And the way they wrote Angrath's last line really justifies my previous wish that Angrath should have been a bratty teen bull instead of a father of two.
I seriously think that Wizards have realized that people are liking a character that is not Jace or Nicol Bolas and is taking steps to make bloody hell sure that character becomes unlikeable. Really, I like Angrath enough before they had the gall to 'reveal' he's a father of two (which, at that point, I could tolerate), that he's been separated for 14 years (an excessive number, as if Angrath is in dire need of quick sympathy (answer: No, he doesn't need sympathetic background to be likeable, thank you very much)), and while then they try to make him sound wise to try justifying the 14 year gap, suddenly they devolve him back into some bratty toddler. (okay, FINE, for his last line, I can take that he's just super ecstatic that he'll be able to see his daughters again. Still, considering his talk with Huatli, especially until they run into Elenda, this excessive shouting doesn't sit well with me.)
Aside from that, the story feels kinda whatever. Next.
EDIT: Oh, God, I just realized what I said... there was a gorgon with snake-y hair on the plane, so it really is Snakes On A Plane
EDIT #2: Sorry, important question, hope you see it.
Anyone knows whatever the hell happened to Jenna Helland? She's practically the ONLY writer I can think of who has always been able to churn out good stories.
Battle for Orazca? That wasn't a battle, that was a scuffle.
Between eight people.
With no casualties.
What a letdown. The card flavor and product info promises a titanic clash between four armies. The card art shows battles, golems, and giant Elder Dinosaurs stomping around the city (the artbook also describes a big, climactic struggle). But then all the writers can manage now is this playground fight, with a few bloody noses and a couple bruises?
Bait and switch, much? This isn't a mere case of disgruntled fans not having pet theories met. This is a case of Wizards deliberately setting up specific expectations, previewing actual battles and events, showing key moments and conflicts in the art... Only for the fiction writers to finally dismiss it all with a shrug.
It's a disservice to the game, disrespectful to the readers, and diminishing to the world they created.
They said that next week's story will reveal the winner of the battle based on votes and geocaching results. It's therefore likely that the real clash for Orazca will be shown us at the very end of the narrative arc.
They said that next week's story will reveal the winner of the battle based on votes and geocaching results. It's therefore likely that the real clash for Orazca will be shown us at the very end of the narrative arc.
It was a Hualti centric story so of course it sucked. She's a boring chaeacter. She's got Gideons Captain America style moral compass with none of his character development, and her hook is lame (the Warrior poet thing), and she manages to make dinosaurs boring. She managed to make a 3 HEADED SUPER TREX boring. She's been the weak link since her intro. I hope that the next time we hear from her its that she stupidly blind walked into New Phyrexian and died.
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Yeah.... I mean, the only thing I can think of is that they're spending so much time on Dominaria to 'get it right' (here's hoping) that they're skimping here.
It was a Hualti centric story so of course it sucked. She's a boring chaeacter. She's got Gideons Captain America style moral compass with none of his character development, and her hook is lame (the Warrior poet thing), and she manages to make dinosaurs boring. She managed to make a 3 HEADED SUPER TREX boring.
This made me laugh and sad at the same time.
Ixalan's story was okay, and in a way a much needed breather after the very heavy (but imo well-done!) Amonkhet. But I share the sentiments here. The parts that didn't involve Vrace were very... lacking. Battle for Zendikar style lacking.* I'm usually much more into world-building than character-centered stories, but Ixalan managed to totally sell me on the Vraska-Jace dynamic. In which direction that is a statement about the quality of the story is up for interpretation I suppose.
*I think it says something about the direction creative is going when a story is being hated on for having the same quality as an entire arc two years ago.
So I have to ask. Is there a single piece of evidence that the voting and geocaching was rigged apart from "my favourite faction didn't win"?
Vampires and Merfolk losing a ridiculous ammount of miles multiple times was noticed and evidenced in this very thread. And Vampires were also winning the first poll before it got hacked and deleted because UNITED RUSSIA won.
