General Cube Philosophy: Principles Of Anti-EDH Feminist Design
- Thread starter lsclr
- Start date
I don't know, we're not shaming Lilianas choice, but the male artists choice how to depict her, right?
I mean, yeah, but it also comes down to the idea that Liliana in her ISD portrayal is less acceptable to a hypothetical female audience than Elspeth's paladin girl aesthetic due to her cleavage. I agree that Liliana's pose is on the pinup-y side, but it wouldn't be out of the norm for an outfit-of-the-day selfie or how some of my coworkers dress when they're in a more femme mood (as opposed to, say, Ashnod).
Would I prefer it if Liliana of the Veil had art that was closer to Liliana, Death's Majesty (which might be one of my favorite planeswalker arts) or actually had her wear the Chain Veil? Yes. Do I think going with the art where she's covering up like a "good girl" and is posed in a way that screams "cosplayer" or "uncertain newbie Marvel movie character" is that much of an improvement? Not really. Seriously, I don't know what art direction they gave Martina Fačková for that piece, but compare that milquetoast pose to the amount of queen bitch energy she gave Tasha, Witch Queen.
(Brom's borderless art for the card is the correct choice, because it shows the necromancer doing necromancy and she's rocking her Professor Onyx look - I'm honestly a little surprised that they didn't stick with that character design for FRA.)
QFT, best Lili art hands down (Though the creature side of Heretical Healer is a close second). Just the best at actually portraying their character at that moment in the story.
QFT!
For what it's worth, I like the "planeswalkers-as-scaling-threats-with-natural-counterplay" argument from lsclr, and the planeswalkers with static abilities kinda feel more like well-costed enchantments that are also a scaling threat. Like, you play an older walker and it gets removed, you basically spent however much mana on a single use of their w/e abilities, plus an extra bit of mana as a premium to eat a card or attack.
The ones I see cubed nowadays with their static abilities are effectively reducing that premium - you're getting more out of just resolving it and having in in play for a turn than you used to. Spark Hunter is far from the worst offender there, but it did prompt the thought.
Static effects, especially triggered one, also add to board complexity, and for less confident players complex board states can just feel awful - missing a trick or trigger you should have seen coming, feeling like there are too many considerations to take into account for every decision, etc etc. My wife's first set was OG Lorwyn/Shadowmoor and she loves the vibes but the fiddly, complex environment really coloured her opinion of Magic for a while. Also just had a cube day at a mates where a dude absolutely lost his shit over people reminding him of his own triggered abilities because his ability to track all that shit while also reading cards for the first time was just not there compared to people who've played for 20 years grinding PTQs.
I like the "tick up, tick up, ult" idea of walkers, but 4+ abilities is a lot of permutations over a turn cycle or two.
I don't mean to slutshame Liliana. Like 3/4 of the women I happen to end up playing Magic: The Gathering with are lesbians, and, judging by the art that some of them have in their apartments, they really like looking at cleavage. I personally wish the ISD Lili didn't look like quite such a naive ingenue-type as opposed to an unrepentantly evil necromancer. That does seem like the kind of thing where representation of various types of woman would make Liliana's pinup-style art more of a statement about a specific character than a generalization about all women, and curating the feminist cube properly would help with that.I find it kinda funny that we're slutshaming Liliana (ok, Liliana's ISD art) in the anti-edh feminist cube thread.
...
I also notice a lack of
This cool lady is here to tell you that kickflipping a motorcycle into villain's face is cool and good.
Chandra, Spark Hunter doesn't have individually complicated abilities, but she creates tokens that each of her abilities then interact with. That's a kind of emergent complexity that I'd want to avoid, or at least spread out among a few cards.