The unified Lorwyn allows for flavor and mechanical exploration not available in the initial sortie, without locking out any of the prior mechanics and only a little of the flavor.
The problem with Lorwyn-at-balance is that everyone would want it to be a tribal set with a huge hybrid mana theme, which I'm not sure whether would be a nonlinear yet deep and complex and diverse environment or a complete mess to design.
I'd think that the obvious answer would be to do the opposite, and make it a hybrid set with a strong tribal subtheme. We've seen that it is very possible to do tribal effectively as a subtheme, and probably works better as a subtheme, via innistrad. Either do allied tribes (say, all effects boost two tribes, like elves AND kithkin or merrow AND faeries) or make the tribes 3 color.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
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!
In defense of Ixalan: we only saw one continent and the story (aside from Jace x Vraska) sucked hard. There's still a lot of stuff to explore to flesh out the plane, and its main hook is decent.
The story didn't bother me too much. I liked the moral ambiguity of Ixalan; the entire plane's "hat" is hypocrisy.
My main hope is that Vivien is an unreliable narrator and has what I call "tautological ethics": "I oppose evil, therefore anyone who disagrees with me is evil. The world would be better off with less evil, therefore anything I do to destroy evil, defined, again, as 'anyone who disagrees with me', is acceptable." (Then again, that's something white would do more than green.)
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Viven Reid and her stories are the worst thing about MTG, on par for Vorthos with the Reserve List for fans of its card's formats. Let's not bring her up again.
Ixalan still has 7 of the 9 merfolk shapers to explore, a bunch of pirate captains, I mean we didn't even a snippet out of Admiral Beckett Brass, Elenda returning to Torezon... The problem with the story I believe were the hypocritical sun empire with their mentality of "we don't kill others because we are righteous, but what our dinos do is up to them" crap and the stupid geocache scam. The story would have been that much better if we didn't have the saltiness of the obviously rigged geocache.
Alara is basically a new world with the shards all joined.
Kamigawa's kami war is over and it was a while ago. They can do something with Konda being freed and starting a samurai vs ninja war. Bushido vs Ninjutsu anyone??? And KITSUNE!!!
Lorwyn is also practically a new world. What tribes kept their morningtide side and which the shadowmoor selves? Did any tribes present in one appear on Lorwyn now.
I think you guys can tell I'm biased towards Kamigawa and Lorwyn lol
In defense of Ixalan: we only saw one continent and the story (aside from Jace x Vraska) sucked hard. There's still a lot of stuff to explore to flesh out the plane, and its main hook is decent.
The story didn't bother me too much. I liked the moral ambiguity of Ixalan; the entire plane's "hat" is hypocrisy.
My main hope is that Vivien is an unreliable narrator and has what I call "tautological ethics": "I oppose evil, therefore anyone who disagrees with me is evil. The world would be better off with less evil, therefore anything I do to destroy evil, defined, again, as 'anyone who disagrees with me', is acceptable." (Then again, that's something white would do more than green.)
You see, the reason I thought Ixalan's story sucked is because it sucked, badly, at making its "hat" work. It was sold as a moral ambiguity plane. It hyped up the moral ambiguity. It promised that we were in for 4 factions that each were sort of good and sort of bad in their own way. It ****ed that up tremendously.
What we got instead was the following:
1: Pirates. No moral ambiguity, just straight chaotic neutral. "Oh those wacky pirates, doing crazy pirate stuff!" was their schtick. An actual, competently executed shades of grey pirate faction would have leaned into their origin as merchants driven off Terrezon by the vamps. They could have had an actual goal, rather than being random raiders played mostly for laughs. A desperate group of rouges willing to do anything to make a new home for themselves or retake their old one, so they raid and pillage the Sun Empire and vampire both, and we get treated to both the nobility of them taking on their oppressors and the savagery of them destroying innocents. Instead, we get wacky antics and them killing vamps, which is always presented as a positive. Their search for the Golden Sun is entirely driven by Jace and Vraska, so they don't even play into that.
2: Sun Empire: Presented as uniformly good victims until the very end. Oh sure, there's mention that hundreds of years ago they ****ed up and betrayed the merfolk, but they are presented here as a purely noble civilization struggling against savage oppressors. Their quest for the Golden Sun is a quest for lost heritage. Again, only at the very, very end of the story do we get any shade of grey. Just terrible execution.
3: Merfolk: Real, actual shades of grey here, solely because one merfolk was an ********. The entire faction pretty much just wanted to prevent anyone from getting the super weapon, which is a pretty purely good goal. Just one ******** wanted to take it for himself. Sure, others agreed with him, but none of them lifted a finger to help. It would be like if in Black Panther if Killmonger announced his plans to arm oppressed people around the world with Wakandan weapons and instead of joining him the Rhino raising Wakandans just said "cool, sounds good, go ahead and fly them out there, we'll see you Thursday." So yeah, the merfolk broke down into Group A: Leaders raced to secure the superweapon to prevent Merfolk Killmonger from getting it, and everyone else made life difficult for the other factions and Group B: Blue Killmonger and some guys who sort of think he might be onto something but just help Group A stop the other factions.
4: Vamps: Yeah, just presented as pure evil until the very end, when they wake up the one none evil vamp queen. Probably the worst execution in a plane filled with terrible execution.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
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!
My problem with the scale is I don't believe its possible to totally seperate the flavor of a plane and the story from the quality of standard at time and the power of cards.
Viven Reid and her stories are the worst thing about MTG, on par for Vorthos with the Reserve List for fans of its card's formats. Let's not bring her up again.
lol why? My only complaint is they used the worse art for her Standard power level card instead of this one. Vivien of the Arkbow
I'm not trolling, but that's an outsized reaction to what is from what I saw, just a 'meh' story.
I agree my point is the Rabiah Scale is flawed in my book. Maro states they have market research that claim Kamigawa sucks on levels, my point is I don't think the flavor/story isn't being biased by how bad Standard was and weak mechanics. Course I just have second knowledge I didn't play magic back then.
I agree my point is the Rabiah Scale is flawed in my book. Maro states they have market research that claim Kamigawa sucks on levels, my point is I don't think the flavor/story isn't being biased by how bad Standard was and weak mechanics. Course I just have second knowledge I didn't play magic back then.
Your second hand knowledge is pretty spot on though.
The Kamigawa books are regarded as the best Magic books. Only The Thran and the Urzas Saga books compete. In large part its due to the quality of the writing and characters, but its also due to the quality of the setting. The story of the block is nuanced and one of the best the brand has ever put out. Unlike Ixalan, its a shades of grey world executed correctly. With engaged players who actually care about the settings and stories, Kamigawa is very popular. It is generally unpopular with casual players who only get the story from the cards and players who only care about game mechanics.
Kamigawa had four main problems: First,it did not communicate its story well from the cards, which was a general problem back then as magic relied on its novels to communicate the story, but was worse for Kamigawa because the Japanese names made it harder for a lot of players to follow from the cards and it wasn't as easy to connect to on a superficial level. Second, and MARO has mentioned this in the past, the block was a fairly faithful attempt at hitting major points in Japanese mythology but it neglected to hit on points of Japanese myth and culture that are particularly resonant in the West hard enough. People came in expecting ninja and samurai and didn't get enough, while they got too much of the Shinto inspired spirits, a problem that was exclusive to the block itself rather than the plane as the blocks story centered around the Kami war, which brought tons of spirits that would normally be in the spirit plane to the material plane and caused half the cards to be spirit themed, so a return would have far fewer spirits. Third, as you mentioned, the block was powered down following the collective design mistake that was Mirrodin. While many cards from the first two set have aged well, with several all time greats, at the time the cards didn't add to the power decks in Standard. Mirrodin had a lot of parasitic mechanics, as did Kamigawa, so decks at the time were either Mirrodin decks or Kamigawa decks, and since the Mirrodin decks featured more broken bull***** the Mirrodin decks were the popular ones. Saviors of Kamigawa being a steaming turd hurt the reputation of the block further as it ended on what would be a power nadir for magic that we wouldn't see again until Born of the Gods. Lastly, its primary theme was supposed to be Legends and that wasn't at common, so the block felt a bit aimless from a mechanical perspective.
2 out of 4 of those were design problems unconnected from the setting. One was a problem with how well they communicate the story to casual players, and one was a legitimate creative problem that they have since learned how to fix.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
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!
2: Sun Empire: Presented as uniformly good victims until the very end. Oh sure, there's mention that hundreds of years ago they ****ed up and betrayed the merfolk, but they are presented here as a purely noble civilization struggling against savage oppressors. Their quest for the Golden Sun is a quest for lost heritage. Again, only at the very, very end of the story do we get any shade of grey. Just terrible execution.
To be fair, at the end, they start actually acting like an empire. Think of the Golden Sun as some kind of terra irredenta. That's how I saw it anyway.
