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@jimharbor
Girl, i gotta know what the 13+ ask was about. Like what issue are you, like, seeing?
I don't know, it's just a big gap between target demo and actual players. Stuff like that can be relevenet. If I made a kids tv show and the viewers were majority adults I would have some thoughts on it.
I'm often very empathetic to issues with Magic design, but I genuinely think the "common legendary creature issue" is a problem of your own making. If a UB property can't stand on its two feet without having a dozen legendary creatures at common in the set, I feel like that UB property genuinely should not be a consideration for UB. I know obviously you disagree but I think that's what separates the strong UB properties for Magic versus the weaker ones.
It's an ongoing part of a bigger problem that already exists. If I want to make a 1G, 2/2 that says "All Dogs get +1/+1.", choosing whether or not it's legendary forces me to take a card two different groups would adore and only let one group play with it.
The goal of Magic design is to give players what the fundamentally want. When you turn a property into a Magic set, the fans of that property want to see the things they most emotionally connect to. For most properties, that's the characters. Saying we should only do properties more about environment than characters (because that's what Magic does) would be cutting off a lot of very popular properties.
And we'll make a lot of sets without common legendary creatures, because we can. But if we fundamentally aren't delivering what players really want, we're just making sub-optimal design choices.
And again, it's the drawback to legendary that's the issue, not the fact that common creatures represent characters you know.
As a common theme of today, I can't predict the future. And what I believe is not necessarily what the majority of R&D believes, and nothing is changing until R&D, as a whole, agrees to change it. I'm just pointing out that there's a certain game mechanic that has been causing problems for a long time, that I, as Head Designer, would love to change because I think it would lead to us having better tools to design cards and would lead to cards more players would enjoy.
No, no, no - please do not get rid of the Legendary Mechanic. The limitation of only having one of any given named legendary permanent on the battlefield at a time is a great way to limit things. Making a card a "dead card in hand" is a good Constraint.
Having 4 Tolarian Academy's on the battlefield at once, would have been even worse. Having 4 Ragavans on the battlefield at once, this is NOT a better space to be in. 4 Meathook Massacres, 4 Vivis, 4 Oko, 4 Omnaths, 4 Jace the Mind Sculptors... How is this a better game state?
For cards that really need to be one ofs on the field for power level reason, you can give them a downside keyword like defender just for them. That way cards that need that constraint can get it, without forcing that constraint on thousands of cards that don't need it. So they can drop the legend rule and give a "Unique" keyword to the few cards that need that limit.
I don't understand the push for micro-sets. Without draft i have no reason to buy packs. Is draft declining in popularity?
No, we're just experimenting.
@ajanicomelately Why do you like opening non-draft packs? Or to reword it, what do you get out of that that you cant get from buying singles (for much cheaper)
Maybe I missed it, but why are the transformer cards in Brother's War? I understand the connection for Godzilla and Dracula in Ikoria and the Innistrad sets but not this. It's incredibly jarring to know these Universes Beyond cards are going to be there.
Brothers’ War is about giant machines fighting each other.
Transformers is about giant machines fighting each other.
The leader of the two sides are even brothers in both.
There just was a lot of thematic overlap.
The Michael Bay films and their associated continuities.
I just want to say it's nice to see legendary lands again. It's really weird that I can have 3 World Trees in play.
Thank Channel and Dave Humpherys.
I should stress legendary lands are only doable in sets where we can adjust for their play issues.
I am so pleased Channel came back for this reason alone.
That being said: I really wish Bushido had made a return as well, it’s a good mechanic that would have fit into the unnamed mechanic they used for samurai. It’s a shame it didn’t make the cut.
I am a fan of Sweep, since it approaches the game from a different direction which is always interesting but understand the issues. The other mechanic I wish had returned was Splice. I think they could have made use of it in a novel futuristic way.
Bushido is a generic combat mechanic that doesn't capture the flavor of Bushido code . It also has the banding problem of really screwing up combat in large volumes
Sweep has players mana screwing themselves. People really don't like doing that. Even if you had a strong sweep card you know have people playing a card they don't like to be competitive. Maro learned back on Odyssey to not make mechanics where the correct thing to do is something the players don't want.
