I definitely appreciate Dominaria's diversity. I don't think a block has to encompass the entire plane by any means - I don't think any block set on Dominaria has done that. But more than any other plane, Dominaria feels like a legitimate world to me. Themed planes have their place, but having "The Horror Plane" and "The Greek Plane" and "That One Time We Went To Japan Plane" etc. makes the worlds feel very small and bland to me after a while. I'd love to have more Dominaria-like planes. Just knowing "We're dealing with one region on this plane, which has its own theme and aesthetic, and which is part of a broader, more diverse body" would be great.
Of course I'd also love just Dominaria.
Except, such a visit would lack cohesion. It makes no sense for a world as diverse as Old Dominaria to not have people from other regions visit and influence whatever region we visit, which was one of the big problems of the setting. And if you put to much of it, cohesion goes out the window and the whole thing ends up a hot mess like Invasion block, and lack of it causes questions as well. At least Time Spiral allowed them to "reboot" Dominaria, getting a more coherent world at the end. Old Dominaria is gone, don't expect a revisit to be anything like the old sets.
I edited the second paragraph in this post to explicitly state what you just said; just didn't do it quick enough apparently. There's no reason a Dominaria set needs to be an incoherent, must-feature-everything set like those of olde.
And it is unlikely it will be after getting a "Setting Reboot" via Time Spiral and the Mending.
I completely agree with some of the posts above. That's why you will all find upvotes in your inboxes.
There is a certain monotony in the planes. One all-encompassing theme that spreads across all cards from a block, and that is tiring. In fact, I think the entire concept of planes is a bit silly.
As it stands now, planes are nothing more than a planet. There's no other worlds anywhere. Sure, I'm certain Krishnath will point out some obscure time we went to another planet on another plane, but as it is, the planes might as well be different planets. I can't really explain it better than that. I'll try a little, though.
As I always saw it, planes are akin to entire galaxies. There are a nigh-on infinite number of them and there's tons of things to see and do there. However, all we're seeing is one planet in the entire galaxy. The scope is completely off. Comparison to our own situation:
We have the Milky Way as our playground, but our focus is only on Earth. Even, galactically speaking, our next-door neighbor Mars might have an interesting story to tell. This is the problem I have. The excuse "But we're not there!" might apply to Mars, but there's no such excuse in MTG.
Are we supposed to believe that an entire plane is just one setting?
If you think the concept of planes is tiring, I am sorry to say that you may be playing the wrong game as that is this games Core Concept.
That is objectively not true, Dominaria was a hugely varied plane that was home to (nearly?) all sets for years
The core concept of the game is you being a planeswalker, planes could easily be more varied and more like, you know, worlds, over the course of sets and returns. If they would just put some effort into world building instead of 'horrors? For a dozen sets in 7 years? Our work us done!
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Project Booster Fun makes it less fun to open a booster.
Mercadia and Kamigawa are not going to happen in Standard anytime soon, if at all. Both where pretty reviled sets. Don't get me wrong, both had their good mechanics (Spellshapers for Mercadia, Bushido and Ninjitsu for Kamigawa), but overall, they were just horrendous badly made blocks. We will likely see them both in Auxiliary Products. Indeed, we have been seeing modern parts of Kamigawa show up in both Planechase 2, Commander, and recently in duel decks.
I never understood wotc way of thinking. Just because the block was badly made back then and that there won't be as much hype from the players at first, why not take the opportunity to revisit it and fix its problems and do the plane justice and make it a plane that the players will enjoy. They know what the problems were. Kamigawa for example had too many legends and the flip cards were confusing. It doesn't mean they have to bring that back, they can revisit some of the legends and design the flip cards differently, leave out the least popular mechanics and replace them with new ones. It's still an incredible setting. I think that wotc are just taking the easy way out and just visit planes that did well so they don't have to change anything.
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Just because the block was badly made back then and that there won't be as much hype from the players at first, why not take the opportunity to revisit it and fix its problems and do the plane justice and make it a plane that the players will enjoy.
"let's return to this place that did poorly creatively and mechanically, and caused players to leave the game."
"you're fired"
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Here are the little self-imposed guidelines I'm working with for the multiplayer decks I've been building:
• Must be cheap. Total price tag < $100, preferably < $50. Ideally ~$30. No one card greater than about ~$6
• Format: Modern (makes getting the cards somewhat easier for the play group, and almost all my cards are Modern-legal)
• Must be relatively interesting in 1:1 games. I don't need to win against Splinter Twin, but I should be able to play duels now and then
• Avoid instant-win combos; they only serve to make me target #1, and then the deck is worse than useless because I get killed first, every time
• Must have a funny name!
Interestingly, the things WOTC admits it did wrong with Kamigawa are the exact mistakes they repeated with one of the most popular planes in MTG recently - Zendikar (in BFZ). Focus was on Eldrazi instead of Zendkiar was the main issue, whereas for Kamigawa it was the Kami/Shinto instead of Japan World aspects such as Kamigawa's Ninjas, Samurai and the unique races like the Soratami/Moonfolk. If a plane so popular it remains a 2 on the Rabiah Scale of likelihood to return (even after the catastrophic failure of BFZ by every metric, just like Kamigawa) can be so utterly ruined by the wrong focus, then judging Kamigawa from decades ago for that reason is absurd. Especially since Kamigawa had the unfortunate handicap of following up Mirrodin, which was so OP it nearly killed MTG as a game.
Even if we play devil's advocate with MaRo's argument that Kamigawa is only popular because of Commander (which is false), it just goes to show that the community's dynamic has changed in the last 15 or so years since Kamigawa debuted, when there was no EDH format. So clearly the data is dated at best.
There is no excuse not to use Kamigawa's physical geography and its unique races as the backbone to make it the Japan World it should have always been and still could be now that the Kami War has resolved and millennia have passed. I see no reason to make "Ninja of New Plane" instead of just revisiting Kamigawa and making such a card "Ninja of Minamo" - if it's designed well, Spike and Johnny with play it regardless of what plane it's from. And because it's Kamigawa, as long as the art and flavor are there, Vorthos will all love it, even more so from being set on Kamigawa done right.
