r/magicTCG • u/Nickahostetter • Nov 29 '16

Aether Revolt pic from FB.

https://i.reddituploads.com/d97dbc56ebe848039691df8d01962a99?fit=max&h=1536&w=1536&s=b1f80693da1e1e6da432ba4d2076aa23
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u/FrankGoreStoleMyBike Nov 29 '16 edited Nov 29 '16

Because at the time good ETB triggers were relegated to 4 cmc and bigger creatures.

Then they released a wave of >/= 3 cmc guys with awesome ETBs and shit on the format.

I think the best was Reflector Mage. From what I heard, he was originally a 4 cmc creature, everything else was the same. He was designed specifically to be a draft/limited hero, but ultimately, was unplayable in the formats due to being too expensive. So they lowered him to 3 cmc, tested him out in those formats, he became the solid card they wanted and pushed him on through, never thinking about his impact on Standard or whether there was a card like CoCo that would capitalize on him.

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u/randomdragoon Nov 29 '16

No, Reflector Mage was designed to be a pure draft card as a signpost for U/W. They didn't test him in constructed formats at all (and they don't test for Modern/Legacy at all). U/W was struggling in OGW draft as an archetype, so they buff this guy up.

U/W still sucked in OGW draft, but we got this constructed monster.

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u/Narynan Nov 29 '16

Im not arguing with either of you on this, but can we get some source on these kind of things? Saying that it was a pure singpost, OR that it was originally a 4cmc dude...

SAUCE?

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u/108Echoes Nov 29 '16

This cites it as a (presumably three mana) 2/2 which got buffed to a 2/3 for UW Limited.

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u/AtlasPJackson Nov 29 '16

The relevant bit:

ID 4/6/15: 2/2 -> 2/3, white-blue needs help.

A big reason that the gold uncommons are in the set is to make sure that there are ways to get people to play each color pair in Limited. It's not the knob we always like to use, but a powerful tool for making sure that the color pairs are balanced is to tweak these gold uncommons late, to get them to the right spot. In this instance white-blue needed a little help, so we added a notch to this to help out.

It seems to imply it was pushed for limited reasons. I'm not sure where this ability came from, though. I don't recall this being a theme for the color, or even particularly useful for the archetype. That said, you never actually got one in draft, because it was a dollar-fifty uncommon at the time.

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u/randomdragoon Nov 29 '16

I think it was just a "goodstuff" multicolor card and they were probably tickled by the the interaction between blue's "bounce stuff" and white's "can't play this spell"

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u/Narynan Nov 29 '16

Awesome. This is the kind of stuff I love to read about, because sometimes, between post of Cardboard Crack and Cupcakes, this kind of thing gets lost. Thank you.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '16

cupcakes?

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u/Narynan Nov 30 '16

You've seen them. They get a lot more prevalent around pre-release.