All good Argy, I misinterpreted the part of Goldberserkerdragon's post that I highlighted in mine.

I think the Brackets are a good starting point and I'm looking forward to the updates in April.

"Rule zero conversations will always be your ultimate go to."

I'm not making this point to be disparaging or condescending, but to point out an aspect of this whole thread exchange where we have been talking past each other a bit. I think that Brackets are intended to facilitate Rule 0 conversations, not replace them. Since the intention here is to give players a more common and better defined set of parameters to describe their deck building intentions with strangers, the intent should be for this to add some better definition to those pre-game discussions.

Ideally Brackets are meant to be a part of Rule 0/pre-game discussions.

TBD on that Andramalech. Regarding Terra, I'm planning on sticking as close to the Party creature theme as much as I can. I think about 24/34 creatures in the 99 for that deck have Party creature typings.

The relevantly typed creatures are on my radar for sure. I brew very heavily in Mardu colors, generally speaking, so I have a pretty good sense of which things work for more specific niches of that Wedge and where overlaps exist lol.

I'm getting some games in this weekend. Half contemplating taking the relevant pieces for Terra out of my Burakos and Alesha decks, and printing proxies of the 3ish cards I'm missing to test Terra out. Currently waiting on her proxies to arrive in the mail.

Thank you greyninja, I appreciate it. I haven't updated this deck in a long while, but definitely had fun brewing it up and play-testing it. Idk if I'd ever put this together, but a Legends Matter deck like this feels like it could have longevity in regards to swapping in and out your favorite Mardu legends. Maybe just swap them out at random each time you play the deck lol.

Thank you for checking out my Terra deck. I've had a lot of fun brewing her & writing her primer.

After reading DeinoStinkus's comment, I'd have to bump Zendikar up to my 2nd favorite plane of all time. When I was first getting into MtG, my best friend gifted me a bunch of draft chaff which mostly contained stuff from Innistrad, Mirrordin, Zendikar, and Shards of Alara. He really hyped up how fun and exciting Zendikar, an adventure world with Eldritch horrors was at the time it dropped.

The Ally mechanic was one of my first favorites, alongside stuff like Heroic, and Auras in general. At the time my friends and I mostly played 60 card table kitchen jank, so getting extra synergy from stuff like Allies felt busted to a bunch of broke college students.

I do enjoy the creature type batching mechanics like Party & Outlaws as an evolution of the Allies. It feels less parasitic than what Allies are, and ensures that those batches will basically have new creature options with almost any new set that drops.

"I would prefer that M:tG have its own identity, rather than merely being a collage of pop culture references"

MtG is 30 years worth of re-skinning some form of mythology, pop culture references, various tropes, the Three Kingdoms Era of China for Portal Three Kingdoms, etc. We are well past the point of MtG designers pulling from a Myriad of cultural references beyond just pop culture ones.

"has WotC yet explained how they had the idea for this set?"

I know it's stated in the wiki article from my first comment, can't remember if it was stated elsewhere, but it's pretty clear that EoE is drawing pretty heavily from Space Operas in general. MaRo might have called it the "Space Opera" set before it was more officially revealed, either on Blogatog or one of the teasers at a Con last year.

MaRo has his list of unvisited planes that players request, usually on Blogatog. "Outerspace World" has def made that shortlist, along with other trope-y worlds like "Water World".

The media we consume is an amalgamation of concepts that borrow from and build upon all manner of past works and mythologies.

Delna, Trade Route Ambassador

Legendary Creature - Orc Advisor

Whenever one or more creatures attack one of your opponents or a planeswalker they control, those creatures gain menace until end of turn.

Whenever one of your opponents attacks the opponent with the most cards in hand, you and that player each draw a card.

Whenever a player attacks one of your opponents, if that opponent has more land than another of your opponents, you and that attacking player create a tapped treasure token.

2/3

This was made with inspiration from one of the recent Planeswalker's Guide to Tarkir articles, "Due to their centrally located territory, the Mardu establish treaties with other clans to protect trading caravans from dragons or other clans, taking a portion of the traded goods as payment."

Create a Sultai farmer as inspired from the article, or wild.

Idk what MtG content you consume, but I'd suggest checking out the EDHRecast episode where they talk to Gavin Verhey about the Bracket system, and some of the current shortcomings of the system. A general TL;DW, since the video is 1.5 hours (you can start around the 10 min mark tbh):

• They are very aware about Bad Actors who may misrepresent their deck, which will always be an issue regardless of these types of systems and their intentions. Some people just suck.

• The Bracket system is intended more so as a "common language" for matchmaking with people that are outside of our typical play groups and LGSs. Players with consistent play groups tend to have a sense of who & what they'll commonly play against, & (hopefully) assess threats accordingly.

