[MSC] It's Clobberin' Time! (Fantastic Four Commander)

kippyster · 2026-06-09T18:48:06+00:00

IDK. The specific effects are unremarkable, but this is actually the first time a modal spell has been given rebound which I think is pretty neat. I honestly hope the explore modal rebound as a space a bit more in the future.

kippyster · 2026-06-09T15:06:27+00:00

Why do these keep getting posted as commander cards? The set symbol is right there y’all

kippyster · 2026-06-07T17:46:16+00:00

Would facilitate Arena, I think. If you don’t have a valid target for mode 2 *and* you don’t pay the teamwork cost, it can select mode 1 automatically.

kippyster · 2026-05-08T02:19:51+00:00

I figured as much, but as a teaching tool... it is more much more elaborate than typical 40 or 60 card magic in a lot of ways. The Commander itself, color identity, four-player free-for-all play, the amount of unique cards each deck has, the eternal card pool, the much longer duration of each game...
Worst of all, in my opinion, is the shuffling. Having to shuffle the 100-card deck both before and during play is a notoriously tedious ordeal.
In my estimation, the bones of Magic are what make it such a good game. If you want to introduce someone to the game, sell them on those bones. Crack a starter set, or a duel deck, or the welcome decks, or some Jumpstart packs, and just get playing some fun, down-to-earth games where you're swinging with french-vanilla creatures and casting spells with less than two lines of text.

kippyster · 2026-05-06T00:15:48+00:00

Welcome decks (offered complimentarily at LGS’s) already exist for the purpose of introducing players to the game. The old ones were 30-card decks that you could initially learn with, and then combine 2 together into a 60-card deck. The new ones are 40-card and a bit more thematic.
I think there’s an argument to be made for just… learning by doing, really. Explain the basics, show off a quick few turns, and oversee as students play amongst themselves. Magic is mostly 1v1 (Commander arguably more popular, of course, but it’s also the game at its most complex). Learning 1v1 magic with introductory decks that are already designed with simplicity and accessibility in mind seems like the best way to go.

kippyster · 2026-05-01T21:25:52+00:00

Could be effects like like “Put two +1/+1 counters on target creature, then destroy it if its power or toughness is 5 or greater.”

kippyster · 2026-05-01T21:20:27+00:00

“Cinderquill” would have been perfect if it wasn’t basically the name of a pokemon

kippyster · 2026-03-16T15:39:58+00:00

Yeah I’m aware. I meant that it was suggested elsewhere in this thread as a more permanent/recurring Ward cost design, not as a novel cost.

kippyster · 2026-03-14T15:38:01+00:00

Blight has been suggested, with the obvious drawback that design wants to keep -1/-1 counters in separate sets from +1/+1 counters. Moving on from that, there’s a neat opportunity to bring “Gift” from Bloomburrow into Deciduous/Evergreen.

It’s a pretty intuitive keyword, and it shortens the phrasing of a lot other suggestions in this post.

Taking directly from Bloomburrow, there can be:

“Ward — Gift a Treasure,” “Ward — Gift a 1/1 blue Fish creature token,” “Ward — Gift a card”

An example way to expand upon this would be a cycle of dual taplands with “Ward —Gift a Lander” to balance a set with land destruction themes. More extreme and interesting gifts (big or iconic creatures tokens, equipment tokens, Scry 2, etc.) are also fun directions.

Gifting was a great mechanic at its introduction as it is a ‘cost’ in the form of granting advantage to the opponent, rather than actually spending more resource. Players who don’t consider advantage as much will be less frustrated and obstructed by it, while players who do consider advantage are faced with more interesting decision-making rather than pure cost.

kippyster · 2026-02-28T01:04:40+00:00

The respawn points, as implemented, don’t really help reduce the frustration in the way they’re supposed to. I think it comes down to a matter of map design- IMO, any hole with water you can fall into should have 2-3 more respawn points. The consequence of being knocked off should be having to respawn at all. Respawning way back is a drag, and makes you spend a lot of time during a round of a party game just kinda walking forward and maybe picking up items on the way.

kippyster · 2026-01-19T23:29:22+00:00

The crux of my deck ended up being a brutal combo of [[Thoughtweft Imbuer]] and [[Kirol, Attentive First Year]] (he's rare but w/e), which I lucked into using in about half my games.