Splice onto Instant/sorcery was tested out in Guilds of Ravnica but it was found underwhelming. My guess is without the limits of Arcane it was too repetitive ala buyback.
Kamigawa just had thin gruel mechanics wise it's why they leaned on call backs to specific cards more so than keywords.
I don’t disagree on Sweep, but I think Splice is a good mechanic which would have been fine without Arcane
Bushido IRL is of course way more complicated that Bushido the mechanic. But I could say the same about Embalm, Mutate, and Ninjutsu. The flavor isn’t the problem as the name means “the way of the warrior” which I think matches the mechanic quite well.
I understand why they did not bring the mechanics back, and I am not saying they should have done so, but I can still like the mechanics and be a little sad about it while acknowledging their many problems.
In a top down set all the mechanics are meant to capture flavor. Ninjutsu captured the flavor of ninjutsu. It's sneaky, surprising based on evasion and tactics. It's a flavor home run.
Bushido is a generic combat mechanic first strike could have been named Bushido it doesn't conjure the flavor at all.
The exalted twist feels more at home in a sort of "noble single combat" vibe.
Also I just don't think splice onto instants and words as a mechanic with much volume has legs. Without the sunset how do you keep it from going full Forecast?
I just want to say it's nice to see legendary lands again. It's really weird that I can have 3 World Trees in play.
Thank Channel and Dave Humpherys.
I should stress legendary lands are only doable in sets where we can adjust for their play issues.
I am so pleased Channel came back for this reason alone.
That being said: I really wish Bushido had made a return as well, it’s a good mechanic that would have fit into the unnamed mechanic they used for samurai. It’s a shame it didn’t make the cut.
I am a fan of Sweep, since it approaches the game from a different direction which is always interesting but understand the issues. The other mechanic I wish had returned was Splice. I think they could have made use of it in a novel futuristic way.
Bushido is a generic combat mechanic that doesn't capture the flavor of Bushido code . It also has the banding problem of really screwing up combat in large volumes
Sweep has players mana screwing themselves. People really don't like doing that. Even if you had a strong sweep card you know have people playing a card they don't like to be competitive. Maro learned back on Odyssey to not make mechanics where the correct thing to do is something the players don't want.
Splice onto Instant/sorcery was tested out in Guilds of Ravnica but it was found underwhelming. My guess is without the limits of Arcane it was too repetitive ala buyback.
Kamigawa just had thin gruel mechanics wise it's why they leaned on call backs to specific cards more so than keywords.
Blue doesn't need a creature "mechanic" it's already got more than enough good creatures when it really shouldn't even have those in the first place. Prowess was busted as hell in blue which is why they (relatively) quickly got rid of it.
Blue has flying and flash. Thats it. It needed something to overlap with red. That 1. Went on creatures 2. Wasnt evasion.
What's the player psychographic for "enjoys making other players not have fun"?
Griefers are a subset of Timmy/Tammy.
Stuff like Stax, Ponza and Draw Go are on purpose made not to be tier decks, if you are playing them, you arent playing optimally like a Spike would, you just want to see the world burn
Just letting you know my two cents about the black dealing damage/life loss thing. I don't like it because black spells feel very red with the change.
Anytime we change something we’ve been doing for a while, it feels that way. To old timers, green destroying artifacts and enchantments feels odd. : )
Black didnt even start the game with life loss burn; all the early sets had black burn as damage, it was a silly one off that went too far. And the gameplay effect is mostly the same, so it didnt even distinguish the colors any way “One color makes you lose life, the other makes you lose life but 5% of the time weird corner case stuff happens” isnt a real seperation.
Trial 2 Test Takers
On a scale of 1 (quite easy) to 10 (very hard), how would you rate the difficulty of the test?
Note: At 12:00 pm PST, you can start discussing questions and answers. This is just asking about difficulty.
8/10 Most of the questions were easy because it was open book and you could look up answers. This main the "grey area" ones and the real edge cases super tough. It was kinda like magic itself with "common" questioms being the most and then some bomb rare ones.
