A joy forever
August 14th 2009 05:20
Who says democracy doesn’t work?
The first day Wizards of the Coast started previewing Zendikar’s amazing new basic land layout, they also introduced a mysterious poll where all the options were parts of a Magic card. Given that it was in an article about Zendikar, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together and realize that the options referred to parts of a Zendikar card, and that surfers on the worldwide web held power over the first step on the road to a new world. And to you, I say: you chose wisely.
Sure, there’s lots of legitimate reasons to want to know a new card’s rules text this early. Tournament players want to know which of their decks he goes in. The format rotations never feel quite as far away as they do when they’re relatively close. Others might wonder what they can still find to design after all these years and 10,000 unique cards. I for one want to know which of Future Sight’s cards are coming back this time around, and why there weren’t more in the Shards of Alara block! Important as those questions are, there is a time and place for them, and I think people realized that now is the time for intellectual, not tactical, anticipation of the new block; for an appeal to big feelings, big concepts, and big dreams.
The art is the only part of a Magic card that lasts forever, so to speak. New sets and blocks and variant formats come out every year, meaning that today’s “perfect” decks will one day vanish from sight and clog up server space on DeckCheck.net. Even the rules themselves change, making some cards’ game text more or less powerful and thus more or less appealing for tournament play. But a beautiful landscape or an inspiring character remains so, no matter how much time passes. We are fortunate that Magic has so many different levels of meaning and significance to can appreciate, and when this character’s game text is revealed over the next couple of weeks, we’ll appreciate it all the more for having had a taste of the man behind the cardboard.
We'll meet him again in the ancient forests of Iranistan.
The first day Wizards of the Coast started previewing Zendikar’s amazing new basic land layout, they also introduced a mysterious poll where all the options were parts of a Magic card. Given that it was in an article about Zendikar, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together and realize that the options referred to parts of a Zendikar card, and that surfers on the worldwide web held power over the first step on the road to a new world. And to you, I say: you chose wisely.
Sure, there’s lots of legitimate reasons to want to know a new card’s rules text this early. Tournament players want to know which of their decks he goes in. The format rotations never feel quite as far away as they do when they’re relatively close. Others might wonder what they can still find to design after all these years and 10,000 unique cards. I for one want to know which of Future Sight’s cards are coming back this time around, and why there weren’t more in the Shards of Alara block! Important as those questions are, there is a time and place for them, and I think people realized that now is the time for intellectual, not tactical, anticipation of the new block; for an appeal to big feelings, big concepts, and big dreams.
The art is the only part of a Magic card that lasts forever, so to speak. New sets and blocks and variant formats come out every year, meaning that today’s “perfect” decks will one day vanish from sight and clog up server space on DeckCheck.net. Even the rules themselves change, making some cards’ game text more or less powerful and thus more or less appealing for tournament play. But a beautiful landscape or an inspiring character remains so, no matter how much time passes. We are fortunate that Magic has so many different levels of meaning and significance to can appreciate, and when this character’s game text is revealed over the next couple of weeks, we’ll appreciate it all the more for having had a taste of the man behind the cardboard.
We'll meet him again in the ancient forests of Iranistan.
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