Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #634: Rabiah Scale, Part 1

Episode Date: May 3, 2019

This is part one of a two-part series exploring the Rabiah Scale, a scale talking about how likely we are to visit or revisit certain planes in a Standard-legal set.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today it's all about the Rabia scale. So, on my blog, a while ago I started something called the Storm Scale. I did a whole podcast on it where I ranked on a scale from 1 to 10 how likely mechanics were likely to come to a standard legal set. Usually come back, although now I do Storm Scale stuff on mechanics that we haven't made yet and stuff. But anyway, so the Rubaiya scale is a similar scale about what are the chances of returning or going to a plane in a standard legal set. And then I wrote an article about it, and this is my podcast based on the article,

based on the scale, based on my blog. Okay, so what I'm going to do is first walk you through the scale, then I'll walk you through all the different planes that I discussed in the article. And then one bonus plane that I forgot in the article that I'm going to add in just for you, for you readers. Okay, so there are five things we talk about when I try to figure out whether or not something, like where it goes on the scale. Now, like my other scales, one means it's very likely, ten means it's very unlikely. That is how my scales work. So a one would mean we're almost for sure going to go back someday. A ten means, I'm skeptical.

I always name the scales after the thing I least think we're going to do. Rabia I will get to today, but Rabia is the plane I least think we're returning to. I'll explain why when we get there. There are five things that I look at when I'm talking about what the scale for a particular plane is. First is popularity.

I put it into a couple different categories. There's very popular, popular, liked, and unpopular. That just talks about, do players like it? The more players like it, the better chance it will come back. So if players really like a world, greatly increases our return. If they really don't like a world, greatly decreases our return. Next, mechanical identity. How tied is this world to some mechanical identity?

The stronger the identity, the better, because one of the things that we want of our world is that they have a strong definition, both creatively and mechanically. So it's either strong, average, or weak. And then there's creative identity. How much flavor, how flavorful is the world? How much do we define what the world is

from a creative standpoint? And that also could be strong, average, or weak. Then we have room for expansion, which is significant, some, or minimal. And what that means is, if we go back, is there stuff to do? Is there places to visit? Is there things to look at? Like, what, how much room is there for us to, like, part of going back is, is there cool things to do?

And so room for expansion says, like, how much do we leave for future sets? And then story continuation, which is major, minor, or minimal. And what that is, is, hey, does the magic story make us want to go there? Major would mean that there's a major unresolved plot hole that we can't resolve until we go there. Minor is, okay, there's some things that matter that if we went there would tie into the story. And minimal means not really connected to the story. I mean, we can make anything connect, but it's not inherently connected. Minimal means there's very little there.

Okay, so let's start with Alara from Shards of Alara Block. Okay, first popularity it is popular the shards meaning so the premise of Alara was that it was a world that was broken into five shards and each shard only has three of the

five colors of magic well what would happen if a color and its allies existed but not its enemies? And each shard got shaped in a very different world. There was the white-centric Bant. There was the blue-centric Esper. There's a black-centric Grixis.

There's a red-centric Jund, and the green-centric Naya. Players liked the shards more than they liked... So what happened in the story is the thing that separates them, there's a thing called the conflicts that brings them back together.

And the world, the shards start reconnecting. The players liked the shards better than the connected shards. So the shards were popular and the combined were light. Definitely it's one of those worlds where we took what was really cool about the world and during the course of the block kind of moved away

from what made it cool. We had a bad habit of doing that for a while. It does mean if we go back to Allura, I mean the interesting thing about the Allura is the shards. The shards all coming together and being a jumbled mess is a little less interesting. Mechanical, it's got a pretty strong mechanical identity.

It's tied to arcs, or what we now call shards. Means a color ends two allies. So three color, it had a very strong three color theme. So mechanically very strong. Creative, it depends. The individual shards had a pretty good mechanical identity. Them all coming together didn't.

That it was kind of strong individually in the shards and kind of average when they came together. That when each world had its own definition of lacking the enemy colors, just a color and its allies, very strong identity.

Once it all kind of mushed together, much vaguer, much harder, a much messier sort of creative. Room for growth. There's significant room for growth as far as what you could do mechanically. I mean, one of the things in general is three color has its challenges. So, actually, I think this is not significant. This is some.