The geocaching event looked to be fixed for pirates for a while because they kept gaining tens of thousands of miles while everyone else was LOSING miles but stil a week from closing vampires had a comfortable lead over the second place pirates and dinosaurs were dead last without even reaching 200K. But all of a sudden dinosaurs win with more than double the miles they had a couple days ago? Sure sounds legit.
It was a Hualti centric story so of course it sucked. She's a boring chaeacter. She's got Gideons Captain America style moral compass with none of his character development, and her hook is lame (the Warrior poet thing), and she manages to make dinosaurs boring. She managed to make a 3 HEADED SUPER TREX boring.
This made me laugh and sad at the same time.
Ixalan's story was okay, and in a way a much needed breather after the very heavy (but imo well-done!) Amonkhet. But I share the sentiments here. The parts that didn't involve Vrace were very... lacking. Battle for Zendikar style lacking.* I'm usually much more into world-building than character-centered stories, but Ixalan managed to totally sell me on the Vraska-Jace dynamic. In which direction that is a statement about the quality of the story is up for interpretation I suppose.
*I think it says something about the direction creative is going when a story is being hated on for having the same quality as an entire arc two years ago.
I agree that it reflects positively on the overall quality of the story, which has gotten much better, but I remember that entire arc, save for about three stories, being hated more at the time than anything since Prophecy. Being better than bfz isnt difficult, anymore then it is for a set to be better than Homelands (Don't think your off the hook Fallen Empires).
That said, I liked a lot about ixilan, but Hualti sucked and they didn't develop the Sun Empire beyond easy references to pre Columbian Mexican culture and that they had dinosaurs. Riding velociraptors is pretty sweet, but they were never more than horses that could bite, and we didn't get to see anything truly *****in, like a war TRex just ******* up a bunch of soldiers or a tricerotps being used as a siege weapon. Really, the whole concept of an empire that uses ******* dinosaurs was woefully under explored. How the **** badly to you have to **** up to make that less interesting than "basically just pirates, just tropy pirates" and "merfolk, but like in touch with nature and *****, like a native American as envisioned by a guy in a wolf shirt." I mean, those two things are fine, pirates are always pretty sweet and I actually thought the merfolk were fairly interesting, but when MOTHER ******* DINOSAUR EMPIRE OF THE SUN GODDAMN is in the house they should be side dishes that make you say, "yeah, that's pretty cool, those really help round out the Stegosaurus gladiators". I mean, vampire conquistadors I get, thats just ******* metal, that *****s going to be hard competition even for like, a war brontosauras that makes the Oliphant's from Return of the King look like *****, but other than them?
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People keep saying the polls were rigged, but is there any real reason to believe that? Clearly the poll on the website was very badly formatted, and there were apparently a lot of problems with the geocaching system, but that doesn't seem like evidence that the game was rigged, just evidence that this whole event was poorly planned and poorly executed. As the old adage goes, never attribute to malice what could adequately be explained by incompetence.
Mostly I'm just skeptical because I don't know why WotC would bother. I honestly don't see any possible motive for them to go through the trouble of setting up this whole system and then just rigging the whole thing anyway. With New Phyrexia, they had a clear incentive to play favorites, since a Phyrexian victory would allow them to print a lot more Phyrexian cards in the final set of the Scars block and that would open up a lot more design space than a rehash of the original Mirrodin. It would also allow them to continue the story of New Phyrexia down the line and keep the Phyrexians around as a lingering threat to the Multiverse, which opens up a lot more story options in the long term. With Ixalan, there's no practical reason for WotC to favor any of these factions. The block is already over, and if they ever plan on revisiting Ixalan, I'm sure they could find a way to continue the story regardless of which faction takes the city. (The real problem is that it doesn't really make sense for the Pirates or Vampires to even want the city, given the motives that were established for them: The Vampires just wanted the Immortal Sun and the Pirates just wanted to loot all the treasure, neither group seemed interested in occupying the place for the long haul.)
People keep saying the polls were rigged, but is there any real reason to believe that? Clearly the poll on the website was very badly formatted, and there were apparently a lot of problems with the geocaching system, but that doesn't seem like evidence that the game was rigged, just evidence that this whole event was poorly planned and poorly executed. As the old adage goes, never attribute to malice what could adequately be explained by incompetence.
