Use :symXX: for the hybrids, where X is w, u, b, r, or g. Order isn't important (i.e., symwu is the same as symuw)
There's also the simile list to the right of the text-entry box when you are in advanced mode for future reference. Most mana-cost related graphics can be done with tags ([ mana ] and [ /mana ]...14rbg becomes 14RBG), which is much easier, but hybrids and the tap symbol are notable exceptions.
I'm sorry I haven't been part of this discussion, either, but I am in the middle of moving to NYC and haven't been at a computer since Friday.
I do really like the Sa'ab, and I think we have some good cards to present despite the lack of team participation. There are a couple of suggestions I would make before these are rendered:
The spell is a little weak at 3BB. It costs more than Zombify and the option of kicking it for a one-shot effect/attack that turn is backwards. If we want something like Footsteps of the Goryo or Goryo's Vengeance, that should be the baseline (at around 3), with a more expensive kicker to keep the guy around. Also, because there is a minor theme of graveyard stealing, you could justify a high cost by allowing you to grab a creature from any graveyard.
The Lord is missing P/T. I assume it's supposed to be 4/4 to match the token, but it could be higher due to lack of evasion.
There is no rare creature yet. A suggestion:
Anubisite - 2BB
Creature - Hound Spirit X, remove X cards in your graveyard from the game, : Put X 1/1 Black Hound Spirt creature tokens into play.
1/1
Or you could do it as a comes-into-play deal, where your entire graveyard is removed from the game and turned into tokens, with the guy having a static ability that grants Hound Spirits some small bonus. Maybe too much like the lord, but there's options.
Also, just to be clear we have until midnight tonight to finalize these. I will be checking in for the next few hours, but will not be able to assist with art/renders or give any feedback after 6 or 7ish EST.
Well, it's Friday, and we don't have a creature type yet. It seems that these are the parameters:
1) A type that is relatively obscure but wasn't a total anomaly (i.e. there's more than one in existence not counting Mistform Ultimus)
2) There's nothing unifying them as a tribe other than creature type (no shared mechanics, no lords, etc.)
3) We can find 6 pieces of art featuring this type
There are some other holistic factors to consider, like whether or not the creature would ever act in a group, from a flavor perspective or a gameplay perspective. Wurms fit a lot of the above requirements, but because they are generally at the top end of the curve, you don't usually have multiple Wurms out at once.
My top two choices right now would be Hounds or Centaurs. There are actually quite a few Hounds out there now, and they have almost nothing in common with each other. They work in groups without having to anthropomorphize them, and have been printed with a variety of abilities that we could build on or start from scratch. Plus they were one of the first types suggested.
There are about an equal number of Centaurs, and they are only slightly less mechanically diverse. A lot of them work with trample or land-fetch, but there's diversity there. Stonebow and Seton give bonuses to tramplers and druids respectively, not Centaurs. On the upside to Hounds, Centaurs are clearly sentient and can be given more complex abilities. They also already have a small connection to Snow, if people like Shiny's idea.
I'm going to screw around on Gatherer a little more, but I think we should get moving on one of these two if there aren't any other suggestions soon.
For the unaware, Jhoira Basic is a format on MTGO that makes use of the Jhoira avatar and deck of 60 basic lands. The avatar's ability essentially allows you, for the cost of 3 and discarding a card, to make a copy of three random instants or sorceries and play one of them for free. This makes for some pretty wacky gameplay, but it's fun and something unique to MTGO.
Unlike Momir Basic, Jhoira Basic isn't an official format (yet). It almost assuredly will become one once all the bugs are worked out, but until then, it's just an agreed-upon convention. One thing that isn't universally agreed upon, however, is what to do about the Wishes. Getting an actual Life from the Loam via Burning Wish is huge when your entire deck is basic lands. In general, being able to choose a particular card in a format defined by randomness makes these some of the top cards.
