You want the actual reason for Dack's death? Because Wizards didn't fully own the rights to his character, IDW did. So they basically gave him a farewell with this set. However the set wasn't originally designed with that in mind so that is why Dack Fayden doesn't appear on flavor text or on cards except for the Ravnica Allegiances mythic edition, this was also after they consolidated a two-set block for War of the Spark into one set. To accommodate this extra planeswalker, there was two teams that handled Dack, the people who handled the trailer and the writing team. The trailer team simply had to come-up with a model and textures and rigging and effects for Dack from 0:40 to 0:56 (16 seconds). For writing they had Greg Weisman, the author of the book, fit Dack in as one of the POV characters. The kicker is that this isn't the first time this has happened either. Similar situation, like deja vu, happened with Armada Comics way back since the publishing company had the rights to Taysir of Rabiah and Kristina of the Woods for example. Their deaths occurred when they were part of the Nine Titans team.
I will see myself out.
Source for that? I've never heard that Dack is still owned by IDW.
I think, and this is just my hunch, its because nothing was done with Dack's story after Conspiracy. Which is also around the same time that IDW stopped making new stories for Dack. That war of the spark is the last time he shows up.
Also that Mark Rosewater confirms that they didn't make the set with him in mind, that he was a last minute addition, and that if they didn't include him into the story then only Gideon Jura and Domri Rade would have died.
You want the actual reason for Dack's death? Because Wizards didn't fully own the rights to his character, IDW did. So they basically gave him a farewell with this set. However the set wasn't originally designed with that in mind so that is why Dack Fayden doesn't appear on flavor text or on cards except for the Ravnica Allegiances mythic edition, this was also after they consolidated a two-set block for War of the Spark into one set. To accommodate this extra planeswalker, there was two teams that handled Dack, the people who handled the trailer and the writing team. The trailer team simply had to come-up with a model and textures and rigging and effects for Dack from 0:40 to 0:56 (16 seconds). For writing they had Greg Weisman, the author of the book, fit Dack in as one of the POV characters. The kicker is that this isn't the first time this has happened either. Similar situation, like deja vu, happened with Armada Comics way back since the publishing company had the rights to Taysir of Rabiah and Kristina of the Woods for example. Their deaths occurred when they were part of the Nine Titans team.
I will see myself out.
Source for that? I've never heard that Dack is still owned by IDW.
I think, and this is just my hunch, its because nothing was done with Dack's story after Conspiracy. Which is also around the same time that IDW stopped making new stories for Dack. That war of the spark is the last time he shows up.
He was left for a cliff hanger when the comic was cancelled entering Thero's underworld. I makes sense that thats when we would see him again it would be on Theros 2. Not saying he couldn't come back soon but he was on a bus that we would come to again.
Also that Mark Rosewater confirms that they didn't make the set with him in mind, that he was a last minute addition, and that if they didn't include him into the story then only Gideon Jura and Domri Rade would have died.
There are also a number of reasons Dack being added and killed could also happen. Last time something like this happened was M19 when Kate Elliot was hired and had the idea of the framing story of Tarkir and having Ugin being Bolas's twin. Could be the author wanted to use him or as you said they decided to add in another death and poor Dack was the target.
Also if IDW owns the character and wizards can't use him how did they did him the war of the spark novel?
Off topic but just thinking, how funny/sad would it be if cursed walker guy died in the war since he doesn't seem to have the best of luck.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
I'd argue that comparing LotR to MtG is unfair because both exist in different thematic contexts. LotR does not allow a lot of wiggle room between good and evil, if any. It's built around the notion and good and evil exists and that everyone gets what they deserve, resulting in good triumphing over evil in the end (even if it doesn't look like it temporarily). Even Gandalf who died, was resurrected, because he was on the good side. He didn't go through any real character development. He was just popped back into existence and given a more powerful role. It's a rigid take on what it means to do the right thing.
MtG on the other hand is much more "modern" in its take on good vs evil. Shades of grey exist everywhere and there are numerous conflicts where it is hard to say who is the villain and the hero, or whether these distinctions are meaningful in the first place. The feud between Sorin and Nahiri comes to mind, but also Vraska's and Liliana's entire story arcs. MtG dabbles in all sorts of shades of grey, mostly because of the colour pie and the fact that each colour has positive and negative aspects. It also frequently uses "tragic" endings, like Amonkhet and New Phyrexia, which clash with the "the just will triumph over evil" approaches of more traditional fantasy.
Saying that MtG could get away with an "everyone (or at least most) gets a happy ending" ending because LotR did it too is completely ignoring that they both operate on fundamentally different levels beneath the narrative surface.
Well, LotR has plenty of grey characters running about, and once you expand beyond that to the Hobbit and the Silmarillion there are plenty of grey characters. The universe has a clear demarcation between good and evil, but individuals don't always share that. The ending of LotR is also more bittersweet than happy. Sauron is defeated, as is Saruman the world is saved, orcs are driven off, and Aragorn becomes Elessar expanding Gondor to reclaim Arnor. But all this comes at a great price: magic will leave the world. Rivendell, Lorien, the Grey Havens, will all come to an end, their splendor fading with the destruction of the One Ring and the subsequent deactivation of the Three that maintained the works of the Noldor. Even Greenwood, nee Mirkwood, will fade, as all the elves of middle earth are doomed to leave or fade, taking all their works with them. The Dwarves, too, will dwindle, their great halls and treasures being lost to time. The Ents are without Entwives and will become Huorns in time, little more than great old trees. Everything that makes Middle Earth special, everything that makes it magical, fades away, even the Shire. Only Man will be left in the end, with all our petty squabbles and faults, a mundane world, stripped of its splendor and wonder.
I mean I think such ends are distinct from "the villain ending them" in the same vein a character dying of old age is different from a character getting murdered by another. Those empires and cultures had their time and it passed, that's how it goes. A big theme in LotR as a whole is the gradual passing of one world into another. It's not really tragic, more like, I dunno, wistful?