I don't really like how the newly revealed card Frilled Deathspitter is based on the fictional version of Dilophosaurus from Jurassic Park. The real dinosaur didn't have a frill and couldn't spit poison. I'm fine with fictional dinosaur characteristics based on general tropes, or new fictional characteristics you think up yourself, but it just seems wrong to lift a specific fictional creature from another property like that.
Resonance is based not on reality but on audience expectation. Theros has a Kraken in it not because actual Greek mythology has Krakens (it’s Scandinavian, I believe) but popular culture created an expectation of Krakens in a Greek mythology setting.
this still makes me mad. there’s literally one source for kraken tied to greek anything, and it’s a garbage claymation film no one cares about. super lame explanation for a complete flavor fail.
I’m still really frustrated by the post-Kamigawa decision that people are only excited by the pop-culture version of things. I don’t think anyone would have been put off if the krakens in Theros had been the more geographically appropriate Cetea instead. It’s not like Magic doesn’t otherwise have just random sea monsters. I think this forced pop-culture resonance just makes it less likely to use more marginalized cultures and make stories that borrow from those cultures weaker and more problematic. The forced mashing of pirates and vampire conquistadors into Ixalan is a great example of this. (Although I will say that I am really impressed with how the creative team wrote those elements, even if I feel like they shouldn’t have been there.
I think this is a really great example of something that Lindsay Ellis talks about in her video essay ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Genres Tell No Tales’. When a corporation makes a bad product (in this case the Kamigawa block) they tend to claim that the audience isn’t interested in a wide genre (sets based on world mythology) rather than admit that the product was designed poorly. I have no doubt that the flavor of Kamigawa was as poorly-received as Wizards says, but I think it’s probably because Wizards did a poor job with Kamigawa’s world-building and story, not because Japanese mythology is inherently unmarketable.
I have to admit, I can’t say how because I did not play when the set came out. But, just look at something like Avatar: the Last Airbender. I don’t want to claim it was perfect, but it tried hard to stay true to the cultures it represented and was fantastically received. Resonance comes from when we see ourselves in the story, not some Ready Player One vomit of pop culture references. There are universalities of human existence that allow us to see ourselves in stories regardless of the culture they are inspired by.
WOTC never said they were against doing another Japan themed plane. In fact they said it's more likely then going to Kamigawa again. It is exactly as you said, Kamigawa's poor top down design (it managed to be both innacurate AND not resonant) doesnt mean wotc think's japan themed worlds are a bad idea. Heck Kamigawa itself came out around the time Yugioh and Duelmasters did, two massivly popular tcgs. I also find it odd people still dont get why Conquistadors and pirates are on the same plane. The Golden Age of Piracy was literally built on the back of Spanish imperialism in what's now Latin American. Conquistadors, Pirates and fantasy Mesoamericans is literally the closest wotc has come to recreating actual history and folks find it "random." You bring up Pirates of the Carribean, did you not notice how often Spain and/or the Spanish empire cropped up in that franchise?
Gremlins of the Realm
I was involved with a project team that was recognized by the execs at Wizards of the Coast last year, and this customized Chandra card was created as our reward! There are very few of these in existence (I think, like, 5). THE (GREMLIN-COUNTING) POWER OF TEAMWORK.
This goes right into my Nalaar family Commander deck! …Which in turn goes right into a security vault, probably. Thank you, Wizards!
https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/910275647691399168
Yeah… that’s a good find.
@dimir-and-diogenes gave me the low down on this one. not sure who originally shared it on twitter
Nira was awarded to the Duelmasters team(Wotc's Japan only game)
Is their a flavor explanation of that weird "metal bra over chainmail" thing Chandra wears?
Getting stabbed feels bad?
Honestly, you’d have to take it up with Aleksi Briclot. There have been dozens of forum pages devoted to this (no joke).
Oh please link those. It's somehow MORE ridiculous than a chainmail bikini, it apparently is meant to be taken seriously, which makes it seem all the worse.
Exploring Ixalan's Story: A Question of Confidence , Annotated
Welcome guys. This week Ixalan was fully spoiled and with it the next installment of the MTG Story. Today I’ll be going back to my roots and annotating the story.