The problem is that it's completely antithetical to the concept of "basic" (unless you Living Wish for a Swamp). In Momir Basic, the only legal cards in the format are the basic lands and the Momir avatar, and you (generally) can't wish for cards that are not legal in the format you are playing.
The problem with the problem is that the Wishes are a lot of fun. More than Momir, there are a lot of dead cards (you often will pull three that don't do anything for lack of nonland targets). Getting anything other than a land into play, hands or graveyards suddenly makes a whole slew of cards useful. Last night, I Golden Wished for a Platinum Angel when I had three cards left in my deck, only to have it Ancient Grudgeed.
But another problem is that not everyone has a Platinum Angel or Life from the Loam in their collection. Momir Basic is the ultimate level playing field; no one can buy an advantage.
What are your thoughts on this? I have to imagine that Wizards will make this format as similar to Momir Basic as possible and prevent you from wishing for anything but basic lands, making the format considerably less dynamic. If you play Jhoria Basic, how do you handle this? Have you run into arguments? Would it be okay if, provided it was technically feasible, the wishes allowed you to get any card of the appropriate type, regardless of whether you owned a copy?
I like Arcadeus' first suggestion of a canine theme, but I don't think I have any art to fit that
That Justin Sweet art I linked to last time has dogs in the foreground. I think that idea has legs (4, to be exact), but the lack of a consolidated creature type may be a hindrance.
This is a challenge where the art definitely needs to be gathered early...if we can't find 6 decent arts with dogs/dogmen in them, we simply can't do that creature type.
Ghosts and Skeletons are very similar to Spirits and Zombies in appearance (would be easy to find good art), but could be differentiated mechanically. Skeletons already have a mechanical theme (regeneration), so there is starting point there. They also are lacking any kind of lord or type-specific noncreature spell outside of Drudge Spell. Plus they are super-iconic and have been represented on cards since Alpha.
The major stumbling point would be to make them distinct from Zombies, but I think we could do it by thinking of some new, flavorful ways of doing regeneration.
This is the insane, terrible beauty of the WWE and professional wrestling in general. I cannot find a single non-wrestling source that confirms his death...even local news is just parroting the WWE.com story. I really, really don't want to believe that WWE would be willing to make something like this up...but how can I justify that now in light of the Vince angle?
Raw starts in a few minutes and I have no idea how they are going to handle this. There is no indication yet that they are going to scrap (or at least suspend) the Vince angle. How are they going to differentiate this Raw from last week's?
This is literally unbelievable.
EDIT
Okay...that was the right thing to do, Vince. You can go back to being dead, now.
I know that Matt Hardy (with brother Jeff) has a rematch against Cade and Murdoch for the Tag-Team Titles, but I've been thinking about his recent string of victories. Could it be that WWE is finally giving him 'The Push'?
Just a thought.
Yeah, I thought that JBL was making it pretty obvious tonight. He's been doing the 9:00 match pretty steadily since that awesome 20 minute one he had with Kennedy.
Tatsumasa, The Sheltering Scale - 3WWW
Legendary Creature - Dragon Spirit
Flying 3WWW, Remove Tatsumasa, The Sheltering Scale from the game: Put a white enchantment token with "Creatures you control get +3/+3" into play. Return Tatsumasa to play under its owner's control when that token is put into a graveyard.
5/5
The thing is that you had slightly better cards on red and green, but that wasn't enough to compensate the fact that I really didn't agree with your decision on blue.
I think this is the most vague part. All you said was that you didn't think blue getting sacrifice was a natural progression of the color pie. Mechanically, if blue sends a permanent to the graveyard, it's been through sacrifice-based removal, and has been since Energy Flux. Most of it has been fairly bad, but with a little manipulation, cards like Reality Acid can be effective. Acid stands out as one of the few that can remove creatures, as killing creatures has been the domain of black, flavor-wise.
