Available at all retailers this Elksmas season.
Category: food
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So You’re an Elk Now
In your past life, perhaps you were a powerful wizard, a complicated piece of machinery or an apple or something — it doesn’t matter. The point is you’re an elk now, and I, Oko, Thief of Crowns, Master of Deception, Shunner of Blouses am here to explain what you can expect from your new life.
1) Poop wherever. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen an elk or a deer, but they’re constantly pooping and they’re doing it everywhere. Embrace the freedom to do your business wherever you like. Inside? Yes. Outside? Of course. All over the carefully arranged banquet I just set up? Yes, unfortunately there as well. I’m not sure why my powers are making food and creating animals that are constantly contaminating it. Life is full of mysteries.
2) You’re massive! What size do you think an elk is? That’s like a big deer right? Maybe a 1/1 or a 2/1 or something? Wrong baby, you’re a 3/3! You’re the size of a mammoth or a small dragon. Knights: people with weapons and armor on the back of a large horse are no match for you. And if you run into something bigger than you? Don’t worry, that’s going to be an elk too soon enough.
3) No clothes. I’m jealous! As you can probably tell from my spectacular abs, I’m no fan of society’s prudish conventions, and if I could, I’d probably go without these pants as well (not wearing pants makes it more difficult to find attendees to my feasts). You, on the other hand, are unfettered by civilization’s cruel obsession with fabric and you can let it all hang out. On the downside, I’m not going to hit on you anymore. Despite what you may have heard, I do not… fraternize… with my employees (that’s you).
4) Stop eating all the food. You’re an elk, which means you can survive by eating moss and grass. I think that’s what you eat anyway. The food on the tables is off limits — that’s for the guests. Don’t worry, they’re getting turned into elks too so there’s no need to be jealous. I love making food even more than turning things into elks, which is why I’d appreciate it if you guys stop attacking the banquet as soon as I’ve left the room.
In any case, I hope this was informative. I thought it would be necessary to write this primer, as I’ve turned most of the Kingdom into elk and most of you just stare at me blankly like I’m supposed to know what you do once you become one.
LOVE
Oko -
The New Flavor of Magic
What up dawgs? Just MaRo Monday poppin’ in to let you know we here at Wizards pay close attention to what our customers want. Magic is a game of the people! And according to our research wizkids, junk food and MtG are inseparable! While me and Hasbro were pondering this connection at a Bohemian Grove soiree, the beings that puppet Frito Lay approached us with quite a chill idea. So for this Fall of 2015 I’m pleased to announce that the cards you love are teaming up with the taste you crave to bring you:
Mark Rosewater
Atacolypse is a stand alone product for both the Magic: the Gathering and Frito Lay brands; we’ve combined, or flavortwisted, the short-burst excitement and rich taste of Magic cards with the diversity and collectibility of Frito Lay’s Doritos Corn Chips. Curious to see what I mean? Well munch right in boi!
Dang that’s tang. Lime Spiral perfectly captures the experience of eating Chile Limón® Doritos while playing midrange. Notice the new ability snackrifice. When you snackrifice a permanent, you get the drop on your opponent’s dad’s spending money by forcing that ‘dult to purchase a delicious Frito Lay product of your choice. “Pump the breaks!,” you may say. “What use is even more Doritos mouth sensation to me?”
Say whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa? Let me tell y’all about livin’ la Vida Loca; MaRo knows about livin’ la Vida Loca. And now players like you can too! Think of la Vida Loca as like multikicker for your taste buds; the more you enjoy, the better the spell. But enjoy responsibly (the squares at the FDA made me put that jazz in. Pbbbftft, whatever). Hey, yo, how do you know which flavor of Doritos best fits your spending habits/lifestyle? Wisdom in 3…2…1…
Say whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa? You’re probably thinking, “Those dudes at Wizzers must have lost their darn minds!” But that’s not true pleeb: we opened our minds. Speaking of opening things, open and then eat lots of Doritos to make this spell more powerful. But huh? Duh? Whu? Snackback? Yeah son, flashback to the snack Samurai Jack! This is called conserving design space. Burn that creep, stop to eat, and repeat! Just call me Snackcaster Mage! Just call me Think Spice! Just call me Rescoop. But you shouldn’t double dip, that’s not cool- you know what, MYTHICS!
