So here's the quick breakdown of the number of times each planeswalker's name appears in War of the spark, and how many chapters they appear in. Please note that while I searched for some characters being referred to only by their surname (22 times, in Jace's case), if the surname was going to get a lot of interference (ie, Rai), I didn't. Just picking out the number of Ral's was a pain in the butt enough.
Ye ashiok was from what i readed just to “remember what happened on Theros underworld” and was kinda weird looked alot like the autor was trying to introduce him/her/it/their/anyotherwordyouthinkisnecessaryorcorrectcauseidon’twanttoofendanyoneontheirinterpretationofthecharacter and then forgot to use it, like he checked the ashiok is on the story lets go to another one.
The story is not all bad soo far but it could have been better, probably not the author’s fault he probably had to follow guidelines and had to tell the story he was told to, like “this character needs to do this and that”.
Maybe if the story was more centered on few characters, like the narrator just following those characters and not bothering to do charapters for 36 characters then maybe the ratings of readers would be better.
Ye ashiok was from what i readed just to “remember what happened on Theros underworld” and was kinda weird looked alot like the autor was trying to introduce him/her/it/their/anyotherwordyouthinkisnecessaryorcorrectcauseidon’twanttoofendanyoneontheirinterpretationofthecharacter and then forgot to use it, like he checked the ashiok is on the story lets go to another one.
The story is not all bad soo far but it could have been better, probably not the author’s fault he probably had to follow guidelines and had to tell the story he was told to, like “this character needs to do this and that”.
Maybe if the story was more centered on few characters, like the narrator just following those characters and not bothering to do charapters for 36 characters then maybe the ratings of readers would be better.
The biggest fix would be to just give the authors more time. For something of this nature, the culmination of a 10 year arc, wizards really should have known what they wanted 2 years out and given the author that long to write the story.
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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!
While I'm not betting on it, could be we will see Ashiok and Kasmina and other characters in Rat's online stories. They are meant to read like extra chapters in the book so we might get a few scenes the novel left out. I still find it odd with the yangling and Kasmina deal.
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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"
Ye ashiok was from what i readed just to “remember what happened on Theros underworld” and was kinda weird looked alot like the autor was trying to introduce him/her/it/their/anyotherwordyouthinkisnecessaryorcorrectcauseidon’twanttoofendanyoneontheirinterpretationofthecharacter and then forgot to use it, like he checked the ashiok is on the story lets go to another one.
The story is not all bad soo far but it could have been better, probably not the author’s fault he probably had to follow guidelines and had to tell the story he was told to, like “this character needs to do this and that”.
Maybe if the story was more centered on few characters, like the narrator just following those characters and not bothering to do charapters for 36 characters then maybe the ratings of readers would be better.
The biggest fix would be to just give the authors more time. For something of this nature, the culmination of a 10 year arc, wizards really should have known what they wanted 2 years out and given the author that long to write the story.
Yeah, they definitely need to give more time. I still think Wizards had the writer write a long outline with 'walker names blank, because a bunch of the interactions seemed just off.
I also wonder why they went first-person for the story. It's very limiting, especially when we already know X, Y, and Z about Ravnica, but we have to read through characters, new and old, explaining it or experiencing it. I feel a global narrator would have been better, with each chapter describing groups and what they were feeling and experiencing, instead of being trapped/locked into the perspective of one walker at a time. First-person works for some stories. I don't think it was a good choice for a story of this scale, because you don't get a good sense for the scale of the story.
Given the start of the book, how Bolas sees "no plan", and the new Jace card which wins by milling yourself I thought they were going to reveal that "showing no plan" was the plan all along to trick bolas, that Jace had wiped his mind as well as those of his team in order to hide the real plan, that every member of the GW had a part and was ignorant of the others, so Bolas will be caught off guard.
But well Ugin says it was all "casually" happening
I was hoping this story would be the end of the Gatewatch era of Magic, but that ending with all the oaths caused me more despair than 65 chapters of Bolas sitting on his throne killing scores of nameless people... uh... more in my sig.
I was hoping this story would be the end of the Gatewatch era of Magic, but that ending with all the oaths caused me more despair than 65 chapters of Bolas sitting on his throne killing scores of nameless people... uh... more in my sig.
If you thought that then you simply weren't paying attention. This was the end of Bolas, not the Gatewatch. The Gatewatch is very successful, until it ceases to be well liked don't expect it to go away.
I really hope they go back to the old way of storytelling (you know, the free one), after the *****show that was WAR i'm never buying another MTG Novel ever again.
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BWG
Art student, EDH lover and a strong believer that Delver has the best design in all of MTG.
