I have a feeling that when they saw this brand new set on a brand new plane,
they realized how wrong it felt that Gideon, Liliana, and Nissa were the "faces" of said plane.
Obviously we're getting Bolas in Hour,
but hopefully we'll get an Amonkhet native, as well.
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Melek, Izzet Paragon
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Bruna, Light of Alabaster
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
Rhys the Redeemed
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Sen Triplets
The Mimeoplasm WUBRGSliver OverlordGRBUW WUBRGSliver Hivelord(Superfriends)GRBUW
I... like this? Yeah, I'm pretty fond of this for a change, I'd love some other walkers return or to see more brand-new faces. As much as I bash the gatewatch, I like the characters design-wise, but seeing them over and over again gets really old, real fast. I'm very interested now how hour and atlazan block will shape up in the walker department.
I'm SO SICK of the "too strong for Standard" argument. It's the new "Dies to removal". We can have a two mana 4/4 with a zillion abilities, but we can't just have Accumulated Knowledge. Makes sense.
Are the still going to be the focus of the story or is something in Hour of Devastation going to cause them to show up less often / less together?
I wouldn't be surprised if something in Hour of Devastation leads the Gatewatch to split up to deal with multiple threats Bolas has been seeding throughout the multiverse (a divide-and-conquer strategy of some kind). Then the next several sets could focus on each member individually on a separate plane. Would let them thin out Gatewatch appearances per-set without them being any less central to the story as a group.
One way or another, I don't see HoD being the end of the Bolas arc, and it doesn't make sense for the story of every set moving forward to be a copy-paste of Superfriends vs The Ancient Evil.
I'm very interested now how hour and atlazan block will shape up in the walker department.
Atlazan is confirmed?
Private Mod Note
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Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
Wizards of the Coast does need some way to react more readily to the players. They have always kept going back to saying they work so far ahead that they can't do X by next set. They need to be able to have alternative printing options or find some sort of way to swap out a specific card for another on the print sheets before they go out or we'll just keep having the ship do a repeat of the Titanic like this last standard season.
Force of will actually took off again thanks to MtG having such a horrible downturn this standard, although FoW has some serious issues of it's own right now thanks to severely underprinting the last few products they have released.
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():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Corny and generic characters a la Liliana, Gideon, Chandra, in trite fantasy plots aren't going anywhere fast. Fighting an evil dragon in pseudo-egypt where everyone is happy to die for the god pharaoh... If my eyes could roll any further to the back of my head they'd make a complete circle.
Though I agree 100% with the first part (with the caveat being that Nissa's exclusion is only as a result of not having enough character to be corny) I'm totally down with the whole society being ready to die for the God-Pharaoh who is secretly an evil tyrant. People with the wits to actually rule the world don't typically lurk in their evil necropolis brooding up ways to be nasty. They deceive the people into wanting to be ruled and devise systems that make their slaves love their chains. I personally am glad to see that the Nicol Bolas is actually smart enough to not carry his villain card everywhere he goes.
Unfortunately they won't scrap the rabble altogether, but I'll take anything at this point
I don't mind them having a core group of Planeswalkers that appears consistently. We already had that with the Core sets. The issue was that they all as a group were just too frequent, at least for me. Tone down how often they show up and it's all good. Hoping we won't see all five of them each year.
I have literally found every single fire and forget planeswalker (for a particular set) they made to be more visually and mechanically interesting than the core ones. Even Tibald is interesting, though the card is junk.
Anyway, for some of the most powerful beings in the universe most are fairly conventional, appearance and ability wise. I am not against planeswalkers per se but the way they are doing them simply does not stimulate my imagination. It feels more power rangers than fantasy, which is really not what I want out of Magic.
Oh, I'm not a huge fan of the characters they picked, but I like the concept at least. If I had to pick one for each color... White would be Elspeth, Blue Tamiyo (this is a definite), Black... uh, no one jumps out. Maybe Vraska shifted to be more Black, or Sorin? Red... again, not sure. White and Blue I have definite likes, but the other three are more iffy. Only other I might want would be Ajani if he could be Green.
They never had to use planeswalkers to begin with. They could have introduced the current equivalent of the Weatherlight with Kaladesh and had legendary non-walkers navigate using the ship, picking up new crew as they went to each plane. The problem with the walkers is that walker sparks are supposed to be rare and when they introduce a new plane they have to either invent a new walker and spark, or recycle an old one that just happens to be passing through.
Seriously, I would have loved a ship piloted by Depala and her dwarves while Rashmi, Eternities Crafter worked the portal engine. If they are going to a new plane might as well bring some people you can trust and some man power. That and bringing a planeswalking ship along adds some stakes to the matter as they have to make sure the ship doesn't fall into the hands of Bolas. Also, it's a bit easier to kill a legendary creature than a planeswalker, as you don't have to deal with the entire debacle of what happens with the spark and it again can add more tension to the story.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
On the plus side, they finally printed some good Chandras (and one REALLY good Chandra) because of her joining the Gatewatch and getting so many new PW cards.
Good Chandra was inevitable with Sam Stottard being a proponent for Big Red on the Magic team.
This is why I miss core sets. All the fanboys and girls got their new jaces and such, and we had room for more plane specific walkers in the block cycles. Don't get me wrong, Gideon is my dude, but does anybody really need 7 of them? I kind of wish they would just focus on new walkers exclusively for a while. There are so many walkers that have 5,6, even 7 different printings. I don't even get excited by new versions of walkers except in cases like sarkhan, where he essentially became a different entity
Not one to complain about the Gatewatch but I'm glad that we might FINALLY see a new mono-green walker. Nissa being the only and thus default is annoying. That was the biggest reason she was in Kaladesh and I'm guessing now Amonkhet.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“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'm SO SICK of the "too strong for Standard" argument. It's the new "Dies to removal". We can have a two mana 4/4 with a zillion abilities, but we can't just have Accumulated Knowledge. Makes sense.
Excellent news. From a gameplay perspective, we start getting a bit more variety in our Walkers. It's so hard to get excited for a new Nissa when it'll be the fifth one in less than two years.
Also, giving more exposure to different characters as actual cards could lead to increased demand for them in the story, which hopefully could lead to less Gatewatch story and more variety there.
They never had to use planeswalkers to begin with. They could have introduced the current equivalent of the Weatherlight with Kaladesh and had legendary non-walkers navigate using the ship, picking up new crew as they went to each plane. The problem with the walkers is that walker sparks are supposed to be rare and when they introduce a new plane they have to either invent a new walker and spark, or recycle an old one that just happens to be passing through.
Seriously, I would have loved a ship piloted by Depala and her dwarves while Rashmi, Eternities Crafter worked the portal engine. If they are going to a new plane might as well bring some people you can trust and some man power. That and bringing a planeswalking ship along adds some stakes to the matter as they have to make sure the ship doesn't fall into the hands of Bolas. Also, it's a bit easier to kill a legendary creature than a planeswalker, as you don't have to deal with the entire debacle of what happens with the spark and it again can add more tension to the story.
You make me miss The Weatherlight and the first 1/3 of Magic history, aww man
In addition they could also have both story lines: A Crew using a device (planar ship perhaps) to explore with and a Jacestice League with their fancy pantsy Planeswalker sparks.
I just dislike how they completely deflated the entire concept of what a planeswalker is. These guys were legendary like gods back in the weatherlight days and now they have turned them into minions people can summon at their whim like an enchantment or lowly creature. Wizards did not think about the game implications from that angle when they made planeswalkers a type of playable card.
Planeswalkers have several problems as "main characters" to a story.
1) Like the gods of ancient greece they can always get away. It is very, very hard to kill a planeswalker due to their ability to planeswalk, and it takes forces on the level of a god plus very particular circumstances to end them. Compare that to regular mortal beings that could end up in a knife fight in an alley way and die to some common thugs, get ill from native diseases and foods, or even die from poison.
2) Planeswalkers are walking forces of nature. A single walker can take down an entire kingdoms army, let alone a dragon. Chandra, who is a relatively weak planeswalker, was able to torch not one, but two eldrazi titans with the help of Nissa Rivane, while someone like Gerrard would have to likely have searched for something on the level of the Legacy weapon left by Urza to deal with the titans.
3) Planeswalkers just aren't all that interesting. Even if they have backgrounds and motivations they almost always come off as more force of nature than mortal being and trying to turn them into super heroes just goes against the entire fantasy genre.
So yeah, the story is trash. Honestly, I could go on a rant for days about how badly wizards has handled magic over the last two years since I came back to it. I came back just as they cut core sets and went to a two block standard set cycle and the entire thing is like watching them just pilot the titanic into multiple icebergs.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Its just 1 set to build a world, and the 2nd wrecks it up. Thats way too fast, way too "stupid" and planeswalkers that just miraculously save the day arent fun. Characters need loses if they win any half meaningful battle. If you dont lose anything and the group just goes on, it was just a casual battle for show.
Sorin vs Nahiri was a REAL battle, someone lost and it actually mattered.
