• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Magic: the Gathering |OT12| Hour of Devastation - Hour of Jace getting dunked on

Status
Not open for further replies.

Ashodin

Member
I think they can do it, they just need to respect what came before. Kamahl, Urza, Teferi, et al.

oh hey top of the page (Unless you're a 50 PPP heathen)

here's a new brew I'm building, it's ENERGY BURN

UHjkzJg.gif
 
In terms of distinct settings on Dominaria that people care about, isn't it really just Jamuraa? With the others either melding together just fine or being fine to ignore. Since Jamuraa is protected by Phasing Man, they'll probably have him phase it into a separate plane.
 

OnPoint

Member
I think they can do it, they just need to respect what came before. Kamahl, Urza, Teferi, et al.

oh hey top of the page (Unless you're a 50 PPP heathen)

here's a new brew I'm building, it's ENERGY BURN

901 would be the top of the page for anyone though lol
 

Ashodin

Member
I like Benalia. I know it's generic Knights but dammit it's the OG generic knights. Also Otaria and its Aven, Cephalids, Pit Fights, Krosan Forest... they did a good job there. Also a legit place of non-silver border Squirrels.
 

Yeef

Member
I don't think it's hard, at all, to make Dominaria cohesive from a flavor standpoint. There's plenty of ways to do it while still respecting the history. What I'm really curious about is the mechanical identity of the plane. I feel like if you ask people to name three gameplay elements that seem distinctly Dominarian, you'll get very different answers from just about everyone.
 

Yeef

Member
dzf61h0avw4z.jpg


Hostile Desert
Land - Desert
T: Add {C} to your mana pool.
{2}, Exile a land card from your graveyard: ~ becomes a 3/4 elemental creature until end of turn. It's still a land.
 

Hero

Member
I don't agree with MaRo on this one. I loved Dominaria having different continents with different cultures and lore/history and characters. Just randomly doing a mashup doesn't work, but when you specifically build things, diversity is great thing.

What bugs me is they had a good template with Magic Origins. They were on 10 different planes and it felt cool because you were discovering a lot about the characters, were they came from, and where they went after they got their spark.

I would love to see a plane vs plane battle though. Zendikar vs Innistrad? Alara vs Tarkir?
 

Ozigizo

Member
I was looking at the card arts and in Last Mercy Oketra is healing Gideon and in Solemnity, Gideon is mourning her.

Neat.
 
Kaladesh, from a design perspective (as in Energy/Vehicles/everything) is fucking sweet. It's just Development fucked up on the balancing half, which is a recurring theme of them since what, at least Theros Block?

"Oops we made Pack Rat"

"Oops we buffed Siege Rhino to deal with a weakass Card that we need"

"Oops we made Manabases too strong in a post Wedge Standard Environment when all the Mana encourages allies, so 4-5C hell is happening"

"Oops, our promotion of Magic-The 3 Drops has allowed for a card we barely tested to become format warping. "

"Oops, we pushed Cast Triggers/Block archetypes too hard/new mechanics too hard"

"Oops, we missed an infinite combo you can pull off in limited"

"Oops, we missed Artifact Hate in our Artifact Block, guess we haven't learned from our 2 other times"



I'm also about 90% certain that MaRo's love of Kaladesh came from him finally getting to use Energy. Mechanic E is to Standard as Unset 3 was to off-beat sets: he loved it so much it was hard for him to see the issues.

As for the "Worlds should be worlds", I agree partially. I mean, as much as I rag on WotC sometimes, the best planes have clearly been worlds and not "City+Some shit"(minus Ravnica). Tarkir, Alara, Hell even OG Zendikar with the different myths/cultures was better then "Kaladesh and the city of 1 Million Planeswalkers"
 

noquarter

Member
They're going to fuck up Dominaria. There is no way that they won't.

It sucks, because they understand fundamentally what will make it work good, but they will get so caught up in a few pieces of it they will humble it like with BFZ.

And onto his comment on world building, they did do that on Dominaria, for over ten years. It allowed them to tell stories where pretty much anything could show up and surprise you, but be believable on the plane. Dominaria is sprawling and allowed the Weatherlight to have an epic journey. They really haven't built a world since that would allow that.

If they did have Kaladesh and Amonkeht on the same plane, they could have an awesome war between them. Would love to see Kaladesh going for some Aether reserves in Amonkhet and as they are readying to go for it, Bolas comes back and starts destroying his city and both come to together with the Gatewatch to take him on.

Or if Innistrad was on Zendikar and they have to come to the aid to help them get rid of the Eldrazi.

