Honka Honka Burning Love
In Clown World, the only god is the one who Honks.
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Doesn't he argue against getting rid of the reserve list?
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Magic The Gathering
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Liliana of the Veil is like a mainstay of Jund decks.
Honka Honka Burning Love
In Clown World, the only god is the one who Honks.
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kiwifarms.net
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Yeah I know, but Jund is rarely ever.."Great" (and this comes from Jund Player) and..is good in one format.
Edit : And before Modern Horizons I maintain LOTV was starting to become Over-rated, there was enough power in the format that she was starting to fall behind (W&6 helped her out immensely)
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- Jan 18, 2017
Faithless Looting was pretty good till Hogaak just snapped that card in half pretty much. I'm not saying card wasn't kinda busted it was just on the level of most of the other top tier modern stuff running about at that time.
I miss Izzet Phoenix in modern.
I do think about how deceptive MH was in it's power level once in a bit though, remember how in the beginning everybody was pretty much "lol commander masters" least in my area. Then Hogaak, started doing Hogaak things, and then Urza... and let's not forget fuckin' astrolabe. Play some snow lands now all my mana fixing problems are taken care of!
Honka Honka Burning Love
In Clown World, the only god is the one who Honks.
True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2019
Faithless looting should have gotten the axe ages before Hogaak showed up, as should ancient stirrings. Just for Consistency.
Blue is fundamentally not allowed to have a good 1 mana cantrip, the highest power Blue Cantrips are allowed to have is opt, but Faithless Looting and Ancient Stirrings both blow Opt out of the water by a huge margin.
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2017
Islam walker details posted.
EDIT: archive & text.
EDIT: archive & text.
CREATING BASRI KET
Check out Mark Rosewater's Basri Ket preview article here.
I'm Liz Leo, the creative producer for the Wizards Franchise Development Team, and today I'm going to be bringing together some of the key creatives in the development of Magic's newest Planeswalker to give us a rundown on everything we need to know about Basri Ket.
We are often tasked with creating a Planeswalker to fully inhabit and represent a certain world. You've most recently seen the introduction of Lukka into Ikoria, who is bonded to the set's worldbuilding across his costume, powers, and story. But what happens when the ask is to design a Planeswalker for a card set that is not connected to a single plane? Core Sets are the perfect places to introduce characters that haven't intersected with our main storyline yet and set them up to play a part in the future of Magic.
For Core Set 2021 (M21), we developed Basri Ket to bring a fresh face to the Core Set. I have gathered Senior Narrative Designer Gerritt Turner, Senior Art Director Daniel Ketchum, and Game Designer Sydney Adams to answer some questions about the process of bringing Basri into being.
Q: Let's start with learning about who Basri is. Can you talk about the genesis of the character and dive a bit into his backstory?
Daniel Ketchum: When we were tapped to create a new white-aligned paladin, we brainstormed a number of concepts—some of which may eventually also see the light of day! But ultimately, we thought Basri Ket best met the ask. Basri is a paladin in the truest sense, duty sworn to an ideal, making him approachable to players who are new to Magic but familiar with fantasy tropes. But the details we've used to flesh out Basri put a twist on those tropes and will be rewarding for longtime fans, all while perfectly embodying the tenets of white's slice of the Magic color pie: protection, order, and banding together to achieve a common good.
Gerritt Turner: As you may have guessed from his card art, Basri Ket was born on the desert plane of Amonkhet. From an early age, he idolized Oketra—Amonkhet's cat goddess of Solidarity—and tried to follow her teachings to the letter. Basri wanted nothing more than to prove himself to her by completing the Trial of Solidarity, and not long before the events of the Amonkhet card set, he got his chance. Thanks to Basri's leadership, his crop survived the ordeal, and Basri himself claimed Oketra's arrow to finish the Trial. In a moment of pure elation, Basri's latent Planeswalker Spark ignited and he disappeared.
Obviously, this was a pretty shocking turn of events for Basri and it took time for him to discover what had happened to him. Until his unexpected journey, he knew nothing about Planeswalkers or the Multiverse. When he finally learned the truth of what he was, he was eager to return home, but . . . spoilers for anyone who hasn't been keeping up with Magic Story: that didn't go great. When Basri got back to Amonkhet, it was a smoking ruin. Oketra was dead, and everything he had believed turned out to be an elaborate lie.
Q: Wow, that's definitely a rollercoaster of emotions. How does Basri cope with what happened to his home plane?
Sydney Adams: With nothing to hold onto, Basri experiences a crisis of faith. It would have been easy for Basri to forget Oketra, renounce his faith, and for that to be his process of moving forward. Instead, Basri sees his people struggling and hurting and understands that he still has a job to do. He rounds up the injured and weary, encourages them with what he knows, and realizes that Oketra's teachings are still true. Basri realizes that while Oketra is gone, her teachings of truth, respect, and solidarity live on in her people and through him. It's at this point this character makes an incredible shift—a coming of age in a way. Oketra is this maternal figure who gave him so much, and Basri comes to a personal understanding that Oketra is always with him and that he can use what he's learned to change the world yet.
DK: One of the things that excites me most about Basri is that he literally grew up in a carefully constructed bubble—the Hekma—and now he's discovered that entire world was a falsehood and there's a wide, wild Multiverse outstretched before him. I love that the way he copes with that revelation is that he's decided to internalize a core truth he learned on Amonkhet that rings true on every world—the power of working together—and will use that as his anchor as he encounters beauty, peril, heartbreak, and triumph in his journey as a Planeswalker.
GT: Even though Basri manages to find hope in what happened to him and his world, he still carries the baggage of those events with him. The entire worldview of Amonkhet was framed around competing to become worthy, and that point of view will always be with Basri to some degree. As a character, he's going to struggle with that sense of worthiness and where to find it now that the God-Pharaoh's true identity and motives have been revealed. The ideal of Oketra lives on in his mind, and as he grapples with his loss, her "voice" helps guide him—not in a literal way, but in a figurative sense. If Basri can feel worthy of Oketra's memory, then maybe he can find peace.
Q: I love how I can see parts of Basri's story reflected across his design elements. Can you go into the inspiration behind these striking visual motifs?
DK: Designing Basri Ket was a lot of fun! To bring Basri to life, we called upon veteran Magic artist Kieran Yanner to reimagine the archetypal paladin through the lens of Amonkhet, with specific details that reference Oketra herself. While full suits of armor aren't easy to come by in the sweltering deserts of Amonkhet, we felt the armor was necessary for the character to read as a paladin. So Basri's armor maintains the silhouette you'd expect in traditional Arthurian fantasy, but the elements that comprise it are specific references to Amonkhet and Oketra: the white and gold color scheme with lazotep accents; the woven breastplate with an abstraction of Oketra's face across the chest; the subtle detail of an empty bandolier that was meant to hold his cartouches hanging from his belt. We also took care in designing his weapon. While the base is one of Oketra's arrows—specifically the one Basri retrieved in the Trial of Solidarity—we added a curved blade to it, inspired by actual ancient Egyptian weaponry, to give it a unique, ownable shape that still feels authentic to Amonkhet.
