Limits of a [CARDNAME] | The Story of Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar

this episode is brought to you by us morano martica dystonicardkingdom.com use cardkingdom.com studies to help support the show and pick up some magic cards that have cool novel elaborate or poetic card names now today we had a big contrast in temperature across the uk just 12 degrees over coastal parts of eastern england with cloudy skies just up the road from clan by the porsche winger this is weatherman and news anchor liam dutton he's feeling what the british may call rather chuffed after nailing the pronunciation of this tiny town in northwest wales the temperature got to 21 celsius at 70 in fahrenheit elsewhere along the eastern coast of the uk that day storm clouds were sending lightning across the sky if only dutton could have commented on the thunderous clap that follows the bolt the sound that james joyce called this is but one of ten thunder words in finnegan's wake each of them 100 letters long except for the last which has 101 making up a total of 1001 collectively a nod to the 1001 knights of arabic folklore this term in particular is an amalgamation of the word thunder as translated and anglicized from various languages mashed together to describe the boom that accompanied adam and eve's fall from grace joyce had fun with words to say the least and i could see our beloved weatherman taking a shot at this term the next time it storms in england her birth certificate is two feet long she has the longest personal name in the world and we want to ask her mother what were you thinking perhaps in an alternate timeline liam dutton is not a news anchor but rather the host of a daytime talk show in the mid-1990s and in charge of interviewing the girl with over 1 000 letters in her name what is her name it's shandy and talnation vision case and simon drew schlenderscher carney rockwell ninja shamika shawnee instead of oprah who was so condescending about the novelty liam dutton would have undoubtedly learned jamie charnell's full name and addressed her in its entirety well now that is about the most unique thing i've heard lately or maybe liam dutton's oratory expertise would be better utilized in the theater his skills deserving of a role in the chorus of the assembly women by aristophanes at the end of the play blepurus in the audience are summoned to feast and the evening's main dish is served here's what's for dinner in the original greek like james joyce's thunder words this term divides into a list of ingredients which make up a very elaborate stew perhaps such a dish could find a home in the underworld cookbook among the handwritten recipes of a chef with an equally elaborate name if only liam dutton played magic the gathering i have a feeling that as miranda martika diced in a cool decar would be among his favorite characters if nothing more than for her brimming title bar and the way it defines and defies the limits of a card name just months before the debut of ravnica city of guilds in 2005 matt cavada wrote the seminal article titled say my name that detailed the formalities of naming magic cards cavada likens this difficult task to a cross between an obstacle course and a high bar routine emphasizing that the process creates more limitations than meet the eye when reading over the finished product successful magic card names like fog sizzle and necropotence for example all check the box for different reasons the imagery of getting lost in a blanket of mist synergizes with the mechanic of blanking combat damage for a turn since your creatures can't see anything sizzle is an onomatopoeia that rolls off the tongue and stylishly complements the color red and necropotence is an old linguistic trick of combining two familiar morphemes into one to form a new concept or idea thoughtseize is another standout example of this concept most importantly each card here delivers on the high fantasy flavor for which magic is known and creates immersion while playing the game weaker card names like snow devil or guardian angel are failures because they conflict with player expectations and lead to confusion and gameplay neither of these two cards are creatures like their names would lead you to believe cavada also highlights how riders must be cognizant of other cards in a set while crafting names quicksliver and clickslither for example were both in legions but despite sounding similar the latter is an insect and doesn't count toward the sliver tribe sometimes card name confusion cross-pollinates with the creative team the most glaring example of this error is on the card hyalopterus lemur artist richard thomas delivered on the hialopterous side of the art brief a fictional term meaning glassy wings but painted a lemur instead of a lemur a creature that has origins in the dnd monster manual as a type of lesser spirit eleven years later in time spiral this mistake showed up tongue-in-cheek in the flavor text of a more aptly painted card present in the time spiral block was also one of the most narrow self-references in magic's history and it was hiding in the title line rigid cuesight is the culprit an anagram of guided strike which calls back to a card in weather light with similar mechanics but in an enemy color this card is one of many anagrams in magic and it provides an example of how wordplay can inform the naming of cards and double as easter eggs for enfranchised players feldergriff the beloved purple