Before we begin, if you like these articles and would like to see more, please like and retweet, and as always feedback is welcomed.
Let’s begin!
Huatli looked around the plaza as she and her cousin passed under the arch at the entrance to Pachatupa.
Pachatupa is the capital of the sun empire, and takes it’s name from an inversion of Tupac Amaura, the last native ruler of the Inca.
The high arches of the Empire are to let large dinosaurs pass through.
Only the two knights' mounts (two bright-eyed clawfoots) seemed to care about their presence.
In the same way we don’t call dogs Canis lupus familiaris , the Dinosaurs of Ixalan aren’t referred to be their taxonomic names as we usually do. The made up dinosaur names also give them an excuse to have more fantastic dinosaur designs. Clawfoots are based on Dromaeosaurs, commonly known as Raptors and are often used as mounts.
Inti held out a hand, and Huatli passed him the stolen sword. He rolled his wrist to test its weight and handed it back. "You should have seen their priest," he said. "Hierophant," Huatli corrected.
Hierophant isn’t a rank used in Spanish or Catholic clergy, but a term stemming from ancient Greece, were it was used for the leaders of the mystery cults. The word means “to show the holy” and the job entailed sharing holy wisdom with acolytes. It’s well known today because of it’s Tarot card, which (tying back to the Catholic vibes) is also known as The Pope.
The Legion of Dusk are very religious, being co-ruled by the Church of Dusk and their Queen Miralda, and their Vampires wade into battle, feeding only on the blood of non believers.
A girl no older than thirteen broke from the group and ran up to her, eyes wide and breath short. "Warrior-Poet, are you delivering an oration at the homecoming ceremony.
A warrior-poet is a character type of a civilized artisan warrior, who finds glory in battle as well as the arts and philosophy. While the rank here is totally fictional Hautli’s status as a poet (and somewhat similar name) show a link to Nezahualcoyotl.
A famed warrior-poet himself, he ruled the city state of Texcoco and revolutionized Nahua poetry by writing from a personal point of view, a sharp divide with the anonymous hymns of earlier generations. His poems were stepped in oral tradition for decades and to this day he is the namesake of the Nezahualcóyotl Award, given to writers in indigenous Mexican languages. Nezahualcoyotl’s personal style is reflected with Hautli’s emphasis on using poems to share her feelings.
Poetry that is honest has magic in it; the ability to let other people feel what you feel is a very powerful magic indeed."
Huatli’s magic based on feeling is an example of wotc showing the non destructive parts of red magic.
Huatli lay a hand on her dinosaur's rough hide and willed her to be still.Wait, she urged, sending the scent-memory of food through the connection between her and the beast.
Knights of the Sun Empire form mystic bonds with their steeds. This power is connected to the Threefold Sun, as seen in the text of Sun-Blessed Mount.
The city around them shone with amber and the light of the noonday sun.
While amber-like resin was heavily used in Mesoamerica, these copal, served as incense for ceremonies, it’s less solidified state making it more aromatic for burning.
The temple itself had been built on the foundation of an older temple, which had been built over several ruins even older than that. The Sun Empire itself was much the same. It was the latest iteration of a land whose rulers were constantly vying for power, building on top of the old and reaching ever higher with the new. Whereas the River Heralds had once controlled the continent, under the leadership of its new emperor, the Sun Empire had cemented its grip on the land.
This process is called Spolia and is very appropriate for the setting. By the time The Spaniards arrived in Mesoamerica a long list of various civilizations had risen and fallen in prominence from the Olmec to the Zapotec to the Maya and Toltec. The Aztec Triple Alliance Cortex encountered was the product of a long line of mesoamerican cultures. The idea of the Sun Empire supplanting the River Heralds takes it’s cues directly from how the Mexica people rose from wandering squatters and mercenaries to the dominant power of the region by usurping their predecessors.
The thing was flimsy and thin, meant for quick stabs rather than smooth cuts, and a tacky black rose was welded to one side. To think that these inferior craftsmen thought themselves conquerors.
