So, what is Ob Nixilis there for? To free Ulamog and destroy Zendikar? What else could he want?
I was really hoping that Drana would try to consume Ulamog. I hope they develop her story more.
Many of us already know the exact answer to this. Read if you want a spoiler:
Ob wants his spark back. That's what he was doing the last time we saw him when Nissa interrupted him. In short he's going to fly into the energy beams connecting the hedron network, regaining hissbspark and freeing Ulamog as a bonus because of his hatred for Zendikar.
I agree that I want more Drana. I hope we get her coming into conflict with Kalitas again so we can get some background on his treachery.
Most of us know but I would hate to spoil it for you.
And if anyone mentions what almost all of us already know please but a Spoilers alert to protect those who've successfully avoided fatpack booklets
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Wizards. listen. The Vorthos community will await the consequences of the Eldrazi Titans' deaths/sealing. We will keep the watch.
“The wind whispers, ‘come home,’ but I cannot.”
— Teferi
I appreciated not only Gideon's reflection of Heliod's spear, but also the reminder that Nissa's actions in Teeth remain canon--she feels remorse for releasing the Eldrazi.
I think a conversation in the future between Jace and Nissa--realizing that they are both to blame--could yield an entertaining dynamic.
It's about time she started to feel remorse for that. Because earlier in URs she lamented on "failing Zendikar" and Jace blamed himself for releasing the titans, while in webcomics and "teeth of Akoum" Jace was an unwitting pawn of Bolas while Nissa knew that by smashing hedron she is releasing Eldrazi to roam, being wrong only in thinking they would leave Zendikar. Btw, does anybody in-story know that it was Nissa who released Eldrazi?
About incoming episodes: I think "promises to keep" might be a wordplay with Keral Keep. Plus, it looks like Chandra's hand to me.
I enjoyed the story, I hate to hate on people, but I do agree Kreines is one of the weakest member but she has been getting a lot of main points stories. This however I think is one of her better stories.
I rather like how Jace was humbled a bit after seeing all of Zendikar through Nissas eyes.
I'm guessing;
Episode 13 will be Ob getting his groove back, 14 will be how Chandra will get tied back into the story.
After, once more I hope we check in on what some of that the other walkers, or more stories about the Commander 2015 legends.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
After, once more I hope we check in on what some of that the other walkers, or more stories about the Commander 2015 legends.
That would be cool, but I wouldn't hold your breath for more Commander stories. Although I wouldn't be surprised if the Commander characters pop up in other future stories.
Jace really pulled the weight of this story. Glad to see while he is indeed the main driving gear, he maintains his composure and humility that Ugin might or might not have driven into him.
Nissa is vast improvement in this article over the others, besides showing regret over releasing her Eldrazi, she's starting to show wisdom and composure in her thoughts even if she's still in the "In the Name of Zendikar!" mode.
The Jace-Nissa mind-link thing isn't that unusual in my opinion. Green is the color of Wisdom and I suppose that among the colors, it can be the most composed when it comes to scale, despite all of Nissa's "Zendikar is great! Zendikar can win!", she understands magnitude at the very least, Zendikar is way larger than she is and Zendikar is not the only plane. So yeah, I guess that locked-in perspective of the world is some form of Wisdom. Also, "Mind-Link and put the freaking mental-hologram onto the actual thing" sounds like the simple yet effective (green) way to solve problems - other people are so cautious (including Jace) of the implications of Mind-Link that it messes things up.
Sorry Gideon, Green is now the color of determination brought to its quickest and most logical conclusion. Talking about Gideon though, his Commander skills have greatly improved, but his hero-complex and that laughable "defense"... no.
Kiora was way more arrogant than usual, but was practically as useful as Noyan Dar, Drana and Munda in this article, non-existent. They all command the numerical forces though (Sea-Monsters, Roilshapers, Vampires and Kors)... they're most likely set for latter than now. Which was why Gideon felt weak overall - his battle plans were great, but the formations, let alone the battle didn't even happen to let it shine.
Ulamog should resign from being an Eldrazi Titan, though. If Gideon could stand so many hits from Ulamog, I'm pretty sure Ugin as an oldwalker could have just grabbed Ulamog and swung him into Valakut for laughs.
