Interesting, could've fooled me given how "harmonized" the stated motivations were (passionate understanding of civilization, self-expression et cetera).

I think it could be styled as internal academic debate (methodical, planned performances versus spontaneous, improvised performances) without the conflict being a dominant theme.

Known Magic however there will be nothing short of overreactions and assassination plots. To be fair real colleges are like that.

How do you design a college around a conflict? Say the conflict between red and white is order vs. chaos, how do you reach a common ground on a dichotomy? Is this another "X ideals with Y means" thing? Enable freedom through excessive laws? Create order by tearing down systems?

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people at wotc were completely on board with that latter concept, but even then I don't know how that leads into archeology (which I can't believe isn't partially green). Their framing makes it seem like red half of the college really doesn't care about the actual subject and just wants to go dungeon delving.

Considering green has a penchant for destroying artifacts of the past, I seriously doubt they'd approve of archeology. I mean, I get the angle your approaching from, with green having an emphasis on tradition, but it's more concerned with living history than unearthing the past.

Archaeology can be any color, but more heavily into both and : the former wants to understand the past, the latter to study civilization and sometimes use it as an excuse for its propaganda.

Lorehold is obviously mostly 's take with 's passion.

I can see red seeing history as inspirational and aspirational. The heroes of yesterday can inspire heroics of today.

And yeah, there's also the "cool stuff!" angle. Red archaeologists as Indiana Jones-types who go in and grab shiny relics or powerful tools that can be used today.

I think Red and White are archaeology due to those two colors being the most concerned about historical narrative. Blue cares about the facts of the past, but not the story. Black cares about the power of the story, but not the accuracy of the facts. Green cares about both, but lets the past stay the past. Green likes things that have stood the test of time, but green needs to see that they're still able to stand.

Red and White are colors that would most actively romanticize the past. They both use it to find purpose and justification. These are the two colors most likely to have an existential crisis if the past as they understood it was wrong.

As a bottom up set, they also likely wanted to find something that wasn't combat focused for RW and I'm guessing its gonna be historic or someone other artifact/enchantment liking theme as thats been the new space they been playing with.

Ah, I see they continue to openly and purposefully disrespect the old lore and its fans, at least on the Elder Dragon front. Message received, Wizards, thank you.

Then again, I wasn't going to buy any cards from this set anyway, judging by the terrible first impression of the houses. Like, you show us the bestest wizard academy evar, but it's broken down into stuff like drama and rhetoric? This isn't a wizard academy, it's a parody of a wizard academy. Doesn't help that this concept eats up a lot of creative space that I would have loved to see explored in established settings. I don't think making a wizard academy the entire focus of a whole set was a good idea anyway, and I feel it steps on the toes of the Tolarian Academies, the Wizards' School on Ulgrotha, or even the five guilds on Shandalar. Speaking of creative space, what's the deal with those archaeologists? More precisely, why did Magic need a college full of archaeologists when the one-set glimpse of Dominaria that we got last time saved New Argive and the Argivian University for a later visit? The approach to Strixhaven in all likelihood decreases our chances of seeing any of those places in the future, and if we do visit them, the "academy" bits will be glossed over and only briefly touched upon because "that would have been too much like Strixhaven" and Wizards wanted to do "something different". I want to remind everyone that the main reason the Cabal in Dominaria didn't feel like the original Cabal was that they had since created the Orzhov and allowed a copy to take away the creative space of the original, which made them change the original to be more different from the copy when they revisited it. I'm sick and tired of new things stepping on the toes of established elements in Magic, and Dominaria in particular constantly has bits and pieces of its original identity chipped away.

Tolaria has no goffs so it sucks.

Strixhaven, on the other hand, will be the host for the New My Immortal much like Mirrodin was for New Phyrexia.

Yeah, that's precisely what the Gixians and the Shadow Academy want you to think...

Besides, there was a black-mana goth girl at Lat-Nam in the Ice Age books, and the school on Ulgrotha also had a goth faction. And one of the five guilds on Shandalar was in charge of black mana, obviously (Wait, does that mean the 'Council of Colors' actually exists in-universe? Hmm...).

Yeah, looks like it's going to be Bad Teenage Fanfiction: The Plane. Exactly the kind of addition that Magic needed in its IP. I hope it's going to be as awesome as Kylem and Ikoria.

If Zendikar and Ixalan can both be "adventure world" and god knows how many artifact theme worlds they keep doing, I think Dominaria can share some of the "history" flavor without it being diluted. The fact they seems to be more modern but magical tone also keeps it from stepping on the more epic fantasy/science fantasy feel Dominaria has.

Don't rule out the Clans of Storgard or the Houses of Estark.

