MTG Salvation

Nemesis, it's literally almost been twenty years since I read it but I looooooved that novel back in the day. I wonder what it would be like to read it now as an adult.

Quote from Ree Wicker »

I think the more silly thing is writers seem to have it down pat the ability to build up a romance, but then when the characters are finally in a relationship, the writers tend to flounder about and are unsure where to take it from there.

This is sadly common in all types of writing, particularly in longform types of media like serialized novels and television. Writers frequently write themselves into a corner because "happy/stable relationships are boring" and inject conflict, usually from outside forces. Honestly, it's lazy writing and though I've just come to expect it I do not find it interesting or excusable. If I'm being brutally honest, I think it says a lot about writers that they seem unable to make fictional relationships interesting without contrived drama. Which isn't to say that fictional relationships can't have any conflict (irl relationships - even the stable, happy ones - certainly do), but that conflict ought to be character-driven and not based on contrivance because the writer doesn't know what to do with writing stable relationships.

I wonder if WotC has market research that indicates legendary lands are unpopular for some reason because these absolutely should have been. This oddly happens in cycles. I remember the Kamigawa block having many legendary lands and the Ravnica came with lands having legendary names depicting specific places (Sunhome, Duskmantle, etc) that weren't legendary. We recently had Ixalan which had several legendary lands and now these specific castles that aren't legendary. Why?

At least the cards are useful. We're clearly getting a larger mono-color focus soon with all these goodies.

Quote from Humphrey »

the famous black queen of medieval european tales and her all female knights army. yeah, sure wotc..

Quote from 5colors »

It seems that Eldraine runs on a "divine merit system" and not hereditary. Algenus and Linden (both born in the peasant class) where picked by the Questing Beast to go on the High Quest to gain knighthood of the 5 courts and implies that Rowan and Will (as well as Hazel and Erec) would need to be picked by the beast as well. Linden also mentions the last rulers abused thier rule privilege and thats the reason they lost power.

Funny enough its bright up by the people if she is up to ruling while the king is missing even thought most people have 1 knighthood and Linden had 4 knighthoods.

This, exactly. I'm not sure why there's so much questioning of her ability to rule (actually, I think we know why so many posters assume she can't be a rightful ruler). It's spelled out right in the story, and if I'm not mistaken it's actually a fairly relevant plot point given her failure to secure her fifth knighthood and subsequent rule upon the High King's disappearance is directly tied into the plot.

I'm really bummed her card is so bleh. It's just not that good at all, and definitely underwhelming for an important character. In fact, the white legends in Eldraine are both rather disappointing. I guess, if we count it, The Circle is alright if you're doing a Knight tribal thing but the critical mass of legendary Knights requires at least three colors and even then, a lot of the options are not ideal. To bring it full circle, were Linden a Human Noble Knight, it would have improved her quite a lot. Not enough to be competitive, mind you, but at least enough to make her desirable to casual tribal players.

Quote from boombox_smk »

I like it, but I have to say I don't like that they have to add Haste in the characteristics of each token. Couldn't it just say:

create a red and white creature tokens with those characteristics and haste, or ...with haste and those characteristics?

That was my thought as well. It could have even been "Creature tokens you control have haste." for a little more utility with the Populate Commander deck that just came out. Would have left space for each token to have other keywords instead.

I dig that it's a very politically-minded card, and I think there are shrewd players in the right local meta that could really make the king sing. I, however, find him really boring. I think I'd rather more 4-color legends than these "mono-to-cast, all-five-in-identity" cards.

Maybe it's because I just watched Endgame, but my first thought was "No more stairs!!!!"

There are cards that can stop the draw (Plagiarize, Possessed Portal), punish the draw (Fate Unraveler, Kederekt Parasite, most Ob Nixilis planeswalkers), or punish the discard (Megrim), so Skullknocker has some support to make it somewhat more useful. Without that support, it might knock a good card out of a hand and replace it with something useful, but the worst case scenarios involve discarding dead cards and drawing into answers or game winning cards. It's natural home is wheel decks, but I'm not sure they're going to want him.

It's certainly not a terrible card, it's got a lot of upsides. And yet, I'm not sure what deck wants it. Maybe a mill strategy since its recursion requires your opponents to have moderately full graveyards?