But blue should have the Edict mechanic before black. Why should black bother manipulating their opponents into sacrificing their own creatures when they have any number of spells that will just kill those creatures outright? For what it's worth, this was my flavor rational for blue:
I think we need to come at this from the top down...the color shifting in PC was really an exercising in framing mechanics in the overall flavor and M.O. of a particular color. If blue gets to destroy things, it needs to do it using its own value system: intellect, manipulation, cunning, control. Blue certainly could kill creatures by making their brains explode/implode, as in Arcadeus' example, but I think it would be way cooler if the attack was leveled at the creature's controller via mind control.
Blue is a very skill intensive color. It takes some real-life intellect to play a blue deck well. So blue gets cards that reward the player for thinking things through and punish opponents for not doing so. Even cards like Counterspell are mind games, even if that isn't reflected in the flavor on the card itself. The ultimate example of getting your opponent to make bad choices, though, is Fact or Fiction. If we were to apply this to destruction, it would be something like the Edict effect. Think Twisted Justice for the flavor.
Forced Hand -1U
Sorcery (u)
Target opponent sacrifices a creature. Foobius couldn't even look away as he brought the knife down on his beloved; his body was no longer his own.
Getting your opponent to sac the thing you want to remove gets around pretty much every defense, like shroud, protection, regeneration, even indestructibility.
Scapegoat - 1UU
Instant (r)
Target opponent sacrifices a creature of your choice. When it comes to blame, it is always better to give than to receive.
I'm sorry this has gotten so long-winded, as I'm not even trying to appeal your decision. I'd rather move on to the elimination challenge as soon as possible as I'm going to be away for a few days. But as ISC didn't really come to a solid consensus on blue and the Edict mechanic was originally my idea, I wanted to at least defend it on behalf of the team if that's what cost us the round.
As my first post on Salvation was in this thread (and about Eddie's last heel turn in comparison to One with Nothing, no less) I think it's fitting that this is where I'll make my 1000th.
Last night's Raw was awesome. Amazing, even. I watch a lot of WWE 24-7, and I'm constantly struck by how flat everything today seems in comparison to the lively, exciting, anything-can-happen WWF of days gone by. Last night's Raw had that magic, even up to and including Steph's lame-duck promo. And while part of it had to do with the total feud overhaul that stemmed from the draft, it was the Who Blew Up Vince angle that was largely responsible.
There's a heated debate on the Torch right now over whether this is the best or the worst wrestling angle ever conceived. Wade Keller has made some impassioned arguments about how Vince fake death exploits the real emotions generated by Eddie and Owen's real deaths in the line of service to this industry, and that the 10-bell salute, tribute videos and involvement of the remaining Guerreros knocks the Katie Vick angle off the pedestal as "the most disgusting thing the WWE has ever done."
He's right, in a lot of ways. No reasonable person would ever believe Vince actually died in that explosion, so there is no point in mimicking the 4th-wall-breaking tribute episodes to make his death seem more real. This will forever taint any kind of real tribute to a fallen wrestler done in that style, and makes everyone's sincerity suspect for no good reason. That episode of Smackdown (and apparently ECW...I didn't see it) were disgusting for that reason.
However, the tone and tenor of this angle was completely different on Raw. Aside from Steph's horrible emoting, this was much closer to the wacky hijinks murder mystery that it should have been from the beginning. Pretty much every other promo on the subject was fun and something that the wrestlers got to sink their teeth into, especially Booker, Cena and Kennedy. And it showed in the crowd response and in the wrestling. People weren't just going through the motions.
One thing Keller said in his argument that this "death" is more disrespectful than "deaths" in shows like Law and Order is that those shows don't present themselves as reality. I call BS on that. With a few notable exceptions, all fiction presents itself as reality; hence the suspension of disbelief. When I'm watching Lost, I'm not thinking about Matthew Fox and Terry O'Quinn hanging out with some camera crew in Oahu; Jack and Locke are on a terrifying mystery island. This is not really a conscious decision on my part; it's just how the show is meant to be consumed.
