don't underestimate the effect of +1/+1.

To be fair, manifest was the worst mechanic in recent history and I'm glad we're back to something close to morph.

Morph is the worst returning mechanic in recent history. And it was an awful mechanic when it was created.

They could have brought back clash instead and it would still have been better than manifest. That's not actually true, but I think it demonstrates just how salty I am.

I like morph in the way I liked monstrous: it lets you play big creatures that are also small creatures. The way the morph costs were priced in Khans means you can actually play around them with some certainty. Manifest doesn't let you do that, and it doesn't have the curve-smoothing benefit either. It's just annoying, pointless randomness. And then there's that they had the bright idea of putting manifest in a format that already had morph so that people would have to distinguish between their identical-looking face-down cards.

You guys are weird.

For those who might have been curious about how many double-faced cards were going to be in Origins:

Manifest isn't a good mechanic, but it's better than protection from players

So over the weekend, MaRo played a word association game on his Tumblr account where people said things and he matched those things to a mechanic that came to mind. Of note were the following two responses:





So, speculation on what's getting key-worded for real this time and what is getting phased out. My guess is that we are finally phasing out Regeneration for a simpler mechanic that doesn't take up so many lines of reminder text. Either that or Protection, but Protection is more useful across so many colors and card types. As for what's finally getting key-worded? I'm pretty sure it's not Mil, and card draw off of damage doesn't show up enough to warrant a keyword. Maybe the Slith ability is getting a "growth-themed" keyword name like Hunger or something along with a number so it can scale?

Huge bunch of MM2 spoiled today. I hope they reprint Serum Visions at not-rare!

What's wierd is that they spoiled (in addition to Emakrul) Ulamog, All is Dust, and Kozilek.

So what are they going to put in Return to Zendikar?

PHASING CONFIRMED RETURNING

According to the last UR we had about Zendikar (the one for Nissa during M15), two of the Eldrazi Titans had already moved off-world and were no longer on Zendikar. I think it was Kozilek that was left on Zendikar, still causing havoc.

Did you expect them to just reprint the same legends from ROE? First, that'd be boring, and second, we've been told that R&D has deemed annihilator too unfun to bring back.

And third, if I remember correctly, they have never reprinted a mythic in a standard expansion. They have in core sets and in nonstandard expansions like Modern Masters and Conspiracy, but as far as I know every standard-expansion-set mythic ever printed has been a new card, never a reprint.

I expect if they revisit Emmy and friends in BFZ, it'll be a new representation of the same character, like they did for Niv Mizzet and Teysa when they returned to Ravnica.

I guess my thinking is that it's weird reprinting eldrazi in MM2 and then printing new eldrazi in RTZ.

My guess is that MaRo was just giving generic vague answers without having anything particular in mind.

Speculate away!

4/4 for

Wait, didn't we already get Isamaru, Hound of Konda?

Edit: Whoops, they said mythic, not legendary.

If Kamigawa was around at the time Mythics were a thing, there's a decent chance he might have been Mythic, as that's where they are supposed to dump interesting Legendary cards. Due to the glut of Rares in the set though, he might have ended up rare while Konda got the Mythoc slot.

My guess is a way under cost ledendary green creature of some kind. Also that MaRo is finally taking us to Muraganda maybe for a "vanilla matters" theme.