Fortified land is a 0/5 white Wall creature with defender. It's still a land.
When fortified land dies, target opponent skips his or her next combat step.
Fortify 4
"The defenses will hold off the approaching Nayan monsters for now. But every night the thunder of their footsteps draws closer." - Diary of Sangrell Par
Trample
Whenever Chrysalis Wurm deals damage to a permanent or player, put a feeding counter on it.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if there are five or more feeding counters on Chrysalis Wurm, sacrifice it. If you do, put a 9/9 blue Insect creature token with flying and haste onto the battlefield.
If there are exactly two permanents named Severed Stave on the battlefield, the "legend rule" doesn't apply to them.
Equipped creature has hexproof and "When this creature attacks, if two Equipment named Severed Stave are attached to it, sacrifice them both. If you do, take two additional turns after this one."
Equip 2
Teferi's staff was broken to save many worlds, soaking up much of his time magic in the process.
To correct a few misconceptions / misinformation in this thread:
- 99.9% of judging takes place at events that aren't Grand Prix. This doesn't discourage most judges from doing most judging
- The PTOs (that run GPs) were told about this in advance and know they will need to consider their compensation packages from 2015 to offset the loss of GP foils
- There will be processes in place to catch system abuse - we're not naive. The reasons people give for their recogs will be public, for starters
- International judges will be able to recognise in their own language
- I'm not sure whether or not the total amount of foils will actually change. Presently we have ~40 GPs giving foils to staffs in the ~50 range per event; we will replace with ~600 L2+ judges able to recognise on an interval basis. How many foils are in each recog packet is not yet known; how long that interval is not known (but likely to be ~3 months); how many will exercise this right is not yet known. But even low values will leave us outputting similar numbers of foils.
That's not to say that this change is all positive or without challenges, but we do actually think about these things before we decide them
Well the two before the latest one were both design-a-set exercises; I felt that worked out pretty well as a larger job and from my perspective as a player at least felt like it was not too heavy on the host. There was probably a feeling of fatigue on that but it'll be like a 1.5 year gap between the last design a set PT and the next.
Alternatively we could look at something like designing cards that could fit into existing sets? So e.g. have a round based on designing cards that are being time-machine inserted into Kamigawa, or Mirage, or w/e. Shows understanding of context well.
I guess you need a structure that is big enough to work when you have a large number of qualified participants. Certainly advancing via votes or similar is a necessity.
Designer commentary for my Round 3 card - Landbind is an idea I've had knocking around (originally called Bond) since before Soulbond. I made it simpler and used "paired" templating technology to make it clearer. Most cards with Landbind would just power up the creature once a pairing was made, but a few cards would buff the land (e.g. adding tapping for any colour) or both (like the example card I posted).
2 of each, as prereleases are basically sealed deck tournaments and when you have the entire block available that means 2 packs of each set including the middle one. WotC designed it that way. I doubt they designed for triple theros triple journey into nyx as that makes no sense.
Whilst the formats aren't necessarily tied to what has been done in the past, in the days prior to preboxed product Set C prereleases in ABC blocks were AAACCC, not AABBCC like the regular Sealed format.
I.e. not rulings or errata.
If they worked as printed, then lotus vale = a black lotus just by itself AT WORST, scorched ruins = a bigger colorless black lotus by itself, and both of them work as drawback-free lotus FACTORIES with any of a huge variety of cards that cancel triggered abilities, like stifletrickbind or sundial of the infinite, because you don't even have to lets them sacrifice anymore after using their initial mana. Then play another one turn 2... (in addition to your hordes of artifact monstrosities, etc.)
The cards do currently work as close to the printed functionality as modern rules allow. Under pre-6th rules, you couldn't activate the mana abilities of these cards until their comes-into-play abilities were dealt with. There has never been a time when Lotus Vale could be used as a land-drop Black Lotus. You can't read pre-6th cards as if they were templated for post-6th, because they're essentially in a different language and need to be translated to make sense.
Now, other cards of course did change functionality to match printed wording when 6th rules came in, so there is a precedent, but these two cards are so egregiously overpowered if played as written that I don't think it's unreasonable for Oracle text to do its best to emulate the original design intent. It's the same way that we don't treat Meditate as having some kind of weird activated ability.
As the project leader for this one, I'll be hanging around the Magic internet today to answer questions
Artifact - Fortification (R)
Fortified land is a 0/5 white Wall creature with defender. It's still a land.
When fortified land dies, target opponent skips his or her next combat step.
Fortify 4
"The defenses will hold off the approaching Nayan monsters for now. But every night the thunder of their footsteps draws closer." - Diary of Sangrell Par
Creature - Wurm (R)
Trample
Whenever Chrysalis Wurm deals damage to a permanent or player, put a feeding counter on it.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if there are five or more feeding counters on Chrysalis Wurm, sacrifice it. If you do, put a 9/9 blue Insect creature token with flying and haste onto the battlefield.
6/6
An earthquake, a famine, and then a hurricane.
Legendary Artifact - Equipment (R)
If there are exactly two permanents named Severed Stave on the battlefield, the "legend rule" doesn't apply to them.
Equipped creature has hexproof and "When this creature attacks, if two Equipment named Severed Stave are attached to it, sacrifice them both. If you do, take two additional turns after this one."
Equip 2
Teferi's staff was broken to save many worlds, soaking up much of his time magic in the process.
Creature - Elemental (R)
Life's Light gets +X/+X, where X is your life total.
-13/-13
It is like life itself: beautiful, potent, and fragile.
- 99.9% of judging takes place at events that aren't Grand Prix. This doesn't discourage most judges from doing most judging
- The PTOs (that run GPs) were told about this in advance and know they will need to consider their compensation packages from 2015 to offset the loss of GP foils
- There will be processes in place to catch system abuse - we're not naive. The reasons people give for their recogs will be public, for starters
- International judges will be able to recognise in their own language
- I'm not sure whether or not the total amount of foils will actually change. Presently we have ~40 GPs giving foils to staffs in the ~50 range per event; we will replace with ~600 L2+ judges able to recognise on an interval basis. How many foils are in each recog packet is not yet known; how long that interval is not known (but likely to be ~3 months); how many will exercise this right is not yet known. But even low values will leave us outputting similar numbers of foils.
That's not to say that this change is all positive or without challenges, but we do actually think about these things before we decide them
Alternatively we could look at something like designing cards that could fit into existing sets? So e.g. have a round based on designing cards that are being time-machine inserted into Kamigawa, or Mirage, or w/e. Shows understanding of context well.
I guess you need a structure that is big enough to work when you have a large number of qualified participants. Certainly advancing via votes or similar is a necessity.
I've got four of each of the non-Force ones in hand and they look good. Elesh and Hanna in particular.
Whilst the formats aren't necessarily tied to what has been done in the past, in the days prior to preboxed product Set C prereleases in ABC blocks were AAACCC, not AABBCC like the regular Sealed format.
The cards do currently work as close to the printed functionality as modern rules allow. Under pre-6th rules, you couldn't activate the mana abilities of these cards until their comes-into-play abilities were dealt with. There has never been a time when Lotus Vale could be used as a land-drop Black Lotus. You can't read pre-6th cards as if they were templated for post-6th, because they're essentially in a different language and need to be translated to make sense.
Now, other cards of course did change functionality to match printed wording when 6th rules came in, so there is a precedent, but these two cards are so egregiously overpowered if played as written that I don't think it's unreasonable for Oracle text to do its best to emulate the original design intent. It's the same way that we don't treat Meditate as having some kind of weird activated ability.