Please tell me the taplands come with new flavor text and art? (Huatli's in particular...)
Actually, now that I think about it, Territorial Hammerskull might be perfect for my efforts to introduce a viable aggro deck to EDH. (I'm thinking "synergy with Meekstone".)
Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Playing the decks against one another, they are simple, balanced, and reward conservative play while producing big blowouts if players just run cards into one another. As a result, they are a fine, unexceptional product for inexperienced or occasional players. For people wanting a sample of Ixalan, you'll have to be satisfied by cards that say "Merfolk" or "Dinosaur" on them, because nothing else about the mechanics or gameplay of two decks with the theoretically correct number of plain creatures and removal suggests anything about the plane.
Some unorganized thoughts:
About 1/3 of the time, one deck just flounders with bad mana, expensive cards, or no way to prevent getting steamrolled, and neither deck can recover well. Another 1/3 of the time, both flounder, but it turns into a good game. For the last 1/3, both decks work smoothly and players are free to maneuver and have a lot of fun. I had fun every game; it's worth getting steamrolled if you just as often get to be the steamroller.
Castaway's Despair and Rallying Roar have a fun interaction for inexperienced players. "You know that card you put on my Burning Sun's Avatar to stop it from attacking? Yeah, you lose." My opponent only made the mistake once and started considering all my tricks, so it worked really well—honestly.
Fleet Swallower is a 7 mana 6/6 with an ability that would do something cool in a different deck, and sadly it's the best choice for the Jace deck's second rare. River's Rebuke would be way too strong, and Huatli lacks the targeted spells needed for something like Shapers' Sanctuary to work. Goring Ceratops is basically the same thing, but Kinjalli's Sunwing would have been a lot more useful. It's great that players will want to upgrade Jungle Delver to Kumena's Speaker, but not so great that they'll have the opportunity to open a Jungle Delver and make their deck better by cutting a rare for it.
Goring Ceratops has double strike, a mechanic that requires knowledge of first strike, which appears in neither deck.
Huatli's deck has a lower mana curve than Jace's and 2 Kinjalli's Caller, yet has no way to spend its mana when it runs out of spells. Jace is served well by waiting for Huatli to run out of steam.
Huatli's deck has 9 uncommons, while Jace's deck has 12. Pterodon Knight looks to the sky and wonders, "Why am I not that?"
Huatli's Spurring is not only weak enough that it had me re-reading it and searching Magic's history for a lesser combat trick (Bull Rush), it's extra bad in this match-up, where it usually leads to trading 2 cards for 1, anyway. River Heralds' Boon from Jace's deck is way stronger. Spurring is weaker in Huatli's deck than noted liar Great Defender, and it was especially crafted to be her exclusive uncommon. Because of this deficiency, Huatli's deck is more difficult to play than Jace's, as she often needs to attack carefully over several turns in order to eventually force a situation where her combat tricks will be effective, and she has to do it against a deck that's stronger in the late game.
Most of my frustrations are focused on Huatli's deck, but these are still balanced. Huatli's best cards, like Tilonalli's Knight, Territorial Hammerskull, and Lightning Strike have more raw power than Jace's cards, so instead of making Jace's stuff better, Huatli was given some duds, I guess.
A monored Angrath can still be played in a BR Pirate deck, and more besides. Personally, I was hoping for a BR PW inspired by characters like Jack Sparrow, but there are always future sets.
You are correct in that it isn't always exactly balanced, but the way they calculate balance is different than yours. Any mono colored planeswalker is considered a 1 for that color, and for a two color walker, each color is given a .5. Three color walkers aren't in consideration, because they can basically only go in one deck, due to the color requirements.
So Amonkhet, for example, is actually 1W, .5U, 1B, .5R, 1G. This does some balancing for Kaladesh, which was 1W, 1.5U, .5B, 1.5R, and 1.5G. Which meant attempted standard was at 2W, 2U, 1.5B, 2R, and 2.5G. (Which in turn was a change from the previous standards heavy amount of Black walkers).
They'll likely keep things as balanced as possible for Ixalan, because it's a focal point for the digital product, and it allows them to "reset" for their returned old standard rotation. Ixalan was made between the two decisions on standard rotation, after all.
