How could Theros have been improved?

I really liked Tribute, but it was in the middle of a clusterfuck of a set mechanically.

Also Inspired, which was really weird and all over the place.

Honestly to me Theros' biggest problem was that it was too much "Ancient Greece" and not enough "A Magical World Based Off Ancient Greece". It felt really grounded in references to actual mythology, which while I appreciated them, I was disappointed that they didn't go for more of the feel those myths were trying to invoke. The gods were a good step in that direction, but I would have loved to see more along the lines of a set about stories and legends and belief.

tl;dr should have brought back Evoke.

Mechanically, it needed to be a fully fledged enchantments matter block as Mirrodin was to artifacts. Enchantments are the weakest permanent type.

Flavor wise, I really enjoyed it. The story with the Prophet of Kruphix was fantastic. I also really like Athreos.

More importantly, will Return to Theros feature a strong, anti-divine state based on Roman culture set against openly hostile gods? That's all I want.

Theros was weak as hell. Theros was quite literally the weakest block after Kamigawa. Granted there was no real way to scale past the power of Innistrad, but eating more shit than Ravnica was not the way to do it. Also, simply because they reprinted Thoughtseize in Theros doesn't make it a good block. On the other stuff, I can't really say anything because I fell out of the game after Theros and have no reference for Khans.

I would have liked to see tribute as more of a continous effect. Like a giant stomp 7/7 trampler for 5, but any player can pay 2 life to tap it sort of thing. So you have to decide how long it's worthwile to keep playing tribute.

I also would have liked to see Heroic be the monstrous mechanic. Ie, he's a nobody, till you heroic him, giving him 3 +1/+1 tokens, death-touch and destroying target gorgon. Or Balerephon getting +2/+2 flying and destroy target chimera etc.

I like these ideas. I feel like Reknown might have been a proto-heroic, and tribute as a recurrent tapdown with differing costs could have made for some really interesting deck setups.

Also they should have made Ashiok actually DO things.

Mechanically, it needed to push and make Enchantments matter a bit more.

Fluff and mechanics wise, it also needed to better define factions and deck archetypes. Making a deck for the various gods and city states should be a bit better defined and feel more distinct, the same way that building a deck around monsters or tribes should.

Theros in general feels like a jumbled mess where nothing stands out. It's just random Greek mythology stuff that is given no weight in the setting

Actual enchantment support that wasn't tacked on as an afterthought. Less love stories for Elspeth, Theros wasn't the height of entertainment but I had trouble staying awake whenever Davos was so much as mentioned. Seriously, fuck that guy.

It felt like they were just checking a lot of boxes for what they thought people expected.

>Alright. Greco-roman mythology. What do people know?
>King Midas
>Icarus
>Prometheus
>Sisyphus
>Perseus
>Hercules
>The Oracle of Delphi
>Trojan Horse
>Arachne
>Narcissus
>Colossus of Rhodes
>The Fates
>etc. etc.

They weren't coming up with classical-type stories, they were taking existing myths and slapping a thin coat of Magic-colored paint on them.

I'm not an expert in the greeks, but it really didn't feel like they "got" ancient greece. Like sure, all the big symbols are there, but it's alien to the greek mindset. Of course you shouldn't expect the magic writing team to employ philology and history phd's, but still, it would have been nice.

>Heroic
garbage mechanic, functionally a win-more ability, tries to make enchantments something more than 2-for-1 bait but encourages it even harder. Flavorfully confused (Why does my guy show his heroism when I help him? Shouldn't it be when he's targeted by something my OPPONENT controls?). On the cards printed it was almost exclusively a neat effect that you never gave a shit about unless you could use it to snowball the game on t1 or t2.
>Enchantment matters
Essentially didn't even try. Like everyone knows already constellation should have been in the first set, pretty much every Theros enchantment printed outside the block should have been printed in the original block
>Bestow
interesting mechanic that will be forgotten because Wizards was for some reason terrified of bestow creatures have playable bestow costs. They could have had cheap costs to help "cheat" bestow creatures into play but they all play the same as french vanilla shits that can be piled onto your heroic creature late game.
>Devotion and gods
pretty much the only success in Theros, thank god it was a slam dunk.
>Monstrosity
solid mechanic that is generic enough to be pseudo evergreen. Has some small memory issues but they could've at least pushed the bill by making some creatures that did something other than ACTIVATE MONSTRIFY TO MAKE MY GUY XBOX HUEG
>Inspired
lame ability that doesn't even deserve to be keyworded. Was almost interesting when they beta tested it in Shadowmoor since it synergized with the untap-symbol
>Tribute
Absolute garbage, especially with them limiting the choices to X or X +1/+1 counters. Pretty much Conspiracy's voting mechanic if it was garbage and retarded
>Constellation
An actual creative mechanic given no chance to be good. Wizards must have serious PTSD from Mirrodin
>Strive
Replicate but only for cards that target creatures, why does this even exist?
you know a set is garbage when it has intentionally terrible removal so that its mechanics actually work

Well, I'd argue that they did a pretty good job with Kamigawa. Power-wise aside, everything there fits Japanese folklore pretty well, while still being its own thing.

