Dominaria Thread

magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/dominaria-previews-and-moving-forward-2018-03-12

>wizards can flip-flop their decisions on their own behalf, but can't reprint cards

Hmm, couldn't they make it more flavorful.

Looks like a design coming from a Sci-fi card game, with the sharp edges and simple formating.

Hmmm. Let's hope each saga has a different design and this one looks cold and unimaginative because it's supposed to look phyrexian.

I actually was thinking this one was really powerful. Its a free boardwipe on five (remember 5 drop board wipes have been a successful test and are standard playable) that also saves one of your creatures (and saving even one tends to cost a premium, not 4 and a turn of delay), and enchantment are not super easy to remove at the moment. Your opponent technically gets a turn to prepare, but what are they gonna do realistically, at least in standard? I guess they get one turn of free attacks?

Forgot to say, but id say the biggest issue is that if you cast it on 4 its kinda shit. But a practically one sided board wipe that also doesnt cost mana the turn it happens is quite a massive tempo swing after rempobloss of "suspending" it. Even if you have no creatures, it seems quite powerful in a control shell since it allows you to hold up mana while also still clesring the board.

Actually it's pretty easy to break enchantment, there are 9 cards that break enchantments on standard right now, almost evenly divided between white and green.

Sagas will most likely be too slow after sideboarding.

Also you can bounce permanents back to the hand with blue.

I'll be very surprised if there isn't a way to fuck with lore counters

>I think it opens fertile design space.
One can think of a Saga as filling a design space between a Sorcery and an Enchantment (assuming all of them have the same timing mechanism as this one). I kind of like the idea. I also like how this specific Saga is hinting that other Sagas can have extremely powerful effects, but give your opponent time to prepare for them, basically a tradeoff to reduce the cost of the effect. It kind of makes me feel bad though, that Saga is a subtype of Enchantment, therefore something as simple as Disenchant or Demystify (is Disenchant still being printed?) can ruin a Saga-dependent strategy. I would unironically like to see Sagas as their own card type, although that would probably lead to chase rare bullshit. Maybe WoTC were worried about improving Tarmogoyf?
I feel shitty for this, but I can't avoid suggesting the Mythbuster, a creature that destroys a Saga when it comes into play, and gains a +1/+1 counter for each lore counter on it. Or perhaps Protection from Sagas, and when a Saga goes kaput it gets counters.

If this is real I'm going back in the bunker

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Well, don't be, they made a whole counter based mechanic in which you COULDN'T fuck with the counters just in kaladesh, they only printed an "answer" in hours of devastation and it wasn't very efficient.

>all of those guns

chill out rudy

Just read:

He does live near a military base in Florida.

I didnt say there was no way to rempve enchantments. I kind of thought it was an unspoken condition that itd have to be good cards. What card in standard currently want to be played in decks that would die to getting wiped, for example? It isnt too slow as long as you actually cast it on 4 or 5. Itll resolve at the same time you would have cast Fumigate or whatever, and leave you at a massive tempo advantage to boot since you can still hold up mana. It is an issue if you draw it late and you play it as your only wipe.

Holy fuck how many guns does Rudy-san own Jesus Christ.

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>no spoilers until the 21st
wait spoilers start on a Wednesday? what?

Is that a stockpile of Force of Will in the back?

>That is one amazing-looking card.

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Fumigate rolls on turn 5, hits all types of creatures AND gives you life too.

There's also dusk//dawn, Bontus, Slaughter the strong, etc.

I don`t want a wrath effect on a delay, even if it save one of my creatures.

Probably to be tied with story column.

I mostly meant the use of frames rather than what they actually did. What they actually functionally do is not really new. For example, Id designed some cards that were noncreature artifacts that used a special frame set up and a counter to choose and mark a mode. You can do stuff like that with this technology.

I like it, feels like deciphering an ancient scroll top to bottom.

I'm not surprised by the negative reaction here, I expect nothing less than full blown negativity from MtG threads on Veeky Forums.

Maybe they'll add something to speed up sagas like Mirrodin had ways of adding more charge counters.

>please clap

we've liked plenty of things before

Yeah, we all know how much people loved when they made something that was meant to make us ~decipher~som ething to actually read

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The problem is the trigger. It only triggers on first main phase of your turn. Even if they gave us an effect that add / manipulate counters, it would mean skip II, going from I to III, but waiting a turn to it trigger.

They could have an effect that reads 'trigger this now' or 'trigger all modes at once', but probably it would get killed on development.

That's an amazing-looking skeleton user

They could just have something like, add a lore counter to a saga, trigger its next effect.