Q: Basri looks like a pretty formidable opponent. What are his powers and how does he use his weapon?
SA: Basri has a lot of tricks up his sleeve. Firstly, his military training. Religion on Amonkhet is less pulpits and more Shaolin temple, so his body and mind are trained throughout his entire life. He's a master of group tactics and strategy, so Basri's magic reflects his upbringing and personality. He understands his gifts make him stronger than his comrades, so his primary goal is to make sure the group succeeds. Using his magic, he surrounds himself and his allies with a golden sand-like aura that allows him to reduce incoming damage or enhance the abilities of anyone within it.
GT: And as Daniel mentioned, when Basri's Spark ignited, he was holding one of Oketra's arrows, and this came along with him when he Planeswalked for the first time. As a symbol of his dedication to Oketra, he turned this arrow into his signature weapon—part spear, part javelin, part battleax. It takes a lot of skill to wield, but Basri's training lets him handle it with deadly precision.
Q: Can you talk about why you designed these powers for Basri?
GT: Basri is a mage who comes from a desert, and we were interested in how a desert paladin might express himself in Magic. Broadly speaking, Paladins are usually either about offense (smiting evil) or defense (protecting allies or the innocent). We have an offense-oriented paladin already in Elspeth Tirel, and we've seen a lot of "Sandblast" style effects through cards in the past, so we decided to focus Basri's powers on defense. This led naturally to images of weapons or spells striking harmlessly into sand, and his power developed from there.
DK: My absolute favorite thing about Basri is that all of the pieces of his design support each other perfectly. He's a paladin devoted to Oketra who evangelized the virtue of solidarity. And what better visual element to represent solidarity, standing together, than sand? One grain of sand is almost unnoticeable, but a whole bunch of grains together can rend flesh from bone and erode mountains. And the perfect visual to represent Basri's ethos just happens to blanket his home plane. So, I love that when he uses his powers to bolster his comrades on the front lines, his magic appears as a swirling aura of sand—not only does it give him a distinct visual that harkens back to Amonkhet, but it subtly tells you what he's all about thematically.
Q: Basri is a man of faith, and that seems to play a big part in many aspects of his design. Can you explain how that decision was made and implemented?
GT: As we were developing his story, we realized that a character driven by faith would have to encounter some kind of challenge to his beliefs, and that the act of overcoming that challenge would galvanize him and send him off into the Multiverse to become a hero. That line of thinking led us to Amonkhet because it represents one of the greatest crises of faith we've seen in recent Magic Story. It felt like the perfect opportunity for our paladin to experience a challenge to his faith and come out stronger for it. Particularly because the Hour of Devastation was such a negative event for the Multiverse, we were excited for a glimmer of hope to come out of it as well.
SA: When I had heard about some of the elements of the character coming together, I was curious if it was going to be another "the church is corrupt, Orzhov!" hook, but when I heard it wasn't, I asked to get in on the creative process. For me it was important that Basri wasn't the byproduct of a bad relationship with religion. I didn't ever want there to be a version of him where he forsakes his faith to evolve as a person. I think that's a pervasive narrative around religion already. It's something your parents made you do, and then you grow out of it. I believe as long as no one is getting hurt, everyone has the right to do what makes them happy with respect and acceptance.
As a religious person with friends from all walks of life, I didn't want Basri to represent the negative experiences he endured. Basri is filled with support, compassion, and love. He's meant to be a positive symbol of faith, especially in the face of tragedy. In one way or another, we all have faith.When you're knocked down, you get up because you believe in something. You believe that it gets better, that this too shall pass, that the sun will come out tomorrow. I wanted people to see their own journey in this character.
Q: I'm always eager to see new Planeswalkers make their way into the world. They're not only cards in a game, but characters we get to relate to. What elements of Basri's design do you as a creative connect with personally?
GT: I really connect with Basri's Spark moment. I'm excited about having a Planeswalker who Sparks from a moment of elation. I work in a creative field, and one of the best, most powerful feelings for me comes when something really clicks. Maybe I've been working on a problem for a long time and then suddenly I have that "eureka" moment that makes it all work. It feels so good to finally break through that wall, accomplish my goal, and fulfill my creative passion. If I were going to be a Planeswalker, I wouldn't want my journey to start with trauma. I'd want my Spark moment to come from joy or wonder, to be something that propels me into this amazing Multiverse of possibilities in a positive way. And I think that experience is captured in Basri's story very well.
SA: I'm religious, and my own journey with faith has been one of struggle, adaptation, and renewal. When I graduated high school, there was a huge local event at my church. I had a crisis of faith at 17, and for me, it was a monumental fracture in my understanding of who I was up until that point. Immediately after, I go to college. I struggled with reconciling my beliefs, my independence, and the sense of betrayal I felt, and for the first time in my life, I'm alone. I live in a dorm, missing Sunday services, galivanting in the city with friends, and taking these intense literary analysis classes.We're discussing the Gilgamesh, Paradise Lost, and the Holy Bible as works of literature with no favoritism or agenda. That period of time made me realize that I didn't need other people to validate my faith or determine what my relationship to God was. I had to analyze it and decide that on my own. I adapted. When we worked on his backstory, I knew Basri's mental state because I was Basri. His journey is one that most people go through. It can be significant or trivial. You have faith that the bus will come, but if the bus doesn't arrive, you adapt. You find another way to get to work. "For we walk by faith, not by sight."Things can look bleak, but if you know deeply that there's always a way forward, you don't give up. You can't. That's what Basri means to me.
Q: M21 is soon to be released and I'm getting really excited to open up a pack and find him in that mythic slot. Lastly, I want to ask—what makes you most excited about Basri's character design?
SA: I think players will find Basri to be a great addition to White.I'm excited to see what unique, fun, and sometimes terrifying play patterns our players will discover with him.
GT: I love Basri's crisis of faith moment. I think there could have been a version of his story where Basri went down a very dark path. I really admire that in his darkest hour, seeing his world destroyed, his god dead, and Bolas's lie revealed, he's able to perform this incredible alchemy and turn the ashes of an unfathomable betrayal into a renewed sense of purpose. I find it really moving that, despite Oketra's complicity in the lie of the Trials and the tragedy of her death, the legacy of her values—truth, solidarity, compassion—will live on through Basri and hopefully become a force for good in the Multiverse.
DK: Basri is venturing into a diverse, challenging Multiverse with a very narrow skillset (fetching arrows while sporting a mean fade?) but is trusting that his belief will see him through—the belief that by working together we can be better and accomplish more. He's a capable adult exploring new worlds with a childlike sense of wonder and a noble heart. I think that's really beautiful and aspirational, and I can't wait to see what each step of his journey brings.
