Is this set still problematic with regards to cultural appropriation if Mark Rosewater comes from a culture that frequently interacted with the ancient Egyptians? What about the differences in culture between the people currently inhabiting Egypt and the modern ones?
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Possibly, but the gods only know as much as the mortals. And phyrexia is subtle. By the time it is discovered, it could already be too late.
Kruphix's domain is knowing, though. He'd presumably pick up on it if a phyrexian entity gained enough sentience or if a PW like Elspeth familiar with them arrived, or simply figuring it out himself considering he's accessed knowledge about them from her and presumably others before.
I think the Eldrazi were the only real threat to Theros. Bolas might be (not that he'd want to be, but in the event he did) but even then, he's not entirely what he once was either. It depends on how cohesive the pantheon decided to be, really. We'll see how the gods interact with him on Amonkhet for a rough idea of planar ruling entities and a powerful walker and how those meld. "Killing" a Theros god is impossible directly. Eldrazi end planes so it's getting around that, although they also only seem to consume worlds in need of recycling, which Theros might not be anyway under natural circumstances. Then there's Phyrexia which the gods could potentially handle. Bolas would immediately be noticed by and mind-read by Kruphix. But as we've seen Phenax helping Ashiok with mischief and Xenagos rising to power because of Heliod and Purphoros escalating conflicts in the pantheon, and Kiora surviving because of the Silence to pose as Thassa and fight her when the god needed to reclaim devotion shows why the gods simply overlook important things for petty things. Even if the gods cleared a major threat I feel like they'd have back-up plans to screw over one another when the war ended just to come out on top above the others lol.
So where is the information that Bolas is involved in the Egypt set?
The last time Bolas had an area under his control he was Emperor Madara that was an area focused on black, red, and blue mana with Japanese mythology. My own speculation is that they're trying to insinuate that Bolas is similar to Apocalypse from X-Men.
But either way, the question that I come to is whether they're going to push mono color again or go with dual or tri color as a shard set.
Either way, we know one of the gods is a pseudo Anubis and this set with have a lot of death theme as well as mummies as zombies.
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"Rise Among the Worthy" on the plane of Amonkhet. Discover a world ruled by Nicol Bolas when the first set of the Amonkhet block releases April 28, 2017.
As well as his horns being everywhere in the art.
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Is this set still problematic with regards to cultural appropriation if Mark Rosewater comes from a culture that frequently interacted with the ancient Egyptians? What about the differences in culture between the people currently inhabiting Egypt and the modern ones?
- The interaction between semitic peoples and the ancient egyptians is too complicated to just summarise it as that
Possibly, but the gods only know as much as the mortals. And phyrexia is subtle. By the time it is discovered, it could already be too late.
Kruphix's domain is knowing, though. He'd presumably pick up on it if a phyrexian entity gained enough sentience or if a PW like Elspeth familiar with them arrived, or simply figuring it out himself considering he's accessed knowledge about them from her and presumably others before.
As far as I understand it, Kruphix's domain is the combined knowledge (and the lack thereof) of mortals. He knows everything mortals know. While he may certainly be able to learn (and remember) things on his own, that is not his nature. He's not a knowledge seeker, he's a knowledge keeper. As such I believe phyrexians might fly under Kruphix's radar for a while, until they directly manifest as true synthetic constructs.
Bolas would immediately be noticed by and mind-read by Kruphix.
This touches another interesting point. Kruphix has been shown to be an immensely passive entity. As I said above, he doesn't seek knowledge on his own and he also doesn't seek to share the knowledge. He only keeps it. Do we know Kruphix will intervene, even if Theros is at risk? It may seem so, considering that he was afraid when he talked to his prophet about the extraplanar threats, but still he has a completely different view from all the other gods, because he's the oldest. It could very well happen that he just lets Bolas take the place, because he saw change happening to Theros since times immemorial. Then again, Kruphix did directly intervene during the Xenagos crisis, though again, true to his nature, he didn't just go and fix everything. Instead he blocked out all the gods and let the issue "resolve itself". We don't really know exactly how Kruphix will act and I would say that whichever path creative would like to take in this scenario, it wouldn't be out of character for him.