Reality shows are a little different, as they ask you not to suspend your disbelief and take the action you are seeing as real (even though it might be as heavily planned and scripted as any purely fictional show). The difference for wrestling, and what sets it apart from everything on television, is that it asks you to suspend your disbelief about your suspension of disbelief by being a fictional show about a reality show. Charlie Kaufman meets Andy Kaufman.
Regardless of how many layers of suspension of disbelief we are proffered, at the end of the day, however, we all now know it is a work. This means that the harder Vince and Co. try to make wrestling seem real again, the less effective television it becomes. This angle, which is the most preposterously fictional thing they have done in a good long while, is therefore a net positive.
Plus, when the angle ends with Mr. McMahon having faked his own death, it will be true in the fictional sense, the reality show sense and the real reality sense. Then we can fill Daniel Boorstin's coffin with iron, wrap wires around it and use it to power the Earth forever.
On "Expatriate"...if the art has a figured being exiled, that definitely makes sense. However, I still think the name is somewhat clunky and seems like it should only or primarily affect creatures. I think "Excommunicate" is a touch better, as it conveys that the person is being exiled for his forbidden ideas and also connects to white's religiosity.
On the red shift: when you think about it, nothing about the name "Zealous Inquisitor" suggests damage redirection in the first place, so we are perhaps holding ourselves to a higher standard than necessary. I think it would be cool to work the word Carom in there, i.e. Carom Mage, Caromcaster, Carommancer. I like AoK's flavor text but it's very close to Firebolt. Is "Carommancers put the 'ping' in 'ping pong'" too meta?
One really important point for anyone who is doing renders. >U's planeshifted cards are not in the planeshifted frames...this is a no-brainer for us.
EDIT
Other flavor suggestions:
For Defiling Horror/Zombie/Whatever the art looks most like: "Its got a black thumb..and the heart to match"
For Pollute (if we use the cropped Donato painting of corpses turning the ground black): "More death is all you get when you sow what you reap."
For the green Annex: ""'Stealing' implies that they have some right to this land. I am simply correcting that misconception." - Some Elf/Forest Spirit/The Progenitor/etc.
I think "Single Out" is going for the same thing as "Sequestration," but I'm fine with either one. Single Out just sort of came to me, thinking about how you opponent is left with a single copy of the card.
Flowstone is definitely out of flavor for these red cards. Maybe you are thinking Lodestone?
Gamble already seems like a red-shifted blue card, so I'm not a huge fan of that idea. But if you have an original design in mind and a concept for the flavor, I'm all ears. If you can render up those two cards, I think that would be a more convincing argument than anyone else has put forth for the blue idea.
Yeah, I'm not too worried about the competition,but we do need to start finalizing these cards immediately. If people want to power-down Thoughtcrime, it can become Thought Police on a 2/2 body. Here's some suggestions...I'll add more later.
Even more interesting are the Hollow-Earthers, who (in certain permutations) believe that the Earth is round, but that we are living on the inside of that sphere, with the entire universe encased along with us. BoingBoing recently linked to a fairly interesting scientific take-down of their favorite proof of concept.
"Flat Earth Society" is one of my favorite Bad Religion songs, by the way.
I mostly like Shiny's suggestions, but here are some revisions, including power tweaks and flavor:
White Single Out or Thoughtcrime - 2WW
Enchantment (r)
Whenever a nonbasic permanent is put into an opponet's graveyard from play, search that player's graveyard, hand, and library for all cards with the same name as that card and remove them from the game. Then that player shuffles his or her library.
Black Pollute -2BB
Sorcery (u?)
Sacrifice any number of lands. For each land sacrificed this way, search your library for a Swamp card and put it into play. Shuffle your library afterward.
I think that taking out "tapped" makes this much more interesting. Compare this to Gaea's Balance. Not having an upper limit on the number of lands might make this degenerate at the end of the game, but then again, Black has often had access to truly ludicrous amounts of B through cards like Coffers.
