MtG Flavor Fails

>Designing Legendary Creatures for Orzhov a giant churchbank run by debt collectors and accountant-priests

Everyone needs to make ghosts or already BE ghosts and have their abilities reflect that fact. Ghosts are clearly the most important aspect of this organization.

>Designing Legendary Creature that's basically just a corrupt politician
Let's make him a tax man!

>inb4 Ulrich and Ludevic

Yeah, nobody's happy about them, but they've been talked to death.

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>Other Theros Gods
Paragons of their domains, encompassing many aspects of their portfolios of worship.

>Pharika, goddess of the twinned healing and harming aspects of nature.
"lol i maek snek"

Kambal isn't part of the Orzhov guild, he just happens to be B/W

Snakes are closely associated with Hermes, who was a god of medicine among other things. Snakes can also be used for their poisons as well as for antidotes. They're also used in medicines in some cultures.

>Every Soldier Ever
Clean, sleek design, usually with shining metal armor or else well tailored clothes, mostly depicted with with either sword and shield or a dueling sword, overwhelmingly White Aligned

>Every Warrior Ever
Rough, gritty design, often unarmored or wearing leather or piecemeal armor, usually depicted using heavy weapons like clubs, maces, or axes, more eclectic color alignment but generally falling in the Jund shard

>Saskia

That's exactly my point. He's in no way affiliated with Orzhov, but is the perfectly designed Orzhov legend in terms of flavor.

It's a play on the Death and Taxes archetype.

>That's exactly my point. He's in no way affiliated with Orzhov, but is the perfectly designed Orzhov legend in terms of flavor.

Oh okay yeah I got you man. Totally misinterpreted that, and would 100% agree with you

>Atraxa marks the final victory in the Phyrexian conquest of Mirrodin. Once a Mirran angel who opposed Phyrexia's corruption, she was captured while single-handedly protecting a Mirran retreat. The praetor Elesh Norn honored the angel's tenacity with the blessed gift of Phyrexian compleation, inviting other praetors to contribute. Urabrask declined, but Jin-Gitaxias, Sheoldred, and Vorinclex all agreed to join Elesh Norn's efforts, and Atraxa was born—an awe-inspiring testament to Phyrexia's singular purpose.

>Keyword Soup

Flying from Jin Gitaxias
Vigilance from Norn
Death touch from Vorinclex
Lifelink from Sheoldred.

It's boring yeah but it works and proliferate is the most new phyrexian thing there is besides infect.

But the ghosts are just the window dressing. Or did you forget that the Orzhov mechanic last time around was extort, there were even vampires based around being bankers, and they taxed the opponent just for showing up.
There wasn't any "just made ghosts, whoo" going on in the Orzhov. Everything was related to paying and taking life

>Depicts a firey divine being charging into the fray, sword held high with a battle cry on her lips.

>Really strong mono-white prison effect

Maybe this one is petty, but the name and art just really have nothing to do with the effect. Hell, even its effect is pretty different from the other Archon creatures.

So if Urabrask showed up, would she of had haste?

Yeah, it's not so much that it doesn't make sense, it's just super boring. The combined efforts of 4/5 Phyrexian praetors create... a really good, nearly French-Vanilla creature.

Or first strike

Forgot the damn picture

Based on that design philosophy, yeah. Maybe first strike?

>Red vampires are bloodlust obsessed mass murderers
>Most of them are borderline fearal
...Except this one who operates a tavern which is somehow secluded enough to not get burned to the ground by the Inquisition but has a steady stream of traffic regardless, and also doesn't mind patiently waiting despite Red being generally opposed to setting drawn out traps.

I may be nit-picking though.

magiccards.info/query?q=t:trap c!r&v=card&s=cname
Red doesn't mind traps. Besides, she knows the fun is when guests show up.
That and only the Neonate's were feral, the rest just acted like party-goers and hunters.

It's probably some kind of privè club for degenerate things rather than a normal tavern in middle of a human town.