At any rate, I see your point though, even if I don't agree with the details.
You want the actual reason for Dack's death? Because Wizards didn't fully own the rights to his character, IDW did. So they basically gave him a farewell with this set. However the set wasn't originally designed with that in mind so that is why Dack Fayden doesn't appear on flavor text or on cards except for the Ravnica Allegiances mythic edition, this was also after they consolidated a two-set block for War of the Spark into one set. To accommodate this extra planeswalker, there was two teams that handled Dack, the people who handled the trailer and the writing team. The trailer team simply had to come-up with a model and textures and rigging and effects for Dack from 0:40 to 0:56 (16 seconds). For writing they had Greg Weisman, the author of the book, fit Dack in as one of the POV characters. The kicker is that this isn't the first time this has happened either. Similar situation, like deja vu, happened with Armada Comics way back since the publishing company had the rights to Taysir of Rabiah and Kristina of the Woods for example. Their deaths occurred when they were part of the Nine Titans team.
I will see myself out.
Source for that? I've never heard that Dack is still owned by IDW.
I think, and this is just my hunch, its because nothing was done with Dack's story after Conspiracy. Which is also around the same time that IDW stopped making new stories for Dack. That war of the spark is the last time he shows up.
He was left for a cliff hanger when the comic was cancelled entering Thero's underworld. I makes sense that thats when we would see him again it would be on Theros 2. Not saying he couldn't come back soon but he was on a bus that we would come to again.
Also that Mark Rosewater confirms that they didn't make the set with him in mind, that he was a last minute addition, and that if they didn't include him into the story then only Gideon Jura and Domri Rade would have died.
There are also a number of reasons Dack being added and killed could also happen. Last time something like this happened was M19 when Kate Elliot was hired and had the idea of the framing story of Tarkir and having Ugin being Bolas's twin. Could be the author wanted to use him or as you said they decided to add in another death and poor Dack was the target.
Also if IDW owns the character and wizards can't use him how did they did him the war of the spark novel?
Off topic but just thinking, how funny/sad would it be if cursed walker guy died in the war since he doesn't seem to have the best of luck.
He has bad luck in that stuff happens but somehow he always manages to live through it. So you could say it's good luck in a way too. Maro mentioned him, but of course blah blah, not story team, blah blah.
Disclaimer: Eldrazi fanboy alert. I heard the Eldrazi were being wrongly belittled again and returned to defend them.
Anybody comparing Bolas's dismal record with the Eldrazi as antagonists are doing it wrong. Yes, the Eldrazi have a kill score less then Bolas, but that's like calling a tornado with no casualties a failure as a criminal compared to a murderer.
The Eldrazi don't register anything than their purposes (I'm inclined to believe Emrakul only did so because Ulamog and Kozilek are gone, otherwise it wouldn't have bothered either). Yes, you could argue they failed in their purpose (to erase the planes they were on) and as such were failures as "antagonists" to the planes, but all because the Gatewatch selflessly threw themselves in the way doesn't automatically equate to the Eldrazi becoming antagonists to the planeswalkers - they never were and won't be, even Emrakul's message was "Hey fly I need to sleep so here's some cryptic messages so you can stop disturbing me".
I'm not saying BFZ was good, it was terrible, but not because the Eldrazi are terrible antagonists - it's because they decided to conveniently hide all the important characters of the plane behind invulnerable meatshields of planeswalkers... who conveniently have the correct skill sets to be said meatshields... and conveniently squeezed in a "create a Gatewatch" storyline written a way that it seems like they were a neighborhood police unit rather than a disaster relief unit which in turn made people think of the Eldrazi as antagonists/murderers/criminals than the natural disasters they are.
Bolas has no such backing - this is the Elder Dragon we knew on Amonkhet (and Time Spiral) who could be as patient as he wanted, the Elder Dragon who set up Liliana's demons knowing she would subvert every last one of them and as much as Test of Metal was questionable in placement, he was at the top of his game there toying with Jace, Liliana and Tezz. Even when he "lost" on Alara, he still had control of situation mostly and only had his hissy fit at the end because the plan was not 100% completed due to Ajani-ex-machina.
I would say the saving grave is that this is also the same Elder Dragon who lost to an Umezawa due to arrogance... so even if we wrote the Liliana-double-switcheroo out of the equation... this time he also lost his contingency plan (which allowed him to remain arrogant) because he let his twin brother who's aware of it into this war (and it's not like he didn't know Ugin's back). There's arrogance and arrogance-that-lets-the-one-thing-that-let's-you-come-back-after-being-killed-by-arrogance-be-demolished-level arrogance.
I’m just going to say that most works of fiction that are considered great do not just kill large numbers of characters. They use death sparingly and impactfully. I don’t know how others feel about it but it didn’t take long before death became a joke in Game of Thrones. Killing well liked characters too often can be a great way to lose a ton of your fans. They killed Gideon and if their Facebook poll is to be considered it had a great impact on people because he rolled over arguably better characters in all of his rounds so far. Just because you don’t like the gatewatch doesn’t mean they need to die. And not to mention the only reason you know any of this is because of leaks. Had it not been for that you would go into reading the novel still thinking that almost anyone could die and it would be way more satisfying. You’re only complaining because you recurved an incomplete version before having the opportunity to consume it as it was meant to be.
And people wonder why WotC gets so upset about leaks.
I’m just going to say that most works of fiction that are considered great do not just kill large numbers of characters. They use death sparingly and impactfully. I don’t know how others feel about it but it didn’t take long before death became a joke in Game of Thrones. Killing well liked characters too often can be a great way to lose a ton of your fans. They killed Gideon and if their Facebook poll is to be considered it had a great impact on people because he rolled over arguably better characters in all of his rounds so far. Just because you don’t like the gatewatch doesn’t mean they need to die. And not to mention the only reason you know any of this is because of leaks. Had it not been for that you would go into reading the novel still thinking that almost anyone could die and it would be way more satisfying. You’re only complaining because you recurved an incomplete version before having the opportunity to consume it as it was meant to be.
And people wonder why WotC gets so upset about leaks.
Again, I'll throw the word ''consequences''.
The Gatewatch hasn't faced any real consequences for their action through the entire saga. What made Urza saga better is that characters made stupid decision and they've payed for them with their lives. There was a feeling of actual stakes at play. Why would I, after WAR, ever feel that there will be any real stakes in future mtg stories? Plane will be in danger, planeswalkers will roflstomp the threat, an illusion of consequence (X randoms had died) will be thrown at us and we're moving on to the next story with the same formula. There is no more tension left. Will Jace die facing Garruk? No, ofc he won't, character deaths are being avoided like the plague. Will the Raven Man fulfill whatever his plan was? No, ofc he won't, the Gatewatch will stop him with no real loses. How do I know that? Because that has been the bloody formula since BFZ!
A plane is facing a threat -> Gatewatch beats the threat -> illusion of consequence is thrown in our faces (what does killing the titans mean? how will kaladesh function now?) -> onto the next story. Neither Amonketh had any real consequences for our characters. Jace lost his memory and then regained it in the same block, Nissa went a way and came back 2 blocks later without anyone noticing that she was gone, the rest just went their own way.
I personally feel the perfect comparison to War of the Spark is Journey into Nyx.
Consider if you will both Nyx and War are the third set. Both feature the death of a and of a planeswalker. Both are treated as the climax to defeating an arrogant self-made god with Xenagos and Nicol Bolas. That Ajani is present in the story for both the death of Elspeth and the death of Gideon. That both Domri and Xenagos engaged in a destructive revelry and are both usurpers of power. That both Elspeth and Gideon are heroes of Theros who thwart the plans of the god. That the antagonistic god Heliod/Nicol Bolas who caused the death of the Theros hero still lives at the end of the day. That both Elspeth and Gideon went to a Theros-styled afterlife. That both Elspeth and Gideon tried to use a legendary weapon to slay a god. That also Ashiok features in both storylines and gets a planeswalker card in both. That Dack Fayden in both storylines is not on a single card but instead on an external piece of reading material Comic/Novel.
TLDR: War is Nyx 2: Planeswalker Boogaloo. Change my mind.
From what I listened to the audio book and taking notes, there is only one story they essentially setup with Liliana post-war, 'Pursued by Bounty Hunters'. That is unless they write something that doesn't factor in the book's elements which wouldn't be expected.
I dunno. Im just very underwhelmed by the whole thing. Im not just talking sbout the ending, im tslking about the last three sets . I get that they were familiarizing people with the guilds , and the importance of them banning together, but it seemed a bit much. I really enjoyed all the stories from bfz onward. The story was a little rocky, but still had momentum building. I followed this story for a few years , only to get an ending that felt rushed .Id be fine if they involved strictly the planeswalker who were in the previous stories from bfz forward, because at least they’re involvement was backed by prior interaction with the Gatewatch, even if only briefly; unlike some walkers who were thrown in to fit the endgame thrme. Sorry if this reply was a jumbled mess, hopefully someone get where i was going with it lol.
I'll reinsert myself in the discussion, which I see has become more of a critical one...
I'm not happy with how it turned out, this is not compelling as a story for me.
About the whole "purpose" of a character I just want to say that the motif of a character is NOT ONLY its origin, but is always in evolution and in motion, the fact Kaya's purpose was fulfilled, does not mean it is expendable. BUT the same can be said in reverse, for real life at least. Our purpose is all-changing and we might not even reach our ending, we might get on another road, or even change our perspective completely, and I like to think modern writing should improve this hyper-realism... as was done in "Lost" (not everything was explained, but so is in real life... Evasion literature does not mean necessarily that it should atrofy our genius of imagination, we can theorize on the unexplained as we do in real life. I think it's extraordinary that we would be capable of doing that from a simple work of fiction). So when we see a Liliana with mysteries unsolved or Tamiyo with children at home, I like to imagine they could die too, leaving unanswered question that may be even addressed in other ways, not involving the original characters, so... Yes, I was counting on the death of many planeswalkers too, not because killing more equals higher quality, but because it would have meant Bolas is still a threat. Let's face it, they call it the most ancient enemy, the biggest baddest... but we can count how many times he won, and they were always midway wins, not definitive ones. An enemy is a threat as long as it is actually a threat. I don't see him as a threat anymore now.
What could have defined Bolas as a threat is not killing the protagonists, but killing characters we are invested in. For example, Voldemort? Yes, the trio is alive in the end, but we lost Dumbledore, Snape (retroactively loved), some Weasleys or parts of them(I don't care about them actually), Lupin, Sirius, Dobby, Tonks... We got lots of felt deaths.
Killing around 10 planeswalkers we are invested in could have been a wonderful way to show that other than win some side battles (Amonkhet and Ixalan), Bolas is also a freaking monster. Now I see him as a Gargamel, with a bit of drama...
And I am even compliant in this, because I would have preferred a God Bolas winning this entire war.
From what I listened to the audio book and taking notes, there is only one story they essentially setup with Liliana post-war, 'Pursued by Bounty Hunters'. That is unless they write something that doesn't factor in the book's elements which wouldn't be expected.
Oh, noooooooooo, I wonder will she manage to get out of that one virtually unharmed?! /s
I’m just going to say that most works of fiction that are considered great do not just kill large numbers of characters. They use death sparingly and impactfully. I don’t know how others feel about it but it didn’t take long before death became a joke in Game of Thrones. Killing well liked characters too often can be a great way to lose a ton of your fans. They killed Gideon and if their Facebook poll is to be considered it had a great impact on people because he rolled over arguably better characters in all of his rounds so far. Just because you don’t like the gatewatch doesn’t mean they need to die. And not to mention the only reason you know any of this is because of leaks. Had it not been for that you would go into reading the novel still thinking that almost anyone could die and it would be way more satisfying. You’re only complaining because you recurved an incomplete version before having the opportunity to consume it as it was meant to be.
And people wonder why WotC gets so upset about leaks.
WOTC’s teaser trailer showed candles (sparks) getting snuffed out leaving only one. They tied those flames to the planeswalkers with the stained glass images - they guided us to the conclusion/assumption/expectation that many walkers were going to die. It was pretty on the nose and to think that the trailer would create any other expectation is just silly.
Seeing just two walkers gone after that kind of build up is ridiculous. As far as the audience is concerned, this story has had very little impact. One planeswalker that mattered on the hero side is gone and one villain is trapped (again).
We have what is presumably a new living guildpact in Niv but so what? In reality, what has that ever actually meant and who ever actually cared that Jace was the guildpact after we left Ravnica post dragon’s maze?
Fact is, this was hyped as a massive war with huge impact. It’s been anything but that.
Death should be used sparingly, I agree with you. But, when was the last time death was used in the MTG story? Elspeth on Theros? So, 5 years ago? I’d say it was time again. Despite this event being, supposedly, a much larger impact, the result is very close to equal to that of the Theros story.
Btw, the idea that many planeswalkers died to create the Elder Spell carries little weight. We didn’t know them before so we have no concept of what we lost there.
So, I believe the frustration lies not just in the fact that only one hero died (or two if you count Dak), one low priority walker died, and another bad guy got trapped. It’s the fact that those are unsatisfying results for something that was touted to be sooooo important. The most ancient evil alive, the most intelligent villain, and a full scale war. WOTC’s own hype was misleading and that’s the issue.
I’ll leave it with this: In reality, what will have changed when we planeswalk off Ravnica? It looks like it’ll be the same cast and another rebuilt world like all the rest.
Another issue I might add is that: Because Ravnica is part of this large wheel that gets spun to see where we land on next, we don't sit on a plane longer than we have to. That instead of us getting to learn about many minor planeswalker characters in the lore and then those characters dying to the elderspell, we instead just see a wispy spark with what might as well have a number attached to it like 'Planeswalker Spark #1333', which doesn't matter to the average person. Its also a hurdle in writing stories that the greater the devastation the harder it is for the average person to wrap their mind around the very concept. Sure a planet could be blown up with millions on it, that it might elicit some emotional response, but its not going to be as hard felt as something that hits closer to home.
To give a perfect example the set has provided: 1000 Nameless Planeswalkers Vs 1 Dack Fayden.
As consider that while there are deaths in the thousands, you and me are not really attached to another nobody dying that makes up a statistic. But what clearly struck a cord with people was Dack Fayden dying. A character that only people who read the comics, played legacy, played vintage would even known.
I think the issue of killing off too many known walkers (or multiple of the gatewatch even) is that you have these characters intertwined with so many other things that you end up leaving loose threads all over. Gideon has nothing left unresolved because he finished what he had started or didn't get wrapped up.
Just looking at the gatewatch:
1. Nissa is probably the other most resolved storywise, but is the only member with ties to sorin (she was with him in the original zen block) and nahiri (they have both fought to protect Zendikar). Ugin could have filled in. She's also part of a well liked and expansive race in game (elves) with a unique mechanical identity (lands matter).
2. Chandra just got a walker mentor in Jaya. Has resolved the kld storyline mostly granted. She has an ongoing rivalry with baan now. Upcoming promotional material. She has probably done the most one off stuff with the other gatewatch members (Jace and the eye of Ugin, her relationship with Gideon, her friendship and training with nissa, her time with liliana on kld).
3. Liliana has two huge plot hooks left in the ravenman and the chain veil. Even if you mash them together somehow killing her dead ends that potential story. She also has a great position to grow from as a character and seeing that growth is satisfying to a reader. She is going from bad to good and there is traction on her development. Nissa/Chandra/Jace are already shades of good and so the progress is minimal if even noticeable.
4. Jace is the poster child of the game. We know he's far and away the most popular for marketing. We have an unresolved story with vryn and he's our only reason to go there. Not to mention we have the vraska, general ravnica ties, and he acts as a great foundation for actually providing the team with solutions.
Everyone else always felt like fair game except karn/ teferi because of their ties to phyrexia. While I agree that only losing a few walkers could be lack luster from a villain perspective, you can't kill everyone and have a story or threatening bad guy after this. I will concede to the fact that 1-2 more on screen deaths of tertiary characters would have been just fine too (like Kiora and tibalt maybe).
First of all, you go through the trouble of creating three new Planeswalkers, one you use extensively (Teyo), one gets a couple cameos (Wanderer), and the third doesn't even appear (Kasmina). Very disappointing on that front.
Overall, I thought the book was... alright. Three planeswalker deaths was... surprising. They couldn't even bring themselves to kill off freakin' Jaya.
I just finished reading the book. Overall the parts I enjoyed I enjoyed and the negatives where big negatives. I feel like the death could have been higher for the named characters BUT I did cry during Dack and Gideon deaths and those two characters where never my favorites so hard to say some form of price wasn't paid for the heroes winning IMO.
Just to address something that people have been asking/debating about here;
and was doing the littlest she could do to command them, actively keeping them from going indoors and holding them back as much she could without Bolas getting upset. The god eternals though seemed to have more self control and basically where slurping up sparks in handfuls.
Kaya is forced into the guimdamster position, for as she killed the obzedat she inhered (and is literally and physically burden with) the contracts they held. Bolas offered to free her form the in order to be his puppet but she refused. The guild hates her and only follows her since the she has the contracts. And she didn't free all the spirts in the guild she focused on the ones who had been held for generations over loans that the orzhov had been moving the goal posts on.
Borborgymos was for the gruul join a guild alliance with the rest but when that fell when Vraska killed Isperia, he lost a lot of respect from his guild and was a factor in the gruul following Domri after the two fought.
Mowu is made of rock. Thats all Yangling said no more no less.
Bolas plantet the idea and deign of the beacon to Ral and Niv for them to make for him. The beacon basically sent out a continues call to planeswalkers to come to Ravnica appearing as lights in the five colors of mana. While it doesn't force them to go, Gideon and Chandra say stuff along the lines of them having a hard time not wanting to follow it and go to Ravnica. The beacon also caused Teyo, before he sparked, to walk into a diamond storms trying to follow the lights and it seems to also have a bit of a hypnotic element to it.
Gideons dies on Ravnica, as others have pointed out it seems like Gideon got the Gerrard and Jeska treatment of being to see their love ones in a heavily after life. Kytheon is home and is in peace.
Gatewatch isn't over. They renewed their oaths and promised to fight not only Bolas but any other threats to the multiverse.
“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Another issue I might add is that: Because Ravnica is part of this large wheel that gets spun to see where we land on next, we don't sit on a plane longer than we have to. That instead of us getting to learn about many minor planeswalker characters in the lore and then those characters dying to the elderspell, we instead just see a wispy spark with what might as well have a number attached to it like 'Planeswalker Spark #1333', which doesn't matter to the average person. Its also a hurdle in writing stories that the greater the devastation the harder it is for the average person to wrap their mind around the very concept. Sure a planet could be blown up with millions on it, that it might elicit some emotional response, but its not going to be as hard felt as something that hits closer to home.
To give a perfect example the set has provided: 1000 Nameless Planeswalkers Vs 1 Dack Fayden.
As consider that while there are deaths in the thousands, you and me are not really attached to another nobody dying that makes up a statistic. But what clearly struck a cord with people was Dack Fayden dying. A character that only people who read the comics, played legacy, played vintage would even known.
See, I don't see that as an issue, as much as what is often effective storytelling when making a series.
Once again, look at the Lord of the Rings books (and movies, I suppose). We only single two major characters actually die. Boromir, and Theoden. That's it. Throughout the entire series, with major battle during intense warfare where people are dying all around the protagonists, only a pair of them die.
Why so few?
Because in these longer stories, especially ones involving war, you can show many people dying in the background, and the stakes might not seem as high to start with. Then someone important dies in a major battle. Theoden. Dack. That pulls you into the moment of seeing someone you recognize die, and also highlighting that oh $%#!&, all those other people in the background are dying, too. Here's someone who's story we DO know paying the ultimate cost. Well, all those other people who have full lives and stories we'll never get to hear also had their life snuffed out.
Killing a Domri to make the stakes of spark harvesting being lethal puts the ball in motion.
Warfare going on with untold numbers dying pulls attention to the background.
Sparks flying to the Elderspell shows you that a disturbingly large number of planeswalkers whose stories we do not, and will now never know, are also dying, just like Domri.
Dack dying pulls it into focus that this means anyone we know could also die.
Now the sparks flying in the background have more meaning, because Dack made it apparent that damn, these people are also planeswalkers, who have wandered the multiverse on their own adventures, within their own story, and their lives are being snuffed out left and right, and we can actually physically SEE the essence of their lives flying toward this threat, Bolas, powering the spell.
Just like seeing someone like Theoden dies puts the stakes of all the nameless soldiers and knights perishing in this terrible war who we've never met, and will never know, into focus. Theodon shows that any one of the people in this war can die.
Gideon pays the ultimate price by sacrificing himself to try to save those he cares about, showing that even the heroes, the protagonists, had their lives at stake in this.
Boromir pays the ultimate price by sacrificing himself to try to let the Fellowship escape, showing that even the heroes, the protagonists, had their lives at stake in this.
See, all the planeswalkers put on cards?
Those are the centers of the story, and it's a loooooong, ongoing story, like a major serial. So like Avatar, the Last Airbender types of long-term storytelling, battles in ongoing warfare going on all around the whole time. Yet, with basically none of the protagonists themselves dying. Not even many of the side characters.
Because as the story ends, we, the reader, the viewer, see that these were the people whose story we were seeing the entire time, possibly being told by them, individually or collectively, in the aftermath.
The planeswalkers we see in print are, by and large, the major focal points of the narrative. Some will die here and there, but on the whole, as with the vast majority of long-term storytelling serials, overwhelmingly they will not. Yet, the background characters, including the unnamed, can quite ably show stakes.
It seems to me that an awful lot of people are, in the current time we're in, used to absurdly high-stakes narratives like The Walking Dead and A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones), which are extreme outliers all said and done, are the best way to show stakes. When that is demonstrably not remotely close to the case.
So, much like a lot of ongoing narratives at the moment, it seems an awful lot of people built narratives up in their head tremendously. And of course, as is virtually always the case, those narratives will not be matched by the narratives that tend to be told on the page or on screen, save in those extreme outliers like a Song of Ice and Fire.
But the very fact that many, many, many planeswalker sparks are portrayed as flying to power the Elderspell means an awful lot of people on par with the 35 planeswalkers printed in the set who survived whose stories we've never heard, died in this war. Meaning Bolas largely carried through with his threat, and had he not been beaten, it would have ended extremely poorly for the Multiverse. Those are stakes. It's ok to not like how the story was told, but the consistent assertions that there were no stakes, or that the stakes mostly being shown by off-screen deaths of the unknown is "wrong" or "bad storytelling" demonstrably flies in the face of some of the greatest narratives of this type ever written. Where the protagonists survive these horrors as others do not, save the day or simply survive to the end, yet the stakes remained there the whole time. While the Magic narrative is relatively middle-of-the-road and not particularly special, all said, the decision to only kill off a handful of protagonists while killing off scores of powerful people in the background, does not a low-stakes narrative make.
- Interesting that the "reformed" Bolas walkers are going after the Bolas Loyalists. Vraska going after the guy who just had his eyes gouged out is an interesting hook. Really looking forward to Kaya vs Liliana
- I love how Bolas undoes himself with his finest bit of magnificent bastardy. Sure, he red-herringed the hell out of the Blackblade and the Gatewatch bought it hoook, line, and sinker. But that also causes the one thing that Bolas, in his arrogance, never properly prepared for- Liliana deciding that death was preferable to eternal servitude.
- The last chapter, where Ugin explains to Bolas just how badly HE ended up screwing himself in his own arrogance, and the corresponding realization that he was pretty much SCREWED (and mortal!) was immensely satisfying.
Also that Mark Rosewater confirms that they didn't make the set with him in mind, that he was a last minute addition, and that if they didn't include him into the story then only Gideon Jura and Domri Rade would have died.
He was left for a cliff hanger when the comic was cancelled entering Thero's underworld. I makes sense that thats when we would see him again it would be on Theros 2. Not saying he couldn't come back soon but he was on a bus that we would come to again.
There are also a number of reasons Dack being added and killed could also happen. Last time something like this happened was M19 when Kate Elliot was hired and had the idea of the framing story of Tarkir and having Ugin being Bolas's twin. Could be the author wanted to use him or as you said they decided to add in another death and poor Dack was the target.
Also if IDW owns the character and wizards can't use him how did they did him the war of the spark novel?
Off topic but just thinking, how funny/sad would it be if cursed walker guy died in the war since he doesn't seem to have the best of luck.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
I mean I think such ends are distinct from "the villain ending them" in the same vein a character dying of old age is different from a character getting murdered by another. Those empires and cultures had their time and it passed, that's how it goes. A big theme in LotR as a whole is the gradual passing of one world into another. It's not really tragic, more like, I dunno, wistful?
At any rate, I see your point though, even if I don't agree with the details.
He has bad luck in that stuff happens but somehow he always manages to live through it. So you could say it's good luck in a way too. Maro mentioned him, but of course blah blah, not story team, blah blah.
Anybody comparing Bolas's dismal record with the Eldrazi as antagonists are doing it wrong. Yes, the Eldrazi have a kill score less then Bolas, but that's like calling a tornado with no casualties a failure as a criminal compared to a murderer.
The Eldrazi don't register anything than their purposes (I'm inclined to believe Emrakul only did so because Ulamog and Kozilek are gone, otherwise it wouldn't have bothered either). Yes, you could argue they failed in their purpose (to erase the planes they were on) and as such were failures as "antagonists" to the planes, but all because the Gatewatch selflessly threw themselves in the way doesn't automatically equate to the Eldrazi becoming antagonists to the planeswalkers - they never were and won't be, even Emrakul's message was "Hey fly I need to sleep so here's some cryptic messages so you can stop disturbing me".
I'm not saying BFZ was good, it was terrible, but not because the Eldrazi are terrible antagonists - it's because they decided to conveniently hide all the important characters of the plane behind invulnerable meatshields of planeswalkers... who conveniently have the correct skill sets to be said meatshields... and conveniently squeezed in a "create a Gatewatch" storyline written a way that it seems like they were a neighborhood police unit rather than a disaster relief unit which in turn made people think of the Eldrazi as antagonists/murderers/criminals than the natural disasters they are.
Bolas has no such backing - this is the Elder Dragon we knew on Amonkhet (and Time Spiral) who could be as patient as he wanted, the Elder Dragon who set up Liliana's demons knowing she would subvert every last one of them and as much as Test of Metal was questionable in placement, he was at the top of his game there toying with Jace, Liliana and Tezz. Even when he "lost" on Alara, he still had control of situation mostly and only had his hissy fit at the end because the plan was not 100% completed due to Ajani-ex-machina.
I would say the saving grave is that this is also the same Elder Dragon who lost to an Umezawa due to arrogance... so even if we wrote the Liliana-double-switcheroo out of the equation... this time he also lost his contingency plan (which allowed him to remain arrogant) because he let his twin brother who's aware of it into this war (and it's not like he didn't know Ugin's back). There's arrogance and arrogance-that-lets-the-one-thing-that-let's-you-come-back-after-being-killed-by-arrogance-be-demolished-level arrogance.
And people wonder why WotC gets so upset about leaks.
Again, I'll throw the word ''consequences''.
The Gatewatch hasn't faced any real consequences for their action through the entire saga. What made Urza saga better is that characters made stupid decision and they've payed for them with their lives. There was a feeling of actual stakes at play. Why would I, after WAR, ever feel that there will be any real stakes in future mtg stories? Plane will be in danger, planeswalkers will roflstomp the threat, an illusion of consequence (X randoms had died) will be thrown at us and we're moving on to the next story with the same formula. There is no more tension left. Will Jace die facing Garruk? No, ofc he won't, character deaths are being avoided like the plague. Will the Raven Man fulfill whatever his plan was? No, ofc he won't, the Gatewatch will stop him with no real loses. How do I know that? Because that has been the bloody formula since BFZ!
A plane is facing a threat -> Gatewatch beats the threat -> illusion of consequence is thrown in our faces (what does killing the titans mean? how will kaladesh function now?) -> onto the next story. Neither Amonketh had any real consequences for our characters. Jace lost his memory and then regained it in the same block, Nissa went a way and came back 2 blocks later without anyone noticing that she was gone, the rest just went their own way.
Consider if you will both Nyx and War are the third set. Both feature the death of a and of a planeswalker. Both are treated as the climax to defeating an arrogant self-made god with Xenagos and Nicol Bolas. That Ajani is present in the story for both the death of Elspeth and the death of Gideon. That both Domri and Xenagos engaged in a destructive revelry and are both usurpers of power. That both Elspeth and Gideon are heroes of Theros who thwart the plans of the god. That the antagonistic god Heliod/Nicol Bolas who caused the death of the Theros hero still lives at the end of the day. That both Elspeth and Gideon went to a Theros-styled afterlife. That both Elspeth and Gideon tried to use a legendary weapon to slay a god. That also Ashiok features in both storylines and gets a planeswalker card in both. That Dack Fayden in both storylines is not on a single card but instead on an external piece of reading material Comic/Novel.
TLDR: War is Nyx 2: Planeswalker Boogaloo. Change my mind.
I'm not happy with how it turned out, this is not compelling as a story for me.
About the whole "purpose" of a character I just want to say that the motif of a character is NOT ONLY its origin, but is always in evolution and in motion, the fact Kaya's purpose was fulfilled, does not mean it is expendable. BUT the same can be said in reverse, for real life at least. Our purpose is all-changing and we might not even reach our ending, we might get on another road, or even change our perspective completely, and I like to think modern writing should improve this hyper-realism... as was done in "Lost" (not everything was explained, but so is in real life... Evasion literature does not mean necessarily that it should atrofy our genius of imagination, we can theorize on the unexplained as we do in real life. I think it's extraordinary that we would be capable of doing that from a simple work of fiction). So when we see a Liliana with mysteries unsolved or Tamiyo with children at home, I like to imagine they could die too, leaving unanswered question that may be even addressed in other ways, not involving the original characters, so... Yes, I was counting on the death of many planeswalkers too, not because killing more equals higher quality, but because it would have meant Bolas is still a threat. Let's face it, they call it the most ancient enemy, the biggest baddest... but we can count how many times he won, and they were always midway wins, not definitive ones. An enemy is a threat as long as it is actually a threat. I don't see him as a threat anymore now.
What could have defined Bolas as a threat is not killing the protagonists, but killing characters we are invested in. For example, Voldemort? Yes, the trio is alive in the end, but we lost Dumbledore, Snape (retroactively loved), some Weasleys or parts of them(I don't care about them actually), Lupin, Sirius, Dobby, Tonks... We got lots of felt deaths.
Killing around 10 planeswalkers we are invested in could have been a wonderful way to show that other than win some side battles (Amonkhet and Ixalan), Bolas is also a freaking monster. Now I see him as a Gargamel, with a bit of drama...
And I am even compliant in this, because I would have preferred a God Bolas winning this entire war.
Oh, noooooooooo, I wonder will she manage to get out of that one virtually unharmed?! /s
WOTC’s teaser trailer showed candles (sparks) getting snuffed out leaving only one. They tied those flames to the planeswalkers with the stained glass images - they guided us to the conclusion/assumption/expectation that many walkers were going to die. It was pretty on the nose and to think that the trailer would create any other expectation is just silly.
Seeing just two walkers gone after that kind of build up is ridiculous. As far as the audience is concerned, this story has had very little impact. One planeswalker that mattered on the hero side is gone and one villain is trapped (again).
We have what is presumably a new living guildpact in Niv but so what? In reality, what has that ever actually meant and who ever actually cared that Jace was the guildpact after we left Ravnica post dragon’s maze?
Fact is, this was hyped as a massive war with huge impact. It’s been anything but that.
Death should be used sparingly, I agree with you. But, when was the last time death was used in the MTG story? Elspeth on Theros? So, 5 years ago? I’d say it was time again. Despite this event being, supposedly, a much larger impact, the result is very close to equal to that of the Theros story.
Btw, the idea that many planeswalkers died to create the Elder Spell carries little weight. We didn’t know them before so we have no concept of what we lost there.
So, I believe the frustration lies not just in the fact that only one hero died (or two if you count Dak), one low priority walker died, and another bad guy got trapped. It’s the fact that those are unsatisfying results for something that was touted to be sooooo important. The most ancient evil alive, the most intelligent villain, and a full scale war. WOTC’s own hype was misleading and that’s the issue.
I’ll leave it with this: In reality, what will have changed when we planeswalk off Ravnica? It looks like it’ll be the same cast and another rebuilt world like all the rest.
To give a perfect example the set has provided: 1000 Nameless Planeswalkers Vs 1 Dack Fayden.
As consider that while there are deaths in the thousands, you and me are not really attached to another nobody dying that makes up a statistic. But what clearly struck a cord with people was Dack Fayden dying. A character that only people who read the comics, played legacy, played vintage would even known.
Just looking at the gatewatch:
1. Nissa is probably the other most resolved storywise, but is the only member with ties to sorin (she was with him in the original zen block) and nahiri (they have both fought to protect Zendikar). Ugin could have filled in. She's also part of a well liked and expansive race in game (elves) with a unique mechanical identity (lands matter).
2. Chandra just got a walker mentor in Jaya. Has resolved the kld storyline mostly granted. She has an ongoing rivalry with baan now. Upcoming promotional material. She has probably done the most one off stuff with the other gatewatch members (Jace and the eye of Ugin, her relationship with Gideon, her friendship and training with nissa, her time with liliana on kld).
3. Liliana has two huge plot hooks left in the ravenman and the chain veil. Even if you mash them together somehow killing her dead ends that potential story. She also has a great position to grow from as a character and seeing that growth is satisfying to a reader. She is going from bad to good and there is traction on her development. Nissa/Chandra/Jace are already shades of good and so the progress is minimal if even noticeable.
4. Jace is the poster child of the game. We know he's far and away the most popular for marketing. We have an unresolved story with vryn and he's our only reason to go there. Not to mention we have the vraska, general ravnica ties, and he acts as a great foundation for actually providing the team with solutions.
Everyone else always felt like fair game except karn/ teferi because of their ties to phyrexia. While I agree that only losing a few walkers could be lack luster from a villain perspective, you can't kill everyone and have a story or threatening bad guy after this. I will concede to the fact that 1-2 more on screen deaths of tertiary characters would have been just fine too (like Kiora and tibalt maybe).
Overall, I thought the book was... alright. Three planeswalker deaths was... surprising. They couldn't even bring themselves to kill off freakin' Jaya.
Just to address something that people have been asking/debating about here;
The eternals sucked as a fighting forced because Liliana was basically genie during most the book;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI4-kzirdZo
and was doing the littlest she could do to command them, actively keeping them from going indoors and holding them back as much she could without Bolas getting upset. The god eternals though seemed to have more self control and basically where slurping up sparks in handfuls.
Kaya is forced into the guimdamster position, for as she killed the obzedat she inhered (and is literally and physically burden with) the contracts they held. Bolas offered to free her form the in order to be his puppet but she refused. The guild hates her and only follows her since the she has the contracts. And she didn't free all the spirts in the guild she focused on the ones who had been held for generations over loans that the orzhov had been moving the goal posts on.
Borborgymos was for the gruul join a guild alliance with the rest but when that fell when Vraska killed Isperia, he lost a lot of respect from his guild and was a factor in the gruul following Domri after the two fought.
Mowu is made of rock. Thats all Yangling said no more no less.
Bolas plantet the idea and deign of the beacon to Ral and Niv for them to make for him. The beacon basically sent out a continues call to planeswalkers to come to Ravnica appearing as lights in the five colors of mana. While it doesn't force them to go, Gideon and Chandra say stuff along the lines of them having a hard time not wanting to follow it and go to Ravnica. The beacon also caused Teyo, before he sparked, to walk into a diamond storms trying to follow the lights and it seems to also have a bit of a hypnotic element to it.
Gideons dies on Ravnica, as others have pointed out it seems like Gideon got the Gerrard and Jeska treatment of being to see their love ones in a heavily after life. Kytheon is home and is in peace.
Gatewatch isn't over. They renewed their oaths and promised to fight not only Bolas but any other threats to the multiverse.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
See, I don't see that as an issue, as much as what is often effective storytelling when making a series.
Once again, look at the Lord of the Rings books (and movies, I suppose). We only single two major characters actually die. Boromir, and Theoden. That's it. Throughout the entire series, with major battle during intense warfare where people are dying all around the protagonists, only a pair of them die.
Why so few?
Because in these longer stories, especially ones involving war, you can show many people dying in the background, and the stakes might not seem as high to start with. Then someone important dies in a major battle. Theoden. Dack. That pulls you into the moment of seeing someone you recognize die, and also highlighting that oh $%#!&, all those other people in the background are dying, too. Here's someone who's story we DO know paying the ultimate cost. Well, all those other people who have full lives and stories we'll never get to hear also had their life snuffed out.
Killing a Domri to make the stakes of spark harvesting being lethal puts the ball in motion.
Warfare going on with untold numbers dying pulls attention to the background.
Sparks flying to the Elderspell shows you that a disturbingly large number of planeswalkers whose stories we do not, and will now never know, are also dying, just like Domri.
Dack dying pulls it into focus that this means anyone we know could also die.
Now the sparks flying in the background have more meaning, because Dack made it apparent that damn, these people are also planeswalkers, who have wandered the multiverse on their own adventures, within their own story, and their lives are being snuffed out left and right, and we can actually physically SEE the essence of their lives flying toward this threat, Bolas, powering the spell.
Just like seeing someone like Theoden dies puts the stakes of all the nameless soldiers and knights perishing in this terrible war who we've never met, and will never know, into focus. Theodon shows that any one of the people in this war can die.
Gideon pays the ultimate price by sacrificing himself to try to save those he cares about, showing that even the heroes, the protagonists, had their lives at stake in this.
Boromir pays the ultimate price by sacrificing himself to try to let the Fellowship escape, showing that even the heroes, the protagonists, had their lives at stake in this.
See, all the planeswalkers put on cards?
Those are the centers of the story, and it's a loooooong, ongoing story, like a major serial. So like Avatar, the Last Airbender types of long-term storytelling, battles in ongoing warfare going on all around the whole time. Yet, with basically none of the protagonists themselves dying. Not even many of the side characters.
Because as the story ends, we, the reader, the viewer, see that these were the people whose story we were seeing the entire time, possibly being told by them, individually or collectively, in the aftermath.
The planeswalkers we see in print are, by and large, the major focal points of the narrative. Some will die here and there, but on the whole, as with the vast majority of long-term storytelling serials, overwhelmingly they will not. Yet, the background characters, including the unnamed, can quite ably show stakes.
It seems to me that an awful lot of people are, in the current time we're in, used to absurdly high-stakes narratives like The Walking Dead and A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones), which are extreme outliers all said and done, are the best way to show stakes. When that is demonstrably not remotely close to the case.
So, much like a lot of ongoing narratives at the moment, it seems an awful lot of people built narratives up in their head tremendously. And of course, as is virtually always the case, those narratives will not be matched by the narratives that tend to be told on the page or on screen, save in those extreme outliers like a Song of Ice and Fire.
But the very fact that many, many, many planeswalker sparks are portrayed as flying to power the Elderspell means an awful lot of people on par with the 35 planeswalkers printed in the set who survived whose stories we've never heard, died in this war. Meaning Bolas largely carried through with his threat, and had he not been beaten, it would have ended extremely poorly for the Multiverse. Those are stakes. It's ok to not like how the story was told, but the consistent assertions that there were no stakes, or that the stakes mostly being shown by off-screen deaths of the unknown is "wrong" or "bad storytelling" demonstrably flies in the face of some of the greatest narratives of this type ever written. Where the protagonists survive these horrors as others do not, save the day or simply survive to the end, yet the stakes remained there the whole time. While the Magic narrative is relatively middle-of-the-road and not particularly special, all said, the decision to only kill off a handful of protagonists while killing off scores of powerful people in the background, does not a low-stakes narrative make.
- Interesting that the "reformed" Bolas walkers are going after the Bolas Loyalists. Vraska going after the guy who just had his eyes gouged out is an interesting hook. Really looking forward to Kaya vs Liliana
- I love how Bolas undoes himself with his finest bit of magnificent bastardy. Sure, he red-herringed the hell out of the Blackblade and the Gatewatch bought it hoook, line, and sinker. But that also causes the one thing that Bolas, in his arrogance, never properly prepared for- Liliana deciding that death was preferable to eternal servitude.
- The last chapter, where Ugin explains to Bolas just how badly HE ended up screwing himself in his own arrogance, and the corresponding realization that he was pretty much SCREWED (and mortal!) was immensely satisfying.