Thinking on this, I'd probably would have wanted this costing 2 and being able to destroy colorless non-land permanents. If wizards wants to make colorless walkers that work in any color, there needs to be an answer to stop them that isn't insanely narrow.
Except black doesn't destroy artifacts or enchantments. Colorless creature or planeswalker, maybe, but they wanted this to be pushed for Modern and it's starting to sound like Wizards really wants black to have a means of dethroning swords to plowshares and path of exile as the preeminent removal spells. White is meant to be bad at removal, not king of it.
Now, this isn't swords or path so it's not quite there, but at 1 mana if the goal is to exile colorless creatures at the very least the temptation to splash white just to get removal is removed for that case.
Why is white supposed to be bad at removal?
MaRo has said so in his Color Pie segments a number of times. White can destroy things, but it should either have conditions (target attacking or blocking creature, or the like) or it should be temporary (Oblivion Ring or other prison effects). The color pie is also why red should never destroy enchantments outside of warp world level "random" effects or why green shouldn't get creatures with first strike. The color pie can be bent or even broken at times, but it is meant to be regarded highly as the standard for what colors can and/or cant do, and how well they can do them (green can have haste, but only rarely).
By clearly defining strengths and weaknesses for each color the game becomes much less likely to have any single color be the dominant color for all formats for all time. (Also probably a reason to add things like this card for colorless hate, since colorless is getting close to needing it's own slice of the color pie)
Written from my phone: will update with better examples/links when I get home.
To be fair, Havrekjex did say /s indicating (if you know the slang) that they were done being sarcastic, so I doubt that was a serious remark about ritualling this out .... ever.
I don't understand why Demons and Angels don't end up together more often TBH... Demons are paragons of black mana: they are selfish and without empathy for others taking whatever they can at any cost, while Angels, as paragons of white mana would strive for the benefit of all, even giving of themselves to better others. One takes impulsively, the other gives generously. It can very easily be believable as long as the Demon is satisfied with what the Angel provides and the Angel can justify or otherwise direct the Demon to use its selfishness for the greater good more often than not (see: Liliana being a 'good guy' despite being very black-aligned/selfish). Now, will it be a healthy relationship? Never. It is the definition of co-dependence. But co-dependent relationships of black and white type characters are very common in fiction as well as in life.
Man I really hope when we finally get that Bolas showdown with Bolas vs. Gatewatch that he actually wins and literally kills of 75 % of the entire Gatewatch. Maybe leaving 1 alive and corruption another.
For God's sake. Maybe they should also change the name of the game to "Magic: the Edgelording".
I think people just want to see more of a Game of (Magic) Thrones. Let the PoV characters die every so often. Make us care about the stakes, and let the writers clean their plate when distaste grows for the main cast. There are plenty of ways to bring people back from the dead, so who cares if the main cast dies every so often?
I don't believe Saheeli/Felidar was unintentional at all...
In a grand sense, you are right. Maro loves talking about the 'pendulum' metaphor for design, and how in order to keep the game from getting stale they try to shift the balance between agro and control, or threats and answers or any number of other tiny dials to make sure the same combination doesnt appear too often in a row.
For Khaladesh they recognized very early how, in order to make a parasitic design like Energy counters work, they needed to push strong combos and actively chose to lower the amount of counters and removal that would make playing combo too risky (on top of their already lowered removal due to a push of the pendulum towards threats, this was a mistake), and at the same time, allowed cards that they recognized as having good combo potential go through so the players (us) would have all the tools we need to play around with. That there happened to be a plethora of standard legal infinite combos was, in this sense then, by design. That one of them happened to be a two card combo where the two cards in question are so versatile they arent even dead cards when you cant stick the other? That was unexpected, but not unintentional.
So why not ban them as soon as they crop up? Well, like I said, there were a lot of good combos out there, and if someone could shave a turn or two off of any of them, or find a way to make them more consistent than copycat a whole new meta could have popped up overnight, and with mardu vehicles around to ensure there wasnt just one deck, they had a tough call: Let the players find an answer that only might exist, or actively tell players what is and is not OK to play by denying the combo deck they half-intentionally created?