No no user
Vigilance is from elesh norn
death touch is from vorinclex
lifelink and the horror creature type is from sheoldred
proliferate is from jin gitaxias
pristine angel being white gives flying

So much of the lore and flavor of Ravnica is fucking retarded, especially when it comes to their prehistoric past.

So we've got the Nephilim, ancient, cyclopian monsters worshiped as gods with crazy, eclectic designs. Oh, but they're not Legendary, there just used to be a bunch of titans with flaming stone faces hovering fifty feet over their altar like bodies and treelike hands and laticework limbs running around. Ok.

Then, in Return to Ravnica, we get the Primordial cycle, five creatures from Ravnica's prehistoric past with godlike powers and eclectic designs. So, naturally, their creature type was AVATAR.

Fucking hell, Ravnica is such a mess.

High level Orzhov members are too busy being dicks and plotting schemes to do paperwork, that's work for the underlings

Stensia is basically Innistrad's Innistrad. It's the place that people from Horror World are scared of because it's extra spoopy. It's also basically run by vamps.

>Primordials are big powerful manifestations of some kind of region or power

That's exactly what an Avatar IS. What type did you expect from them?

And the Nephilim not being legendary means that apparently there were more than one of each running around. Legendary means "There's really only one, an individual or one of a kind being"
That's the difference between "Yore Tiller Nephilim" and "Khaxxixzy, the Yore Tiller"

Not all Orzhovs are ghost or ghost related people.

Worse, her story fucking says she is a warrior-barbarian who hates the large organized empire.

Pretty sure that between her weird mistyping and wizards being hush hush on what plane she's acutally from it's probably something to do with her plane in specific.

Nekusar world soon

He's talking about teysa

Sorry user, but it was platinum angel not pristine.

Grasp of darkness tells a story. Just like clip wings, liliana and humble. Look at the set symbol on the first print of grasp, atraxias' flavor text, and look up the new phyrexia arc.

too bad, we will never have more of Ravnica.

How are those flavour fails?
Orzhov's schtick is that you're indebted to them forever. There are a few things, like Teysa, that make ghosts, and the first time around it was all about "Haunt", but in Return to Ravnica, the whole thing was about bleeding you slowly as a tax.

I see nothing wrong with Kambal.
So?

*YOU* can attack, though. And have no reason not to, since you don't need to block.

It's the Titty Twister

Teysa's job is working directly for the tax ghosts as a lawyer. Her having taxpowers like lifesteal and such wouldn't have made sense because that's not what she does.
Instead she sues every creature that hurts you to death.

>I see nothing wrong with Kambal
>So?

You're pretty dense user. The point is that he's a perfect fit for Orzhov, but is not actually Orzhov in anything except colors. He's from Kaladesh, not Ravnica.

You're right. Only Ravnica can have taxes or blackmail. Good job. ONLY ONE CONCEPT PER PLANE GUYS. You fixed Magic forever!

It's an archon, archons are white a race. If you look at the art, this one is heavily related to justice with the scales and blindfold, which is definitely white's domain.

The fiery thing is just background.

>>Designing Legendary Creatures for Orzhov a giant churchbank run by debt collectors and accountant-priests
If you had read Ravnica, or paid attention to the carts really, you'd realize that the Orzhov are far more than that. Sign up a policy with the Orzhov, stick around as a ghost until your avenger gets it done. Running a restaurant for zombies, demons and undead with a side dish of information brokering to golgari and boros? It's done by an Orzhov imp.
They are a CHURCH and exemply basically all aspects of real world churches turned up to eleven, especially the bad ones In the old Ravnica set they decided to focus on the ghastly aspect: you don't owe them money, you owe them your life and afterlife too. You want your death to be avenged? They make deals with ghosts constantly and their patriarchs are all ghosts as well. So why wouldn't they have a lot of ghost-related cards and abilities?
In RtR,they changed the way in which the orzhov were represented, and went in the tax-collecting direction instead.

This doesn't work. It would work if they had the matching keywords from the preators, but just having keywords the colors can have doesn't make it really that flavorful. The intention was pretty obvious that the keywords each reflected a color. But it's not even like it does it very good. Deathtouch is technically green but it has a very specific flavor connotation in green which isn't reflected at all in this for example.

