Yeah, when I necro a thread, it's "like three months" later...

Not to be the pessimist, but are we sure the dwarves will be the kind of dwarves we want to see, or a better take on them than the duergar, or do you think it will probably be the dueregar again?

I kind of hope it's not the last one because their look was bad and from what I can tell it doesn't seem they were too popular.

What did people actually dislike about the Duergar beyond They Changed It Now It Sucks?

I mean I just went through all of lormor and broadly speaking I'd say both settings were wildly successful, and the duergar fit really well into shadowmoor while still feeling very dwarven. The biggest problem I see with them is that they weren't very visually consistent and sometimes slipped a little into boggart and kithkin territory

That was most of my problem, adding into it that they lacked the builder-ish pride of most dwarves in a setting that also had the Hobgoblins running about...

IMO, they weren't terrible in isolation, but they were a pretty bad fit for conceptual space. Kithkin did xenophobic isolationists and hobgoblins did quasi-honorable scrappy fighting type short ugly folk...

The biggest problem a lot of the latecomers in shadowmoor had were a dearth of actual reasons to associate with them. Some were okay, such as selkies, but the likes of the pucas, duergar, and hags were pathetic showings with no identity worth speaking about or details that overlapped so badly they shoved each other out of the spotlight.

See I loved the pucas and hags and hated selkies (why couldn't they have their own creature type???) so

The hags were stretched too thin between two color combos, so they suffered an identity crisis a bit much. W/B used them well. G/B had a decent visual scheme, but literally no identity of their own.
Puca were tragically unutilized. All of one card, and instead we got those **** noggle.

But they just phoned in so much of eventide flavorfully. Mechanically it was absolutely insanely powerful.

Yeah I'd agree with both of those things.

I mean it's weird because there's so much cool stuff there but yeah a lot of it feels very underexplored. The w/b hags have an amazing visual identity! I love the hobgoblins so much they're so intriguing! And the puca magic we saw was fascinating even if we only got one actual card. And you know I love noggles even if you don't

Like I think what I love so much about it is that it really feels diverse in a way that magic planes frankly don't anymore. To put it bluntly, everything is so focus tested and style guided that there's no room for any damn flights of fancy! It's just the same as the weird nonliteral art thing--we go back to zendikar and whoops no more surrakar, we go back to mirrodin and whoops no more sliths.

But at the same time I think you're right that while they had all those resources at their finger tips they were tragically under utilized. I mean I feel like the Eventide anthology wasn't even a blip on hardly anyone's radar, and all those weird wonderful creatures didn't even really show up until the second set of the mini block, so there was no room for anything to breathe.

I don't know I think I'm just going to have to try to dump a bunch of Lormor cards into the Kyren Game and get people to flesh out these creatures for me It's just too good to waste.

But yeah, it's... I dunno. I just... feel like there's a vibrant weirdness to Shadowmoor that to a large extent we've lost. Ravnica is kind of the last bastion for that weirdness and with two set blocks now that have to accommodate ten guilds I really don't expect we're going to see Ravnica's wild and weird side again, either.

tl;dr:

I read that again and laughed my pants off.

I think my biggest problem with Shadowmoor is that there was too much in it.

There were so damn many races in the setting, and a lot of them were competing for mechanical and flavorful space. Worse still, a ton of them had no analogue in Lorwyn, so I'm left wondering where the hell they came from.

I enjoyed Selkies and hags, but had largely forgotten that there were black-green hags as well as the white-black ones that resonated so well. Pucas were kinda meh, but to me they didn't feel shoehorned as a "this is a race that will matter", they were just sort of a sideshow. Like a Korrigan (Loch Korrigan is one of my favorites) or Dieflyn, but there happened to be more than one. Noggles were a bit more shoehorned (Eventide did that) but were also kinda fun and unique for their headspace. Duregar just got overcrowded, especially with YET ANOTHER EVENTIDE TRIBE in the exact same enemy pair

Well, my point wasn't really to blame Brady for shooting down dwarves but to express my bafflement about how he was able to singlehandedly enforce his personal pet peeve. Because when you look at things that were objectively A LOT more terrible and harmful to Magic than dwarves (the things I stated above), that makes it look like everyone in Creative was okay with it and just nodded it through. Like, they discussed trivialities like whether or not Magic needs a particular race (only because Brady didn't like that race), but when it comes to the really important things, nobody stands up and says "Wait a moment, I think all of this is bull and people are gonna hate it! We can't do this!"..?

And then, I guess you could pick any race except humans (plus maybe elves and goblins), exclude it from Magic for ten to fifteen years, then bring it back (or not) and say "See? Magic did really well without race XY! No harm done!" I mean, the right question to ask isn't "Does Magic need Dwarves?", it's more like "Would it be really cool, enrich the world of the game and make a lot of people happy?". And at least for me, the answer to that question is yes.

Yeah, I didn't write that, and it's not an adequate summary of what I wrote either.
And it's not like I didn't give any reasons for why I think still feels right for dwarves.

Fair enough. The Orcs were actually one of the things I liked about Tarkir. I really enjoyed Unyielding Krumar.

@Pavor: Brady still worked on some of Tarkir, but if like to assume he posted ways with the company before they got to the really destructive bits.

@yxoque: I really hope they continue to use orcs.

Look, I don't want to copy a wall of text after putting two other people's quotes in my post, so I put that into the comment in a rush.

To my knowledge all he did was pitch for the clans.

That are now gone.

I don't know what to say.