I could like the general idea of the layout, but that I-II-III bar seems incredibly shoved in and the type bar works badly with the bottom of the card.

Mechanically it opens up a lot of interesting design space that they willl surely revisit in the upcoming Vikings set.

>those clean, crisp and sharp lines

Looking kinda generic and sci-fi there. Feels like I'm playing Scifi Board Game #453

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I think the visual design leaves a little to be desired, but it's a difficult mechanical design and they did what they could. it reminds me of levelers from rise of the eldrazi which weren't perfect but did what they needed.
>I expect nothing less than full blown negativity from MtG threads on Veeky Forums.
it's mostly toward new things, to be fair.

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As far as I knew, bontu's and slaughter arent played but i may be recalling wrong. Phyrexian Scriptures comes down on 5 as well if you cast it on, and again you can hold up mana for things like supreme will. I also think youre underestimating the save a creature thing. Youll be so far ahead on board both having open mana AND a dude while also wrathing. Its not like a normal wipe where the trick is to cast it after the opponent expends their hand, you dont need that situation, it puts you ahead no matter what. As said, the downside is that its worse after turns 4 or 5 at the latest. You cant topdeck it.

Exactly, the text square needed more opacity, but it's a great design, as always coming from Richard Garfield.

Meh, it doesn't look that bad. People overreacting to something unusual. I like the verticality to it, means you can just use one token and slide it down like reading a legendary scroll.

scryfall.com/search?q=o:" lore counter "&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name

Seem like there is a creature with the 'add a lore counter to Saga' effect.

Wonder how spicy the older cards with lore counters will be if there is other cards like that.

Dude, An enchantment can be answered by 3 different colors right now. Means the sideboard for it is easier to make.

Spells and instants have to be countered to not drop or requires the opponent to waste cards to keep their creatures alive.

It doesn`t matter IF when it triggers, it`s more advantageous when you give the opponent time to just destroy it before it, for one mana at the cheapest, in 3 different colors.

Also, the saga counters drop after the draw step, so they can answer your enchantment during your upkeep. They can swing with all the creatures they have, save enough for the break and keep the board presence easily because the enchament signals the wrath one turn earlier.

With all love and respect to Ricky G, most of this design space is available to planeswalkers already. And since those haven't been fleshed out very creatively yet it's unfortunate to see talent being focused on another alike concept. But then this company did insist on giving us both gold and treasure recently, so this probably isn't on Garfield.

Good thing the font on the DOM cards is the usual.

I agree with the I - II - III column, I would've liked something a bit more weathered. It reminds me too much of Netrunner. I do like the overall vertical layout though.

Reminded of magicmansam's frame video. Someone at WotC has a huge boner for verticality.

Maybe Sagas will finally let them empty those blue balls and they'll stop bothering everyone about it.

That's it. I'm quitting Magic. This design is godawful and just shows how MaRo and WotC try to ruin the game

If standard decks are gonna sideboard for it, wouldnt that mean the card is being played? The only thing projecting this particular one does is give your opponent a turn where they can swing all out for free without thinking if you dont have tough blockers. If they side board in fucking naturalizes or disperses (actually, to be fair, theres an Into the Roil functional reprint so thats a good card) then you side Scriptures out for normal wipes. All those colors can always deal with enchantments, does that just mean enchantments are never good or what? The trick is whether or not theyre good enough to maindeck. Its not like how Abrade shits on artifacts so bad because of its flexibility.

>I expect nothing less than full blown negativity from MtG threads on Veeky Forums
Well we're not banned for wrongthink here so it makes sense you'd find more honest opinions than on the corporate reddit.

Garfield had an idea during Original Ravnica about structures that could be attacked with effects that triggered on order. Then there was early planeswalker designs that followed this trend:

magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/planeswalk-wild-side-part-i-2007-11-05

magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/planeswalk-wild-side-part-ii-2007-11-12

Sagas seems like a revamped design, mixing those two.

Everybody is sideboarding against enchatments because of vampire decks and that new jank second sun deck the enchantment that exiles creatures.

It`s weak because EVERYBODY already has a sideboard for it. What Green/white deck doesn`t sideboard at least 3 cards that destroy enchantments/artifacts?

You want a good enchantment to build a deck around and win the game, use the new lich card being printed, since it`s hexproof. GLOBAL enchantment destruction is way harder to come by.

How many modern decks use enchantments as wincons? Bogles, but the enchantments stay on a hexproof shell and Ad nauseum, which is super jank.

I'm waiting for them to unveil the new legendary frame so I can watch that shitstorm too.