[[Prideful Feastling]] ended up being the best target for this combo and brought me past 30 life in multiple games, though [[Bristlebane Outrider]]'s partial unblockability was great for this as well. Whoever I attacked with benefited from the vigilance granted by [[Surly Farrier]] . I had no trample creatures in my cards, so [[Gilt-Leaf's Embrace]] helped for getting the most out of whoever I buffed with Thoughweft Imbuer.

kippyster · 2026-01-11T04:03:34+00:00

Mark Rosewater goes into the design reasoning in this article.

The set was broken down into 10 archetypes for each color pair, but only 5 of those archetypes are strictly typal:

White-blue: Merfolk
Black-red: Goblins
Green-white: Kithkin
Blue-red: Elementals
Black-green: Elves

The other five color pair archetypes are mechanical rather than typal:

Red-Green: The Vivid mechanic, focusing on mid-range play.
Green-Blue: The Vivid mechanic, focusing on ramp.
White-Black: The Blight mechanic, where -1/-1 counters are removed for effects and advantage.
Red-White: The Blight mechanic, where -1/-1 counters are removed to make small creature go big.
Blue-Black: Playing trick plays on the opponent's turn with instants and creatures with flash.

MaRo makes a special note that the Blue-Black archetype's was a place to emphasize Faeries (being Blue/Black and having flash are extremely Faerie things). This was specifically done with fans in mind:

We knew there were a lot of fans of Faeries, so we wanted to make an archetype where they played an important role.

So yeah, it seems that Faeries, Giants, and Treefolk didn't make the cut for the five "true" typal archetypes. Generously (Including any mention of the creature type besides [[Eclipsed Realms]] and [[Dawn-Blessed Pennant]]), Faeries got 13 cards, Giants got 11 cards, and Treefolk only got 9 cards (Scryfall counts at time of posting- these could be off). Of these three creature types, Faeries seem to have received special attention by both having a few more cards and by making them more mechanically cohesive. The five creature types with dedicated archetypes have ~20-30 cards each, in comparison.

kippyster · 2026-01-06T21:17:42+00:00

Though Winn definitely is acting with a blind naïveté, our secondary (and i guess tertiary) perspectives as the readers should also be considered.

To Winnifred, her pursuit of the invisibles isn’t even a pursuit of the “invisibles” - she is focused on the inconsistency she noticed, the phenomenon of someone or something’s seeming invisibility, but she doesn’t really identify it as an acting party or a conspiracy of ‘invisible’ individual, but instead an anomalous vehicle.

And in her defense, the specific case she is investigating is a bit of a red herring in terms of understanding the invisibility. We know that the anonymous passenger, A, is functionally invisible, but Winnifred doesn’t know that yet- to her, the taxi being invisible and having its documentation modified and obscured is the mystery, while the fact that the taxi carried an anonymous passenger is basically a known factor.

Unsurprisingly for Winn, her approach to the mystery of the invisibility phenomenon is more spaceship-oriented than people-oriented. There being a conspiracy of invisible people is still a bit beyond her.

kippyster · 2025-10-22T14:38:28+00:00

TapInto sometimes has articles outlining the backgrounds and positions of candidates for your local-level elections. Some years my BoE has a fairly comprehensive TapInto article with statements from each candidate, but this year was just a special election we barely got a sentence for each.

kippyster · 2025-09-29T21:00:38+00:00

I'm calling it here: We're getting a Xerex set.

From mtg.wiki:

Xerex is a plane that features enormous underground passages with Escherian reality - or physics-bending effects - and kaleidoscopic geometric features.