Now I am really scared that the pirate themed planeswalker deck is going to have Vraska as the cover card and is going to be Black Green, when pirates have nothing to do with green. If that was the case, it means that they are building the deck around the planeswalker, not around the theme, in which case I just wished they went back to theme decks. The worst part is, I can't think of any blue, red, or blue red planeswalker that can be the cover card of a pirate deck.
Unless you're asserting Vraska will get two cards in one block like Sarkhan in Tarkir there is absolutely zero chance of her being the face card of a Rivals of Ixalan Planeswalker deck. Those cards are exclusively jank variants of planeswalkers that are in THAT set.
At this point, barring someone more interesting in the second set, I'm going with monored Angrath in a UR deck and BG Vraska.
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MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
At this point, barring someone more interesting in the second set, I'm going with monored Angrath in a UR deck and BG Vraska.
I just hope the strategy sheets for those decks have a blurb on strategy and a decklist printed on them.
Theme decks strategy sheets mainly have information on what the set's mechanics do, what mainly happens in the storyline, a little blurb on what specifically happens to the story, depending on what theme deck you get, a deck list, and 3 to 4 paragraphs of text on strategy, and what other cards to add to improve the deck. The strategy sheets also have ads on FNM, or the MTG website, or some other stuff.
Champions of Kamigawa theme deck strategy sheets are larger and contain mainly the same stuff with the addition of a glossary of terms and more space for some artwork.
Ravnica City of Guilds and Time Spiral strategy sheets are also larger and contain more space showing more of the key art.
Core set theme deck strategy sheets are similar to the expansion theme deck strategy sheets, except it didn't have text on mechanics or storyline, but what to do with your theme deck, such as adding 20 more cards, or combining with another theme deck, and what the philosophy of a certain color is, depending on which theme deck you have.
Starting with Planar Chaos, the size of the strategy sheets are the same as the ones from Champions of Kamigawa, Ravnica City of Guilds, and Time Spiral. Instead of containing the decklists for the one specific deck, it contains decklists for all the decks from the set. Deck specific storylines are gone.
Shards of Alara, Conflux, and Alara Reborn intro pack strategy sheets are even larger, have more space for artwork, information on the shards, and their mechanics, and decklists on the back, along with a few paragraphs of strategy for each deck.
All intro packs from M10 to Avacyn Restored contains the same stuff as the ones from Alara block, except that there is no information on set's mechanics, and instead, there is some color wheel thing, and information on 5 planeswalkers, 1 of each color.
Return to Ravnica block intro pack strategy sheets have the guild wheel and what each guild does.
Khans of Tarkir block has a one or 2 sentences describing each of the 5 clans.
The rest of the intro pack strategy sheets have no information, aside from decklist, its strategy, and large key art on the other side.
Planeswalker deck from Kaladesh to Hour of Devastation have a very short blurb on deck strategy and a decklist, large art of the planeswalker that the deck has, and some sort of blurb telling you to get the other deck.
Ixalan planeswalker deck strategy contains no information other than 4 or 5 words on what 3 of the evergreen mechanics do, and one sentence on what the deck does. That's all there is.
When I buy precons, I double check whether the cards I have match that of the official decklist. For the Ixalan planeswalker decks, and Archenemy Nicol Bolas, no decklist included, so I had to use my phone, and suffer through having to keep the screen on as well as scrolling, whereas if I had a printed decklist on the strategy sheet, I could easily view the entire decklist without any scrolling, or the screen won't automatically turn off.
Could you imagine if you bought something that requires instructions, and instead, the sheet contains a large picture of what you just bought, and on the other side, it contains ads for what other things you could buy from the same company, and in the bottom in small print, it tells you to go online for the actual instructions?
Every extra insert that Pokemon and Yugioh includes have information in them. No amount of space is wasted.
What does WOTC do? Include strategy sheets where 1/6 of the space is used on actual information on the deck. Whoever thought up the idea to omit the decklist from the strategy sheets should be fired. The strategy sheets should never have artwork on them, and should contain only text, maybe with a little background artwork to keep each strategy sheet unique.