Three color has its challenges. There is only so much design for three color design. It is not infinite. And each of the worlds has a very distinct identity that, you know, I do think we could revisit. I do think, I mean, obviously players like it. But I think the expansion, I guess, it's some.

Story is minimal. Or I don't know, I think I put minimal in an article. It's somewhere between minimal and minor. Some of the characters are from here. Tezzeret is from Esper. I believe Ajani is from Bant. Bant is where Gideon first sparked to. So, I mean, there are connections to our characters.

So there's not... I think the reason I put minimal is there's not a lot of ongoing things. I mean, the biggest connection is some of our characters have a bond to these places or from them or have visited them. So, there's, there's some connection there. I mean, also, um, because Planeswalkers were around a lot of our first, you know, Nicole Boles had been there, various of our plans workers had been there, and so there is some connection to the story. So I give it a rating of 5, which means that I think we're more likely to return than not to return. That's where the 5-6 cut off my mind.

And I, like I said, the reason it's a five overall is there's some challenges to making it work. Uh, we kind of left it in a creative state that's a little messy. And, um, three color has its challenges to do. Next, um, Amonkhet. So, Amonkhet, uh, was popular. Uh, playersonkhet. So Amonkhet was popular. Players generally liked it. There had been a lot of requests for an Egyptian-inspired world, and so we finally had an Egyptian-inspired world.

There were a lot of players that enjoyed it, and the world definitely is one of our top-down worlds, so a lot of players really appreciated us hitting Egypt. Mechanical, it had a pretty strong mechanical identity. It definitely was a world that was kind of a cruel world. We had some top-down stuff like in Bomb. It used minus one, minus one counters. If we went back, there's a few things that are very core to this mechanical identity. And creatively, it was a pretty strong identity.

It's top-down Egyptian mythology world, our take on it. So both the mechanics and creative were pretty strong. Room for growth, some. Probably the biggest problem is we kind of blew up the world as we knew it at the end of it. But that's one city in the world. There were definitely hints at the idea that there's other cities there. Bolas was clearly shaping at least the one city, and he had a lot of plans for that one city.

But there's some hints of other stuff there. And at the end of the story, there were characters and stuff. The Red God survived. There definitely was hints of where to go. And the story itself was minimal. It played a lot into the story. The Gatewatch coming there to defeat Bolas was a big deal at the time. But now that Bolas is left and the Gatewatch is left, there's not a lot there from the core part of the story

to pick up on. There are on-plane stories, obviously, like the Red God and stuff. So I gave it a rating. I also gave it a rating of five. I think it has a very strong identity. It was relatively liked. The biggest sort of, the reason it's a five rather than a little lower is we had kind of wrapped up a lot of stuff in the story, and so we really would need to figure out what story we're telling, and mechanically speaking,

you know, a lot of it was geared toward the blowing up of the world, and we, anyway, there'll be some work to go back there. Dominaria. Very popular. One of the most popular worlds we have, and the return visit was super popular.

In fact, I looked at our, what we call the God Book study, our ratings, and it had, the Dominator, the set, and the plane both had remarkably high ratings from the players. Mechanical identity, average, one of the biggest problems that we have with Ravnica, not Ravnica, I'm sorry, with Dominaria is we've just been there so many different times and so many different, like, in some ways, a lot of our trips to Dominaria, because it was early in Magic,

had it been later in Magic, it just would have been its own world. Icy World, Ice Age would have been its own world. Jamora, Jungle World would have been its own world. Icy world, Ice Age would have been its own world. Jamora, jungle world, would have been its own world. Post-apocalyptic world, or mutant world, or just all these different things that are kind of jumbled together. And then mechanically, you know, hey, we've done multicolor there. We've done tribal there.

We've done, like, lots of different things there. We've done artifacts there. You know, we've done a lot of different themes. So it is a little bit jumbled. When we visited Dominaria, we started off this sort of historical history thing. That it's about history. And so if you went back,

that's the route we'd probably cover. Creatively, it has the same problem. Well, it has the problem of its identity is a little muddy because we've been there so many times. The good news is there's lots of places to visit. There's lots of things we can tap into. It is a world that we know so much about

that the creative identity problem, the reason I'll say average is just there's too much. It's the world with the embarrassment of riches of just, there's too much there. So it is tricky to know what part will be returned. But Room for Growth, significant. I mean, significant. So much time was there and there's so much established there and so many characters and worlds.