First, like Tiro of Meletis was saying, focus on the races instead of the spirits.
Second, the flavor cannot choke the mechanics again and be unbending like it did in the original Kamigawa.
Third, flavor should be more familiar to a western audience.
Fourth, new mechanics to properly portray this kind of flavor.
With those in mind, Kamigawa can actually be a good, if not great, block.
Too much planeswalking is very disorienting. Too many planes means all of them are dispensable, disconnected, and distant.
Dominaria was successful for its purpose: to serve as the central home plane for an epic saga. There is a certain coolness and empathy factor to know that events on some continents of Dominaria had a far-reaching impact on other parts of the plane. Like how a apocalyptic blast led to a dark age and global ice age that affected the global climates and behavior and migrant patterns of struggling species, which led to eventual falls of empires. These historic links between inhabitants from different parts of the same plane enables the audience to form their own connections, akin to tying the common bonds of histories of diverse ancestries.
There is functional need to visit other planes. To balance that, there is also a functional and emotional need to claim a home plane. One that is universal, familiar, full of history, and important enough for the villains to fight over and for heroes to protect at all costs.
It is not known whether any werewolves still exist on Innistrad, but some, perhaps many, might have escaped destruction by slayers and rejected Avacyn's eldritch transformation into wolfir. It was theorized that other lands beyond the great seas harbored exotic species of lycanthropes, and it has been speculated that some werewolves of the known world have fled for those far regions.
For awhile I knew a few people thought a return to Innistrad could have some new horror from another continent appear. Huh, that is a good pitch for Innistrad 3 too, since maybe it had been held back by Avacyn's magic from the main continent.
Honesty the world-building shows a greater view of the planes then the card and storyline do. I have the planeswalker guild to Alara and the art books for Kaladesh and Innistrad and what we see on the cards is like 30-40% what creative has put into the world building/areas/cultures of the world. (my favorite fact from Alara is Esper has people who mentally control artists to perform works of art, although the one controlling the artist gets the credit for the work and the artist is thought of as a tool, like a pain brush or a piano).
Also Dominaria had years of story telling to add onto the plane, the new planes don't have that yet but as we return to them creative can flesh them out more. Like pick only two blocks set on Dominaria and try to say it shows all the elements we're known about the plane.
ON TOPIC: My personal guesses is Atlazan, then Ravnica, then Dominaria for the anniversary of magic, the next return world after that will be Theros.
“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"
Yes. please explain me how focussing on distinct continents instead of monotone planes? They could tell the stories just the way they are doing right now. How could the Kaladesh story not being executed the same way, when Kaladesh was a continent or even country on a multidimensional plane?
Okay, ignoring that you seem to have forgotten a word and I might be misinterpreting your question, here is some fun fact to you:
On most planes it is actually canon that we see only a small part of the world which sometimes is implied to contain more diversity. I think you mentioned "continent Innistrad" before in another post. Doing that exactly would be stupid due to the fact that naming a set after the continent rather than the plane would hide the feature of visiting new planes from player perception (and marketing based around that is a clever move).
Here is what they did though: (unfortunately I cannot right now recall the source - maybe a Planeswalker's Guide or Artbook, maybe social media) They stated that we only visit part of the plane of Innistrad in card sets and have given snippets about other parts of the plane - IIRC more tropical parts with different types of were-creatures (IDK which example they mentioned - Werecats maybe?).
Our story on Kaladesh also is focussed on the city of Ghirapur, the largest city on Kaladesh.
Now the stories of returning sets will always explore the parts of the plane we know first and foremost - and so far they have been anything but lazy about that by creating incredibly deep settings. That doesn't mean the world is restricted to the one city or continent we see, but like every story telling device Magic sets have to restrict their scope, when it comes to what they show us of a world.
The greatest scope we have seen so far outside Dominaria was unfortunately the plane of Zendikar - which had several actually quite diverse (between each other as well as each individually) continents. It's unfortunate that both planes in their most recent stories went through an apocalyptic phase which leaves both in need of rebuilding.
But just based on the locations I recall of the top of my head on pre-Eldrazi Zendikar available online you could run a world-spanning all-year RPG campaign without missing out on glaciers, volcanoes, jungles, oceans, whitewaters, lost cities, hardy settlements, physics-defying gravitational anomalies, vampire cities and probably a lot of things that I won't remember until I look it up.
That's not a dearth of diversity.
I'm fine that some settings are described with a wide focus on seven continents, while others with a narrow focus on a single district of the largest city of a plane. That's because sometimes you want a story about traveling the lands or marching armies and sometimes about students playing pranks on each other in a magical boarding school.
And the reason diversity usually is not as transparent in the card set at a superficial glance? Because marketing likes focus and game design likes focus. And people like to recognize things when they do a revisit.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
So Atlazan seems it can't really be the next block because we would have had 2 new planes by then (Kaladesh and Amonkhet) so there should be a return to a previous plane indeed. Dominaria will probably be kept for next year's 25th celebration. I'd like to revisit New Phyrexia, Lorwyn and Alara.
No, seriously. KAMIGAWA. We did get Tamiyo after all, and she played some major role not to long ago. And last time kamigawa was set in distant past, return would have to be in modern times.
For most active players, Champions of kamigawa looks like some ancient set. Some weren't even born Only few old players like me and, maybe some users of mtgsalvations remember these times. When most powerful equipment was printed in starter deck... Cranial extraction, kokusho, jitta, meloku, SDT, Gifts, and notably Heartbeat combo. Good times.
So... If Dominaria, with all the different climates and cultures is a problem for coherence... What about other planes with different cultures and "climates"?
- Alara: pretty much 5 planes together, which can be seen as similar as having 5 Dominarian continents in the same block, just pick a prominent theme for each one of them. Did the visit seemed incoherent? Never saw anyone complain about that.
