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Murders looks and feels like a silver border detective parody set with all the fedoras and leather jackets. Should have been called unclued.
 
So MaRo's latest article.... peak autism?
One day, I was thinking about resonance, and I asked myself, what's the next step, in game design technology, to making Magic cards feel more natural, more appealing, more aesthetic? This reminded me of the point about technology in science fiction. Was there a way to apply that to Magic design? After some thought, I realized the answer was language. As a writer, I have a great respect for words. They carry a lot of power and can shape how people think. One of the reasons, for example, I've been such a proponent of creating vocabulary for Magic design is so that R&D and the public have a means to talk about certain concepts.

Was there a way in design to prioritize harnessing the power of words? There was. What if when we work with resonance, we tag the words that we feel are most important and then use those words as jumping-off points to look for mechanical space. I bring this up with Murders at Karlov Manor because this was the first set where I had crystallized this idea. Here's how it worked. We spent time in exploratory design figuring out the words that best embodied the murder mystery genre, and then we spent time trying to find mechanics that matched the word that allowed us to write the phrases and sentences that felt the most resonant.

I should point out that in top-down design, there has always been a desire to match mechanics with flavor, and if we do our job correctly, it all looks seamless. The shift here was the use of the word as impetus for the mechanic. Think of it as designing a card to a name or to a piece of art. Both of those we've done before. In the past, we've designed to a concept but haven't designed to words as much. This time, I found the language I wanted on the card and worked backwards from that. I should also point out that I co-lead this design with Mark Gottlieb, and he, also a word person, was aboard on using card language as a jumping-off point of making mechanics such that they read as flavorfully as possible.
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I mean if you think a set's flavor is literally the only selling point it makes a lot of sense, disguise is going to be dead in the water in standard because every permeant in the metagame leaving value behind and counterspells being completely terrible even before reprinting cavern means the only reasonable answer to most cards for controlling decks is wrath effects, especially Sunfall and Farewell. Disguise is good against single target removal so if anyone is interested in 3 cmc ward 2 and whatever upside you get from flipping it's going to push out most other decks.

Edit: I'll rephrase my thoughts, if disguise isn't too fucking slow against aggro it is way, way too slow against control and is going to lead to very binary games which will in turn lead people not to play it.
 
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Logistical Nightmare said:
Oh and they killed Teysa, and it looks like a selesnya black woman did it if the story spotlight card is right.
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So, I was a bit hasty in my call here, as the spotlight cards weren’t revealed in order, but apparently I still managed to get the twist right??? If I’m understanding all of the spotlight cards correctly, one third of Trostani somehow managed to orchestrate the whole thing without alerting the rest of her? (I’m not very clear on how Trostani exists as an entity) but she blames all the guild leaders for not working together to stop the phyrexian invasion form March, which doesn’t make ANY sense to me. I think the writing team just said “which guild is least likely to commit a murder” and went with that.
 
Logistical Nightmare said:
she blames all the guild leaders for not working together to stop the phyrexian invasion form March, which doesn’t make ANY sense to me. I think the writing team just said “which guild is least likely to commit a murder” and went with that.
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This makes even less sense in the context of War of the Spark..where the Guilds did work together to stop an Invasion so..why wouldn't that previous experience have them unite again..and Really in the context of Ravnica itself them uniting for an outside threat is the most likely option because the Guilds have had a stable treaty for the majority of the past 10K years..and the current Guildpact is a literal dictatorship where Niv-Mizzet has the ability to FORCE the guilds to work together*


*Yes this is a thing, Jace was able to use his status as the Living Guildpact to force Azor onto the useless Island in Ixalan.
 
Flexo said:
latest article
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Are we supposed to believe that maro has never started designing a mechanic from a word or pun. I wouldn't be surprised if he had a big file with a bunch of dumb puns or words that he's been trying to find mechanics to for years. The only thing I can tell that is different is this time they started by grabbing a bunch of words that appear in mystery stories to build mechanics around.