Thanks so much to Sydney, Gerritt, and Daniel for their work and insights on the new Planeswalker, Basri Ket. Don't miss your first chance to stand on the front lines next to Basri at an M21 Prerelease event on June 26!
Check out Mark Rosewater's Basri Ket preview article here.
I'm Liz Leo, the creative producer for the Wizards Franchise Development Team, and today I'm going to be bringing together some of the key creatives in the development of Magic's newest Planeswalker to give us a rundown on everything we need to know about Basri Ket.
We are often tasked with creating a Planeswalker to fully inhabit and represent a certain world. You've most recently seen the introduction of Lukka into Ikoria, who is bonded to the set's worldbuilding across his costume, powers, and story. But what happens when the ask is to design a Planeswalker for a card set that is not connected to a single plane? Core Sets are the perfect places to introduce characters that haven't intersected with our main storyline yet and set them up to play a part in the future of Magic.
For Core Set 2021 (M21), we developed Basri Ket to bring a fresh face to the Core Set. I have gathered Senior Narrative Designer Gerritt Turner, Senior Art Director Daniel Ketchum, and Game Designer Sydney Adams to answer some questions about the process of bringing Basri into being.
Q: Let's start with learning about who Basri is. Can you talk about the genesis of the character and dive a bit into his backstory?
Daniel Ketchum: When we were tapped to create a new white-aligned paladin, we brainstormed a number of concepts—some of which may eventually also see the light of day! But ultimately, we thought Basri Ket best met the ask. Basri is a paladin in the truest sense, duty sworn to an ideal, making him approachable to players who are new to Magic but familiar with fantasy tropes. But the details we've used to flesh out Basri put a twist on those tropes and will be rewarding for longtime fans, all while perfectly embodying the tenets of white's slice of the Magic color pie: protection, order, and banding together to achieve a common good.
Gerritt Turner: As you may have guessed from his card art, Basri Ket was born on the desert plane of Amonkhet. From an early age, he idolized Oketra—Amonkhet's cat goddess of Solidarity—and tried to follow her teachings to the letter. Basri wanted nothing more than to prove himself to her by completing the Trial of Solidarity, and not long before the events of the Amonkhet card set, he got his chance. Thanks to Basri's leadership, his crop survived the ordeal, and Basri himself claimed Oketra's arrow to finish the Trial. In a moment of pure elation, Basri's latent Planeswalker Spark ignited and he disappeared.
Obviously, this was a pretty shocking turn of events for Basri and it took time for him to discover what had happened to him. Until his unexpected journey, he knew nothing about Planeswalkers or the Multiverse. When he finally learned the truth of what he was, he was eager to return home, but . . . spoilers for anyone who hasn't been keeping up with Magic Story: that didn't go great. When Basri got back to Amonkhet, it was a smoking ruin. Oketra was dead, and everything he had believed turned out to be an elaborate lie.
Q: Wow, that's definitely a rollercoaster of emotions. How does Basri cope with what happened to his home plane?
Sydney Adams: With nothing to hold onto, Basri experiences a crisis of faith. It would have been easy for Basri to forget Oketra, renounce his faith, and for that to be his process of moving forward. Instead, Basri sees his people struggling and hurting and understands that he still has a job to do. He rounds up the injured and weary, encourages them with what he knows, and realizes that Oketra's teachings are still true. Basri realizes that while Oketra is gone, her teachings of truth, respect, and solidarity live on in her people and through him. It's at this point this character makes an incredible shift—a coming of age in a way. Oketra is this maternal figure who gave him so much, and Basri comes to a personal understanding that Oketra is always with him and that he can use what he's learned to change the world yet.
DK: One of the things that excites me most about Basri is that he literally grew up in a carefully constructed bubble—the Hekma—and now he's discovered that entire world was a falsehood and there's a wide, wild Multiverse outstretched before him. I love that the way he copes with that revelation is that he's decided to internalize a core truth he learned on Amonkhet that rings true on every world—the power of working together—and will use that as his anchor as he encounters beauty, peril, heartbreak, and triumph in his journey as a Planeswalker.
GT: Even though Basri manages to find hope in what happened to him and his world, he still carries the baggage of those events with him. The entire worldview of Amonkhet was framed around competing to become worthy, and that point of view will always be with Basri to some degree. As a character, he's going to struggle with that sense of worthiness and where to find it now that the God-Pharaoh's true identity and motives have been revealed. The ideal of Oketra lives on in his mind, and as he grapples with his loss, her "voice" helps guide him—not in a literal way, but in a figurative sense. If Basri can feel worthy of Oketra's memory, then maybe he can find peace.
Q: I love how I can see parts of Basri's story reflected across his design elements. Can you go into the inspiration behind these striking visual motifs?
DK: Designing Basri Ket was a lot of fun! To bring Basri to life, we called upon veteran Magic artist Kieran Yanner to reimagine the archetypal paladin through the lens of Amonkhet, with specific details that reference Oketra herself. While full suits of armor aren't easy to come by in the sweltering deserts of Amonkhet, we felt the armor was necessary for the character to read as a paladin. So Basri's armor maintains the silhouette you'd expect in traditional Arthurian fantasy, but the elements that comprise it are specific references to Amonkhet and Oketra: the white and gold color scheme with lazotep accents; the woven breastplate with an abstraction of Oketra's face across the chest; the subtle detail of an empty bandolier that was meant to hold his cartouches hanging from his belt. We also took care in designing his weapon. While the base is one of Oketra's arrows—specifically the one Basri retrieved in the Trial of Solidarity—we added a curved blade to it, inspired by actual ancient Egyptian weaponry, to give it a unique, ownable shape that still feels authentic to Amonkhet.
Q: Basri looks like a pretty formidable opponent. What are his powers and how does he use his weapon?
SA: Basri has a lot of tricks up his sleeve. Firstly, his military training. Religion on Amonkhet is less pulpits and more Shaolin temple, so his body and mind are trained throughout his entire life. He's a master of group tactics and strategy, so Basri's magic reflects his upbringing and personality. He understands his gifts make him stronger than his comrades, so his primary goal is to make sure the group succeeds. Using his magic, he surrounds himself and his allies with a golden sand-like aura that allows him to reduce incoming damage or enhance the abilities of anyone within it.
GT: And as Daniel mentioned, when Basri's Spark ignited, he was holding one of Oketra's arrows, and this came along with him when he Planeswalked for the first time. As a symbol of his dedication to Oketra, he turned this arrow into his signature weapon—part spear, part javelin, part battleax. It takes a lot of skill to wield, but Basri's training lets him handle it with deadly precision.
Q: Can you talk about why you designed these powers for Basri?
GT: Basri is a mage who comes from a desert, and we were interested in how a desert paladin might express himself in Magic. Broadly speaking, Paladins are usually either about offense (smiting evil) or defense (protecting allies or the innocent). We have an offense-oriented paladin already in Elspeth Tirel, and we've seen a lot of "Sandblast" style effects through cards in the past, so we decided to focus Basri's powers on defense. This led naturally to images of weapons or spells striking harmlessly into sand, and his power developed from there.
DK: My absolute favorite thing about Basri is that all of the pieces of his design support each other perfectly. He's a paladin devoted to Oketra who evangelized the virtue of solidarity. And what better visual element to represent solidarity, standing together, than sand? One grain of sand is almost unnoticeable, but a whole bunch of grains together can rend flesh from bone and erode mountains. And the perfect visual to represent Basri's ethos just happens to blanket his home plane. So, I love that when he uses his powers to bolster his comrades on the front lines, his magic appears as a swirling aura of sand—not only does it give him a distinct visual that harkens back to Amonkhet, but it subtly tells you what he's all about thematically.
Q: Basri is a man of faith, and that seems to play a big part in many aspects of his design. Can you explain how that decision was made and implemented?
GT: As we were developing his story, we realized that a character driven by faith would have to encounter some kind of challenge to his beliefs, and that the act of overcoming that challenge would galvanize him and send him off into the Multiverse to become a hero. That line of thinking led us to Amonkhet because it represents one of the greatest crises of faith we've seen in recent Magic Story. It felt like the perfect opportunity for our paladin to experience a challenge to his faith and come out stronger for it. Particularly because the Hour of Devastation was such a negative event for the Multiverse, we were excited for a glimmer of hope to come out of it as well.
SA: When I had heard about some of the elements of the character coming together, I was curious if it was going to be another "the church is corrupt, Orzhov!" hook, but when I heard it wasn't, I asked to get in on the creative process. For me it was important that Basri wasn't the byproduct of a bad relationship with religion. I didn't ever want there to be a version of him where he forsakes his faith to evolve as a person. I think that's a pervasive narrative around religion already. It's something your parents made you do, and then you grow out of it. I believe as long as no one is getting hurt, everyone has the right to do what makes them happy with respect and acceptance.
As a religious person with friends from all walks of life, I didn't want Basri to represent the negative experiences he endured. Basri is filled with support, compassion, and love. He's meant to be a positive symbol of faith, especially in the face of tragedy. In one way or another, we all have faith.When you're knocked down, you get up because you believe in something. You believe that it gets better, that this too shall pass, that the sun will come out tomorrow. I wanted people to see their own journey in this character.
Q: I'm always eager to see new Planeswalkers make their way into the world. They're not only cards in a game, but characters we get to relate to. What elements of Basri's design do you as a creative connect with personally?
GT: I really connect with Basri's Spark moment. I'm excited about having a Planeswalker who Sparks from a moment of elation. I work in a creative field, and one of the best, most powerful feelings for me comes when something really clicks. Maybe I've been working on a problem for a long time and then suddenly I have that "eureka" moment that makes it all work. It feels so good to finally break through that wall, accomplish my goal, and fulfill my creative passion. If I were going to be a Planeswalker, I wouldn't want my journey to start with trauma. I'd want my Spark moment to come from joy or wonder, to be something that propels me into this amazing Multiverse of possibilities in a positive way. And I think that experience is captured in Basri's story very well.
SA: I'm religious, and my own journey with faith has been one of struggle, adaptation, and renewal. When I graduated high school, there was a huge local event at my church. I had a crisis of faith at 17, and for me, it was a monumental fracture in my understanding of who I was up until that point. Immediately after, I go to college. I struggled with reconciling my beliefs, my independence, and the sense of betrayal I felt, and for the first time in my life, I'm alone. I live in a dorm, missing Sunday services, galivanting in the city with friends, and taking these intense literary analysis classes.We're discussing the Gilgamesh, Paradise Lost, and the Holy Bible as works of literature with no favoritism or agenda. That period of time made me realize that I didn't need other people to validate my faith or determine what my relationship to God was. I had to analyze it and decide that on my own. I adapted. When we worked on his backstory, I knew Basri's mental state because I was Basri. His journey is one that most people go through. It can be significant or trivial. You have faith that the bus will come, but if the bus doesn't arrive, you adapt. You find another way to get to work. "For we walk by faith, not by sight."Things can look bleak, but if you know deeply that there's always a way forward, you don't give up. You can't. That's what Basri means to me.
Q: M21 is soon to be released and I'm getting really excited to open up a pack and find him in that mythic slot. Lastly, I want to ask—what makes you most excited about Basri's character design?
SA: I think players will find Basri to be a great addition to White.I'm excited to see what unique, fun, and sometimes terrifying play patterns our players will discover with him.
GT: I love Basri's crisis of faith moment. I think there could have been a version of his story where Basri went down a very dark path. I really admire that in his darkest hour, seeing his world destroyed, his god dead, and Bolas's lie revealed, he's able to perform this incredible alchemy and turn the ashes of an unfathomable betrayal into a renewed sense of purpose. I find it really moving that, despite Oketra's complicity in the lie of the Trials and the tragedy of her death, the legacy of her values—truth, solidarity, compassion—will live on through Basri and hopefully become a force for good in the Multiverse.
DK: Basri is venturing into a diverse, challenging Multiverse with a very narrow skillset (fetching arrows while sporting a mean fade?) but is trusting that his belief will see him through—the belief that by working together we can be better and accomplish more. He's a capable adult exploring new worlds with a childlike sense of wonder and a noble heart. I think that's really beautiful and aspirational, and I can't wait to see what each step of his journey brings.
Thanks so much to Sydney, Gerritt, and Daniel for their work and insights on the new Planeswalker, Basri Ket. Don't miss your first chance to stand on the front lines next to Basri at an M21 Prerelease event on June 26!
Last edited:
Bully_Hunter_69
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- May 10, 2018
Jund is sick in historic right now with a gitrog/crucible deck.
Fervent Champion
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2015
Same here. I've actually been really enjoying Jund again since the companion fix.
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2019
lmao
archive
So apparently this disgruntled employee tweeted this earlier today and it’s been causing an uproar on magic twitter.
archive
My name is Zaiem Beg. I was a contributing editor, then editor-in-chief for major Magic: The Gathering retailer and strategy website Channelfireball.com. Before that, I was a regular contributor for TCGPlayer.com. I’ve covered several Grand Prix events for official Wizards of the Coast coverage, I’ve played in Pro Tours testing as a member of Team Channelfireball and Team Mythic, and I’ve been an active member of the Seattle Magic community, where both Wizards of the Coast and I reside. My work has allowed me to foster close relationships with players at all levels of competitive play as well as employees and contractors at Wizards of the Coast.
Last week when Lawrence Harmon’s published his open letter to Wizards about the treatment of black players in the community, a friend and former employee of Wizards of the Coast shared it on his Facebook wall saying, "The Wizards I know is a company that wants to do the right thing,” a sentiment I saw echoed several times elsewhere. I hold a very different viewpoint of the company.
Here's the Wizards I know:
I know the time a black writer messaged Wizards asking about writing openings for eighteen months and was told they were not accepting new writers, then continued to keep hiring white writers over that time.
Or the time a black person interviewed at Wizards and started off the interview being told "I've never had this many internal recommendations for a candidate before" then three minutes later, "you're not really a culture fit here."
Or the time they put a 7/11 creature in an India-themed set, then joked in a column about putting the word "convenience" in the flavor text if only there was room on the card for such delightful racisms.
Or all the times people of color heard “you don’t have experience for this role,” when they had more experience than the white person they ultimately hired.
Or how the only way most people with brown skin can get in the door is as a temporary contractor and the common refrain along the lines of "well, I didn't get hired on full-time as a contractor, got beat out again, maybe next time, I don't get it -- my teammates and manager said I was doing the best work on the team" with baffled sadness over why their dream company treated them that way.
Or all the times a person of color got fired (contractors, natch) for their first offense but saw their white coworkers get second- and third- chances for the same thing.
Or all the times someone of color had to put up with casual workplace bullshit but knowing if they speak up, they have zero chance of ever advancing if they say anything, so they had to go along with it with a smile.
Or or or or or or.
There are so many stories. And most of these stories don’t get shared, even privately among friends. Stories that were asked not to be shared even anonymously, lest some vague detail potentially connected back to them. And those who are in a position to speak out for others don’t feel empowered to do so.
That’s because they operate on fear.
Monowhite Control: not just a deck
There is absolutely zero accountability at Wizards of the Coast.
People don't speak up to change from within because they can't. Passion is welcome as long as it's not the boat-rocking kind. It's really hard to do well at the company if you're a boat-rocker. People hold petty grudges for years and it's very bad for your career if you want to stick your neck out to do the right thing. Dissent is absolutely not what you want to be doing if you want to advance your career prospects at Wizards of the Coast. If you’re seen as a troublemaker in any way, they won't hire you if you apply. If you're a contractor, you won't get converted. You get less leeway at work. Maybe your bonus is a little lower. You don't get as good a review. You get passed over for promotion.
This problem is not limited to just inside the company by any stretch. Content creators who rock the boat do not get rewarded. Community leaders can’t speak out about things they feel are unjust because they know if they do, their equity plummets. If you’re a content creator and get showcased or get a preview card and receive the mammoth signal boost that comes with any official Wizards endorsement of your content, that can make-or-break someone in an increasingly crowded field of streamers, video makers, writers, and podcasters. It is absolutely imperative that nobody bites the hand that feeds them because absolutely anything out of line at all can result in any number of forms of retaliation, mostly insidious, sometimes overt. They'll blacklist them. They'll ban them if they need to.
Anyone in a position to hold them accountable is invested in being around the game in some capacity, and that would be career suicide. If you ever even plan on potentially working at Wizards someday you need to keep in line at all times. And even worse, even if you don't have aspirations of working for Wizards, a Magic website, or creating content independently, they can just shut off your ability to play the game.
Social media activity is closely monitored. If this note gets shared on Facebook, no Wizards of the Coast employee or content creator, no CFB writer, no Arena streamer, no podcaster is likely to engage with it in any way. Not a like on a tweet. Not a Facebook react. Doing that carries too high a risk of the silent death penalty.
Former director of Global Organized Play and eSports Helene Bergeot:
This is formally codified in the language when players sign when they agree to the Magic Pro League, a league of 32 contracted players for MTG: Arena, one of their two digital offerings.
You shall not make any statement, oral or written, that ridicules, libels, slanders, makes fun of, is injurious to, or places in a negative light the MPL, the Games, the League, WOTC, and Hasbro (including for each its employees or other competitors).
Clean it up a little and that could be the company mission statement!
The Jason Chan situation: where basic human decency is kind of a big ask
The degree to which Wizards operates knowing it won’t face public accountability sometimes reaches absurd levels. Take, for example, the situation last week with Jason Chan, better known as Amaz.
Amaz is a Chinese-Canadian streamer on Twitch with 924k followers. He is primarily a Hearthstone streamer, but in recent years has played more Magic, much to the delight of Wizards. Bringing in that crossover audience is very valuable, so they are happy to promote him. He’s received two special Pro Tour invites and had previously been sponsored by Channelfireball. Last August, he was disqualified from Grand Prix Vegas for aggressive behavior. Pushing or bumping into a judge, depending on whose account you believe.
Getting disqualified from a Grand Prix for aggressive behavior toward a judge typically carries a suspension from playing in live Magic tournaments. However, Wizards can’t continue to use Amaz for advertising their new digital platform if they announced he’s not and didn’t want to deal with the PR and outrage, so they just quietly banned him behind the scenes and gave him a shadowban so they could keep him out of their Magic tournaments, but still reap the rewards of the audience he brings to their game. This is one of the open secrets that are whispered in private messages, and these shadowbans have been effective in managing the PR strategy. They’re watching your social media likes. They’re definitely watching what you say about who is and who isn’t banned. Nobody gets out of line.
Jason Chan, better known as Amaz, has been banned from playing in live Magic: The Gathering tournaments since the fall of 2019.
Wizards of the Coast runs a feature called Cube Spotlight. A cube is a great way to fine-tune a Magic experience and is something people feel deeply passionate about. It’s a form of expression and the philosophy of what makes good or fun or interesting gameplay. Curating a cube is very personal. For Cube Spotlight, they take someone’s cube, they put up a beautiful writeup about the cube and the decisions that went into it, and run it on queues on Magic Online all week. Having different cube lists each week keeps formats fresh so people will continue to play Magic Online and not burn out.
Amaz did not get the treatment to his writeup that everyone else got. They had him submit one. Magic writing for things of this nature takes a long time to write even if you’re used to the cadence of putting out a column every week. For people who write seldom or not at all, these can take as many as 20 hours to write.
Instead, they had him submit a time-consuming writeup about a passion project under the guise of showcasing his cube to the world, then didn’t run the article. They just put his cube list up and they didn’t even give him credit for it until he asked them to. The reason? “Scheduling issues.” They didn’t afford him the basic decency of an explanation that isn’t transparently bullshit. Every other cube spotlight has the search feature enabled on the webpage, allowing you to search for specific cards in the long list. His does not.
But I'll tell you what they didn’t have any problem with: they took the part they can monetize and were happy to run with that. Scheduling issues did not extend to the Magic Online queues, which were fresh and popping off with his intellectual property. Hey, as long as they can profit off his work!
Asking someone to spend considerable time writing and perfecting an explanation of their passion project, then not running it saying "oops, scheduling issues" is cruel. It reads like a mean-spirited prank. They couldn’t even afford him the decency to put his own fucking name on his work until he asked. They asked a content creator to provide content, then ran it without attribution. Of all the possible permutations available to them, THAT is what they ultimately settled on.
