"Tribal" is out! Wizards Of The Coast Changes Popular slang

After a recent post published on the main website where Mark Rosewater explained a few things about the mechanics in the newest The Lord of the Rings set made its rounds on Reddit for something other than Orcs and Halflings, the famous Magic: The Gathering dev once more took to social media to explain a very important shift in Wizards of the Coast's policy.

The post, which was published on Monday, June 19th, at first glance, seems innocent enough; "Lessons Learned, Part 4", tackles the debates regarding things such as what a set needs to have to be well-built, and other core MTG mechanics which had to be considered in the Tolkien-inspired collection.

However, a single paragraph in the article brought up a rather interesting debate regarding certain terms used by the community and also internally. One sentence alone brought up a debate within the Magic community that has already birthed a few news articles and Reddit posts:

"We've stopped using the word "tribal" in R&D as numerous consultants have stressed that it carries negative connotations, so we now use "typal" to mean "creature type mattering mechanically."

The reception online, incredibly, was more of confusion than negative. In fact, this move comes rather in line with previous efforts made by Wizards of the Coast to bring Magic: The Gathering up to the standards of a welcoming space to people of all backgrounds, such as removing racist artworks previously published and increasing the amount of representativity in their own lore. Still, some fans wondered what was so "offensive" about the word, which prompted MaRo to post further explanations on Twitter:

Following these statements, fans wondered if this meant the previously printed cards which contained references to the old word would be dropped altogether, reprinted or if this meant the mechanic would be avoided in the future.

Overall, however, the feedback has been understanding of the actual implications of using such slang, and considering the word used now by devs isn't that far from the original slang and even sounds quite elegant, many fans feel like they won't have any issue adapting to this new vocabulary.

There hasn't been any official statement since Mark Rosewater's Twitter post as of the date of this article.