I don't believe they've never done this before and this is a very bad sign for the western set that's coming up and any future genre planes.
 
Honka Honka Burning Love said:
This makes even less sense in the context of War of the Spark..where the Guilds did work together to stop an Invasion so..why wouldn't that previous experience have them unite again..and Really in the context of Ravnica itself them uniting for an outside threat is the most likely option because the Guilds have had a stable treaty for the majority of the past 10K years..and the current Guildpact is a literal dictatorship where Niv-Mizzet has the ability to FORCE the guilds to work together*


*Yes this is a thing, Jace was able to use his status as the Living Guildpact to force Azor onto the useless Island in Ixalan.
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The reality is that they think the story doesn't matter so they'll never treat it as it matters, so it will never matter and will always be a retarded mess.
 
Retink Retunk said:
The reality is that they think the story doesn't matter so they'll never treat it as it matters, so it will never matter and will always be a retarded mess.
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This is why I have become an unironic supporter of Universes Beyond.

Fuck it, the lore is shit anyways gimme Universes Beyond One Piece so I can dunk on Nigger Aragorn with Monkey D Luffy.
 
Honka Honka Burning Love said:
This is why I have become an unironic supporter of Universes Beyond.

Fuck it, the lore is shit anyways gimme Universes Beyond One Piece so I can dunk on Nigger Aragorn with Monkey D Luffy.
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I've just stopped caring about Universes Beyond, if they want to license shit out, who cares. I don't think Magic will matter in ten years from now, kind of like how no one gives a shit about Monopoly anymore.
 
Honka Honka Burning Love said:
This makes even less sense in the context of War of the Spark..where the Guilds did work together to stop an Invasion so..why wouldn't that previous experience have them unite again..and Really in the context of Ravnica itself them uniting for an outside threat is the most likely option because the Guilds have had a stable treaty for the majority of the past 10K years..and the current Guildpact is a literal dictatorship where Niv-Mizzet has the ability to FORCE the guilds to work together*
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Worse part is that the three of the guilds were trying to use Phyrexian shit to either cure their conversion (Simic), to get designs from them (Izzet), or were using information from dead phyrexians before they fully converted (Orzhov). If anything Trostani should've been heavily targeting the Golgari since like a huge portion was converted in the lore and if she was targeting traitors to Ravinica she should've started with the one who a literal planeswalker usurped. Point is Mark Rosewater should've been stuck writing Rosanne.
 
Well this answers my question about why they didn't have the story end with the murderer being revealed... and then running off to Thunder Junction where the next set's story would be hunting down the fugitive. (Could have been a funny little mini arc.)

Anyway I listened to MaRo's podcast (so you don't have to) and his explanation for why ravnica (mostly echoing his article with a few additional details) still just annoys me.


A great compilation of all the recent faggotry on the game. Included a few details I hadn't known.
 
Flexo said:
Anyway I listened to MaRo's podcast (so you don't have to) and his explanation for why ravnica
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Nevermind that New Capenna introduced Dogged Detective, and the attire that most of the detectives are wearing looks identical to New Capenna's aesthetic - oh no! They definitely chose ravnica because they realized they were "just designing Ravnica" again. Beyond that literally the only things similar between Rav and their idea... was "city, and there's law enforcement."

Thing is? You absolutely could set a murder mystery in Ravnica, and have the Boros and Azorius try to solve it -- and it'd be neat! Except that you'd need to hew to the aesthetic of the plane as it was, and have the guilds operate as they normally did, and not have a bunch of fucking random-ass 1920s-era attired Gumshoes running around with sherlock holmes caps that have never once been reflected in the setting's aesthetics.
 
Rich Evans Ayypologist said:
You absolutely could set a murder mystery in Ravnica, and have the Boros and Azorius try to solve it
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This is literally the plot of the First Book of the first block lol.

Someone gets Murdered..and Argus Kos has to solve it...and then stumbles upon the Hidden Guild (The Dimir, who had to that point been a Myth) and the fact that the Dimir are now not a secret guild breaks the Guildpact.
 
