Lotus Cobra is Evil – Nissa Fantasy IX

Apparently Nissa just won Nashville 5K hosted by Star City Games. Coincidence? I think not (Actually, yes, yes it is). Again, houseofsixten.com to see all of sixten’s work.

Monthly Mailbag – Leave MaRo Alone!

You are lucky he even designs cards for you!

Not only am I launching a new blog about EDH (I’ve Got 99 Problems But a General Isn’t One), but it’s mailbag time! That’s right, I sometimes get real questions from real people and give you real answers. I ask my twitter followers for questions about Magic and they sometimes deliver. Let’s get to them.

Why do you hate MaRo so much? It seems like every few posts that you talk about him, you’re always bashing him and making fun of him or things like that. What did he ever do to you?

Short answer: I do not hate Mark Rosewater.

Long answer: It’s funny when you read online and assume that everyone hates each other. Like the tabloids do every day, they photoshop and make stuff up to sell magazines. Let me hip you guys on a little secret: people love conflict. That’s why they watch Lord of the Rings, or Grey’s Anatomy, or other movies/shows/stories (Honestly, the only time you’ll see Grey’s Anatomy on this site). People don’t read X-Men because Magneto and Professor X get along, they read it because of the struggles and the fights they get to. See: Family Guy’s parody of “The Even Couple” (Good luck finding it, I wasn’t able to).

So, while it seems like I’m hating on him, that’s not the case. By “fighting” when I’m trying to make a point, makes for a much more interested read. Do I worship the ground he walks on? No, because he levitates. There are things that I don’t like WotC doing from time to time but, and here’s the thing you have to remember, I understand it. I understand why Lotus Cobra is Mythic, I understand why Allies are the way they are, I understand why online has PTQ’s. Do I like any of those choices? No, but I get why they do it.

Lotus Cobra is Evil – Favorite Zen Card

From what I can tell you guys like this comic, which is good because I like it too. No more talk this week, today’s comic. Remember, visit Sixten’s (the creator) website houseofsixten.com.

I’ll Never Let Go, Jack – Saying Goodbye to a Format

A Titanic reference, always relevant

Half of you reading the title and seeing the card to the right has a terrible song stuck in their head and for that I really, really apologize. But what bothered me from this movie is that while he was being a gentlemen and letting her stay “dry,” body heat helps both of them keep warm and it would’ve helped them both to be on the door together. I guess I’m still just upset that my mom ruined the movie when I told her I was going to see it. “And the end, the boat sinks,” she said. Oh, Spoiler alert. Sorry.

What I’m talking about today is something that at sometime or another we have experienced at one time or another: people stop playing what you like to play. Some of you used to play the old Decipher Star Wars TCG (or even WotC’s version), or Lord of the Rings, or Heroclix; those games have died out, but if your friends have the cards/clix, you can still play them. What I’m talking about is a little different as it deals strictly with Magic.

Since I’m starting my new EDH blog (I Got 99 Problems But a General Ain’t One) next week, I looked at my EDH decks to give me ideas what I could talk about. While going through my cards, I found my 150 Highlander deck. It was a deck that I used to carry around with me everywhere I went, people were playing 150 at pre-releases, and I was trying to get players at my store to play it. Heck, I even wrote an article on MTGSalvation on the format (you think I use alot of links now?). Problem was, I hadn’t used that deck in over a year. I kept getting cool foils for it, but there was no one around playing 150 Highlander. After I started playing EDH, it seemed like most people wanted to play that instead.

So, what happened? Honestly, nothing. And that’s the problem.

Magic Cinema – A Few Good Lotus Cobras

Like this, but with #LotusCobra

Some of you may have figured out that I’ve got three loves of my life: My wife (hi hun), Magic, and Movies. Wife doesn’t play Magic, but we watch movies together, and recently I’ve been mixing Magic and movies on this blog. In this new series (Magic Cinema), I take a look at some famous scenes in movies and imagined what they might look like if Magic was the central focus of them. This is the second scene I thought of, but more relevant timing (Note: I did not plan this to fit so well with the timing of “Lotus Cobra is Evil”) Some NSFW language, but not rampant.

A Few Good Lotus Cobras

Players are mad, they’re angry that Lotus Cobra was made a mythic, and they want answers. Why would they print such a powerful card at that rarity? More importantly the players want someone’s head on a plate. WotC offered up two of the developers who made Zendikar: Grame Hopkins and Matt Place. The two said they were just following orders but no one believes them.

