Wizards To Make Flavor Text Easier To Understand

Posted on October 31, 2007
Filed Under Articles, Flashbacks, John Koziar |

Originally ran Oct. 9, 2006

RENTON, Wash. — Wizards spokeswoman Tina Gaffney announced Monday that flavor text is to be “dumbed-down” for future core set expansions.

“We’ve been dumbing down the mechanics for years, but we recently realised that the flavor text expected a level of intelligence in the players which was inconsistent with the stupidity we assume for core sets,” Gaffney said.

Certain types of flavor text, such as real-world quotations, are to be excised completely.

“We can’t assume that magic players can read at a fourth-grade level — it’s undemocratic,” Gaffney told reporters Monday.

Some reminder text will also have flavor text, so as to limit confusion, Gaffney said.

Anaconda, the quintessential green swampwalker, will read:

This creature has swampwalk because it’s a snake that can swim underwater. So if your opponent has swamps, it can swim through them to avoid detection.

Gaffney offered a few other examples:

Blinding Angel
3WW
Creature - Angel
2/4
Flying because it has wings. (This creature can’t be blocked except by creatures with flying.)
Whenever Blinding Angel deals combat damage to a player, that player skips his or her next combat phase.
This is because the angel temporarily blinds the opponent’s creatures, and they can’t see where they’re going to attack you.

Telepathy
U
Enchantment
Your opponents play with their hands revealed.
This is because your hand represents your mind as a wizard, and telepathy, which is a big word, means that you can read people’s minds: So, you can see their hands!

A few other cards will be removed from the set because they can’t be justified from a flavour standpoint, Gaffney said. “It just doesn’t make sense that Beast of Burden grows when you have more creatures in play, so we cut it,” she said.

“Oh and Storage Matrix. Who knows what a matrix is anyway?” she said.

Comments

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.