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The lines have been drawn, are you for Phyrexia or Mirrodin?
Before I get to Scars stuff, I wanted to talk about a rumor season staple that is a thorn in the side of people trying to keep discussions focused. Hopefully this article can turn the Orb into an instrument of good, rather than evil.
For the uninitiated, the Orb of Insight shows up for (almost) every expansion when the minisite launches. This will happen for Scars at midnight EST, September 2nd. The Orb is a flash-based (iPhone is sad, should make an app for it IMO) website that allows you to enter ONE search term, and then supplies you with how many times that term appears in the set.
The orb is not very mystical in how it functions. It searches a spreadsheet containing a full set spoiler, and reports on how many times the queried term shows up. The card name, casting cost, card type, power/toughness, artist name, and rules text are the fields of information on this spreadsheet.
When the Orb is released, people go crazy trying to find new and exciting things. Unfortunately, the same problems crop up every time.
The Orb doesn’t simply CTRL+F the spreadsheet with what you entered. If you search 1, it will not give you how many times 1R shows up. If you search zombie, it will not let you know how many times zombies shows up. The exact term entered is what is searched for.
The problem with this approach is that WoTC has yet to make apostophes in the spreadsheet match keyboard apostrophes. Currently, any search with ‘ in it will show up as 0. You have to use a special apostrophe instead. This leads to people freaking out when can’t and other things show up as 0, when they clearly are in the set. WoTC doesn’t have a disclaimer anywhere about the apostrophe, which would easily dispel most of this confusion.
Years ago, people ran macros or something of that nature bombarding the Orb with a list of dictionary words, and the current contents of gatherer. We would easily have a full list of terms due to this. WoTC them implemented a ‘code word’ (captcha) to prevent people gaming the orb in such a way. This allows the orb to be more in line with what WoTC envisioned, something about discovery and community, allowing people to wonder and sometimes piece together a card or reprint.
In practice, the data gathering portion of the orb feels like a big game of ‘ME FIRST’, where everyone races to be the first person to report X finding. Naturally, people do not check to verify if they are, in fact, first or not.
Generally, on a forum with a compiled results thread, using CTRL+F on each page works wonders. Also, all forums have highly capable integrated (and often ignored) search functions.
Ultimately, the amount of redundancy in the information gleaned from the orb weighs down the original findings that people post. From my time moderating at MTGSalvation, orb threads would have hundreds of deleted posts, and many others would have been moderated for people repeatedly posting useless, redundant information. Most posts deleted were for someone being the 10th person to post “0 = GHOSTFIRE” for Rise, for example.
So now that a “full” list has been compiled of the orb, and the dust of the hundreds of useless posts has cleared, there are hundreds of words, a spectrum of casting costs, and a range of power/toughnesses to ramble on about. For the most part, unless we see a potential reprint, the list serves as a jumping-off point for more speculation and just a quaint point of interest.
It helps set the scene of the set, but in the way that a 15,000 piece puzzle (without the box!) helps you visualize what it looks like while you attempt to piece it together.
And that is why the Orb is the first thing that shows up for each set. It sets the stage, gets the juices flowing, gets the hype going. It is a great tool, but it causes far too much headache for those running forums than it benefits.
Another problem with the orb is that it can be misleading, and some reprints are rumored that don’t materialize. The most recent I can remember is Cartographer showing up in the orb for Zendikar. We all know it was for Kor Cartographer now, but that word never showed up on another card before, and it fit the set, so it seemed ok. I asked Forsythe on twitter about it when he was hinting at the reprints in ZEN, and he flat out told me that it wasn’t in. (Love when RnD is straightforward like that!)
Situations like that caused people to refuse to believe Meddling Mage was in Alara Reborn, which pushes against the ‘usefulness’ of the Orb.
The orb launches along with the minisite (and visual spoiler) for the upcoming set, so we will also have those to discuss. There will likely only be 4 cards on the visual when it launches, unless they throw us a bone for that.
The real launch of spoiler season will be at PAX this weekend. (As well as at PT Amsterdam)
Last year, we had the enemy fetches revealed at the event. Several other cards from the set were also showcased, and literally paraded around the convention, in the form of oversized cards.
