Sultai Ascendancy

Magic the Gathering blog. Vorthos stuff, EDH talk, Blogatog commentary, color pie philosophy, and custom card design.

[markrosewater]

3 colored hybrid costs. If or when?

If.

[askkrenko]

3 color hybrid hits dangerously close to generic mana, and you’re not going to have very many effects that fit the overlap well.

Actually, quick challenge: Show me a five-card cycle that uses 3-color hybrid mana. Shard or wedge. Make it work. Show me five things that make sense in three colors, but not in four or five.

[sultaiascendancy-blog]

W/B/G

Instant

Up to two target creatures gain indestructible until end of turn.

U/R/W

Instant

Search your library for an Equipment card and reveal it. Shuffle your library and put that card on top of it.

B/G/U

Instant

Put the top three cards of your library into your graveyard.

Draw a card.

R/W/B

Instant

Creatures you control get +1/+0 until end of turn.

If a creature dealt damage by a source you control would die this turn, exile it instead.

G/U/R

Instant

This spell can't be countered.

The next spell you cast this turn costs 1 less to cast and can't be countered by spells or abilities.

[markrosewater]

How well were Legendary Sorceries received and can we see them again?

The reaction has been mixed.

What do all of you think of the legendary sorceries?

[sultaiascendancy-blog]

Easily the worst mechanic of an otherwise amazing set. They're basically dead cards in limited even in format with as many legends as this one, let alone one with a normal amount. They're good for Commander, but it's really easy to make cards that are good for Commander, and it's best to make them somewhat functional in other formats or at least limited. Giving legendary a completely different meaning on different card types is also a bad call.

[markrosewater]

Is a naga planeswalker an if or a when?

If.

[sultaiascendancy-blog]

If we can afford to have 30 human planeswalkers then why can't we have a naga one?

[markrosewater]

Sagas are extremely cool. I was skeptical at first, but I appreciate how functional they all seem to be (especially in Limited) and also how flavorful they are for players who are returning to Dominaria and who are becoming newly familiar. Will we see more Sagas in the future?

How long before you all would like to see Sagas again?

[sultaiascendancy-blog]

Every few sets. In other words, they should be deciduous.

[markrosewater]

I know it's a bit early for this, but have you learned any immediate lessons from Dominaria?

Let me turn this question around to all of you. Is there anything that Dominaria does differently that you’d like to see Magic do more regularly?

[sultaiascendancy-blog]

Powerful uncommons. Sagas. Batching. Higher number of legends (we don't need 40 in every set but 10-15 would be nice).

[wizardsmagic]

After revealing the new lands featured in the upcoming Battlebond, we got a ton of requests for the full art pieces! Take a look at the plane of Kylem with these gorgeous vistas! 🎨: Jung Park, Jonas De Ro, Grzegorz Rutkowski, Florian De Gesincourt, Darek Zabrocki

[sultaiascendancy-blog]

The RG one is gorgeous. The WU is very good as well; interesting how it shows the same place as the RG one from a different angle. I like how the BR shows that it's at a high altitude so that you understand why it taps for red, and lands with sunsets are always great. The UB one is a little cartoony and sci-fi for what I'm looking for in Magic art but it's a cool concept. I thought the GW one looked worst from the small, partially-blocked image and having the full art doesn't really change my mind at all. The texture seems really blocky and artificial, and the colors are overly vibrant for no reason. But I do see not one but two purple-skinned humanoids, which seems like a new race that's exclusive to this plane, so at least it gives us that information.

[markrosewater]

Thanks for your articles on Sagas, Mark. Though, I still don't understand why Sagas deviate from decades of established convention by triggering after the draw step rather than in the upkeep. You said that it's so players can have information "before committing to using the Sagas", but few chapter abilities involve choices. I've found it very jarring and clunky to perform upkeep triggers, draw, then perform saga triggers.

I’ve been getting a bunch of feedback in this regard. It’s tough sometimes to balance trying something new that adds flexibility with deviating with how things have been done.

[sultaiascendancy-blog]

It makes sense to have it during the main phase. Flame of Keld and any future sagas that add mana will be much better because of it.

[markrosewater]

Could you please do a poll to see which plane people would like to see Sagas again on? I vote Theros. It seems like the perfect plane for Greek Mythology Sagas.

A fine question. If we brought back Sagas on another plane, which plane would you prefer?

[sultaiascendancy-blog]

Definitely Tarkir, with at the very least a cycle of sagas representing each clan during the Khanfall. Theros should have them when we return there, and if we ever return to Kamigawa there's a place for sagas there as well.