And there's just so much there that, yes, we could go back many, many different times and have lots of material to cover. And then story, major. Dominaria has been on the forefront of many of the major storylines. Nicol Bolas, one of the main characters, one of the villains, is from there. Liliana is from there. Teferi is from there. So, you know, there's a lot of ties to Dominaria. It is definitely, I think it is a world that has more known planeswalkers from it than any other world, I believe. Although Ravnica is close. So the rating is a one. That is me saying I can't imagine us not going back to Dominaria. It is

too popular with the players and there's just too much potential things we can do not to go back. There's some challenges. We spend a lot of time on Dominaria, the set, of giving it an identity that's more in line with our normal identities for worlds. And so I do think the history world

flavors what you'll see going back. Fiora! So Fiora is the world that both conspiracies take place in. It's kind of a Renaissance Italy-inspired world. There's a lot of intrigue and a lot of politics and stuff. Players liked it. It is one of those worlds that sort of has a general look and feel to it but it's not the God of the Studies that I've given, Fiora was

not in a main set, they were in two supplemental sets and the supplemental sets were relatively liked but when we tested the world players were like, okay I like it but we got less of wow this is really one of my favorite worlds although I do get requests to visit Fiora Mechan it, but we got less of, wow, this is really one of my favorite worlds.

Although I do get requests to visit Miura. Mechanical, it's got pretty strong. It's very much tied toward politics and multiplayer. The problem there is what makes it a strong identity does not lend itself really well to a standard legal set. Meaning if we went to do a standard legal set, I'd have to figure it off the mechanics. You know what I'm saying? Because what the mechanical identity has is not just lean towards standard.

Doesn't lean toward a standard set. Creative, very strong. There's definitely some story woven in there. There's some planeswalkers from there. Jack made a home there for a while, I don't think he's originally from there, but Dak made some time there Kaya spent some time there um, Doretti, I think is from there

um, so there's some minor ties, and there's definitely some characters that are connected to it um, so the rating I gave it a 6 um, the biggest problem is that, I gave it a 6. The biggest problem is that it's cool and flammable, it's so tied to multiplayer

and politics that trying to figure out how we would do it in... There's a challenge of how do you make it work in Standard? How does Standard do something with Fjord in a way that is sort of cool? Not undoable, but a little bit of a challenge. That's why it's a six.

Innistrad. Players very popular. Players like Innistrad. In fact, I think in the latest poll I saw, Dominaria and Ravnuk and Innistrad were all three super popular. Zendikar also did pretty well.

But Indusrides is in the top three of most popular of all time. Mechanical identity, super strong, top-down, gothic horror world. It is very established. There's a monster tribal theme that runs through it. There's a graveyard theme that runs through it. It's double-faced cards, that it's the world's double-faced that runs through it. You know, it's definitely, it's double-faced cards, that it's the world's double-faced cards.

So it has a very strong mechanical identity. Creative identity, also very strong. You know, like I said, it's got the core world and we've really carved out

who the monsters are and what the different parts of the world and how the world works. Room for, room for expansion. Pretty significant. There's a lot.

The horror genre is pretty strong. And even within the stuff we've already done, we're playing in really rich trope space. That even, yes, we've made zombies, but this is a very distinct kind of zombie. And it's the home of the werewolves. It's hard to do werewolves other places and stuff like that. It definitely has lots of room.

And story, it is major. There's a lot of stuff intertwined. One of the Odrazi, Emrakul, is trapped in the moon, and Sorin is from here, and all the Gatewatches visited here Tamiyo currently is studying the moon there