Fucking kappa goblins alone are great and a perfect example of blending together mtg's common stuff along with the mythology they're using.

Theros defaulted to using Satyrs and Centaurs and Minotaurs and Harpies because hey, those are greek creatures that we can put in with 0 changes or work.

Both very true. It felt less Greek than campy sword & sandal schlock.

Not doing it.

>you know a set is garbage when it has intentionally terrible removal so that its mechanics actually work
So magic for the past 4 years?

>scry
Scry was one of the worst parts of thermos because they overcosted all spells with it

Thermos was the first block that featured (((premium removal))) at rare and pure shit at common and uncommon. This hurt draft significantly.

Kamigawa is the set where they went super hard on making sure everything was faithful to the existing mythology, but neglected the actual mechanical end of it, and ended up with the kind of mess it was.

Lorewise though, Kamigawa is fucking excellent, and should be something they look to as "a good example of a real religion and mythology translated to fantastic style"

Yeah. Except now Theros was a 'success', so we're only going to see basic amusement park mythology from now on

It was released between the overpowered mirrodin and the beloved ravnica (and coldsnap lol). It was destined to fail

the real reason behind that though is that Kamigawa's super in depth mythology is really damn confusing from an outside perspective. The amusement park stuff appeals to a more commonplace demographic, and it's kind of sad to see how hard into the marketing mindset they've been going.
Ideally, they'd manage to do both in a way. A veneer of easily understood and recognized tropes hiding a vast web of complex and interesting lore.

yeah. Anything put next to Mirrodin was destined to fail.

I don't know shit about japanese religion except for some basic concepts (kitsune, kappas, ghost that just wants to show you the giant eye in its asshole, etc), and I still thought it was cool as fuck. The human side is perfectly understandable(samurai, bandits, ninja), and the spirit side is just tons and tons of weird and cool fucking ghosts who embody all the possible concepts and objects in the real world and then went to war against humanity over that which was taken. I don't understand how you could not "get" kamigawa.

Wizards like to talk shit about Kamigawa and went full damage control while Theros was being printed but considering the Theros cars they've printed outside the block I think they understand how shitty it was even if they won't admit it.

Less whites
Less heteros
Less males

I do think having that underlying depth alongside the more basic displays of mythology would have helped.

Generally, it feels like they wasted a lot of space, or somehow didn't have enough to convey as much about the world as they needed.

Less wights
Less doritos
Less mails

I'd rather have the game teach me some things about a culture I didn't already know.

I mean, if we're absolutely married to the idea of using real-world cultures for flavor.

Make enchantments actually matter, that's literally it.

If we're down to opinions, then push devotion very slightly less. Making Kiora and UBtrap do their own things was good, but I'll admit that possibly as a result of it, I have no fucking idea what Elspeth did on the plane aside of killing xenagos and getting killed in turn.

Equipments worth shit would help the set too. More focus in tactics in combat would have helped, maybe with 'can block two creatures' keyword and Provoke returning, rather than everyone and their mom having menace.

Enchantment Lands

Bro u hear about Hercules?

With Bestow.

Satyr Hoplite was the best, dumbest example. Symbol of absolute anarchy working as symbol of rigid discipline? Fuck it, give the goat a spear.

That is a big aspect of it. Satyrs on Theros basically boiled down to just being another generic fantasy race. They were Elf Goblins that loved trees and causing some chaos, but that's all it boiled down to. On top of that, they didn't even define them well by trying to give them any sort of strong identity for their tribe or cards.

You don't know what Elspeth did because the entirety of the plot was relegated to the Ebook.

Imagine being as toned deaf as this poster, fucking amazing.

Tbh the Elspeth storyline has a lot in common with greek tragedy. The highest point of her journey immediately leads to an inevitable death. You also have the whole "reluctant but stoic hero following his fate instead of his hearth" from Virgil.
I agree that they could have gone way deeper and just put in random things from every mythology book for children. I think that Theros was the perfect opportunity to go for a Kamigawa level of depth without making it feel as alien.