They seem to be going for small world's anyway that might as well just be continents on the same plane. Going to a one block structure will probably end up making all the planes seem even smaller.
 

Ooccoo

Member
They're going to fuck up Dominaria. There is no way that they won't.

It sucks, because they understand fundamentally what will make it work good, but they will get so caught up in a few pieces of it they will humble it like with BFZ.

And onto his comment on world building, they did do that on Dominaria, for over ten years. It allowed them to tell stories where pretty much anything could show up and surprise you, but be believable on the plane. Dominaria is sprawling and allowed the Weatherlight to have an epic journey. They really haven't built a world since that would allow that.

If they did have Kaladesh and Amonkeht on the same plane, they could have an awesome war between them. Would love to see Kaladesh going for some Aether reserves in Amonkhet and as they are readying to go for it, Bolas comes back and starts destroying his city and both come to together with the Gatewatch to take him on.

Or if Innistrad was on Zendikar and they have to come to the aid to help them get rid of the Eldrazi.

They seem to be going for small world's anyway that might as well just be continents on the same plane. Going to a one block structure will probably end up making all the planes seem even smaller.

I trust Richard Garfield. He will probably push cards that development usually nerf.
 

Zocano

Member
I feel like Dominaria would work best as "the core set world" or something like that. The one you come back to most often or most frequently but maybe checking in on a different place each time. But only because it's already established and wide reaching. By its nature having already been established and during the early era when they weren't crazy experimenting with their world, it already is "generic" in many ways and the generic flavor of a core set could fit pretty naturally with Dominaria.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I think they can do it, they just need to respect what came before. Kamahl, Urza, Teferi, et al.

oh hey top of the page (Unless you're a 50 PPP heathen)

here's a new brew I'm building, it's ENERGY BURN

UHjkzJg.gif

Fun fact: the top of 100 ppp is still the top of the page for 50 ppp
 
In fairness, the time portal resurrection stuff isn't totally without precedent. Bolas himself may be a Bolas from another reality, per the novels. There was a thing at the end of the novels where Jodah and Jhoira get to meet and Jhoira wasn't sure if it was the Jodah of her timeline or not. Jodah is way overdue for a card btw.

I would like to see him get a card, but what I really want is a new Jhoira that is actually an artificer. (Y'know, to fill that blue/red artificer slot I heard one or two people would like to see.)

I'll also be pretty disappointed if either of Teferi and Squee is missing.

The fetches in masters sets instead of in standard is such a monumental fuck up. That shit need to be depressed to 15 bucks

Printing them in MM3 and knocking a decent bit off their topline price makes it easier to avoid people complaining too much when they do print them in a Standard set soon.

Also if they want to really juice one of these core sets, that's certainly an option they have.

Fundamentally he's wrong.

Nah. Dominaria has a setup that's fundamentally hostile to the game and storytelling structure of Magic. The single most fundamental thing about the game's setting is the planeswalking concept, and the idea of having tons of diversity on a single plane is pointless when the multiverse concept explicitly exists to allow a wide range of settings without running into issues of plausiblity and tonal whiplash.

The biggest reason people like Dominaria so much is because it was at the core of one of their early storytelling successes: Antiquities effectively captured the feeling of finding archaeological evidence of a past conflict, and the procession of The Dark -> Fallen Empires -> Ice Age showed a small region of the world suffer a series of changes that all flowed naturally from one another and particularly the inciting incident of the destruction of Argoth. These sets also had a strongly consistent theme -- they're all variants of classical "D&D-style" fantasy, and the differences show the creeping changes from the changing climate. That's all real, but it also fits exactly with what Maro's saying: a setting that's coherent.

The problem really comes in with Mirage. Jamuura really doesn't add anything by being on the same world, and doesn't ever interact in a serious way with the Terisiare setting. Otaria similarly has almost no connection to the rest of the world and doesn't benefit by being another remote part of the same plane. These things don't contribute to the value of the setting and actively detract from any attempt to visit it without just jamming together stuff that has no appeal outside of nostalgia.

RE Maro & Dominaria: After telling us how Kaladesh was "the awesome set" and breaking Standard for the last year, I have no faith left in his "just trust us" pre-set speeches. Sorry Maro, all that goodwill and trust is gone.

Blaming Maro for shit that literally has nothing to do with his job is what we're supposed to make fun of Reddit for, not do ourselves.

Dominaria is post-Apocalyptic Mad Max plane now. Duh.