Nahiri is obviously visited there there's just a lot of it's one of those worlds that's very intertwined with a lot of the story stuff that's going on and leaving Emrakul on the moon means we kind of left, there's some stuff left behind that definitely sort of there's a lot of little plot lines that have been left that we could pick up on. And it's one of the worlds, because we visited it a couple times,

there's a lot of native characters there that have storylines that are ongoing. Like the angels and stuff. So I give Innistrad a 1. Once again, I would be shocked if we don't return to Innistrad. It's a very popular world. Ixalan. Popularity. Liked. Players more were fond of the pirates and the dinosaurs more so than... They liked a lot of the components of the world. It's one of those things where I think the world, given a better... I mean, I don't know. I think the

set made some mistakes, and the world is somewhat tempered by that, as you will see. There's definitely worlds where the player's unhappiness with the set itself comes across on the world. I think this world could have been rated a little better if the set just had been

a little stronger. I don't know. So I populate light. Mechanical identity, average. It has a tribal sort of component to it, but I think there were some missteps there and we went back. Not that we wouldn't have a tribal element to it, but I think we would need a little bit more than that. I think creative is pretty strong. I think the world creatively, in fact, I think the world is better creatively than its response

from the audience. And I attribute some of that to some of the executions of mechanics. Return, there's some significance. There's an entire continent. We find that vampires came from another continent, so there's a whole other aspect of the world we haven't seen yet. And even though the world's a South, there's definitely a lot of room for other stuff within it.

And story... I think I put minor. It's minor to minimal. There's definitely some characters that spent time there. You know, a bunch of... Angrath was trapped there. What's her name? The dinosaur.

The dinosaur... I'm blanking on her name. The dinosaur... I'll come back to her. The dinosaur planeswacker's there. Vraska and Jace were trapped there. Azor, who was a planeswwalker at one point, was trapped there. So there's definitely some characters, and it's... It has a connection to the current storyline.

So, I mean, there's some connections. So I put on my scale, I gave it a 4. I think I was being a little optimistic. It's one of those worlds where I think the creative's really strong. I think that its reception was, like, we made some missteps mechanically. And so a lot of this world's return is can we find the correct way

to handle the world upon its return? I think we can. I think my four rating is a little optimistic, but I feel like it's a really strong creative world that mechanically we didn't quite handle as well as we could. Next, Kaladesh. Popularity, somewhere between liked and popular. It was one of those worlds that the popular went down

over the length of the world being in standard, partly because standard kind of broke, and a lot of people sort of blamed Cowardish for it. I mean, rightfully so. Cowardish has broken stuff in it. Mechanical identity is very strong. It's an artifact world. It's a technological world. Creatively is very strong. It's an artifact world. It's a technological world.

Creatively also very strong. It is definitely a world that has a very, you know, a very strong sense of what it is. I think there is some room for expansion. Actually, probably somewhere between some and significant. I mean, we only visited basically one city in the world, so there's a lot of flavor space for it. And mechanically, artifacts are pretty robust. I mean, one of the things we have to solve is mechanical sets get kind of broken,

and so we're trying to figure out how to solve that, and so it is that problem to solve. And then story-wise, minor. This is Chandra's home. this is Dovin Bond's home you know, so we obviously the Gatewatch visited here, Tezzeret visited here and it has some connection the Planter Bridge came from here, I mean there's definitely some things

that tie this world to the larger storyline but in a more minor way. I gave it a rating of 5. This is one of those worlds where I think there's a lot going for it, but also it caused some problems, and we have to figure out how to fix that. Artifact sets in general have been troublesome for us. I don't think we're going to abandon artifact sets, but we need to find some solutions.

We're definitely looking at using colored mana more. Anyway, we need to figure out how to solve that problem. That definitely is something that we have yet... A nut we've yet to crack, as they say. Kamigawa. It was unpopular. Although I will say it has grown in popularity after the fact. When we actually were at the world, so interesting point is, it's one of the first worlds we

ever tested the world with market research, and it polled really poorly. In fact, I think today it's still the lowest rated world we have. So one of the problems with what we found was we did a top-down world inspired by Japanese mythology. First top-down world, I mean, other than maybe Arabian Nights, first top-down world once we were making blocks. And we made a choice to make it, we sort of made it very, very true to Japanese mythology, but hitting a lot of things that were unfamiliar with most of the audience.

