What does this all mean?

What does this all mean?

I'm guessing punch out cards to assemble contraptions.

People just don't like UN sets I suppose?

Dogsnail Engine?

looks like contraptions are going to work like schemes

Old

ughhhh...tell me they aren't actually going to be torn up into hideous scraps

No, these are giant size puzzle bits they mailed to a bunch of mtg news sites.
they'll be actual cards

I don't get how it's meant to work. The sprockets are on one side, while the contraption is on the other.
Are they going to be two seperate cards that they just sent doublesided for the promotion?

i assume the sprocket card is separate from the contraptions. each contraption has a number (dogsnail engine looks like a 2 to me) and so if you play dogsnail engine first it won't get activated until two turns later. if you play a 1 sprocket contraption it would get activated on the very next turn.

Alright, let me see if I can make it less confusing. When you assemble a contraption, you decide to put it on sprocket one, two, or three. During each upkeep, the counter moves from one sprocket to the next sprocket. If it is on One it goes to Two. If it is on Two it goes to Three. If it is on Three it goes to One.
Whenever the counter goes on the sprocket the contraption is on, you activate the contraptions effect. You activate each contraptions effect once every three turns. You choose the order when you play the contraptions.

I think the two-headed flask symbol is more likely to be a faction symbol just for flavor; if it had game significance then it would be spelled out on the card somewhere. My guess is that it's shaped the way it is (with a point at the bottom) so you can point to the specific sprocket that it's assembled on. When you have multiple contraptions they might overlap the rules text, but seeing the symbol tucked underneath will remind you which is which. (Unless you have multiple contraptions from the same faction, I guess, but that may not be a huge issue.)

finally, my rigger tribal deck will have the support it needs!

>rigger tribal

It is possible that the sprocket number is listed on the type line, and we just don't have that information yet.

yeah those 2 cards really need support

new one, add it to the puzzle i don't know how to paint

...

Not a whole lot of new information here, unfortunately.

Nvm memeddit did it.

>finally make contraptions a thing
>put them in a joke set
>and then don't even bother making them actual joke cards

I'm not even mad, just disappointed.

Hmm, well I guess that still doesn't answer how it is determined which sprocket a contraption is attached to.

Maro has hinted that silver-boarder is kind of like a testing ground for weird things that could be done in black border is some situations. I guess the idea is that if it is something people like, it might make it to black border eventually.

I still don't get it, do you start with a "sprocket card" then? I guess each contraption will have a sprocket number?

So I crank my dogsnail engine on sprocket 2... and gain X life????????????

That seems to be the implication. There is still a lot to be shown, and we still don't know how a contraption's sprocket number is determined, even after seeing a card fully spoiled.

My current guess is that it will be set when a rigger assembled a contraption (for example, a rigger might have an ability that says "assemble a contraption to sprocket 2" or something)

I think it's neat. True, this one isn't a joke, but I have a feeling other contraptions will be funny. This is also an uncommon.

Look at he arrows on the sprockets, I am guessing, that's where you will put the contraption down.

Fuck, I didn't even see those arrows there. So it could be possible you are only allowed to have three contraptions assembled at a given time?

That's possible, but I hope you can put multiple on a sprocket, seems more fun that way.

The fuck is a dogsnail engine

An engine powered by a dogsnail. Do try to keep up, user.

I think that art is pretty cute, in a weird way.

I was thinking it looked pretty cool, and then I had spirals flashbacks.

>crank ANY NUMBER of that sprocket's ContaptionS
RTFC

dammit, I didn't think that, but now I can't stop the association in my mind.

>reading the cards

What do you think this is, user, 1996? Maro says you shouldn't have to read cards to understand them anymore.

I'm 99% certain the name is a parody of wurmcoil engine. Sometimes they need more basic cards to let people learn the mechanics, and while the mechanic itself isn't funny, we all remember how Gotcha! turned out.

spirals flashbacks?

They are probably talking about the manga "Uzumaki" (Spiral) by Junji Ito.

i wasnt around then
how did gotcha turn out?

'shut up and stop having fun, in the wacky comedy set: the mechanic'

would people just not talk?

It reminds me a bit of Dogscape.

Maro has remarked that gotcha was a failure because instead of making people watch what they said, like it intended, it merely encouraged people to not communicate at all.

no interaction between players.

At least it didn't encourage players to take off their pants.

Man, at least that is funny, and doesn't cause the game it happens in to not be fun. gotcha actively destroyed the fun of unhinged, because communication was basically a mechanical theme in that set.