.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/cube-spotlight-series-john-terrills-cultic-cube-2020-05-18
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/cube-spotlight-series-pauper-cube-2020-03-10
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/cube-spotlight-series-amazs-peasant-cube-2020-06-01
https://twitter.com/Amaz/status/1267886969108996099
https://twitter.com/Amaz/status/1267920724997611522
Imagine thinking treating anyone like this could ever somehow be okay, as if a shadowban justifies this. Of course he can't say anything to advocate for himself, because gaming is his livelihood and can't bite the hand that feeds him even when that hand is exploiting him. And since Wizards shadowbanned him because lol transparency, he can't even defend himself along that axis or provide any context. He just has to smile while they shit on him. But they were very nice to credit him for his own work after he asked nicely, as a treat.
This is what happens when there’s never any public accountability. People can’t even safely like a social media post without fear of retaliation. How can anyone feel safe to do the unpopular thing and stand up and tell people what they’re doing is wrong? How can that possibly happen in the environment of paranoia and fear Wizards of the Coast has deliberately created?
We’re very inclusive, that just doesn’t include you
The very next day after the Amaz cube went up, they tweeted out a black square and look, we have Cedric! And Rashad! And...an hour later we found a third one and yes I know he's called us out over our racist behavior but...he's black! We have three black friends, you guys! I'll let you guess if they talked to any of these people before exploiting them for tokenism. Wizards of the Coast is so proud of their diversity and inclusiveness. And they’re so, so proud of themselves for their LGBTQ characters and their black characters and how they have a black guy on coverage, so how could they possibly be racist??
And it's so insulting to see them do things like go to Kaladesh and pat themselves on the back about how so goshdarn diverse they are all the navel-gazing and look we made Saheeli Rai, then you look at the company photo and realize the only people benefitting from this financially don't look like the people in these inclusive planes. They don't look like that at all. (But still gotta work in that 7-11 joke, Indian people own convenience stores you see, that's the joke isn't that very funny, really wish we could have worked something into the flavor text though, hey maybe we can do a tech support joke if we return there that'd be pretty fun wouldn't it?)
Eric Froehlich earnestly looking to support black Magic artists, only to learn the reality of how few there are would be funny if it wasn’t so sad:
“Sorry, you're not a culture fit, now please excuse me while I promote our next set with Teferi as the flagship character wow sales look strong this quarter #unity #blacklivesmatter”
And maybe you can explain some of these transgressions with innocent explanations. But I liken it to cheating. Everyone forgets to put their creature into the graveyard after combat sometimes, but when it happens over and over and over and over and over again, it becomes a pattern. And then the big things like "telling the black writer we aren't accepting writers while hiring white ones" is just clear, naked cheating like stacking the deck (an apt metaphor if I say so myself) and we’ve arrived at Alex Bertoncini. (This analogy gets less clean when you incorporate subconscious bias, but analogies involving complex ideas are rarely perfect; this should still suffice.)
And since nobody feels like they can speak up about all the racist experiences that they’ve had or noticed from other coworkers, there can be no allyship. The people wronged have no option but to sit there and hope it gets better, often gaslighted and wondering if the very racist thing they endured wasn’t racist at all because nobody else is talking about these things, so maybe they’re just imagining it.
WotC has some wonderful, kind, empathetic people working there who are willing to do the right thing, but the culture makes it impossible for those people to have any meaningful influence. There's no culture of accountability, just deep obliviousness while simultaneously maintaining the performance of awareness. And they think because they're not all MAGA Trump 2020 alt-right nationalist #NotCStaff, they're absolved of racism.
"This game is inclusive to everyone, but if you're brown, we'll keep you at arm's length and maybe you can be a token if you're lucky. But regardless we are always happy to profit off your work, and most of the time we'll even credit you for it!”
Wizards of the Coast is a rotten company with a long unbroken pattern of insidious racist behavior wrapped in self-congratulatory praise. You can print all the Teferis and Saheelis and Chandras you want, but it doesn't make you racially inclusive when the people profiting off it all are almost exclusively white. And people of color can't get in on it even when they try.
That's not inclusive; it's exploitive.
That's the Wizards I know.
-Zaiem
P.S. this is a real Magic card. Now, this card was from a long time ago and would be unfair to criticize the current management for something printed over 25 years ago. But you know what was not from 25 years ago? The URL that points to this card in the Gatherer database. That can be changed easily and at any point, but nevertheless, it remains where it is. Isn’t that an interesting choice?
.
https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/details.aspx?multiverseid=1488
Last week when Lawrence Harmon’s published his open letter to Wizards about the treatment of black players in the community, a friend and former employee of Wizards of the Coast shared it on his Facebook wall saying, "The Wizards I know is a company that wants to do the right thing,” a sentiment I saw echoed several times elsewhere. I hold a very different viewpoint of the company.
Here's the Wizards I know:
I know the time a black writer messaged Wizards asking about writing openings for eighteen months and was told they were not accepting new writers, then continued to keep hiring white writers over that time.
Or the time a black person interviewed at Wizards and started off the interview being told "I've never had this many internal recommendations for a candidate before" then three minutes later, "you're not really a culture fit here."
Or the time they put a 7/11 creature in an India-themed set, then joked in a column about putting the word "convenience" in the flavor text if only there was room on the card for such delightful racisms.
Or all the times people of color heard “you don’t have experience for this role,” when they had more experience than the white person they ultimately hired.
Or how the only way most people with brown skin can get in the door is as a temporary contractor and the common refrain along the lines of "well, I didn't get hired on full-time as a contractor, got beat out again, maybe next time, I don't get it -- my teammates and manager said I was doing the best work on the team" with baffled sadness over why their dream company treated them that way.
Or all the times a person of color got fired (contractors, natch) for their first offense but saw their white coworkers get second- and third- chances for the same thing.
Or all the times someone of color had to put up with casual workplace bullshit but knowing if they speak up, they have zero chance of ever advancing if they say anything, so they had to go along with it with a smile.
Or or or or or or.
There are so many stories. And most of these stories don’t get shared, even privately among friends. Stories that were asked not to be shared even anonymously, lest some vague detail potentially connected back to them. And those who are in a position to speak out for others don’t feel empowered to do so.
That’s because they operate on fear.
Monowhite Control: not just a deck
There is absolutely zero accountability at Wizards of the Coast.
People don't speak up to change from within because they can't. Passion is welcome as long as it's not the boat-rocking kind. It's really hard to do well at the company if you're a boat-rocker. People hold petty grudges for years and it's very bad for your career if you want to stick your neck out to do the right thing. Dissent is absolutely not what you want to be doing if you want to advance your career prospects at Wizards of the Coast. If you’re seen as a troublemaker in any way, they won't hire you if you apply. If you're a contractor, you won't get converted. You get less leeway at work. Maybe your bonus is a little lower. You don't get as good a review. You get passed over for promotion.