Stop the presses! What’s this buzz about a contest? For a limited (lol) time we’re teaming up our team up to give one lucky person FREE MAGIC CARDS FOR LIFE!!!* If that isn’t enough to whet your appetite than maybe you should go eat some flippin’ Pringles you Yu-Gi-Oh tweenage scrub for brains. Alright, that’s all I got for this week. Look forward to seeing you brosefs on the convention floor/tipsy at a gas station at midnight on a Wednesday. Peace and may the taste be with you!*Free Magic cards is limited to less than a penny draft fodder and all non-Hymn to Tourach cards opened from slightly damaged Fallen Empires packs found under Ken Nagle’s bone pile in the supply closet of R&D. Offer available for a limited time, results may vary. Snack responsibly.
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The Flavor of Innistrad
It’s no surprise that Hasbro’s recent unveiled publishing deal with General Mills had a big effect on the top-down design of Innistrad. In week two of the Innistrad previews, Mark Rosewater talks about the influence that the five monster cereal tribes had on the set’s development.
Remember that the set was always going to have a lot of creature types that only showed up in ones and twos. We just had to figure out which one we could blow up into another major race. In the end, I was swung by breakfast cereal. In 1975, General Mills put out five monster-themed cereals: Count Chocula, Franken Berry, Boo Berry, Fruit Brute, and Yummy Mummy. Obviously, General Mills was trying to go with the most popular monsters. Vampires, zombies, and werewolves were all represented.
Breakfast cereals have actually had a big impact on M:TG for years – I am sure you all remember Fruity Pebbles, Cocoa Pebbles, and Trix (famous decks), as well as Lucky Charms (a nickname for the Demon’s Horn cycle). For Innistrad it was pretty clear that Wizards of the Coast had decided to invest themselves fully in the breakfast cereal industry, but it ended up not working out for some reason. Normally you wouldn’t be able to see fully-rendered test cards like these, but our expert hackers were able to extract the following 5 tribal Planeswalkers from deep within WotC’s developer databases, along with some juicy developer comments:
TL: Innistrad’s spirits are blue and white, without any real mechanical identity. This fits in well with what we usually try to do with planeswalkers: Having them make no flavor sense whatsoever. This is a home run in that department.
TL: The main aspect of Innistrad zombies is that they say “Zombie” a lot on the cards, because market research showed that our most zombie-centric demographics would often forget what kind of card it was by the time they finished reading it. Someone designed this planeswalker, and then we threw that word in each ability and moved it around at random until the sentence made grammatical sense zombie.
TL: Blah blah blah, something something, here’s a planeswalker that costs six.
TL: Rawwwrrr! Werewolves! Yeah, I don’t know either, but creative called us like “hey can you make a planeswalker that regenerates werewolves” and we were like “what that’s stupid, regeneration sucks” and they were like “well you suck” and we were like “well no YOU suck” and then they said that if we don’t make one that they’ll stop Catherine from bringing in cake on Fridays and those cakes are really good and sometimes she’ll write a message to us in the frosting like “thanks for all the hard work guys!” and generally she’s just really sweet to us when she comes by with the cake (last week it was chocolate) so we said okay. Regeneration matters now, people! Really!
TL: Rules change with Innistrad at FNM level and below: If a player targets a creature for the sole purpose of gaining life, no one is allowed to respond to that ability. I mean, come on. That would just be mean. The lil fella’s just trying to gain some life, would y’all chill out a bit? It’s pretty adorable.
…and that’s the end of it. I wonder if we’ll end up seeing these unique new Planeswalker personalities in any upcoming sets?
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Lime from the Loaf
Lime from the Loaf was originally posted on The Magic Lampoon.
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Cabal Carrots
Cabal Carrots was originally posted on The Magic Lampoon many years ago. It’s part of a line of food-related cards. Delicious!