I do enjoy a versatile bear. Charming here is quite useful for a Roon deck as it provides a couple of somewhat useful ETB triggers (scry more than lifegain) plus redundancy of flickering effects. He'll always be what you need him to be. An additional trigger for a creature with a powerful trigger, a bit of selection for your next draw, or a small buffer of life (not typically the best of the three, but not without its benefits either, however limited they may be).

Hey friends, apologies in advance for the can of worms.

So, in July a thread in the Mill was modded because it veered into a discussion of how political correctness/representation had been influencing MtG negatively (in the opinion of some posters), a discussion loosely inspired by some aspect of a spoiled card (the art, if I'm not mistaken). I followed up with Feyd who said that those discussions tend to slip away from being focused on MtG so the staff regarded them as too hot to allow, a line of reasoning I can respect. I recommended that the staff consider devising a constructive way to facilitate a discussion because it was only going to continue coming up frequently across threads.

Given that the same conversation keeps coming up at least once in every spoiler season (twice in Eldraine already, by my count - once in the initial Oko reveal and again in the Mystical Dispute thread) and is showing no sign of going anywhere, is there a plan aside from modding threads as these disputes develop? I can't help feeling like that's just holding action because the underlying frustrations and conflict isn't going away, and the discussions are often going for hours if not a day before the staff have a chance to intervene. People have a lot of thoughts and feelings on representation in the game within the larger context of political correctness and social woes, and it's just going to keep coming up at every opportune moment. Locking threads and deleting posts (or even issuing warnings/infractions) doesn't seem to be making an impact.

I bring it up here and not on Feyd's helpdesk because it's clearly a problem centralized in the Mill (I do appreciate Feyd's input here and he ought to chime in if I'm off base bringing it up again) and has some impact on spoiler season (sapping staff time, derailing threads, making the Mill feel less welcoming when it's frequently the first subforum new people look at, etc).

I dunno, thoughts?

I haven't really been loving most of the spoiled cards thus far, at least in regards to the heavy-handed references, but this one is definitely a big win. Fun, flavorful, and might even be somewhat useful.

Quote from grid_monitor »

. is 'guardian' for 'stepmother' a political correctness thing ?
.

They probably just didn't want to be so on the nose with "Wicked Stepmother".

Quote from OrzhovPlaneswalker »

Quote from mikeyG »

Quote from CatParty »

Sultai makes sense to me since we haven't had it yet as a planeswalker, and this set will probably already have a Rx and a Ux walker in the form of the twins.

This is honestly the most compelling argument for me even if I also completely understand why many think Oko is more URG aligned. Though I do think it's worth mentioning that a planeswalker's overall alignment doesn't necessarily mean their cards must always be represented by those exact colors (Ajani, Arlinn, and Tamiyo are good examples where they are aligned with various color configurations but aren't always printed in all of those colors all the time because secondary affiliations don't always make sense for individual card designs), so Oko may not actually be three colors when we get his card.

Except that this set is Top down rather than Bottom up. Which means that WotC is less concerned with using narrative to explain the mechanical design they wanted, but rather they started with the kind of tropes and ‘feel’ of a set and built mechanics to reflect these.

So apart from the colour and format balancing done in all sets (and someone already explained why this is rarely an issue in 3 colour) I don’t think they’ll be trying to fill any other holes in the larger meta, but rather they’ll be filling tropes.

I'm not sure that refutes my point. A set can be designed top down and a planeswalker card in the set can still not be all colors in that character's alignment. Even in flavor/trope heavy sets, characters don't need to see print exactly as they may exist lore-wise.

Quote from CatParty »

Sultai makes sense to me since we haven't had it yet as a planeswalker, and this set will probably already have a Rx and a Ux walker in the form of the twins.

This is honestly the most compelling argument for me even if I also completely understand why many think Oko is more URG aligned. Though I do think it's worth mentioning that a planeswalker's overall alignment doesn't necessarily mean their cards must always be represented by those exact colors (Ajani, Arlinn, and Tamiyo are good examples where they are aligned with various color configurations but aren't always printed in all of those colors all the time because secondary affiliations don't always make sense for individual card designs), so Oko may not actually be three colors when we get his card.

Ignite the Future is going directly into my Intet deck which already ramps wicked fast and sets up explosive Intet triggers, so ItF may help create some additional consistency. Even the non-Flashback casting is relatively attractive since the deck is tuned to take advantage of those "temporary hand" effects. The deck even has a dragon subtheme and Backdraft here might be something to test as well.