[markrosewater]

So, after further consideration, do you think mcu Thanos is mono white? I do

WARNING: VAGUE SPOILERS FOR “AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR”

The MCU Thanos has a lot of white.

[deranged-hermit-mtg]

INFINITY WAR TALK READ AT RISK

I’ve seen some talk of green, but I definitely disagree with that. The whole idea of going against the natural progression of societies’ developments doesn’t seem green. He doesn’t appear to have anything against their technological development, just the size of the populace. I just saw it a bit ago, but I don’t remember any mention of destiny, someone correct me if I missed that. He definitely talks about getting to this point with ambition, dedication, and will, which I could see as black. White’s the most obvious though, definitely working to achieve what he believes is a better state of order for the universe and its (remaining) inhabitants.

[sultaiascendancy-blog]

I think there's an argument to be made for green. I know that some, if not most, green characters would have major issues with what Thanos does, but that doesn't make him not green. There is conflict within each color. Morality, law, and religion all fall into white's domain. But when we see someone do something immoral because of their religion or the law, or ignore religion or the law because of their morality, that doesn't make them non-white. It just means that they embody some aspects of white and not others. Similarly, green can include both a non-interventionist philosophy (let sentient life play itself out naturally) or a preserve-life-at-all-costs philosophy. Many green characters are the former but others, such as Thanos, are the latter. It's similar to how when we see eco-terrorist type characters - those who are willing to kill or entirely wipe out humans to prevent thousands of other species, if not the whole planet, from being wiped out - those characters are invariably classified as green or black/green. Again, there's conflict within the color - many green characters would be against killing life of any kind, but others would tolerate it if it was for the good of all life.

Maro's argument is that Thanos can't be green because he tries to usurp the natural cycle of life and death. And yet, what is the description that is consistently applied to black/green in Magic? Manipulating the cycle of life and death - EXACTLY what Thanos is trying to do. What he's doing easily falls within the BG color pair. There's a ton of white in him as well, of course. And for the record, he does talk about his destiny and seems to actually believe in the concept, which is pretty much exclusively green, but bleeding into white and black as a justification for his ruthless actions. Thanos combines the philosophies of white (needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, killing only out of perceived necessity, and killing completely randomly rather than based on merit), black (mass killing as a means to an end, usurping the natural order, and general ruthlessness and ambition), and green (belief in destiny, preserving natural resources, and trying to allow life to continue indefinitely). In my opinion, he's very, very Abzan.

[markrosewater]

Could batching be used for characteristics other than type, such as keyword abilities?

There is a lot of design potential with batching.

[sultaiascendancy-blog]

This really does have a TON of design space now that I think about it. For example…

1. Batches of flavorfully similar creature types that probably could and should have been one creature type in the first place:

Sea Monsters - Krakens, Leviathans, Octopuses, Serpents (Listing every aquatic creature type would be too long, but there are already a handful of cards referring to these four specifically. What if they didn’t have to list them all out?)

Undead - Skeletons, Spirits, Vampires, and Zombies (Innistrad sets REALLY want this.)

Serpentine - Gorgons, Naga, Serpents, and Snakes (What all future snake tribal should be. You could argue that hydras should be included as well, but the hydras that are particularly snake-like have the snake creature type anyway.)

(Tagging @askkrenko on this because it’s really his department; his creature type guides have lots of other examples of creature types that can and should be consolidated by batching.)

2. Batches that reference a set mechanic in a way that isn’t parasitic, triggering off of two generic things or one set-specific thing like historic does:

Eldritch - Eldrazi cards, double-faced cards, and cards with madness or delirium (Would have been perfect in Eldritch Moon - I think including a handful of relatively benign DFCs is an acceptable bend, as it’s the only way to reference cards that are only eldrazi on the back.)

Remnants - Zombies, Deserts, and artifacts (Return to Amonkhet.) ??? - Legendaries, Arcane, and Spirits (I can’t think of a good name, but Kamigawa block desperately needed this - arcane/spirit appeared on tons of cards, and legendaries really needed more payoff for how many of them there were.)

3. And finally, batches that care about specific keywords:

Quick - Creatures with flash, first strike, double strike, and/or haste (This is what Path of Mettle really needed to make the flavor click. I think flash is a better inclusion than vigilance, since vigilance often represents something other than speed. I really want to see a card that makes quick creatures unblockable by non-quick creatures for the flavor, and that’s not going to happen if all these keywords have to be written out twice, so batching is the perfect solution.)

Tough - Creatures with hexproof, indestructible, and/or toughness greater than their power (Creatures that are hard to kill. Good for both benificial tribal-esque effects and specific hate cards, which would likely have to “choose a tough creature you control and exile it” to get around both hexproof and indestructible.)

