A Blog Mainly for Resharing Things

Mark, today I bring you squirrel news just published today in Nature Communications! Work on ancient DNA traces in fossilized ground squirrel scat from as old as 700,000 year ago found evidence of grasses, flowering herbs, spiders, insects, mammoths, bison and horses... anyway, I thought you'd enjoy a squirrel fact of the day!

Will there be plans to give Muraganda a stand alone set to itself? Having to share its debut with two already beloved planes seems very lackluster for its first real introduction.

Mark, I guessed long ago that the third unvisited plane for Aetherdrift would be Muraganda, but what I did not expect was such a lovely homage it would be Land of the Lost, Tarzan, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, One Million BC, and the 65000000 BC era of Chrono Trigger. Wow! As a paleontologist, I am absolutely here for some good old-fashioned rubber-suit dinosaur-people nonsense, in contrast to Ixalan, and went from zero to excited about Aetherdrift. High fives to Creative and others who decided to do Murganda, and decided to do Muraganda this way, especially Miguel Lopez for the Planeswalker Guide, as his writing is always a joy.

Mark, apologies if this has already been asked, but where is Wrestling (Return to Lorwyn) currently in the development process? Is it heading to the printers soon?

My biggest problem with Aftermath was that I expected it would be rich with clues of what was coming next, like an extremely tantalizing after-credits scene for an action movie, setting up several singles. Instead it was its own 'desparking' and omenpaths story -- which is fine, and a good story to tell, but not as satisfying in terms of hints. We learned King & Queen Kenrith are dead, that Saheeli and Huatli are on separate planes (which Saheeli will have overcome two sets later), and (maybe the best clue) was Sarkhan and Narset's cards hinting at the clan resurgence in return to Tarkir. What we could have gotten was a hint of an Eldraine youth who was more than he seemed (Kellan), the undiscovered secrets waiting below Ixalan, a hint about the rise of crime in post-invasion Ravnica, a hint about the Atiin discovering the omenpaths to Thunder Junction. Those sorts of sneak peeks would have been really cool, and would have made me inclined to buy more (I bought a bundle, but was considering buying a box).

I forgot to ask my birthday question this year! So I would like to ask: What is your favorite art on a magic card (that isn't Maro :P)?

Hey, I've been getting much more into the worldbuilding, story and art of Magic much more heavily recently, and Thunder Junction is becoming one of my favorite planes. Is there any chance at all that we get a post-set Planeswalker's Guide, or is it officially a lost cause? I know it's been a couple months, but I really think it might change the perception on the plane.

Mark

If/When manifest dreadmaw? :)

There's a line in Gev's blurb in the Legends of Bloomburrow article that says he and Hugs are "inseparable, not only as mercenaries, but as partners."

I have bad news: the attempt to split Tribal "cares about a type" and "the card type" into two different vocabulary terms seems to have failed in the general fandom. I've seen so many people just say "Kindred" for both now.

So random question, after the fallout lair's success how likely is it you would say that Rad counters would ever return? They seemed to be pretty warmly received by the player base, but are understandably really hard to fit into the flavor of magic.

Have you ever been tempted to die your hair rainbow as overseer of the Council of Colors?

I just want to say that I'm a big fan of one-off poison cards like Persuasive Interrogators and Bloodroot Apothecary. It's always interesting to see old mechanics get new twists like this. I love giving poison counters when people don't expect them. It's a fun alternate way to win the game.

You've answered what colours you'd assign the Greek classical elements to, but what about the Chinese elements (fire, water, wood, metal and earth)?

Having thought about this at length in the past, I considered allied and enemy pairs

Hi Mark! Excellent choices for the classical elements (White = Air, Blue = Water, Black = Aether, Red = Fire, Green = Earth)! Fun fact, each classical element was associated with a platonic solid by Plato: tetrahedron i.e. shape of a D4 (Fire), cube i.e. D6 (Earth), octahedron i.e. D8 (Air), dodecahedron i.e. D12 (Water), and icosahedron i.e. D20 (Aether). Noticably, this order of increasing faces when correlated to your element-colour matching is RGWUB: Kenrith, The Returned King's abilities in order from lowest cost to largest cost.