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The Basics
Age:
35
Gender:
Male
Race:
Other
Location:
New Jersey
United States
The Details
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About Me
The American is one of my favorite films. A tense, quiet, and intimate character study of a deeply reserved man, it features a nearly impenetrable performance from George Clooney and a gorgeous, deliciously tragic ending that seems to me both inevitable and perfect. It was marketed, however, as a Bourne-style thriller as opposed to the beautifully constructed character study it was, and so many people went to see it with expectations that were not fulfilled.
Let's go back to Magic. Mark Rosewater is, at heart, an artist. A quick look through his article archives can find you high-concept articles like "Elegance" and "80,000 Words" that push the boundaries of what can be done in a Magic article for no other reason than the sheer joy of trying. He often approaches Magic sets that way—Zendikar exists mostly because he wanted to see if he could design a block around land. Mark is a consummate professional, and will always try to design something appropriate to the space he has been asked to fill, but he gets a big kick out of making things that tickle his artist's brain.
As soon as we settled on a story structure for the Innistrad block, it became clear the second set in the block was going to have the bleakest tone. The next question one must ask is how to convey that tone using mechanics in Magic text boxes, as text boxes are the most powerful tools we have to communicate with you. Magic is a card game, after all, and those text boxes define so much of what you experience while you play.
Mark chose to express the bleak tone of Dark Ascension by showing that Innistrad's humans were in trouble. He did this with the fateful hour mechanic.
What I'm Looking For
The American is one of my favorite films. A tense, quiet, and intimate character study of a deeply reserved man, it features a nearly impenetrable performance from George Clooney and a gorgeous, deliciously tragic ending that seems to me both inevitable and perfect. It was marketed, however, as a Bourne-style thriller as opposed to the beautifully constructed character study it was, and so many people went to see it with expectations that were not fulfilled.
Let's go back to Magic. Mark Rosewater is, at heart, an artist. A quick look through his article archives can find you high-concept articles like "Elegance" and "80,000 Words" that push the boundaries of what can be done in a Magic article for no other reason than the sheer joy of trying. He often approaches Magic sets that way—Zendikar exists mostly because he wanted to see if he could design a block around land. Mark is a consummate professional, and will always try to design something appropriate to the space he has been asked to fill, but he gets a big kick out of making things that tickle his artist's brain.
As soon as we settled on a story structure for the Innistrad block, it became clear the second set in the block was going to have the bleakest tone. The next question one must ask is how to convey that tone using mechanics in Magic text boxes, as text boxes are the most powerful tools we have to communicate with you. Magic is a card game, after all, and those text boxes define so much of what you experience while you play.
Mark chose to express the bleak tone of Dark Ascension by showing that Innistrad's humans were in trouble. He did this with the fateful hour mechanic.
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