PAX culminated into an ‘invite-only’ MTG party at a club where a huge hedron was situated. One person won the puzzle contest to open the hedron and received a black lotus made out of several folded 100 dollar bills. I’m pretty sure that when the hedrons opened, Eldrazi, not treasures came out…but it helped the ‘treasures’ theme of the set, so eh.
We can expect plenty of buzz and hype from this weekend’s events, as well as the legitimate kickoff of the new extended format.
The rumor season is only going to get more muddled from here on out, so lets recap a few things, before they are lost forever in the clutter.
Scars block is [i]a sequel[/i] to Mirrodin. Sequels often feature references to the original, in-jokes that people who only saw the first would get, and advance the blueprint laid out by the original.
We already know of several races returning that existed in the original Mirrodin block. Leonin, Zombies, Vampires, Vulshok, and Elves are among the known returning tribes.
The Darksteel swords will have their cycle completed (or at least have 2 more printed) as mythic rares.
Other cards will reference cards and themes from the original block, like ‘Glimmerpost’ and ‘Etched Champion’. Indestructible represented by ‘Darksteel’ cards is also returning.
At least one (exclusive) keyword from Mirrodin is returning, and MaRo said it is ‘not necessarily a +1/+1 counter mechanic’. Take that for what you will, as I and many others had assumed Sunburst was back.
So what mechanics are left, if not Sunburst or Modular?
Imprint, Affinity, and Entwine. What is most likely?
How about Affinity?
How does ‘Affinity for counters’ sound? (Counters being the counters on permanents you control and counters on YOU.)
Affinity got a bad shake last time because it was paired with far too many cards that cost you no investment at all (lands), and people often were able to max out their affinity with relative ease.
Several WoTC articles have come to the defense of the idea behind the mechanic, saying that it was the ‘artifacts’ that was a mistake, not Affinity itself. It certainly would be interesting for this set to be the one to prove to people that Poison is legit, and Affinity is fun and not busted.
WoTC has never backed down from a challenge, so anything is possible really.
Another very important bit about this set was in the Game Day information for Scars. EVERY card in this set is going to belong to either Phyrexia or Mirrodin’s faction, and be watermarked as such. Memoricide was spoiled as a PDF image, which is not representative of what the physical card looks like. It will likely be a Phyrexian faction card.
Translation provided
Personally, I feel that making every card fit a category will end up weakening the flavor of the faction overall.What’s the flavor benefit to making a judgement call on what faction would get each individual card in the set? It stands to reason that half belong to Phyrexia and half belong to Mirrodin. Wouldn’t this have some cards with shaky flavor anchoring them to one faction?
Could they even amend the rules for ‘factions’ or ‘watermarks’, making them relevant inside the game? Affinity for Mirrodin? (costs 1 less for each Mirrodin faction card you control, 2 more for each Phyrexia faction card you control) Seems too abusable, but (silly) food for thought. This could be done mechanically without changing any rules if the split expansion rumor for Mirrodin Beseiged was legitimate. It would then look at expansion symbols, which ARE a field that cards can check, it is just never utilized.
While writing this article the prerelease card was spoiled! A big dumb creature with deathtouch that ‘disassembles’ when it dies. Here is a translation:
Wurmcoil Engine 6
Artifact Creature – Wurm (MR)
Deathtouch, Lifelink
When Wurmcoil Engine is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, put a 3/3 colorless artifact Wurm creature token with deathtouch and a 3/3 colorless artifact Wurm creature token with lifelink onto the battlefield.
6/6
Beefy beats to be sure. Sundering Titan set the standard for big dumb, annoying artifacts, this set will not let the previous down!
Enjoy the Orb and the PAX spoilers! Until next time, think…and think again, before you talk about rumors.
Greg Haenig has been playing magic for nearly 15 years, and was in charge of the MTGSalvation spoiler for around 5 years. He currently moderates the Starcitygames.com forums. His favorite formats are limited and EDH, and he eagerly awaits to smash at each prerelease.