You sure?

well, now I am doubly horrified. Thank you.

That's one card that has a conditional unblockable ability.
Not eleven cards that prevent you from touching the table, touching your face, LAUGHING, saying the words Creature, Guy, Deal, Damage, Save, Life, Spell, Counter, any number, or any word on a cardname in the graveyard.
The only acceptable one is the one that triggers on card flicking.

Pretty sure the arrow denotes which sprocket the contraption goes on. Left is 1, middle is 2, right is 3.

Thanks, didn't notice that. That sounds potentially a lot of fun, but then the question becomes what determines which contraptions, go on which sprocket.

They deliberately designed this set to be "fun to draft" which means with less jokey mechanics. I'm guessing they're just going to make fun of hearthstone a lot.

The only addition is that you can have multiple contraptions on the same sprocket, which is implied on the sprocket token.

Does anybody else feel like solving the Riggers and Contraptions issue as well as the Vanilla Mythic issue in an Un-Set feels like a cop out?

I'd rather see them in silver border than not at all.

no not really. Unstable is the set for experimental design, so I thought it was completely logical.

No. They never planned to follow through on contraptions, so it's lucky to get them at all.

There's still hope. Meld became a thing in Eldritch Moon, which is based on B.F.M.
Ichor Slick, a card from Future Sight, has both cycling and madness. The only other card crazy enough to have both is Blast from the Past from Unhinged.
The Dinosaur creature type finally became a thing in Ixalan. Prior to that only Old Fogey was one.
Don't expect contraptions to be a thing, but being in an Un-Set doesn't make it "never ever".

>Prior to that only Old Fogey was one.

I'll fuck you up.

Unless it's Staying Power.
That's a Never Ever, despite sounding like it'd work in regular Magic.

They errata'd that to lizard or lizard beast and then back in Ixilan.
The only reason Old fogey stayed a dino is cause they don't Errata un sets. Ever

This looks fucking fantastic. So my guess is that assembling a contraption either 1) goes and gets one from your deck, 2) puts one into play from your out of deck "contraption zone" kind of like a conspiracy zone, or 3) it plays it from your hand. If you have to assemble them from your hand, then they better be fucking good to compensate, because they don't look like they otherwise have a cost, but that's a lot of card support to get them out.

I really like this mechanically, because it's so fiddly (and I wonder if some contraptions also crank in the same position in a different sprocket, etc), and i hope enough of the set gets this attention. This is the shit i want from magic UN sets, weird stuff that throws wrenches into it, not dumb shit that makes me hokey pokey.

moniker mage can get a reprint, though.

The point is that Old Fogey was only a dinosaur to start with in order to reference Pygmy Allosaurus.

I was kind of pissed off about the vanilla mythic, given that Maro hyped it up for months then went 'lol its in the joke set'

So given that Dogsnail Engine has no mana but has a mana symbol, I'm willing to bet it's gonna occupy the Conspiracy slot and there'll be one every booster.

*rarity symbol

>this will never be real

>mfw the contraptions don't technically have a silver border
>mfw maro says none of the contraptions will have silver borders

What could it mean

top kek

>Not eleven cards that prevent you from touching the table, touching your face, LAUGHING, saying the words Creature, Guy, Deal, Damage, Save, Life, Spell, Counter, any number, or any word on a cardname in the graveyard.
>The only acceptable one is the one that triggers on card flicking.

True. Because that's a bad habit that people should be discouraged from. Meanwhile all the other gotcha shit is random things that people do normally all the time.

>Unstable is the set for experimental design

Future Sight was the set for experimental design. Unstable isn't a set at all, it's just a bunch of memes printed on cards. I agree with , printing shit in a set that's illegal in every format is the same as not having printed it at all.

Then just don't fucking buy any and move on with your life.

There is a mythic vanilla, he confirmed it.

He's probably one of those autists who think that sanctioned play is the only play that happens, and as such un-cards aren't "real."

I wonder how MAGIC-y the game will still feel like with all these new components. Very interested. He posted a couple mechanics are lifted from a board game he designed about robots.

WHIP THE 'X'ES, PINCH THE 'O'S
WHAT WE'RE BUILDING, NO ONE KNOWS

Meld was just 'hey, this works in pokemon, and duelmasters, lets steal from those games as always' just like wizards is prone to do.