The weapon is a Rapier , invented by the Spanish. Destreza, a martial art of it’s use was formalized around the same time they made landfall in the Americas. The Spaniard themed legion of dusk use them, but also have fangs at the tips to showcase their vampiric nature. The Black Rose is an emblem of the Legion of Dusk, and like the Sun Empire symbol, it looks very much like the seal of Ixalan’s binding.
"Kinjalli, hear my call! The time has come to wake the sleepers, To pierce the eastern shadow That would darken all our days.
Tilonalli, hear my call! Fill your children's hearts with fire That we may be the dawn that breaks To immolate the Dusk.
The Sun Empire worship three aspects of the sun, one for each color of mana they use. Kinjalli is the wakening sun, of white mana Tilonalli is the burning sun of red mana. Huatli being RW homages these aspects of the sun in particular.
Kinjalli is close to K’injal which would be Mayan for “Sunify.” While Tilonalli is a corruption of tōnalli, the Nahua word for day.
A bit of irony in that the Aztec inspired faction is the one with the Holy trinity.
"Driving the Brazen Coalition and the Legion of Dusk from our eastern coast means that we are ready to reclaim the south," Apatzec announced.
Miraldanor is the name of the Vampire territory in the south of Ixalan. It’s named after their queen, and is where they first landed.
He had the body of a blacksmith, but the head of an animal that Huatli had only seen around Legion of Dusk forts—a bull? Heavy iron chains were wrapped around his chest, and he seemed to glow from within like a furnace, a steady flow of steam rising from his snout.
Bulls aren’t native to Ixalan and Hautli only knows them from the Legion, just as in real life bulls were brought to mesoamerica by Europeans. Angrath’s burning horns are drawn to look like the burning ropes hair Blackbeard used in his hair for intimidation.
Hijack by Sveltin Yelenov
Blackbeard by Miles Teves
"I am the dread pirate Angrath," he said, "and I seek the Immortal Sun."
Huatli laughed out loud. "You and everyone else, fool."
“Dread Pirate” is a term taken from the classic film/novel the Princess Bride. Angrath’s foreign accent and alien way of fighting are because he is a planeswalker, one who is trapped on Ixalan and as Angrath’s Marauders tells us, not very happy about it. His name is an on-the-nose meld of Anger and Wrath that is similar to Dominarian hero and Tahngarth of the Weatherlight Saga.
The Immortal Sun is a lost treasure that all four factions on Ixalan want for different reasons.
The Vampire believe it will make them immortal without needing to drink blood.
The Sun Empire wishes to reclaim their lost city of Orazca
The Pirates want the ultimate treasure
and the Merfolk want to keep it from anyone else because they believe if found it will cause doom.
Her vision burst into a miasma of color and light, sound rushed through her ears, and she felt her body begin to break away from itself. It was bright and warm and should have been frightening, but it felt like the most natural thing in the world—she felt her head pass forward, deeper into the color and light, and she saw.
It was a city that shone with the warmth of gold.
Huatli’s first planeswalk is an attempt to get to Kaladesh, a plane ruled by the creativity she so values and one that has a golden city, just as in her culture’s legends.
Her perception was yanked sharply back, as if some unseen force was pulling her backward to the jungle. Whatever door she peered through had slammed shut, barred her from entry. Everything was flying again through color and light, sound and noise, until her body rearranged itself on the forest floor.
Huatli's blood pounded, and her vision settled on a strange triangle-and-circle symbol hovering with a strange glow above her head.
Huatli’s first planeswalk is stopped by the same sealing that trapped Jace and that also traps Angrath.
She was not a seer, yet she had seen. She was not a voyager, yet her mission was to voyage. Huatli was two things, and neither seemed connected to the destiny that lay ahead.
Huatli closed her eyes and calmed her busy mind. Her dreams were dappled with gold, shining with the colors of a place beyond her any she had ever seen. The dream shifted, transformed, became more prophecy than dream, and she saw herself as she would someday be.
Huatli has been compared to Joan of Arc by her creators, in that both are female knights driven by religious visions. The Golden City of Orazca’s mythic and sacred value to the Sun Empire as a bygone city mirrors the status of of Aztlan as the legendary homeland of the Nahua people.
And that wraps up this chapter’s annotation, I hope you guys enjoyed and special thanks to cultural consultant @stevethesorcerer .
Exploring Ixalan: The Tools of the Trade part 1.
Welcome guys, thanks for all the great feedback on the three previous articles.
Last week we narrowed in on the real world cultures that helped form a faction. This time, in a multi part series, I’ll be focusing on the weapons and equipment of all the tribes of Ixalan.
Jade
As detailed in the PAX Worldbuilding Panel, the tribes of Ixalan each have unique designs cues. The Merfolk are marked by their stunning use of Jade. It’s seen used for their weapons and armor, and as treasure plundered by pirates.
Jade use in Mesoamerica goes back millennia. It’s has been used by the Olmec, Aztec, Maya, Nahua and countless native cultures for decorative and ceremonial purposes.
Zapotec jade and shells mask, ca. 200 BC - 100 AD, Monte Alban, Mexico. Photography © Jorge Pérez de Lara
The River Heralds being the faction to use jade isn’t just because of the great color scheme. Jade is naturally harvested from rivers, and in fact it was thought until 1996 that all Mesoamercian Jade was mined from the shores of the Motagua River. It’s deep ties to the Merfolk, natural guardians of the 7 great rivers of Ixalan, is only fitting.
The Morion
The iconic crested helmet knows as the morion is classically assumed to the signature hat of the Conquistadors who lead the Spanish invasion of the Americas. Ironically, the morion wouldn’t come into widespread used until decades after the Spanish invasion of the west. But art and pop culture has left them as an iconic Spanish image.
The Helmet was in use all around Europe in the 15 and 1600s. In England, it was associated in with pikeman for it’s use deflecting spear tips in the massive Push of Pike battles that wrecked the continent of that era. Imagine thousands of people repeatedly stabbing each other with ten foot long pointed poles until enough people died that one side ran away. While being stabbed.
Push of Pike, by TaoDragon
A neat fantasy twist on the Morion is that the Vampires of Ixalan have fangs on theirs. Unlike Innistrad with its close up gothic horror art, many of the Ixalan vampires are seen at a distance, in imitation of “Lost World” and “Age of Exploration” painting and frescoes. Because of this, the classic “bearing fangs” image of a vampire shows up on a card less clearly and the points on the helmets and spears are added to make up for it. Even their flag (as seen in the bottom of Vanquisher’s banner) is just a mustache with fangs on it.
The Censer
Censers are ancient and widespread bowls used for the burning of incense. Used by religions and meditative groups the world over, Ixalan’s Catholic inspired Vampires make use of these in their designs.
On Ixalan, the Black vampires tend to be soldiers and knights, ruthless Paladins of the Legion of Dusk. The White Vampires take up the spiritual role among the legion and so Censers show up in the religiously tinged art of various white spells.
The twirling wisps coming from the vents in Bishop of Rebirth’s censer, while not iconically Catholic, do show some similarities to the Hill Censers used in the Western Han dynasty of China. These vents were added to make the smoke whirl and twist , just like the clouds on the sacred mountains these censers were built to look like.
The Macuahuitl
The Macuahuitl is the iconic weapon of the Aztec Triple Alliance. Immortalized in their codices and European paintings, this weapon was a large oar shaped hilt with edges lined with volcanic obsidian glass.
Obsidian is naturally hyper sharp, with edges as thin as molecules, and backed up by a powerful swing from pounds of wood, they could do severe damage. These things easily decapitated and dismembered horses.
Ironically, they also found use in non lethal capturing of human sacrifices. The gaps between the blades used in some designs limited damages, and the weapon could be turned to the flat wooden side to give blunt force trauma to knock victims out.
The ones on Ixalan follow this popular “gap” design, but many of these swords had a smooth and sleek edges, including the last remaining original Aztec design. Destroyed in a fire in 1884 and shown with modern reproductions below.
Reproductions by Jim Winn, author of original sketch unknown.
Wrap-Up
Ixalan is wonderfully fleshed out and full of amazing details. Too many for just one article. Come back next time and we’ll take a deeper dive into the Sun Empire’s Weapons, do a breakdown of the pirate faction, and see some cultural influences that go across the tribes. As always feedback is welcomed and thank you for reading.