Red Magnetic Field - 3RRR
Enchantment - Aura (r)
Enchant player RRR: The next time target creature would deal damage this turn, that damage is dealt to enchanted player instead.
Even after restricting it to creatures, this is a huge effect, on par with Form of the Dragon if not stronger. Depending on more feedback, we may have to scale this down even further...my Homing Beacon is still on the table. In any case, we should do a creature for the red shift (Zealous Inquisitor or otherwise) for the red shift.
Green
As for your green suggestion, I think the idea of green getting to control tokens makes tons of sense, though the one you proposed is fairly weak. Aside from the occasional Wurm token, most of them are 1/1s and not worth 4 mana to deal with, even permanently. I also liked Arcadeus' idea of putting convoke on such an effect.
Back to Nature- 5GG
Instant
Convoke
Gain control of all token creatures. "Born of seed, born of sky, born of man, you are all born of me." - The Progenitor
or, we could do it as a creature
The Progenitor - 4GG
Legendary Creature - Avatar
Convoke
You control all token creatures. "Born of seed, born of sky, born of man, you are all born of me."
2/2
Blue
It's a shame that we haven't been able to come to any kind of consensus on this. But right now we have less than two days to finish, so we just need to pick something. The only finished pairs I see are my edict set and two-headed set, and Arcadeus' blocking set. Shiny has suggested something based on Kiku's Shadow or Rampant Growth, AoK suggested Wildfire and spreadingdark suggested Tortured Existence. There are some others floating around, too. I'm willing to go with any of these, provided we can illustrate them effectively. I've been looking for art all week, but I guess I don't have the same fantasy-art resources as some people on this thread.
I honestly think we should go with the blue concept that is best captured by whatever art we find.
There's also the simile list to the right of the text-entry box when you are in advanced mode for future reference. Most mana-cost related graphics can be done with tags ([ mana ] and [ /mana ]...14rbg becomes 14RBG), which is much easier, but hybrids and the tap symbol are notable exceptions.
I do really like the Sa'ab, and I think we have some good cards to present despite the lack of team participation. There are a couple of suggestions I would make before these are rendered:
The spell is a little weak at 3BB. It costs more than Zombify and the option of kicking it for a one-shot effect/attack that turn is backwards. If we want something like Footsteps of the Goryo or Goryo's Vengeance, that should be the baseline (at around 3), with a more expensive kicker to keep the guy around. Also, because there is a minor theme of graveyard stealing, you could justify a high cost by allowing you to grab a creature from any graveyard.
The Lord is missing P/T. I assume it's supposed to be 4/4 to match the token, but it could be higher due to lack of evasion.
There is no rare creature yet. A suggestion:
Anubisite - 2BB
Creature - Hound Spirit
X, remove X cards in your graveyard from the game,
1/1
Or you could do it as a comes-into-play deal, where your entire graveyard is removed from the game and turned into tokens, with the guy having a static ability that grants Hound Spirits some small bonus. Maybe too much like the lord, but there's options.
Also, just to be clear we have until midnight tonight to finalize these. I will be checking in for the next few hours, but will not be able to assist with art/renders or give any feedback after 6 or 7ish EST.
1) A type that is relatively obscure but wasn't a total anomaly (i.e. there's more than one in existence not counting Mistform Ultimus)
2) There's nothing unifying them as a tribe other than creature type (no shared mechanics, no lords, etc.)
3) We can find 6 pieces of art featuring this type
There are some other holistic factors to consider, like whether or not the creature would ever act in a group, from a flavor perspective or a gameplay perspective. Wurms fit a lot of the above requirements, but because they are generally at the top end of the curve, you don't usually have multiple Wurms out at once.
My top two choices right now would be Hounds or Centaurs. There are actually quite a few Hounds out there now, and they have almost nothing in common with each other. They work in groups without having to anthropomorphize them, and have been printed with a variety of abilities that we could build on or start from scratch. Plus they were one of the first types suggested.
