Rumors, Speculation, and Discussion

Hello everyone, I want to spend a little bit of time today on new set rumors, speculation, and discussion. Before the release of a new set, we have a time period where these three words have a whole lot of meaning.

I spend a lot of time each day on the MTGSalvation Forums. I mean like a lot of time, like I always have a few threads open in my browser when I'm online. So lately, there have been a few cards being spoiled by Wizards of the Coast for the upcoming set Zendikar. This set is said to house a crate full of magic flavor and brings back a mechanic that players love to play.

One Wizards announces the new set, speculation starts to happen. People start new threads in the Speculation forum at MTGSalvation. This speculation season started off with hardly anything to work with except for two sentences, "Priceless Teasures. Deadly Perils". This is all that people had to work with for a few months. many started to browse through all the futureshifted cards from Futuresight to see what cards may fit the tiny spoiler we were given.

Not much time later, Mark Rosewater wrote an article about card design and gave another tiny spoiler. He wrote "you wouldn't believe us if we said we were doing ______ without ______." He did not give anything away, but what he wrote started even more speculation. There is so many things that can fit into the spoiler he gave us. Threshold without 7 came to my mind. Other things that can fit are "Affinity without Artifacts" and "Splice without Arcane".

Another hint came from yet another article on the Magic website. we were told that heavy multicolor would not happen again for a while. After this tidbit, players started talking about how Zendikar would be a monocolor themed block. This is something that I could agree with, more so after the new dual lands were released with Magic 2010. The dual lands from M10 deal with basic land types. So the only way they could be used most efficiently would be in a two color deck with many basic lands. Another thought came to mind not too long later. Maybe there will be nonbasic lands in Zendikar that have basic land types. They make the M10 duals great and they help support a mono color theme.

So last week, we had Gencon. The Convention for games. At Gencon, Wizards released a few products before they hit the streets a week or two from now. Planechase and From the Vault: Exile was released to a very limited amount of people. Each Planechase deck has a card from Zendikar in them. All of these cards were common, but four commons were better than not having anything. Each card displayed good flavor and revealed a possible sub-theme for the set.

Currently Wizards is slowly spoiling Sorin the new planeswalker from Zendikar. Not much is know about Sorin, but we do have the art, name, type, and loyalty. And as one can imagine, the forums went nuts. Speculating abilities, colors, and playability. Today, Wizards spoiled another planeswalker that will be in Zendikar. The new Chandra has been revealed, and just like Sorin, we only know the color, type, and art. And during my browsing of the "New Chandra" thread on MTGSalvation, I came across this picture:

Could this be the new Chandra? Could it have been leaked? The answer to those questions is no. Why you ask? Because a few days before I was browsing and saw this picture:

At first glance, the card looks real with the counters and things on it, but once you take a closer look, its clearly fake. As you can see, both cards are the same except for a few things. For one, Chandra's hair is coming out of the border just like the planeswalker art should. Secondly, one picture has two +1 abilities and the other only has one +1 ability. Thirdly, the picture of the cards on the table, the cards have no depth and just looks like they were copied and pasted on the background.

So, why do people do this? Why do they try and create fake cards to put on display? Well that's an interesting question to answer. Because these people think that they can fool others. A lot of times these attempts don't work, but sometimes they do. If you can create a card that looks perfect in every way and I believe it, I say more power to you and good job. But these attempts keep people thinking and gives them more to talk and speculate about.

This card here is one that mocked up for my own custom set.

I think I did a relatively good job with this card, but I do admit that this is far from perfect.

In the end, people just want their handy work recognized and they want something more to talk about. So I how you link back next week when I talk a bit more on Rumors, Speculation, and Discussion. This is Deppe passing the turn.

And here is another little goody that I think you all will enjoy.