I'm sorry but this story serves to confirm that the establish writers should front the big events. Kelly Digges and Doug have been great, as was a few others. Her lack of experience (with combat-writing) is telling. There're crescendos and decrescendos in great stories, but this one feels like it's trying to be on a high, everytime. Till it comes off as a death line on a heart moniter.
There's too much wrongdoing, and I can't write them all, so here are the snippets:
-Jori En just arrived to announce Ulamog's arrival... Jace opens the door a few mins later... WTF? Couldn't Jori followed Jace all along for an audience with the Great Ugin? My, Jori En must have felt cheated to miss out that concert.
-Ulamog felt like a side dish, a warmish-coleslaw that's out for too long. Nobody touches it. Kreines barely got near it.
-Gideon, literal one-man army, last line of defence... Zzzz... she needs to read some Tom Clancy...
-As someone mentioned, Improbable vs Impossible. Some stuff are obviously made up but tolerable (because fantasy), but improbable turns readers away.
-Kiora, nuff said. Overdone dialogues by a brattish teenager.
-I find it unbelievable that a successful defence strategy (Hedron Aligned Network) can merely be done in hours while Nahiri and Co took decades to plot the Eldrazis' entrapment.
This article subject is potentially worth chapters and trying to squeeze it into a couple of thousand ain't doing it for me. Imagine Lord of the Rings series was told in a 2-hour movie. That's how I felt.
On a sidenote... The irony of Ebi's (the kor) end... Like a shrimp (Japanese meaning for Ebi). Couldn't Wizards be better with names?
As much as I agree that Kimberley's writing is not that great, it's clearly visible that she's getting better. I think this was the best UR she has done so far.
Of course, it also had a lot of low points. Ulamog was a joke, the summit read more like some highschool drama and Drana was completely lacking character (going from "yay attack the titan" to "meh I don't really care lol" in a matter of seconds). Ob was probably only saved, because his only lines were "Shhh" and a prewritten piece of flavour text.
However it also had some things I really enjoyed. The first one or two paragraphs read really well, I liked how Nissa felt useful for once and how Jace was actually able to show off his blue analytical side.
-Jori En just arrived to announce Ulamog's arrival... Jace opens the door a few mins later... WTF? Couldn't Jori followed Jace all along for an audience with the Great Ugin? My, Jori En must have felt cheated to miss out that concert.
To be fair, Jace probably planeswalked back to Seagate. He said that when they were on their way to Akoum that he is familiar enough with Seagate to be able to planeswalk into the general vicinity, while he'd have to go on foot to the Eye of Ugin. So that puts things into perspective. It has taken Jace roughly the same amount of time to go to the Eye of Ugin as it took Jori to return to Seagate.
At least the story was readable and all characters seemed to have evolved over the course of the block. Well except Kiora. She was incredibly badly written. Ulamog was the slightly larger baloth that need to be put in its pen. That was awful.
On the positive side Nissa was actually readable and I liked her. Jace was good. Gideon really evolved as a character.
Side comment: Someone said that they think the people here have too much negativity. There were 2 stories I didn't agree with people here where I felt they were criticizing things that didn't deserve. The rest of time the analysis is spot on. It is good criticism and if you ever want to write a story you should consider stuff said here.
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Thanks to DNC at Heroes of the plane studios for this awesome sig and SGT_Chubbz for the awesome avy. Check out the Shop Thread
Gideon confronting Ulamog had about as much tension as Gideon fighting an elephant. A big, dumb elephant. I thought the mere touch of a titan was supposed to destroy anything it touched. And all it did was swat rather uselessly at Gideon, knocking him back a few feet. Titan's Presence basically says that just being near the titan is enough to destroy something. Yet both Jace and Gideon walk right up to Ulamog like it's no big deal.
I get that everything is supposed to be beneath the titan's notice, but confronting Ulamog had no sense of danger behind it at all. I almost wish I hadn't read that story.
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The world is on fire
and you are here to stay and burn with me.
Gideon confronting Ulamog had about as much tension as Gideon fighting an elephant. A big, dumb elephant. I thought the mere touch of a titan was supposed to destroy anything it touched. And all it did was swat rather uselessly at Gideon, knocking him back a few feet. Titan's Presence basically says that just being near the titan is enough to destroy something. Yet both Jace and Gideon walk right up to Ulamog like it's no big deal.
I get that everything is supposed to be beneath the titan's notice, but confronting Ulamog had no sense of danger behind it at all. I almost wish I hadn't read that story.