I really hope they go back to the old way of storytelling (you know, the free one), after the *****show that was WAR i'm never buying another MTG Novel ever again.
The free one isn't really the old one. Before that, there were at least a novel for block, and before that even a novel for sets. They stopped doing them around Innistrad, I think, when they realized they were selling well. I don't know how War of the Spark would sell, but Magic storyline has never been top notched, even at its best.
I was hoping this story would be the end of the Gatewatch era of Magic, but that ending with all the oaths caused me more despair than 65 chapters of Bolas sitting on his throne killing scores of nameless people... uh... more in my sig.
If you thought that then you simply weren't paying attention. This was the end of Bolas, not the Gatewatch. The Gatewatch is very successful, until it ceases to be well liked don't expect it to go away.
Except it isn't definitely the end of Bolas, they put him on ice. They brought him back once before from what we thought was actually dead, so explicitly not killing him off all but ensures he will return.
I also wonder how popular the gatewatch actually is. For people who care about the story I mean. There are plenty of people who like the cards but don't know much about the story.
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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!
I was hoping this story would be the end of the Gatewatch era of Magic, but that ending with all the oaths caused me more despair than 65 chapters of Bolas sitting on his throne killing scores of nameless people... uh... more in my sig.
If you thought that then you simply weren't paying attention. This was the end of Bolas, not the Gatewatch. The Gatewatch is very successful, until it ceases to be well liked don't expect it to go away.
Except it isn't definitely the end of Bolas, they put him on ice. They brought him back once before from what we thought was actually dead, so explicitly not killing him off all but ensures he will return.
I also wonder how popular the gatewatch actually is. For people who care about the story I mean. There are plenty of people who like the cards but don't know much about the story.
I know I cared about the story and all this stupid gatewatch stuff made me quit.
I was hoping this story would be the end of the Gatewatch era of Magic, but that ending with all the oaths caused me more despair than 65 chapters of Bolas sitting on his throne killing scores of nameless people... uh... more in my sig.
If you thought that then you simply weren't paying attention. This was the end of Bolas, not the Gatewatch. The Gatewatch is very successful, until it ceases to be well liked don't expect it to go away.
Except it isn't definitely the end of Bolas, they put him on ice. They brought him back once before from what we thought was actually dead, so explicitly not killing him off all but ensures he will return.
I also wonder how popular the gatewatch actually is. For people who care about the story I mean. There are plenty of people who like the cards but don't know much about the story.
If it says anything, the popularity contest they had on twitter and facebook and instagram shows that people really do prefer the Gatewatch characters over most other characters. The only notable exceptions were Sorin, Ugin, and The Wanderer. Sorin beat his competition every time with majority vote except when it came to Liliana. Ugin also followed a similar trend to Sorin and also only lost to Liliana. The Wanderer while beat by Nissa on facebook actually managed to stalemate the votes on a 50%/50% on twitter, she is also the only new walker from WAR who managed to beat Huatli who is an established character.
I would not count Wanderer as an exception. She beat Huatli in round one. Who has terrible cards despite having what 5 or 6 by now? And Huatli was not written well on Ixalan. Sorin and Ugin though did have a good run. I wonder how much popularity of the plane plays in position. I would guess power of the cards is relevant. Though Sorin might challenge that assumption. Then again Ajani and Vraska dont have especially great cards and Chandra only has one.
I was hoping this story would be the end of the Gatewatch era of Magic, but that ending with all the oaths caused me more despair than 65 chapters of Bolas sitting on his throne killing scores of nameless people... uh... more in my sig.
If you thought that then you simply weren't paying attention. This was the end of Bolas, not the Gatewatch. The Gatewatch is very successful, until it ceases to be well liked don't expect it to go away.
Except it isn't definitely the end of Bolas, they put him on ice. They brought him back once before from what we thought was actually dead, so explicitly not killing him off all but ensures he will return.
I also wonder how popular the gatewatch actually is. For people who care about the story I mean. There are plenty of people who like the cards but don't know much about the story.
If it says anything, the popularity contest they had on twitter and facebook and instagram shows that people really do prefer the Gatewatch characters over most other characters. The only notable exceptions were Sorin, Ugin, and The Wanderer. Sorin beat his competition every time with majority vote except when it came to Liliana. Ugin also followed a similar trend to Sorin and also only lost to Liliana. The Wanderer while beat by Nissa on facebook actually managed to stalemate the votes on a 50%/50% on twitter, she is also the only new walker from WAR who managed to beat Huatli who is an established character.
People generally gravitate to the characters you push most.
Let me give you an example. This guy is hated. Absolutely loathed. He is WWE's "main character", of sorts. Fans don't like him. However, because the organization refuses to move him from main character position, promotes him the most and gives him all the cool moments, he's by far the best merchandise seller.
It's the mere exposure effect. The people you are most familiar with are the ones you like most.
I was hoping this story would be the end of the Gatewatch era of Magic, but that ending with all the oaths caused me more despair than 65 chapters of Bolas sitting on his throne killing scores of nameless people... uh... more in my sig.
If you thought that then you simply weren't paying attention. This was the end of Bolas, not the Gatewatch. The Gatewatch is very successful, until it ceases to be well liked don't expect it to go away.
Except it isn't definitely the end of Bolas, they put him on ice. They brought him back once before from what we thought was actually dead, so explicitly not killing him off all but ensures he will return.
I also wonder how popular the gatewatch actually is. For people who care about the story I mean. There are plenty of people who like the cards but don't know much about the story.
It's the end of him as a focus for the time being, not the end as in forever. It should be rather clear contextually what I meant if you're paying attention to the story, but if you're not I'll be more explicit next time.
And the Gatewatch, according to data we can look at, seem to be popular at least on an individual level. As a group it's probably a bit harder to measure, but if it wasn't popular I'm sure Wizards would just go back to the old format (which really wasn't all that different from what's currently going on anyways, speaking of stuff Alara onward for reference). The Gatewatch are just the result of a positive feedback loop from what I can see though, so it's not surprising.
Also I'm glad Ugin is so popular, if a bit surprised. Makes me hopeful that they'll show him doing more, he's been pretty background for now.
Do you guys know if anyone has already compiled Nicky Drayden's Ravnica story vignettes as ebooks? I know Wizards used to do that and I found fan versions of everything up to M19, but not for Guilds and Allegiance. I'm downloading all the recent story material onto my Kindle right now to read it again in preparation for the book, and these are all I'm missing.
I may have missed this so apologies if it was already mentioned. I did look and didn't see it though. Does Ilharg appear or do anything in the story? It seemed like a big deal that Ravnica suddenly became a plane with a physically manifesting god...and then we got nothing?
I may have missed this so apologies if it was already mentioned. I did look and didn't see it though. Does Ilharg appear or do anything in the story? It seemed like a big deal that Ravnica suddenly became a plane with a physically manifesting god...and then we got nothing?
Apologies if I screwed up the spoiler formatting on my phone.
No mention whatsoever of Ilharg. Just did a word search in the ebook. No mention of Ilharg, no mention of boars except by comparison, no mention of 'raze.'
Domri's card (Anarch of Bolas) and the story setup had it appear that Domri was always on Bolas' side. In the story, however, Domri is fighting Eternals until deciding, after witnessing some event, to pledge loyalty to Bolas. He goes over to Bolas, and is promptly harvested. Domri is never an agent of Bolas in the book, witting or unwitting, and there's zero mention of the Raze Boar, which essentially makes all the other backup stuff pointless.
The whole book is like this.
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1. Bolas- 375 (57 chapters) [also in epilogue, not mentioned by name]
2. Jace- 375 (38 chapters)
3. Gideon- 339 (35 chapters) [4 posthumous]
4. Ral- 307 (25 chapters)
5. Teyo- 275 (18 Chapters)
6. Kaya- 269 (27 chapters)
7. Chandra- 169 (21 Chapters)
8. Liliana- 159 (28 chapters + mentioned in epilogue)
9. Dack- 156 (11 chapters [2 posthumous]
10. Vraska- 118 (20 chapters)
11. Nissa- 97 (18 chapters)
12. Karn- 77 (19 chapters)
13. Ajani- 63 (16 Chapters)
14. Dovin- 55 (9 chapters) [Only physical appearance is chapter 44]
15. Domri- 55 (8 Chapters [4 posthumous])
16. Samut- 51 (12 Chapters)
17. Jaya- 50 (16 chapters)
18. Teferi- 40 (15 chapters)
19. Saheeli- 34 (11 Chapters)
20. Tezzeret- 33 (8 chapters)
21. Nixilis- 32 (8 chapters)
22. Angrath- 28 (7 chapters)
23. Huatli- 19 (5 chapters)
24. Vivien- 17 (5 chapters)
25. Sarkhan- 12 (4 chapters + mentioned in prologue)
26. The Wanderer- 9 (3 chapters)
27. Kiora- 7 (6 chapters)
28. Ugin- 7 (4 chapters) [also in prologue and epilogue, not mentioned by name]
29. Arlinn- 6 (3 chapters)
30. Jiang- 6 (3 chapters)
31. Tamiyo- 5 (5 chapters)
32. Nahiri- 4 (3 chapters)
33. Narset- 3 (3 chapters)
34. Sorin- 3 (2 chapters)
35. Davriel- 3 (1 chapter)
36. Mu- 3 (1 chapter)
37. Tibalt- 1 (1 chapter)
38. Ashiok- 1 (1 chapter) [mentioned in one of Dack's memories]
39. Kasmina- NOPE!
So Vivien, whose only background was "Bolas destroyed everything I had", does practically nothing in tearing down her arcinemesis?
