If you had been in charge of the Kamigawa set, both flavor and mechanics, how would you have made it less shit?

I'd keep the flavor untouched.

Arcane would go and stay gone. Splice would stay but would be varied and be like "Splice onto Blue", "Splice onto Creature", and so on, making the set less...whatever the terms are.

Bushido and Ninjutsu would have different, more generic names but the same effects.

Umezawa's Jitte wouldn't be printed.

>Reduced costs
>Arcane is gone, replaced by Tribal Spell - Spirit
>Splice is more generically useful
>Samurai isn't a card type, all samurai are soldiers or warriors, one of the two
>Foxes are more clearly a shapeshifter race: either foxes or humans with vestigial vulpine ears and tails (which is how you recognize them in ACTUAL Japanese lore and how they appear in pop culture): which means NOT 90%
>Offering becomes Championing
>Sweep becomes Exerting lands
>Activating a moonfolk ability isn't a massive tempo loss: literally ANYTHING else would have been better
>Ninja are fine as-is: their "tribal" identity isn't relevant because their abilities don't care about tribe and "Ninjutsu" is descriptive of what it IS
>Bushido should be renamed: that's where I draw the line on "obscure" flavor that doesn't really affect gameplay
>Not everything needs to be legendary to be cool
>Change the way Jitte works somehow, because it got ridiculous in Standard
On a sidenote, if we ever revisit Kamigawa, or get more references to it, I wanna see an order of Kitsune who ritualistically cut off half a tail and revolve mechanically around protection abilities.

Pretty much just this. This along with reducing the cost of many of the spells would help greatly.

Leave the flavor and artwork alone entirely. That shit's almost perfect, doesn't need to be changed, but does make a good point about Kitsune. That's the real question, do they become a shapeshifter "tribe" that might even take on an antagonistic role (either White as servants of the Kami or UB as self-allied tricksters), or do they work better as a tribe in the same context they do currently? I'm inclined to keep them as is, but it's a valid point.

Regarding Gameplay, there definitely needs to be both an over-all power-increase and a reduction in CMC. I would keep the creature types Samurai and Ninja the same, because I feel it's too much part of the flavor not to, but I agree with in changing the name of Bushido and Ninjitsu.

Get rid of Arcane and have Splice onto Instant or Sorcery, Soul Shift should have been on Parity (i.e. a 5 cmc spirit would have soulshift 5).

I also would have like to have seen more multi-color creatures, given that there was only one in the set.

Epic and Sweep were both pretty bleh, and The cycle of cards that required you to have 7 more cards in hand to work was both hard to activate and typically underwhelming for that cost.

It really does have the prettiest art

Obviously, the kami needed to be MORE on drugs.

Blah blah mana costs.

Bushido would get renamed to Implacable, and would read "When this creature blocks or becomes blocked, its power becomes equal to the highest power among creatures it is blocking or blocked by" or something to make it not actually garbage. Im not a judge or anything, so I don't know what interactions that may have. Also add trample or first strike to more samurai. Add more ninjas from Champions on. Make splice more generic. Burn Jitte and all who support him at the stake. Make soratami work with the graveyard, but based on flashback. Like, make the soratami lord give creatures +1/+1 for every card you have exiled, and give soratami interaction with the graveyard a la "return this creature to your hand: target instant or sorcery in your graveyard gains flashback until end of turn. Its flashback cost is equal to its Mana cost" or something. Anything to make them not garbage.

I see a lot of people say to change or get rid of arcane and splice onto arcane and i have to ask, why? We ARE allowed to have parasitic mechanics sometimes and we relatively uncommonly get new card types that only a set cares about at first. I think Arcane is kind of a wierd name since it doesnt really have anything to do with spirits in particular but I see no problem with it as a subtype and consequently having cards that care about. I thought the main thing was they made the cards overcosted to compensate for effectIve CA splice did, but even then theyve considered bringing back just splice.

Remove most of the keywords. Bushido, Ninjitsu, and Soulshift are fine.

Aside from that, put more focus on the Spirits vs nonspirits theme. The Legendary subtheme is okay as well, but needs to be handled better and lower rarity legends need to still be worth playing, even if they're just undercosted vanillas.

Shift it over to being more of a tribal set, and improve the power level overall. Doesn't have to be Mirrodin levels, but slightly lower costs or slightly better numbers across the board are needed, if not the insane combo potential.