Well yes it was, but that was the point. The shard where mini-planes each with very extremely different cultures and races because of the lack of two colors and then see them mixing and merging. Return to Alara has some issues since people would want the shard which are now mixed and mashed together.
So Atlazan seems it can't really be the next block because we would have had 2 new planes by then (Kaladesh and Amonkhet) so there should be a return to a previous plane indeed. Dominaria will probably be kept for next year's 25th celebration. I'd like to revisit New Phyrexia, Lorwyn and Alara.
The ratio is suppose to be roughly 50% and since return blocks we have seen;
Mirrodin (return)
Innistrad
Ravnica(return)
Theros
Tarkir
Zendikar (return)
Innistrad (return)
Kaladesh
Amonkhet
So roughly we have a little more return sets then not or if you count zendikar 1, equal. If we got a new plane then two return planes (my own guess) then it still roughly balances out.
One thought I had: Ravnica has taken over Dominaria's place as nexus of the multiverse. Not canonically, but by way of focus. Eerybody and their mom's been on Ravnica. Heck, even Garruk has been on Ravnica and he HATES cities.
Pretty much is. In the lore it is semi-supported since we where told in the first block story before the guildpact kept planeswalkers out, old walkers where naturally drawn to Ravnica and enough had planeswalker battles it gave Ravnica its diverse mix of races of the plane. When the guildpact broke makes sense that planeswalkers would be naturally draw back to it.
As for the people who say that, for instance, there is more to Innistrad than the continent we've seen, then I tell you: there might as well not be. Have we seen any cards? No, we have not. We have not seen werepanthers, werecapibaras, werechinchillas, and so on. All we have is the werewolves. In a game like Magic, hinting at things doesn't work. In Warhammer, you can say "Well, my army comes from another continent" and then you make your army different from others by way of, say, adding native American aspects to them. They would still be legal in tournaments as well as canon. But you can't do that in MTG. You can't design your own cards from stuff hinted at in the bylines and use them in any tournament setting. Besides...Show, don't tell.
wild defiance shows an exotic wolf creature that Garruk summons and Thing in the Ice looks to have be taken from farther north then the "mainland" we've seen since while cold Innistrad dons't seem to have cold enough winters for icebergs.
Like I said above, we got Dominaria for years of magic, which lead to it getting more to the world added on and so far the second most seen planes are a 4 way tie of Mirrodin, Ravnica, Zendikar and Innistrad at 2 blocks, lets see how things look when we have more planes that have had several blocks set on them.
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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"
MaRo actually explained this on his blog when asked. The reason the planes are focused as they are is the same reason that in Star Wars Hoth is the Ice Planet, Coruscant is the City Planet, and Dagobah is the Swamp planet.
But then Star Wars also has places like the Cantina or episode VII's bar in the forest where there's loads of random weird aliens that are never expanded on or explained. Those places still have a single theme, but one that evokes and depends on the suggestion of a diverse world beyond. I think the way to do Dominaria would be to take that sort of approach to it; maybe the Plane is now geographically quite homogenous but still has all these strange creatures you don't tend to see anywhere else, some of which old players will recognise and some of which are completely new.
It is a little bit different in Star Wars in that Space Travel is common, thus it is *EXPECTED* to see multiple different aliens visiting the other planes. MTG does not have the luxury because Planeswalkers, the only people capable of reliably visiting other worlds, are extremely rare. So your argument is a false equivalency that is not really relevant to M:TG.
No, seriously. KAMIGAWA. We did get Tamiyo after all, and she played some major role not to long ago. And last time kamigawa was set in distant past, return would have to be in modern times.
For most active players, Champions of kamigawa looks like some ancient set. Some weren't even born Only few old players like me and, maybe some users of mtgsalvations remember these times. When most powerful equipment was printed in starter deck... Cranial extraction, kokusho, jitta, meloku, SDT, Gifts, and notably Heartbeat combo. Good times.
Kamigawa is extremely unlikely to happen outside of Auxiliary products, for reasons I have mentioned previously. Tamiyo is basically WotC saying, here is something for the few fans of Kamigawa, we have not forgotten you, but we will not be revisiting the plane in Standard anytime soon, if ever. There is a reason that Kamigawa is an eight on the Rabiah Scale, it is simply to unpopular to revisit and almost killed M:TG. The thing is though, WotC nailed the flavor of the plane, and a few of the mechanics where good, but unfortunately, most of the block was, to put it mildly, a steaming pile of horse apples. It nearly killed the Legendary supertype (If every rare creature is legendary, then none of them are), some of the mechanics that had potential (Splice) were marred by being confined to by extremely parasitic (splice onto Arcane), and many of the cards were overcosted compared to what they did. But thanks to the rise of the Vocal Vorthoses among us, we will revisit it in auxiliary products, which is how we ended up with Kaseto.
One thought I had: Ravnica has taken over Dominaria's place as nexus of the multiverse. Not canonically, but by way of focus. Eerybody and their mom's been on Ravnica. Heck, even Garruk has been on Ravnica and he HATES cities.
As for the people who say that, for instance, there is more to Innistrad than the continent we've seen, then I tell you: there might as well not be. Have we seen any cards? No, we have not. We have not seen werepanthers, werecapibaras, werechinchillas, and so on. All we have is the werewolves. In a game like Magic, hinting at things doesn't work. In Warhammer, you can say "Well, my army comes from another continent" and then you make your army different from others by way of, say, adding native American aspects to them. They would still be legal in tournaments as well as canon. But you can't do that in MTG. You can't design your own cards from stuff hinted at in the bylines and use them in any tournament setting. Besides...Show, don't tell.
Ravnica has become the new planar nexus now that the shard has been reintegrated into the multiverse. This was pretty much confirmed during our last vist.
As for there is more to Innistrad than the one continent we visit, there is. This was outright stated during Avacyn Restored. Many of the werewolves fled to another continent during the story.