I really hate where they get feedback from, I've never talked to anyone who says meld was good compared to regular flip cards but they claim it was a success

The mysterious source of their "market research' has always been a point of contention. That said, obviously a company with a focus on making money wouldn't try to sabotage their profits, and magic continues to be growing in success every year, so it is not as if they are just making this shit up.

It also doesn't help that most of their employees have to act like the secondary card market doesn't exist.

>I've never talked to anyone who says meld was good compared to regular flip cards

I've talked plenty of people and the biggest complaint about Meld was that they didn't do enough of it, having only three in the set. Each time I've seen Chittering Host melded in limited, the person who pulled it off was very excited about it. It's a sort of goal to aim for, which definitely appeals to certain factions of the playerbase. It's definitely not a very Spiky mechanic, but Johnny players appreciate the process of getting to the meld to go off, and Timmy players love getting some big monster from smaller things.

I don't think it's necessarily something to compare to regular transform cards, since regular transform cards were probably one of the most well received and highly regarded mechanics of all time, but it was certainly successful taken as its own thing.

I hope this un set is a real playable set instead of the 'you have to stand up and sing to counter a spell' bullshit variety.

MaRo said something along the lines of "Unstable was designed to be fun where the previous Un-sets were designed to be funny." They've put a lot more focus into making cards that are just something they can't do in black-border because it's a rules mess, like the Sword of D&D. I think there was some murmuring about some cards being faction-specific in that they care about watermarks, which is another cute thing that they can't do in black border but would play well mechanically if they could.

Maybe if the set is good, I'll buy a stack to build a cube with. I'm assuming the cards will be crazy cheap with everyone buying packs for the lands and draft only.

There's a tiny chance of the mythics and/or foils ending up expensive if they're EDH "playable" like Grimlock.

That's very true. I forgot we'll start seeing vanilla tribal EDH decks now.

I get the feeling there's going to be more to the vanilla mythic than people are expecting. His exact words are that a vanilla creature is "a creature with no rules text", which means there's still the window to slip something something in that isn't actually rules text. If the thing about watermarks mattering is true, for instance, it could have all the watermarks at once or something.

Well, now we have a basic idea of how contraptions work, thats cool. gotta say that maro's excitement for the set is pretty damn infecting

Sword of D&D doesn't really do anything so odd outside the roll a D20 thing

That's exactly what I mean. Introducing a 20-sided die mechanic to regular magic would be a mess, because the card using it would be an obscenely swingy random chance. There are problems enough with coin flips.

It also has a nonstandard color identity.

Speaking of colors, that's one of the other options for the vanilla mythic. If they do something that cares about colors and it's some crazy rainbow monstrosity that is literally every possible color at once, that'd definitely be deserving of a silver border.

It's odd, but I'm way more interested in this set than in any other set they have done.
Ixalam is probably the safest set they have ever done: Catering to kids, core set tier cards and not one new idea or mechanic to the table.
At least with this set they are actually doing something new, even if it's a spin on the cycle of resuspending sorceries from Future Sight.

>then they better be fucking good to compensate
You already know they won't be.
Their basic mech works against normal deckbuilding (if they even just are in your deck, it's virtual negative card advantage), and the power level isn't particularly hot (gain life for each critter? at least the doggo is cute)

Yeah but it won't be THAT mythic vanilla.

>gain life for each critter?

Not quite.

...

Yeah, and I already went over what "a vanilla creature by R&D's definition" is.

This here is a vanilla creature.
The things you could do with it include:
>Something about its name
>Something about its mana cost
>Something about its types
>Something about its watermark
>Something about its colors
>Something about its power and/or toughness

If you think it's going to be as simple as a common vanilla creature, I'm certain you'll be surprised.

It makes me so warm and happy inside whenever people post this. I had a lot of fun trying out concepts for the most reasonable vanilla mythic, and this design was my favorite.
The flavor text was jank, but I made it at a time when we didn't really have any info about Amonkhet to go off of.

Another option that I didn't end up posting was a white 0/50, which I thought was amusing. The BIGGEST WALL

You have no idea how excited I was for that wurm. Legendary Wurm fucking when.

I have been bored with magic ever since Battle for Zendikar.

This new unset may be the first packs I buy since then. Contraptions and sprockets look really cool.

Vanilla creatures can have alternate casting costs, like Phyrexian Mana

Awesome! I love doing mockups like that, so it's nice to know that other people like them too.
I'm the same guy who did the Anguished Unmaking arts with amusing flavor text a while back. Haven't been any really good memes lately to jump in on, though.