This ended up longer than I intended but the point is that batching has a TON of design space, and I’m surprised that it hasn’t been used before Dominaria. I’m excited to see where this goes in future sets and I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on this.

[askkrenko]

Honestly, “batching” creature types and providing a cheat sheet for all creature type batches would solve a lot of problems. It’d also allow for some batch overlap. Here’s some example batches I could see using:

“Sea Monsters” “Aquatic”

“Herd Animals”/”Ungulates” or at least the smaller “Ruminants.”

“Reptiles”

It’s funny to me that you bring up Undead, because Undead is actually unbatchable.  Yes, you could go wide with Spirit, Zombie, Skeleton, Vampire, Shade, Graveborn, etc,  but it’s important to remember that MANY Spirits are not Undead (especially on Kamigawa) and many Vampires are not undead (especially on Zendikar) so you can’t batch like that.

I like Serpentine.

The real issue with Batching is how you communicate what’s in the batches. As much as I love the “Historic” batch as a concept, the fact that it’s written out on every card I’ve seen that references it really means it’s more flavor than clear usefulness. If a set included say, one or two big batches, it could be included on cheat-sheet cards in sufficient token slots.

Dragon Ball Z actually used to do this. Racial types weren’t witten on cards, there’s was just a part of the rulebook that specified which of the (admittedly smaller) list of characters were Saiyans and which were Namekians, and then whenever a new set came out it’d have a rule insert card that had something like  “New personalities, Goten and Kid Trunks, are Saiyans! Kid Trunks is NOT the same character as Trunks, for the purposes of (the legendary rule).” 

Obviously, you wouldn’t want to overwhelm with this, but imagine a rules insert that said “Basilisks, Crocodiles, Lizards, Nagas, Snakes, Turtles, and Viashino are Reptiles” that showed up in like ¼ packs. That’d Give you a lot more freedom to just have cards say “Reptiles you control get +1/+0″ without having to type out all the types each time. It’d still say it some of the commons, too, just to make sure it was extra clear.

[markrosewater]

Could batching be used for characteristics other than type, such as keyword abilities?

There is a lot of design potential with batching.

[sultaiascendancy-blog]

This really does have a TON of design space now that I think about it. For example...

1. Batches of flavorfully similar creature types that probably could and should have been one creature type in the first place:

Sea Monsters - Krakens, Leviathans, Octopuses, Serpents (Listing every aquatic creature type would be too long, but there are already a handful of cards referring to these four specifically. What if they didn't have to list them all out?)

Undead - Skeletons, Spirits, Vampires, and Zombies (Innistrad sets REALLY want this.)

Serpentine - Gorgons, Naga, Serpents, and Snakes (What all future snake tribal should be. You could argue that hydras should be included as well, but the hydras that are particularly snake-like have the snake creature type anyway.)

(Tagging @askkrenko on this because it's really his department; his creature type guides have lots of other examples of creature types that can and should be consolidated by batching.)

2. Batches that reference a set mechanic in a way that isn't parasitic, triggering off of two generic things or one set-specific thing like historic does:

Eldritch - Eldrazi cards, double-faced cards, and cards with madness or delirium (Would have been perfect in Eldritch Moon - I think including a handful of relatively benign DFCs is an acceptable bend, as it's the only way to reference cards that are only eldrazi on the back.)

Remnants - Zombies, Deserts, and artifacts (Return to Amonkhet.) ??? - Legendaries, Arcane, and Spirits (I can't think of a good name, but Kamigawa block desperately needed this - arcane/spirit appeared on tons of cards, and legendaries really needed more payoff for how many of them there were.)

3. And finally, batches that care about specific keywords:

Quick - Creatures with flash, first strike, double strike, and/or haste (This is what Path of Mettle really needed to make the flavor click. I think flash is a better inclusion than vigilance, since vigilance often represents something other than speed. I really want to see a card that makes quick creatures unblockable by non-quick creatures for the flavor, and that's not going to happen if all these keywords have to be written out twice, so batching is the perfect solution.)

Tough - Creatures with hexproof, indestructible, and/or toughness greater than their power (Creatures that are hard to kill. Good for both benificial tribal-esque effects and specific hate cards, which would likely have to "choose a tough creature you control and exile it" to get around both hexproof and indestructible.)

This ended up longer than I intended but the point is that batching has a TON of design space, and I'm surprised that it hasn't been used before Dominaria. I'm excited to see where this goes in future sets and I would love to hear other people's thoughts on this.

[markrosewater]

Do people want a Return to Kamigawa more, or a Return to Lorwyn/Shadowmoor more?

