Thread by @bsweitz123

Tarkir is finally upon us, so it's time to make good on my promise of being insufferable. As the Red color pie councilor, I'm very excited to introduce some brand-new mechanical space for Red. Unrestricted Manadorks! #wotcstaff🧵

Red has been a mana color for a long time. It has generated mana through rituals and treasures. Its mana production has been temporary and bursty. Unfortunately, bursty mana can be developmentally problematic. It's hard to make fun, smooth games of Magic with rituals.

Recently we've solved some of this by making "attacking manadorks" that generate mana while still following a red play pattern. This was an improvement, but they still have polar gameplay. We wanted to give Red cards that can function from behind, and that can be more defensive.

We hope manadorks can incentivize Red decks to play a longer game and try to cast 4+ mana spells, rather than try to blitz the game and win as fast as possible. We also feel that manadorks are still temporary or unreliable: They often die or get caught up in sweepers.

Red will NOT be gaining access to land ramp like Rampant Growth or Skyshroud Claim. These remain singularly Green (before you ask, Zell doesn't ramp you, it bounces a land). Red's unrestricted manadorks will add less mana than Green's: e.g. no Kami of Whispered Hopes.

This is part of a design-wide effort to open up mechanical space for Red, especially focused on positive, constructive outputs and playing longer games. There's more stuff coming in the future but for now I hope people enjoy adding {oR} without having to attack :) #wotcstaff