And so it ended up being a world that didn't quite resonate as much as we hoped. One of the reasons I think it got rated so low. It's definitely one of those worlds that... It's one of those worlds that has grown on people in retrospect. Like, it has a much higher following now than it ever did then. Mechanically, it's weak. It was a very parasitic set. The mechanic, like... One of the biggest problems, going back to Kamigawa,

is there's very few mechanics I'd even want to salvage. Flip cards didn't quite work out. Double-faced cards are just a better version of that. The splice, I mean, splice, if we went back, maybe we'd try splice onto Instants of Sorcery rather than onto Arcane. Ninjutsu is somewhat popular. That's a mechanic we've tried to figure out how to do again. You know,

Bushido is at least, I mean, it's a very simple mechanic, but it's got a name tied to this world. I don't know. There's not a lot of mechanical stuff I want to revisit if we went back. Creatively average. I mean, there's some cool things about it. I mean, the story, it's not devoid of some interesting aspects.

And I do think a Japanese-inspired world is something that if we started from scratch, we would do really amazingly. Room for... There's some room for expansion. Not tons. I mean, there's not a some room for expansion. Not tons. Uh, I mean, there's not a lot of mechanic expansion I care about. There's some, there's some creative expansion. Story-wise, there's some minor

plot points. It's Tamio's home world. Uh, Johnny and Tamio have a connection, um, as does, I think, Narset and Tamio. So there's, there's some tie into the story that if we went there, there's some tie into the story. If we went there, there's some ways to weave it into the larger story. I gave it a rating of an 8.

It is just a hard sell within the home office to say, let's go to Kamigawa, just because Kamigawa just hasn't really done all that well in the past. And it's easier to say, let's go to a world that was popular. It's a lot harder to say, let's go to a world that's unpopular. I did a whole podcast talking about why it's dangerous. Like, it went horribly. We can fix it. It's just not the greatest place to start a design. So, I will say I gave this an 8. I probably would drop it to a 7. I did a drop it to a 7. I did a poll not long ago where I asked the audience on my blog and on my social media mostly.

I tagged from other places and said, What world do you most want to return to? And then I weighted the answers. And the number one was Lorwyn and the number two was Kamigawa. And those two were 1 and two by a decent margin. So, both Lorwyn and Kamigawa, I think maybe ticked up one from just

a strong, given that's the enfranchised audience, it's not all the audience, but the enfranchised audience really does seem to have a soft spot for Lorwyn and Kamigawa. So, keeping that in mind, while I gave it an eight in my article, probably I guess I'd say it's a 7. Which gets us to Lorwyn.

Lorwyn slash Shadowmoor. So it was also unpopular when we were originally there. It's the second lowest rated world. Shadowmoor did better than Lorwyn. I'm treating them as a singular world called Lorwyn and Shadowmoor. For those who don't know, it's a world in which the world changes and it's light part of the time and dark part of the time. And there's an event that changes it between these two states.

So Shattermoor did a little bit better than Lorwyn. Neither did great. Mechanically, it's got a pretty strong identity. Lorwyn's very tied to tribal. Shattermoor's very tied to tribal Shadowmour's very tied to hybrid if we went back we would probably tie the most interesting aspect mechanically of the world

is the fact that there's two states that might be something we would mechanically tie into creatively average some players really like the sort of softness to it, especially on the Lorwyn side. It's a world that's a little gentler than some of our normal worlds, but I mean, the creative didn't really, at the time, based on all our market research, the

creative didn't resonate as strongly with the audiences. We hope, obviously, the fact that it rated so high in the recent survey means, at least within Franchise's audience, there's something about it that people like. There's some sort of quality to it that's a little bit different. It is the one plane, the only plane that I know of that doesn't have humans on it. The funny thing is, the people who love it, some of them bring up no humans as being a plus to the world, although all market research actually shows that the lack of humans is one of the reasons

that the world gets rated so lowly, so I'm not sure where that stands. There is some room for expansion. Obviously, if we did, I mean, if we played into tribal space, there's things we would do. If we played into hybrid, hybrid's a little bit limited.