Shame they have Sorin stuck on Innistrad in a block of stone - they could've had him on Ixalan instead, leading the vamps. I don't know what kind of convoluted shenanigans they'd have to pull to place him there, but I'm sure they could manage it - this is the same story team that jumped the shark and had the Gatewatch seal an Eldrazi Titan, yet lose to a dragon.
Shame they have Sorin stuck on Innistrad in a block of stone - they could've had him on Ixalan instead, leading the vamps. I don't know what kind of convoluted shenanigans they'd have to pull to place him there, but I'm sure they could manage it - this is the same story team that jumped the shark and had the Gatewatch seal an Eldrazi Titan, yet lose to a dragon.
Shame they have Sorin stuck on Innistrad in a block of stone - they could've had him on Ixalan instead, leading the vamps. I don't know what kind of convoluted shenanigans they'd have to pull to place him there, but I'm sure they could manage it - this is the same story team that jumped the shark and had the Gatewatch seal an Eldrazi Titan, yet lose to a dragon.
Because Nicol Bolas is just "a dragon".
Compared to the Eldrazi, who routinely eat entire planes of existence for lunch, I find him to be, yes, just a dragon. A dragon that's good at scheming and being cruel and looking out for number one, but yes, just a dragon.
Shame they have Sorin stuck on Innistrad in a block of stone - they could've had him on Ixalan instead, leading the vamps. I don't know what kind of convoluted shenanigans they'd have to pull to place him there, but I'm sure they could manage it - this is the same story team that jumped the shark and had the Gatewatch seal an Eldrazi Titan, yet lose to a dragon.
Because Nicol Bolas is just "a dragon".
Compared to the Eldrazi, who routinely eat entire planes of existence for lunch, I find him to be, yes, just a dragon. A dragon that's good at scheming and being cruel and looking out for number one, but yes, just a dragon.
You mean the same dragon the we just saw completely warp 3 of 8 gods to his bidding, brainwashed the other 5 (these gods being connected the plane itself), and brought an entire plane to involuntarily do his bidding (these three happening while he was weakened), desecrated Amonkhet itself, created a plane(s), been killed and came back to life through his own power and plane, practically caused all of Alara to go to war, harvested most of the mana that came from the Conflux, manipulated Chandra to release the Eldrazi, has said himself he has ruined many planes, and Kruphix believes Bolas to be just as bad as the Eldrazi and Phyrexians when it comes to the threat to Theros and his info was only based on a weakend Bolas. Oh, and he was so good he ended up in another card game, unlike the Eldrazi (that's a joke fact, but it's still true.) You're right though compared to the Eldrazi, which he had a hand in releasing, he's just a plain dragon. Just one of those normal dragons that's a multiplanar threat with schemes and plans spanning 20,000+ years.
All the while Bolas gains far more power while the Eldrazi don't get stronger with each plane they consume. We've seen Bolas be a god and it took the entire universe changing to knock him down a peg, but the Eldrazi were beaten several times, and while I agree some of that were asspulls from bad writing, there is a reason that with all of Bolas's enemies only Umezawa has ever been able to beat him prior, with the use of one insane spell to do it, but not fully kill.
Shame they have Sorin stuck on Innistrad in a block of stone - they could've had him on Ixalan instead, leading the vamps. I don't know what kind of convoluted shenanigans they'd have to pull to place him there, but I'm sure they could manage it - this is the same story team that jumped the shark and had the Gatewatch seal an Eldrazi Titan, yet lose to a dragon.
Seal an Eldrazi Titan using the natural features of a plane. Much like on Zendikar if it were on any other plane The GW would get chumped hard by the Eldrazi.
Of course that is why the Eldrazi were a terrible choice for the GW's first opponents and a terrible thing to exist anyways because the only plot they could have had was "Get beat by deus ex machinca." or "Long string of constant loses."