Nah, they've had little bits of stories and flavor text for a while now talking about how after the Time Spiral story the plane was recovering.

I'm also about 90% certain that MaRo's love of Kaladesh came from him finally getting to use Energy.

Yes, and energy is a good mechanic and far and away the most successful part of Kaladesh.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I like how Teferi is going to just hanging around on Dominaria because he's immortal but doesn't actually have a spark so he can't go anywhere. Maybe they can print Mage of Zhalfir again. I love that card.
 

cuc

Member
The problem with "streamlining" Dominaria is that you can't do it.

Like, when I think of Dominaria, I think of my favorite sets that took place there. Their first return - Time Spiral - worked because it was an absolute clusterfuck of a set that filled every card to the brim with weird, obscure references. If you sand off those edges, what are you left with? Urza and the Weatherlight Saga, I guess.
Completely agree.

Dominaria is an era of Magic, not a place. Return to Dominaria is like "Return to Mirrodin-Kamigawa-Ravnica-Time Spiral-Lorwyn" - a lot of disparate ideas that are only tied together by the design sensibilities and nostalgia of the people playing during that era.
Two or three eras, depending on your criteria.

I don't know how you coalesce Dominaria into one "vision" without making it very generic. Doesn't it just end up like Shandalaar?
Which is why I said I prefer blowing it up Draenor-style and making it Magic's "space the frontier" setting, which is a very fitting theme for the center of the universe. It also helps differentiate it from Zendikar, the other "digging up ruins of civilization" setting.

In terms of distinct settings on Dominaria that people care about, isn't it really just Jamuraa? With the others either melding together just fine or being fine to ignore. Since Jamuraa is protected by Phasing Man, they'll probably have him phase it into a separate plane.
Yeah, and also save Jamuraa.
 
is MaRo just bad with critique? Sure what he's describing is basically hot takes but hours/work put into does not equal good neceasarily.

That posts just strikes me as incredibly naive.

Also I'd love for a bunch of a new to be set on the same world, with subtle interconnectivty.
Imagine Tarkir having a silk road.
 
is MaRo just bad with critique?

No, he just does a ton of extra outreach and community interaction he isn't paid for outside his normal salary and occasionally gets sick of people's shitty, disingenuous complaints about the product they put out. I certainly can't blame him, he's very rarely less than chill and he engages with people all the time who dislike stuff he and the R&D team have done.
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Ravnica really should be a planar hub.

Also anyone think we are gonna get three "entire plane is actually only concerned with one city" sets in a row? The whole search and fight for el dorado is certainly setting ixalan up to be another super zoomed in plane.

Also I don't think any (alright, most) of this comes from a disingenuous place. Same with the jacetice league stuff that he snapped back at.
 
No, he just does a ton of extra outreach and community interaction he isn't paid for outside his normal salary and occasionally gets sick of people's shitty, disingenuous complaints about the product they put out. I certainly can't blame him, he's very rarely less than chill and he engages with people all the time who dislike stuff he and the R&D team have done.
That's a mighty attitude to have, calling planes one trick pony is a valid complaint.

Even WotC repeatedly speaks of the theme they picked for a world and worked upon.

Failing to reiterate on Zendikar just reinforces that notion.
 
Also anyone think we are gonna get three "entire plane is actually only concerned with one city" sets in a row? The whole search and fight for el dorado is certainly setting ixalan up to be another super zoomed in plane.

Ixalan will almost certainly be better about this than the last two blocks since it has to have a minimum of three distinct locales (at least one living city, the wilderness, and the lost city.)

TBH I think Kaladesh is the real outlier on this particular issue. Amonkhet is insular but it's insular for reasons that absolutely fit the setting (a tiny enclave of civilization in a giant desert is a pretty significant Ancient Egypt trope) and the storyline. It wouldn't be as glaring if it didn't follow Kaladesh, which had a world created that had tons of room for exploration but stuck to one narrow part of the setting for no real deep reason. Like, this isn't a problem in Theros or Tarkir or Zendikar or Innistrad, really.

Also I don't think any (alright, most) of this comes from a disingenuous place. Same with the jacetice league stuff that he snapped back at.

The followup ask he got today was absolutely a shitty, sub-reddit-tier whiny manchild comment of the type that always made me want to never talk to a Magic player again back in the day. It's not at all that there aren't legitimate complaints, there absolutely are, but there's a few issues that people get into a really cynical hive-mind groove on and then bitch about without even taking into account facts on the ground (like people who still bitch about Jace being overexposed when he's had far and away the least of the Gatewatch members lately.)

