burning_paladin, im sorry are you really trying to play off the people who committed genocide, instituted slavery, and practised brutal economic exploitation for centuries as the victims in this conflict?
History is seldom as black-and-white as people like to imagine. Any time different peoples come into conflict, you can find heroes and villains on both sides. It is also important to bear in mind that the most powerful weapon in the conquistadors' arsenal was one they didn't know they had, and, having met humans from a wide variety of backgrounds, I suspect that most of the Spaniards would have been horrified at what the microbes they carried could do to the people they met. Cortez and his comrades were initially heroes to many natives who they helped to overthrow the oppressive Triple Alliance that dominated much of northern Mexico. Then introduced European diseases began to ravage native populations, and the Spanish found that they were dealing with peoples that had lost the ability to govern themselves. Wave after wave of disease kept disrupting these societies. How could a good person not step in, take over, to try to help these people whose social fabric had been torn apart, and continued to be torn apart? How could a selfish person not take advantage of the situation? We are all motivated by a complex web of selfish and altruistic impulses, and this was an unparalleled moment in human history where the most benign of intentions could lead to great evil, and opportunities for self-enrichment were unbounded. It would take many extraordinary people on the Spanish side to prevent what happened, but like every human society, the vast majority of people available to them were quite ordinary. That is, in my mind, the greatest tragedy of contact - it was inevitable.
of course every conquistador wasnt horrible and every mesoamerican was not a saint. however, what burning paladin is fundamentally arguing, i believe, is that the conquistadors are being treated unfairly, which i strongly disagree with. he is trying to depict (or seems like he is trying to depict) the aztecs and their neighbors and their cultures as brutal, savage, violent cultures and the conquistadors as simply honorable soldiers who tried to write the cultural ills they saw and who's own centuries of brutality, the repercussions of which people alive today still endure, were somethings that could not be helped or were misunderstood. i think that sort of thinking is deeply, deeply flawed.
burning_paladin, im sorry are you really trying to play off the people who committed genocide, instituted slavery, and practised brutal economic exploitation for centuries as the victims in this conflict?
portrayals of oppressed peoples (the mesoamericans) must be done much more sensitively than portrayals of oppressors (the spanish, the church). while not all conquistadors/spaniards/catholics were bad and not all mesoamerican were good, only one of those groups had to endure genocide, slavery, conquest, subjugation, economic disenfranchisement and exploitation among other horrors at the hands of the other. when representing these cultures it is important to carefully consider it and depict it based on its own merits, rather than through the lenses of the oppressors or in way where it is defined by its subjugation. that is why they feel the need to skate around things like human sacrifice and bring in consultants for those. the spanish depictions come with none of this baggage.
I know you get it but Innistrad is heavily German inspired, not Slavic, and Gothic Horror originated in England and Germany mostly, so comparing those two is a pretty reasonable comparison.
Going off what you said in the spoiler tag, I think it would be best for Magic to have two weekly story columns. One called Magic Story or whatever that follows the Gatewatch and whatever they're doing, the main storyline - like what we've been getting recently. The other column, call it Uncharted Realms, could be something secondary, that explores the world we are visiting and maybe only tangentially/not at all, relates to the main storyline. Maybe it could be biweekly rather than weekly, or something. A couple vignettes about interesting characters around the world (like the story about The Gitrog Monster) or a small side series about some legendary creature dealing with a problem or whatever (like expanding upon Hal and Alana and Arlin Kord that we got in the very first SOI story), because I agree with you: the story feels like it is lacking depth. I feel like huge failings of these last two worlds is that I didn't really feel connected to the loss - personally I didn't care about the Zendikari, I didn't care about Avacyn very much because I felt like the roles in the story were glossed over, and I think partially this is because they didn't have enough words to tell us about them. I think that it might help with the official story's pacing because that often feels rushed in the end, but I'm a little more skeptical because the early parts of the story feels extremely slow.
I don't know how logistically and financially feasible this is, and I don't want the quality of the story to suffer for this, but I think it would go a long way to help out magics story problems.
The DnD thing also told us that one of the old Vampire bloodlines was called the Duskens, with their progenitor Irska Dusken, who was killed by Strefan Maurer which scattered the Duskens. Also names the twins of Maurer estate, talks about Bitterheart and other stuff in there.
I think the reason Lightning Strike hasn't been in standard is because they thought Draconic Roar would have taken its place, when it did not.
I'm pretty sure the reason Lightning Strike and its ilk have disappeared from Standard (aside from the fact that Wizards has had a hard-on for White dominance in Standard for literally seven years, barring a brief Devotion respite in Theros) is because they're considered too strong for Limited. It's not the only decision Wizards has made that ruins Standard for the sake of Limited, but it's definitely the most damaging to color-balance.
