FULL AMONKHET MASTERPIECES RELEASED

Fuck me, forgot

link http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-preview/masterpiece-series-amonkhet-invocations-2017-03-29

aggravated assault is pretty fuckin' random

>>52429756
Boy thats an ugly font, and a stupid one at that. They couldve just gone full heiroglyphs

>>52429756

So my deck can have 4 ?N[]T~1Counterspells and 4 counterspells, right?

>>52429756
>http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-preview/masterpiece-series-amonkhet-invocations-2017-03-29
>All blue Invocations (except the creature) are counterspells
Is that unimaginative? Does the blue Bird god is a counterspell good? Does its abilities work around counterspells?
Is there actually a hidden meaning or am I just trying to make sense of nonsense?

>>52430174
Well yeah, these aren't Counterspells, thats not a real card border

>>52430174
only if you can show me in the rules what phases you can play 7m~T○_|instant|7m○_ cards in.

>>52430324
You're trying to make sense where there is none.
Whoever okayed these obviously said, "Busy , busy, so very busy. Busy with business! Business, numbers , hiring, la- de- da. Oh, what's this in my in- box? APPROVED! That's how business works right? Is this working?"

>>52430481
You're probably right
>Only 2 red Invocations, none green
Where the fuck is my Beast Within invocation?

The real problem here is that high prices and demand for masterpieces was the thing keeping standard cheap. If it's Force or bust for Invocations or the frame drives many people away then Amonkhet prices won't be artificially depressed and standard becomes expensive again.
Everyone praising WotC for taking a risk on these is stupid. These need to be reliably expensive so people can play their flagship format.

>>52430085
It'd be about as readable.

>>52429986
Aggravated Assault is fucking awesome.
The lack of Green is not.
Can we blame the prominence of Blue on Maro?

>>52430511
I'm not too worried about that. With that Counterspell masterpiece, i know sooner or later i will get my Giant Growth and Lightning Bolt masterpiece.

>>52430085
At least I can actually kinda read hieroglyphics.

Remember when we all thought that Expeditions were meant to be lands, Masterpieces were meant to be artifacts, and Invocations weren't meant to be an excuse to reprint a bunch of random cards that have little to nothing to do with the plane?

>>52433200
They seem to represent the Gods intervening on Amonkhet
>Aven Mindcensor
>Consecrated Sphinx
Never mind

>>52429756
Man, when will we get a Counterspell art that's just a really confused wizard looking at his hands, with flavor text like "I swear, this has never happened to me before"?

The amount of autism in this thread.. Embarassing..

>>52433373
fuck off MaRo

>>52433373
Kang pls go

And I thoughy Fantasy Flight LCGs had the ugliest cards

>>52431268
No, in fact quite the opposite. If it was for Maro it would have all be green and white, with a touch of black.

>>52434465
Maro is in fact mono green.

>>52433243
Seems like the Green god is dead.

>>52434542
We see him on Maelstrom Pulse

>>52430481
This is a depressingly accurate view of how the directors at my workplace operate

>>52434565
That's pretty much how all large companies operate. If they just took the time to make good decisions they wouldn't be in such a shitty place to begin with. Also nice time quints.

>>52434517
Mark identifies as UR because he's a wacky inventor.

Will blue finally be a dominant color this set?

>>52435033
>Counterbalance
>Counter spell
>Cryptic Command
>Force of Will
>Daze
>Divert
>Pact of Negation
>Spell pierce
>Stifle

MY FUCKING DICK HOLY SHIT WHAT IS GOING ON

>>52435152

Nothing. You are jizzing to the idea of hooking up with an internet girlfriend that has a 1/144 chance of being amazing, instead of more realistically get bad to average.

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How do you like my edit?

>>52434517
He might be, but Timmies need their Human Good Guys™ too!

>>52435278
Try centering the name and type. I feel like the hieroglyphics are meant to effectively do that, but they end up cluttering too much.

>>52435278
The border is still disgusting. Black border it.

>>52429756
In the past I had read/listened to designers talk about how important it is to not clutter up the card with unnecessary information and extra text with strange fonts. What happened man?

>>52435708
They fired off the expert designers/artists and got college kids that they barely pay.

At least that's the feel I get looking at everything art included of these cards.

Wonder if Wotc will ever print a card with actual gold foil on it.