Flavor Friday: The Legendary Lands of Ixalan
Over the past few days we’ve seen the start of what seems to be a Legendary Land cycle of Ixalan.
Predicted by number crunchers who noticed the rare sheet was color imbalanced and by a close look of the Ixalan Full Map, these lands give us a bigger picture of the mythos of Ixalan. So in honor of @vorthosjay ‘s #flavorfriday let’s take a look.
Azcanta the Sunken Ruin
Azcanta is located under Ixalan’s Inner Sea and it’s name, close to both the Aztec Legendary city of Aztlan and the sunken city of Atlantis shines some light on its possible origins.
Remember, the Inner Sea looks very much like an impact crater, and if the theory that the Star of Extinction has hit Ixalan before is correct, Azcanta would have been directly in the path. This suggests Azcanta had something to do with how the Immortal Sun was lost by the Sun Empire.
The Temple of Aclazotz
Aclazotz takes his name from Camazotz, the Maya god of caves, death, the underworld and sacrifice. Tying the Mesoamerican lore more into the vampires is a great touch, hinting that the tribes of Ixalan are more connected than we thought. Camazotz being visually based on a Vampire bat also explains the pointed elf like ears of the Vampires on this plane.
Camazotz originated in the lore of the Zapotecs before being folded into the greater Quiche Mayan pantheon, and the exact nature of the figure varies. Sometimes a singular figure, and other times a group of bat like monsters, and sometimes a massive cave that was bridge to the underworld. Ixalan is using aspects of all these versions, with one Bat-God, an entire Bat-like race and a very Cave-like temple right in the heart of Vampire country.
Camazotz was also responsible for destroying humanity in an age of a previous sun(note the Five Suns of Mesoamerican lore, in which the world is destroyed and restarted anew with a new sun and race of humans). The fact Ixalan had a previous apocalypse (perhaps more than one) means Aclazotz’s place in the lore may dig deeper into the mystery of Ixalan’s past.
Aclazotz being the sworn enemy of the Threefold Sun isn’t a direct pull from real life, but rather a natural riff on the Sun being enemy to the night. This is reflected by how different the square and blocky Temple of Orazca looks from the pointed peaks and pyramids of Orazca. Aclazotz very well could have been the instigator in the Immortal Sun based doom that the merfolk fear will happen again should it be found.
Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun
Itlimoc takes its name from “-tli”, which is a Nauatl suffix used for un-possessed nouns, and moch, the word for “all.” We previously saw Ixalan reversing native languages when it turned Tupac, the Inca ruler, into Pachatupa, the Capital of the Sun Empire.This specific reversal probably came from taking the end of the word for tree (cuahuitl.)
The idea of an All-Tree or world tree is present in many religions (Yggdrasil in Norse lore for example) The Mesoamericans were no different, with several World trees appearing among the Olmec, Aztec, and Maya cultures. A specific aspect relevant to Ixalan would be the common use of water across the roots, and the name yax imix che (Blue/green tree of abundance) , that points the Merfolk Deeproot Tree as another example of this concept.
The Cradle of the Sun title is both a sly homage to Gaea’s Cradle the Eternal All-star whose effect is borrows but also to the idea that the Sun Empire actively nature the jungles of the island to give habitats for their dinosaurs a fun inversion of the common practice of clearing forests for livestock.
Wrap Up
Ixalan’s lore just goes deeper and deeper and I am loving the theorizing the community is doing and the pondering over it. Thanks a lot to vorthos jay for inspiring this post and the guys at reddit for bouncing ideas off of.
Yep, Ixalan as the site of a previous cataclysm is almost assured at this point. I’m interested in seeing the clues from the rest of the set. Note that Atlazan makes a lot more sense as a potential name when you consider this.
I am surprised it took so long for the community to notice the fantasy Chicxulub crater possibility. That was a great dig. Man I love fandoms.
No, I noticed the possibility right away with the map, I just haven’t had a chance to write on it yet ;) you’ve saved me the trouble.
Well I'm glad that sleepless night was worth something, I cranked out that article after the map came like past midnight and when I finally submitted Alcazotz's card was previews 38 MINUTES later .😂
