Relentless Advances · 11:40am May 31st, 2023
This one's mostly for me and hawthornbunny, maintainer of PonyMTG, to whom I apologize for making their life more complicated. In my defense, WotC did it first.
Previews for the Lord of the Rings Magic set have begun in earnest, and that includes giving a lot of Sauron-associated cards the amass keyword action, because if there's one thing the Dark Lord on his dark throne loves, it's army-building. But while he was once known as the Necromancer, it wasn't reanimated corpses beating down the doors of Minas Tirith. Amass has been updated to amass (type), and mixing and matching will lead to a... unique army composition as you blend Eternals and orcs. And potentially more.
As you may recall, I've used amass in card blogs for another dark lord who laid siege to a shining city. Sombra basically is pony Sauron, so it's only fitting... but this presents a unique opportunity for better flavor. After all, this is a kids' show, and while overriding free will is okay—Hello, Starlight—killing and raising corpses is a bit iffier. Thus, I'm making some functional updates, organized by blog entry:
The Beginning of the End
Suppress Resistance; Kneel Before Sombra; Conquest of Ponyville; Sombra's Gatebreaker; and Sombra, Slaver King now amass Drones, in keeping with other cards that represent those under Sombra's thrall.
My Little Pony: The Manga, Ch. 1 & 2
Necromancers' Revel, Ravening Herd, and Ruins of Ponyville still amass Zombies. After all, those were inspired by a timeline where the cookie-induced zombie plague wasn't a prank.
Homecoming, Part 2
Knights in Sombra's Service now amasses Drones.
The Magic of Cybertron #1 & #2
Sudden Reinforcements now amasses Robot artifacts (i.e. any Armies you have will become Robot artifact creatures, as will the Army token you create if you didn't have any.)
Spotter Thrall also amasses Robot artifacts, and "Zombie tokens you control have reach" has been changed to "Artifact creature tokens you control have reach."
Sombra Eternal now amasses Drones. It's a bit inconsistent, yes, but I feel it works.
The Magic of Cybertron #3 & #4
Squad Rotation and Capacitor Raiders now amass Robot artifacts.
Sombra's Scrying and Praise Sombra now amass Drones.
The Return of Discord
March of the Shade-Thralls now amasses Drones.
Ancestral Tribute
Grogar Rises now amasses Horrors, as befits the tone of the story that inspired the card.
This concludes FoME's latest bit of hyperfixation on details few if any other people care about. But hey, best to strike while the motivation is hot.
Well, yeah, that's pretty self evident. Jokes aside you might want to fix that.
Though I will maintain he's a good fit for pony Nyarlathotep too.
So, via conversation with MaRo on Tumblr, "Amass [Type] N" specifically creates Army creature tokens of the named Type that are specifically Black in colour, and if we wanted to make Armies of other colours, we'd need new keywords. The odd thing is how the Reminder Text says that if you, say, Amass Zombies 1, then Amass Orcs 2, you should wind up with a 3/3 Orc Zombie Army, but MaRo says that you should actually have a 1/1 Zombie Army and a 2/2 Orc Army instead.
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Sombra being but one guise for the Crawling Chaos is a surprisingly appealing concept.
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That may be a case of MaRo working off of an R&D decision that was later changed; the mechanics article says otherwise.
I do need to get on with a PonyMTG update anyway, I shall add this to the list
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If it helps, I have updated the card text in the linked blogs.
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Ah, I hadn't seen the mechanics article yet. And I was just coming here to update my post because he did answer it differently today.
These updates have now been implemented
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Much appreciated. I’ll try to keep more from happening, but that’s on WotC.