• The Game Changer list is subject to change, and will hopefully be evaluated and updated every 3-6 months. The list could shrink if feedback from players is strong enough that certain cards aren't as impactful, or to your point, that players have a collective threat assessment to deal with cards on the list.

I think that Brackets are a decent starting point, and we are still only 3 weeks into collectively thinking about and implementing this beta version of this tool. I think that the differentiation between Brackets 3 & 4 need a bit more work, and will hopefully be addressed in the update/launch at the end of April. Generally speaking, I think this is less vague and subjective than the "Power level 1-10" scale which was commonly thrown around.

Tarkir is definitely up there for my favorite planes. I think it's a toss up between Tarkir and Theros for me, mostly because those were the two newest planes when I first started playing around 2013.

I'll give the edge to Tarkir, mostly because at the time I was bummed out that I missed out on Kamigawa, and Shards of Alara seemed really cool as a three color set, so Tarkir was like a combination of aesthetics and concepts that I missed out on.

One of my key MtG related memories from that time was the day that Tarkir was spoiled by WotC. My best friend and I were still in college. We bought and devoured an entire Costco pizza between the two of us as we watched the Tarkir reveal. Mardu's key art from Mardu Ascendancy stood out to me most from the reveal, and I knew that was the faction that I wanted to play most.

Alesha, Who Smiles at Death was one of my favorite characters from Khan block, and would go on to be one of my first favorite commanders a few years later. Her story is one of my favorites from MtG, so I was glad when she returned in Foundations.

Overall, I'm pretty excited for Dragonstorm on the horizon.

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Given that Edge of Eternities draws heavy inspiration from the Space Opera genre of sci-fi, I don't think it is out of the realm of possibility for it to be Magic, instead of of Space: the Convergence.

Two of the most famous Space Operas are the Star Wars and Dune, both of which blend various elements of high fantasy and sci-fi. It's not out of the realm of imagination for Jedi to read as "Space Wizards", or the Houses of Dune to read like royal courts from a setting with knights and magic.

The Destiny franchise, which is also listed as a Space Opera features technology which is incredibly advanced, centered on weapons and armor treated with mythical reverence. Compared to Star Wars and Dune, its advanced technology reads the most like magic, and often borders on magic, depending on the factions in the franchise. I call out Destiny and Dune specifically, because the armors present in the EoE teaser article bear similarities to the armor aesthetics of both franchises.

I think that the blend of Sci-fi and fantasy is ultimately tied together by Clarke's third law that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Although Kenrith, the Returned King isn't queer, would you count him since Kieran Yanner based the art on his husband?

I'm excited to see where you go with this, especially as you flesh out your primer some more. Just a few ideas off the top:

• Vault of the Archangel - Helpful in a pinch if you have the mana for it, but I think has some extra value in this deck as a quick life gain anthem for your board.

• Serra Ascendant would be a great aggro threat for this deck, if not too on the nose lol.

• Lunar Convocation - Seems like it could be a decent value fit with everything your deck wants to do.

• The Gaffer could be a consistent draw piece

• Celestine, the Living Saint - More Betor redundancy.

• Witch of the Moors offers some removal and redundancy to Betor.

That makes sense. The only other thing I could think of would be adding some more utility lands like Command Beacon and Plaza of Heroes as additional means to protect Skittles or dodge commander tax. I've been including them in my decks that rely on the commander wading into and surviving combat.

I think it's too surprising Goldberserkerdragon lol. Skittles has been around like 15 years at this point, so it's not super surprising to have some homogeneity across decks, especially being limited to one color.

I know this isn't an aristocrats deck, but would you consider Braids, Arisen Nightmare as a draw/removal piece? You have plenty of non-creature permanents to feed her.

The Dino DNA extraction experiment was successful Necramus.

Lol I'll get back to you on the bachelor stuff. Wishing your friend the best on their special day!

Oh dang that's been a while then lol. Warleader's Call is definitely a great one. In terms of stuff that's dropped since 2023 that I think is worth taking a look at:

• Fear of Missing Out - For a low end extra combat effect.

• Generous Plunderer is cool. I've liked it when it's stuck around.

• Enduring Innocence

• General Kreat, the Boltbringer - Token generation and Impact Tremors all in one body.

• Kambal, Profiteering Mayor - Fun way to leech off other token strats.

• Enduring Courage - Just Ogre Battledriver with additional resiliency.

• Giggling Skitterspike

• Rev, Tithe Extractor - Def one of the more pricey options, mostly due to limited print in Jumpstart & Waifu Tax.

• Warren Warleader - If you'd like another Hero of Bladehold-esque effect. Could replace Leonin Warleader.