Samurai should have just been Knights and have samurai support be Knight support.

Same with Ninjas and Rogues.

best girl

I think you posted the wrong image, that isnt ink-eyes.

Its really, really tough. Samurai and ninja are such powerful and cool words its really hard not to want to use them. Its kins of like Pirate or Dinosaur in Ixalan in a way in terms of cool factor and splashiness of the types. I still dont know what the correct move is. Closest I can think is to include them but give them a mechanical identifier, lkie pilots caring about vehicles. But even then pilots can be used on a lot of worlds. You cant do that with samurai/ninja. You basically just have japaneae worlds, or if you really want to grasp for it asian themed worlds, but they already passed on that avenue with Tarkir

I think a good compromise would have been to make them 'Samurai Warriors' or otherwise give all samurai and ninjas a second class type so they could still be their own thing while also interacting with other sets and support.

>why
Because you're talking about something parasitic that only functions with another thing that only appears in that block.

Instead you could have introduced Tribal spells and had Splice key off something else: like "Splice onto Spirit" or "Splice onto Fox" or "Splice onto Blue" and had it work the same, but not be so goddamn parasitic. Arcane, and splicing onto arcane, is parasitism that adds nothing.

They do that regularly relatively often. One of the requisites of a new card type is having cards care about it which meqns parasitism is inherent in it. We just got Cartouches.

I think the difference is that Splice Onto Arcane stuff is basically useless outside of running a lot of arcane.

An example of how to do it well is with Energy. Energy cards both produced and spent energy so you could interact completely with the system even with only one card.

Yeah. The Cartouches and trials as well combo with eachother, but it isn't designed as this huge sweeping mechanic. They're a small little bonus if you're playing the enchantments involved, but you had Arcane spells that you were literally required to Splice onto others.

Splice onto Arcane is not useless without other arcanes. Theyre not great but theyre perfectly castable. The Cartouches and Trials neither are very good cards without eachother if that is your barometer.

I agree energy is a very well implemented parasitic mechanic.

Iirc there was only one arcane that was not castable without other spells. That was one, individual design that was not necessary flavorfully or mechanically. It was not a regular feature of the mechanic. That card could not exist and the mechanic would be exactly the same.

It's sad that every discussion of Splice seems to agree with every comment in this thread but Wizards will never give us a working Splice mechanic.

>Bushido and Ninjutsu
Honorbound and Sudden Strike?
>Enemy Color funtimes with the tribes
I liked the monocolor set, but a redesign where the kami are represented in ally colors and the mortals are enemy colors would be interesting.

>Foxes
Visually, a few of the foxes were alien enough and leaning hard into that would add to them. Color-wise, they're notLeonin instead of tricksters, which is more to fit the Magic theming of mammal races. Which thematically is a shame. Then again they're recast as mortals here, but a race of Black foxes would be a compromise (that would sadly edge out the number of Nezumi cards). You don't have to make them evil, just mean, like more dangerous Bogards.
>Offering becomes Championing
A five card Offering cycle for brutal gods was awesome to me, just the gods sucked and so did the tribes they supported. I'd replace LEGEND with Champion and just spruce up the gods.

>Samurai should have just been Knights
I think Warrior would work too.

>there needs to be 10% more anime and the kami names and pictures have to be a bit less on drugs
Ew. No. Fuck no. First off acid gods were great, second the names were super anime already, just with the benefit of the cards being "translated" instead of every spirit being something like
>Yami-Kagi no Sakusen no Kami

>I think Warrior would work too.

Warrior would also work. I was leaning Knight as Samurai tended towards White and so do Knights, that way they'd slot in easier. Warrior is more red-leaning.

That change for Bushido just sounds worse. If you have a really skilled 3/3 samurai, your opponent could block it all day with a 1/2 chump blocker, because his power would drop to 1.

Bushido is fine at being a +1/+1 for whenever blocking happens. At most you just need to be more generous with the numbers on it so that it's more impact.

The vast number of Bushido cards only have Bushido 1 or 2. Having more that went up to 3 or 4 would help. As well, their mana costs were often based around the stats with Bushido, so that a 3/3 with Bushido 2 would be 5 mana for a 5/5, rather than more reasonably being 4 mana to fall between the two extremes.

Using it as a mechanic on smaller creaturs with big bushido numbers would aslo be a good way to make creatures that are cheap but harder to block.