Funnily enough, sagas are basically how planeswalkers originally were concepted, though they didnt go away. Actually, I guess contraptions are too now that I tghnk about it. The frame layout is different (but better, and would have fit planeswalkers well, like... really well. I kind of wish its how planeswalkers looked now since itd still work). They changed it because they felt it made planeswalkers feel like dumb ai when they tried to resolve effects that didnt do anything. But the point is they apparently think the functional space is different enough that they felt it didnt suit walkers.

When I said design space, I think people are thinking too much about what it actually does and not about what I feel is the important part. The use of frames to help with or enhance gameplay.

You think they are doing that because Hearthstone and most other online card games started to use it?

I want to use this space to praise this guy magicmansam. I like what he does, his videos are good. Good sources, good talk, good presentation.

I think it's to get "legendary" off the typeline since it eats up so much room.

Remind me a bit of the future sight cards because of how lopsided it is.

It’s future sight, but for like.... the past.

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Bitch, Garfield made this.

Your logic makes no sense. Just because there are enchantments that are getting sideboarded against doesnt make this worse IF it's good. If there were enchantment removal good enough to maindeck itd be different. If theres good enough enchantment removal to side bpard and it was good, itd get sideboarded against whether other good enchantments existed or not. Also, if you side board removal against Scripture, you make yourself much weaker to normal boardwipes, which you can still play alongside this, whether mained or sided.

That wouldn't really work since then they'd need to add a reminder text saying (this permanent is legendary) for new players.
I also doubt there's anything longer than legendary enchantment creaure- god they'd make.

Present Sight
also known as hindsight

I doubt that, especially since it's not accomplishing it. It's more likely just to help with quick visual ID. they did it to two-color cards in ravnica with the inside border, they did it with flashback and threshold in odyssey with the little tombstone icon. the tombstone was temporary, but the multicolor border stayed.

Neat!

I can dig that. Vertical framing is another interesting form of design space alongside flipping, morphing, transforming, melding, exiling face up vs face down, X to Y split cards, and classical tapping itself. Bisecting the card vertically for its textbox is still a suboptimal graphic choice and detracts from the aesthetic. It has the excuse for see-through textboxes and fullscale art, and frankly really needs it. Potential is there though.

In black? All the boardwipes in black right now are fatigue wipes.

It`s pointless when you give the opponent time to answer.

All the good enchantments give return right away, either by buffing your creatures, giving a advantegeous effect AS SOON AS THEY DROP.

You are asking people to pay 4 mana to turn one creature into an artifact creature and MAYBE wipe the board next turn.

Bontu`s reckoning manages to be better because you can wipe the board right away, even taking in account the 3 mana upkeep on the next turn.

The speed is too slow, that`s the whole point.

Am i being trolled or something? Why did you think Id be referring to a mono black deck? Grixis and esper are both playable combinations

I've found the article talking about structures.
magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/garfield-play-2013-07-22

"Because we were in a city, Richard came up with a new card type he called structures. The idea was that they represented buildings. Structures functioned a lot like enchantments or global artifacts, in that they had a static effect, but they had one difference—a toughness that the opponent could attack and whittle down. I didn't end up using it in the set because Ravnica was already stuffed to the gills, but I loved the idea."

Sagas is Richard Garfield pushing what he envisioned during Ravnica, it seems.

Yup, idiot actually thought it would retain value and wondered why nobody was buying his out-of-date boxes from a set already considered almost universally bad by the people who played FOW

>foil watermark

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It isnt too slow. It resolves the same time as fumigate or hour of devastation. Your opponent gets a chance to answer it, but if people are only side boarding enchantment removal and not maindecking, you can side scriptures out and max out other boards while still being able to have a turn 5 virtually-one-sided wipe that lets you hold up mana in game 1. Also this technically "does something" the turn you play it too. Its not a great effect for 4 mana but its not like you got nothng.

Makes me wonder what watermarks other Sagas will have.

Fair point, but most U/B / Grixis Decks in the meta right now don`t even bother with wipes anyways. They just use target removals.

You`ll just need this level of removal if Merfolk or Vampires really take off on the meta.

The aggro decks use gods and phoenixes, so wipes don`t really bother them.

I must admit, structures do sound pretty cool.

Didnt think about the gods and the phoenix. But scriptures is actually good (relatively speaking) against phoenix, since when it wipes you still have mana up so you can kill the token afterwards., plus you might still have a dude that can tap and attack as well.

>Chainer's Torment with a Torment watermark

Sounds cool. It's going to be black too, so the design, like here, won't look THAT bad.