It's not about anything the Titan or the characters did. The issue is that we get no emotional connection to Ulamogs presence. There is an abrupt transition from Jace planning to Ulamogs showing up. What we needed was a sense of awe in the moment. Gideon's fight doesn't seem desperate because we get almost zero description of Ulamog, both physically and in people's reaction to him, just Gideon's grim determination. Someone needs to be appropriately terrified. There are two good points to include it in the narrative. Ulamog's arrival and the trap's failure.
As Ulamog approaches rather than having Jace's POV as he ignores it we switch to Kiora at the height of her confidence. The sea creatures she summoned flee, no longer responding to her command, when she turns the bidet on Ulamog the power of the sea is useless.
When the trap fails that should shatter Jace's confidence in his plan. Imagine that when the trap fails to close Jace is convinced that he has miscalculated and killed them all with his failure. We seen the everyone die in his vivid imagination. Nissa interrupts and shows him all the power Zendikar still possesses. Reassured they fix the trap.
Then Gideon standing up to Ulamog has some weight to it. At the very least we'd get a sense of the magnitude of what Gideon is doing.
Gideon confronting Ulamog had about as much tension as Gideon fighting an elephant. A big, dumb elephant. I thought the mere touch of a titan was supposed to destroy anything it touched. And all it did was swat rather uselessly at Gideon, knocking him back a few feet. Titan's Presence basically says that just being near the titan is enough to destroy something. Yet both Jace and Gideon walk right up to Ulamog like it's no big deal.
I get that everything is supposed to be beneath the titan's notice, but confronting Ulamog had no sense of danger behind it at all. I almost wish I hadn't read that story.
IKR. Imagine a top WWE wrestler entering the arena without a soundtrack. No cheering, no fireworks. A virtual nobody. That's as humiliating as an Eldrazi could feel. That's the reason why we return to Zendikar right? Billed as the million-dollar fight, what we got was limp squid.
IKR. Imagine a top WWE wrestler entering the arena without a soundtrack. No cheering, no fireworks. A virtual nobody. That's as humiliating as an Eldrazi could feel. That's the reason why we return to Zendikar right? Billed as the million-dollar fight, what we got was limp squid.
Actually, to make it worse, it wasn't even billed as a fight, it was billed as Ulamog turning everything living to dust and all we got was Ulamog walking slowly wrecking nothing (since it was already more or less wrecked by his brood). Forget about turning someone important to dust, we didn't even get to see Ulamog obliterate a sizable army. Even O-Kagachi did a better job at that.
At this point, Gideon single-handily delaying Ulamog is just Sowing Salt on Ulamog's ability to Crumble to Dust.
So, I read it today. The characterizations weren't that good, but the plotting was pretty decent. Nice to see the walkers use their powers together, and the obvious-is-obivious foreshadowing about Ob Nixilis showing up was interesting.
I believe that Gideon's ability to defend against Ulamog is due entirely to his magical indestructibility.
So, I read it today. The characterizations weren't that good, but the plotting was pretty decent. Nice to see the walkers use their powers together, and the obvious-is-obivious foreshadowing about Ob Nixilis showing up was interesting.
I believe that Gideon's ability to defend against Ulamog is due entirely to his magical indestructibility.
Gideon has magical indestructibility, but Ulamog should have just ignored him if he is that indestructible. Ulamong was just dumb.
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-I find it unbelievable that a successful defence strategy (Hedron Aligned Network) can merely be done in hours while Nahiri and Co took decades to plot the Eldrazis' entrapment.
Agreed with about everything you said but just wanted to make a note about this. I figure that the original three took that long to get it set up because they were starting from scratch. They had to decide how to come up with a way to trap the eldrazi, then build all of the hedrons and magically seal them. In this arc, all they had to do was gather and align existing and ready hedrons with Jace having already gotten the scoop and plan from Ugin.
Overall, I thought is was an interesting story. Kiora was annoying. Ulamog was lame, as was Gideon fighting him. Otherwise, I liked the characters fairly well and how it went.
So we get bident-spinning to go with sural-whipping. Yep, I didn't think I could hate Kiora more than I do now (hate is a very vast understatement) but Krienes managed to do it. Good job.
Yeah, I'm gonna need Ob Nix to do some serious ass-whooping or Ulamog to get his act together. I was hoping the writing for the BFZ storyline would eventually get better but that's clearly not the case. The Teysa story was very enjoyable though.