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It's about time for the reserved list to die, for the sake of Vintage and Legacy (And Commander).
Like I said above, we got Dominaria for years of magic, which lead to it getting more to the world added on and so far the second most seen planes are a 4 way tie of Mirrodin, Ravnica, Zendikar and Innistrad at 2 blocks, lets see how things look when we have more planes that have had several blocks set on them.
At the rate they flip-flop on new and old planes, no plane in the foreseeable future could match the number of sets and rich history for Dominaria. Which had around 24 sets. How long would it take before we see 24 "Return to Ravnica" sets? (if you want to math it out. Rav has 6 sets so far. New blocks get only 2 sets, so 9 times more we must return to Rav. Each return interval, though, is about 5-6 years. So after 40 to 60 years, we may match the amount of history from Rav plane to Dominaria. Even though Dom has been sidelined for 10 years now.)
Moreover, as we visit more and more new planes, that means more planes that we want to revisit. This would extend the interval of return to a specific plane. That means even the more popular planes now will get fewer and fewer return sets and longer waits between returns. (From this pessimistic view, it will take Rav maybe 100 years to see 24 sets to match Dom.)
Like I said above, we got Dominaria for years of magic, which lead to it getting more to the world added on and so far the second most seen planes are a 4 way tie of Mirrodin, Ravnica, Zendikar and Innistrad at 2 blocks, lets see how things look when we have more planes that have had several blocks set on them.
At the rate they flip-flop on new and old planes, no plane in the foreseeable future could match the number of sets and rich history for Dominaria. Which had around 24 sets. How long would it take before we see 24 "Return to Ravnica" sets? (if you want to math it out. Rav has 6 sets so far. New blocks get only 2 sets, so 9 times more we must return to Rav. Each return interval, though, is about 5-6 years. So after 40 to 60 years, we may match the amount of history from Rav plane to Dominaria. Even though Dom has been sidelined for 10 years now.)
Moreover, as we visit more and more new planes, that means more planes that we want to revisit. This would extend the interval of return to a specific plane. That means even the more popular planes now will get fewer and fewer return sets and longer waits between returns. (From this pessimistic view, it will take Rav maybe 100 years to see 24 sets to match Dom.)
Well duh it would take years for the planes to be built up as well as Dominiaria, it was the setting for ~8 years, thats the biggest reason they haven't returned there. Also I said blocks (since that is when creative would have to flesh out/map/reveal any areas they want to add on/focus on), so we'd need to see Ravnica and Co. have as many blocks as Dominiaria we'd need to see to each plane ~ 8 times so for Ravnica and Co. we'd need to go back only 6 or so times not 9. Also lets us look at that, we've seen each return plane 2/8 (1/4, 25%) the amount that Dominiaria has shown.
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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"
In the article talking about the new arts that some of the cards in mm17 got, they tell where the setting is, such as cavern of souls is in innistrad, serum visions is new phyrexia and goblin guide is from zendikar. But terminate and stony silence got "not important" as a setting. Is this maybe some kind of clue? You would think that maybe it just didn't have a specific setting but the last one shows guttural response and it says "not setting-specific"
In the article talking about the new arts that some of the cards in mm17 got, they tell where the setting is, such as cavern of souls is in innistrad, serum visions is new phyrexia and goblin guide is from zendikar. But terminate and stony silence got "not important" as a setting. Is this maybe some kind of clue? You would think that maybe it just didn't have a specific setting but the last one shows guttural response and it says "not setting-specific"
They got "Not Important" because they aren't important, the three that got specific planes attached to them are very famous cards from those specific settings. Cavern of Souls is from Innistrad, Serum Visions is Mirrodin/New Phyrexia, and Goblin Guide is so Zendikari that it almost hurts. None of them have ever been printed in a setting outside of where they first appeared, even Serum Visions appearance in Conspiracy was not set on Fiora.
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It's about time for the reserved list to die, for the sake of Vintage and Legacy (And Commander).
Well duh it would take years for the planes to be built up as well as Dominiaria, it was the setting for ~8 years, thats the biggest reason they haven't returned there. Also I said blocks (since that is when creative would have to flesh out/map/reveal any areas they want to add on/focus on), so we'd need to see Ravnica and Co. have as many blocks as Dominiaria we'd need to see to each plane ~ 8 times so for Ravnica and Co. we'd need to go back only 6 or so times not 9. Also lets us look at that, we've seen each return plane 2/8 (1/4, 25%) the amount that Dominiaria has shown.
even if you count by block, it take at best 18 years if they revisit one particular setting every 3 years. and you realize it has been 13 years since they started to depart from Dominaria. by your '25%' amount, to match Dom would take another 39 years.
Dominaria being the main setting for 8 years is not a valid reason to ignore it for next 10 or 20 years or forever. it was and to this point still is the most comprehensive. most versatile. most memorable plane they have developed. so they abandon it because it was too epic, too many unforgettable characters and lore built from it? what kind of logic is that?
Well duh it would take years for the planes to be built up as well as Dominiaria, it was the setting for ~8 years, thats the biggest reason they haven't returned there. Also I said blocks (since that is when creative would have to flesh out/map/reveal any areas they want to add on/focus on), so we'd need to see Ravnica and Co. have as many blocks as Dominiaria we'd need to see to each plane ~ 8 times so for Ravnica and Co. we'd need to go back only 6 or so times not 9. Also lets us look at that, we've seen each return plane 2/8 (1/4, 25%) the amount that Dominiaria has shown.
even if you count by block, it take at best 18 years if they revisit one particular setting every 3 years. and you realize it has been 13 years since they started to depart from Dominaria. by your '25%' amount, to match Dom would take another 39 years. Dominaria being the main setting for 8 years is not a valid reason to ignore it for next 10 or 20 years or forever. it was and to this point still is the most comprehensive. most versatile. most memorable plane they have developed. so they abandon it because it was too epic, too many unforgettable characters and lore built from it? what kind of logic is that?