Lol. No. This is clearly not why. Lightning Strikes been gone for a year, and now its back. In the mean time we had Draconic Roar, which is, in fact, a Lightning Strike variant. Most draft formats in the past couple years have had some Lighnting Strike type card. (Between Lightning Strike, Searing Spear and Draconic Roar).
I don't think this is true. Completely conjecture, but I think the reason Lightning Strike hasn't been in standard is because they thought Draconic Roar would have taken its place, when it did not. And the reason this isn't Instant speed is because they didn't want it to be 100% better than Lightning Strike. Strike will be back, they're just trying out slightly different effects for now. The last one, Draconic Roar, didn't really work, but this one might.
You may be right. I interpreted the last two paragraphs to mean, "by not having Bolt, we get to try out neat Lightning Strike and Shock variants for standard."
I guess that it is still decent removal. I don't get why they think that Lightning Strike is too powerful though.
I don't remember the source offhand, but a recent Stoddard (I think it was Stoddard) said that the cards aren't necessarily too powerful for the format. They just restrict color identity and player color choice. If you have Strike in the format, people tend not to play red decks; they just play decks splashing red for Strike. I believe this was Wizards' rationale about this card and others like it.
I don't think this is true. Completely conjecture, but I think the reason Lightning Strike hasn't been in standard is because they thought Draconic Roar would have taken its place, when it did not. And the reason this isn't Instant speed is because they didn't want it to be 100% better than Lightning Strike. Strike will be back, they're just trying out slightly different effects for now. The last one, Draconic Roar, didn't really work, but this one might.
Murder or Ruinous Path as the preferred 1BB removal spell?
Ruinous Path.
I'm missing the excitement here. Blacks problem in standards isn't the lack of good spot removal Between Grasp of Darkness and Ultimate Price, there aren't actually too many holes in its removal suite as far as creatures are concerned. Black's problem right now is that it can't effectively combat Nissa + Gideon effectively and that it doesn't really have good answers to planeswalkers. There's no real reason to load up on more creature removal at the cost of your precious few planeswalker answers.
I'm finding the hate for this set to be a little over-the-top and missing the point. The two main criticisms I'm seeing are "my angels are dying" (angels die, its a game about conflict, everything dies. You're allowed to be upset cause things you like are dying, but the amount of whiny self pity is unreal), and "Eldrazi are boring because Zendikar had a ton." The second one is kind of valid, people get burnt out over things, and Wizards probably should have expected this when they use two themes back to back. They've said that they overused multicolor in Alara block, why didn't they forsee the Eldrazi in a second block in a row being a little much? I don't know. Though, to be fair this idea that BFZ sucked because there were too many Eldrazi and not enough Zendikar is silly. The only logical conclusion for a second Zendikar set was a pile of Eldrazi. That's what 1/3rd of the block was about. Why would they spend so much time and energy on making that and return to Zendikar and Worldwake? That's not where the set was anymore. I don't know why people expected BFZ to be Zendikary rather than Eldrazied. I feel like like you all set yourselves up for disappointment by building up unrealistic expectations. Burn out is real and BFZ's story wasn't great, but its not cause some people wanted Zendikar II and got Rise II. (I'm guessing the real thing was you all liked Zendikar a lot and didn't really think much about what returning to the plane would entail because hype, which is understandable, but looking back it should make sense)
I feel like there are criticisms that are valid. The Emrakul reveal was kind of bad. Emrakul was pulled up as the most obvious answer. The mystery almost wasn't a mystery, to the point where I at least was thinking it couldn't be Emrakul because what good mystery has the person standing right in front of you be the bad guy? I get that this mystery probably wasn't for the enfranchised but the casual story watchers who maybe picked up on one or two clues, rather than all of them, but I still feel like they dropped the ball, and could have thrown in some red herrings and made it more of a compelling mystery. Especially considering that Innistrad has a really rich history an all sorts of things that could have been big and scary and madness-inducing. (However, even though I was wrong about that, I am please with the first 15% of the set, I just wish the mystery was more of a mystery.)
Second, if the storyline ends up being "battle at Thraben, they almost lose but Lili saves the day with zombies and friendship," which is what the trailer makes it sound like, then that's really bad writing. Yes they can't learn from the mistakes from BFZ block, but they can't possibly have thought that basically rehashing BFZ blocks story was a good idea? That much has to be obvious right? I willing to reserve judgement until we see the final storyline, but I'm having a bad feeling about it. I'm thinking that they're doing really well with worldbuilding recently. The madness theme in Shadows was on point. But I feel like their story-writers really seem to be dropping the ball.