There's a lot you can do with it as a keyword, but they just chose to play it very safe.

Samurai becoming Warrior, and Warrior becoming Barbarian might fit the feudal Japan theming really well if you didn't want Samurai and Knights to intermingle mechanically or thematically.

Though in reality just making a non-Japanese set with Samurai creature type wouldn't kill Wizards either. Might annoy some spergs, but so might calling Samurai "knights" or "soldiers" or "warriors". Come on Wizards! Make a plane with knights, samurai, warriors, soldiers, and barbarians all fighting because you have a universe of infinite possibilities and making a History Channel plane is about as sound as pirates riding dinosaurs or all people are half metal somehow.

I kind of like the idea of dividing the Spirits and Mortal races by color pairings.

Perhaps instead though, it could be kami being monocolor to represent their more singleminded nature, while mortals trend more towards multicolor pairings to represent their more fluid alliances?

Kami were in every colour, due to the how Kami worked. In Shinto and Shinto-Buddhism the Kami were referred to as the 8 million gods, and that there was a god of every object. Every teacup, every rock had a kami specifically of that rock. They chose to keep this by putting them in every colour and in the flavour text, such as on Night of Souls Betryal

Yeah, I mean that Kami would all be monocolor as in being just W, U, B, R, or G, while mortals would have a focus on multicolor pairings like WR Samurai or UB Ninjas

Kamigawa is literally the first event to happen in magic (ignoring time wrap stuff). I'd do a total 180 and show how it's destroyed or changed for the worse, or converted to the the "spirit lands" or some shit.

>there needs to be 10% more anime and the kami names and pictures have to be a bit less on drugs.
if you want anime card games there's a fucking ton you retarded weeb

>GB snakes and GU moonfolk
or
>GW snakes and UW moonfolk working together because both just want the wild to not be blowed up

So you take it a number of places I think. Multi vs Mono (a third Ravnica set focused on this would be rad too) or ally vs enemy could be used to represent whatever you wanted really. Ally kami would be harmonious nature, enemy kami would be normally separate parts of nature combining into a threat, or mono kami could be the simple beings standing up to kick ass.

Also, would anyone be apposed to this?
>black Nezumi
>red Kitsune
>green Orochi
>white Tengu
>blue Soratami
Kitsune could be more trickstery, we'd get some cool bird designs, and it would free up the kappa idea as maybe some smaller creature type.
>blue Kappa (turtle)
>white something
>green Koro-Pak (ouphe or something)
>red Oni (redesign the Kamigawa ogres and rename either them or the demon-oni)
>black Nekomatta (cat demon(?))
Just a handful of cards for fluff.

I like the idea of WR Kitsune blending the harmonious sorts with the tricksters, and UR Akki showing off the mountain kappa goblins alongside the river ones.

Yeah, the idea would be 5 monocolors vs the varipus multicolor ideally. Kami would be a single color representing their raw and primal nature, while you would have them going against WU Moonfok and GB snakes who have more mixed and nuanced motivations.

>Revisit Kamigawa
>900 years after the Kami War a planar portal opened and some vaguely Asian species immigrated forcefully to Kamigawa
>Mending seals them there
>160 years later tensions erupt into conflict between invaders and their supporters/allies vs the Kamigawa races

Just don't base the invaders directly off Korea or China and make the conflict more nuanced than The NotWhite Man Wants Our Stuff and there you go, modernize Kamigawa since you have a century timegap and the limits of the imagination to explain the differences between this Kamigawa set and the one from a decade ago.

>UR Akki showing off the mountain kappa goblins alongside the river ones
This might make me more interested in the Akki, though their visual design rocked.

Wedges or shards representing the races without a distinct three-color theme would add to that, and provide for better cultural explanation that usual in Magic. Like Soratami that are seen in blue, white, and green but not always fixed to a Bant strategy. Green snakes and moonlanders could be in the same deck, bounce and drop land together, not be fixed only to weird tribal or "buy the fetchland" strategies, not cost 3 more than they should, etc.

Yeah, ideally Races would crop up across multiple colors and be more fluidly intertwined, while any strict multicolor effects would be more related to class tribal stuff, like Mardu Samurai supporting eachother or expanding ninjas into Sultai.