Posted by Greg Haenig in Feature, New Set, News, Spoilers, Uncategorized Friday, 27 August 2010 13:58
I have been involved in the internet rumor community of Magic for well over 10 years. It all started on the news posts of MTGnews, which are preserved in the wayback machine (anything before March 2001). A community was created in the comments of news articles, discussing and picking apart things such as an ebay auction for an uncut sheet of Invasion cards (before the set’s release!) and cards rumored to be in upcoming sets.
I was very active in discussing rumors, and eventually was put into a moderator position which I have held on/off in different sites ever since. This gave me the desire to frame discussions and curtail pointless speculation and misinformation. Unfortunately, no amount of bannings or infractions has seemed to make discussing rumors any easier.
To understand the present, we need to make sure we don’t repeat mistakes of the past. One of the first mistakes I made in quantifying a rumor came shortly after Apocalypse, when someone posted partial card images of a tombstone in the top of a magic card, and this strange mechanic called ‘Threshold’. The photoshop wizards (and myself) at MTGnews declared these images to be fake, and he was laughed away.
Clearly evidence Springing Tiger is fake
He later posted to further explain the events surrounding the images, and how he got fired for what he did. He also posted that everyone that didn’t believe him would ‘eat crow’ when he was proven to be correct. Time eventually vindicated him, and magic rumors had claimed its first martyr.
I tried to learn from the experience, and really wanted to have more of a critical eye towards rumors going forward. It also taught me not to kick a gift-horse in the mouth, something that people on rumor threads are so quick to do. There are plenty of grey areas in these discussions, and sticking to absolutes does not always work out so well. This wouldn’t be the last ‘mistake’ made, but it was a salient one.
Here’s a ‘mistake’ that is perhaps more commonly known. An Ebay auction with tons of foil Guildpact rares showed up months before the prerelease. We used the images from it to get information for several cards.
Still no Vengevine
Giant Solifuge was one of them, and the toughness went through the SAME ‘photoshop wizard’ treatment as the Odyssey shenanigans. A big debate of ‘1 vs 3’ was had, and it had 1, 3, and ‘?’ as its toughness in the spoiler at different times during the day that it was added. It was seen as amazing if it was a 4/3, and pointless if it was a 4/1. To this day, people blame the rumor mill for ‘spoiling it wrong’ when it was just an inability to read a blurry scan. Because of this debacle, I loathe incomplete cards in spoilers.
During the rumor season of Planar Chaos, I posted what I thought was Timbermare, possibly with my own personal comment on how the card wasn’t good. This proved to be an inaccurate rumor. Unbeknownst to me, the card was a memorial to the late wife of Jamie Wakefield, and I had spoiled it as costing 5G to cast. This is the only time I can think of where the spoiled card was nocticably WORSE than the real card.
The most recent error where I can remember being wrong to a relevant degree was pre- M10. Someone posted a card based on the art of Sunpetal Grove which I then added to the spoiler. It was basically a Lotus Vale that you could only use once, and I was so convinced I bought a playset of Knight of the Reliquary, It was cheap and hardly used then, so…win? Part of the issue was that I got personally invested in a rumor and let my positive feelings towards the card get in the way of the logic to disprove it.
So why write up an introduction highlighting my personal missteps and miscalculations? To put things into perspective. Nobody is perfect. You can never be right all of the time so it’s important to learn and grow from mistakes, rather than brush them aside and pretend they never happened.
For the past 10 years I have been analyzing, commenting on, and discussing magic rumors. I remember the bad fakes, the good fakes, the ones that tricked us, and the ones that we should have believed. Right now there are more places than ever to read and listen about magic on the internet, but misinformation is running rampant. Whether it is a blog posting ‘speculation’ cards that inevitably get reposted as real on every other message board, or a podcast using outdated and inaccurate information, those that don’t look into things too deeply are getting mislead.
Darksteel?! In my equipment?
That is the mission statement of this series. To educate, and create a better discourse in general for the online magic playing populace. I will frame discussion for several current rumors and also point out incorrect and inaccurate information.
Lets open some lines of discussion concerning Scars of Mirrodin by breaking down some of the heavy discussion currently going on with the set.
