So, I'm slightly surprised we have no thread dedicated to this yet.
If you haven't heard yet:
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/ar ... nspiracy-2

I'm fairly excited for it. I loved the first go around and I'm very curious how much material they might reprint. I'm sort of hoping some of the stuff from the original gets another run.

Flavorfully though, I'm banking hard on a reappearance by Daretti as our featured walker this go around.

Update: looks like the title changed. And might very well change again.

Wow, I'm not looking for like two days and then this pops up
I'm definitely excited for it. I never really liked the draft specific cards, but there was a lot of cool multiplayer stuff going on, and Fiora is a great setting. I'd hoped we'd see it in a proper block rather than just a special set, but more Fiora is good either way, especially as they're wrapping up the loose ends from Conspiracy's story.

Also, yes to Daretti! If they end up never using him as a character, I'll be retroactively upset they didn't just print Sandruu or Fiers as the red commander in C14.

Fiers is... A complicated character if he exists. I'd rather they not touch on that if they can help it.

I guess he wouldn't really be that complicated if they just decided to establish he was a planeswalker and most of the myths around him are just myths. It's not like he would ever appear in the post-Mending storyline. Karona's little chat with all those people was just her delusion, so that wouldn't really get in the way either. But I really just brought him up because he and Sandruu are the only Oldwalkers that would remotely make sense for a red artefact deck. And between the two, Sandruu would probably have been the more popular option. As I said, I really like Daretti, but at least they should do something with him when the opportunity arises.

The one I made was up in the Spoiler Room.

retconning the Karona walk is probably the one retcon I -want- to happen. I think that there will be another Daretti planeswalker in ROB and he will be a plot focus.

I'm pretty sure there will be a new Daretti PW card, we'll see about the story focus. But it would certainly be interesting if he made a dramatic comeback and everyone saw he's still alive. He might oppose Muzzio's plans for world domination or something like that. I somehow don't see him being directly involved in the Brago main-plot, but he doesn't really have to to be interesting.
I hope they'll finally establish that Edric, Spymaster of Trest is from Fiora. It seems pretty obvious but AFAIK hasn't been confirmed anymwhere. I could also see Damia, Sage of Stone being from there, but that's less likely to come up I guess.
The first Conspiracy set was really cool, I'm getting more hyped about this by the minute.

Just a heads up.....

https://twitter.com/wizards_magic/status/702170303217197057

Who dat I love her

I am LMFAO, the gameplay people be like "His art fits in the PW card frames, we smelling he gonna be a Neowalker yo!" and then this art.

Your mom.

This was a pretty hilarious marketing game, I gotta say. Well played, WotC

Also, nice art. Not often you get to see a ghost stabbed in the neck. Or... ever, really. Because... it's a ghost. But really, I'm thrilled with how painterly the piece is! It's really got a lovely tactile feel to it that I've kinda been missing in recent art which feels more and more... glossy to me. Great color choices too.

The art in BFZ and OGW definitely had more of a digital, uncanny-valley feel to it -- "glossy," if you will -- which I think was a deliberate choice by the art directors, in order to emphasize the sort of alien-ness of the eldrazi.

But, yeah, that's not my favorite style, either, and I'm hoping that, with the new Innistrad block, and now the new Conspiracy set, too, we may see a return to a more painterly look in the art this year.

You would think that WOTC would have taken the opportunity to play up the difference and give Eldrazi assignments to digital painters and let the paint painters handle the natives.

I mean, it's all digital, but some have a painterly style.

It certainly is NOT all digital.

Hm! I thought most artists, even those with very traditional styles, had transitioned over...

Nope! There are a bunch of magic artists who work either primarily or entirely in traditional media.

Steve Belledin, for example, works mainly in oils, and he has a great blog where he walks though the creation of a lot of his illustrations, from initial description to finished painting. Here's his entry on Tyrant of Valakut, for example: http://stevenbelledin.blogspot.com/2016/01/tyrant-of-valakut.html

Winona Nelson works in traditional media, digital, and a combination of the two. Her Chandra was done in oils, for example, and I got to see her original painting for Prophet of Kruphix at IlluxCon last year, and it's just stunningly beautiful.

Terese Nielsen does beautiful oils, and uses some really cool mixed media like colored pencil and gold leaf. If you ever get a chance to look at one of her original paintings, it's amazing to see the way that the various textures come together. For example, look at the finely-detailed application of the gold leaf here on her Mother of Runes:



I've been lucky enough to meet Lindsey Look at a couple of shows, and she does just the most incredible oil paintings. You can watch a really cool time-lapse video of her painting one of her non-Magic illustrations on YouTube:



And those are just a handful of the artists who I can think of off the top of my head.

Which isn't to say anything against primarily or all-digital artists, though -- they are stonkingly talented, too!

I know for absolute certainty that Volkan Baga works in oils.
Pretty sure Chris Rahn does too.

That mother of runes has some very strong influences from Gustav Klimt, which is very interesting.

Yup! There's a whole bunch of Magic artists working in traditional media.



I think I remember reading something where Terese Nielsen mentioned Klimt, although for the life of me I can't remember where it was.

She did call attention to a Fredric Leighton painting, "Pavoina." in the context of Mother of Runes, too: http://originalmagicart.com/art-in-focus-mother-of-runes-by-terese-nielsen/