Honka Honka Burning Love said:
Someone gets Murdered..and Argus Kos has to solve it...and then stumbles upon the Hidden Guild (The Dimir, who had to that point been a Myth) and the fact that the Dimir are now not a secret guild breaks the Guildpact.
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Actually I thought it was because Argus Kos (one of MTG's best protagonists btw) arrested the head of Dimir for trying to break the guildpact - which was the Dimir's job (to break the guildpact). So it caused a paradox and the paradox is what broke the guildpact.

I just remember it was a neat story by having the main character actually be the one to break something by succeeding.

Rich Evans Ayypologist said:
Nevermind that New Capenna introduced Dogged Detective, a
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Wait a minute....

That card is getting reprinted in MKM's commander decks...
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AND THEY DIDN'T UPDATE HIS TYPE TO DETECTIVE???? He literally has Detective in his name!!
 
Flexo said:
Actually I thought it was because Argus Kos (one of MTG's best protagonists btw) arrested the head of Dimir for trying to break the guildpact - which was the Dimir's job (to break the guildpact). So it caused a paradox and the paradox is what broke the guildpact.
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That..might be more accurate..Ish.

The plot got weirder in the Third book when it was Revealed that The Dimir Parun was working with the Azorious Guild leaders to break the Guildpact so that the Azorious Guild could reform it into something where they are in control.
 
Honka Honka Burning Love said:
That..might be more accurate..Ish.

The plot got weirder in the Third book when it was Revealed that The Dimir Parun was working with the Azorious Guild leaders to break the Guildpact so that the Azorious Guild could reform it into something where they are in control.
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I admit, I swore I read the 3rd book but the more summations i read the more I'm convinced I either didn't finish it or was so drunk it all washed out of my brain.

Might be time for a revisit when stuff was decent.
 
Flexo said:
AND THEY DIDN'T UPDATE HIS TYPE TO DETECTIVE???? He literally has Detective in his name!!
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Seems kindof lazy and rushed, doesn't it? Well, I came across a pretty solid explanation this morning that quite nicely fills in all the gaps with this set that I've been struggling with.

So, the fact that all of the art looks like it's supposed to be for New Capenna and there's even remnants of art deco in others just continues to rub me the wrong way. Well, what I didn't realize was that New Capenna, at one point, -did- have law enforcement. Now, we know there's somewhere around a 2-year window between design and release for these sets, right?

So - what happened in 2020? Ohhhh, they had a late-in-design change that came up... because of Floyd. In order to do their part to imagine a brighter future, Wizards cut all of the police (who looked like noir detectives, in fitting with the set) from New Capenna, and made absolutely everyone into criminals -- which was itself a majorly confusing element of that setting, as without law enforcement, why are there "demon lawyers?" Why were there cards that talked about being sprung from jail, if there's no jailers?

This would point to a lot of commissioned art sitting around, gathering dust. Normally, that gets rolled into supplementary sets. Except - along comes Hasbro, insisting that Wizards create a tie-in Clue set to sell something that borders on physical gacha. Well, when you've got all this art lying around, when all you need to do for most of it is swap out the background layers for something more Ravnica-y, when it's 2022 and there was still this impression that the game was "invincible," why not just dump all of that art into a lazy, zero-effort set?

The mechanics are just ward and manifst with a nearly pointless twist, cases are templated terribly and unintuitively, collect evidence is a really awkward design space in a set with very few cyclers: are you just supposed to run the split cards? That's it? A whole mechanic in colors that has access to 1 cycler and maybe 2 split cards? Seriously - it's going to be a garbage mechanic.

Detectives are 47/142 of all creatures in the set, which is bizarrely pushed... which might make sense if the vast majority of detective cards were unused New Capenna art, and this creature type was an easy way for them to keep track of which ones needed new backgrounds or otherwise didn't fit the setting. Particularly since Dogged Detective... is not a Detective, and is in the supplementary material.
 
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