>Soul Shift should have been on Parity (i.e. a 5 cmc Spirit would have soulshift 5)

How about no? You do realise that mean 2 same cost cards would be constantly recurring each other? That'd be extremely stupid and extremely limiting in what you can do with those cards' designs without breaking them.

>ninjas outside UB
This would take some work thematically. Green ninjas would be hexproof spies? No reason a ninja wouldn't be equipped for nature, and green is all about camouflage. There are even a few green rogues so you could still do rogue tribal.
White or red ninjas would be going full either full anime (fire/lightning ninjas) or basically printing soldiers that hide in the walls. I'd accept loyal wall ninjas printed as soldiers or scouts.

I think Green works from the scouting angle, but also with the idea of self-bouncing.

keywords have changed before, Chroma became Devotion for example

More black people.

Dude, the good guy was already black, and there are dozens of Nezumi and Oni on cards. Black peoples be everywheres in the swamps.

Flavors fine where it is, tryhard wea-westaboo is what makes kamigawa the plane it is.

Mechanically; Lower the cost of some spells by 1-3, raise the cast cost of top from 1 to 2, Jitte would be changed to combat damage to player Splice on to Arcane would stay the way it is, instead I'd add a legendary artifact or enchantment that makes all spells you control arcane so that way it can be flexible in and out of the block.

There'd be some more samurai in the other colors, some more gy spirit interaction, and definitely more ogres n demons.

Other then those changes thats all I'd really do otherwise it'd stop being kamigawa honestly

Nah, change Jitte to be something other than -1/-1 for the one option.
Which was something they threw in at the last minute and turned out like all their other last minute changes.

Aa hard divide between spirits and mortals is one rewson thst despite all thr flack it seems to get, I support the concept of Arcane at least. I like that spirits have their own, otherworldy spells, and since wizards is against the tribal card type, this gives the magic of the kami a way to be identified by other cards. I think splice is a fine mechanic but I dont necessarily think it had to exist alongside arcane spells in Kamigawa.

The idea of giving Kami separate spells to help represent them being otherworldly is good, but I don't think Splice and Arcane really capture that in a good way. Splice onto Arcane just makes me think of highly experimental wizards melding magic together to see what happens, rather than something weird and mysterious that spirits do.

I still don't get why Wizards is against the Tribal card type though, especially in this case where having Spells be Spirits alongside creatures being spirits would be a perfect fit.

Either way, I do feel like emphasizing that divide between mortals and spirits is good, it just needs to be done in a way that better defines both sides, and they wasted too much mechanical space on things that didn't advance those differences.

You can have Arcane without Splice onto Arcane. That was the point of my post. I also happen to agree splice doesnt feel especially flavorful for Kamigawa spirits which is why i thought it was not a necessary part of having the subtype Arcane. There are already plenty of cards that also care about arcane spells in general lumped in with Spirits so that route is an option, there is no need for Splice I dont think.

The problem with tribal is that if you use it all the time, then more often than not its pointless for the set its in and is just more text on cards that don't matter in its environment. If they dont always use it, you have a flavor fuck up because you can have the issue of, say, why is Krenko's Command not a tribal sorcery - goblin? Arcane conveniently avoids this problem because if there was no desire to make it matter, it can be tied flavorfully solely to Kamigawa spirit spells as a marker for cards to care about it, like how Devoid was used. The use a subtype is how you get the effective function of tribal without its issues of being out of being meaningless in sets it doesnt matter or flavorfully dissonant when it isnt used where it should be.

Also ive always felt it was kinda clunky. It feels weird as a major card type and not a sub type. You have lands, artifscts, creatures, sorceries... and tribals? 8ts purpose as a mechanical concession has always been too obvious imo.

Don't forget that making something a Tribal Whatever fucks with its ability to be reprinted. Can't have Tarfire on a plane without goblins, even if it's a plane that has lots of tar catching on fire as a distinguishing trait.

Yeah, I feel like they should have just changed the core rules to make it so those spells could have subtypes without issue.

That said, I do feel like Arcane also isn't a very fitting word for spirits, though I do get the importance of having something for it. The issue lies in the fact that it isn't mechanically supported much. Outside of the Baku and that one legendary cycle, Arcane spells and spirits don't interact too much specifically, and even then those are all listed as 'Spirit or Arcane spell'. It would have been much cleaner had it just been 'spirit spell' and Arcane was Spirit instead.

Of course, a better mechanic to make those spells stand out in a fitting way would have been nice, as well as making more spirits that cared about you casting more spirits or arcane spells.

>Can't have Tarfire on a plane without goblins, even if it's a plane that has lots of tar catching on fire as a distinguishing trait.
Wizards will be shooting themselves over that one when we finally go to Tar World.

Yeah, I forgot about that. Ive always honed in on the it wont always matter when its used if its used whenever its flavorfully correct part.

That's why Tribal spells need to be 100% clearly associated with a certain tribe by name and possibly effect.

If you make a Dragon tribal sorcery, it'd better be called 'Dragonbreath' and have an effect that cares about Dragons so that it'll only get reprinted in cases where Dragon Tribal matters.

Pic related would be the perfect example of a card that could and should be Tribal

I dont think Mark has ever actually said which part of the rules made it so creature subtypes could only go on creatures. Hes implied he doesnt even really know, just the rules manager at the time (Tabak?) told him it was the case and he went with it. I cant think of any reason why that would have to be the case or the game would collapse in upon itself.

I agree that Arcane isnt super flavorful in regards to kami/spirits but it was the word they chose so. In this hypothetical kamigawa do over you could call it whatever you want. Its just easier to refer to it as Arcane since thst is how it exists

But the problem is, what if a set has, sat, again, for example, Krenkos Command. Thats definitely a goblin card, right? Krenko himself even cares about goblins though a sorcery obviously doesnt affect that. But it wouldnt make sense in context of Krenko's Command to be a Tribal because the set it was in doesnt care about that. Its not like, say, Krenko who works in and of himself without goblins. So its just a waste of ink for no use at all. That can happena surprising ampunt eith a lot of cards when you really look through them. There was an Amonkhet card flavored as a naga shedding its skin, should that be Tribal - Naga?

Fair enough. In terms of Arcane though, Splice was certainly a mis-step, though spell mechanics as a whole are hard. Being able to interact with Spirit tribal on a larger whole certainly feels necessary though, and could open up some fun possibilities with Soulshift.

I feel like something based around the idea of exiling the cards while they're in the graveyard or on the stack in exchange for another more universal effect could be neat. That might just boil down to a weird form of cycling though.

Again, look to the card I posted as an example. It has Dragon in the name, it has Dragon in the text, and the set it's in cares about Dragon Tribal itself.

For the examples you gave though, I would say that Krenko's Command could be a tribal spell. It's in a core set anyway, and while it wouldn't specifically function with Krenko's Goblin tribal effects, it would key in to others. Plus, Krenko is a pretty specific person so you don't have to worry about many reprints, and the card creates goblins so you don't have to worry about that either.

In general, that's a card that could go either way, but I'd argue there wouldn't be much of a problem with printing a Tribal card without much interaction in a core set. Sure, it doesn't do anything, but it'd teach new players about the mechanic and open up possibilities of them learning about other tribal interactions.

In your second example, which I assume is Shed Weakness, is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about when it comes to Tribal effects. The name of the card isn't about Naga and is very generic. The effect of the card doesn't deal with Naga in the slightest. And while the set does have some tribal themes, this isn't the card for them.

If it had been called 'Naga Scaleshed' and made you gain 2 life if you controlled a Naga, then I would argue it should be Tribal.

But if they keep being afraid of Tribal because the cards they printed it on the first time were too generic, then it's just going to be this forgotten quirk that nobody is aware of, and then in cases and blocks where it fits perfectly (see ) it gets ignored, and the problem exacerbates itself because then people stop and ask why one spell is tribal while another isn't.

Getting rid of the Ogre bullshit would have been a nice start. Every single Ogre-related card is fucking garbage.

It's incredible how much of a gap there was between the best and the worst cards in this block.

Kill yourself

Tribal without interaction is exactly the kind of issue they want to avoid. They dont want people opening packs and getting this card with a major (not major as important but main) card type that doesnt actually matter in the set, and that definitely goes double for core sets since they are aimed more at beginners than expert level sets. But we know a spell that makes tokens of that creature type is enough to make you a tribal since iirc Elves got one that did nothing else as well.

I just dont think tribal was the correct move at all on any level. I wish I knew exactly why noncreatures couldnt have creature subtypes because I think that would far and away be the best case scenario if you could just have plain old Sorcery - Goblin. Less of an issue to include it or reprint it when it doesnt matter mechanically and solves the issue of a weird mechanicalness of Tribal as a type that I personally have a problem with.