That's a mighty attitude to have, calling planes one trick pony is a valid complaint.

Yeah but that's not what he's responding to.
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
We all know Gideon and Nissa are the current Mary Sues. The product backs this up :p. But I'm not sure if I saw the reply you are talking about. Was it something other than the one trick comment?

Also we know the Jace complaints are also caught up in general gatewatch hate, memory and the fact that he is still a flat character at best. It's a mix of things not necessarily even related to exposure at this point
 
That's pretty tempting for a green-black delirium/reanimator type shell, but those card lists are so ridiculously crowded as it is.
 

Violet_0

Banned
Driven//Despair is neat, it's just difficult to find a spot for creature-based card draw. In limited, this is an absolute killer

also, ha manlands are not rotating out after all

here's a new brew I'm building, it's ENERGY BURN

2x radiant flames and 2x sweltering suns seems counterintuitive to a deck strategy that relies on generating tokens. Dynavolt Tower seems akward, would rather play a Abzan token deck with god support
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Driven // Despair is just is dumb. 4 mana bombs like this in limited are ridiculous - you take a decent board, draw 2, opponent discards 2, probably make a fairly decent trade when your opponent is forced to double block.
 

Ashodin

Member
2x radiant flames and 2x sweltering suns seems counterintuitive to a deck strategy that relies on generating tokens. Dynavolt Tower seems akward, would rather play a Abzan token deck with god support
You'd only cast them when aggro is eating your lunch, or after you drop a soul scar with hapatra or the enchantment out. Then you make a shitton of tokens that can needle your opponent to death.

Basically for one red extra, you wipe the board and get tons of tokens.
 
We all know Gideon and Nissa are the current Mary Sues. The product backs this up :p. But I'm not sure if I saw the reply you are talking about. Was it something other than the one trick comment?

Also we know the Jace complaints are also caught up in general gatewatch hate, memory and the fact that he is still a flat character at best. It's a mix of things not necessarily even related to exposure at this point

TBH, it feels like the Gatewatch as a whole gets more hate than Jace does now. He's not as pushed as he once was but still just as annoying when he does show up.
Being thrown by Nissa aside.
 

Maledict

Member
Wow that's bad. Looks like an enemy from a PS3 jrpg...

Re. Amonkhet, I know they like to end a block / set with a big disaster, but so far it feels like this place is toast as a plane. It was already reduced to just one city due to some unknown conflict in the past, and now that city has been destroyed, its gods killed, undead hordes both wild and under Bolas's control set free and its population butchered. Combine that with the fact that basically they have *no* culture as everything was faked by Bolas and it seems like a very unlikely place to ever return to. I think some of the phyrexian spheres are less hostile!
 

DrArchon

Member
I guess Sphinx tribal is a thing for EDH now. You miss the cool Esper Sphinxes, but dropping the cost by 2 and a smaller Fact or Fiction per Sphinx is pretty good.

I'd still rather have Glyph Keeper in my draft deck.
 

OnPoint

Member
In case you hate fun...

Solemnity%2B%255BHOU%255D.jpg
Decree%2Bof%2BSilence%2B%255BSCG%255D.jpg

Blaming Maro for shit that literally has nothing to do with his job is what we're supposed to make fun of Reddit for, not do ourselves.
You're right, he's not responsible for everything going on in the set. But he is, or at least he acts, like he's the vocal face of the company. Are we to believe he's just hyping up the setting and the mechanics? Perhaps it's irresponsible of him to hype up a set without knowing exactly what's in it. If he's the face of hype, then he's a lightning rod for criticism as well. Can't have it just one way.

Please, fall more into my trap

Uh... ok. Got me, I guess.
 

jph139

Member
Re. Amonkhet, I know they like to end a block / set with a big disaster, but so far it feels like this place is toast as a plane. It was already reduced to just one city due to some unknown conflict in the past, and now that city has been destroyed, its gods killed, undead hordes both wild and under Bolas's control set free and its population butchered. Combine that with the fact that basically they have *no* culture as everything was faked by Bolas and it seems like a very unlikely place to ever return to. I think some of the phyrexian spheres are less hostile!

They mentioned really trying to avoid "tombs and archaeology" tropes for this block, so I assume a return would essentially be Indiana Jones World. Maybe the survivors form scattered nomadic villages and decide to try and discover what existed before Bolas or whatever.

The fact they intentionally blew up Egypt World is kind of dumb, though, since it's probably the most resonant setting they have next to Innistrad and Theros. I figure they have to have a plan for it post-HOU for that reason alone.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom