[Article] the flavor of artifacts

[Machinus]

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mr165

But there's more to artifacts than just how they're concepted on cards. In fact, when I started the Mirrodin Design Team (Tyler Bielman, Mike Elliott, Brian Tinsman and myself), the very first question I posed to the team was what are the qualities of an artifact. Here's what the team decided.

Interesting article on the design and development of artifacts.

[Dr. Sylvan]

I am in the middle of writing about the color wheel right now (assuming TK likes it, there will be several), so I was looking at this article a bit differently, and noticed how he didn't really say too much. It was more pointing at what had already been explicitly stated in other ways, and officially making artifacts the home for "wacky" effects. In the colors' articles, he explains quite a bit and they have long been some of the most interesting pieces to read for me, but I think he underplayed the complexity of the ability-bleeding issue. (Though I think I overemphasize it because of the Type One perspective of seeing every color be bled five directions, all of them toward blue.) I also would have liked to hear more about why artifacts have more direct ties to some colors (just like his discussion of allies and enemies in each color's article), and how that affects color wheel balance.