As the one who originally brought up the issues with the Geochaching, this has always been my opinion of the matter. Not rigged, just badly executed and likely horribly inaccurate. I honestly always expected Dinosaurs to win, even if the Sun Empire is frankly my least favorite faction, so I don't see that it would even need to be rigged to reach this (almost assured, come next week) outcome.
The poll was not rigged. There are four endings written (next week's story), and they're discussing how best to roll-out the alternate endings. Please move on from the 'rigged' topic.
The poll was not rigged. There are four endings written (next week's story), and they're discussing how best to roll-out the alternate endings. Please move on from the 'rigged' topic.
Wotc has a bad rep on that end, as far as we know it is rigged.
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Art student, EDH lover and a strong believer that Delver has the best design in all of MTG.
Mostly I'm just skeptical because I don't know why WotC would bother. I honestly don't see any possible motive for them to go through the trouble of setting up this whole system and then just rigging the whole thing anyway. With New Phyrexia, they had a clear incentive to play favorites, since a Phyrexian victory would allow them to print a lot more Phyrexian cards in the final set of the Scars block and that would open up a lot more design space than a rehash of the original Mirrodin.
The Mirrodin Pure/New Phyrexia wasn't touted as a choose the winner, it was decided before the very first card from Scars was spoiled that the Phyrexian's would win. The community hyped itself up into believing that they were influencing the the outcome of the war due to some poor wording on Wizards part. But it was never actually claimed that people joining sides would effect the war. To compare these two events is foolish, its like comparing the capture of the city to the Ravnica guild ranking and who won the Maze, no actual connection between the two, no connection ever stated, but people could mistakenly believe they were connected if they weren't paying attention.
As the one who originally brought up the issues with the Geochaching, this has always been my opinion of the matter. Not rigged, just badly executed and likely horribly inaccurate. I honestly always expected Dinosaurs to win, even if the Sun Empire is frankly my least favorite faction, so I don't see that it would even need to be rigged to reach this (almost assured, come next week) outcome.
The Sun Empire seems to be the least popular faction among people who actually read the stories, possibly just because of bad writing that makes the Empire seem boring and overly saccharine. Judging by the online stories, they seem to be a very generic nature-loving Proud Warrior Race with shallow Aztec trappings, except without any of the negative aspects of real-life Aztecs or other fictional Proud Warrior Races (except for the scheming power-hungry Emperor, but he just seems like a uniquely amoral individual, not a representative of the culture as a whole). The fact that their war with the River Heralds has been downplayed into more of a rivalry doesn't help, nor does the fact that they go out of their way to avoid killing unless they're fighting vampires. Quite frankly, the Legion of Dusk and the Brazen Coalition and the River Heralds are all a lot more compelling, since their negative traits aren't whitewashed, and their motives are more complex and sympathetic.
Among people who don't read the stories and only know the cards, I can see how the Sun Empire would seem a lot more interesting. Bloodthirsty dinosaur-riding Aztec warriors sound badass! And for a lot of players who don't know the story, sheer badassery is probably the main deciding factor in choosing a favorite faction. It also really doesn't help that all the polls listed the choice as Dinosaurs rather than Sun Empire, which makes it seem like a choice between tropes rather than factions. To a non-Vorthos, it's just going to seem like the poll is asking if Dinosaurs are cooler than Vampires or Pirates or Merfolk, so this result is unsurprising.
The Mirrodin Pure/New Phyrexia wasn't touted as a choose the winner, it was decided before the very first card from Scars was spoiled that the Phyrexian's would win. The community hyped itself up into believing that they were influencing the the outcome of the war due to some poor wording on Wizards part. But it was never actually claimed that people joining sides would effect the war. To compare these two events is foolish, its like comparing the capture of the city to the Ravnica guild ranking and who won the Maze, no actual connection between the two, no connection ever stated, but people could mistakenly believe they were connected if they weren't paying attention.