There are about an equal number of Centaurs, and they are only slightly less mechanically diverse. A lot of them work with trample or land-fetch, but there's diversity there. Stonebow and Seton give bonuses to tramplers and druids respectively, not Centaurs. On the upside to Hounds, Centaurs are clearly sentient and can be given more complex abilities. They also already have a small connection to Snow, if people like Shiny's idea.
I'm going to screw around on Gatherer a little more, but I think we should get moving on one of these two if there aren't any other suggestions soon.
Unlike Momir Basic, Jhoira Basic isn't an official format (yet). It almost assuredly will become one once all the bugs are worked out, but until then, it's just an agreed-upon convention. One thing that isn't universally agreed upon, however, is what to do about the Wishes. Getting an actual Life from the Loam via Burning Wish is huge when your entire deck is basic lands. In general, being able to choose a particular card in a format defined by randomness makes these some of the top cards.
The problem is that it's completely antithetical to the concept of "basic" (unless you Living Wish for a Swamp). In Momir Basic, the only legal cards in the format are the basic lands and the Momir avatar, and you (generally) can't wish for cards that are not legal in the format you are playing.
The problem with the problem is that the Wishes are a lot of fun. More than Momir, there are a lot of dead cards (you often will pull three that don't do anything for lack of nonland targets). Getting anything other than a land into play, hands or graveyards suddenly makes a whole slew of cards useful. Last night, I Golden Wished for a Platinum Angel when I had three cards left in my deck, only to have it Ancient Grudgeed.
But another problem is that not everyone has a Platinum Angel or Life from the Loam in their collection. Momir Basic is the ultimate level playing field; no one can buy an advantage.
What are your thoughts on this? I have to imagine that Wizards will make this format as similar to Momir Basic as possible and prevent you from wishing for anything but basic lands, making the format considerably less dynamic. If you play Jhoria Basic, how do you handle this? Have you run into arguments? Would it be okay if, provided it was technically feasible, the wishes allowed you to get any card of the appropriate type, regardless of whether you owned a copy?
That Justin Sweet art I linked to last time has dogs in the foreground. I think that idea has legs (4, to be exact), but the lack of a consolidated creature type may be a hindrance.
This is a challenge where the art definitely needs to be gathered early...if we can't find 6 decent arts with dogs/dogmen in them, we simply can't do that creature type.
Ghosts and Skeletons are very similar to Spirits and Zombies in appearance (would be easy to find good art), but could be differentiated mechanically. Skeletons already have a mechanical theme (regeneration), so there is starting point there. They also are lacking any kind of lord or type-specific noncreature spell outside of Drudge Spell. Plus they are super-iconic and have been represented on cards since Alpha.
The major stumbling point would be to make them distinct from Zombies, but I think we could do it by thinking of some new, flavorful ways of doing regeneration.
Raw starts in a few minutes and I have no idea how they are going to handle this. There is no indication yet that they are going to scrap (or at least suspend) the Vince angle. How are they going to differentiate this Raw from last week's?
This is literally unbelievable.
EDIT
Okay...that was the right thing to do, Vince. You can go back to being dead, now.
Yeah, I thought that JBL was making it pretty obvious tonight. He's been doing the 9:00 match pretty steadily since that awesome 20 minute one he had with Kennedy.
About time.
Tatsumasa, The Sheltering Scale - 3WWW
Legendary Creature - Dragon Spirit
Flying
3WWW, Remove Tatsumasa, The Sheltering Scale from the game: Put a white enchantment token with "Creatures you control get +3/+3" into play. Return Tatsumasa to play under its owner's control when that token is put into a graveyard.
5/5
I think this is the most vague part. All you said was that you didn't think blue getting sacrifice was a natural progression of the color pie. Mechanically, if blue sends a permanent to the graveyard, it's been through sacrifice-based removal, and has been since Energy Flux. Most of it has been fairly bad, but with a little manipulation, cards like Reality Acid can be effective. Acid stands out as one of the few that can remove creatures, as killing creatures has been the domain of black, flavor-wise.
