M11 Dev Chat

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Good Day MTG peeps,

We have for you today, what we would like to call a 'filler' post - this is a blog post which may be mildly interesting to some and rubbish to others. Today's post concerns the recent Dev Chat (or Magic 2011 Developer Chat) which took place on Tuesday, July 27th at 3pm PDT / 6pm EDT. In this forum, players and MTG fans of all variety are afforded an opportunity to ask a limited number of questions of Wizards of the Coast personalities regarding the last set release - this being the Magic 2011 Core Set - all in real time.

On Tuesday, a number of questions were put to the head of R&D Aaron Forsythe and designer/developer Tom LaPille. Many thanks to forum member PhoenixLAU, who posted the transcript. We suggest you read the full transcript here as we have provided only Question and responses related to the upcoming Scars of Mirrodin release . . .










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<%Mono789> What efforts were made to connect M11 to the blocks surrounding, i.e. Zendikar block and Scars of Mirrodin block?

<@TomLaPille> We used individual cards to do that, mainly

<@AaronF> Erik Lauer, the set's lead dev, is always looking to make those kind of cross-block connections, and the design team helped out.

<@AaronF> There are several "artifact-matters" cards, like Hoarding Dragon, Phylactery Lich, and Steel Overseer for Scars.

<@TomLaPille> For example, Primeval Titan connects well with both landfall and expensive spells

<@TomLaPille> We tried to go in both directions.

<@AaronF> Right, green Titan was definitely made to interact with ZEN.

<@AaronF> There we even cards made to interact with Shards block, although they were subtle and I don't recall them at the moment.

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<+andrew_holder> Voltaic Key has a history of being a strong card that leads to many powerful interactions and even sees eternal play. How much debate, if any, went into giving the Key a reprint, especially with Scars around the corner?

<@TomLaPille> Key breaks with other broken artifacts, like Mana Vault and Time Vault (heh)

<@AaronF> Key wasn't ever really the problem card, it was always the other insane cards like ... see above

<@AaronF> It's like blaming Hypnotic Specter when the real broken card is Dark Ritual.

<@AaronF> Key does stuff with Scars block, but I don't anticipate brokenness.

<@TomLaPille> Key does cool and fun and reasonable things with cool and fun and reasonable artifacts

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<+GlenDonald> Was there specific thought given to making M11 feel nostalgic so as to tie in with Scars?

<@TomLaPille> To me, M11 is built to be nostalgic for anyone who knows anything about baseline fantasy

<@TomLaPille> Everything there is sometihng you recognize

<@AaronF> Not particularly more than I'd want any Core Set to feel nostalgic. They should all contain familiar cards, as well as some new hotness. So no, no special treatment here.

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Well that's it. Make certain you keep your ear to the ground for the next Dev Chat. One can participate through the following methods . . .

via widget: tinyurl.com/mtgdevchat (Should take you directly to a login screen)

via mibbit: mibbit.com/chat (Takes you to a screen where you type in your desired username and your channel name (the channel will be #mtgdevchat )

via IRC: If you have an IRC client, you can access it by going to the mibbit IRC (irc.mibbit.net) and then the channel (/join #mtgdevchat).

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And lastly, we suggest you get over to MTG Mint Card - this is your LAST CHANCE to get the discounted M11 Card Sets from only $29.99 ! Check out this solid deal for Magic 2011 Core Set M11 Uncommon & Common Set X4.
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