Deathtouch indestructible 1/1 hydra with a bunch of counters it loses and regains
If they're going to be retarded and just rip off greek mythology wholesale DO IT RIGHT HOLY FUCK.

>subsaharan negroids
>meds
Everyfuckingtime.
Libs out.
t. Med

Maybe I'm easily pleased but I think they captured the capriciousness and human-ness of the gods quite well. Helios being an absolute dick felt very on point to me.

They did kind of fuck up with making the creature tribes unique and cool like in Kamigawa. But to be honest when I started Magic with kamigawa I just thought it was a bunch of weird shit, my appreciation only came way later.

What I'll never understand is why they started to print Naga cards when Snake tribal could have been so awesome. It could have vindicated parts of Kamigawa as well. All these shitty tribes they keep introducing with no support will never not be stupid (Naga, Jackal, etc.)

It's really dumb when they do it for stuff that already has an obvious analogue, like snakes for Nagas or hounds for Jackals.

More delicious black girls.

Theros tribes were shit (except for the zombie one, that was a flavour homerun). Minotaurs were understandable, but merfolks and leonins fell shoehorned (I know there are sirens in the mythology but come on). Also they completely failed to portray the poleis. They completely missed the public aspect of greek society, expecially of religion, wich is a huge miss in a block with 15 gods running around. Also the there cities had really small depht. We had !notSparta, !notAthens aka we wuz philosophers n shit, and what the fuck was even Sethessa.

They missed out on the Polis so heavily that it isn't even obvious that there are 4, one for each color-pairing with white. The last one is the city of the dead with the zombies (which I agree are great)

Leonins feel really out of place, since they're essentially just a random race of beast people to show up. Merfolk I can kind of understand from wanting to have their Poseidon equivalent to have subjects, but focusing on them so heavily feels off. Ideally, some of these other races should have been more on par with cyclops. Or, more broadly, been a relative rarity that on an individual basis is more powerful than the average human. Merfolks could have been more closely in-tune with Nyx or whatever, blessed by the sea goddess, but generally just been a limited number of small mages, rather than a full tribe.

Focusing more upon the various city states should have been much more key, and along with that, 15 gods feels like far, far too many.

Less nigger.

I think that the big problem is that they mixed up two periods of greek history, the arcaic and the classical. They took the hero theme from the first, were greeks were divided in tribes with a lot of emphasis on the single leader (Homer society basically, 1 king + a whole bunch of random people fighting in the background), and shoved it into the classical poleis structure, missing out completely on the depth of those society. It would have been way better structured as an odissey like travel heavily focused only on Elspeth and the places she visists, instead they went for a broader background that hard 0 depth. The alternative would have been a story inspired by classical tragedy, where the society and its rules/beliefs/superstitions are dominant and often in contrast with the personal mission of the hero, but it wasn't the case.

>toned deaf

fuck theros
Where's my Dominaria?

I want Elspeth back. I want her to come back from the grave and shank that bitch ass Heliod and become the new Goddess of the Sun.

That's a good point. It does feel like they just sort of said, 'eh, greek myth is just heroes, gods, and monsters, right?' and left it at that.

They either needed to focus more on the poleis they established, getting down and defining stuff and making it an actual region, which could then have Elspeth's adventure take place in, or they should have gone full Odyssey with it, and just have innumerable random kingdoms scattered all across the globe. There's no major city states to worry about, just random quirky kings and queens of their own little bubbles, each dealing with their own monsters.

Mechanically, theros has lots of gimmicky and impractically overcosted stuff that tires to look cool but fails in producing a real alternative to more basic playstyles. Flavorwise, it is a jumbled mess of references with no underlying theme beyind a vague "it is greek". Basically, theros is the dark souls 3 of mtg blocks.
Real talk though, they made this epic "theriad" poem that tries to mimic the feeling of the odyssey, and then half the quotes from it are its protagonist making "witty" jokes. I think this sums up the flavor of theros perfectly.

>Constellation as the headline mechanic over monsterous
>delet Inspired
>Actually reinforce the "enchantment matters" theme (BNG had 0 non-creature, non-aura enchantments, Theros and JOU each had 10, and 15 of those were god-related cycles)
>actually powerful cards (though lets be honest - lightning strike and magma jet would be awfully good about now)

Use scry effectively! It was only good on magma jet, everything else was oveecosted crap

>Real talk though, they made this epic "theriad" poem that tries to mimic the feeling of the odyssey, and then half the quotes from it are its protagonist making "witty" jokes.
the protagonist (and many other cards) is also a girl, which signifies that they more want to check all their little corporate pandering checkboxes than actually want to capture the greek spirit

in other settings that would be perfectly fine, but here it's like making a movie where a black guy is the king of england, which probably has been done several times already

So magic for the past 4 years.