>>52431268
Should have had something like Natural Order in there instead of Worship or Daze. Or ritual.. Or Counterspell..
Those commons should gtfo

>>52433200
This is what probably bothers me the most about this whole debacle. There no theme binding the cards together. What the fuck?

Honestly i like the black ones.

My favorite though is TIMENOTIBAZENOTI, it's truly gorgeous. Best INSTARTI spell revealed so far.

>>52435933

This solves nothing

>>52436147
Kys retard

>>52436222

Black border > white border

>>52436231
Incredibly incorrect.

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Is this Croco-Dragon? Is there a dragon sub-theme?

>>52436231
>but muh subjective taste is superior

>>52436284
Would be kinda weird regarding Bolas's past "kill all other dragons except me" policy.

>>52436048
Fuck the card type theme - it didn't take long before everyone surmised it was a stupid thing to try and force.

A flavor-driven sampling of cards is much better.

>>52436327
>kill all other ELDER dragons
ftfy

iirc he did have an interest in manipulating Jund

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>>52435459
Done. Also made the mana symbols blue.

>>52436366
Hey, the blue mana colors actually look really great. Like paint on a wall. Not bad.

>>52436366
Would look better if the title & type text were centered, too much empty space to the right of the words.

>>52436485
>>52436366
It would look best if the border would only go around the actual letters so there's no empty space. Would probably work best with a more full art style of the artwork.

>>52436485
That's how it is on all Magic cards.

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>>52429756
These look like such fucking ass. The cart art is OK, if not actually pretty cool on some cards like Entomb and Daze, but the frame and fonts look like something I would have made in 8th grade. I mean I'll keep them if I get them in a draft or go in with buds on a box, but I won't like them even if it's a FoW. Masterpiece frames are kinda gaudy but at least are pretty, and the card art is is varied and luscious to look at. With these it's predominantly "a god does something" which looks samey and repetitive, with that video-game-looking neon color shit everywhere too.

They should have just used normal fonts for the names/types, and put random hieroglyphs into the pillars on the border. There, now they're legible yet the cards would still uncreatively scream "guys it's like it's egyptian, get it? get it?".

The brown on dark tan for the rules text looks bad too. They could have done something cooler, like polished black marble texture with etched-in-looking gold colored text, or some such. It's just boring like it is, plus the Kaladesh masterpieces also were predominantly brown cards too. Why do they like brown everything? Do they think that looks cool?

>>52436968
>Why do they like brown everything?
Well, they can't exactly have white, blue, black, red, green, gold, or grey everything.

>>52436968
>They could have done something cooler, like polished black marble texture
That was probably an option before they remembered that a card having a big black frame was already an actual feature of the game serving as a pretty important indicator that can't be used on cards that use red blue green or white mana.

>>52437610
What about different colored marble for each color then?
White and Black marble exist in real life, MtG is set in a multiverse of infinite magical worlds, so there being other colors of marble out there is fine.
Blue, Red, Green, and Gold marble isn't that far fetched.

Also, all of them have plain sandstone borders, but they also have black marble in the forced 3d around the arts, even on the non-Black ones.

>>52436968
You know what would have been cooler? Just my personal thoughts
>Only have a few
>Make them only instants, sorceries, and maybe enchantments
>Keep the brown limestone backgrounds as is
>No fake-roglyphs whatsoever
>Centered card names and rules text
>Card text is a custom font, something between cuneiform and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Like Papyrus. Stylized, but English.
>Ignore the way modern magic art works. The Art would be painted in the style of of what they find in Egyptian tombs. Think murals, reliefs, or sculptures heavily featuring gold, blue and red paint. Instead of just being framed, the art is part of the actual card border, so it looks like each one is part of a museum/temple describing the acts of the Gods.
>Colored casting cost
thoughts?

>>52438205
Forgot to mention that the entire point of all of this is so that it's like the Amonkhetians are documenting their own history.

I really wish they just only did Grixis spells, and have all the art involving Bolas in some way. Stuff like Thoughtseize, Remand, Anger of the Gods, Molten rain, ect.

>>52431268
Maro has far less influnce on development choices now, and I doubt he'd have sole control over masterpieces.

>>52430085
I think that would have been a great idea. If the Elesh Norn promo could have been that sexy...why not the masterpieces?

>>52435152
People asked for permission in standard legal set. WotC gave them a bunch.

>>52433200
I thought theme was control .