Yeah, that was my point, they're not at all comparable for a variety of reasons. I was just responding to the people who brought up New Phyrexia as an example of WotC supposedly rigging the outcome of an event.
Honestly, that story was the worst. No respect for Ixalan, Orazca, its cultures or legends. I really thought Zacama would be involved in overturning the emperor and allowing Huatli to take command and work on peace treaties. Instead, it was just transport. Next to nothing about the fate of Orazca, this long journey to it, its relevance to Ixalan as a plane, the tribes... instead, the whole Ixalan story ended up being a plot line for Bolas a a villain, and Orazca, Huatli, the journey, all of it - no relevance to Ixalan, but came down to celebrating just how great being a planeswalker is, how much better it is than being anything else. And rather than focusing on the wonders of Ixalan and its city of Orazca, the story we've been following all this time, the focus in this story was on how great it is to leave it all behind and go elsewhere. Literally as soon as it was discovered? Planeswalkers.
I miss when these worlds actually mattered more than leaving them. When being on the one we're on actually meant something. And not just Planeswalker marketing.
Azor no longer a Planeswalker, so they literally disposed of him like trash.
If I may, I feel like I can partially answer as to why the story of this set was off. I have no idea as to the legitimacy of the vote.
Ixalan’s story was problematic from the very start. Remember, the first pitch that would evolve into Ixalan began with a single idea:
Vampire Conquistadors
Every other idea that developed into Ixalan after that was in reaction to both the positive and negative aspects of telling such a story, such as the understandable denouncement of colonialism, noble and martially-matched, indigenous peoples, immigrant pirates whose lands were already taken, shamanic seers who foretell of the dangers that these explorers bring and a brave new world of treasure, dangerous fauna and a fabled lost city.
We have portrayed the perils of organized religion, a race between cultures for a secret super weapon and a protagonist who doesn’t know the evil of her own patron.
Ixalan’s story is meant to be an Aesop that teaches about the dangers of “my people right or wrong” mindsets and the tyranny that a single-group with near-absolute power
could achieve over thier rivals.
The problem however with telling this kind of story is that such stories nowadays need clear signposts so that the reader does not misunderstand them and read the story as “honourable explorers meet unenlightened savages” or “tyrannical bigots and noble, disenfranchised indigenous peoples”.
Understandably, the risks of the story wrongly portraying the first message outweighed the PR risk of portraying the second stereotypical narrative. There was so much that the story team had to do to ensure that the Sun Empire were viewed in a positive light that there was little narrative room for showing moral complications within them save for the straw-antagonist, the Emperor.
By the time we are given a sympathetic Vampire Torrezan, it is too late in the narrative for the character to really bring any depth to the faction, the Vampires serving the role as placeholder antagonists until the threat of Bolas was revealed to Jace. And No, despite Azor’s actions being the cause of the conflict, he didn’t come off as much more than an annoyance unfortunately.
Simply, episodic short stories based on a fantasy card game is a difficult medium through which to tell the complicated narrative that Ixalan deserves. If you have to spend the majority of the story to assure audiences what it isn’t, there is less room thereafter to explain what it is. No room for Elder Dinosaurs really.
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Edit: oh and I also agree and disagree with those complaining about Huatli’s character.
As a dude who sees a lot of White’s strengths and weaknesses in himself I find it perfectly alright for her character to have been more than a little naive, self-righteous and hypocritical.
What was lacking however was a little narrative aside where she deliberately engages with that aspect of herself, admits her strengths, weaknesses and acknowledgment that she is no longer the same and s commitment to prevent the escalation of needless conflict.
The lack of the latter was truly surprising. Just as Narset and Samut’s birth Planes needed them at home more than abroad at thier particular times, so does Huatli’s Ixalan. Her family could be pressed into a needless war and die!
By no means should a planeswalker not use thier gift to explore the planes, learn and grow, but I would find it hard to leave if I was in Huatli’s shoes and given what she learned at the closing of her quest.
I think I'll just repeat something I said some time ago: The vast majority of their writing efforts seems to have gone into Vraska and Jace. The story was much more interesting to take in whenever it zoomed in on either of these two and their shared dynamic.
