MTG Color Pie

A Magic: The Gathering blog about card design, humor and culture

Category Archives: Lorwyn


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Better Know a Card Type – Tribal

better-know-a-card-type-tribalTo help you design better cards, I thought it would be a good idea to know what you can do with this card game.  First I looked at colors (something I’ll come back to again), and now is my overarching look at Magic.

Welcome to part 1 of my 19 part series: Better know a card type.

Today’s card type: Tribal; The Fightin’ Tribes!

Tribal is a new card type introduced in 2007 with the release of the large expansion set Lorwyn.  For those that want to argue that it was infact Future Sight that first debuted Tribal you’re wrong.  That set was in the future brought to us in the past by a man in a DeLorean going 88 mph.  Great Scott!

57-lorwyn-nameless-inversion-jeff-miracolaAt the moment there are only 50 cards that have the card type Tribal in it’s card type.  It’s the second smallest major card type and the third one to only feature inside a single block.

MaRo-Type Aside: For those of you wondering why I’m calling it a major card type is there have been alot of card types that have been printed.  Some are still in use (Artifact) while some have been left behind (Mono Artifact).  While I combined Mono and Poly artifacts into just artifacts, I’m giving some of them their own part in the series because you have to know the past to build toward the future.  Yes, I’m even covering the card type with one card.  Sigh, that brings back memories.

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After MaRo – The 2008 State of Design Response 2: Electric Boogaloo

If I mention Politics, her pic goes up
If I mention politics, her pic goes up

Editor’s Note: Other possible titles of this post include: After MaRo – The 2008 State of Design Response 2: Electric Boogaloo or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love WotC, Take 2, and Stop Me If You’ve Heard this Before.  If you don’t get this reference to the actual title, see here.

Just like in MaRo’s Type 1, Take 2 article (the Take 2 Link in the above aside) I want another shot at this article.  What happened the first time was that I read MaRo’s State of Design and wanted to throw some stuff that I had been thinking about or things that were bothering me, mostly about the number of cards being printed at a time.  Sure, I love creating different decks, but I made my point last time and I’m not going to do it this time again.  I felt I was a little too political with how things should be handled (though being political got me to put Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin’s picture on this site because we need to beautify it here) and I didn’t really focus on the design of the past year (Note: I’m not supporting any ticket, only that Palin is the most attractive VP in the past 20 years (With apologies to Dan Quayle)).

Keep in mind that with my suggestion (and with the hard working people at Organized Play, alright, mostly their work), States/Champs are coming back.  I am excited and now if Wizards would continue to include things that I talk about, maybe then I’ll get an overinflated ego that I think I’m making a difference.

Now, to the bulk of this post (again,a long post, but I’ll make it up to you).

Magic R&D: You guys are doing an awesome job.  I like the cards that are seeing print, and except for a few of them, couldn’t be happier.  Bringing us back to a tribal block and making it feel different was a great success.  Thoug it isn’t being run by Goblins is a great feeling, but only to have them be run by Faeries is meh.  When I was gunslinging at PAX last weekend, I played against Aaron Forsythe.  He just sat down and played against me: his being a Greater Gargadon while mine was a Zur the Enchanter that just didn’t get going (Yes Aaron, that’s what I was playing).  As I sat and looked at his suspended Gargadon while playing a Sower of Temptation to steal one of his tokens, I joked that I wish it had flash in hopes of taking said Gargadon.  Aaron looked at me and said, “Well, in testing it did.”  Maybe because I was being beaten horribly or just because I was a smart ass, I replied, “Oh, good thing it didn’t, because you didn’t want to make Faeries too good, did you?” Continue Reading →


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After MaRo – The 2008 State of Design Response

(MaRo art by UGMadness.net (I don’t think I use that much bandwidth, though WordPress helps me out there)).

Lady(ies?) and gentlemen, the great master MaRo talked to us yesterday about his thoughts and opinions about the past year in Magic design.  He told his his highs, his lows, and what he wants to do in the next year.  Most of us play the game as well as junior designing, so some of their non-design decisions have been on our minds rather then if the past block worked well together.  We’ll get to that in due time while some of that will be sprinkled in as well (this is a long post, be prepared).

Highlights of 2008

The Planeswalkers. Players were really worried when there was an announcement of a new card type, especially one that could break the game in half.  Using the hybrid of a creature and an enchantment, cries were heard that they wouldn’t be different enough to see print.

Yeah, we players were wrong. Continue Reading →


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After MaRo – Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

I love the fact that R&D is pushing the Race/Class model.

Quick aside: If you don’t know what the Race/Class model is, pick up a creature card, let’s say um, Coiling Oracle. Let’s take a look at it (Hint: it’s to the right). For the card type line we see: Creature – Snake Elf Druid. That creature is all of those types (A snake, an elf, and a druid) for every card that cares about creature types. Elvish Harbinger can search him up, can trigger Sosuke’s Summons, and can tap to Seton, Kroasn Protector. Its race (what the creature actually is) is a snake and an elf, and its class (what’s its role in its society is) is a druid. While not every creature has a class, every creature has a race (except Nameless Race, which was updated with the first creature type clean up). But remember, everything on the card type line is the creature type. Remember to check Gatherer for updates to old cards (Creature type update 1, update 2).

Why is this a good thing? Why do we need the Race/Class model in Magic? In the beginning there was “Summon X” and all was good. But over the past 15 years, Wizards have changed it, and some people think that it loses some flavor when it looks a little more structured. Sure, it’s much cleaner for rules, but it lost it’s fantasy flavor. But this is where it can make up with the fantasy fans. I’m not into D&D or WoW (don’t shoot me, I’ve got my one addiction), but I know that those fantasy games have the same race/class markup. Wizards pushed this so they could fit more with those fantasy games, something that Magic didn’t have at the beginning of the game. It added the flavor back into the game, which I love, as long as it doesn’t ruin mechanics (sorry, I’m more of a game interaction than flavor fan). Continue Reading →


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After MaRo – Rejected Lorwyn Promos

A funny thing happened yesterday: it snowed in the Seattle area. Drivers who aren’t used to the snow (you know the kind, the ones with the four wheel drive SUVs that think they can handle everything and goes 90 down the unplowed highway) seem to have it out for people who drive carefully. The smart people who didn’t have to be anywhere yesterday, telecommuted from home.

Why do bring this up? When I called Wizards yesterday to talk to MaRo about his Warriors column, they told me he stayed home because of the weather. I said yeah right, there’s no snow, it never snows in Seattle. That’s when I looked outside. Sigh, fine. And, of course they wouldn’t give me his home phone number; something about privacy and harassment, whatever, I wasn’t paying attention. But I wasn’t going to let some frozen water get in my way.

As I was sitting on my couch last night watching TV when I saw one of those Morningtide Promos on Adult Swim for the release event happening this weekend. If you haven’t seen them, here’s one they had for Chanrda Nalaar (I can’t find any Morningtide ones on YouTube yet).

This made me sad, as I had produced those type of ads for Wizards before. Yes, I did ads in that very same style for the Lorywn release dates. Wizards asked me to make some “Adult Swim” type promos, and after the snafo they had with the Time Spiral ones (Scroll down to the Akroma picture to get that story), they wanted something more edgy. After showing them mine, they rejected them as they thought it was too “Pop-culturey” and “Made Wizards look bad” and “We’re a family company.” Whatever. You guys decide for yourselves. My last one is my personal favorite.

This first one is the card Hurly-Burly:

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