Time Spiral : les premières cartes

Le 20/08/2006, seida avait écrit ...

Un rêve s'écroule, ces fumerolles emportés par le vent...
Wizard affirme qu'il ne réinprimera plus jamais d'ondins.

And merfolk were on the way out. To head off a swarm of angry e-mails let me try to explain what has happened to the merfolk.
At the same time R&D was examining the color wheel, the creative text folks were reexamining the visuals of the game. In the last ten years, Magic has been all over the map in its creative vision. The team wanted to figure out the proper way to visually represent the game. After hours of talking, the answer seemed to be obvious. Magic, at its heart, is a game about wizards dueling. The creative had to embrace this core concept.
All the spells, the creatures, the artifacts, the land, the enchantments had to reinforce the concept of dueling. They had to make sense in a duel. A wizard fighting for his life needed to want to call forth this spell or item. As an exercise, the creative team looked at past Magic cards to examine which spells fit this new mold and which didn't. One of the big problem areas were water based creatures. It just didn't make any sense that a wizard would summon a shark in the middle of a land-based battle.
While merfolk weren't quite as bad as fish, they did provide discontinuity. To prove my point, let me pull an example that shares two of my passions, superheroes and television. Let's assume you're a wizard with the power to summon any one of the Super Friends. Obviously Superman's first. Then Wonder Woman. Then probably Batman and Robin. Next? I guess Jayna. The ability to turn into any kind of animal has to be somewhat useful. And then? I guess I have to go with Zan. There was one episode where he turned into a tidal wave.
Finally, we come to Aquaman who ranks below everyone but Gleek, the space monkey. Why so low? Because the ability to swim well and communicate with sea life is not that useful in a land battle. In fact, the history of Aquaman in the comics has shown that no one knows what to do with him once you take him out of the sea. The same holds true for merfolk. They just don't make a lot of sense when your creative revolves around land-based magical duels.

Lord of Atlantis: I don't like playing the race card, but it's just got to be said. R&D has some issues with merfolk. You know why I'm going home? Because I have gills, plain and simple. You don't see the Goblin King gathering up his belongings. Oh, no. Goblins fit right in. But just live underwater and suddenly you're not appropriate for land based fighting.
Merfolk of the Pearl Trident: Lord, it's okay.
Lord of Atlantis: No, it's not. This has to be said. What they're doing to the merfolk is disgraceful. Disgraceful! You don't see this kind of attitude towards the elves or the zombies. This doesn't end here.
Merfolk of the Pearl Trident: He's a little upset.

"Thanks for the question, Scott. As you know, we're currently not using Merfolk as a creature type in Magic. In trying to improve Magic's creative, we took a close look at blue creatures and a few questions came up: 'Does it really make sense to summon aquatic creatures to land battles?', 'How do water-bound and land-bound creatures fight?'.

Q: "About the 'tribal' aspect of Onslaught... I can understand Goblins for red, Elves for green, Zombies for black, and Soldiers for white, but why Wizards for blue? I mean, when I think of blue, the first creature type that springs to mind is Merfolk. Wizards are (I think) in every color. Merfolk are not. Why didn't you use them?"
--Stephen Frimmel, Carrboro, NC

A: From Brady Dommermuth, Magic creative director:
"Thanks for your question. We're always working on improvements to Magic's creative elements. One of those improvements involves rethinking blue's creatures. For example, does it make sense to summon an aquatic creature in a battle between dueling mages? How would a merfolk attack a land-bound creature? In general, we're trying to leave underwater stuff behind, or at least make our aquatic creatures amphibious, to make the game make more sense.

"Also, Merfolk were a staple creature type for a long time, but they weren't ever particularly loved by players (unlike Goblins and Elves, for example). When we poll players, underwater settings and themes are near the bottom of their lists. So change is afoot for blue creatures. Because of Onslaught's tribal theme, almost all Wizards will be blue for the block. But as you've begun to notice, Wizard is a job, not a race (as are Soldier and Cleric), so we're currently working on a new iconic race for blue."

Another common question is posed in the many “Why Coral Eel?” letters.
In your recent article “Small Change,” you say that Merfolk were eliminated because sea-creatures made little sense in Magic. Why then, what Coral Eel put in place? Last time I checked, Eels weren't so hot on land either.
Jonah Palmer

Jonah,
I got a lot of letters asking this very question. The answer is that change takes time. We wanted a 2/1 vanilla creature for the basic set. We had two choices, Coral Merfolk and Coral Eel. Neither fit our new “makes sense fighting on land” philosophy. So, we made the decision to purge the Merfolk on this pass and fix the problem before Ninth Edition. So to all you Coral Eel and Giant Octopus lovers, you’re forewarned. Their time is almost up.

Tout ceci résume un horrible état d'esprit. Wizard ne réinprimera pas d'ondins tant qu'il n'auras pas trouvés le moyen de faire combattre une créature aquatique contre une créature terrestre dans un duel de sorcier (nous). Espérons qu'ils trouveront vite la solution.

Moi, je dit, ils n'ont qu'à s'inspirer des Nagas de Warcraft.

[ Dernière modification par seida le 20 aoû 2006 à 14h14 ]

Le 21/08/2006, D1abl0s avait écrit ...

Vous saviez que Time spiral et ses deux extensions, Planar Chaos et Future Sight étaient de vrais carte ?

Le 21/08/2006, azara avait écrit ...

J'aime bien quand wizard dit qu'il vas fair de nouvel capa car dans 99,9% des cas ces du recyclage de viele capa d'anciene carte avec un effet court qui peut devenir une capa .

Lool, Cite moi les cartes dont ils se sont inspirer pour farie les dit capacités des 10 guildes de ravnica... vas-y... j'attend?