That being said, this story had a lot of potential to make Huatli really come into her own. We can finally get to see the epic Elder Dinos wreck **** like Zetalpa is doing in his art with that smug look on his face. We can see Huatli respond to finally seeing these behemoths in the flesh (well, aside from that brief moment she was getting high off the Immortal Sun) and see her struggle and triumph to wrest the biggest of them under her control. I like that Huatli finally stopped taking Apatzec's ****, but the far better approach was to show up at the ceremony, give the oration anyway to sow the seeds of doubt amongst the people, grab the helm and planeswalk away (after having said her farewells to her family prior, of course). Also, it would have been nice to know what exactly happened to Inti while he was missing.
But I'm not a writer, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.
So they mention Huatli hearing the 5 heartbeats of the elder dinos. We know one is missing, but it's apparently not Zacama and may not matter in the slightest.
Who knows, maybe the missing one is Nezahal and it interferes with the vampires as they try to leave Ixalan.
As the one who originally brought up the issues with the Geochaching, this has always been my opinion of the matter. Not rigged, just badly executed and likely horribly inaccurate. I honestly always expected Dinosaurs to win, even if the Sun Empire is frankly my least favorite faction, so I don't see that it would even need to be rigged to reach this (almost assured, come next week) outcome.
The Sun Empire seems to be the least popular faction among people who actually read the stories, possibly just because of bad writing that makes the Empire seem boring and overly saccharine. Judging by the online stories, they seem to be a very generic nature-loving Proud Warrior Race with shallow Aztec trappings, except without any of the negative aspects of real-life Aztecs or other fictional Proud Warrior Races (except for the scheming power-hungry Emperor, but he just seems like a uniquely amoral individual, not a representative of the culture as a whole). The fact that their war with the River Heralds has been downplayed into more of a rivalry doesn't help, nor does the fact that they go out of their way to avoid killing unless they're fighting vampires. Quite frankly, the Legion of Dusk and the Brazen Coalition and the River Heralds are all a lot more compelling, since their negative traits aren't whitewashed, and their motives are more complex and sympathetic.
Among people who don't read the stories and only know the cards, I can see how the Sun Empire would seem a lot more interesting. Bloodthirsty dinosaur-riding Aztec warriors sound badass! And for a lot of players who don't know the story, sheer badassery is probably the main deciding factor in choosing a favorite faction. It also really doesn't help that all the polls listed the choice as Dinosaurs rather than Sun Empire, which makes it seem like a choice between tropes rather than factions. To a non-Vorthos, it's just going to seem like the poll is asking if Dinosaurs are cooler than Vampires or Pirates or Merfolk, so this result is unsurprising.
Yup. Fact of the matter is that most people who play Magic don't read the story, so it ultimately just comes down to "Dinosaurs are cool, yo!"
So they mention Huatli hearing the 5 heartbeats of the elder dinos. We know one is missing, but it's apparently not Zacama and may not matter in the slightest.
Who knows, maybe the missing one is Nezahal and it interferes with the vampires as they try to leave Ixalan.
That could be fun, introduce the idea that not only do Torrezon and High&Dry know about Ixalan. Ixalan now knows about Torrezon and High&Dry, and about seafaring boats they can surelly reverse-engineer.
We know Innistrad is just a (mini)continent in a much larger world, but they don't really seem to care to show us that world because Innistrad is Horror World and the other continents haven't even been named. But here we know there's an empire much larger than Ixalan and have the supposition that there still are a couple places in that continent where orcs are fighting the vampires' advance. This is a world after 4 sets that pretty much focused entirelly in a single city/territory and I think that's part of why some feel so unfulfilled with the story, there's still a lot to explore about this setting and it may be a very long while before we return because there's not much else here for planeswalkers to care.
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And the way they wrote Angrath's last line really justifies my previous wish that Angrath should have been a bratty teen bull instead of a father of two.