I thought it was common knowledge that the Vampires infect the Dinosaurs - and there is a RWGB Vampire-Dinosaur tribe in Rivals. And that the Merfolk take over the Pirate Syndicate giving us a URBG Merfolk-Pirate tribe as the other tribe. Dack Fayden shows up and steals the artifacts from other tribes with the help of his Ninja posse (a new RU tribe in Rivals) yelling "They belong in a Museum.... on Fiora...."
I assume Dack Fayden is one of the Planeswalkers for the face of a deck - but I don't know who the other one will be.
You mean the same dragon the we just saw completely warp 3 of 8 gods to his bidding, brainwashed the other 5 (these gods being connected the plane itself), and brought an entire plane to involuntarily do his bidding (these three happening while he was weakened), desecrated Amonkhet itself, created a plane(s), been killed and came back to life through his own power and plane,
This was all pre-mending. After the mending, Bolas lost a lot of power, hile the eldrazi didn't get weaker after it.
The Amonkhet portion has him being weakened during it. In the story he himself admits that he has to do it while he isn't 100%. Even so Bolas has been gaining power ever since the Mending. Gaining what power he could from the Conflux and gaining the service of thousands, if not 10's of thousands, of undead and eternal servants, and now has a way of creating a portal to take his forces off or to any plane he wishes. He still may not be a god, but he has 20,000+ years of knowledge, planning, and schemes while the Eldrazi only know how to move forward and consume. If Bolas worried about the Eldrazi he wouldn't have had them released. It's very probable he has a use for them, just like with Amonkhet and Kaladesh, and then wherever he may send his forces.
If the Gatewatch lose any more battles, the GM should consider rebuilding the Gatewatch and trade away Gideon, Jace, Liliana, Chandra, and Nissa for more youth and draft picks.
And if that’s not enough we can also point out that no one has ever defeated Bolas....
That's not technically true. Umezawa defeated Bolas long ago, but yes he has never been killed.
That can be said for most of the game's surviving cast of characters. In spite of the comparisons between the Gatewatch and Marvel/DC superheroes, MTG is light on in-story resurrections. Ugin (alongside the other changes brought about during the Crux of Fate) is the only genuine example I can name off of the top of my head, though Magic does have a few not-quite-dead moments for other characters. This is all runs counter to how easy it is to perform resurrection in the game proper.
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Actually, now that I think about it, Territorial Hammerskull might be perfect for my efforts to introduce a viable aggro deck to EDH. (I'm thinking "synergy with Meekstone".)
The Jace deck has Tempest Caller? Awesome!
On phasing:
2 Jungle Delver
2 Kumena's Speaker
2 Deeproot Warrior
3 Jace's Sentinel
2 Shaper Apprentice
2 Vineshaper Mystic
2 Shapers of Nature
2 Jade Guardian
2 Headwater Sentries
1 Herald of Secret Streams
1 Tempest Caller
2 Air Elemental
1 Fleet Swallower
2 Grasping Current
Instant (3)
3 River Heralds' Boon
Enchantment (4)
4 Castaway's Despair
Land (26)
4 Woodland Stream
11 Forest
11 Island
1 Jace, Ingenious Mind-Mage
Ixalan Rares: 1 Herald of Secret Streams, 1 Fleet Swallower
Planeswalker Deck Exclusives: 4 Castaway's Despair, 3 Jace's Sentinel, 2 Grasping Current, 1 Jace, Ingenious Mind-Mage
2 Kinjalli's Caller
4 Huatli's Snubhorn
2 Raptor Companion
2 Tilonalli's Knight
2 Frenzied Raptor
2 Territorial Hammerskull
2 Bonded Horncrest
2 Pterodon Knight
2 Shining Aerosaur
2 Sun-Blessed Mount
1 Burning Sun's Avatar
1 Goring Ceratops
3 Huatli's Spurring
2 Slash of Talons
2 Lightning Strike
2 Rallying Roar
Land (26)
4 Stone Quarry
11 Mountain
11 Plains
1 Huatli, Dinosaur Knight
Ixalan Rares: 1 Burning Sun's Avatar, 1 Goring Ceratops
Planeswalker Deck Exclusives: 4 Huatli's Snubhorn, 3 Huatli's Spurring, 2 Sun-Blessed Mount, 1 Huatli, Dinosaur Knight
Playing the decks against one another, they are simple, balanced, and reward conservative play while producing big blowouts if players just run cards into one another. As a result, they are a fine, unexceptional product for inexperienced or occasional players. For people wanting a sample of Ixalan, you'll have to be satisfied by cards that say "Merfolk" or "Dinosaur" on them, because nothing else about the mechanics or gameplay of two decks with the theoretically correct number of plain creatures and removal suggests anything about the plane.