The Eldrazi where handled very poorly, for being so powerful they were not ment to be defeated at all, and that event alone crippled the gatewatch so much, as it made them way too overpowered (had they lost and needed to abandon Zendikar and even Innistrad, they could have grown up to power, and not just "win" by default).
What I liked most about the Weatherlight Saga and the early days is that we would get hints and glimpses of legendary characters through art and flavor text and when they finally printed a card of a character, it felt like a big deal because we had already gotten to know the characters from previous blocks. The ability to suddenly be able to play with our favorite characters - who you had been reading about sometimes for years at a time - as a card felt like a treat. Now they just throw planeswalkers in our face and expect us to be happy about who the characters are even though we never got to know them in advance. I want Wizards to go back to the model of using art and flavor text to tell a story, then treating us with legendary creatures when we least expect it.
Cool, this will be a nice change. I know most people are sick of the gatewatch at this point, we want to explore different characters and different aspects of each color. Wizards tries to make it so new players can easily identify who characters (the gatewatch) are, and ended up churning out a ton of them. Bringing new players into the game and acquainting them with the world is important, but so is keeping your enfranchised players. You know, the ones that go to FNMs, prereleases and even GPs frequently are the real audience you should be trying to retain, because we stay with the game year after year and that means money for wizards!
On a small side note: I also would like to see non-planeswalker characters make more of a splash. I know that's hard when "THE FATE OF THE MULTIVERSE IS AT STAKE" but sometimes smaller-scale stories are more interesting than the big picture of what is happening.
At any rate this is a good sign that wizards is listening to the playerbase, thanks WotC.
Cool, this will be a nice change. I know most people are sick of the gatewatch at this point, we want to explore different characters and different aspects of each color. Wizards tries to make it so new players can easily identify who characters (the gatewatch) are, and ended up churning out a ton of them. Bringing new players into the game and acquainting them with the world is important, but so is keeping your enfranchised players. You know, the ones that go to FNMs, prereleases and even GPs frequently are the real audience you should be trying to retain, because we stay with the game year after year and that means money for wizards!
On a small side note: I also would like to see non-planeswalker characters make more of a splash. I know that's hard when "THE FATE OF THE MULTIVERSE IS AT STAKE" but sometimes smaller-scale stories are more interesting than the big picture of what is happening.
At any rate this is a good sign that wizards is listening to the playerbase, thanks WotC.
The trouble with them listening is that now we got to wait for them to do something in two years because they already planned out the next year of stuff. I think someone commented before that Wizards is like the US Mint or something as far as how they are well meaning, but just way too slow at reacting to anything going on in the player market. If they could find a way to cut down the time it takes to react to stuff like this that will be the real game changer. FoW company reacts way faster than Wizards does and the same can be said of the company behind Weiss Schwartz.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Is one of Liliana's demons on Amonkhet?
Older Magic as a Board Game: Panglacial Wurm , Mill
I have a feeling that when they saw this brand new set on a brand new plane,
they realized how wrong it felt that Gideon, Liliana, and Nissa were the "faces" of said plane.
Obviously we're getting Bolas in Hour,
but hopefully we'll get an Amonkhet native, as well.
Reprint Stasis!
Control needs more love.
EDH:
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Melek, Izzet Paragon
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Bruna, Light of Alabaster
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
Rhys the Redeemed
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Sen Triplets
The Mimeoplasm
WUBRGSliver OverlordGRBUW
WUBRGSliver Hivelord(Superfriends)GRBUW
One way or another, I don't see HoD being the end of the Bolas arc, and it doesn't make sense for the story of every set moving forward to be a copy-paste of Superfriends vs The Ancient Evil.
Atlazan is confirmed?
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
Force of will actually took off again thanks to MtG having such a horrible downturn this standard, although FoW has some serious issues of it's own right now thanks to severely underprinting the last few products they have released.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Though I agree 100% with the first part (with the caveat being that Nissa's exclusion is only as a result of not having enough character to be corny) I'm totally down with the whole society being ready to die for the God-Pharaoh who is secretly an evil tyrant. People with the wits to actually rule the world don't typically lurk in their evil necropolis brooding up ways to be nasty. They deceive the people into wanting to be ruled and devise systems that make their slaves love their chains. I personally am glad to see that the Nicol Bolas is actually smart enough to not carry his villain card everywhere he goes.
Oh, I'm not a huge fan of the characters they picked, but I like the concept at least. If I had to pick one for each color... White would be Elspeth, Blue Tamiyo (this is a definite), Black... uh, no one jumps out. Maybe Vraska shifted to be more Black, or Sorin? Red... again, not sure. White and Blue I have definite likes, but the other three are more iffy. Only other I might want would be Ajani if he could be Green.