hippopotamus on wings is another anagram this time referencing the name of the game's legendary creator penman's aura also points back to the real world to another superhero with a suit but without a phd this enchantment is a mechanical echo of morphling a card that tournament players nicknamed superman because of all its abilities grey merchant of asphadel is probably now better known by his nickname gary a slight rearrangement of that first word in the title bar sometimes nicknames take shape before cards are sent off to the creative team during development playtest names serving as placeholders can lead to inside jokes for members of r d they can even show up in the art briefs at the exhibit of gp vegas 2017 i saw sketches of mark zug's coiling oracle which at one point was called manaconda now beyond the self-referential the outliers the standouts and the mistakes card names have the function of carrying the cognitive load of the game and they inform how we think and speak about magic oh wow look what he found off of that canyon slew it does mean he doesn't get to get back the scrap heap scrounger but he'll take the upgrade here goblin chain whirler if he blocks hazard at the fervent he takes three from the chain one goes down to four and then gregor kowalski does have that lethal ribbons which would be a ribbon's four four so he can actually so he cannot attack even possible here he will lose both of his chain rulers and kowalski will still have that hazard on the battlefield we can look at a few examples of average card names to analyze how our expectations as players align with these invisible conventions consider aegis turtle dark bargain and enhance the human from iquaria without seeing the entire text we can deduce the mechanics the colors even the rarities entirely from the card names these three are most likely commons the first is probably a blue creature with low power and high toughness the second is probably a black sorcery that draws cards in exchange for life and the third is probably a white enchantment that benefits one of vicoria's main tribes moving up the latter a card like yadaro wandering monster is likely a legendary creature with a higher rarity and stronger stats that comma is pulling a lot of the weight here as does the definite article on cards like karuga the macro sage and umori the collector similarly the ozolith evokes a significant and unique artifact in a way that ozolith does not by itself ozolith could be the plane's currency or an adjective denoting a location or a type of giant green monster this is why players bemoans the world tree of call time as a generic land rather than a legendary one it is proof of how sensitive we are to these conventions and how names must deliver on these expectations as such if you sensed an imposter among us in this list you'd be correct enhance the human isn't a card i made it up and it could never be a useful card name it's to vanilla it lacks meaningful fantasy flavor it sounds uninspired the game has a higher quality bar to clear so naming magic cards matters for aligning with player expectations for brand ambassadorship and for communicating the game's high fantasy aesthetic but naming magic cards is also part of gameplay itself a few years ago i made a video on pithing needle the most infamous generator of bad beat stories that revolve around naming cards in game the most divisive of these stories took place in january 2016 when bradley carpenter cast pitting needle and named borborygmos upon resolution in response his opponent bob huang took a moment to think got out of his seat to talk to a judge then on his next turn proceeded to cast corio's vengeance putting borborygmos enraged into play after attacking hwang activated borborygmos enraged claiming that carpenter didn't name the correct card with pithing needle and killed him on the spot this led to many heated debates about ethics and tournaments and an eventual rules change to favor carpenter's side with regards to player intent when this guy named borba rigmos everybody knows what he's talking about it's the win condition of your deck that's what i'm casting pitching needle on you know how can you then say no you name the card that exists in magic but it's not the one that's in my deck clearly this guy was trying to name the card that kills you in which case this was borborygmo's enraged i thought a lot about this story when asmorano martika diced in a cool decar was previewed in june 2021 i thought about players casting pithing needle to nullify her activated abilities and how they'd have to communicate that during a game like almost everyone at the time i didn't know how to pronounce this card name at first glance it looked like gibberish like another inside joke from r d but there was one person who knew who had known for almost two years who had told the magic worlds back in september 2019 that such a card could never be printed and encouraged everyone to give up hope of ever seeing her in a legitimate magic set the issue of course with making a magic card of asmorano martica diced in a cool decar is that as moreno martica diced in a cool dakar doesn't actually fit on the top of a magic card where we put the name of the card so i don't think we're going to be seeing ask mirando martika dyson to cool the car on a magic card anytime soon except of course in flavor text but they were all of them deceived so what changed how did we break the rules and find space in the title