The point of iconics is to print the every set. They may switch around what iconics are from time to time on different planes, but the point of having iconics is to have big iconic creature types in every set. Not printing them every set defeats the purpose.



Again the intended point of iconics is to encapsulate a color in a big creature type. Now we can argue how well various iconics do this job, but that is the job R&D set out to do with these. Where characteristic races are meant to be basics of that color on this world, iconics are the big flashy part of the color. It's why we dodn't se multicolor dragons that much until dragons are a focus of the set. Or multicolor is.



Not really a wish, but ok. Kor are characteristic (i.e. small and common), not iconic. So they don't have much baring here. Hellions do show up fairly regularly, and in conjunction with dragons. We just got one out of no where on Amonkhet for example. But I agree they could use them over dragons more often, but they lack the natural resonance of dragons. Hellions are a go to for red's big bad non flying creatures. So they see plenty of work. Which leads to the other thing: iconic aren't taking focus from other things. They have a dedicated purpose: big flashy creatures. They aren't fighting with Kor for space, because Kor fit a different niche in the set. Hellions and dragons rarely conflict because of the flying/non flying thing. Big flashy non flyers are hellions. Big flasshy fliers are Dragons. In red at least.



Huh? Not sure how this is relevant at all, as planeswalkers are entirely separate design space from iconic creatures.

I think making the iconics appear in every set, as well as forcing them to be exclusively one color, defeats the purpose of having multiple creature types. I also think that having dragons be stupid beasts in 80% of the sets they appear in are a very significant symptom that I don't want to ignore.

And in some colors, having repeatedly printed creature types over and over again acts like a massive brain fart. for example is the color of, among other things, biodiversity. It shouldn't get one specific creature type reprinted over and over again because that's unrealistic. Elves being iconic green for example makes printing Trolls a lot harder.

So far, I only seen one Frog since KTK. No rabbits. Two foxes.
Heck, I think Wizards could have done a Vampire Frog as a meme for SOI.

So if the point of iconics is to print them every set, I think the iconic/characteristic system should just be abolished altogether.


Sorry about the Nahiri thing I was just going off on a tangent.

I was thinking along the lines of "oh what if 's evangelical traits turn it into the invasive species color" here.

I think this is really important because it's such a modern creative sensibility, and as much as anything, it tarnishes the long legacy of dragons in Magic. We got a reprieve in Tarkir, but dumb beasts started with Jund and... never went away. There's an entire generation of players that thinks that is the norm, and I feel like it needs to change.


trolls having regenerate as an identity is what hurts them the most.

That said, Hydra can go die in a fire. I'll never accept them as icons.

I didn't say anything like that. I'm saying it's one tool among millions, and that they aren't going to use it when they don't need it, or aren't thinking about it.

That is false. Almost all of the dragons printed have been dumb beasts. Dumb beasts was always the norm.

By the same merit, there's no reason why they shouldn't use it either.


On that count, you are demonstrably wrong. Dominarian dragons have been shown as highly intelligent creatures that form their own nations and have something that passes for social structures. This has been true since Primeval times. Literally, since the time of the Primevals.
On top of that, there have been instances of dragons integrating with other societies.

What this means is the vast majority of dragons prior to Lorwyn, were, in fact, not dumb beasts. The shadowmoor dragon and Jund dragons were, however. We've no instance to believe the Zendikari or Innistradi dragons were any different either (quite the opposite), while the Kaladeshi and Amonkhet dragons are... more difficult to tell. Ravnican dragons are explicitly dumb beasts because of Niv's involvement in wiping out the higher order of dragons.

The Mirran dragons are sapient, as evidenced by Skithyrx's soliloquy, meaning that of the majority of other world's visited, they've conformed to bestial dragons as opposed to the previous norm.

Shivan Dragon is the first instance of a dragon in MtG and it was non-sentient.

I think however that I want to up the stupidity ratio of dragons to 90%. We have leonin, which is weeb for cat-people (oh wait that's neko sry) and they are sentient, bipedal cats.
Meh.

Also I didn't engage in this conversation because I had almost nothing to say, so please don't use my words here as a reference for an argument in the future of this thread.

Rhamidarigaaz, his mother, and Rorix Bladewing are all Shivan dragons and are sapient (much less sentient)

Oh. I guess I was wrong. I just peeked into alpha to see who was right.

Still, I think my point about the Leonin isn't a bad one, no?

The point is to have focal things that most players like. Some players like foxes, or cats. But a lot of players like Dragons, Angels, and Demons. Sphinxes are catching on I believe. Hydra is slower, but they too are growing in popularity. Also if you look back (I think around 8th edition or so, but I could be wrong on when exactly) they did something called the big creature type update where they actually consolidated creature types. This methedology is why Selkie are merfolk and not their own type. While they are many types, tribal pushes them to have fewer to make it easier to support. And the iconics, for good or ill, are a push for brand identity.



You seem to contradict this later saying up it more. Nut none the less I agree with it, they can do more with dragons. And more can be done with them in red.



Elves are characteristic, not iconic. And trolls fill a mid range turf, of 3/3 or 4/4 size the elves rarely do. Also beastial vs civilized (usually), means they aren't filling the same creative role or mechanical one at all. And as Brinellos said there link to regenerate also hurts them.



And why does there need to be? What role would a frog play in most blocks? A rabbit? And again these are filling different creative roles than civilized (except in the case of kitsune) races such as Elves or goblins. And again are much smaller than the cards Iconics would get.



The point is to fill these roles in most planes to show certain aspects of the colors. The iconics, showing up less than characteristics, are more constant but do get switched up from time to time. It's terminology for what they always did, just codified and shared.