Should they have listened to pro players when they asked for a swift banning of the combo? Probably. Were they wrong not to? We cant really answer that with any certainty, because they didnt know anything about what answers might exist with any certainty.
I hope they do something interesting with the tribes in this. All too often Tribal just reduces itself to Lords, tokens and generic effects that just get better if you have (insert creature type here). That's basically the same thing with a new coat of paint every time.
What I'm looking for is a distinct identity among the tribes. Wizards are a decent example of what I mean because the most common form of Wizard Tribal is Azami, Lady of Scrolls which is a control deck rather than big wizard beatdown or weenies.
Giving each tribe a theme they want to work off of is highly beneficial and makes each tribe unique and interesting.
Of course, we also have our two parasitic tribes, Slivers and Allys which function reasonably different than the classic tribes. But yes, Wizards are my favorite example of how you can take tribal in whole new directions other than just creature combat pumps.
I'm assuming this is an "Eternal Masters" set that did not want to be forced to reprint high-value cards. Modern Masters and Eternal Masters can't be printed unless they offer the chance for $100 mythics or $60 rares, so in order to make a draft set utilizing classic cards that is designed for fun or flavor and wants to ignore price, they need a new name for it. With any luck (not that it will ever happen), Iconic Masters will also allow printing new cards, so we can get cards for the iconic heroes of old that never got them and maybe even remakes of the ones who did. I would love a Gerrard that had the right color identity to play the rest of the Weatherlight crew (just as an example).
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MaRo has said so in his Color Pie segments a number of times. White can destroy things, but it should either have conditions (target attacking or blocking creature, or the like) or it should be temporary (Oblivion Ring or other prison effects). The color pie is also why red should never destroy enchantments outside of warp world level "random" effects or why green shouldn't get creatures with first strike. The color pie can be bent or even broken at times, but it is meant to be regarded highly as the standard for what colors can and/or cant do, and how well they can do them (green can have haste, but only rarely).
By clearly defining strengths and weaknesses for each color the game becomes much less likely to have any single color be the dominant color for all formats for all time. (Also probably a reason to add things like this card for colorless hate, since colorless is getting close to needing it's own slice of the color pie)
Written from my phone: will update with better examples/links when I get home.
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I think people just want to see more of a Game of (Magic) Thrones. Let the PoV characters die every so often. Make us care about the stakes, and let the writers clean their plate when distaste grows for the main cast. There are plenty of ways to bring people back from the dead, so who cares if the main cast dies every so often?
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It's hard to imagine how that grandpa became one of the most notorious villains of the entire multiverse.
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In a grand sense, you are right. Maro loves talking about the 'pendulum' metaphor for design, and how in order to keep the game from getting stale they try to shift the balance between agro and control, or threats and answers or any number of other tiny dials to make sure the same combination doesnt appear too often in a row.
For Khaladesh they recognized very early how, in order to make a parasitic design like Energy counters work, they needed to push strong combos and actively chose to lower the amount of counters and removal that would make playing combo too risky (on top of their already lowered removal due to a push of the pendulum towards threats, this was a mistake), and at the same time, allowed cards that they recognized as having good combo potential go through so the players (us) would have all the tools we need to play around with. That there happened to be a plethora of standard legal infinite combos was, in this sense then, by design. That one of them happened to be a two card combo where the two cards in question are so versatile they arent even dead cards when you cant stick the other? That was unexpected, but not unintentional.
So why not ban them as soon as they crop up? Well, like I said, there were a lot of good combos out there, and if someone could shave a turn or two off of any of them, or find a way to make them more consistent than copycat a whole new meta could have popped up overnight, and with mardu vehicles around to ensure there wasnt just one deck, they had a tough call: Let the players find an answer that only might exist, or actively tell players what is and is not OK to play by denying the combo deck they half-intentionally created?
Should they have listened to pro players when they asked for a swift banning of the combo? Probably. Were they wrong not to? We cant really answer that with any certainty, because they didnt know anything about what answers might exist with any certainty.
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And Thallids! Don't forget your Thallids (well, technically they are Fungi now)!
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Of course, we also have our two parasitic tribes, Slivers and Allys which function reasonably different than the classic tribes. But yes, Wizards are my favorite example of how you can take tribal in whole new directions other than just creature combat pumps.
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