As Ulamog approaches rather than having Jace's POV as he ignores it we switch to Kiora at the height of her confidence. The sea creatures she summoned flee, no longer responding to her command, when she turns to bidet on Ulamog the power of the sea is useless.
When the trap fails that should shatter Jace's confidence in his plan. Imagine that when the trap fails to close Jace is convinced that he has miscalculated and killed them all with his failure. We seen the everyone die in his vivid imagination. Nissa interrupts and shows him all the power Zendikar still possesses. Reassured they fix the trap.
Then Gideon standing up to Ulamog has some weight to it. At the very least we'd get a sense of the magnitude of what Gideon is doing.
Yeah, this is pretty much what it needed. Ulamog needs to dust some people, he should be like opening a whole in the sea where the water rushes in to become dust. I can buy Gideon not getting hurt, but how does he maintain his footing? A swipe from a tentacle that size should just take him clean off the hedrons? Of course they would save it with an eel flying by or whatever, but at least that's cool. He should be like constantly laboring to keep his guard all around, and even then feel the withering aura of Ulamog.
Also, if they just roped and magic-pushed all the hedrons into place, Ulamog flailing around should have been what was throwing them out of alignment, and there should have been sacrifices there, like Nissa and Noyan raising elementals who strain to hold the ropes and keep the hedrons in place or even fly out (Halimar Tidecaller), kor actually jumping and kiting between them and retying ropes but getting picked off as they do, and then maybe another chance for Kiora to come in with an octopus, closing a section of the hedrons while the octopus gets chalked out and ripped apart.
Unless Kiora weirdly not showing up was her getting off-screen killed or tied up by Ulamog or Ob for some reason?
I find it weird that we did not get to know Kiora's attack on Ulamog before the Seagate thing. I mean, we're probably not going back retroactively, as the URs seem to be in chronological order, so that only leaves the possibility that Kiora will quickly recap what happened in her next story?
Err... Why did we spend weeks at the beginning literally doing nothing and now that the action starts we just skip all the juicy bits?
I believe that Gideon's ability to defend against Ulamog is due entirely to his magical indestructibility.
Not trying to get too much into the fictitious nature of magic (noncapital) here, but the Eldrazi are said to drain all energy, including mana. Gideon's shield which is a mana construct should have been as much protection as a piece of paper.
I mean, if it really was that easy to just cast a protection spell in order to fend off the Eldrazi, why didn't the original Zendikar trio just cast a simple planar protection ward. For a bunch of oldwalkers, that really should have been a cakewalk.
I was really hoping that Drana would try to consume Ulamog. I hope they develop her story more.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
Many of us already know the exact answer to this. Read if you want a spoiler:
I agree that I want more Drana. I hope we get her coming into conflict with Kalitas again so we can get some background on his treachery.
And if anyone mentions what almost all of us already know please but a Spoilers alert to protect those who've successfully avoided fatpack booklets
The Vorthos community will await the consequences of the Eldrazi Titans' deaths/sealing. We will keep the watch.
“The wind whispers, ‘come home,’ but I cannot.”
— Teferi
I really just can't.
I just can't.
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
About incoming episodes: I think "promises to keep" might be a wordplay with Keral Keep. Plus, it looks like Chandra's hand to me.
Decks:
Casual
R Burn R
EDH
R Godo Voltron R
RUG ETB Overload RUG
BW Clerics Pain and Drain BW
GW Spirits!!! GW
RUG Landfall Silliness RUG
I rather like how Jace was humbled a bit after seeing all of Zendikar through Nissas eyes.
I'm guessing;
After, once more I hope we check in on what some of that the other walkers, or more stories about the Commander 2015 legends.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
That would be cool, but I wouldn't hold your breath for more Commander stories. Although I wouldn't be surprised if the Commander characters pop up in other future stories.
Nissa is vast improvement in this article over the others, besides showing regret over releasing her Eldrazi, she's starting to show wisdom and composure in her thoughts even if she's still in the "In the Name of Zendikar!" mode.
The Jace-Nissa mind-link thing isn't that unusual in my opinion. Green is the color of Wisdom and I suppose that among the colors, it can be the most composed when it comes to scale, despite all of Nissa's "Zendikar is great! Zendikar can win!", she understands magnitude at the very least, Zendikar is way larger than she is and Zendikar is not the only plane. So yeah, I guess that locked-in perspective of the world is some form of Wisdom. Also, "Mind-Link and put the freaking mental-hologram onto the actual thing" sounds like the simple yet effective (green) way to solve problems - other people are so cautious (including Jace) of the implications of Mind-Link that it messes things up.