Some unorganized thoughts:
You are correct in that it isn't always exactly balanced, but the way they calculate balance is different than yours. Any mono colored planeswalker is considered a 1 for that color, and for a two color walker, each color is given a .5. Three color walkers aren't in consideration, because they can basically only go in one deck, due to the color requirements.
So Amonkhet, for example, is actually 1W, .5U, 1B, .5R, 1G. This does some balancing for Kaladesh, which was 1W, 1.5U, .5B, 1.5R, and 1.5G. Which meant attempted standard was at 2W, 2U, 1.5B, 2R, and 2.5G. (Which in turn was a change from the previous standards heavy amount of Black walkers).
They'll likely keep things as balanced as possible for Ixalan, because it's a focal point for the digital product, and it allows them to "reset" for their returned old standard rotation. Ixalan was made between the two decisions on standard rotation, after all.
Umm... Nissa from HOU would like a word with you.
What a joke.
Instead, there is a large picture of Jace or Huatli on one side, and ads for Ixalan the set and the deckbuilder's toolkit on the other.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
I just hope the strategy sheets for those decks have a blurb on strategy and a decklist printed on them.
Theme decks strategy sheets mainly have information on what the set's mechanics do, what mainly happens in the storyline, a little blurb on what specifically happens to the story, depending on what theme deck you get, a deck list, and 3 to 4 paragraphs of text on strategy, and what other cards to add to improve the deck. The strategy sheets also have ads on FNM, or the MTG website, or some other stuff.
Champions of Kamigawa theme deck strategy sheets are larger and contain mainly the same stuff with the addition of a glossary of terms and more space for some artwork.
Ravnica City of Guilds and Time Spiral strategy sheets are also larger and contain more space showing more of the key art.
Core set theme deck strategy sheets are similar to the expansion theme deck strategy sheets, except it didn't have text on mechanics or storyline, but what to do with your theme deck, such as adding 20 more cards, or combining with another theme deck, and what the philosophy of a certain color is, depending on which theme deck you have.
Starting with Planar Chaos, the size of the strategy sheets are the same as the ones from Champions of Kamigawa, Ravnica City of Guilds, and Time Spiral. Instead of containing the decklists for the one specific deck, it contains decklists for all the decks from the set. Deck specific storylines are gone.
Shards of Alara, Conflux, and Alara Reborn intro pack strategy sheets are even larger, have more space for artwork, information on the shards, and their mechanics, and decklists on the back, along with a few paragraphs of strategy for each deck.
All intro packs from M10 to Avacyn Restored contains the same stuff as the ones from Alara block, except that there is no information on set's mechanics, and instead, there is some color wheel thing, and information on 5 planeswalkers, 1 of each color.
Return to Ravnica block intro pack strategy sheets have the guild wheel and what each guild does.
Khans of Tarkir block has a one or 2 sentences describing each of the 5 clans.
The rest of the intro pack strategy sheets have no information, aside from decklist, its strategy, and large key art on the other side.
Planeswalker deck from Kaladesh to Hour of Devastation have a very short blurb on deck strategy and a decklist, large art of the planeswalker that the deck has, and some sort of blurb telling you to get the other deck.
Ixalan planeswalker deck strategy contains no information other than 4 or 5 words on what 3 of the evergreen mechanics do, and one sentence on what the deck does. That's all there is.
When I buy precons, I double check whether the cards I have match that of the official decklist. For the Ixalan planeswalker decks, and Archenemy Nicol Bolas, no decklist included, so I had to use my phone, and suffer through having to keep the screen on as well as scrolling, whereas if I had a printed decklist on the strategy sheet, I could easily view the entire decklist without any scrolling, or the screen won't automatically turn off.