>But we know a spell that makes tokens of that creature type is enough to make you a tribal since iirc Elves got one that did nothing else as well.

I also would not use existing tribal spells as a basis for good tribal spell design. Again, name should be tribal, effect should be tribal. Otherwise you get Tarfire.

And I disagree on the idea that you couldn't print a Tribal spell that makes tokens of that race, especially in a core set. People will assume it's just an extra gobliny spell or whatever. And yeah, it probably would be a lot better if they had just done it that way from the beginning and made it so spells could have subtypes.

I just wish they wouldn't have written it off as a bad idea after handling it poorly and then wondering why it was handled poorly. It was a great idea for helping to make tribal sets less bland because then you could have a tribe that was focused around spells or enchantments while only having a handful of creatures, and it would actually work.

Instead Tribal decks lately seem to have boiled down to 'here's your lord, enjoy +1/+1 and a keyword for these vanillas we printed'

It's for the sake of things that change types and have all types not letting you turn your Goblins into Forests or your Changelings being Loci (or Urza's Power-Plant Mine Tower Desert Lair) or naming Shrine or Cartouche with Conspiracy

I guess i can agree that if they DID keep tribal around that it should be used exclusively on cards that actively support or care about the tribe in the card text.

I do however think R7D's notion of card real estate being valuable is a real thing though. I remember Mark's story about the decision for ditching Tribal as a card type in Innistrad went something like they put Tribal on a Raise Dead that got a bonus effect if you raised a zombie, but then found out that it didn't matter 99% of the time, meaning that tribal was just a waste of brain space. If I'm real, I kind of go with that because I get that feeling in my games as well. I never find myself thinking I wish I could interact with non creatures with cards that care about a creature type. But that's just my experience. It's cute when it can happen but it just isn't a big loss.

I disagree that they've been doing tribal poorly lately though. when it's really a theme and not just a random handout to a tribe they think peple like, they support tribal decks pretty well. Even in Amonkhet, the Minotaurs usually supported the discard and heckbent theme and tribal wasn't even really a major part of that block. But for a more clear example, how SOI did tribes was really good imo. Vampires weren't just about caring about creature type vampire. They supported an aggressive Madness strategy, so cards that weren't vampires but still featured or flavored after them still went into vampire decks. Same with Spirits and abusing flicker and bouncing. I think how they handle tribal nowadays when it isn't just a random throwaway like the horse or the aetherborn is usually pretty good.

The tribal commander decks so far ironically notwithstanding however. Those are some pretty piss poor designs for a commander product we've seen so far except for maybe Taigam who is an instant/sorcery commander more than a dragon one due to colors.
Oh... huh. Okay.

I'd like a "Brilliant X" keyword that let's the creature do any combination of X as +1/+1s or copies or nullifications of keywords found on any creature in the combat until end of turn. So if you're blocked by something with vigilance, you could give it to your Brilliant creature. Or it could act like Bushido. They could kill indestructible creatures, avoid deathtouch, gain trample in the middle of an attack, avoid getting first struck, etc. Don't know if taking menace would be useful, it vigilance for that matter. But it'd be cool.

>What do you mean changing +1/+1 to +1/-1 made the card better!

Nothing inherently wrong with the ogres/demons dynamic, but they needed to be powerful cards with the option to remove the drawback. Think Juzam Djinn, but with "unless you control a hooblydoobly"

>century timegap

Dude it's several millennia

...by the time you've been blocked, giving yourself vigilance is pointless. And negating a blocker's vigilance is pointless.
And that's not counting the simple fact that 'nullifying keywords' is way too much of a pain in the ass to track and means that nothing can ever be updated ever and ability words never become used because people will think they're keywords. Leading to Zendikar never existing, because Landfall will be seen as not a mechanic because it's not a keyworded mechanic (because people don't see mechanics unless they're keyworded because they're fucking retarded)

bump

>Ninjas become Rogues, Samurai become Warriors
>Ninjutsu becomes Covert, Bushido becomes Martial Way
>Legendary theme removed, all tribes remain
>up the powerlevel/rebalance costs, don't brake too hard after MRD
>remove Flip, push forward the Transform mechanic from Shake
>Splice Arcane becomes Splice Sorcery
>give Epic spells more modes or things to do

Ok, straight talk, I seriously do not get why people think Arcane is too insular a mechanic. Yeah, it had a particular connotation of kami-related magic in the context of Kamigawa, but the subtype word itself is in no way setting-restricted. It's not a case like Bushido or Ninjutsu where they painted themselves into a corner with a name they can't use outside that block.