Sorry Gideon, Green is now the color of determination brought to its quickest and most logical conclusion. Talking about Gideon though, his Commander skills have greatly improved, but his hero-complex and that laughable "defense"... no.
Kiora was way more arrogant than usual, but was practically as useful as Noyan Dar, Drana and Munda in this article, non-existent. They all command the numerical forces though (Sea-Monsters, Roilshapers, Vampires and Kors)... they're most likely set for latter than now. Which was why Gideon felt weak overall - his battle plans were great, but the formations, let alone the battle didn't even happen to let it shine.
Ulamog should resign from being an Eldrazi Titan, though. If Gideon could stand so many hits from Ulamog, I'm pretty sure Ugin as an oldwalker could have just grabbed Ulamog and swung him into Valakut for laughs.
There's too much wrongdoing, and I can't write them all, so here are the snippets:
-Jori En just arrived to announce Ulamog's arrival... Jace opens the door a few mins later... WTF? Couldn't Jori followed Jace all along for an audience with the Great Ugin? My, Jori En must have felt cheated to miss out that concert.
-Ulamog felt like a side dish, a warmish-coleslaw that's out for too long. Nobody touches it. Kreines barely got near it.
-Gideon, literal one-man army, last line of defence... Zzzz... she needs to read some Tom Clancy...
-As someone mentioned, Improbable vs Impossible. Some stuff are obviously made up but tolerable (because fantasy), but improbable turns readers away.
-Kiora, nuff said. Overdone dialogues by a brattish teenager.
-I find it unbelievable that a successful defence strategy (Hedron Aligned Network) can merely be done in hours while Nahiri and Co took decades to plot the Eldrazis' entrapment.
This article subject is potentially worth chapters and trying to squeeze it into a couple of thousand ain't doing it for me. Imagine Lord of the Rings series was told in a 2-hour movie. That's how I felt.
On a sidenote... The irony of Ebi's (the kor) end... Like a shrimp (Japanese meaning for Ebi). Couldn't Wizards be better with names?
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
Of course, it also had a lot of low points. Ulamog was a joke, the summit read more like some highschool drama and Drana was completely lacking character (going from "yay attack the titan" to "meh I don't really care lol" in a matter of seconds). Ob was probably only saved, because his only lines were "Shhh" and a prewritten piece of flavour text.
However it also had some things I really enjoyed. The first one or two paragraphs read really well, I liked how Nissa felt useful for once and how Jace was actually able to show off his blue analytical side.
To be fair, Jace probably planeswalked back to Seagate. He said that when they were on their way to Akoum that he is familiar enough with Seagate to be able to planeswalk into the general vicinity, while he'd have to go on foot to the Eye of Ugin. So that puts things into perspective. It has taken Jace roughly the same amount of time to go to the Eye of Ugin as it took Jori to return to Seagate.
On the positive side Nissa was actually readable and I liked her. Jace was good. Gideon really evolved as a character.
Side comment: Someone said that they think the people here have too much negativity. There were 2 stories I didn't agree with people here where I felt they were criticizing things that didn't deserve. The rest of time the analysis is spot on. It is good criticism and if you ever want to write a story you should consider stuff said here.
Thanks to DNC at Heroes of the plane studios for this awesome sig and SGT_Chubbz for the awesome avy.
Check out the Shop Thread
Gideon confronting Ulamog had about as much tension as Gideon fighting an elephant. A big, dumb elephant. I thought the mere touch of a titan was supposed to destroy anything it touched. And all it did was swat rather uselessly at Gideon, knocking him back a few feet. Titan's Presence basically says that just being near the titan is enough to destroy something. Yet both Jace and Gideon walk right up to Ulamog like it's no big deal.
I get that everything is supposed to be beneath the titan's notice, but confronting Ulamog had no sense of danger behind it at all. I almost wish I hadn't read that story.
The world is on fire
and you are here to stay and burn with me.