But blue should have the Edict mechanic before black. Why should black bother manipulating their opponents into sacrificing their own creatures when they have any number of spells that will just kill those creatures outright? For what it's worth, this was my flavor rational for blue:
I'm sorry this has gotten so long-winded, as I'm not even trying to appeal your decision. I'd rather move on to the elimination challenge as soon as possible as I'm going to be away for a few days. But as ISC didn't really come to a solid consensus on blue and the Edict mechanic was originally my idea, I wanted to at least defend it on behalf of the team if that's what cost us the round.
Last night's Raw was awesome. Amazing, even. I watch a lot of WWE 24-7, and I'm constantly struck by how flat everything today seems in comparison to the lively, exciting, anything-can-happen WWF of days gone by. Last night's Raw had that magic, even up to and including Steph's lame-duck promo. And while part of it had to do with the total feud overhaul that stemmed from the draft, it was the Who Blew Up Vince angle that was largely responsible.
There's a heated debate on the Torch right now over whether this is the best or the worst wrestling angle ever conceived. Wade Keller has made some impassioned arguments about how Vince fake death exploits the real emotions generated by Eddie and Owen's real deaths in the line of service to this industry, and that the 10-bell salute, tribute videos and involvement of the remaining Guerreros knocks the Katie Vick angle off the pedestal as "the most disgusting thing the WWE has ever done."
He's right, in a lot of ways. No reasonable person would ever believe Vince actually died in that explosion, so there is no point in mimicking the 4th-wall-breaking tribute episodes to make his death seem more real. This will forever taint any kind of real tribute to a fallen wrestler done in that style, and makes everyone's sincerity suspect for no good reason. That episode of Smackdown (and apparently ECW...I didn't see it) were disgusting for that reason.
However, the tone and tenor of this angle was completely different on Raw. Aside from Steph's horrible emoting, this was much closer to the wacky hijinks murder mystery that it should have been from the beginning. Pretty much every other promo on the subject was fun and something that the wrestlers got to sink their teeth into, especially Booker, Cena and Kennedy. And it showed in the crowd response and in the wrestling. People weren't just going through the motions.
One thing Keller said in his argument that this "death" is more disrespectful than "deaths" in shows like Law and Order is that those shows don't present themselves as reality. I call BS on that. With a few notable exceptions, all fiction presents itself as reality; hence the suspension of disbelief. When I'm watching Lost, I'm not thinking about Matthew Fox and Terry O'Quinn hanging out with some camera crew in Oahu; Jack and Locke are on a terrifying mystery island. This is not really a conscious decision on my part; it's just how the show is meant to be consumed.
Reality shows are a little different, as they ask you not to suspend your disbelief and take the action you are seeing as real (even though it might be as heavily planned and scripted as any purely fictional show). The difference for wrestling, and what sets it apart from everything on television, is that it asks you to suspend your disbelief about your suspension of disbelief by being a fictional show about a reality show. Charlie Kaufman meets Andy Kaufman.
Regardless of how many layers of suspension of disbelief we are proffered, at the end of the day, however, we all now know it is a work. This means that the harder Vince and Co. try to make wrestling seem real again, the less effective television it becomes. This angle, which is the most preposterously fictional thing they have done in a good long while, is therefore a net positive.
Plus, when the angle ends with Mr. McMahon having faked his own death, it will be true in the fictional sense, the reality show sense and the real reality sense. Then we can fill Daniel Boorstin's coffin with iron, wrap wires around it and use it to power the Earth forever.
On the red shift: when you think about it, nothing about the name "Zealous Inquisitor" suggests damage redirection in the first place, so we are perhaps holding ourselves to a higher standard than necessary. I think it would be cool to work the word Carom in there, i.e. Carom Mage, Caromcaster, Carommancer. I like AoK's flavor text but it's very close to Firebolt. Is "Carommancers put the 'ping' in 'ping pong'" too meta?