Seriously, I would have loved a ship piloted by Depala and her dwarves while Rashmi, Eternities Crafter worked the portal engine. If they are going to a new plane might as well bring some people you can trust and some man power. That and bringing a planeswalking ship along adds some stakes to the matter as they have to make sure the ship doesn't fall into the hands of Bolas. Also, it's a bit easier to kill a legendary creature than a planeswalker, as you don't have to deal with the entire debacle of what happens with the spark and it again can add more tension to the story.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Good Chandra was inevitable with Sam Stottard being a proponent for Big Red on the Magic team.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
No, it isn't, but the Amonkhet packaging 'leak' turned out to be real, so I'm assuming the Atlazan thing will be as well.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
Also, giving more exposure to different characters as actual cards could lead to increased demand for them in the story, which hopefully could lead to less Gatewatch story and more variety there.
I just dislike how they completely deflated the entire concept of what a planeswalker is. These guys were legendary like gods back in the weatherlight days and now they have turned them into minions people can summon at their whim like an enchantment or lowly creature. Wizards did not think about the game implications from that angle when they made planeswalkers a type of playable card.
Planeswalkers have several problems as "main characters" to a story.
1) Like the gods of ancient greece they can always get away. It is very, very hard to kill a planeswalker due to their ability to planeswalk, and it takes forces on the level of a god plus very particular circumstances to end them. Compare that to regular mortal beings that could end up in a knife fight in an alley way and die to some common thugs, get ill from native diseases and foods, or even die from poison.
2) Planeswalkers are walking forces of nature. A single walker can take down an entire kingdoms army, let alone a dragon. Chandra, who is a relatively weak planeswalker, was able to torch not one, but two eldrazi titans with the help of Nissa Rivane, while someone like Gerrard would have to likely have searched for something on the level of the Legacy weapon left by Urza to deal with the titans.
3) Planeswalkers just aren't all that interesting. Even if they have backgrounds and motivations they almost always come off as more force of nature than mortal being and trying to turn them into super heroes just goes against the entire fantasy genre.
So yeah, the story is trash. Honestly, I could go on a rant for days about how badly wizards has handled magic over the last two years since I came back to it. I came back just as they cut core sets and went to a two block standard set cycle and the entire thing is like watching them just pilot the titanic into multiple icebergs.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Marath, Will of the Wild
Friendly Kess Twin Combo
Tatyova - Sir Bounce A Lot
Gonti's Luxury Pie
Prime (Eldrazi) Speaker Zegana (Retired)
The 2 set "mini" stories just dont work for me.
Its just 1 set to build a world, and the 2nd wrecks it up. Thats way too fast, way too "stupid" and planeswalkers that just miraculously save the day arent fun. Characters need loses if they win any half meaningful battle. If you dont lose anything and the group just goes on, it was just a casual battle for show.
Sorin vs Nahiri was a REAL battle, someone lost and it actually mattered.
The Eldrazi where handled very poorly, for being so powerful they were not ment to be defeated at all, and that event alone crippled the gatewatch so much, as it made them way too overpowered (had they lost and needed to abandon Zendikar and even Innistrad, they could have grown up to power, and not just "win" by default).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
GWUBRDraft my Old Border Nostalgia Cube! and/or The Little Pauper Cube That Could!RBUWG
Modern:WDeath & TaxesW | RUGRUG DelverRUG
On a small side note: I also would like to see non-planeswalker characters make more of a splash. I know that's hard when "THE FATE OF THE MULTIVERSE IS AT STAKE" but sometimes smaller-scale stories are more interesting than the big picture of what is happening.
At any rate this is a good sign that wizards is listening to the playerbase, thanks WotC.
BGGRock
Modern
BRGJund
BBGRock
The trouble with them listening is that now we got to wait for them to do something in two years because they already planned out the next year of stuff. I think someone commented before that Wizards is like the US Mint or something as far as how they are well meaning, but just way too slow at reacting to anything going on in the player market. If they could find a way to cut down the time it takes to react to stuff like this that will be the real game changer. FoW company reacts way faster than Wizards does and the same can be said of the company behind Weiss Schwartz.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Dunes of Zairo
SHANDALAR
Innistrad - The Darkest Night
~THE RAVNICAN CONSORTIUM~
A Community Set
Commander: Allies & Adversaries
Colt47 This means that starting with HoD they will be starting this new approach, that isn't a long time to wait at all.