Sonorous Howlbonder

Prospects of 'Evergreen Keyword Tribal'

New 08 Oct 2021 Asked by usetheinternetforevil 66 Comments

In Ikoria, there was a subtheme for 'evergreen keyword tribal ' (I'm not sure what you guys called it in development, but that's what me and my friends referred to it as.) I'm talking about cards like Labyrinth Raptor and Sonorous Howlbonder that were essentially "tribal" lords for the menace keyword.I really enjoyed this design because my biggest problem with tribal is there is no inherent identity with the different tribes. Playing a 2/2 Elf and a 2/2 Human doesn't have any inherent effects on the game until you play a lord in that tribe, whereas playing a 2/2 with menace and a 2/2 with trample does. On top of that, the tribes we currently have in-game have kind of a wide range of identity (for example, Elves on Kaldheim are much different compared to Elves on Ravnica. Of course, Elves have the "Tap for mana" ability generally, but that is neither exclusive to elves nor is it inherent in every elf) which sort of reduces the cohesiveness of these tribal identities, whereas trample is trample no matter what plane you're one.Is there a possibility in the future that we get more 'evergreen tribal', and possibly even a set that revolves around it as a focus? (similar to how Innistrad focuses on Zombie, Vampire, etc. Tribal, is it possible we get a set that focuses on Vigilance, Lifelink, etc. Tribal?)Also high fives for the team for Midnight Hunt, very fun set


A deck being all elves or all merfolk is just way more flavorful than a deck being all creatures with trample or lifelink. I do think we’ll do more, but it’s not something I expect us to do in large volume.


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