>the protagonist (and many other cards) is also a gir
That's never bothered me in any way and shouldn't bother you as well. The theriad could have been good with a female protagonist as well as a male one, the problem is that they failed compeltely to make it look like an epic tale.

It bothers me because it's un-greek, it just feels ridiculous.
Same for the card that represents the other famous aspect of the greeks, travelling philosopher. Is it some old bearded guy, as is iconic and accurate? Nope, it's some chick. Fucking stupid.

>bothers me because it's un-greek
Good thing she's in Theros and not Greece then

>but here it's like making a movie where a black guy is the king of england

We've got a shitty TV series on a two-bit station over here in the United States where Lancelot is black. I think there's another show where Gwynevere is black too.

You know, I'm getting kind of tired of this excuse being brought up every time someone begins to bitch about WotC poisoning the culture they were going for with a Plane.

Yes, this is Theros and not Greece. Would it have hurt the company if they actually modeled it after Greece? What urged Wizards to take some aspects of Greece yet throw some others away? Does Wizards enter a diabetic coma every time they forget to regularly inject a "strong" quippy female character into their settings?

And that's another thing that bugs me about Magic: The Gathering. You've got this thing built around Interdimensional Travel, yeah? Like, endless variation of culture and society and all that shit... Yet everyone we meet is some multicultural melting pot of whites and blacks, or blacks and blacks, or Asians and blacks, and gender roles do not exist. Patriarchy does not exist. Matriarchy? Kind of exists, but it's not prominent. Where the fuck are the cultures that actually have hardline issues on this shit?

if they wanted theros to be it's own setting instead of an adaptation of ancient greece to mtg they shouldn't have shameslessly ripped off every iconic aspect of greek culture and mythology

I know it's theros. And it sucks.
they made a movie where the finnish-swedish general mannerheim was black

>they made a movie where the finnish-swedish general mannerheim was black

... Which was universally panned by critics and viewers alike as a piece of cheap, sleazy tripe. The fact they made the film was insulting and a sure sign that the worst aspects of liberalism is infecting Finland, but that movie was by no means a success. It was sloppily filmed, sloppily directed, everyone hated it every step of the way, and it died a pitiful death in a niche film festival in 2012.

Theros Good
>The cycle of gods
>Heroic
>Bestow
>Devotion
>The actual main storyline with Elspeth was simple, a proper Greek-tragedy motivated by something that fit in the lore, with a good villain
>Kruphix

Theros Bad
>The zero-effort attempt to make anything new. Their method of constructing a Greek themed plane was to file off the serial numbers and shift things around a tiny, tiny bit, and even then it didn't work.
>Holy shit Meletis really you didn't even try Miletus is a real place on earth you fucknuts
>You just keep doing it too Amonkhet was awful about this Jesus WotC stop
>The power level being in the basement
>The shoehorning of black people into Greece isn't something I particularly give a shit about but did you have to do it so bloody horribly? Akroan Line Backer is some of the dumbest art I've ever seen.
>Enchantment matters my ass. The only thing you managed to do was to come up with a way to make Auras not a 2-for-1.

>but did you have to do it so bloody horribly

>Throwing black people into a white part of the world
>Implying it will ever be done well

You assume the people they're pandering to give a shit. As long as they see black people in their card game, people will be happy. No, people will be PLEASED. If you haven't been paying attention, WotC has gotten so successful at diversity they've even hired a dedicated Diversity Consultant to help them write ever-more realistic black women.

>to help them write ever-more realistic black women.
Well to their credit, they're succeeding in making them consistently repellent, so the accuracy is on point.

But naw I kid. If they actually bothered to worldbuild and make the plane feel larger than one fucking tiny island, they'd have been able to get various skin tones into the setting without issue. Make the world feel like a real place instead of being like "yeah okay but imagine Greece but with the same modern black man pasted 50 times over"

You won't like it when you get it.

Richard Garfield is working on it. Creative may end up shit but gameplay wise the set will be right on.

...

What sets did he work on again?

His last set was og innistrad

>We've got a shitty TV series on a two-bit station over here in the United States where Lancelot is black. I think there's another show where Gwynevere is black too.