We've learned we can't do hybrid at the levels we did hybrid in Shattamore. So if we went back to Lorwyn, the hybrid levels couldn't be quite as high if we were doing the Shattamore part. Story-wise, there's minor connections. Lorwyn is where Nissa sparks to when she first goes there. I don't know. I mean, I guess maybe somewhere between minimal and minor. There's some connections to Lorwyn,

maybe less than I was thinking of off the top of my head. I gave this a seven. I rated it slightly better than Kamigawa. Maybe this dips down to a 6 with all the recent stuff. I mean, it is a world that has some problems to it, has some things we have to work out, has some issues. The audience's response when we were there last

definitely has us rethinking how we want to visit it. It's a world with potential. Obviously, it's more popular than our enfranchised crowd. I rated it a 7 on the article. I'm going to take it down to a 6. Okay, next. Mercadia. So Mercadia is from the block Mercadian Masks. It's a world that is kind of a world of commerce. It's got some city aspects to it,

but it also has some other aspects. It was unpopular. Players did not like Mercadia. I think Mercadia is the... Well, Mercadia was prior to us measuring worlds. But when we've gone back and asked about Mercadia,

it never does well. It didn't do great in their poll. For example, some of these ones, I have a lot of people asking. Others are like, eh, the enfranchised player's like, you know what? I don't need to see Mercadia. Can you give me Lorwyn or Kamigawa? So Mercadia isn't really even championed by the

enfranchised crowd. It's got a weakened mechanical identity. I don't even know, like, it was a point in time where we hadn't really got themes yet for a world, so it doesn't even have a mechanical identity. And creative identity, the world

at the time was like, it's a world where things don't work the way you expect them to, and they really sort of just did things that were weird for the sake of being weird, but it didn't make it cohesive. So I don't think it has a very strong creative identity. It's got minimal room for, I mean, there's not much creatively or mechanically that I want to return to. So there's not a lot of room for, you know, growth. And the connection to story is pretty minimal.

I mean, the Gatewatch were there. I don't even know if a planeswalker was there or visited there or was from there. It's got minimal connection to modern day storyline. And for ratings, I gave it a 9.

It is almost a 10. I gave it a 9 just because Rubia has one extra thing that keeps us unlikely to go back there. So, I give Norkedia a 9.

Okay, New Phyrexia. So, New Phyrexia, the Myrden part of it was popular. More so, I think the Myrden part of it was popular, more so. I think the Mirrodin part of it was bordering between popular and very popular, and the New Phyrexia part was merely popular. That players seemed to like the Mirrodin part a little bit better,

so it's another world where we sort of steered it in a direction that... Now, some players like New Phyrexia. We do get some requests. I think on the recent poll I asked, New Phyrexia was in the top five. I think it was fifth, but still in the top five. It has a strong mechanical identity. We really defined who the Phyrexians were,

and there's poison and negative one minus one minus one counters and proliferate and they're definitely the Phyrexians have a very strong mechanical feel to them and creatively we really shaped a world that was very shaped. Now that world's kind of dark and depressing and I don't know how how long we wanted to be in that world. You know one of the things that the reason I think New Phyrexia was rated a little lower than Mirrodin is Mirrodin was a little sunnier and bright than New Phyrexia. New Phyrexia is a little bleaker. And in general, players don't mind things a little dark,

but New Phyrexia is a little on the bleak side for them. Return, there's some. Definitely mechanics have some space to play around with. Like I said, there's a strong mechanical and creative identity, so there's things to play into. One of the trickiest things is, I think the Phyrexians do the best when you watch them sort of invading other worlds.

When they're slowly sort of turning a world, it's kind of Phyrexian that's coolest. And having a world already turned kind of Phyrexian that's coolest and having a world all returned there's less to do, you're sort of playing in the watching the world sort of fight the factions fight with themselves we definitely built that up

in New Phyrexia so that part is there but probably the strongest thing going for it is stories, major the Phyrexians are a major enemy of magic But probably the strongest thing going for it is stories. Major! The Phyrexians are a major enemy of magic. And there's a major dangling plot hole,

which is the fate of the Phyrexians. The Phyrexians cannot planeswalk. With the mending, the planar portals shut down, so that's how they used to travel, was planar portals. They got to Mirrodin through Karn, when Karn got affected. So, you know, that's how they managed to travel last time. They're an evil force that would take over the multiverse. The only thing holding them back is the ability to travel between planes. But they are a danger, and like I said, they're

one of the big baddies of magic. We really, the Phyrexian storyline is something at some point we have to pick back up on. So it's a pretty major, and there's a bunch of planeswalkers that have tied into it. I think Koth, for example, is still on New Phyrexia. Karn is very much tied to it. Elsbeth, although Elsbeth has her own issue right now, but Elsbeth is very tied to the Phyrexians.