Two Pro Tour players have been selected to represent the Prosecution, Mike Flores (who previewed the card and said it was nuts and one of the best cards ever printed), and Defense, Patrick Chapin (who doesn’t live in “Magic Christmas Land” (Sorry, another Premium SCG article)) as well as Fanboy Evan Erwin of “The Magic Show” to reside as judge. Smelling something fishy going on, Chapin had brought fellow Pro Player Brian Kibler to help defend the two sacrificial Zendikar designers and find out the bottom of the situation. There have been rumors of cards that were supposed to go in the Mythic Rare spot instead, to even one of the other cards moved to rare so Lotus Cobra could be Mythic, to moving Lotus Cobra to a different set altogether.

As a last ditch effort during the trial, Chapin has decided to put Mark Rosewater (MaRo), the head designer of Zendikar, on the witness stand to try and get something out of him. During his investigation, two people enter the courtroom, Elane Chase and Aaron Forsythe, both WotC Employees. After mocking Chapin for a few minutes, MaRo stands up and starts to leave. Chapin has asked him to sit back down because he wasn’t done with him.

INT – MILITARY COURTROOM – MORNING

Inside the courtroom everyone is stunned that CHAPIN told MARO to get back up on the witness stand. CHAPIN sighs and takes a drink of water. He’s decided to finally go for it, the jugular. MARO goes back to the stand and sits down.

MARO
(Sarcastically)
What would you like to discuss now? My favorite color?

CHAPIN
Mr. Rosewater, Zendikar was the first set in the block had no Green Mythic opening?

MARO
Yes.

CHAPIN
Worldwake, the next set, didn’t have an open slot for a Green Rare?

EVAN
Patrick, I think we’ve covered this, haven’t we?

CHAPIN grabs both three ring binders from KIBLER.

CHAPIN
Your Honor, these are the Multiverse database developers comments for both Zendikar and Worldwake. Zendikar shows no open Green Mythic spots that had to be created. That’s the same as Worldwake’s comments as well as there were no open Green Rare spots. I’d like to admit them as Defense Exhibits “Alpha” and “Bravo”.

EVAN
I don’t understand.  You’re admitting evidence of a card hole that never existed?

CHAPIN
We believe it did, sir.
(Motioning to the WotC employees)
The Defense will be calling Elane Chase and Aaron Forsythe.  They work for WotC and have intimate knowledge of the Multiverse database.

FLORES
(Standing up)
Your Honor, these two weren’t on the list.

KIBLER
Rebuttal witnesses, Your Honor, called specifically to refute testimony offered under direct examination.

If you looked closely at MARO, you could see a drop of sweat.

EVAN
I’ll allow the witnesses.

Lotus Cobra is Evil Comic Premiere

Today, I feel lucky to bring you a new web comic, “Lotus Cobra is Evil.” The creator of the comic (Sixten on MTGSalvation) has been gracious enough to let me post the comic here on MtGColorPie. With any luck, it will add more “lulz” to you day, or whatever you kids say on the internet.

On Sundays, we’ll post the next one in the series (Remember Sunday comics in your newspapers? What, you don’t know what a newspaper is? You darn kids). Of course I have to give credit where credit is due and tell you all to go to the creator’s website houseofsixten.com.

Today’s comic is the first of the series (obviously). Hope you kids enjoy it.

Design Class – Lonely Legends

Eh, close enough.

If I’m such a legend, then why am I so lonely? Let me tell you, legends are all very well if you’ve got somebody around who loves you.
- Judy Garland

One of the largest growing formats in Magic is the much loved (Especially by me) Elder Dragon Highlander. If you haven’t played this format, I would highly suggest it. Not only does it reward deck building skills and creativity, I have met very few people who dislike it (and most of them are Spikes who play the usual 40/60 card decks).

If you’ve only heard about EDH and want to know how to build a deck, read this article here from the creator of the format, Sheldon Menery. He talks about some of the things you should look for when creating your deck. My advice? Well, sometime we’ll get around to that. Today, instead let’s look at the most important piece in EDH, your General.

If you don’t know, you start with a Legendary creature (General) in the Command Zone (a zone created in Planechase just for this) that you can play at any time you normally could. Your 100 card deck (including General) can only have one copy of a card (excluding basic land); hence Highlander (There can be only one!). The cards in your deck can only be the same color as your General, you lands can only produce mana of your general and text boxes can’t have off-color mana symbols as well (A deck with Rafiq of the Many as the General cannot have Ethersworn Adjudicator because of the Black mana symbol).

All of this is very flavorful and makes perfect sense; if you have a legendary creature (One who is named and supposedly powerful) leading your army (hence the General), they would only want to have their support be by cards with the same philosophies in the Color Pie. It’s a very flavorful format and with all of the things you can do with it, very customizable as well.

