May be too good to reprint. I mean, there are Zombies other then Scathes these days.
tavaritz
★★★☆☆ (3.5/5.0)(3 votes)
IMHO all lords should be in print at leat in Extended.
Aaron_Forsythe
★★★★☆ (4.6/5.0)(12 votes)
Aaron’s Random Card Comment of the Day #77, 6/6/11
Tribal lords were such an amazing thing to have gotten right at the game’s inception, and I tip my proverbial hat to Richard Garfield for nailing the idea of the flavorful build-around as well as he did.
Zombie Master debuted alongside his more powerful brethren Lord of Atlantis and Goblin King in Alpha and lasted in the Core Sets for a decade—through Sixth Edition—before Seventh Edition became the first Core Set without a Zombie lord.
As charming as Zombie Master was—as a younger man, I certainly included him in decks to enhance my Scathe Zombies—he lagged pretty far behind his Goblin and Merfolk counterparts in the power department. A long look at Alpha had me guessing that the existence of the card Bad Moon kept Richard from putting the lordly +1/+1 bonus on Zombie Master—I can imagine him not wanting two black rares that pumped creatures. (Crusade—Bad Moon’s white counterpart—was also in Alpha, and there’s no white tribal lord at all.)
As the years went on, Goblin King and Lord of Atlantis made their way into tournament-caliber decks and the hearts of players everywhere, but Zombie Master never enjoyed that level of glory. With tons of copies in print and very little player interest in owning more of them, Zombie Master was put out to pasture after 7ED, replaced in the minds of players, and later in Core Sets, by Planeshift’s Lord of the Undead.
Lord of the Undead is a more traditional tribal lord, as it grants the now par-for-the-course +1/+1 to members of its tribe. Additionally, the ability to regrow dead Zombies to the top of your library was much more generally useful than swampwalk.
Lord of the Undead reigned in Core Sets for several years until Magic 2010, when we redid the cycle of tribal lords to be non-symmetrical; most prior ones, including Zombie Master, gave bonuses to all creatures of their tribe, regardless of who controlled them. I really like the flavor of those kinds of cards—“Zombies pay fealty to the Master first, their controllers second”—but over and over again we saw players fail to realize that opposing creatures were getting buffs from their cards and, once they were told, found themselves wrestling with whether or not the lord was worth playing at all.
I enjoy some amount of tension in the game—the risk/reward of including a certain card because it might help an opponent more that it does you occasionally—and, like I said, the flavor of old lords was spot-on, but the goal of tribal lords, at least in Core Sets, is to be immediately lovable. Having them help only your creatures was one way to make sure that was the case, in addition to keeping board states simpler to process.
And that’s how Cemetery Reaper became the heir to Zombie Master in Magic 2010.
I realize the Reaper was kicked out of M11 for Captivating Vampire, but trust me, you’ll see the Reaper again. I can’t make the same promise for Zombie Master.
willpell
★★★☆☆ (3.5/5.0)(3 votes)
Aaron's logic on the non-symmetry of tribal lords is utterly correct and also very sad. I pine for the days when Magic's goal was to be the best possible representation of its fantasy flavor, rather than the best game to play. Amusing pastimes are a dime a dozen, but classic stories live forever, so I feel that this was making the wrong decision, albeit for the perfectly understandable reason of liking to have a job.
Comments (4)
Tribal lords were such an amazing thing to have gotten right at the game’s inception, and I tip my proverbial hat to Richard Garfield for nailing the idea of the flavorful build-around as well as he did.
Zombie Master debuted alongside his more powerful brethren Lord of Atlantis and Goblin King in Alpha and lasted in the Core Sets for a decade—through Sixth Edition—before Seventh Edition became the first Core Set without a Zombie lord.
As charming as Zombie Master was—as a younger man, I certainly included him in decks to enhance my Scathe Zombies—he lagged pretty far behind his Goblin and Merfolk counterparts in the power department. A long look at Alpha had me guessing that the existence of the card Bad Moon kept Richard from putting the lordly +1/+1 bonus on Zombie Master—I can imagine him not wanting two black rares that pumped creatures. (Crusade—Bad Moon’s white counterpart—was also in Alpha, and there’s no white tribal lord at all.)
As the years went on, Goblin King and Lord of Atlantis made their way into tournament-caliber decks and the hearts of players everywhere, but Zombie Master never enjoyed that level of glory. With tons of copies in print and very little player interest in owning more of them, Zombie Master was put out to pasture after 7ED, replaced in the minds of players, and later in Core Sets, by Planeshift’s Lord of the Undead.
Lord of the Undead is a more traditional tribal lord, as it grants the now par-for-the-course +1/+1 to members of its tribe. Additionally, the ability to regrow dead Zombies to the top of your library was much more generally useful than swampwalk.
Lord of the Undead reigned in Core Sets for several years until Magic 2010, when we redid the cycle of tribal lords to be non-symmetrical; most prior ones, including Zombie Master, gave bonuses to all creatures of their tribe, regardless of who controlled them. I really like the flavor of those kinds of cards—“Zombies pay fealty to the Master first, their controllers second”—but over and over again we saw players fail to realize that opposing creatures were getting buffs from their cards and, once they were told, found themselves wrestling with whether or not the lord was worth playing at all.
I enjoy some amount of tension in the game—the risk/reward of including a certain card because it might help an opponent more that it does you occasionally—and, like I said, the flavor of old lords was spot-on, but the goal of tribal lords, at least in Core Sets, is to be immediately lovable. Having them help only your creatures was one way to make sure that was the case, in addition to keeping board states simpler to process.
And that’s how Cemetery Reaper became the heir to Zombie Master in Magic 2010.
I realize the Reaper was kicked out of M11 for Captivating Vampire, but trust me, you’ll see the Reaper again. I can’t make the same promise for Zombie Master.