Is this set still problematic with regards to cultural appropriation if Mark Rosewater comes from a culture that frequently interacted with the ancient Egyptians? What about the differences in culture between the people currently inhabiting Egypt and the modern ones?
Most people don't care.
The cultural appropriation only come whenever Selena Gomez wears Bollywood attire or Cher, of Armenian descent, wore Amerindian garb. Even then, the logic is flaccid because it is a part of artistic expression which heralds into aesthetics, what is art, and so forth.
Then there's the problem with the Red Skins football team, which is a legitimate complaint.
The other thing really here is that we need to look at something outside of our own culture. Japan. Japanese loved Kawigama, because it took an American company using Japanese lore to build a Japanese world with a game that is popular inside of Japan. Had Kawigama been designed better, we would have seen a return to Kawigama by now, but I digress.
Egypt has been used in media for decades, the ancient Egyptians don't exist to have any complaints. We have also had Arabian Nights as an expansion to the game, and thus far I have yet to really hear from any players who happen to be Muslim complain about Army of Allah or the fact that one of the most powerful planeswalkers in Magic is Arab and his name was Taysir.
Now, modernly Magic would not even touch anything to do with Islam or any real world counterparts. However, we can surmise simply that Taysir is an Arab and probably more than likely a Muslim that also happens to have been the most powerful or second to most powerful planeswalker in Magic next to Urza and Bolas.
So in short, Muslims seem okay with Magic because Magic has historically been rather respectful to source material.
Ancient Egyptians don't exist, but modernly whenever we do see ancient Egypt in modern culture everyone exploits it to their own artistic ends. Including people from modern Egypt.
And this is why respecting foreign cultures is great, but you can't appease everyone and that is why keeping diversity on the table and ironing out a few cross cultural problems when you approach them. This is similar to the issue that Japan has with the Swastika, that to their own culture the same symbol is seen as good luck to everyone else in the world it's Nazism. So homegrown they use the symbol, everywhere else it's either tucked away and not noticed or they edit it out.
Simplicity at it's finest. When you make a mistake, you own up to it and move on. Taysir isn't used, because he's dead. So they're able to dodge the issue of Taysir is a Muslim wizard problem as well as other issues of the past. And besides, we already saw Khans of Tarkir take on aspects of cultures who are Islamic. Abzan in short is the Ottoman Empire, and there hasn't been any real issue with Turks complaining about Abzan. Nor has there been any problem with Greeks complaining about Theros.
I feel it's safe to say right now, with the current formula. Magic isn't going to get hit with cultural appropriation. Even in the same way, we see so far that Kaladesh is steam punk merged with India. And frankly, there's been no large scale complaints. These people are rather conservative and are trying to develop their own products and worlds to protect their trademarks and branding purposes and expand the branch while being inclusive rather than exclusive.
So in short, they learned from Arabian Nights in both the good way that to be respectful of other cultures but also that you can't be scared of not using something by just being as original as you can while being faithful and respectful to the source materials.
In short, if we take Kaladesh as an example I would not hesitate that someone who is Indian would look at it as something cool. The same with people that are descended from ancient Egyptians. Just like I'm certain that many Greek Americans look at Theros, it's cool but it doesn't define their culture it just reflects it in a healthy manner.
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I wish Taysir would get a card. Personally as someone from Lebanon which is basically between Greece and Egypt (and closer in culture to Greece than the latter) I'm pretty much assured that Theros may very well be the best and only representation of me, and I loved it. I'm surprised anyone would have issues with being represented. If anything I think the louder outcry is not enough representation.
I think the only time that people complain about representation is if it's down really poorly, or if it touches on things that people don't want represented, like religious/spiritual beliefs. Though it's not like there is an universal standard on what is/isn't appropriate, everyone draws the line differently.
Basically, don't do what New Agers did to Hindu beliefs.
Which Kaladesh thankfully is on the opposite scale of.
Eh. Kaladesh is so bland as so it could have had any theme. It really SHOULD have been a return to Kamigawa, or a new Japanese pop culture inspired plane, because we've got Gundams, Pokemon Battles, Speed Racer, etc.
I think they could hand pushed the India culture angle a bit more too, but that isn't really the focus of Kaladesh, it's being an inventor/aetherpunk. It's kind of like how Theros was not an enchantment block but a Greek block, just in reverse.
So we have Bolas. It's unlikely he didn't notice the Gatewatch, a group of kids that put down some of the most fearsome entities that took the combined effort of ancient planeswalkers to seal away.
He might be arrogant and power-hungry, but he's no fool. He can see a threat when there is one. So what if he was trying to turn them against each other by the means of his pawn Tez, who could use Chandra's emotions to create chaos within the ranks, or even create his "Bolaswatch" as a result?
Amonkhet is ancient Egypt and Bolas is the ancient alien He came from off world and now they worship him.
"I'm not saying it was Planeswalkers, but it was Planeswalkers"
A lot of people are really hoping for Egyptian god cards (I SUMMON SLIFER THE SKY DRAGON) but I think they could go another way with Amonkhet. I wouldn't be necessarily opposed to having gofs in the same vein as the cycles from Theros although I belive the argument can be made that it may be a little soon for another round of that. I belive there are a few options for how the gods will operate on Amonkhet.
1. The gods exist and are simply complacent to Bolas' schemes for some reason.
2. The gods exist and serve Bolas willingly.
3. The gods exist and Bolas has the gods on a leash.
4. The gods exist but are unable to directly intervene on the plane (see: The Elder Scrolls).
5. The gods don't actually exist and Bolas has constructed a religion of false figures to manipulate the people of the plane for millennia.
Personally, I believe 5, 2 and 4 are the most interesting of the bunch in that order but 3 also definitely gives Bolas some street cred.
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Personally I find the third to be the most intriguing. That could make for some awesome conflict within the gods themselves. On the one hand they are gods and need to act like that towards the population but behind the scenes they're nothing more than playtoys and know that.
Having that said, I believe 5 is most likely, but I hope for 3 myself.
I'd rather have them unable to interfere or just not really concerned by Bolas. I really doubt they'd not have actual gods though, that's one of the big Egyptian mythology things, along with pyramids, mummies and such. Sad that we will likely get a very surface touch of Egypt but not even getting the gods would be really disappointing.
A lot of people are really hoping for Egyptian god cards (I SUMMON SLIFER THE SKY DRAGON) but I think they could go another way with Amonkhet. I wouldn't be necessarily opposed to having gofs in the same vein as the cycles from Theros although I belive the argument can be made that it may be a little soon for another round of that. I belive there are a few options for how the gods will operate on Amonkhet.
1. The gods exist and are simply complacent to Bolas' schemes for some reason.
2. The gods exist and serve Bolas willingly.
3. The gods exist and Bolas has the gods on a leash.
4. The gods exist but are unable to directly intervene on the plane (see: The Elder Scrolls).
5. The gods don't actually exist and Bolas has constructed a religion of false figures to manipulate the people of the plane for millennia.
Personally, I believe 5, 2 and 4 are the most interesting of the bunch in that order but 3 also definitely gives Bolas some street cred.
I had a different idea altogether: What if Bolas himself is one of the gods of Amonkhet? Xenagos was a Planeswalker who managed to turn himself into one of the gods of Theros. Perhaps at some point in his exceptionally long life, Bolas was able to incorporate himself into the pantheon of Amonkhet the same way. If a mere satyr could find a way to do it, then a 25,000 year old Elder Dragon probably could too. And if I remember correctly, Xenagos still retained his spark and his ability to travel between worlds after ascending to godhood, so Bolas traversing across the multiverse doesn't preclude him from being a god on one plane.
After all, Bolas frequently described himself as a god, maybe he meant it more literally than anyone knew! If this turns out to be true, it means that Bolas is even more powerful than usual on Amonkhet, since he'd have the near-omnipotence of a god there. It also means we might be seeing two Bolas cards in this block: Just like Xenagos, he'd get a Planeswalker card and a Legendary Creature card to represent his godly form. It can also be inferred that the gods of Amonkhet are tri-colored, as opposed to mono-colored and dual-colored like the gods of Theros.