Maro is certain it won’t be the last of ugin
https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/184391971988/having-read-peoples-comments-online-about-ugins
Still, this story sounds excellent, and I am excited to get my copy.
The story is not all bad soo far but it could have been better, probably not the author’s fault he probably had to follow guidelines and had to tell the story he was told to, like “this character needs to do this and that”.
Maybe if the story was more centered on few characters, like the narrator just following those characters and not bothering to do charapters for 36 characters then maybe the ratings of readers would be better.
The biggest fix would be to just give the authors more time. For something of this nature, the culmination of a 10 year arc, wizards really should have known what they wanted 2 years out and given the author that long to write the story.
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!
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Yeah, they definitely need to give more time. I still think Wizards had the writer write a long outline with 'walker names blank, because a bunch of the interactions seemed just off.
I also wonder why they went first-person for the story. It's very limiting, especially when we already know X, Y, and Z about Ravnica, but we have to read through characters, new and old, explaining it or experiencing it. I feel a global narrator would have been better, with each chapter describing groups and what they were feeling and experiencing, instead of being trapped/locked into the perspective of one walker at a time. First-person works for some stories. I don't think it was a good choice for a story of this scale, because you don't get a good sense for the scale of the story.
But well Ugin says it was all "casually" happening
Bolas lost his spark and his name
So which means he might pass on and not resurrect
So after that ugin can then reopen the meditation realm and he’s free to planeswalker again since he doesn’t need to guard anymore
Oh it accured to me Ashiok is on the meditation realm so ugin probably had ashiok take away his name then planeswalker away later
If you thought that then you simply weren't paying attention. This was the end of Bolas, not the Gatewatch. The Gatewatch is very successful, until it ceases to be well liked don't expect it to go away.
Art student, EDH lover and a strong believer that Delver has the best design in all of MTG.
The free one isn't really the old one. Before that, there were at least a novel for block, and before that even a novel for sets. They stopped doing them around Innistrad, I think, when they realized they were selling well. I don't know how War of the Spark would sell, but Magic storyline has never been top notched, even at its best.
Except it isn't definitely the end of Bolas, they put him on ice. They brought him back once before from what we thought was actually dead, so explicitly not killing him off all but ensures he will return.
I also wonder how popular the gatewatch actually is. For people who care about the story I mean. There are plenty of people who like the cards but don't know much about the story.
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!
I know I cared about the story and all this stupid gatewatch stuff made me quit.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5GCek4XoAAGO9K?format=jpg&name=medium
People generally gravitate to the characters you push most.
Let me give you an example. This guy is hated. Absolutely loathed. He is WWE's "main character", of sorts. Fans don't like him. However, because the organization refuses to move him from main character position, promotes him the most and gives him all the cool moments, he's by far the best merchandise seller.
It's the mere exposure effect. The people you are most familiar with are the ones you like most.
It's the end of him as a focus for the time being, not the end as in forever. It should be rather clear contextually what I meant if you're paying attention to the story, but if you're not I'll be more explicit next time.
And the Gatewatch, according to data we can look at, seem to be popular at least on an individual level. As a group it's probably a bit harder to measure, but if it wasn't popular I'm sure Wizards would just go back to the old format (which really wasn't all that different from what's currently going on anyways, speaking of stuff Alara onward for reference). The Gatewatch are just the result of a positive feedback loop from what I can see though, so it's not surprising.
Also I'm glad Ugin is so popular, if a bit surprised. Makes me hopeful that they'll show him doing more, he's been pretty background for now.
Apologies if I screwed up the spoiler formatting on my phone.
No mention whatsoever of Ilharg. Just did a word search in the ebook. No mention of Ilharg, no mention of boars except by comparison, no mention of 'raze.'
Domri's card (Anarch of Bolas) and the story setup had it appear that Domri was always on Bolas' side. In the story, however, Domri is fighting Eternals until deciding, after witnessing some event, to pledge loyalty to Bolas. He goes over to Bolas, and is promptly harvested. Domri is never an agent of Bolas in the book, witting or unwitting, and there's zero mention of the Raze Boar, which essentially makes all the other backup stuff pointless.
The whole book is like this.