Also I really like the "Emrakul makes new titans out of Brisela and Hanweir" theory, but I'm having a hard time Hanweir is a proto-titan, because wouldn't all the proto-titans be Mythics? Also since Innistrad is a relatively low-mana plane would Emrakul really be able to build two new Titans out of it? Maybe Innistrad only makes Brisela, and some other poor plane makes a third.
of course every conquistador wasnt horrible and every mesoamerican was not a saint. however, what burning paladin is fundamentally arguing, i believe, is that the conquistadors are being treated unfairly, which i strongly disagree with. he is trying to depict (or seems like he is trying to depict) the aztecs and their neighbors and their cultures as brutal, savage, violent cultures and the conquistadors as simply honorable soldiers who tried to write the cultural ills they saw and who's own centuries of brutality, the repercussions of which people alive today still endure, were somethings that could not be helped or were misunderstood. i think that sort of thinking is deeply, deeply flawed.
my b i assumed we'd be talking about the most recent story not the one they published a month ago, how stupid of me
I know you get it but Innistrad is heavily German inspired, not Slavic, and Gothic Horror originated in England and Germany mostly, so comparing those two is a pretty reasonable comparison.
Flavor text on this spoiler: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/cards/amonkhet/28617-prowling-serpopard
I don't know how logistically and financially feasible this is, and I don't want the quality of the story to suffer for this, but I think it would go a long way to help out magics story problems.
Lol. No. This is clearly not why. Lightning Strikes been gone for a year, and now its back. In the mean time we had Draconic Roar, which is, in fact, a Lightning Strike variant. Most draft formats in the past couple years have had some Lighnting Strike type card. (Between Lightning Strike, Searing Spear and Draconic Roar).
You may be right. I interpreted the last two paragraphs to mean, "by not having Bolt, we get to try out neat Lightning Strike and Shock variants for standard."
I don't think this is true. Completely conjecture, but I think the reason Lightning Strike hasn't been in standard is because they thought Draconic Roar would have taken its place, when it did not. And the reason this isn't Instant speed is because they didn't want it to be 100% better than Lightning Strike. Strike will be back, they're just trying out slightly different effects for now. The last one, Draconic Roar, didn't really work, but this one might.
Also, flavor text is on point.
And the Gatewatch. Which is probably what he was referring to. Not the Eldrazi.
Ruinous Path.
I'm missing the excitement here. Blacks problem in standards isn't the lack of good spot removal Between Grasp of Darkness and Ultimate Price, there aren't actually too many holes in its removal suite as far as creatures are concerned. Black's problem right now is that it can't effectively combat Nissa + Gideon effectively and that it doesn't really have good answers to planeswalkers. There's no real reason to load up on more creature removal at the cost of your precious few planeswalker answers.
I feel like there are criticisms that are valid. The Emrakul reveal was kind of bad. Emrakul was pulled up as the most obvious answer. The mystery almost wasn't a mystery, to the point where I at least was thinking it couldn't be Emrakul because what good mystery has the person standing right in front of you be the bad guy? I get that this mystery probably wasn't for the enfranchised but the casual story watchers who maybe picked up on one or two clues, rather than all of them, but I still feel like they dropped the ball, and could have thrown in some red herrings and made it more of a compelling mystery. Especially considering that Innistrad has a really rich history an all sorts of things that could have been big and scary and madness-inducing. (However, even though I was wrong about that, I am please with the first 15% of the set, I just wish the mystery was more of a mystery.)
Second, if the storyline ends up being "battle at Thraben, they almost lose but Lili saves the day with zombies and friendship," which is what the trailer makes it sound like, then that's really bad writing. Yes they can't learn from the mistakes from BFZ block, but they can't possibly have thought that basically rehashing BFZ blocks story was a good idea? That much has to be obvious right? I willing to reserve judgement until we see the final storyline, but I'm having a bad feeling about it. I'm thinking that they're doing really well with worldbuilding recently. The madness theme in Shadows was on point. But I feel like their story-writers really seem to be dropping the ball.
Also I really like the "Emrakul makes new titans out of Brisela and Hanweir" theory, but I'm having a hard time Hanweir is a proto-titan, because wouldn't all the proto-titans be Mythics? Also since Innistrad is a relatively low-mana plane would Emrakul really be able to build two new Titans out of it? Maybe Innistrad only makes Brisela, and some other poor plane makes a third.