A lot of people are really hoping for Egyptian god cards (I SUMMON SLIFER THE SKY DRAGON) but I think they could go another way with Amonkhet. I wouldn't be necessarily opposed to having gofs in the same vein as the cycles from Theros although I belive the argument can be made that it may be a little soon for another round of that. I belive there are a few options for how the gods will operate on Amonkhet.
1. The gods exist and are simply complacent to Bolas' schemes for some reason.
2. The gods exist and serve Bolas willingly.
3. The gods exist and Bolas has the gods on a leash.
4. The gods exist but are unable to directly intervene on the plane (see: The Elder Scrolls).
5. The gods don't actually exist and Bolas has constructed a religion of false figures to manipulate the people of the plane for millennia.
Personally, I believe 5, 2 and 4 are the most interesting of the bunch in that order but 3 also definitely gives Bolas some street cred.
5 seems most likely to me, though given that the God card type has already been confirmed, I'm thinking that it will play out with Amonkhet depicting the Gods, with Nicol Bolas being one of them, and establishing the world, then having the following set "pulling the curtain back" as it were, and revealing Nicol Bolas (and possibly the other Gods) to be planeswalkers.
A lot of people are really hoping for Egyptian god cards (I SUMMON SLIFER THE SKY DRAGON) but I think they could go another way with Amonkhet. I wouldn't be necessarily opposed to having gofs in the same vein as the cycles from Theros although I belive the argument can be made that it may be a little soon for another round of that. I belive there are a few options for how the gods will operate on Amonkhet.
1. The gods exist and are simply complacent to Bolas' schemes for some reason.
2. The gods exist and serve Bolas willingly.
3. The gods exist and Bolas has the gods on a leash.
4. The gods exist but are unable to directly intervene on the plane (see: The Elder Scrolls).
5. The gods don't actually exist and Bolas has constructed a religion of false figures to manipulate the people of the plane for millennia.
Personally, I believe 5, 2 and 4 are the most interesting of the bunch in that order but 3 also definitely gives Bolas some street cred.
I had a different idea altogether: What if Bolas himself is one of the gods of Amonkhet? Xenagos was a Planeswalker who managed to turn himself into one of the gods of Theros. Perhaps at some point in his exceptionally long life, Bolas was able to incorporate himself into the pantheon of Amonkhet the same way. If a mere satyr could find a way to do it, then a 25,000 year old Elder Dragon probably could too. And if I remember correctly, Xenagos still retained his spark and his ability to travel between worlds after ascending to godhood, so Bolas traversing across the multiverse doesn't preclude him from being a god on one plane.
After all, Bolas frequently described himself as a god, maybe he meant it more literally than anyone knew! If this turns out to be true, it means that Bolas is even more powerful than usual on Amonkhet, since he'd have the near-omnipotence of a god there. It also means we might be seeing two Bolas cards in this block: Just like Xenagos, he'd get a Planeswalker card and a Legendary Creature card to represent his godly form. It can also be inferred that the gods of Amonkhet are tri-colored, as opposed to mono-colored and dual-colored like the gods of Theros.
A cycle of tricolored cards, even if it's just ally, seems a bit much. Maybe though. But with Ravnica likely around the corner it's hard for me to imagine them doing that. I could see Bolas as a god though.
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I think the Eldrazi were the only real threat to Theros. Bolas might be (not that he'd want to be, but in the event he did) but even then, he's not entirely what he once was either. It depends on how cohesive the pantheon decided to be, really. We'll see how the gods interact with him on Amonkhet for a rough idea of planar ruling entities and a powerful walker and how those meld. "Killing" a Theros god is impossible directly. Eldrazi end planes so it's getting around that, although they also only seem to consume worlds in need of recycling, which Theros might not be anyway under natural circumstances. Then there's Phyrexia which the gods could potentially handle. Bolas would immediately be noticed by and mind-read by Kruphix. But as we've seen Phenax helping Ashiok with mischief and Xenagos rising to power because of Heliod and Purphoros escalating conflicts in the pantheon, and Kiora surviving because of the Silence to pose as Thassa and fight her when the god needed to reclaim devotion shows why the gods simply overlook important things for petty things. Even if the gods cleared a major threat I feel like they'd have back-up plans to screw over one another when the war ended just to come out on top above the others lol.
|| 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 ||
The last time Bolas had an area under his control he was Emperor Madara that was an area focused on black, red, and blue mana with Japanese mythology. My own speculation is that they're trying to insinuate that Bolas is similar to Apocalypse from X-Men.
But either way, the question that I come to is whether they're going to push mono color again or go with dual or tri color as a shard set.
Either way, we know one of the gods is a pseudo Anubis and this set with have a lot of death theme as well as mummies as zombies.
Modern
Commander
Cube
<a href="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-lists/588020-unpowered-themed-enchantment-an-enchanted-evening">An Enchanted Evening Cube </a>
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/announcement-day-2016-08-31
As well as his horns being everywhere in the art.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
- The interaction between semitic peoples and the ancient egyptians is too complicated to just summarise it as that
- Modern Egypt is muslim
As far as I understand it, Kruphix's domain is the combined knowledge (and the lack thereof) of mortals. He knows everything mortals know. While he may certainly be able to learn (and remember) things on his own, that is not his nature. He's not a knowledge seeker, he's a knowledge keeper. As such I believe phyrexians might fly under Kruphix's radar for a while, until they directly manifest as true synthetic constructs.
This touches another interesting point. Kruphix has been shown to be an immensely passive entity. As I said above, he doesn't seek knowledge on his own and he also doesn't seek to share the knowledge. He only keeps it. Do we know Kruphix will intervene, even if Theros is at risk? It may seem so, considering that he was afraid when he talked to his prophet about the extraplanar threats, but still he has a completely different view from all the other gods, because he's the oldest. It could very well happen that he just lets Bolas take the place, because he saw change happening to Theros since times immemorial. Then again, Kruphix did directly intervene during the Xenagos crisis, though again, true to his nature, he didn't just go and fix everything. Instead he blocked out all the gods and let the issue "resolve itself". We don't really know exactly how Kruphix will act and I would say that whichever path creative would like to take in this scenario, it wouldn't be out of character for him.
Most people don't care.
The cultural appropriation only come whenever Selena Gomez wears Bollywood attire or Cher, of Armenian descent, wore Amerindian garb. Even then, the logic is flaccid because it is a part of artistic expression which heralds into aesthetics, what is art, and so forth.
Then there's the problem with the Red Skins football team, which is a legitimate complaint.
The other thing really here is that we need to look at something outside of our own culture. Japan. Japanese loved Kawigama, because it took an American company using Japanese lore to build a Japanese world with a game that is popular inside of Japan. Had Kawigama been designed better, we would have seen a return to Kawigama by now, but I digress.
Egypt has been used in media for decades, the ancient Egyptians don't exist to have any complaints. We have also had Arabian Nights as an expansion to the game, and thus far I have yet to really hear from any players who happen to be Muslim complain about Army of Allah or the fact that one of the most powerful planeswalkers in Magic is Arab and his name was Taysir.
http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Taysir
Now, modernly Magic would not even touch anything to do with Islam or any real world counterparts. However, we can surmise simply that Taysir is an Arab and probably more than likely a Muslim that also happens to have been the most powerful or second to most powerful planeswalker in Magic next to Urza and Bolas.
So in short, Muslims seem okay with Magic because Magic has historically been rather respectful to source material.
Ancient Egyptians don't exist, but modernly whenever we do see ancient Egypt in modern culture everyone exploits it to their own artistic ends. Including people from modern Egypt.
And this is why respecting foreign cultures is great, but you can't appease everyone and that is why keeping diversity on the table and ironing out a few cross cultural problems when you approach them. This is similar to the issue that Japan has with the Swastika, that to their own culture the same symbol is seen as good luck to everyone else in the world it's Nazism. So homegrown they use the symbol, everywhere else it's either tucked away and not noticed or they edit it out.
Simplicity at it's finest. When you make a mistake, you own up to it and move on. Taysir isn't used, because he's dead. So they're able to dodge the issue of Taysir is a Muslim wizard problem as well as other issues of the past. And besides, we already saw Khans of Tarkir take on aspects of cultures who are Islamic. Abzan in short is the Ottoman Empire, and there hasn't been any real issue with Turks complaining about Abzan. Nor has there been any problem with Greeks complaining about Theros.
I feel it's safe to say right now, with the current formula. Magic isn't going to get hit with cultural appropriation. Even in the same way, we see so far that Kaladesh is steam punk merged with India. And frankly, there's been no large scale complaints. These people are rather conservative and are trying to develop their own products and worlds to protect their trademarks and branding purposes and expand the branch while being inclusive rather than exclusive.
So in short, they learned from Arabian Nights in both the good way that to be respectful of other cultures but also that you can't be scared of not using something by just being as original as you can while being faithful and respectful to the source materials.
In short, if we take Kaladesh as an example I would not hesitate that someone who is Indian would look at it as something cool. The same with people that are descended from ancient Egyptians. Just like I'm certain that many Greek Americans look at Theros, it's cool but it doesn't define their culture it just reflects it in a healthy manner.
Modern
Commander
Cube
<a href="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-lists/588020-unpowered-themed-enchantment-an-enchanted-evening">An Enchanted Evening Cube </a>
|| 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 ||
Which Kaladesh thankfully is on the opposite scale of.
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He might be arrogant and power-hungry, but he's no fool. He can see a threat when there is one. So what if he was trying to turn them against each other by the means of his pawn Tez, who could use Chandra's emotions to create chaos within the ranks, or even create his "Bolaswatch" as a result?
"I'm not saying it was Planeswalkers, but it was Planeswalkers"
I wonder how far out they planned the 'Bolas Egypt world' thing.
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He also has a little golden orb (The mask) floating between his horns.
Hathor is usually depicted with having the sun between her horns.
Additionally, Vengeful Pharaoh's head dress and staff bear an uncanny resemblance to Bolas' trademark horns and orb.
The plot thickens.
1. The gods exist and are simply complacent to Bolas' schemes for some reason.
2. The gods exist and serve Bolas willingly.
3. The gods exist and Bolas has the gods on a leash.
4. The gods exist but are unable to directly intervene on the plane (see: The Elder Scrolls).
5. The gods don't actually exist and Bolas has constructed a religion of false figures to manipulate the people of the plane for millennia.
Personally, I believe 5, 2 and 4 are the most interesting of the bunch in that order but 3 also definitely gives Bolas some street cred.
-Chandra Nalaar
Having that said, I believe 5 is most likely, but I hope for 3 myself.
I had a different idea altogether: What if Bolas himself is one of the gods of Amonkhet? Xenagos was a Planeswalker who managed to turn himself into one of the gods of Theros. Perhaps at some point in his exceptionally long life, Bolas was able to incorporate himself into the pantheon of Amonkhet the same way. If a mere satyr could find a way to do it, then a 25,000 year old Elder Dragon probably could too. And if I remember correctly, Xenagos still retained his spark and his ability to travel between worlds after ascending to godhood, so Bolas traversing across the multiverse doesn't preclude him from being a god on one plane.
After all, Bolas frequently described himself as a god, maybe he meant it more literally than anyone knew! If this turns out to be true, it means that Bolas is even more powerful than usual on Amonkhet, since he'd have the near-omnipotence of a god there. It also means we might be seeing two Bolas cards in this block: Just like Xenagos, he'd get a Planeswalker card and a Legendary Creature card to represent his godly form. It can also be inferred that the gods of Amonkhet are tri-colored, as opposed to mono-colored and dual-colored like the gods of Theros.
5 seems most likely to me, though given that the God card type has already been confirmed, I'm thinking that it will play out with Amonkhet depicting the Gods, with Nicol Bolas being one of them, and establishing the world, then having the following set "pulling the curtain back" as it were, and revealing Nicol Bolas (and possibly the other Gods) to be planeswalkers.
A cycle of tricolored cards, even if it's just ally, seems a bit much. Maybe though. But with Ravnica likely around the corner it's hard for me to imagine them doing that. I could see Bolas as a god though.