...really? Not one of the members of the round table who COULD be black reasonably?

I mean, the Round Table had a guy from Babylon, it's not like they wouldn't accept basically anyone as long as they were knightly.

So few Magic sets do cities/towns well at all. Ravnica did, obviously, and Innistrad was good about showing the town/wilderness divide, but otherwise I'm going back to Homelands and Fallen Empires. They were shit sets, but they had worlds that felt lived-in. Regular, non-magical, non-heroic townsfolk had creature cards that didn't reference major characters; An Havva was a (garbage) land; the Sengirs were mostly just hanging out.

The dictates of comic book characters and marketing make that impossible now, but a mechanically sound set with more scene-setting than action would be really refreshing.

>the protagonist (and many other cards) is also a girl, which signifies that they more want to check all their little corporate pandering checkboxes than actually want to capture the greek spirit

Atalanta, Medea and Circe. It's not like Greek Mythology was without impressive female characters.

Sorceresses, enchantresses and supportive figures for their husbands. The rare martial lady were virginal huntresses or fierce Amazonians, not R63 Odysseus.

Most of Wizards staff lives in the city, how can't they write cities?

>Sorceresses, enchantresses and supportive figures for their husbands. The rare martial lady were virginal huntresses or fierce Amazonians, not R63 Odysseus.

You could say that about most mythology. In basically every mythology, female protagonists are in the minority.

Reduce all cmc of the bestow abilities by one

Boom

Your arguments would come across as less contrived if you didn't get so buttflustered about blacks and women. I will completely agree that Theros as a setting sucked balls, the anachronistic sexual and racial equality is not really an issue considering that sort of shit is practically status quo for standard fantasy fiction. Yes Wizards is a being especially faggy abo ut their virtue signalling, we get it, now as a board we need to move the fuck on and complain about all the other garbage in the set.

There's no reason for people to be complaining about Sexual Equality, because in the story we see that Akros hates women, and Setessa hates men, Meletis and Oreskos were the only ones where men and women were equal one because they only talked ideas so there was no need to care, and the other where they're so desperate to survive they don't have the time to care.

>I will completely agree that Theros as a setting sucked balls, the anachronistic sexual and racial equality is not really an issue considering that sort of shit is practically status quo for standard fantasy fiction.
BUT I DON'T WANT GENERIC FANTASY FICTION, I WANT GREEK CULTURE IN THE GREEK SET

it's not even about fucking sjwism (even though that's the reason behind these specific creative non-decisions), it's about fucking AMERICANISM, where all subtle culture is just replaced with the modern american mindset. It's like if god-pharaoh bolas in amonkhet was a standin for president obama, not a living diety as understood by bronze age people 4000 years ago. The movie the last kingdom was a painful example of this, where the main character started talking about ridiculous middle-of-the-road liberalism of "living together" or what the fuck, even though he's at least about 600 years too early to hold such views.

Fantasy isn't for you then. I can't think of a single relevant piece of media in the past decade that embodies an ancient culture's values. People want to experience and consume media that relates to their experiences and their worldview. A few people want to consume media that challenges their worldview and makes them grow as people. Almost nobody wants to consume media that simulates ancient worldviews for the sake of accuracy. This has been true of fantasy and science fiction since it's creation, because it's not history it's FICTION.

And again, it's hard to take you seriously when the only adherence to ancient beliefs you care about is gender and racial limitations.

>And again, it's hard to take you seriously when the only adherence to ancient beliefs you care about is gender and racial limitations.
apparently I only care about the things I happen to be talking about. How can your family stand you when literally all you care about is magic the gathering?

WE WUZ DEMIGODS AN SHEIIIITT

Finally, someone posted.

I think the only thing you care about is getting the last word in.

maybe you should stop defending shit cheap fantasy like it being common excuses it

it's a thread about how to make theros better, not about how all the flaws are okay because x or y reason

I'm not defending it, I wholey admit it was shit for all the reasons stated above.

Maybe you shouldn't be such a baby when people say let's talk about something other than the evil sjw menace because frankly i got tired of it after the thousandth WE WUZ

I thought Tarkir was good since it was only asians

I'm glad we're not going back to Kamigawa, otherwise we'd have to deal with WE WUZ SAMOORAI!

it's you who babied out when I mentioned something you didn't like you fucking revisionist shithead

maybe if you got tired of something you could ignore it instead of having to defend the opposite position for some fucking reason

but at least you're staying on theme, sophistry is greek after all

>maybe if you got tired of something you could ignore it
You should try practicing what you preach

More oil