>>52436327
Bolas doesnt use cloacondoms

>>52436366

My suggestions here would be to get rid of the ugly shadows that are trying to make a stupid faux 3D effect. But also getting rid of the blue "banners" on the sides of the text box. (Just replace it with more of the black pillar?)

Besides that, solid work.

>>52429986

It's purely there for EDH.

>>52442207
new card

I just noticed something. So far it looks like compared to masterpieces there are barely any Standard Legal invocations as of this time as opposed to Kaladesh and Aether Revolt masterpieces.

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>>52442207

>embalm only as a sorcery

>>52442284

Embalm is basically Unearth that doesn't have to sac at EOT.

>>52442311

I get the feeling that Embalm will be all over shitty creatures with only a few good ones.

>>52442344

Most likely, maybe Populate ends up being a mechanic in the set so dunno.

>>52442344
YEP

>>52442344
You forgot the part where one mythic will have embalm and 20 keywords so it'll be $50+

>>52429756
What is the theme of these masterpieces? I get that it doesn't have to be card types every time, but the invocations seem completely random.

>>52443508
Interventions of the Gods on Amonkhet

>>52443533
Aven Mindcensor is truly the dankest intervention senpai

>>52442344

>implying that's a bad thing

Embalm is flashback for creatures. It could very easily become broken if a bunch of really good cards get printed with embalm. I'm 100% certain there will be at least one card that was underestimated during R&D and it will be useful across most formats.

>>52444078
bounce and blink kill the token and they can price the embalm differently than the card cost.
it's not that hard to balance it and they probably didn't go full retard as with the copter.
but hey, who knows, they seem to be pretty consistent in fucking up things.

>>52444017
well it does have flash

what's wrong with a god throwing a bird at you so you can't study in your library properly

>>52443533
That's honestly the dumbest theme i can think of. Especially as several of the cards don't even feature the gods intervening in anything.

>>52444343
What about Consecrated Sphinx?

>>52444573
Calling the power of gods and it sends you a sphinx.
Containment Priest and Loyal Retainers are maybe the priests who invoke the god's power.

The only one that i can't think of the reasoning is Stifle.

I can't wait for the next set, SLAVOGRAD, with FABERTOV MASTERPIECES

They are all red backgrounds with backwards R's so you can tell they're SLAVOGRADIAN.

They include

BOTTLE GNOMINSKI
DARK KULAK
COMRADE TARMOGOV

>>52444800
Next set is Aztec-ish settings, and i have a hunch a Wild Nacatl will be one of the masterpiece.

>>52444821
oh boy, can't wait for LEGENDS OF THE HIDDEN TEMPLE

>>52438329
I feel like that's what the HoD's theme is going to most likely be, with this set being suppoused to be about spells flavoured towards each of the gods on the plane.

They completely dropped the ball with making half the spells Blue and counter-spells at that though, not depicting the blue god casting something like Cyclonic Rift despite being a fucking bird or hell, any other iconic blue effect seems like a big wasted opportunity to me.

>>52442344
I get the feeling we'll get a Roar of the Wurm kind of an Embalm card to encourage a real graveyard format, and they will think it's balanced, and it will be exactly as busted as Roar of the Wurm was.

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>>52430420

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>>52445050
>Roar of Wurm
plebs

>>52445416
>from play
kek

>>52444343
Nevermore

not!thoth appears on so many counterspells, I hope that isn't foreshadowing for his own card, I much prefer tempo Blue to no-fun-allowed Blue

>>52442344
I guess its mechanic for limited , much like fabricate was

>>52447472
Allow me to design a few more keyword mechanics for limited
>Boon: When this creature enters the battlefield, you may gain 1 life.
>Clairvoyance X: When this creature enters the battlefield, you may look at the top X cards of your library, then put them back in the same order.
>Cantrippy: When this creature enters the battlefield, you may say "please". If you do, you may draw a card.

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Why must all the dragons only be good in limited?

>>52452303
this is a fine card if Big Red is allowed to exist.

>>52430568
>The real problem here is that high prices and demand for masterpieces was the thing keeping standard cheap.

But they don't, though. We're currently in a standard where there are only two "real" decks that are playable, and they both cost a butt-ton of buckaroos because they're built around mythics. Standard isn't cheaper at all. Masterpieces did dick-all to affect prices for standard decks.

>>52444800
GHOSTLY GULAG

>>52442344
You mean like most mechanics?