Am I saying that we should never go back to Dominaria? No (in fact a page ago you can see I think we'll see Dominaria in fall of 2018 so don't put words in my mouth), all I've said is A) agreeing with some of the echo chamber of having such a versatile world means Wizards are having issues pinning down what a Dominaria set in modern magic would focus on and B) Wizards is giving the world a break after it being the setting for most of magic (a game about wizards that are suppose travel between many different worlds), which is C) the reason it is so big and diverse and finally D) that is it kinda unfair to compare the current worlds to Dominaria since Dominaria has had ~8 years of storyline and world building where each of the other return planes have only had 25% of the exposure that Dominaria has gotten. Those are the point I was to make.
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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"
To be fair, how long they spent in Dominaria is almost irrelevant now. Ive been playing almost as long as the game has been around so I was lucky enough to experience it in all its glory, but I would wager a large percentage of the people who play MTG nowadays never knew it. I also think with the amount of backstory they have to work with, they have the chance to take the storyline any number of ways.....all of which HAVE to be better than the tiresome Gatewatch being shoved down our throats. The fans and the game deserve another epic story (or the continuation of one long since touched upon)
To be fair, how long they spent in Dominaria is almost irrelevant now. Ive been playing almost as long as the game has been around so I was lucky enough to experience it in all its glory, but I would wager a large percentage of the people who play MTG nowadays never knew it. I also think with the amount of backstory they have to work with, they have the chance to take the storyline any number of ways.....all of which HAVE to be better than the tiresome Gatewatch being shoved down our throats. The fans and the game deserve another epic story (or the continuation of one long since touched upon)
No, we do not need or want another weatherlight saga. The weatherlight saga sucked something fierce. It got so bad they had to resort to a literal Deus Ex Author to end it.
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It's about time for the reserved list to die, for the sake of Vintage and Legacy (And Commander).
To be fair, how long they spent in Dominaria is almost irrelevant now. Ive been playing almost as long as the game has been around so I was lucky enough to experience it in all its glory, but I would wager a large percentage of the people who play MTG nowadays never knew it. I also think with the amount of backstory they have to work with, they have the chance to take the storyline any number of ways.....all of which HAVE to be better than the tiresome Gatewatch being shoved down our throats. The fans and the game deserve another epic story (or the continuation of one long since touched upon)
No, we do not need or want another weatherlight saga. The weatherlight saga sucked something fierce. It got so bad they had to resort to a literal Deus Ex Author to end it.
At least the book wasn't written by Robert Wintermute. My god. That guy is so internet generation I felt my ovaries shrink.
True, but the story was still horrendous. Urza's murder of Taysir was such an out of character moment it was horrendous, and given that there was no way in Hades that the Titans could defeat Yawgmoth they had to have the actual friggin author of the book say that Yawgmoth died in the friggin book. It was bad, bad, bad, bad, all around. As powerful as Yawgmoth was at the end of the weatherlight saga, he was an actual god that there was literally no way for an oldwalker, or even multiple oldwalkers to defeat him. If a story goes so far that there is no way for the "heroes" (and I use that term lightly considering Urza's behavior) to defeat the villain, then the villain should win. But WotC couldn't have that, as it would kill the franchise, so they had the Author of the book pull something that should never, under any circumstance, be done in a book other than parodies: Put themselves in the story as the writer and declare the villain has a weakness, effectively rewriting reality to make it happen. It's not just bad writing, but horrendous story telling. And that was just the culmination of that abortion of a storyline that got worse and worse from Urza's Saga onward.
The stories these days may or may not be good (some are excellent), but at least they are consistent.
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It's about time for the reserved list to die, for the sake of Vintage and Legacy (And Commander).
Urza's complexity makes him so much more than anything we have now. In terms of colors, he was WURB whereas the new walkers have pretty much no depth. They are almost all squarely rooted in one or two colors and do not grow beyond the most basic tenets of those colors. Not Tamiyo nor Nicol Bolas in the three-color slot are particularily well-thought out. Only Sarkhan had an appreciable arc. That is 1/3 in the three-color walker department and for the mono or dual ones, there is almost nothing.
So you would rank consistency above quality?
That wasn't my point. The Weatherlight Saga wasn't good, it hadn't been good since WotC took the story from MaRo and veered it in an entirely different direction and handed the writing duties to one bad writer after another ending in, as I mentioned, a completely out of character action by Urza (the murder of Taysir) and a LITERAL Deus Ex Author. It was a horrendous read, I've read fanfiction by third graders that was more coherent and well written.
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It's about time for the reserved list to die, for the sake of Vintage and Legacy (And Commander).
Urza's complexity makes him so much more than anything we have now. In terms of colors, he was WURB whereas the new walkers have pretty much no depth. They are almost all squarely rooted in one or two colors and do not grow beyond the most basic tenets of those colors. Not Tamiyo nor Nicol Bolas in the three-color slot are particularily well-thought out. Only Sarkhan had an appreciable arc. That is 1/3 in the three-color walker department and for the mono or dual ones, there is almost nothing.
So you would rank consistency above quality?
That wasn't my point. The Weatherlight Saga wasn't good, it hadn't been good since WotC took the story from MaRo and veered it in an entirely different direction and handed the writing duties to one bad writer after another ending in, as I mentioned, a completely out of character action by Urza (the murder of Taysir) and a LITERAL Deus Ex Author. It was a horrendous read, I've read fanfiction by third graders that was more coherent and well written.
J. Robert King was a great writer. What are you talking about?
Even a good writer can write a bad book if given a steaming pile of excrement to work with. The weatherlight saga post Tempest block was a steaming pile of excrement. If you have to end the story with a literal deus ex author (i.e. the author intervening directly in the story), then the story is a heaping pile of excrement.
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It's about time for the reserved list to die, for the sake of Vintage and Legacy (And Commander).
I watched as Ajani stalked away from us, pulling his cloak closer and vanishing in a flash of light. My mind followed after him briefly as he disappeared from my reach, his thoughts fading within the impenetrable Blind Eternities. Behind me, Gideon cleared his throat, and I turned and gave him a quick nod. "We're in the clear."
"Let's move quickly then," Gideon replied. "And you're sure you know of the place we are to meet him after, Liliana?"
Liliana raised an eyebrow, a languid hand drifting up to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "My dear Gideon, I've traveled to countless worlds in the Multiverse in the centuries before you were born. I know many places, and I know the place Ajani spoke of especially well."
"We'll trust you to navigate, then. Both to Amonkhet and to our rendezvous after." Gideon flashed what I'm sure he intended as a warm smile at Liliana.
So the plane after Amonkhet is a place that is familiar to Lili and Ajani, but unfamiliar to Gideon, Jace, Chandra, and Nissa. That should narrow the possibilities down quite a bit.
I watched as Ajani stalked away from us, pulling his cloak closer and vanishing in a flash of light. My mind followed after him briefly as he disappeared from my reach, his thoughts fading within the impenetrable Blind Eternities. Behind me, Gideon cleared his throat, and I turned and gave him a quick nod. "We're in the clear."
"Let's move quickly then," Gideon replied. "And you're sure you know of the place we are to meet him after, Liliana?"
Liliana raised an eyebrow, a languid hand drifting up to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "My dear Gideon, I've traveled to countless worlds in the Multiverse in the centuries before you were born. I know many places, and I know the place Ajani spoke of especially well."
"We'll trust you to navigate, then. Both to Amonkhet and to our rendezvous after." Gideon flashed what I'm sure he intended as a warm smile at Liliana.
So the plane after Amonkhet is a place that is familiar to Lili and Ajani, but unfamiliar to Gideon, Jace, Chandra, and Nissa. That should narrow the possibilities down quite a bit.
So it wouldn't be Theros, Alara, Innistrad, Ravnica, Zendikar, Lorwyn, Kaladesh, Regatha, Kaldheim, or Kamigawa. That leaves, Tarkir, Shandalar, New Phyrexia, Fiora, Vryn, planes we don't know about, and of course: Dominaria.
I think Atlazan is happening next, but occurring concurrently with the events of Amonkhet. Then they meet up to lick their wounds in Dominaria.
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That is objectively not true, Dominaria was a hugely varied plane that was home to (nearly?) all sets for years
The core concept of the game is you being a planeswalker, planes could easily be more varied and more like, you know, worlds, over the course of sets and returns. If they would just put some effort into world building instead of 'horrors? For a dozen sets in 7 years? Our work us done!
I never understood wotc way of thinking. Just because the block was badly made back then and that there won't be as much hype from the players at first, why not take the opportunity to revisit it and fix its problems and do the plane justice and make it a plane that the players will enjoy. They know what the problems were. Kamigawa for example had too many legends and the flip cards were confusing. It doesn't mean they have to bring that back, they can revisit some of the legends and design the flip cards differently, leave out the least popular mechanics and replace them with new ones. It's still an incredible setting. I think that wotc are just taking the easy way out and just visit planes that did well so they don't have to change anything.
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"let's return to this place that did poorly creatively and mechanically, and caused players to leave the game."
"you're fired"
• Must be cheap. Total price tag < $100, preferably < $50. Ideally ~$30. No one card greater than about ~$6
• Format: Modern (makes getting the cards somewhat easier for the play group, and almost all my cards are Modern-legal)
• Must be relatively interesting in 1:1 games. I don't need to win against Splinter Twin, but I should be able to play duels now and then
• Avoid instant-win combos; they only serve to make me target #1, and then the deck is worse than useless because I get killed first, every time
• Must have a funny name!
Even if we play devil's advocate with MaRo's argument that Kamigawa is only popular because of Commander (which is false), it just goes to show that the community's dynamic has changed in the last 15 or so years since Kamigawa debuted, when there was no EDH format. So clearly the data is dated at best.
There is no excuse not to use Kamigawa's physical geography and its unique races as the backbone to make it the Japan World it should have always been and still could be now that the Kami War has resolved and millennia have passed. I see no reason to make "Ninja of New Plane" instead of just revisiting Kamigawa and making such a card "Ninja of Minamo" - if it's designed well, Spike and Johnny with play it regardless of what plane it's from. And because it's Kamigawa, as long as the art and flavor are there, Vorthos will all love it, even more so from being set on Kamigawa done right.
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
Second, the flavor cannot choke the mechanics again and be unbending like it did in the original Kamigawa.
Third, flavor should be more familiar to a western audience.
Fourth, new mechanics to properly portray this kind of flavor.
With those in mind, Kamigawa can actually be a good, if not great, block.
Dominaria was successful for its purpose: to serve as the central home plane for an epic saga. There is a certain coolness and empathy factor to know that events on some continents of Dominaria had a far-reaching impact on other parts of the plane. Like how a apocalyptic blast led to a dark age and global ice age that affected the global climates and behavior and migrant patterns of struggling species, which led to eventual falls of empires. These historic links between inhabitants from different parts of the same plane enables the audience to form their own connections, akin to tying the common bonds of histories of diverse ancestries.
There is functional need to visit other planes. To balance that, there is also a functional and emotional need to claim a home plane. One that is universal, familiar, full of history, and important enough for the villains to fight over and for heroes to protect at all costs.
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It is. From the Avacyn Restored guide;
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/planeswalkers-guide-part-2-2012-04-18
For awhile I knew a few people thought a return to Innistrad could have some new horror from another continent appear. Huh, that is a good pitch for Innistrad 3 too, since maybe it had been held back by Avacyn's magic from the main continent.
Honesty the world-building shows a greater view of the planes then the card and storyline do. I have the planeswalker guild to Alara and the art books for Kaladesh and Innistrad and what we see on the cards is like 30-40% what creative has put into the world building/areas/cultures of the world. (my favorite fact from Alara is Esper has people who mentally control artists to perform works of art, although the one controlling the artist gets the credit for the work and the artist is thought of as a tool, like a pain brush or a piano).