I seriously think that Wizards have realized that people are liking a character that is not Jace or Nicol Bolas and is taking steps to make bloody hell sure that character becomes unlikeable. Really, I like Angrath enough before they had the gall to 'reveal' he's a father of two (which, at that point, I could tolerate), that he's been separated for 14 years (an excessive number, as if Angrath is in dire need of quick sympathy (answer: No, he doesn't need sympathetic background to be likeable, thank you very much)), and while then they try to make him sound wise to try justifying the 14 year gap, suddenly they devolve him back into some bratty toddler. (okay, FINE, for his last line, I can take that he's just super ecstatic that he'll be able to see his daughters again. Still, considering his talk with Huatli, especially until they run into Elenda, this excessive shouting doesn't sit well with me.)
Aside from that, the story feels kinda whatever. Next.
EDIT: Oh, God, I just realized what I said... there was a gorgon with snake-y hair on the plane, so it really is Snakes On A Plane
EDIT #2: Sorry, important question, hope you see it.
Anyone knows whatever the hell happened to Jenna Helland? She's practically the ONLY writer I can think of who has always been able to churn out good stories.
Between eight people.
With no casualties.
What a letdown. The card flavor and product info promises a titanic clash between four armies. The card art shows battles, golems, and giant Elder Dinosaurs stomping around the city (the artbook also describes a big, climactic struggle). But then all the writers can manage now is this playground fight, with a few bloody noses and a couple bruises?
Bait and switch, much? This isn't a mere case of disgruntled fans not having pet theories met. This is a case of Wizards deliberately setting up specific expectations, previewing actual battles and events, showing key moments and conflicts in the art... Only for the fiction writers to finally dismiss it all with a shrug.
It's a disservice to the game, disrespectful to the readers, and diminishing to the world they created.
Source: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/vote-control-golden-city-2018-02-07
The problem is that the voting and geocaching looks to be rigged.
Dragons of Legend, Lead by Scion of the UR-Dragon
The Gitrog Monster
Gonti, Lord of Luxury
Shogun Saskia
Hive World
Atraxa hates fun
Abzan
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That's a charitable theory, I think?
This made me laugh and sad at the same time.
Ixalan's story was okay, and in a way a much needed breather after the very heavy (but imo well-done!) Amonkhet. But I share the sentiments here. The parts that didn't involve Vrace were very... lacking. Battle for Zendikar style lacking.* I'm usually much more into world-building than character-centered stories, but Ixalan managed to totally sell me on the Vraska-Jace dynamic. In which direction that is a statement about the quality of the story is up for interpretation I suppose.
*I think it says something about the direction creative is going when a story is being hated on for having the same quality as an entire arc two years ago.
The geocaching event looked to be fixed for pirates for a while because they kept gaining tens of thousands of miles while everyone else was LOSING miles but stil a week from closing vampires had a comfortable lead over the second place pirates and dinosaurs were dead last without even reaching 200K. But all of a sudden dinosaurs win with more than double the miles they had a couple days ago? Sure sounds legit.
I agree that it reflects positively on the overall quality of the story, which has gotten much better, but I remember that entire arc, save for about three stories, being hated more at the time than anything since Prophecy. Being better than bfz isnt difficult, anymore then it is for a set to be better than Homelands (Don't think your off the hook Fallen Empires).
That said, I liked a lot about ixilan, but Hualti sucked and they didn't develop the Sun Empire beyond easy references to pre Columbian Mexican culture and that they had dinosaurs. Riding velociraptors is pretty sweet, but they were never more than horses that could bite, and we didn't get to see anything truly *****in, like a war TRex just ******* up a bunch of soldiers or a tricerotps being used as a siege weapon. Really, the whole concept of an empire that uses ******* dinosaurs was woefully under explored. How the **** badly to you have to **** up to make that less interesting than "basically just pirates, just tropy pirates" and "merfolk, but like in touch with nature and *****, like a native American as envisioned by a guy in a wolf shirt." I mean, those two things are fine, pirates are always pretty sweet and I actually thought the merfolk were fairly interesting, but when MOTHER ******* DINOSAUR EMPIRE OF THE SUN GODDAMN is in the house they should be side dishes that make you say, "yeah, that's pretty cool, those really help round out the Stegosaurus gladiators". I mean, vampire conquistadors I get, thats just ******* metal, that *****s going to be hard competition even for like, a war brontosauras that makes the Oliphant's from Return of the King look like *****, but other than them?