Back to the Legendary creatures themselves. If you didn’t notice recently, Wizards has officially adopted EDH as a format, but let the Banned list still be effected by the “Elder Dragons.” In the most recent developer’s chat I even asked the question if Wizards designs Legendary creatures with EDH in mind. Guess what, they do (At least Ken Nagle (@norrYtt) does). But that doesn’t always seem to have been the case.

Blog Action Day 2009 – Climate Change – Only You Can Save the Multiverse

I never said I was a role model

Editor’s Note: Today is Blog Action Day 2009. Every year, bloggers from around the world talk about one subject to try and change the world. This year, bloggers blog about Climate Change. I really don’t get political so it may come as a surprise why I’m talking about climate change in a blog about a game that prints cards on paper. If you want my opinion about the people who get political about climate change, watch this Penn & Teller clip.

So today I grabbed a celebrity to talk about climate change for me. While I didn’t get a heavy hitter like Sean Penn or Susan Sarandon (who both are suckers for complaining about anything liberal), I did someone who was pretty high up there. Also, I think the celebrity will go great with my core demographic (Male gamers). If you haven’t looked at the picture right now, shame on you. Without further ado, Natalie Portman.

Wizards of the Coast is killing the Universe.

Wait, hold on a second, let me re-read that. The Multiverse. Got it. Wizards of the Coast is killing the Multiverse. If you players don’t do something about it soon, there will be no more Multiverse left to play Magic in.

On earth, there are many different climates that you have to be concerned about. But whenever Wizards creates a new plane, it’s all one type of climate. First it was too hot there were Deserts all over the place. Then, with the creation of too many machines, they created an Ice Age. An ice age? Remember where urban sprawl took over the entire plane? You know what happened after that? Total f’ing chaos where the environment and mana was completely messed up. They’ve already allowed Acid Rain to come to pass, how long until something much worse happens?

Magic Motivators 2: Motivate Harder

While getting ready for Windows 7, I’ve been backing up my stuff and going through folders deleting things I don’t need to transfer. I found some more Magic Motivational posters lost in my folders. They were going to be a follow up to the original post but they got lost in another back up and, well, kids that’s why you label everything.

So, unlike the last thing Magic related that was created but “lost“, this one was exactly like that. I asked my Twitter followers if they wanted to see them. Several of them said yes. So they’re going up. What can I say, I’m a people pleaser.

After the long post last time and the posting date for tomorrow’s post, I wanted to do a simple post. While it’s not a complete cycle of posters (where’s modular mechanics?), as long as people like this you’ll get “Magic Motivators 3: Revenge of the Motivators” sometime later to finish it out.

Enjoy!

Design Class – How Much Fetch Could a Fetchchuck Fetch, Ohh, You Get the Idea

Admit it, you'd pay $30 for this card (or at least your #1 Dime)

Editor’s Note: Some of you might have read some of this before. I accidentally hit publish when I was still working on my draft. Sorry about that. Here is the full post. Also, I hate Jeremy Fuentes for picking the best title ever (Stop Trying to Make Fetch Happen).

Fellow blogger Kelly Reid runs the amazing blog Quiet Speculation about his love affair with a certain Judgment uncommon instant the financial value of Magic. On his blog he recently ran a letter complaining about the horrible effects that Fetchlands have on the Game of Magic, both from a financial and play standpoint. Mike wrote this:

I recently bought a box of Zendikar cards: $85 bucks paid partially in store credit and partially in cash. I’m working my way though the packs slowly and so far, in about 8 packs, I’ve opened up two fetchlands. A quick search of the internet tells me that this small portion of my packs is worth a little under $40.

See, like you, I’ve been making a lot of decks in preparation for the new standard format. I’m trying to be realistic with what I can spend money on, and the last thing that I want to do is spend $80 per playset of lands in order to just get my deck off the ground…

…To say it more briefly, fetchlands are boring. Dual lands are boring. Mana fixing is boring.

What if mana fixing was all in the uncommon slot? Sure, there could still be rare lands like Oran-Reef the Vastwood or Mutavault that have additional effects, but what if the foundations of deck building were more readily available?

This is a very interesting idea; making something like that uncommon. There are two facets to this issue, as a business model and as design.

Magic started off as a collectible card game (Hence, the CCG). Dr. Richard Garfield created a game to be played in between sessions of D&D, where he got the fantasy influence. Never in his wildest dreams (alright, maybe in his wildest wildest dreams) did he ever think that Magic would become so popular, that 17 years later people would be dropping hundreds of dollars every few months. So, he took an idea from D&D when making the game: different rarities.