First thing is first, Purple and riggers still aren’t happening, as Aaron Forsythe already stated Mirrodin is rigger-free.
Sunburst and Darksteel (indestructible) are both safe bets. We have a ‘darksteel’ equipment art already, and a card art that is an homage to a sunburst creature. Indestructible and sunburst also ‘foil’ Infect quite nicely.
Famous cards from mirrodin are not coming back in large numbers. Maybe one or two, but no ‘flagship’ cards. This set is more likely to go the route of Time Spiral and have cute references/sequels to Mirrodin block cards. For example, according to Mark Rosewater, there will be at least one other ‘Sword of blah de blah’ in the set. (We already know the G/U one)
“No, those mockups some other blog posted are still fake.”, Never has a more general statement been so true. Please take the extra two minutes to read the original blog entry before reposting the images elsewhere, where they are out of context and only deepening the misinformation the images create in the first place.
Speculating about cards and doing your own ‘create a card’ excercises is fine, but when you start misleading the community (either accidentally or intentionally), it becomes a problem. Some of these cards have been discussed on podcasts as if they were legitimate rumors. I don’t really see the value of making a full mockup of a card, because once you put something in the confines of a cardframe, people will be MUCH more likely to believe it is real. This only serves to deflect legitimate discussion of the set.
There are three planeswalkers in this set. How can I be so sure? Every set since Conflux (Alara had one booster for each shard) has depicted all of a set’s planeswalkers on the booster arts. We have had Koth, Elspeth, and Venser arts previewed as well, in addition to the booster images. I am also confident that Tezzeret is going to be in this block, but not this set.
Counters ahoy
We have just learned of the preview cards from the Duel Deck, and they each have a different watermark- One for each faction- Mirrodin vs Phyrexia. There is also a new keyword to boot! Proliferate allows a poisoned player to…keep getting poisoned, as well as dropping more counters on anything else you want. Make your Infect -1/-1 counters eat away at the creatures they sit on. Grow the loyalty of your planeswalkers. Make everflowing chalice better. Make your sunburst creatures grow. Cheat on your quests. Make your upkeeps more cumulative. Level up in a non-efficient way!
Vampire Hexmage may gain some added value in the new standard, because it seems to me that Scars is going to be “Mirrodin block: this time its about the counters, not the artifacts under the counters”.
They obviously learned some lessons about how counter growth should be done, sup Arcbound Ravager. They learned that -1/-1 counters deserve some respect, and certainly encapsulate the flavor of Phyrexia to a “T”, while keeping +1/+1 counters in check…and vice versa. Charge counters may make a return as well. I look foward to this set, because I love throwing counters around. Some have even suggested that they include some counters on tips/tricks cards.
As for the mechanic itself, while I agree it isn’t the most elegant keyword, it IS interesting how the mechanic can fit perfectly on each side of the conflict. Phyrexia is throwing around poison and -1/-1 counters, Mirrodin is throwing around +1/+1 counters and charge counters. Both sides of the conflict are in the ‘proliferation’ period of the conflict. Both are ‘building up arms’ to prepare for the coming war. If Scars is only the preface and it is interesting to think about where this is all leading. Also, does the inclusion of the Clasp in Tezz’s deck, and the Mirrodin-aligned guy in Elspeth’s deck hint at planeswalkers taking sides in this conflict?
I would like to end this article with a question. Do you know where your counters are?
Greg Haenig has been playing magic for over 10 years, and was in charge of the MTGSalvation spoiler for around 5 years. He prefers to play limited and EDH, eagerly awaiting to smash at the next prerelease.
Posted by Jonathan Medina in Uncategorized Monday, 26 July 2010 13:50
I have a question for you. How much is a Maelstrom Pulse?
I want you to write that number down, or type it a Notepad / Word document. We’ll come back to this number later, but before we do that, lets transform ourselves into a fly and sit on the wall in my local card shop. Look to the back of the room. I’ll be there trading. I am sitting at a table with an assortment of binders and boxes stacked up around me. I am surrounded by a crowd of people who are digging for treasure in my stuff. From across the store I hear someone trying to get my attention.