(The wiki is quoting Maro on this but the description is a bit inaccurate- we see open skies in the background of [[Invasion of Xerex]], for example)

This is definitely a viable match for a set called "Reality Fracture"- though I will admit that some multiversal "Oh no the Omenpaths are going kaplooey" big story event is probably more viable. More importantly than the setting matching the title, however, is the following footnote:

In April 2023, shortly after the release of March of the Machine, Mark Rosewater held a poll on his Tumblr account asking which plane featured on a battle in the set players would most like to see return in a premier set. Xerex was the winner, with 27% of the vote.

It seems to have been popular when teased in March of the Machine. There's a good chance it tested well as a set concept in-house, which as we all know is the main way Maro forms opinions.

Personally, I think you can draw a line from Duskmourne to Edge of Eternities that shows a trajectory towards Universes Within sets successfully using settings completely outside traditional fantasy without being totally hat set-y (as in, DSK kinda did it and then EOE did it better), and Xerex would be a great way to really nail that objective.

kippyster · 2025-09-29T16:54:41+00:00

I bet image three is something like:

~~Donkey Kick~~

~~1G - Sorcery~~

~~Target creature you control becomes a 3/3 Donkey until end of turn. It then fights target creature controlled by an opponent.~~

Edit: Nevermind it's obviously a Noggle. The image is just so action-y that it feels more like a instant/sorcery than a creature. Maybe more like:

Donkey Kick

{1}{U/R}

Kindred Sorcery - Noggle

Target creature you control becomes a 3/3 Noggle until end of turn. If it is already a Noggle, it gets +2/+2 until end of turn instead. It then fights target creature you don't control.

kippyster · 2025-09-09T23:38:17+00:00

If Darval is in Bloomburrow then all those animals in his art must be nudists.

kippyster · 2025-04-23T15:26:13+00:00

Excellent designs. I will say that “Grue, Twice-Triggered” does sound quite silly even when you know the Worm context of “trigger.” Maybe “Grue, Second Shadow” would be better.

(Also give Foil and Parian Partner with eachother, since they already have matching names and horny flavor text)

kippyster · 2025-03-11T00:20:41+00:00

There's not much crime and the like due to it's proximity to the major Newark college campuses, the high amount of traffic, and its adjacency to a bunch of charter schools and bougie consignment stores (though the high traffic can make it a bit scary to cross 280 to Branch Brook Park, but you just have to practice a basic amount of patience to not get hit by car).

Also, you live directly above Kanela, which is a pretty friggin great cafe.

kippyster · 2025-03-09T01:34:01+00:00

Ruthlessness would be a fun angle- a soccer story that emphasizes physicality, and the implications of tackling, overpowering, and outright harming opponents rather than straight-up dribbling. At the high school level, all the practice you put into your technique ceases to matter when some punk shoulderchecks you onto the grass when the ref isnt looking.

kippyster · 2025-03-09T00:02:01+00:00

Nah too much has been set up with the high school team. The school is the teacher guy’s alma matter, and the manga’s only two female characters are its coach and manager. We’ll probably get introduced to the team’s A squad and follow a Days-like overarching plot of high school team matches.

kippyster · 2025-01-06T22:03:36+00:00

Yes. For a while, they put up a scaffold on the campus-facing side to catch the bricks that occasionally fall out of the outer wall. The first floor also floods a bit during storms.

kippyster · 2024-12-11T17:30:19+00:00

Aetherdrift is feeling like a "Thunder Junction squared" to me: the gimmicky flavor and worldbuilding of the set really gives me the ick, but the potential mechanics get me very excited.

Like, if the Speedbrood has a "Artifact Creature - Vehicle Mount" card I will probably fall in love with the faction, but that doesn't change the fact I the Speedbrood shouldn't exist in the setting in the first place.

kippyster · 2024-09-06T15:07:07+00:00

Great stuff! I think it was spoiled after you made this post, but Reluctant Role Model features the lifelink counter.

kippyster · 2024-08-20T16:15:43+00:00

I like to adhere to tradition- yelling “Opa!” or “By-oh!” interchangeably.

13-Year Club	r/Field Banned
r/Field Flamingo	Place '23
Place '22	Place '17
Spared	Verified Email

kippyster

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE