The end of the tunnel
July 26th 2009 03:23
“Settle for what you can get, but first ask for the world.”
-- Diana Wynne Jones, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland
The name “Zendikar” has been known since March. A name and a tagline is barely enough to prove that an expansion actually exists; that did not, however, stop someone from registering the domain Zendikar.net about a week later. Of course whoever it was didn’t have enough to write about, and they fell into the same tracks of discussion on Alara Reborn and M10 that everyone else already had, and then they started updating even less frequently than I do, and now even the forgiving AI at Google PageRank is questioning their assessment of opportunity costs.
Like the brief history of that domain name, Magic players tend to watch the next set come in with a good measure of wishful thinking. It mainly takes the form of blindly guessing which of their favorite old cards is likely to be reprinted in the next set, or hoping that every card in that same set will strengthen their favorite deck type and weaken everyone else’s. From a purely statistical point of view, though, applying wishful thinking to Magic is a slightly worse idea than registering the domain Zendikar.net in mid-March. I’ve watched (and in some cases, participated in) speculation on the contents of every set from Onslaught to M10, and no-one has ever been right. (Right now you’re thinking I must be being hyperbolic. But I’m not.) What do I, or anyone else, care? Even more than leaked cards, unfounded speculation blunts enthusiasm for new sets by generating unrealistic expectations. Not enough players read the unfounded speculation to make a major difference, but enough read it to make some difference. Being excited about a new set is understandable, but staking your entire Magic worldview on the next set being more powerful than Urza's Saga is setting yourself up for disappointment.
Here at the Orb of Insight, I prefer to stick to what is actually known. At least then, if you must speculate, you’re a little less likely to embarrass yourself. And the fact is, very little is known about Zendikar. I know from a source I trust that the name comes from a place in ancient Persia. The companion novel’s subtitle is In the Teeth of Akoum, which another source informs me is a city in Gabon. This is no help at all in discerning the mechanical theme, so if you want help with that, head over to Salvation and shout at someone for 15 pages or so. However, it’s well-known that in the gestalt fantasy conception, Persian and Arabian culture and tropes run together, as do Arabian and African, forming a sort of arid, colorful, spicy continuum of imagery. Magic has visited that continuum once before, and I for one am looking forward to seeing what it looks like the second time around, without the burden of preconceptions or wishful thinking.
-- Diana Wynne Jones, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland
The name “Zendikar” has been known since March. A name and a tagline is barely enough to prove that an expansion actually exists; that did not, however, stop someone from registering the domain Zendikar.net about a week later. Of course whoever it was didn’t have enough to write about, and they fell into the same tracks of discussion on Alara Reborn and M10 that everyone else already had, and then they started updating even less frequently than I do, and now even the forgiving AI at Google PageRank is questioning their assessment of opportunity costs.
Like the brief history of that domain name, Magic players tend to watch the next set come in with a good measure of wishful thinking. It mainly takes the form of blindly guessing which of their favorite old cards is likely to be reprinted in the next set, or hoping that every card in that same set will strengthen their favorite deck type and weaken everyone else’s. From a purely statistical point of view, though, applying wishful thinking to Magic is a slightly worse idea than registering the domain Zendikar.net in mid-March. I’ve watched (and in some cases, participated in) speculation on the contents of every set from Onslaught to M10, and no-one has ever been right. (Right now you’re thinking I must be being hyperbolic. But I’m not.) What do I, or anyone else, care? Even more than leaked cards, unfounded speculation blunts enthusiasm for new sets by generating unrealistic expectations. Not enough players read the unfounded speculation to make a major difference, but enough read it to make some difference. Being excited about a new set is understandable, but staking your entire Magic worldview on the next set being more powerful than Urza's Saga is setting yourself up for disappointment.
It’s never being reprinted. Get over it.
Here at the Orb of Insight, I prefer to stick to what is actually known. At least then, if you must speculate, you’re a little less likely to embarrass yourself. And the fact is, very little is known about Zendikar. I know from a source I trust that the name comes from a place in ancient Persia. The companion novel’s subtitle is In the Teeth of Akoum, which another source informs me is a city in Gabon. This is no help at all in discerning the mechanical theme, so if you want help with that, head over to Salvation and shout at someone for 15 pages or so. However, it’s well-known that in the gestalt fantasy conception, Persian and Arabian culture and tropes run together, as do Arabian and African, forming a sort of arid, colorful, spicy continuum of imagery. Magic has visited that continuum once before, and I for one am looking forward to seeing what it looks like the second time around, without the burden of preconceptions or wishful thinking.
If you link to this post with the thread title “OMG PHASING IN ZEN,” I swear I’ll DDoS you into the Stone Age.
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