Could you imagine if you bought something that requires instructions, and instead, the sheet contains a large picture of what you just bought, and on the other side, it contains ads for what other things you could buy from the same company, and in the bottom in small print, it tells you to go online for the actual instructions?
Every extra insert that Pokemon and Yugioh includes have information in them. No amount of space is wasted.
What does WOTC do? Include strategy sheets where 1/6 of the space is used on actual information on the deck. Whoever thought up the idea to omit the decklist from the strategy sheets should be fired. The strategy sheets should never have artwork on them, and should contain only text, maybe with a little background artwork to keep each strategy sheet unique.
Because Nicol Bolas is just "a dragon".
Compared to the Eldrazi, who routinely eat entire planes of existence for lunch, I find him to be, yes, just a dragon. A dragon that's good at scheming and being cruel and looking out for number one, but yes, just a dragon.
You mean the same dragon the we just saw completely warp 3 of 8 gods to his bidding, brainwashed the other 5 (these gods being connected the plane itself), and brought an entire plane to involuntarily do his bidding (these three happening while he was weakened), desecrated Amonkhet itself, created a plane(s), been killed and came back to life through his own power and plane, practically caused all of Alara to go to war, harvested most of the mana that came from the Conflux, manipulated Chandra to release the Eldrazi, has said himself he has ruined many planes, and Kruphix believes Bolas to be just as bad as the Eldrazi and Phyrexians when it comes to the threat to Theros and his info was only based on a weakend Bolas. Oh, and he was so good he ended up in another card game, unlike the Eldrazi (that's a joke fact, but it's still true.) You're right though compared to the Eldrazi, which he had a hand in releasing, he's just a plain dragon. Just one of those normal dragons that's a multiplanar threat with schemes and plans spanning 20,000+ years.
All the while Bolas gains far more power while the Eldrazi don't get stronger with each plane they consume. We've seen Bolas be a god and it took the entire universe changing to knock him down a peg, but the Eldrazi were beaten several times, and while I agree some of that were asspulls from bad writing, there is a reason that with all of Bolas's enemies only Umezawa has ever been able to beat him prior, with the use of one insane spell to do it, but not fully kill.
Seal an Eldrazi Titan using the natural features of a plane. Much like on Zendikar if it were on any other plane The GW would get chumped hard by the Eldrazi.
Of course that is why the Eldrazi were a terrible choice for the GW's first opponents and a terrible thing to exist anyways because the only plot they could have had was "Get beat by deus ex machinca." or "Long string of constant loses."
Dragons of Legend, Lead by Scion of the UR-Dragon
The Gitrog Monster
Gonti, Lord of Luxury
Shogun Saskia
Hive World
Atraxa hates fun
Abzan
I assume Dack Fayden is one of the Planeswalkers for the face of a deck - but I don't know who the other one will be.
Custom Set
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hu9uNBSUt92PwGhvexYlwFvsh6_SJBlEEIUV3H9_XyU/edit?usp=sharing
The Amonkhet portion has him being weakened during it. In the story he himself admits that he has to do it while he isn't 100%. Even so Bolas has been gaining power ever since the Mending. Gaining what power he could from the Conflux and gaining the service of thousands, if not 10's of thousands, of undead and eternal servants, and now has a way of creating a portal to take his forces off or to any plane he wishes. He still may not be a god, but he has 20,000+ years of knowledge, planning, and schemes while the Eldrazi only know how to move forward and consume. If Bolas worried about the Eldrazi he wouldn't have had them released. It's very probable he has a use for them, just like with Amonkhet and Kaladesh, and then wherever he may send his forces.
That's not technically true. Umezawa defeated Bolas long ago, but yes he has never been killed.
That can be said for most of the game's surviving cast of characters. In spite of the comparisons between the Gatewatch and Marvel/DC superheroes, MTG is light on in-story resurrections. Ugin (alongside the other changes brought about during the Crux of Fate) is the only genuine example I can name off of the top of my head, though Magic does have a few not-quite-dead moments for other characters. This is all runs counter to how easy it is to perform resurrection in the game proper.