Also Dominaria had years of story telling to add onto the plane, the new planes don't have that yet but as we return to them creative can flesh them out more. Like pick only two blocks set on Dominaria and try to say it shows all the elements we're known about the plane.
ON TOPIC: My personal guesses is Atlazan, then Ravnica, then Dominaria for the anniversary of magic, the next return world after that will be Theros.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Okay, ignoring that you seem to have forgotten a word and I might be misinterpreting your question, here is some fun fact to you:
On most planes it is actually canon that we see only a small part of the world which sometimes is implied to contain more diversity. I think you mentioned "continent Innistrad" before in another post. Doing that exactly would be stupid due to the fact that naming a set after the continent rather than the plane would hide the feature of visiting new planes from player perception (and marketing based around that is a clever move).
Here is what they did though: (unfortunately I cannot right now recall the source - maybe a Planeswalker's Guide or Artbook, maybe social media) They stated that we only visit part of the plane of Innistrad in card sets and have given snippets about other parts of the plane - IIRC more tropical parts with different types of were-creatures (IDK which example they mentioned - Werecats maybe?).
Our story on Kaladesh also is focussed on the city of Ghirapur, the largest city on Kaladesh.
Now the stories of returning sets will always explore the parts of the plane we know first and foremost - and so far they have been anything but lazy about that by creating incredibly deep settings. That doesn't mean the world is restricted to the one city or continent we see, but like every story telling device Magic sets have to restrict their scope, when it comes to what they show us of a world.
The greatest scope we have seen so far outside Dominaria was unfortunately the plane of Zendikar - which had several actually quite diverse (between each other as well as each individually) continents. It's unfortunate that both planes in their most recent stories went through an apocalyptic phase which leaves both in need of rebuilding.
But just based on the locations I recall of the top of my head on pre-Eldrazi Zendikar available online you could run a world-spanning all-year RPG campaign without missing out on glaciers, volcanoes, jungles, oceans, whitewaters, lost cities, hardy settlements, physics-defying gravitational anomalies, vampire cities and probably a lot of things that I won't remember until I look it up.
That's not a dearth of diversity.
I'm fine that some settings are described with a wide focus on seven continents, while others with a narrow focus on a single district of the largest city of a plane. That's because sometimes you want a story about traveling the lands or marching armies and sometimes about students playing pranks on each other in a magical boarding school.
And the reason diversity usually is not as transparent in the card set at a superficial glance? Because marketing likes focus and game design likes focus. And people like to recognize things when they do a revisit.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
Remnants: Valheim
Legendary Journey: Heroes & Planeswalkers
Saga: Shards of Rabiah
Legends: The Elder Dragons
Read up on Red Flags & NWO
For most active players, Champions of kamigawa looks like some ancient set. Some weren't even born Only few old players like me and, maybe some users of mtgsalvations remember these times. When most powerful equipment was printed in starter deck... Cranial extraction, kokusho, jitta, meloku, SDT, Gifts, and notably Heartbeat combo. Good times.
Decks:
EDH: :symbw::symuw::symub:Merieke Ri Berit:symbw::symuw::symub:
Archenemy EDH: Reaper king
(")(")
GONZO
Genius, fast, and long eared.
Well yes it was, but that was the point. The shard where mini-planes each with very extremely different cultures and races because of the lack of two colors and then see them mixing and merging. Return to Alara has some issues since people would want the shard which are now mixed and mashed together.
The ratio is suppose to be roughly 50% and since return blocks we have seen;
Mirrodin (return)
Innistrad
Ravnica(return)
Theros
Tarkir
Zendikar (return)
Innistrad (return)
Kaladesh
Amonkhet
So roughly we have a little more return sets then not or if you count zendikar 1, equal. If we got a new plane then two return planes (my own guess) then it still roughly balances out.
Pretty much is. In the lore it is semi-supported since we where told in the first block story before the guildpact kept planeswalkers out, old walkers where naturally drawn to Ravnica and enough had planeswalker battles it gave Ravnica its diverse mix of races of the plane. When the guildpact broke makes sense that planeswalkers would be naturally draw back to it.
wild defiance shows an exotic wolf creature that Garruk summons and Thing in the Ice looks to have be taken from farther north then the "mainland" we've seen since while cold Innistrad dons't seem to have cold enough winters for icebergs.
Like I said above, we got Dominaria for years of magic, which lead to it getting more to the world added on and so far the second most seen planes are a 4 way tie of Mirrodin, Ravnica, Zendikar and Innistrad at 2 blocks, lets see how things look when we have more planes that have had several blocks set on them.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
It is a little bit different in Star Wars in that Space Travel is common, thus it is *EXPECTED* to see multiple different aliens visiting the other planes. MTG does not have the luxury because Planeswalkers, the only people capable of reliably visiting other worlds, are extremely rare. So your argument is a false equivalency that is not really relevant to M:TG.
Kamigawa is extremely unlikely to happen outside of Auxiliary products, for reasons I have mentioned previously. Tamiyo is basically WotC saying, here is something for the few fans of Kamigawa, we have not forgotten you, but we will not be revisiting the plane in Standard anytime soon, if ever. There is a reason that Kamigawa is an eight on the Rabiah Scale, it is simply to unpopular to revisit and almost killed M:TG. The thing is though, WotC nailed the flavor of the plane, and a few of the mechanics where good, but unfortunately, most of the block was, to put it mildly, a steaming pile of horse apples. It nearly killed the Legendary supertype (If every rare creature is legendary, then none of them are), some of the mechanics that had potential (Splice) were marred by being confined to by extremely parasitic (splice onto Arcane), and many of the cards were overcosted compared to what they did. But thanks to the rise of the Vocal Vorthoses among us, we will revisit it in auxiliary products, which is how we ended up with Kaseto.
Ravnica has become the new planar nexus now that the shard has been reintegrated into the multiverse. This was pretty much confirmed during our last vist.