This problem is not limited to just inside the company by any stretch. Content creators who rock the boat do not get rewarded. Community leaders can’t speak out about things they feel are unjust because they know if they do, their equity plummets. If you’re a content creator and get showcased or get a preview card and receive the mammoth signal boost that comes with any official Wizards endorsement of your content, that can make-or-break someone in an increasingly crowded field of streamers, video makers, writers, and podcasters. It is absolutely imperative that nobody bites the hand that feeds them because absolutely anything out of line at all can result in any number of forms of retaliation, mostly insidious, sometimes overt. They'll blacklist them. They'll ban them if they need to.
Anyone in a position to hold them accountable is invested in being around the game in some capacity, and that would be career suicide. If you ever even plan on potentially working at Wizards someday you need to keep in line at all times. And even worse, even if you don't have aspirations of working for Wizards, a Magic website, or creating content independently, they can just shut off your ability to play the game.
Social media activity is closely monitored. If this note gets shared on Facebook, no Wizards of the Coast employee or content creator, no CFB writer, no Arena streamer, no podcaster is likely to engage with it in any way. Not a like on a tweet. Not a Facebook react. Doing that carries too high a risk of the silent death penalty.
Former director of Global Organized Play and eSports Helene Bergeot:
This is formally codified in the language when players sign when they agree to the Magic Pro League, a league of 32 contracted players for MTG: Arena, one of their two digital offerings.
You shall not make any statement, oral or written, that ridicules, libels, slanders, makes fun of, is injurious to, or places in a negative light the MPL, the Games, the League, WOTC, and Hasbro (including for each its employees or other competitors).
Clean it up a little and that could be the company mission statement!
The Jason Chan situation: where basic human decency is kind of a big ask
The degree to which Wizards operates knowing it won’t face public accountability sometimes reaches absurd levels. Take, for example, the situation last week with Jason Chan, better known as Amaz.
Amaz is a Chinese-Canadian streamer on Twitch with 924k followers. He is primarily a Hearthstone streamer, but in recent years has played more Magic, much to the delight of Wizards. Bringing in that crossover audience is very valuable, so they are happy to promote him. He’s received two special Pro Tour invites and had previously been sponsored by Channelfireball. Last August, he was disqualified from Grand Prix Vegas for aggressive behavior. Pushing or bumping into a judge, depending on whose account you believe.
Getting disqualified from a Grand Prix for aggressive behavior toward a judge typically carries a suspension from playing in live Magic tournaments. However, Wizards can’t continue to use Amaz for advertising their new digital platform if they announced he’s not and didn’t want to deal with the PR and outrage, so they just quietly banned him behind the scenes and gave him a shadowban so they could keep him out of their Magic tournaments, but still reap the rewards of the audience he brings to their game. This is one of the open secrets that are whispered in private messages, and these shadowbans have been effective in managing the PR strategy. They’re watching your social media likes. They’re definitely watching what you say about who is and who isn’t banned. Nobody gets out of line.
Jason Chan, better known as Amaz, has been banned from playing in live Magic: The Gathering tournaments since the fall of 2019.
Wizards of the Coast runs a feature called Cube Spotlight. A cube is a great way to fine-tune a Magic experience and is something people feel deeply passionate about. It’s a form of expression and the philosophy of what makes good or fun or interesting gameplay. Curating a cube is very personal. For Cube Spotlight, they take someone’s cube, they put up a beautiful writeup about the cube and the decisions that went into it, and run it on queues on Magic Online all week. Having different cube lists each week keeps formats fresh so people will continue to play Magic Online and not burn out.
Amaz did not get the treatment to his writeup that everyone else got. They had him submit one. Magic writing for things of this nature takes a long time to write even if you’re used to the cadence of putting out a column every week. For people who write seldom or not at all, these can take as many as 20 hours to write.
Instead, they had him submit a time-consuming writeup about a passion project under the guise of showcasing his cube to the world, then didn’t run the article. They just put his cube list up and they didn’t even give him credit for it until he asked them to. The reason? “Scheduling issues.” They didn’t afford him the basic decency of an explanation that isn’t transparently bullshit. Every other cube spotlight has the search feature enabled on the webpage, allowing you to search for specific cards in the long list. His does not.
But I'll tell you what they didn’t have any problem with: they took the part they can monetize and were happy to run with that. Scheduling issues did not extend to the Magic Online queues, which were fresh and popping off with his intellectual property. Hey, as long as they can profit off his work!
Asking someone to spend considerable time writing and perfecting an explanation of their passion project, then not running it saying "oops, scheduling issues" is cruel. It reads like a mean-spirited prank. They couldn’t even afford him the decency to put his own fucking name on his work until he asked. They asked a content creator to provide content, then ran it without attribution. Of all the possible permutations available to them, THAT is what they ultimately settled on.
.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/cube-spotlight-series-john-terrills-cultic-cube-2020-05-18
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/cube-spotlight-series-pauper-cube-2020-03-10
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/cube-spotlight-series-amazs-peasant-cube-2020-06-01
https://twitter.com/Amaz/status/1267886969108996099
https://twitter.com/Amaz/status/1267920724997611522
Imagine thinking treating anyone like this could ever somehow be okay, as if a shadowban justifies this. Of course he can't say anything to advocate for himself, because gaming is his livelihood and can't bite the hand that feeds him even when that hand is exploiting him. And since Wizards shadowbanned him because lol transparency, he can't even defend himself along that axis or provide any context. He just has to smile while they shit on him. But they were very nice to credit him for his own work after he asked nicely, as a treat.
This is what happens when there’s never any public accountability. People can’t even safely like a social media post without fear of retaliation. How can anyone feel safe to do the unpopular thing and stand up and tell people what they’re doing is wrong? How can that possibly happen in the environment of paranoia and fear Wizards of the Coast has deliberately created?
We’re very inclusive, that just doesn’t include you
The very next day after the Amaz cube went up, they tweeted out a black square and look, we have Cedric! And Rashad! And...an hour later we found a third one and yes I know he's called us out over our racist behavior but...he's black! We have three black friends, you guys! I'll let you guess if they talked to any of these people before exploiting them for tokenism. Wizards of the Coast is so proud of their diversity and inclusiveness. And they’re so, so proud of themselves for their LGBTQ characters and their black characters and how they have a black guy on coverage, so how could they possibly be racist??
And it's so insulting to see them do things like go to Kaladesh and pat themselves on the back about how so goshdarn diverse they are all the navel-gazing and look we made Saheeli Rai, then you look at the company photo and realize the only people benefitting from this financially don't look like the people in these inclusive planes. They don't look like that at all. (But still gotta work in that 7-11 joke, Indian people own convenience stores you see, that's the joke isn't that very funny, really wish we could have worked something into the flavor text though, hey maybe we can do a tech support joke if we return there that'd be pretty fun wouldn't it?)