It's not about anything the Titan or the characters did. The issue is that we get no emotional connection to Ulamogs presence. There is an abrupt transition from Jace planning to Ulamogs showing up. What we needed was a sense of awe in the moment. Gideon's fight doesn't seem desperate because we get almost zero description of Ulamog, both physically and in people's reaction to him, just Gideon's grim determination. Someone needs to be appropriately terrified. There are two good points to include it in the narrative. Ulamog's arrival and the trap's failure.
As Ulamog approaches rather than having Jace's POV as he ignores it we switch to Kiora at the height of her confidence. The sea creatures she summoned flee, no longer responding to her command, when she turns the bidet on Ulamog the power of the sea is useless.
When the trap fails that should shatter Jace's confidence in his plan. Imagine that when the trap fails to close Jace is convinced that he has miscalculated and killed them all with his failure. We seen the everyone die in his vivid imagination. Nissa interrupts and shows him all the power Zendikar still possesses. Reassured they fix the trap.
Then Gideon standing up to Ulamog has some weight to it. At the very least we'd get a sense of the magnitude of what Gideon is doing.
IKR. Imagine a top WWE wrestler entering the arena without a soundtrack. No cheering, no fireworks. A virtual nobody. That's as humiliating as an Eldrazi could feel. That's the reason why we return to Zendikar right? Billed as the million-dollar fight, what we got was limp squid.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
Actually, to make it worse, it wasn't even billed as a fight, it was billed as Ulamog turning everything living to dust and all we got was Ulamog walking slowly wrecking nothing (since it was already more or less wrecked by his brood). Forget about turning someone important to dust, we didn't even get to see Ulamog obliterate a sizable army. Even O-Kagachi did a better job at that.
At this point, Gideon single-handily delaying Ulamog is just Sowing Salt on Ulamog's ability to Crumble to Dust.
I believe that Gideon's ability to defend against Ulamog is due entirely to his magical indestructibility.
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Gideon has magical indestructibility, but Ulamog should have just ignored him if he is that indestructible. Ulamong was just dumb.
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Check out the Shop Thread
Agreed with about everything you said but just wanted to make a note about this. I figure that the original three took that long to get it set up because they were starting from scratch. They had to decide how to come up with a way to trap the eldrazi, then build all of the hedrons and magically seal them. In this arc, all they had to do was gather and align existing and ready hedrons with Jace having already gotten the scoop and plan from Ugin.
Overall, I thought is was an interesting story. Kiora was annoying. Ulamog was lame, as was Gideon fighting him. Otherwise, I liked the characters fairly well and how it went.
BWTokens
GCollected Stompany
BWGUSeance Insanity
URUR Bloo
Yeah, I'm gonna need Ob Nix to do some serious ass-whooping or Ulamog to get his act together. I was hoping the writing for the BFZ storyline would eventually get better but that's clearly not the case. The Teysa story was very enjoyable though.
"Kiora is the Aquaman of planeswalkers."
"Useless and everyone pretends to like her?"
Yeah, this is pretty much what it needed. Ulamog needs to dust some people, he should be like opening a whole in the sea where the water rushes in to become dust. I can buy Gideon not getting hurt, but how does he maintain his footing? A swipe from a tentacle that size should just take him clean off the hedrons? Of course they would save it with an eel flying by or whatever, but at least that's cool. He should be like constantly laboring to keep his guard all around, and even then feel the withering aura of Ulamog.
Also, if they just roped and magic-pushed all the hedrons into place, Ulamog flailing around should have been what was throwing them out of alignment, and there should have been sacrifices there, like Nissa and Noyan raising elementals who strain to hold the ropes and keep the hedrons in place or even fly out (Halimar Tidecaller), kor actually jumping and kiting between them and retying ropes but getting picked off as they do, and then maybe another chance for Kiora to come in with an octopus, closing a section of the hedrons while the octopus gets chalked out and ripped apart.
Unless Kiora weirdly not showing up was her getting off-screen killed or tied up by Ulamog or Ob for some reason?
Err... Why did we spend weeks at the beginning literally doing nothing and now that the action starts we just skip all the juicy bits?
Not trying to get too much into the fictitious nature of magic (noncapital) here, but the Eldrazi are said to drain all energy, including mana. Gideon's shield which is a mana construct should have been as much protection as a piece of paper.
I mean, if it really was that easy to just cast a protection spell in order to fend off the Eldrazi, why didn't the original Zendikar trio just cast a simple planar protection ward. For a bunch of oldwalkers, that really should have been a cakewalk.