I'd be down for more rats simply because it is in deathly need of some more tribal cards

However, I'd like to point out that in the promo image, there aren't any people in the background that are obviously not human. However, taking in the fact that none of them have any real detail, it could still mean that there are some non human sentient races.

What do you mean by this?

Theros was all things considered loyal to greek mythology. Even the whole "single individual races like Minotaurs becoming a full species" thing was acceptable, since actual mythology does occasionally treat things that way. And the Nostron were plain amazing.

My only regret was that we were negated ant-people for more leonin. But even then, I like lions.




That's on purpose actually.

Also, unfortunately, it makes sense. WHile something the scale of Dominaria would be prefferable, there's simply no way to explore it without feeling random and disjointed (case in point, Otaria).

Oh, the art book announcement also had this little tidbit in it:



Bets on Jace bumping into Ral at the steampunk science fair and Ral being all "Dammit Jace! Ravnica is burning to the ground and you're here looking at new Thopter designs? Get back to work you bumb!"

Well, that's an easy fix, they should just return to Dominaria more often . And I still think Kaladesh would have been better off as a different continent on Fiora rather than being a plane of its own.

They should roll Vryn and Kaladesh into Fiora as separate continents. I'd like to see another plane that's about as big as New Alara, Dominaria, and Ravnica. We can fix the logistics of Jace and Chandra being from the same plane by revealing that Jace mindsculpted away the memories of his real homeplane and replaced them with false memories of Vryn.

Ravnica is purportedly tiny. Brady once gave the population numbers as something like 10 million.

Thanks for clarifying. Back in the first block when Cory briefly mentioned the poles and all, I got the impression of a much bigger world.

I’m not, I really don’t care for steampunk elements in muh high fantasy (or in anything, really)

I just hope that there’ll be enough flavor-wise “untainted” cards so that I can enjoy the hopefully included non-steampunk aspects of the upcoming block ;P

I want a Dark Tower inspired setting...Dominaria could be ripe for that since they've been through an apocalypse or two.

But looking at the aesthetic of Kaladesh, I think it'd be neat if our elves, or naga if we're going with more folklore inspired creatures, had this kind of bauplan:



These extra joints would let them nimbly navigate their constructs and adds an element of otherworldly strangeness to their basic movements.

Hrm. Looks cool but don’t think bipedal creatures benefit from multiple joints. If anything that’d actually make it harder to walk. I mean if you look at the animal kingdom then the only ones who do have something like that are horizontally aligned arthropods such as spiders and crabs.

The Dark Tower idea is interesting. One would have to implement it in a way though that makes it look like not too much of a rip-off

Otaria's design history was... troubled. Most notably, the team behind Odyssey decided to give the traditional creature types a rest, not knowing that the Onslaught team was working on a tribal block.


That sounds like an awesome idea. Unfortunately, with the focus being squarely on Magic's planes, exploring different regions of the same plane is not a priority. I think it probably runs contrary to WOTC's marketing. Plus, Kaladesh and Fiora were mentioned as separate planes before they had much development.


Dang. Considering the density of the plane, it's likely smaller than the kanto plain (over 30 mil inhabitants), which is just a small part of Japan, which is a small country. I knew Ravnica was small, but that's way smaller than I thought.

It looks more aetherpunk and clockworkpunk than steampunk, and depending on how much diversity they put in the setting, it could end up looking really nice and diverse. If Ghirapur is the only city, on the other hand...

I have no idea what the difference is between those three things, and I am confident I'm not the only one.

Steampunk's technology is based around late 19th century - early 20th century (Pre WWI) technology. It generally focuses on elements of discovery and the idea that the world is wide and there's still a lot to be discovered by talented/skilful individuals (or small groups). Ideally it also tackles the issues of Victorian social mores and has a message of freedom and curiosity.

Clockpunk is based more on the European Renaissance or Baroque era. It often has more fantastical elements and stuff like alchemy generally works as if it's real. The focus is more on singular inventors, rather than discovery. It's less actual "punk" than most other genres in that it has less societal criticism. (Both of the time and current society)

Aetherpunk has general "punk" elements (often cyberpunk elements such as megacorps and individual "hackers" working against faceless organizations), but has actual magic. It's not really a well-defined genre.

I just hope they nail the actual "punk" regardless of what type they do.

I'm sure they will. The Origins story for Chandra had some very "punk" elements in it.

Cringeworthily so

I'm a fan of goo/slime punk myself.

Would the Mistborn series be Aetherpunk, then? Especially Wax and Wayne, which swings wildly from genre to genre between books?

I don't think so. While it has some elements, it doesn't really have the necessary elements at the same time.
The original trilogy had the punk elements, but lacked the advancement necessary for the dystopia to really feel punk. It cane across much more as classic high fantasy with punk elements.

The second series had the advancement, but the characters aren't the right fit. They much more come across as pulp fiction, which has a lot of the basis for punk, but it doesn't defy the genre like it should.

I could see dwarves on Kaladesh. They're already very humanlike, so it would be easy for creative to overlook them in previewing the world with Origins.