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Shufflingdead > Articles > Games
I Want to Timmy Johnny With My Spike
 | In Phyrexian Homarid, green is carefully balanced so as not to overpower the other colours. |
Welcome to magicthegathering.com! I'm Rose Markwater, Head Designer of Magic: The Gathering, and today I'm giving you the full preview of our new set, Phyrexian Homarid. This new set is based entirely on market research performed on our five remaining tournament players, as everyone at the company is terrified of losing those players, and even more terrified of producing a product anyone else might actually want. Before that though, I want to talk a bit about where Magic is going in the next few years.
First, I'd like to announce that we're changing our tournament formats. We're eliminating Vintage, Legacy, Extended, Standard, and any other formats that allow you to play with old cards. Instead we're only allowing Block Constructed, and only of our newest block (which will soon be Phyrexian Homarid!). Additionally, we're disallowing all casual play, all casual players can expect to receive cease and desist orders soon. By the way, we've entered into a contract with all Magic vendors to buyback (get it?!?!?!?!) all the Magic cards we've ever produced. We expect this will raise card prices for those casual players who try to circumvent our laws by a magnitude of several thousand.
We're not quite satisfied with sucking off the vendors yet! I am proud to announce that in addition to our Reserved Cards list of cards we will never reprint, we're introducing a Disintegrate (seriously, these jokes are amazing, do you guys see what a fucking genius I am yet?) list. These cards will be burned on site by Wizards of the Coast whenever we come into contact with them. This should raise prices by a magnitude of several million beyond that of our buyback initiative. This is only a preliminary list, expect us to add more in the future:
- Black Lotus
- Ancestral Recall
- Time Walk
- Grizzly Bears
- Balduvian Bears
 | We’ve also been careful not to give blue an advantage. |
Our hope is that Black Lotus will actually become the rarest commodity on Earth. Once all copies of the card in circulation are destroyed, we will open up the vault and sell the last remaining copy of the card, and use the money to launch a multi-trillion dollar circle-jerking campaign, promoting some of our most accomplished tournament players.
Now, let's talk about Phyrexian Homarid. Our market research tells us that our players love keywords, so we're going to introduce 305 keywords, one for each card in the set, minus one. The reason for that minus one is that that one card will have all of the keywords of all of the other cards! Additionally, our customers love creature types, and the synergy those produce, so we're going to go ahead and make every creature in the set a Homarid (thus the set name, by the way, do you see what a twat I am yet?). Homarids and Phyrexia also have great nostalgic appeal, another thing our research tells us our players dig. It's a good thing we have market researchers telling us what to do, we are creatively deceased.
Let me tell you a little bit about some of the keywords and abilities we're introducing.
Disappearing - We already made Vanishing and Fading, two abilities that are functionally exactly the same, people loved both, so we're going to be introducing a few more in Phyrexian Homarid. The first of those abilities is Disappearing. Creatures with Disappearing come into play with some number of Disappearing counters, and one counter is removed during that creature's controller's opponent's attack phase, before blockers are declared. When the last is removed, the creature is removed from the game with the same number of Time counters as Disappearing counters. During your own attack phase, before blockers are declared, you remove a Time counter, and when the last is removed, you get the creature back and the cycle starts again!
Going Away - Similar to Disappearing. Of course, it uses Going Away counters instead of Disappearing counters, and once the last counter is removed, the card goes into the graveyard rather than being removed from the game. Counters are removed at the beginning of your opponent's second main phase.
 | This hard to find rare will have you buying thousands of boosters! |
Leaving Slowly - The same as Going Away, but with Leaving Slowly counters instead of Going Away counters. Also, the counters used must be pieces of the card itself, rendering the card useless after it has been played only once or twice. This will help boost the rarity of creatures with Leaving slowly immensely, creatures with this ability will likely become the chase rares of the set. Our vendors love it when we make chase rares! Speaking of which, with the launch of Phyrexian Homarid, we are changing the way rarities work. First, there are no more uncommons, only rares and commons. Second, booster packs will normally contain nothing but commons, only one in one hundred will contain a rare. Also, only rares will be remotely playable, players are recommended to heat their homes by burning the thousands of useless commons they will be collecting. This works well as the amount players will have to pay for playable cards will be so exorbitant that they will not have money to pay their gas bills.
Inappropriate Touching - This is another exciting creature ability! When a creature with Inappropriate Touching blocks a creature older than it, it gets -1/-1, when it is blocked by a creature younger than it, it gets +2/+2, when it is put into prison from play, it gets +1/+6 for each other creature in prison, when it gets back out of prison, it gets +6/+6 for each creature younger than it that blocks it.
Eloping - This is the keyword we are most excited about. Instants with Eloping can be played twice during your opponent's draw step, and can be repositioned in the stack at your choosing! It comes with a heavy price though, using Eloping allows your opponent to play their own spells and activated abilities twice, and their mana abilities three times! We felt that the draw step wasn't seeing its fair share of card playing, so we decided to introduce this exciting new keyword!
Wow! I can't wait to start making money off of this set!
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