>"wow this looks like absolute crap"
>"richard garfield designed it"
>"well I mean I guess it's kinda cool"

Fucking standard. COMMANDER is the real man’s format. That’s all I really care for with this set.

Adding counters works with other mechanics that add or subtract counters. Moving counters would be a massive bitch to write into the rules. There would also be lots of CPVs in tournament play

Yeah, but if we follow the argument that you can just use normal wipes after sideboard, then your gameplan gets worse after sideboard, since the aggro deck will side the enchant hate and you`ll have to rely on normal board wipes, which are inefficient againist phoenixes and gods.

Well this is probably gonna be THE comamder set so lucky for you.

Wasn`t the whole graft mechanic based around moving counters?

And modular creatures, to a certain extent.

I thought the same thing. There’s a lot of great mechanics for blink decks in here that I think I’m going to enjoy- plus, that buy a box promotion card (forget its name) could literally be a stand alone Commander in a burn deck. There’s a lot for us in this format.

Maybe they’re actually coming to their senses and realizing that Commander is a sensible format worth investing in?

Dick G's name holds a lot of street cred around here homie. He still has bad ideas sometimes but yes his name makes us look twice.

You dont have to always trade scripture out for other wipes, its not like you have to always sideboard for the same things. You switch it out for more contempts or whatever else.

Like I said, I think the biggest issue with scriptures is it being shitty when drawn late, if your rip fumigate or whatever on 6 or 7, even if youve been getting shit on that can help you come back. This wont do that because its delayed a turn. This matters less if you actually cast it on 4 or 5 but it falls off fast.

I really like this. Not sure why you guys are sperging out. At least it's not

>any format that allows shit like Sol ring and black's tutors to fly
>good in any way

Ok, but at least our games can be dynamic. You’re never going to know what the outcome will be- even if you did sideboard against that dude’s wizard tribal deck.

In modern, if you’re using an Affinity deck, you know exactly which decks to not play right off the bat- you’ll just lose. It’s not fun, and frankly, it’s downright repetitive. I’d even give a comparison to standard on that front.

>Veeky Forums is nay
>normies are yay
So seems like the Dominaria (and sagas) will be a fucking blockbuster. We all know that Veeky Forums has no idea how to play games and everything anons don't like turns out to be loved by everyone else. I, for one, welcome our fugly saga overlords

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>Maybe they’re actually coming to their senses and realizing that Commander is a sensible format worth investing in?
But they already know it user. The best mtg products for now are commander pre-cons

Yeah, but they're suggesting physically moving one counter to different spots on the face of a card to denote a value, something Magic has only done in silver.

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Have Masterpiece Planeswalkers been ruled out yet?

I am actually kinda bothered by the reminder text and the box it takes up

They are really good with the design.

So far from the notes we have

"Build up Sagas"

These give you something on the I and II then the last chapter pumps then, like the one that gives you a Knight Token, Gives you a Knigth token then pumps all your knights or the OP which pumps a dude, makes him immune to the wrath then exiles the stuff your enemy rathed away

"Pay back Sagas"

These sags do something really broken on the I, then the II and III undo it slowly OR they hurt you on the I then pay you back on II and III

One white saga destroys all lands, but the II and III let all players reanimate some lands back from the grave

A red saga makes you pitch your hand on its I, but its II ancestral recallas you

"Goodstuffs sagas"

These saga basically are just a bunch of good shit stapled on a card that go up in scale, liek the green one turns your dudes into mana dorks then pumps all your dudes with keywords and power.

Honestly rich design

Imagine sags that transform as there Last Chapter, very "Suspend" esque, or a Saga that lets you go up or down.

OOOH!!! Imagine a saga with like 4 abilties, all crazy broken, but the last one is "you lose the game: like the Lilianas Pact one.

How does saga work with their counters? Do they only activate an ability when a counter is placed? Could you effectively keep repeating a mode if you played solemnity to prevent it from hitting the next mode, or would it just stop the saga from doing anything else?

They work as enchantments just as vehicles worked as artifacts. No need to add a new type when not needed, otherwise you have to force a bunch of interaction.

Making them enchantmnets makes them backwards and forward compatiable

Its meant to be a scroll; thus vertical

But it doesn`t look like a scroll. I looks like a table of contents or a drop-down menu in a program.

Don`t they have the art assets for the Ixalan land design? Just slap the scroll looking design here.

II REALLY am finding it hard to make out the art, It just looks like a rectangle with a hand on top. Its alike a ten commandments tablet right? Very hard to parse art. Wonder why they didnt use Planeswalker/Leveler frame technology