The only thing that makes Splice/Arcane parasitic to the block is that they just never *bothered* to support it later, not that they *couldn't*. You could quite easily have Splice Onto Arcane as a recurring mechanic. It might have different fluff and creature type associations on other planes -- or maybe even no creature type associations at all, on some planes -- but it could easily be done.

>Make a plane with knights, samurai, warriors, soldiers, and barbarians all fighting
Heck, you could actually do that as different color tribes

>White holy knights
>Blue magitech soldiers
>Black mercenary samurai
>Red barbarian raiders
>Green isolationist warriors

I would switch Knights and Samurai if only because Black Knights are better known as a concept than Ronin, but it does sound like an interesting idea for a plane without a lot of magic and with a lot of warfare.

Ninjutsu ahouod be Ambush. I dont wuite grt the flavor of Bushido to give it a new namr, though. That theyre stronger in combat when they take out theirnblades? Prowess would be perfect if that wasnt alresdy a thing. Maybe Expertise N, Proficiency N or Readiness N or something.

I don't know why I typed century. I'm dumb.

While I kind of agree, I'd go with whichever one made it more interesting for the setting. While the fallen knight or blackguard is better not known in pop culture than the ronin, a country of mercenary samurai who lost their masters long ago wouldn't need much explanation really.

That's fair, though I think the same goes for an Order of Knights who lost their king and went a similar route, or possibly started working for some evil overlord instead.

Samurai and Knights are so similar though that you could really do either and have it work. A bit like how the Green Warriors and Red Barbarians would have a similar degree of overlap.

On another note, I almost feel like Monks might work better for the Blue tribe, having them be more philosophical warriors rather than going high tech with them.

The overlap can only really be separated with mechanics or lore. Making the warrior warriors and barbaric warriors distinct in every way, while managing to make the armored warriors and other armored warriors AND other less "noble" armored warriors different is as easy as giving one more tokens and a distinct weapon/armor style in the art.

I'd be down for warrior monks, especially if they weren't just the same looking as the Kamigawa or Tarkir monks. I'd still give them tech in the sense they they have the best artifact cards (better weapons, tools, and research) if you didn't want the magitech.

I guess it depends what you meant by Magitech. I pictured it as soldiers with wands and magical energy shields and the like. Giving them tech or magic might still work out though. Perhaps they're good at creating magical weapons like wind swords or whatever.

It's a neat idea for a block to be certain, but it does need to have the lore a bit more fleshed out to have the factions be distinct.

ew a furry

bump

I was basically thinking like if you took the Izzet, dialed down the mad science a few notches, and replaced it with militarism. Possibly also engineered to be super soldiers, a la Metathran. A military that leans heavily on a decisive technological superiority over the other factions.

Could potentially even spice each faction up with a bit of wedge coloring, one strong primary color with dashes of an ally and the common enemy:
>Knights primary White for the usual holy knight stuff, with splashes of Green for some nature aspects to their holy order -- possibly originally a splinter sect of the Warrior faction? -- and Black for the bad apples in the bunch
>Soldiers primary Blue for the magic/technological focus, with splashes of Red for the creativity/mad wizardry that drives that innovation and White for the military discipline
>Samurai primary Black for being mercenaries, with bits of Blue and Green for the lingering elements of Zen/Shinto-esque philosophy from back in the good old days, before their home society collapsed and they were forced to go ronin
>Barbarians primary Red for berserking raiders, with bits of Black for generally giving no fucks and White for having some elements of tactics and strategy
>Warriors primary Green for being innawoods and just wanting everyone to fuck off and leave them be, with bits of Red and Blue for being philosophical warrior-monks, probably with a Taoist-y philosophy of balance, like the balance between instinct/impulse (red) and discipline/control (blue)

Ambush was my first go to as well, but ambushes are usually done on the defence, with all the hiding and then jumping out. Whereas Ninjutsu is an offensive misdirection, though I'm still not quite happy with Covert.

Think of Bushido as getting into fight mode, drawing your sword or whatever.