Okay, Question Marks, where would you rather return:

a) Kamigawa

or

b) Lorwyn

Also, explain why you chose the answer you did.

[askkrenko]

Lorwyn!

Both worlds have their own problems, but Kamigawa’s problems would need to be solved by heavily reworking what the themes were, what the mechanics were, and what the set was about. Lorwyn, however, just needs a bit of simplification. Ixalan and Innistrad have both shown that tribal-heavy sets work great, it’s just that Lorwyn went a bit overboard on it. There’s plenty to love about Lorwyn, such as the Prowl mechanic, support for lots of creature types, the best designed elves in Magic: the Gathering, cool goblins, faeries, etc, and a new Lorwyn learning from old Lorwyn could easily solve the problems of things like “too complex in limited,” while a smaller Lorwyn/Shadowmoor (due to the new set schedule) allows to cut out some of the ‘padding.’   Champion, Changeling, Evoke , Prowl, Persist, Wither, and Retrace were all straight up solid and interesting mechanics. Kamigawa really just had Ninjutsu, Channel, and Offering as great mechanics. Offering was already redone better in Eldritch Moon, and Channel could easily show up in any random set (and honestly should. One of my GDS3 cards was an aura with a Channel-like ability.)  Shadowmoor also gave us a lot of cool and interesting mythological creatures we haven’t seen elsewhere: Kelpies, Hobgoblins, Redcaps, Duergar, etc. Kamigawa did some of this, but didn’t seem to do so as successfully, with so much just getting lumped into the ‘spirit’ category and the akki, moonfolk, nezumi, and orochi being new things with Japanese flavor instead of giving us straight versions of the creatures. Also, Lorwyn/Shadowmoor is absolutely begging for a heavy DFC theme, at least as numerous as in Innistrad.

Ultimately, a return to Kamigawa would be a completely new set that also had Japanese stuff. A return to Lorwyn/Shadowmoor could easily feel like a proper continuation of Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, using lessons learned to just make it a stronger set overall. And if people DO insist on complaining about a set with no humans in it, you can just put like… Domri and Kaya hanging out, because for some of us, the lack of humans is a major draw.

[markrosewater]

When we go to viking world, I'd like the saga subtype to return (assuming sagas are fun).

Sagas are fun.

Noted.

[sultaiascendancy-blog]

They would make a lot of sense on Theros, Tarkir, or even Kamigawa if we ever return there. All have a lot of history/mythology to cover.

[markrosewater]

Will we ever see a reprint of doubling season?

We have before and I’m sure we will again, just not in Standard.

[sultaiascendancy-blog]

Actually, we would much rather have Tree of Redemption reprinted. Obviously.

[markrosewater]

BFZ, SOI, Kaladesh, Amonkhet, and Ixalan were all large sets and they had 6, 6, 7, 9, and 7 legendary creatures respectively. We haven't seen a standard-legal set, large or small, with 10+ legendary creatures since Origins. It seems that historically 10 is more like a maximum than the average. Is it safe to assume that your statement "10+ per set" is looking more towards future sets made with Brawl in mind than currently-released sets made before Brawl was introduced?

I estimates poorly. It’s six or more.

[sultaiascendancy-blog]

Well, that's kind of unfortunate. I got excited there for a moment. An increase in the minimum number would have been nice.

Still, though, six or more means more than the a single rare cycle in Core 2019. I'm still putting my money on flipwalkers.

[markrosewater]

Could a red/green creature have dash? It doesn't seem like it would be a break since green has flash.

It could happen.

[sultaiascendancy-blog]

Dash has more to do with haste than flash since it literally mentions haste in its reminder text. But haste is BRG, so it still works. If it's a major set theme it could even be in white and blue the same way that suspend was.

[markrosewater]

In relation to the previous question about Brawl being limited after Dominaria I think the asker meant since it’s based on standard won’t it get very limiting once the huge number of legends in Dominaria rotate out?

Each set has ten or more legendary creatures. That means Standard should always have at least forty to chose from, usually more. Also, remember can use planeswalkers which adds another twelve plus to the mix.

[sultaiascendancy-blog]

BFZ had 6. OGW had 7. SOI had 5. EMN had 7. KLD had 7. AER had 6. AKH had 9. HOU had 7. XLN had 7. RIX had 8. Dominaria is the first set since Origins to have at least 10. So this must be referring to sets from Dominaria onward. Good news for Commander players.

This also implies that the Core 19 and future core sets might have the usual monocolored rare legend cycle plus a flipwalker cycle to make 10 legends, unless they double up on the rare legends or something.