These terms and ideas exist because magic is a game first, and a brand. Now we can discuss if they could make better use of the iconics, which is partially Barinellos' original point I believe, but arguing about the system as a whole is pointless as it has a very business centric reason to exist.

The GCTU was in tenth edition, just for clarification sake.

If it's one tool among millions, why use this one all the time and save the rest for special occasions? They already shower much more love on the Dragon type than on any other, so I'm not going to buy that argument.

I don't care what they've talked about in the novels/comics/random webpages buried in the mists of time. We're arguing about what they do and don't show on the cards (if Dragon Mage is our model). As far as that goes, the cards have shown little to no evidence of sapience outside of high-profile cycles like the Planeshift Dragons, and not even on all of those (the Mirage cycle for example).

You don't really care about anything in the story from most evidence, so... You'll forgive me if your lack of interaction with it is equally a poor metric for us as our interaction with it is for you.

That said, there's one thing that can convey the idea, though it admittedly took me a little to decide if the idea DID in fact convey it.
Freejam Regent and Glorybringer are both wearing clothing. That single visual cue says a lot.

So somewhat of a tangent...I like things all lining up nicely with each other. In my Pathfinder game set on Zendikar, I have lined sphinxes up with angels and demons by making them Outsiders (Sphinx, Air) instead of their usual type of Magical Beast. (Though I sometimes wonder if I should have rather made angels and demons non-outsiders instead.) Wanting people to be able to to play characters with links to the iconics, I included tieflings and aasimar as possible races, and made a sphinx-connected race called the maftet, based on an old part-sphinx creature from D&D.

When it comes to dragons and hydras, however, I can't quite justify turning them into outsiders for some reason. Maybe it is the whole non-sentience/non-sapient thing (I always confuse those two), or maybe it's the fact that dragon has always been it's own creature type in Pathfinder, and so making them Outsider (Dragon) just feels wrong. Sphinxes are far more bestial-looking than angels and demons (although, I suppose it depends on the demon) but they have a very high intelligence, can talk and usually tend to enjoy mind-puzzles.

In addition to this, I have been converting existing adventures into Zendikar form, as it's a lot less time consuming than building everything from scratch, but sometimes a monster they need to fight is a non-fire dragon. And then I have to decide whether I keep, say, a blue dragon that breathes ice or a green dragon that breathes acid, or reskin it into a red fire dragon, which is far more the magic side of things. Does changing them all to fire make it too boring? Does using ice and acid dilite the identity of dragons as red and make the setting less magic-based? The intelligence issue also comes up - how smart do I portray them as?

I always saw MtG dragons as mainly being sapient but not particularly deliberative or thoughtful. Kinda like the dragon in Talrand, Sky Summoner's story. They could stop and have a conversation if they felt like it, but why would they?

Yes to all of this. I think those oddball dragons have a lot of charm compared to how formulaic and predictable that kind of thing has become, and the Fallen Angel thing is (or could be) a bit of inbuilt multiverse-wide mythology so to speak, even if they don't use it much. There's even a barrel full of Horned Halos in the backround of Grandmother Sengir's art, and Pete Venters actually confirmed it. Imagine someone Bolas building an army of Fallen Angels... And I agree they should give more spotlight to sapient dragons.


I swear, I'll never get over the fact that they killed regeneration in favour of indestructible, especially regarding trolls. Regeneration was a cool, flavourful ability that defined both skeletons and trolls, and while the shift to a new mechanical identity (coming back from the graveyard) is flavourwise okay for skeletons, there's no replacing regeneration on trolls. The only troll I can think of that should probably be temporarily indestructible is Uthden Troll because those have impenetrable stone-like skin in the Greensleeves books and are in the wrong colour for regeneration anyway. Indestructible just looks stupid on almost everything that gets access to it these days, and it's in no way a flavour-equivalent to regeneration. Call me old-fashioned, but to me being indestructible in Magic either means you're divine or you're made of darksteel. Cathar's Companion needs to be put down...


Quoted for truth.


Generally speaking, I have less of a problem with the concept of iconic creatures than with characteristic races, but they should use them more carefully. Dragons and hydras (yeah, I know it was just that one) on Innistrad weren't a good idea, and I really hope they have enough sense to not shoehorn that characteristic model into older planes that we haven't seen since it was introduced and that didn't have it originally. Yeah, Kamigawa has dragons and demons, but the demons there don't have flying and shouldn't get it all of a sudden, and the dragons are sapient spirit dragons that exist in all colours (and we know from the Kiki-Jiki story that there are more than just five). Shandalar getting the iconics is fine, but if they ever give us a proper set (or several sets) there, at least I want to see a cool mythic rare cycle of astral dragons, with a Faerie Dragon in and a Prismatic Dragon in etc. (no, not like the weird astral cards from the Microprose game). And god forbid they stick green hydras and a ton of sphinxes into Dominaria. Dominarian hydras are red, and sphinxes never showed up much in the story and only have Petra Sphinx and Vexing Sphinx as far as cards are concerned. Sure, Dominaria is vast, but completely streamlining it to conform to the iconic model when it didn't originally would just feel wrong.

Dominaria has a history of it's green big things being maro-sorcerers, treefolk and wurms.

Let's hope they remember that...

Oh come on, we know that's unlikely.

Though we'll definitely see wurms. At uncommon. Maybe rare.
Treefolk?... that's a far harder call to make.
Maro aren't likely unless we're finally picking up the 'whatever happened to Multani?' thread. But that's, quite frankly fine. Maro are weird and have no instant impact.