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Mostly I'm just skeptical because I don't know why WotC would bother. I honestly don't see any possible motive for them to go through the trouble of setting up this whole system and then just rigging the whole thing anyway. With New Phyrexia, they had a clear incentive to play favorites, since a Phyrexian victory would allow them to print a lot more Phyrexian cards in the final set of the Scars block and that would open up a lot more design space than a rehash of the original Mirrodin. It would also allow them to continue the story of New Phyrexia down the line and keep the Phyrexians around as a lingering threat to the Multiverse, which opens up a lot more story options in the long term. With Ixalan, there's no practical reason for WotC to favor any of these factions. The block is already over, and if they ever plan on revisiting Ixalan, I'm sure they could find a way to continue the story regardless of which faction takes the city. (The real problem is that it doesn't really make sense for the Pirates or Vampires to even want the city, given the motives that were established for them: The Vampires just wanted the Immortal Sun and the Pirates just wanted to loot all the treasure, neither group seemed interested in occupying the place for the long haul.)
As the one who originally brought up the issues with the Geochaching, this has always been my opinion of the matter. Not rigged, just badly executed and likely horribly inaccurate. I honestly always expected Dinosaurs to win, even if the Sun Empire is frankly my least favorite faction, so I don't see that it would even need to be rigged to reach this (almost assured, come next week) outcome.
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[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
Wotc has a bad rep on that end, as far as we know it is rigged.
Art student, EDH lover and a strong believer that Delver has the best design in all of MTG.
The Sun Empire seems to be the least popular faction among people who actually read the stories, possibly just because of bad writing that makes the Empire seem boring and overly saccharine. Judging by the online stories, they seem to be a very generic nature-loving Proud Warrior Race with shallow Aztec trappings, except without any of the negative aspects of real-life Aztecs or other fictional Proud Warrior Races (except for the scheming power-hungry Emperor, but he just seems like a uniquely amoral individual, not a representative of the culture as a whole). The fact that their war with the River Heralds has been downplayed into more of a rivalry doesn't help, nor does the fact that they go out of their way to avoid killing unless they're fighting vampires. Quite frankly, the Legion of Dusk and the Brazen Coalition and the River Heralds are all a lot more compelling, since their negative traits aren't whitewashed, and their motives are more complex and sympathetic.
Among people who don't read the stories and only know the cards, I can see how the Sun Empire would seem a lot more interesting. Bloodthirsty dinosaur-riding Aztec warriors sound badass! And for a lot of players who don't know the story, sheer badassery is probably the main deciding factor in choosing a favorite faction. It also really doesn't help that all the polls listed the choice as Dinosaurs rather than Sun Empire, which makes it seem like a choice between tropes rather than factions. To a non-Vorthos, it's just going to seem like the poll is asking if Dinosaurs are cooler than Vampires or Pirates or Merfolk, so this result is unsurprising.
Yeah, that was my point, they're not at all comparable for a variety of reasons. I was just responding to the people who brought up New Phyrexia as an example of WotC supposedly rigging the outcome of an event.
I miss when these worlds actually mattered more than leaving them. When being on the one we're on actually meant something. And not just Planeswalker marketing.
Azor no longer a Planeswalker, so they literally disposed of him like trash.
|| 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 ||
Ixalan’s story was problematic from the very start. Remember, the first pitch that would evolve into Ixalan began with a single idea:
Vampire Conquistadors
Every other idea that developed into Ixalan after that was in reaction to both the positive and negative aspects of telling such a story, such as the understandable denouncement of colonialism, noble and martially-matched, indigenous peoples, immigrant pirates whose lands were already taken, shamanic seers who foretell of the dangers that these explorers bring and a brave new world of treasure, dangerous fauna and a fabled lost city.
We have portrayed the perils of organized religion, a race between cultures for a secret super weapon and a protagonist who doesn’t know the evil of her own patron.
