So now that they are in Kaladesh, we can presume that, if the set is successful, they are here to stay. Furthermore, they have shifted from being a race to one of the fifty million ones. In context, it makes a lot of sense, since in a proper scifi-world dwarves are going to obviouly be the voice of structure and tradition.

Still, given Depala we still have some ties to , which is continuing Shadowmoor's theme would mean that dwarves are the facto race they were always meant to be, hopefully fluctuating to either depending on the set.

I hope that there are dwarves one day, however. Greed + having originated as maggots.

I definitely suspect dwarves will be going forward. I wouldn't rule out a colour bleed, but they're going to be red and/or white by default. I also see artifacts remaining a theme with them. Might end up have decent overlap with soldiers, but beyond that I can't hazard a guess.

Hopefully they'll finally solve the issue of a white characteristic.

I've been making that argument since at least original Zendikar.
Fingers crossed.

I hope they make them have the visual variety of the other characteristics. Just looking like short humans in every set bores me.

By the same merit, let's hope they have better sense than to repeat the mistakes they made with duergar and play less variety than with goblins.

I don't know. Sure, they can be on some planes like Kaladesh, but dwarves tend to favour things isn't well known for, like alcoholism, macho aggression and being gritty and dirty, which makes them lean a lot towards . Other races like the kor and leonin generally work, if for no other reasons than being blank slates.

That said, I already have some ideas for and dwarves, stressing on tradition and greed, respectively.

They aren't likely going to slow dwarves to do negative things anymore because they'd look bad for "company values" like why they nuked elvish racism.

And the big thing really comes down to resonance. Kor is a nothing term and leonin are slightly better in that regard, but still don't have a defining nature really.

Dwarves could still be bad guys. The bad guys are allowed to be bad, it's just morally complex protagonists we can't have. Now I'm worried about Lili.
I would love to see leonin go away. Are they pretty popular, or if cat people showed up in another colour would people be fine with it?

Before cat people were white, they were green more often than not.

I blame Savanah lions.
Personally I'd like to see cats in black, but green and even blue seem like improvements.

Well, leonin are lions, which only really fit in . Other catfolk readily fit into other colours.

I think they are appropriate as the signature race, and sometimes they have been genuinely interesting like the feral, atheist Theros leonin.



Being drunken **** is a mile away from being genocidal.

This post from Doug, highlighting earlier conversations of Dwarves as a potential white characteristic race, lead me to believe they will be the default white characteristic race going forward.

http://dougbeyermtg.tumblr.com/post/150 ... -old-posts

I dont get that impression even a little.

Truth. All the drunks I knew tend to get happy.

Should they bring in a thoughtweft-esque theme?

No, that'd make their overlap with kithkin too obvious. When people say that dwarves are is more due to their focus on tradition and structure, not on the bonds between community.

The dwarves I thought of, for example, would be more akin to, say, what the Dromoka are to Selesnya or innistradi humans. Communal and group-focused, yes, but with a heavier emphasis on the dogmatic side.

Mmm. A lot of dwarf-themed cards from Apocalypse were in Blue and Red, with Guided Passage. I'd like to see this revisited somewhere down the line.

IMO Dwarves, at their most resonant core, have a "Work hard, Play hard" kind of existence. They're known as great crafters and have a reputation for being taciturn sticks in the mud at least when 'on duty'. Work matters to a dwarf, they love work and if they don't well then they put their noses to the grindstone and do it anyway. But they are also drinkers and revelers, and as per non-rageaholic red, they can be artists (if in the flavor of sculptors and inventors) making things that are innovative and beautiful as well as high quality, functional, and true-to-form. Since most creatures in M:tG are 'doing their job' I see Dwarves as a good typical race, even if they have some of those familiar traits.

Most of the characteristic races have another color or two that they favor bleeding into -- Elves are but a recognizable minority crop up (Shadowmoor in , and some simic/Trest but less so. None I can think of in of all things, unless you count Radha, who's half-keldon), Vedalken sometimes affiliate themselves with white-including groups or show their azure mugs on hybrid or multicolor cards (far more often than they give or the time of day, at least. Again, you won't find them in ), predominantly catfolk also hang out with their roots in and , it's no accident that Tarkir's Cat Demon Rakshasa fell into that color scheme. So I'm totally okay with "Dwarves are . If a dwarf isn't (mono) , it probably has in its identity."

Nin says hi!

hm, once more we have a single legendary exception, only even I forgot that one. Still, it seems that while Red has had a crudload of main characteristics it's gotten a little short on people taking it for their secondary.

To be fair, Nin is part of the Izzet League, so maybe it's more of the guild's influence over her than an expression of her inner self. Though the Flavor text does imply she enjoys her work.