line to print such a convoluted card to find out i knew i had to go to the source my name is ethan fleisher i'm a senior game designer at wizards of the coast working on magic almost exclusively i was the lead designer of modern horizons 2 and my favorite magic card that i designed was from pretty early in my career when each card really counted felden of the third path which i think is one of the top three saddest magic cards of all time after approaching ethan with these same questions i learned that the original video from september 2019 was not what it seemed it was a trap the card was put into the file months before the video was made so i already knew that this card was in the works and then i was worried that oh is anyone going to care when this card comes out and so i wanted to kind of make people want it and help people get the joke and so it was like you can't have this the name is too long can't be done you're not going to see it anytime soon and so of course when you tell people that they can't have a thing they want a thing ethan knew the card name was of the perfect length to fit in the title bar but it required eliminating the mana cost which heavily informed mechanics and design after reaching out to the proxy guy the resident experts on all things formatting i learned that the physical canvas size of a normal magic card is 63 millimeters wide by 88 millimeters tall abiding to current conventions that means there is space in the title line for roughly 31 characters written in ballerin font size 9.5 due to the initiative of time spiral remastered however as mourinho martika dystonia cool decar also needed to work with the pre-modern card frame formatting that uses the font gaudi medieval as long as the card had no casting cost it would fit there too but then again cards with longer names have been printed in years past without this limitation okina temple to the grandfathers for example has 33 characters total two more than asmr as does leliana the quetzalcia highland which not only has a casting cost but requires two black mana symbols and one generic crowding the title line further but even liliana heretical healer does not hold a flame to marshal the french version of gore house chain walker which has 44 characters in their name and two pips in the mana cost well another hidden rule that r d respects for cards printed in english is the typeface faux pas of distorting text well the fact that at our normal font size the card name exactly filled the title bar on the top of the magic card was something i was very conscious of as i was working on it obviously we can and have shrunk the font size but i hate it when we do that i hate doing that okina temple to the grandfathers is an example of squeezing text to fit into the title line a more subtle solution without changing the font size would be to slightly shrink the spaces between letters and words a technique called kerning here's okina with the kerning treatment in this case the integrity of the font remains intact and the card blends in better with others from the same set and era all of these examples though are names made up of multiple words with spaces between them and translation of course adds wrinkles that are not present on english versions but that's not the case for our beloved card in question asmorano martika dyson akuldikar is one long uninterrupted word that had to fit at normal font size without exceptions and that's because it's the proper name of a character whose origins are as old as the game itself back in 1993 in magic's very first set alpha the name appeared in the flavor text of this innocuous tutu flyer granite gargoyle the character we know now however is much different than what ethan fleischer suspected she was back then i suspect and i haven't talked to richard garfield about this but i suspect that the original intent was that asmorano martika dyson nakoldikar was the name of a demon just based on how other cards in alpha are named sarah angel means serrated angel shivan dragon is a reference to shiva perhaps asmorano martika dyson akuldikar is a reference to asmodeus which is a a demon from a jewish legend over the years however the novelty grew into a fully formed character who was not a demon but rather a servant of one found in the distant plains anthology is the novella titled chef's surprise written by sonja orrin lyras here we learn of asmore's troubled relationship with a demon named vincent who virus chose as a reference to vincent price the american actor best known for his roles in horror films in the story asmore is in charge of cooking new dishes every day for the demon and her recipes are eventually published in the underworld cookbook one of these recipes is the proper way to prepare granite gargoyles thus solidifying the reference from the original card where she first appeared into the canon of magic lore in 2004 as miranda martika diced in a cool decar showed up again in the flavor text of a card called saute here we find another excerpt from the underworld cookbook this time instructing readers on the best way to prepare beables this card is from unhinged magic's second parody set following unglued and is a perfect tonal match to the chef's outlandish name it feels more at home in a silver border the set also provided us with the longest magic card name in history but as you can see here it lacks all respect for the title line the final iteration of asmara was printed in modern horizons too