So, you know, there are definitely some characters like when we were on Dominaria in the storyline, you saw Karn. Karn is very preoccupied with the Phyrexians and he's on his mind. So, like, it is definitely something that ties into the story that is Oh, so what did I give it? I gave it a rating of a 5. is on his mind. So, like, it is definitely something that ties into the story that is...

Oh, so what did I give it? I gave it a rating of a five. I think there's some challenges with the mechanics to work through. Poison, for example, is very polarizing and definitely has some challenges. I mean, I think we could go

to New Phyrexia... Well, I think if we went to New Phyrexia with zero poison, the poison fans, of which there are a lot of poison fans, would be quite disheartened. The poison haters would probably be happy. But anyway, between the idea of there's definitely some mechanical and creative identity that people connect to, and there's a lot of major storylines, I think at some point, like I said,

I gave it a five, meaning I think we're more likely to return to New Phyrexia than not to return to New Phyrexia. But I will admit the reason it's five and not lower is there's a bunch of challenges. There's some mechanical challenges. There's some creative challenges. There's a lot of reasons to go back to New Phyrexia, but it is

not a world that necessarily is easy to design. Creatively, it's very bleak. Mechanically, it's very bleak. Mechanically, it's types of mechanics that are very polarizing. So there's definitely some real challenge. Okay, so I'm almost at work, so I'm going to cut off here. So in my next podcast, a little preview of things to come, I'll talk about Phyrexia, Rebaah, Wrath, Ravnica, Ragatha, Chandelar, Tarkir, Theros, Algrotha, Vryn, Zendikar, and Kylo. That's the one I hadn't talked about yet.

Well, let me talk about one more. I guess I'll sneak in one more before I get it. I'm waiting in the light. Phyrexia. So Phyrexia was somewhat popular, although, once again, Phyrexia, we only really visit Phyrexia a little bit in Urza's Saga. Most of the time we've seen Phyrexia, the creatures, go elsewhere. So we haven't really been to the plane of Phyrexia. And its mechanical identity is average. It's very black

is probably its biggest problem. When we brought Phyrexia back, we kind of pushed them through all five colors. They're very, very black on original Phyrexia. Creatively, it's pretty weak. It's kind of based on Dante's Inferno, so it's dark. You think new Phyrexia is dark. Phyrexia is darker.

Room for expansion, there's some, but not a lot. I mean, we've only been there once, so, I mean, it's not like we've tapped everything out. There's some minor tie. I mean, the Phyrexians are very much a big part of the magic larger story.

Urza, Yawgmoth, I mean, there's some characters in old that are tied to Phyrexia. So there's definitely something. In the larger magic storyline, there's some connection. There's maybe minimal Planeswalker connection. Actually, no Planeswalkers are from there. I gave it as a rating a nine because, like, visiting a world

that basically is mostly black mana. I mean, we did Torment, which was leaning toward black, and that was problematic. That's why I gave it a nine. I'm not quite sure how we pull it off. Maybe I give it a 10 if I didn't want to make her buy the 110.

Maybe it's a world where as a component of other things, maybe if we did something like Magic Origins where we visited a bunch of planes, maybe it's one of the planes we could visit. The other problem is the Phyrexians that were on Phyrexia I think are dead now based on the Wetlight Saga story.

So while there are new Phyrexians and new Phyrexia, I don't think there are... I think Phyrexia the world might be empty. I don't know. Maybe there's Phyrexians there. I'm not sure. So anyway, it's a troublesome world for us to visit. So anyway, I gave it a 9. Okay, so I'm now pulling into the Wizard's Parking Lot. So I have, anyway, I gave it a nine. Okay, so I'm now pulling into the Wizard's Park a lot. So I have a bunch of planes left to talk about.

I will cover them next time. I was going to say tomorrow, but for you guys on the next podcast. But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed it, and it's kind of fun. One of the reasons I think the scale articles and stuff on my blog is popular is it's fun to discuss kind of like the chances of things.

And it lets me sort of talk through like how successful things have been. So anyway, my Rebiah Scale article was pretty popular. So I assume, I hope that this will be popular as well. But anyway, so many planes. I only got through half of them or some of them. But anyway, I will talk about the rest on the next podcast. So anyway, I'm now at work. So we all know what that means. It is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.