I still say Viv was where it really jumped the shark. Fixable, but there's only one plausible way to do it, ye olde unreliable narrator.
Huatli has her own mechanical issues, too. The same ones Sorin and to a lesser extent Nissa, Sarkhan, and any other tribal 'walker face. Made all the worse for Huatli, since dinosaurs aren't a major creature type on most planes.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Its funny Sarkhan Fireblood is how you do a tribal focused walker. Low CMC, Card Draw, Ramp, and Reasonable Ult. He has the advantage of monocolor and a more popular tribe but still that is what i want to see more of for tribal walkers.
The best part about Huatli is the character design...her personality, motivations and cards were all weak.
I was a bit surprised by Ixalan. I personally found the world to be almost... sterile. Like, there was so little meat on its bones. You can sum up the world in four sentences and you pretty much have heard everything.
I mean really?
We had aztec humans riding dinosaurs
The dinosaurs were quetzalcoatl referenece and the descendant of an herald of the threefolded sun.
There may be more dinosaurs we don't know about
The merfolk were tropical and vibrant, with a good green aspect
We had pirates, made of thieves, assassins, explorers and thinkerers
We had vampires... kinda dull these ones, i guess.
Other aspects of the plane we haven't see: other sun-related creatures (like the phoenixes), the night-related creatures like the demons and the Bat God, the Grim Captain and her armies of undead, sea monsters and tropical versions of established fantasy creatures (like the parrot griffin of resplendent griffin)
There is still a lot to show if they want
What you listed were a bunch of cool ideas (and I enjoy those aspects of Ixalan) but they're not what I consider coherent or strong worldbuilding.
The Kami War has been over for AT LEAST 800 years, so Kamigawa is ripe for a revisit--most changes to the setting can easily be brushed off as natural results of the progression of time. We're now 30+ generations after the Kami War; the only living person with any memory of it would be the petrified, shattered remains of Konda, growing moss in the middle of the Jukai Forest (or, more realistically, buried under five feet of loam and soil by now), ruing his immortality and still wishing he had a mouth to scream with.
Konda's fate is most certainly the most horrific in MTG. That's what you get for messing with planar overlords. You know, before Planeswalkers came in and became OP Mary Sues for marketing purposes.
It is funny Oldwalkers are technically more powerful but it does seem the had to me more worried about powerful non Oldwalker threats then currently technically weaker Neowalkers have to be about present non walker threats. Bolas got put down by being outsmarted, three oldwalkers had to contain Eldrazi that went down to channel fireball and the power of friendship....Yawgmoth was owning Oldwalkers left right and center. Does any really think Bolas is going to take half the Walkers that go up against him. Plus you know non Walkers actually mattered to the story and weren't just background dressing.
So... I gonna ask it here... Are the Sisters of Flesh and Spirit more powerful than neowalkers?
Yes. As they should be. The Sisters literally stood before and barred Oldwalker Leshrac from even entering Kamigawa. Of course these days, they'd have some random Neo-Walker inexplicably defeating them. You know, actual gods that manage entire planes with their unfathomable magic, on their own turf. Because Planeswalker.
Entities like the Sisters, Theros gods, Avacyn, etc. Should be respected, feared and avoided. Basic wurms on Amonkhet, hell even bears, should be avoided. Let alone planar overlords. If they can be so easily bested by mortal mages born yesterday whose only ability is the presumably travel planes, then what's the point of having planes or other characters at all? Makes the writing seem weak and the marketing ploys are transparent. Tell a good story and respect your characters and settings - that's good marketing. Not making Mary Sues.
Viven destroying an entire city of immortal vampiric mages with a conquering society on their own plane. Because Planeswalker. Right.
I was a bit surprised by Ixalan. I personally found the world to be almost... sterile. Like, there was so little meat on its bones. You can sum up the world in four sentences and you pretty much have heard everything.
I mean really?
We had aztec humans riding dinosaurs
The dinosaurs were quetzalcoatl referenece and the descendant of an herald of the threefolded sun.
There may be more dinosaurs we don't know about
The merfolk were tropical and vibrant, with a good green aspect
We had pirates, made of thieves, assassins, explorers and thinkerers
We had vampires... kinda dull these ones, i guess.
Other aspects of the plane we haven't see: other sun-related creatures (like the phoenixes), the night-related creatures like the demons and the Bat God, the Grim Captain and her armies of undead, sea monsters and tropical versions of established fantasy creatures (like the parrot griffin of resplendent griffin)
There is still a lot to show if they want
What you listed were a bunch of cool ideas (and I enjoy those aspects of Ixalan) but they're not what I consider coherent or strong worldbuilding.
I actually think this touches on a deeper philosophical question as to what exactly constitutes coherent or strong world building. Magic, over the past decade and a half, has leaned strongly into the world of hats model: Look guys, it's Mirrodin, the artifact world! Look guys, it's Shogun World! Look guys, it's City World! Look guys, it's adventure world! Look guys, it's horror land! Look guys, it's Greek world! Look guys, it's Egypt World! This can lead to satisfying world building, and certainly leads to coherent worldbuilding, but it's often cheap, hollow, and lazy, anything but strong. Usually, it's just fan service, and ends up being Magic's take on a genre or setting rather than a setting in and of itself. The strongest creations here are the world's that have more going on than their single hat: Ravnicas guilds mean that the city world has ten very different cultures inhaniting it, which makes it feel like what it's supposed to be in lore, a large diverse plane whose cultures were united under the guildpact and thus formed a plane wide city. Kamigawa, while fantasy Japanese, manages to feel diverse because of the differences in human cultures between colors, and the differences within colors between the human and non human cultures. These planes feel unique to magic in a way that Theros, as entertaining and likeable as it is, does not.
Arguably the best plane is Dominaria, an incoherent collection of cool *****, generic fantasy, and somewhat original stuff. Even there you had the occasional land if hats, but at least it makes sense for instance for magic Africa to be a continent like real Africa. Dominaria as a result feels big, like an actual alternate plane of existence, an actual world, because it IS big, and it IS and actual world. Theros, Kaladesh, Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, Zendikar, all feel very small, and limited. I think all of those are cool, but I don't think any of them are actually good examples of worldbuilding. I'm excited to go for another ride in fantasy Greece and see some Gods and minotaurs and hydras and *****, but the whole plane was paint by numbers fantasy Greece. I really like Zendikar (sans Eldrazi), but it doesn't feel like a real world, more like a neat setting for a DnD campaign focused on combat and puzzles. Even Alara feels smaller than it should as it's just 5 hats smashed together.
Ixalan has a lot of cool ***** that's unconnected, and I think that's great. It actually makes the setting better, and the worldbuilding stronger, that you have multiple wildly divergent cultures clashing on a continent that's only a part of the world we know, and we know there is more out there that we don't know. The Sun Empire with feathered dinosaurs and native central American inspired merfolk are all coherent, you could imagine a world of hats based on Aztecs, but with dinosaurs with parrot feathers. I mean, Tarkir is China, but with dragons, and Amonkhet was Egypt, but with a dragon, and Kaladesh was India, but aetherpunk. But with Ixalan, we get entire different cultures involved, with their own cool ***** that is unrelated to the fantasy Aztec continent, because those cultures are foreign. The vampires are late reconquistas, early exploration Spain, but vampires. The pirates are 16th century pirtes of the carribean fantasy pirates. But putting them all together actually works because it makes the world feel big, and it promotes the culture clash theme. Ixalan literally took place on one, fairly small, continent, and yet it feels bigger than Kaladesh, Theros, or Zendikar.
I mean, A Song of Ice and Fire's setting is a much stronger example of worldbuilding than anything Magic has put out, and that's got dragons, ice zombies, fantasy Ming, fantasy Mongols, Rennasaince Italy inspired free cities (including fantasy Venice), Cthulu Vikings, dark ages England, Tudor era inspired Plotters, and sort of Spain but if the Ummayads won and were super progressive when it comes to pansexuality and women leaders.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
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!
It always rubs me the wrong way when Dominaria is presented as the "objectively best plane" just because it has continents and stuff. Dominaria feels big not only because there's cultural diversity, but also because the cultures on the plane have their roots in the very conception of Magic as a game and all implications coming from that (since Dominaria is Magic's first plane).