One really important point for anyone who is doing renders. >U's planeshifted cards are not in the planeshifted frames...this is a no-brainer for us.
EDIT
Other flavor suggestions:
For Defiling Horror/Zombie/Whatever the art looks most like: "Its got a black thumb..and the heart to match"
For Pollute (if we use the cropped Donato painting of corpses turning the ground black): "More death is all you get when you sow what you reap."
For the green Annex: ""'Stealing' implies that they have some right to this land. I am simply correcting that misconception." - Some Elf/Forest Spirit/The Progenitor/etc.
I think "Single Out" is going for the same thing as "Sequestration," but I'm fine with either one. Single Out just sort of came to me, thinking about how you opponent is left with a single copy of the card.
Flowstone is definitely out of flavor for these red cards. Maybe you are thinking Lodestone?
Gamble already seems like a red-shifted blue card, so I'm not a huge fan of that idea. But if you have an original design in mind and a concept for the flavor, I'm all ears. If you can render up those two cards, I think that would be a more convincing argument than anyone else has put forth for the blue idea.
Black Arts
Black Planeshifted Yavimaya Dryad maybe...Puddnhead
Red Arts:
Red Original...David Ho...maybe a close crop on the head on fire + orbiting junk
Green Arts
Green Original...would need to rename, but awesome Justin Sweet
"Flat Earth Society" is one of my favorite Bad Religion songs, by the way.
White
Single Out or Thoughtcrime - 2WW
Enchantment (r)
Whenever a nonbasic permanent is put into an opponet's graveyard from play, search that player's graveyard, hand, and library for all cards with the same name as that card and remove them from the game. Then that player shuffles his or her library.
Black
Pollute -2BB
Sorcery (u?)
Sacrifice any number of lands. For each land sacrificed this way, search your library for a Swamp card and put it into play. Shuffle your library afterward.
I think that taking out "tapped" makes this much more interesting. Compare this to Gaea's Balance. Not having an upper limit on the number of lands might make this degenerate at the end of the game, but then again, Black has often had access to truly ludicrous amounts of B through cards like Coffers.
Red
Magnetic Field - 3RRR
Enchantment - Aura (r)
Enchant player
RRR: The next time target creature would deal damage this turn, that damage is dealt to enchanted player instead.
Even after restricting it to creatures, this is a huge effect, on par with Form of the Dragon if not stronger. Depending on more feedback, we may have to scale this down even further...my Homing Beacon is still on the table. In any case, we should do a creature for the red shift (Zealous Inquisitor or otherwise) for the red shift.
Green
As for your green suggestion, I think the idea of green getting to control tokens makes tons of sense, though the one you proposed is fairly weak. Aside from the occasional Wurm token, most of them are 1/1s and not worth 4 mana to deal with, even permanently. I also liked Arcadeus' idea of putting convoke on such an effect.
Back to Nature- 5GG
Instant
Convoke
Gain control of all token creatures.
"Born of seed, born of sky, born of man, you are all born of me." - The Progenitor
or, we could do it as a creature
The Progenitor - 4GG
Legendary Creature - Avatar
Convoke
You control all token creatures.
"Born of seed, born of sky, born of man, you are all born of me."
2/2
Blue
It's a shame that we haven't been able to come to any kind of consensus on this. But right now we have less than two days to finish, so we just need to pick something. The only finished pairs I see are my edict set and two-headed set, and Arcadeus' blocking set. Shiny has suggested something based on Kiku's Shadow or Rampant Growth, AoK suggested Wildfire and spreadingdark suggested Tortured Existence. There are some others floating around, too. I'm willing to go with any of these, provided we can illustrate them effectively. I've been looking for art all week, but I guess I don't have the same fantasy-art resources as some people on this thread.
I honestly think we should go with the blue concept that is best captured by whatever art we find.