... so?

I mean, says it well. Why do you feel that concept should ONLY exist for Orzhov?

Eh, theyr'e still represented as heavily associated with ghosts in RTR, just the mechanic they went with reflected the whole reason behind their association with ghosts more than the flavor of ghostly things themselves. They still ahd the Ghost Council, Teysa still amde spirits, and I've never counted but I feel like there's still plenty of Orzhov spirit cards as well. OP is just being retarded, there wasn't really that much change for Orzhov in RTR afaik.

It makes more flavor sense that Kambal would just be a tax dude since Kaladesh is less "magical" than someplace like Ravnica and doesn't have undead or anything. Ravnica legends can be more fantastical.

...so corrupted politicians in Kaladesh can't collect taxes...?
You had a LOT of evil taxmen in RTR Orzhov, you can't be possibly complain that there are none on Ravnica. The only rightful complain in this whole thread is about Ludevic not being Black.

>there wasn't really that much change for Orzhov in RTR afaik
There was not at the core, they just decided to show one aspect more and the other less, switching the main focus from ghosts to taxes. Not that Orzhovs collect just *money* anyway.

The shift in representation is because of jace. Religions want to be governments but are content to step back a little if pushed there by force and they get left alone enough. The living guildpact really did change ravnica. On the bright side the obzedat seem to be working on fixing that problem though.

Who knows. Wizards seems to have replaced dominara with a set list of core planes, and ravinica is the home base for the jacetice league. We'll probably be going there at least one more time, to see it get invaded by new phyrexia or bolas or more eldrazi or whatever ugin thinks the eldrazi might be eating or zombie yawgmoth or whatever the big thanos equivalent is that the jacetice league will have to fight.

Eh, even then I think it's mostly just through the lens of the mechanic. Even Haunt wasn't really on just spirits, just the flavor was that they became spirits that haunted you when they died, while extort is more straightforward flavorwise as them taxing opponents. Though it would make sense since iirc the Orzhov were heavily associated with Agyrem the Ghost Quarter, though I never read the books.

Uh, what? It sounds like you read the story because of the last bit, but that story was about how Jace cracking down with Azorius laws explciitly DID NOT affect the Orzhov.

You're both wrong.

Return to Ravanica block was the worst selling block ever since kamigawa, they even stopped printing dragon's maze halfway through it.

...

[citation needed]

I want to fuck that angel

the c15 story had a nice ravnica update, If wotc gave a fuck about their old lore gideon would have noticed tajic was no longer part of the boros instead of trying to get nissa to crush his boipussy
magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-story/family-values-2015-11-11

No, I know, but that story was explicitly about how Jace enforcing Ravnica's laws didn't affect Orzhov activity because the magical laws have no effect on them.

I can accept this

I just realized how circular this sounded but it's pretty hilariously ridiculous anyway. I loved this story because the reveal was so absurd. The law literally doesn't apply to them.

Tesya was fucking with the stability of how the guildpact worked for the obsedat. If jace can be controlled/manipulated he would fuck over any guild. He can mind control everyone on ravnica so it doesnt matter if the orzhov are immune to law magic or telepathy. The orzhov know they dont need to listen to him 100% but they know he shapes the entire rest of their world. Its why they are reeling in tesya, she should have helped the guild instead of backstabbing it.
Also as a side note, now that jace has liliana on his side again the orzhov can be manually controlled by jace with necromancy.

So dense.

Divining the intent of the OP, this thread is about cards that could have been improved by minor tweaks, like making a not!Celt into a Warrior instead of a Soldier. Similarly, it appears OP's point was that Kambal is wasted by not being part of Orzhov.

This is merely restating the thread's purpose more clearly, as it appears you all have misunderstood it.

OP's point is that he doesn't have a point. He calls them "flavour fails" when they aren't.

OP stated his intention poorly.
And anyway, Orzhov is Ravnica. You'd rather they buried the design for Kambal in a future Ravnica set than justprinting him for the world of Kaladesh?