Eric Froehlich earnestly looking to support black Magic artists, only to learn the reality of how few there are would be funny if it wasn’t so sad:
“Sorry, you're not a culture fit, now please excuse me while I promote our next set with Teferi as the flagship character wow sales look strong this quarter #unity #blacklivesmatter”
And maybe you can explain some of these transgressions with innocent explanations. But I liken it to cheating. Everyone forgets to put their creature into the graveyard after combat sometimes, but when it happens over and over and over and over and over again, it becomes a pattern. And then the big things like "telling the black writer we aren't accepting writers while hiring white ones" is just clear, naked cheating like stacking the deck (an apt metaphor if I say so myself) and we’ve arrived at Alex Bertoncini. (This analogy gets less clean when you incorporate subconscious bias, but analogies involving complex ideas are rarely perfect; this should still suffice.)
And since nobody feels like they can speak up about all the racist experiences that they’ve had or noticed from other coworkers, there can be no allyship. The people wronged have no option but to sit there and hope it gets better, often gaslighted and wondering if the very racist thing they endured wasn’t racist at all because nobody else is talking about these things, so maybe they’re just imagining it.
WotC has some wonderful, kind, empathetic people working there who are willing to do the right thing, but the culture makes it impossible for those people to have any meaningful influence. There's no culture of accountability, just deep obliviousness while simultaneously maintaining the performance of awareness. And they think because they're not all MAGA Trump 2020 alt-right nationalist #NotCStaff, they're absolved of racism.
"This game is inclusive to everyone, but if you're brown, we'll keep you at arm's length and maybe you can be a token if you're lucky. But regardless we are always happy to profit off your work, and most of the time we'll even credit you for it!”
Wizards of the Coast is a rotten company with a long unbroken pattern of insidious racist behavior wrapped in self-congratulatory praise. You can print all the Teferis and Saheelis and Chandras you want, but it doesn't make you racially inclusive when the people profiting off it all are almost exclusively white. And people of color can't get in on it even when they try.
That's not inclusive; it's exploitive.
That's the Wizards I know.
-Zaiem
P.S. this is a real Magic card. Now, this card was from a long time ago and would be unfair to criticize the current management for something printed over 25 years ago. But you know what was not from 25 years ago? The URL that points to this card in the Gatherer database. That can be changed easily and at any point, but nevertheless, it remains where it is. Isn’t that an interesting choice?
.
https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/details.aspx?multiverseid=1488
So apparently this disgruntled employee tweeted this earlier today and it’s been causing an uproar on magic twitter.
- Joined
- May 8, 2020
It's times like this that I'm glad Netrunner's 'diversity' was mostly a happy accident.
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2017
That Google doc.
Tezzeret's black?
This is why you don't put your fantasy/scifi setting into modern day issues. Because it will never be enough and you tossed aside your shield of "it's a made up world."
Ironic considering a black man is all over core 2021 packaging.
EDIT: wow. From the same doc
Tezzeret's black?
This is why you don't put your fantasy/scifi setting into modern day issues. Because it will never be enough and you tossed aside your shield of "it's a made up world."
Ironic considering a black man is all over core 2021 packaging.
EDIT: wow. From the same doc
- We take notice when the brand launches its flagship “Justice League” (for lack of a better term) and the darkest member is a white-passing ‘Greek’ man.
- We took notice to the ham-fisted inclusion of Teferi and Kaya into The Gatewatch, and aren’t blind to the fact that Teferi perfectly fits the “Mystical Magical Negro” archetype.
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- Joined
- Jan 18, 2017
Harold McNeil is racist as fuck but it being 1488 in gatherer is pretty much just a weird twist of fate. If you order all the cards printed in the order they are supposed to be on the sheets it actually does end up being #1488.
Unlimited Lich is 666 btw.
Also I know two black fellas that play magic and nobody is shitty to them and both of them are honestly some of the nicest players I know. If anybody was I can assure you nobody is gonna let that shit stand in my shop.
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2019
It's times like this that I'm glad Netrunner's 'diversity' was mostly a happy accident.
That game isn’t near as bad about the “muh diversity” as magic is, thankfully.
I’ve noticed they like to make terrible planeswalkers black. Look at aminatou from commander 2018. I remember so many people were excited about that card because it’s the empowered black child trope. Remember when one of the khans was a troon?
I love that people are trying to replace their copies of sylvan library now that the know about McNeill, only for them to realize that the only other art for it is done by Terese Nielsen.
Edit: it’s not Nielsen, but that’s be great if it was.
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Fervent Champion
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2015
If anything Magic player I've known are the least like to care about race. No sensible person would drive someone away from a hobby that requires multiple people to play in person. Same is true of other games like 40k.
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2017
Yeah, the only people you should hate in magic are blue people.
(really, they should be careful about overanalyzing things in the game, otherwise we'll be able to start making jokes about murder is a black card)
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2017
That game isn’t near as bad about the “muh diversity” as magic is, thankfully.
I’ve noticed they like to make terrible planeswalkers black. Look at aminatou from commander 2018. I remember so many people were excited about that card because it’s the empowered black child trope. Remember when one of the khans was a troon?
I love that people are trying to replace their copies of sylvan library now that the know about McNeill, only for them to realize that the only other art for it is done by Terese Nielsen.
Edit: it’s not Nielsen, but that’s be great if it was.
If it wasn't for the price I'd probably actually run Invoke Prejudice in a commander deck. I almost got one at one point for lolz before it spiked in price. Friend of mine did have an Italian one though. I do have an Italian Moat at least.
Not the most expensive card I own but it's the most I've ever paid for a card, aside from my judge foil Demonic Tutor.
I mean, you can probably guess it's one of my favorite cards anyway... Also, the Ultimate Masters art fucking sucks for it. I don't care if it was meant to be an Masterpiece in Ixalan or not. That's why it's got a pirate on it though.
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2019
That and the vampiric tutor judge promo were pretty cool art wise.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they wound up banning invoke prejudice across the board in some kind of empty gesture despite it not being widely used despite being a lulzy card like in the eye of chaos.
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2017
OG Vampiric Tutor JF or bust.
I was thinking about something similar today except it was what if they banned every version of a card with art by Harold McNeil and Terese Neilson.
It'd be RIP Force of Will aside from the judge foil.
Would def help line CFB, TCG, SCG's wallets though.
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2019
I remember last year Gerry T was doing alters for people by scribbling over the art of their FoWs.
Honka Honka Burning Love
In Clown World, the only god is the one who Honks.
True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2019
"Jund" has a very specific meaning, The Gitrog/Crucible is very much not a traditional "Jund" deck in the Modern(format) sense of the name.
And this is why you never pander to these braindead fucks. It never works.
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