As for there is more to Innistrad than the one continent we visit, there is. This was outright stated during Avacyn Restored. Many of the werewolves fled to another continent during the story.
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Numquam evolutioni obstes. Solum conculceris.
Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.
At the rate they flip-flop on new and old planes, no plane in the foreseeable future could match the number of sets and rich history for Dominaria. Which had around 24 sets. How long would it take before we see 24 "Return to Ravnica" sets? (if you want to math it out. Rav has 6 sets so far. New blocks get only 2 sets, so 9 times more we must return to Rav. Each return interval, though, is about 5-6 years. So after 40 to 60 years, we may match the amount of history from Rav plane to Dominaria. Even though Dom has been sidelined for 10 years now.)
Moreover, as we visit more and more new planes, that means more planes that we want to revisit. This would extend the interval of return to a specific plane. That means even the more popular planes now will get fewer and fewer return sets and longer waits between returns. (From this pessimistic view, it will take Rav maybe 100 years to see 24 sets to match Dom.)
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Well duh it would take years for the planes to be built up as well as Dominiaria, it was the setting for ~8 years, thats the biggest reason they haven't returned there. Also I said blocks (since that is when creative would have to flesh out/map/reveal any areas they want to add on/focus on), so we'd need to see Ravnica and Co. have as many blocks as Dominiaria we'd need to see to each plane ~ 8 times so for Ravnica and Co. we'd need to go back only 6 or so times not 9. Also lets us look at that, we've seen each return plane 2/8 (1/4, 25%) the amount that Dominiaria has shown.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/modern-masters-2017-edition-new-art-descriptions-2017-03-28
They got "Not Important" because they aren't important, the three that got specific planes attached to them are very famous cards from those specific settings. Cavern of Souls is from Innistrad, Serum Visions is Mirrodin/New Phyrexia, and Goblin Guide is so Zendikari that it almost hurts. None of them have ever been printed in a setting outside of where they first appeared, even Serum Visions appearance in Conspiracy was not set on Fiora.
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Numquam evolutioni obstes. Solum conculceris.
Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.
even if you count by block, it take at best 18 years if they revisit one particular setting every 3 years. and you realize it has been 13 years since they started to depart from Dominaria. by your '25%' amount, to match Dom would take another 39 years.
Dominaria being the main setting for 8 years is not a valid reason to ignore it for next 10 or 20 years or forever. it was and to this point still is the most comprehensive. most versatile. most memorable plane they have developed. so they abandon it because it was too epic, too many unforgettable characters and lore built from it? what kind of logic is that?
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Am I saying that we should never go back to Dominaria? No (in fact a page ago you can see I think we'll see Dominaria in fall of 2018 so don't put words in my mouth), all I've said is A) agreeing with some of the echo chamber of having such a versatile world means Wizards are having issues pinning down what a Dominaria set in modern magic would focus on and B) Wizards is giving the world a break after it being the setting for most of magic (a game about wizards that are suppose travel between many different worlds), which is C) the reason it is so big and diverse and finally D) that is it kinda unfair to compare the current worlds to Dominaria since Dominaria has had ~8 years of storyline and world building where each of the other return planes have only had 25% of the exposure that Dominaria has gotten. Those are the point I was to make.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
No, we do not need or want another weatherlight saga. The weatherlight saga sucked something fierce. It got so bad they had to resort to a literal Deus Ex Author to end it.
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Numquam evolutioni obstes. Solum conculceris.
Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.
True, but the story was still horrendous. Urza's murder of Taysir was such an out of character moment it was horrendous, and given that there was no way in Hades that the Titans could defeat Yawgmoth they had to have the actual friggin author of the book say that Yawgmoth died in the friggin book. It was bad, bad, bad, bad, all around. As powerful as Yawgmoth was at the end of the weatherlight saga, he was an actual god that there was literally no way for an oldwalker, or even multiple oldwalkers to defeat him. If a story goes so far that there is no way for the "heroes" (and I use that term lightly considering Urza's behavior) to defeat the villain, then the villain should win. But WotC couldn't have that, as it would kill the franchise, so they had the Author of the book pull something that should never, under any circumstance, be done in a book other than parodies: Put themselves in the story as the writer and declare the villain has a weakness, effectively rewriting reality to make it happen. It's not just bad writing, but horrendous story telling. And that was just the culmination of that abortion of a storyline that got worse and worse from Urza's Saga onward.
The stories these days may or may not be good (some are excellent), but at least they are consistent.
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Numquam evolutioni obstes. Solum conculceris.
Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.
That wasn't my point. The Weatherlight Saga wasn't good, it hadn't been good since WotC took the story from MaRo and veered it in an entirely different direction and handed the writing duties to one bad writer after another ending in, as I mentioned, a completely out of character action by Urza (the murder of Taysir) and a LITERAL Deus Ex Author. It was a horrendous read, I've read fanfiction by third graders that was more coherent and well written.
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Numquam evolutioni obstes. Solum conculceris.
Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.
Even a good writer can write a bad book if given a steaming pile of excrement to work with. The weatherlight saga post Tempest block was a steaming pile of excrement. If you have to end the story with a literal deus ex author (i.e. the author intervening directly in the story), then the story is a heaping pile of excrement.
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Numquam evolutioni obstes. Solum conculceris.
Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.
So the plane after Amonkhet is a place that is familiar to Lili and Ajani, but unfamiliar to Gideon, Jace, Chandra, and Nissa. That should narrow the possibilities down quite a bit.
So it wouldn't be Theros, Alara, Innistrad, Ravnica, Zendikar, Lorwyn, Kaladesh, Regatha, Kaldheim, or Kamigawa. That leaves, Tarkir, Shandalar, New Phyrexia, Fiora, Vryn, planes we don't know about, and of course: Dominaria.
I think Atlazan is happening next, but occurring concurrently with the events of Amonkhet. Then they meet up to lick their wounds in Dominaria.