alongside the supplemental underworld cookbook we can piece together the whole story from the distant plains anthology and understand the difficulty of printing this card in black borders the third ability here is especially insightful into the subtleties of card design aaron forsythe commented in his article titled challenge accepted that the target deals damage to itself for practical reasons we couldn't fit her name in the text box again 6 damage is also significant because vincent the lord of the pit has seven toughness and should survive whatever ghastly food his chef prepares for him on this card is also the color indicator a piece of design tech that debuted way back in innistrad which denotes a card's color identity without this tiny piece of information it may have actually been impossible to print this card just as ethan promised in his video back in 2019 but beyond mechanics and silly references to old laura i see this card as representative of a very human tendency to play with the plasticity of language just like james joyce and finnegan's wake and aristophanes in the assembly women this name is a whimsical example of sesquipetalianism or rather the practice of using long obscure words in speech or writing elaborate examples like jamie charnell's full name or that one town in wales wait how do you say it again wait who do i know that speaks welsh hey sam don't worry i got you clan ah right thank you maria they all make their statement and push the limits of the spoken word this card does the same so far it's the only card name in magic's history that needs a pronunciation guide or if you're on scribe fall that comes with a silly note about how to say it long names like these attract attention and give those who are in the know an opportunity to flex their linguistic prowess i asked ethan if printing this card brought anything to magic or design if it had significance beyond being an inside joke for players of the game it reminded me that sometimes you just do it for the sake of doing it and that the party trick is enough a reason as any to warrant its printing it was nice to be reminded to relax to take it easy and to just have fun with the novelty now i'm looking forward to when this card will be usurped when we find a new way to push the limits of a card name into even wonkier spaces until then i encourage you to learn how to say as miranda martica diced in a cool decar if only to give yourself insurance when casting pithing needle thanks for what wait wait hold on a second the dish in aristophanes play the town in wales the thunder words they were all names conceived with intention there's a difference between wordcraft and gibberish just hitting your keyboard a few times and seeing what comes out of it furthermore magic is full of references to literature especially the earlier cards and especially when richard garfield is involved after spending two months saying this name and typing it out into my notes i started to notice how it was suspiciously full of vowels which means that it's meant to be pronounced aloud but it's completely void of the vowel e i noticed how most of the plosive consonants are d but it had exactly one t which is strange because they're virtually interchangeable in this case how there are no f's or b's or g's or h's but there are three c's and for that matter no k's essentially i noticed how it's a very long name made of relatively few letters and then i noticed how the last group of letters of this conglomerate of a name reminded me of another name from an old book i read in college i realized it wasn't an accident that this name appeared in the flavor text of granite gargoyle it was a hint as miranda martika diced in a cool decar isn't a riff on asmodeus [Music] it's an anagram [Music] i figured it out dracula is a romanian sarcoma addict [Music] there's a certain welsh village which has become world famous simply because of its name a name which enables the village to boast one of the longest railway station signs in the world situated on the beautiful isle of anglesey it is called [Music] this song will teach you how to say it [Music] [Music] everyone a name which is there for all to see a name you'll learn to say to anyone if you listen carefully somebody [Music] believe me it's easy when you know how so i'll teach you in a song and you will soon be saying it if you simply sing along [Music] for

Channel: Rhystic Studies

Views: 393,322

Keywords: magic the gathering, mtg, trading card game, themagicmansam, rhystic studies, asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar, longest magic card name

Id: pukpaxSBeAE

Length: 23min 27sec (1407 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/TheMancersDilema]

Good start to a weekend right here.

[u/Infinite_Bananas]

i'm so happy to start seeing these again more often! love them so much

[u/Kmattmebro]

I got caught by the "wait a minute." Nice meme.

[u/CannonSam]

I’m only about 5 minutes in but wow the editing is top notch. I love content that is about playing Magic for sure, but I always love seeing content that goes beyond just card commentary or play. This is awesome!

[u/Vodis]

...Maria speaks Welsh?

[u/Realistic_Rip_148]

I can just pronounce it now because of Remy’s song

[u/PartOfMyPlasterMan]

For some strange reason, that last bit struck me as slightly too much of a coincidence.

[u/ArborElf]

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[u/RonaldoAngelim]

Amazing, one of his best