Ixalan’s story is meant to be an Aesop that teaches about the dangers of “my people right or wrong” mindsets and the tyranny that a single-group with near-absolute power
could achieve over thier rivals.
The problem however with telling this kind of story is that such stories nowadays need clear signposts so that the reader does not misunderstand them and read the story as “honourable explorers meet unenlightened savages” or “tyrannical bigots and noble, disenfranchised indigenous peoples”.
Understandably, the risks of the story wrongly portraying the first message outweighed the PR risk of portraying the second stereotypical narrative. There was so much that the story team had to do to ensure that the Sun Empire were viewed in a positive light that there was little narrative room for showing moral complications within them save for the straw-antagonist, the Emperor.
By the time we are given a sympathetic Vampire Torrezan, it is too late in the narrative for the character to really bring any depth to the faction, the Vampires serving the role as placeholder antagonists until the threat of Bolas was revealed to Jace. And No, despite Azor’s actions being the cause of the conflict, he didn’t come off as much more than an annoyance unfortunately.
Simply, episodic short stories based on a fantasy card game is a difficult medium through which to tell the complicated narrative that Ixalan deserves. If you have to spend the majority of the story to assure audiences what it isn’t, there is less room thereafter to explain what it is. No room for Elder Dinosaurs really.
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
As a dude who sees a lot of White’s strengths and weaknesses in himself I find it perfectly alright for her character to have been more than a little naive, self-righteous and hypocritical.
What was lacking however was a little narrative aside where she deliberately engages with that aspect of herself, admits her strengths, weaknesses and acknowledgment that she is no longer the same and s commitment to prevent the escalation of needless conflict.
The lack of the latter was truly surprising. Just as Narset and Samut’s birth Planes needed them at home more than abroad at thier particular times, so does Huatli’s Ixalan. Her family could be pressed into a needless war and die!
By no means should a planeswalker not use thier gift to explore the planes, learn and grow, but I would find it hard to leave if I was in Huatli’s shoes and given what she learned at the closing of her quest.
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
A short but intriguing story. They did not reveal the gender of the narrator, which is clever.
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest WUR Voltron Control
Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun WU Unblockable Mirror Trickery
Ra's al Ghul (Sidar Kondo) and Face-Down Ninjas
Brudiclad, Token Engineer
Vaevictis (VV2) the Dire Lantern
Rona, Disciple of Gix
Tiana the Auror
Hallar
Ulrich the Politician
Zur the Rebel
Scorpion, Locust, Scarab, Egyptian Gods
O-Kagachi, Mathas, Mairsil
"Non-Tribal" Tribal Generals, Eggs
That being said, this story had a lot of potential to make Huatli really come into her own. We can finally get to see the epic Elder Dinos wreck **** like Zetalpa is doing in his art with that smug look on his face. We can see Huatli respond to finally seeing these behemoths in the flesh (well, aside from that brief moment she was getting high off the Immortal Sun) and see her struggle and triumph to wrest the biggest of them under her control. I like that Huatli finally stopped taking Apatzec's ****, but the far better approach was to show up at the ceremony, give the oration anyway to sow the seeds of doubt amongst the people, grab the helm and planeswalk away (after having said her farewells to her family prior, of course). Also, it would have been nice to know what exactly happened to Inti while he was missing.
But I'm not a writer, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.
Who knows, maybe the missing one is Nezahal and it interferes with the vampires as they try to leave Ixalan.
Yup. Fact of the matter is that most people who play Magic don't read the story, so it ultimately just comes down to "Dinosaurs are cool, yo!"
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
We know Innistrad is just a (mini)continent in a much larger world, but they don't really seem to care to show us that world because Innistrad is Horror World and the other continents haven't even been named. But here we know there's an empire much larger than Ixalan and have the supposition that there still are a couple places in that continent where orcs are fighting the vampires' advance. This is a world after 4 sets that pretty much focused entirelly in a single city/territory and I think that's part of why some feel so unfulfilled with the story, there's still a lot to explore about this setting and it may be a very long while before we return because there's not much else here for planeswalkers to care.