You kinda have a point there. Then again, there have been weirdly specific cases where they tried to be different just for the sake of being different, like the Orzhov/Cabal scenario. Or take the fact that they are burning through design space for Sagas at an alarming rate, a card type that is part of the Historic mechanic, both of which were introduced to convey Dominaria's new history theme. I'm pretty sure that, between Theros and Kaldheim, most Sagas that have been printed so far are now from planes other than Dominaria, and I'm kinda worried there might be no interesting design space left when we return there. Which would be doubly frustrating because you can't do Historic without Sagas since they are directly referenced by that mechanic. Considering that it took them forever to come up with a modern identity for the plane, and also considering that only led to one set after an eleven-year gap, I've become pretty touchy and protective on that front.

And when you think about Dominaria outside of the 'magic academy' and 'university of archaeologists' context, there are more aspects and regions of the plane that are probably not going to be explored at least in part because the flavour or mechanics that would imply are already tied to another plane. Artifact theme with a magical resource represented by energy counters? That's going to be a return to Kaladesh, not an exploration of modern day Kipamu. Pulp adventures with pirates and mercenaries and explorers on the high seas or in deep jungles? Probably more Ixalan rather than Southern Jamuraa or Dominaria's South Sea. A set about bands of adventurers delving into ancient dungeons? Let’s return to Zendikar ten more times, because god forbid anyone explore those artefact toves from the Brothers' War or any of the old Thran cities. A dragon set with lots of dragons in all colours? You guessed it, it's going to be Tarkir, not a fleshing out of Dominaria's dragon nations and the Primevals, not even another shot at what Scourge was trying to do. Maybe I'll be proven wrong one day, but stuff like that frustrates the hell out of me. I'd argue we have too many planes as it is, especially with the rate at which they've been introducing new ones lately, so why do they constantly ignore all this stuff that has been a part of Magic since forever in favour of some new plane? And it's not even just Dominaria, I already mentioned the wizard school on Ulgrotha for example.

Great, you just made me even more nostalgic for Estark On the other hand, I already put a lot of love and attention to detail into creating an authentic version of modern day Estark as the starting location for my Dominaria D&D campaign, so I guess getting an official canon version might be a little bit awkward at this point... (Anyone remember oquorak for example? That ritual combat with daggers the people in Arena were into? Yeah, I homebrewed rules for that. We didn't even spend that much time there before we moved on to Benalia, all things considered, but it's definitely been set up as a potential future homebase, and the players got to do a lot of stuff you'd expect in Estark while they were there).

If there's one thing I'm pretty confident about, it's that you don't have to worry about saga design space running out. They are pretty open-ended by nature, and they haven't even attempted to innovate on it yet.

They are pretty open-ended, sure, but for what it's worth, Maro has talked about some of the challenges of Saga designs: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2021-02-08

On the one hand, he doesn't sound as if he thinks they are going to run out of design space very soon, but on the other hand, the concerns he raises about Sagas having to convey a story is what worries me the most. It's not enough to just slap three or four vaguely useful effects on a Saga, they also have to synergise AND fit an existing story. Personally, I'd even be cool with them printing a Saga design that's functionally identical or very similar to an existing one if that's what's needed to convey an exisiting story from Dominaria, but the question is, would they be willing to do that? And sure, maybe I worry too much and they'll still be able to pump out lots of cool new Sagas in future Dominaria sets. But even then I'd still argue the frequency with which Sagas seem to be showing up in Magic makes them feel less special. Imagine if they'd included Landfall or Allies in various other sets on various other planes after original Zendikar. Would anyone have been particularly excited to see those mechanics return in any of the subsequent Zendikar sets? Would they still be a unique part of Zendikar's identity? It just rubs me the wrong way that they took a prominent part of Dominaria's new identity that was years in the making and started handing it out to other planes like candy.

So Kasmina is (hopefully the main villain as well) and Liliana is back except as a teacher.

What turns indeed. I am interested how they're gonna explain Liliana's turn.

Also, with Kasmina being Simic, Liliana giving the B rep, put in Rowan (red or Boros) and the possibility of Will being Azorius and they have completed WUBRG for the Planeswalkers.

I think it's more likely Will and Rowan are going to stay firmly in , so either they'll each appear as their own mono-coloured card, both on the same card like in Eldraine, or as two sides of an MDFC. Considering they were introduced in Eldraine and presumably made it straight to Strixhaven after that, their appearance on Kylem is probably still in the future, and I assume Strixhaven is where they are going to pick up some of that performance stuff to show off at Valor's Reach eventually. Yeah, I haven't read that Eldraine book and never will, so maybe there's something in there that contradicts this, but that would surprise me. And I don't like Will, Rowan, Eldraine, Kylem or Strixhaven, but I have to admit that's a nice little closing of the cirlce right there.