There are strong parallels here to other bottom-up planes like Tarkir, Ravnica and Alara. Because the mechanics of Magic: the Gathering are (obviously) unique to it as a game, there's a strong sense of independence to these worlds built on top of them: The Jeskai may superficially resemble Tibetan monks, but they're ultimately not inspired by Tibetan monks, but the combined philosophies of the colors that form their "wedge". Both Mirrodin and Kaladesh are built on the artifact subtype first and foremost and have serious creative design space (see Mirrodin's transformation into New Phyrexia). Kaladesh does feel small, but that's due to the story almost exclusively focusing on the Inventors' Fair and the events that occurred there (and the events that resulted from those). The pitch for Ixalan may have been "vampire conquistadors", but in the end the set turned out to be a lot more rooted in mechanics, namely tribal. Ixalan, in a way, could be described as a "fixed Lorwyn" in that it did the tribal theme with greater flavor resonance. I think the reason it ended up feeling kind of bland to some was - as has already been said in this thread - that the storytelling (both on the cards and in the actual story) was too streamlined and one-note, attributes which amusingly also fit its limited environment. Ixalan was wide but ended up lacking depth, with Kaladesh being the opposite case.
I would, however, argue that a world doesn't necessarily have to "feel big" in order to be a good or "solidly worldbuilt" world. Basically, depth is more important than pure scale. Case in point: Ravnica; although it's always stated that the city covers the whole plane and the urban setting and the ten guilds (+ the guildless) make the world seem complex and interesting, the "relevant part" of the plane is, in the end, pretty small. Conversely, Zendikar is big, but when looking at the cards you get the feeling that wherever you go, it's essentially the same kind of generic adventure environment everywhere, although the "skins" for the environments differ.
Kamigawa and Lorwyn/Shadowmoor (my personal favourites) both are on the small side as well, but I find them very interesting and engaging. They are seen as failures because they didn't have enough resonance, i.e. things people from a very broad audience could easily relate to. But that's also the reason for why they feel original. It's often mentioned that the design team of Kamigawa was very true to the source material/culture it was depicting. But if you look closely, it's actually very different and very much its own thing. If you searched for descriptions of Kami like they're presented on cards from Kamigawa, you'd search for a long time. At the same time, there's no prominent sun goddess and also no other easily identifiable figures from the "traditional mythological canon", and the ghosts/monsters/yokai from the realm of folk belief are also largely absent or have been turned into independent groups/civilizations, sometimes pushed into colors they most likely wouldn't have been in if the goal had been to present their image in the real world as accurately as possible (kitsune, moonfolk, orochi, akki). Similarly, Lorwyn/Shadowmoor heavily drew on folklore from the British Isles, but from a flavor standpoint, the focus wasn't really on portraying/referencing the source material correctly, but rather the larger theme of "world of light VS world of dark". The elements based on real culture were merely combined with this theme, resulting in a world that made sense without suffering from "overfitting" which can be observed on planes like Theros or even Innistrad. I think the key to creating a sense of originality in fantasy worlds/works is to deliberately leave some elements unconnected and disparate. If you try to reference too much/connect everything to another thing, the greater whole starts to feel bland (which is also a problem with prequel series/movies).
Dominaria to me is one of the dullest planes ever. So much of its lore feels so old and out of touch, and convoluted at best over the span of so may years and so many different adaptations. The fact it doesn't have a coherent identity is what I dislike about it most. While I would love to see Theros expand to encompass more of the Mediterranean, or at least more of Greece itself (which had FAR more settlements than we saw), I prefer worlds with more grounded identity. I don't find it lazy or uninspired at all. The opposite actually, I take comfort in the familiarity and enjoy finding aspects of originality and how MTG adapted certain tropes. It's no surprise that the worlds with the most focus and are the most resonant are also the most popular. Dominaria is only as high as it is in part because Richard Garfield had a part in designing the set (think original Innistrad) and in part because of older fans.
I want Return to Theros with Sagas and Historic. I want them to explore more of the landmass, reference more settlements, explore Arixmethes as Atlantis, give it an adventure vibe (which I admired about Ixalan).
I'd think that the obvious answer would be to do the opposite, and make it a hybrid set with a strong tribal subtheme. We've seen that it is very possible to do tribal effectively as a subtheme, and probably works better as a subtheme, via innistrad. Either do allied tribes (say, all effects boost two tribes, like elves AND kithkin or merrow AND faeries) or make the tribes 3 color.
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!
The story didn't bother me too much. I liked the moral ambiguity of Ixalan; the entire plane's "hat" is hypocrisy.
My main hope is that Vivien is an unreliable narrator and has what I call "tautological ethics": "I oppose evil, therefore anyone who disagrees with me is evil. The world would be better off with less evil, therefore anything I do to destroy evil, defined, again, as 'anyone who disagrees with me', is acceptable." (Then again, that's something white would do more than green.)
On phasing:
|| 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 ||
Alara is basically a new world with the shards all joined.
Kamigawa's kami war is over and it was a while ago. They can do something with Konda being freed and starting a samurai vs ninja war. Bushido vs Ninjutsu anyone??? And KITSUNE!!!
Lorwyn is also practically a new world. What tribes kept their morningtide side and which the shadowmoor selves? Did any tribes present in one appear on Lorwyn now.
I think you guys can tell I'm biased towards Kamigawa and Lorwyn lol
You see, the reason I thought Ixalan's story sucked is because it sucked, badly, at making its "hat" work. It was sold as a moral ambiguity plane. It hyped up the moral ambiguity. It promised that we were in for 4 factions that each were sort of good and sort of bad in their own way. It ****ed that up tremendously.
What we got instead was the following:
1: Pirates. No moral ambiguity, just straight chaotic neutral. "Oh those wacky pirates, doing crazy pirate stuff!" was their schtick. An actual, competently executed shades of grey pirate faction would have leaned into their origin as merchants driven off Terrezon by the vamps. They could have had an actual goal, rather than being random raiders played mostly for laughs. A desperate group of rouges willing to do anything to make a new home for themselves or retake their old one, so they raid and pillage the Sun Empire and vampire both, and we get treated to both the nobility of them taking on their oppressors and the savagery of them destroying innocents. Instead, we get wacky antics and them killing vamps, which is always presented as a positive. Their search for the Golden Sun is entirely driven by Jace and Vraska, so they don't even play into that.
2: Sun Empire: Presented as uniformly good victims until the very end. Oh sure, there's mention that hundreds of years ago they ****ed up and betrayed the merfolk, but they are presented here as a purely noble civilization struggling against savage oppressors. Their quest for the Golden Sun is a quest for lost heritage. Again, only at the very, very end of the story do we get any shade of grey. Just terrible execution.
3: Merfolk: Real, actual shades of grey here, solely because one merfolk was an ********. The entire faction pretty much just wanted to prevent anyone from getting the super weapon, which is a pretty purely good goal. Just one ******** wanted to take it for himself. Sure, others agreed with him, but none of them lifted a finger to help. It would be like if in Black Panther if Killmonger announced his plans to arm oppressed people around the world with Wakandan weapons and instead of joining him the Rhino raising Wakandans just said "cool, sounds good, go ahead and fly them out there, we'll see you Thursday." So yeah, the merfolk broke down into Group A: Leaders raced to secure the superweapon to prevent Merfolk Killmonger from getting it, and everyone else made life difficult for the other factions and Group B: Blue Killmonger and some guys who sort of think he might be onto something but just help Group A stop the other factions.
4: Vamps: Yeah, just presented as pure evil until the very end, when they wake up the one none evil vamp queen. Probably the worst execution in a plane filled with terrible execution.
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!
|| 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 ||
lol why? My only complaint is they used the worse art for her Standard power level card instead of this one. Vivien of the Arkbow
I'm not trolling, but that's an outsized reaction to what is from what I saw, just a 'meh' story.
Spirits
Your second hand knowledge is pretty spot on though.
The Kamigawa books are regarded as the best Magic books. Only The Thran and the Urzas Saga books compete. In large part its due to the quality of the writing and characters, but its also due to the quality of the setting. The story of the block is nuanced and one of the best the brand has ever put out. Unlike Ixalan, its a shades of grey world executed correctly. With engaged players who actually care about the settings and stories, Kamigawa is very popular. It is generally unpopular with casual players who only get the story from the cards and players who only care about game mechanics.
Kamigawa had four main problems: First,it did not communicate its story well from the cards, which was a general problem back then as magic relied on its novels to communicate the story, but was worse for Kamigawa because the Japanese names made it harder for a lot of players to follow from the cards and it wasn't as easy to connect to on a superficial level. Second, and MARO has mentioned this in the past, the block was a fairly faithful attempt at hitting major points in Japanese mythology but it neglected to hit on points of Japanese myth and culture that are particularly resonant in the West hard enough. People came in expecting ninja and samurai and didn't get enough, while they got too much of the Shinto inspired spirits, a problem that was exclusive to the block itself rather than the plane as the blocks story centered around the Kami war, which brought tons of spirits that would normally be in the spirit plane to the material plane and caused half the cards to be spirit themed, so a return would have far fewer spirits. Third, as you mentioned, the block was powered down following the collective design mistake that was Mirrodin. While many cards from the first two set have aged well, with several all time greats, at the time the cards didn't add to the power decks in Standard. Mirrodin had a lot of parasitic mechanics, as did Kamigawa, so decks at the time were either Mirrodin decks or Kamigawa decks, and since the Mirrodin decks featured more broken bull***** the Mirrodin decks were the popular ones. Saviors of Kamigawa being a steaming turd hurt the reputation of the block further as it ended on what would be a power nadir for magic that we wouldn't see again until Born of the Gods. Lastly, its primary theme was supposed to be Legends and that wasn't at common, so the block felt a bit aimless from a mechanical perspective.
2 out of 4 of those were design problems unconnected from the setting. One was a problem with how well they communicate the story to casual players, and one was a legitimate creative problem that they have since learned how to fix.
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!
To be fair, at the end, they start actually acting like an empire. Think of the Golden Sun as some kind of terra irredenta. That's how I saw it anyway.
I still say Viv was where it really jumped the shark. Fixable, but there's only one plausible way to do it, ye olde unreliable narrator.
Huatli has her own mechanical issues, too. The same ones Sorin and to a lesser extent Nissa, Sarkhan, and any other tribal 'walker face. Made all the worse for Huatli, since dinosaurs aren't a major creature type on most planes.
On phasing:
The best part about Huatli is the character design...her personality, motivations and cards were all weak.
What you listed were a bunch of cool ideas (and I enjoy those aspects of Ixalan) but they're not what I consider coherent or strong worldbuilding.
Sorin's stuck in a rock? Boy's got it easy.
|| 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 ||
Entities like the Sisters, Theros gods, Avacyn, etc. Should be respected, feared and avoided. Basic wurms on Amonkhet, hell even bears, should be avoided. Let alone planar overlords. If they can be so easily bested by mortal mages born yesterday whose only ability is the presumably travel planes, then what's the point of having planes or other characters at all? Makes the writing seem weak and the marketing ploys are transparent. Tell a good story and respect your characters and settings - that's good marketing. Not making Mary Sues.
Viven destroying an entire city of immortal vampiric mages with a conquering society on their own plane. Because Planeswalker. Right.
|| 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 ||
I actually think this touches on a deeper philosophical question as to what exactly constitutes coherent or strong world building. Magic, over the past decade and a half, has leaned strongly into the world of hats model: Look guys, it's Mirrodin, the artifact world! Look guys, it's Shogun World! Look guys, it's City World! Look guys, it's adventure world! Look guys, it's horror land! Look guys, it's Greek world! Look guys, it's Egypt World! This can lead to satisfying world building, and certainly leads to coherent worldbuilding, but it's often cheap, hollow, and lazy, anything but strong. Usually, it's just fan service, and ends up being Magic's take on a genre or setting rather than a setting in and of itself. The strongest creations here are the world's that have more going on than their single hat: Ravnicas guilds mean that the city world has ten very different cultures inhaniting it, which makes it feel like what it's supposed to be in lore, a large diverse plane whose cultures were united under the guildpact and thus formed a plane wide city. Kamigawa, while fantasy Japanese, manages to feel diverse because of the differences in human cultures between colors, and the differences within colors between the human and non human cultures. These planes feel unique to magic in a way that Theros, as entertaining and likeable as it is, does not.
Arguably the best plane is Dominaria, an incoherent collection of cool *****, generic fantasy, and somewhat original stuff. Even there you had the occasional land if hats, but at least it makes sense for instance for magic Africa to be a continent like real Africa. Dominaria as a result feels big, like an actual alternate plane of existence, an actual world, because it IS big, and it IS and actual world. Theros, Kaladesh, Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, Zendikar, all feel very small, and limited. I think all of those are cool, but I don't think any of them are actually good examples of worldbuilding. I'm excited to go for another ride in fantasy Greece and see some Gods and minotaurs and hydras and *****, but the whole plane was paint by numbers fantasy Greece. I really like Zendikar (sans Eldrazi), but it doesn't feel like a real world, more like a neat setting for a DnD campaign focused on combat and puzzles. Even Alara feels smaller than it should as it's just 5 hats smashed together.
Ixalan has a lot of cool ***** that's unconnected, and I think that's great. It actually makes the setting better, and the worldbuilding stronger, that you have multiple wildly divergent cultures clashing on a continent that's only a part of the world we know, and we know there is more out there that we don't know. The Sun Empire with feathered dinosaurs and native central American inspired merfolk are all coherent, you could imagine a world of hats based on Aztecs, but with dinosaurs with parrot feathers. I mean, Tarkir is China, but with dragons, and Amonkhet was Egypt, but with a dragon, and Kaladesh was India, but aetherpunk. But with Ixalan, we get entire different cultures involved, with their own cool ***** that is unrelated to the fantasy Aztec continent, because those cultures are foreign. The vampires are late reconquistas, early exploration Spain, but vampires. The pirates are 16th century pirtes of the carribean fantasy pirates. But putting them all together actually works because it makes the world feel big, and it promotes the culture clash theme. Ixalan literally took place on one, fairly small, continent, and yet it feels bigger than Kaladesh, Theros, or Zendikar.
I mean, A Song of Ice and Fire's setting is a much stronger example of worldbuilding than anything Magic has put out, and that's got dragons, ice zombies, fantasy Ming, fantasy Mongols, Rennasaince Italy inspired free cities (including fantasy Venice), Cthulu Vikings, dark ages England, Tudor era inspired Plotters, and sort of Spain but if the Ummayads won and were super progressive when it comes to pansexuality and women leaders.
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!
Ixalan does feel most complete world of the recent stuff.
There are strong parallels here to other bottom-up planes like Tarkir, Ravnica and Alara. Because the mechanics of Magic: the Gathering are (obviously) unique to it as a game, there's a strong sense of independence to these worlds built on top of them: The Jeskai may superficially resemble Tibetan monks, but they're ultimately not inspired by Tibetan monks, but the combined philosophies of the colors that form their "wedge". Both Mirrodin and Kaladesh are built on the artifact subtype first and foremost and have serious creative design space (see Mirrodin's transformation into New Phyrexia). Kaladesh does feel small, but that's due to the story almost exclusively focusing on the Inventors' Fair and the events that occurred there (and the events that resulted from those). The pitch for Ixalan may have been "vampire conquistadors", but in the end the set turned out to be a lot more rooted in mechanics, namely tribal. Ixalan, in a way, could be described as a "fixed Lorwyn" in that it did the tribal theme with greater flavor resonance. I think the reason it ended up feeling kind of bland to some was - as has already been said in this thread - that the storytelling (both on the cards and in the actual story) was too streamlined and one-note, attributes which amusingly also fit its limited environment. Ixalan was wide but ended up lacking depth, with Kaladesh being the opposite case.
I would, however, argue that a world doesn't necessarily have to "feel big" in order to be a good or "solidly worldbuilt" world. Basically, depth is more important than pure scale. Case in point: Ravnica; although it's always stated that the city covers the whole plane and the urban setting and the ten guilds (+ the guildless) make the world seem complex and interesting, the "relevant part" of the plane is, in the end, pretty small. Conversely, Zendikar is big, but when looking at the cards you get the feeling that wherever you go, it's essentially the same kind of generic adventure environment everywhere, although the "skins" for the environments differ.
Kamigawa and Lorwyn/Shadowmoor (my personal favourites) both are on the small side as well, but I find them very interesting and engaging. They are seen as failures because they didn't have enough resonance, i.e. things people from a very broad audience could easily relate to. But that's also the reason for why they feel original. It's often mentioned that the design team of Kamigawa was very true to the source material/culture it was depicting. But if you look closely, it's actually very different and very much its own thing. If you searched for descriptions of Kami like they're presented on cards from Kamigawa, you'd search for a long time. At the same time, there's no prominent sun goddess and also no other easily identifiable figures from the "traditional mythological canon", and the ghosts/monsters/yokai from the realm of folk belief are also largely absent or have been turned into independent groups/civilizations, sometimes pushed into colors they most likely wouldn't have been in if the goal had been to present their image in the real world as accurately as possible (kitsune, moonfolk, orochi, akki). Similarly, Lorwyn/Shadowmoor heavily drew on folklore from the British Isles, but from a flavor standpoint, the focus wasn't really on portraying/referencing the source material correctly, but rather the larger theme of "world of light VS world of dark". The elements based on real culture were merely combined with this theme, resulting in a world that made sense without suffering from "overfitting" which can be observed on planes like Theros or even Innistrad. I think the key to creating a sense of originality in fantasy worlds/works is to deliberately leave some elements unconnected and disparate. If you try to reference too much/connect everything to another thing, the greater whole starts to feel bland (which is also a problem with prequel series/movies).
I want Return to Theros with Sagas and Historic. I want them to explore more of the landmass, reference more settlements, explore Arixmethes as Atlantis, give it an adventure vibe (which I admired about Ixalan).
|| 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 ||