Quote from Flisch »
As for the guide itself: I liked it, it was very thorough. Can we pretty please get this quality for all sets going forward?
Chances are no. Miguel Lopez put in extra hours from his non-work free time for no extra pay to write this. As a Latino he wanted to give Ixalan as much love and exposure as he could give it for other Lantine folks as we are very underrepresented in the fantasy genre.
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I also in retrospect must agree that the Ugin-Tarkir connection becomes rather unfortunate as well with the revelation that he and with him in turn the dragon storms, are not even native to Tarkir. And it was never explained how he so deeply connected himself to the plane. And even though I liked March of the Machine overall, I really didn't understand the whole "Ojutai teams up with a random Kolaghan bell ringer" card at all. Probably the most ridiculous, lore-breaking pairing in the set.
I hope they can retool some of the worldbuilding similar to what they did with Kamigawa and Ixalan in the upcoming return set. The seeds for a violent rebellion against the dragons have certainly been sown since Dragons of Tarkir, and to be honest, aside from maybe Ojutai (if he actually let Narset go because he is started seeing the errors of his way and not out of some elaborate scheme), the dragons would pretty much deserve it.
The video also kinda gives the Kolaghan too much credit I feel like. Sure, on the surface her clan seems pretty much the same as the Mardu, but there is no real camadery or sense of honor anymore, with Kolaghan imparting blood-frenzies in her clan members, some of them now having cannibalistic tendencies and the dragons being so vicious that they don't even communicate with the non-dragons with anything but violence. For me, Kolaghan (if we continue the colonialism metaphor) symbolizes the utter destruction of a culture through sheer, unabashed cruelty and destruction of even close family connections. Ojutai is colonialism via censorship, reeducation and historical revisionism; Dromoka is forced cultural destruction and societal fundamentalism of colonialist values imparted on the colonized; Atarka is the environmental impact of colonialism, combined with the resource draining of the colonizers and lastly Silumgar stands for pure oppression and slavery, as well as the paranoid, controlling tendencies colonizers often exhibit.
Let's see how the return to Tarkir pans out. But I seriously hope that they learned something from the first block.
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I can't agree on many of these points. The Fomori definitely colonized the Oltec, the Planeswalker's guide explicitely says that they were in power in the core for a long time (and the diminishing of the inner sun weakened the god's connection to the core, so they weren't able to help or at least give the people there some solace).
So the Fomori were in power for at least three centuries, probably quite some time longer. Sounds to me like it would leave some serious trauma, especially with the evidence of the colonization still very much visible in the core, the loss of the inner sun for a while and the gods not being available at the time. So "sledgehammer"? Yeah maybe. But people reacting sensitive to such subjects is not that surprising. "Unearned" though? I don't see it. The trauma of the pirates should probably be explored more, but their colonization was pretty recent in contrast, and they are not a unified culture with its own historians and scholars that could analyze what happened to them. In addition to that I think their need for freedom and their strong survivalist instincts are a result of the trauma of being colonized by the vampires (I think as much was even hinted at in the guide). They pretty much didn't have the time or motivation for much introspection in that regard and instead projected it outwards.
The mycotyrant is pretty much everywhere in the caves, so Malcolm and Breeches coming across it and then (after a pretty long march while they were already underground at the start) finding one of the entrances is not that strange to me. Now why the Mycotyrant seemingly can't open the entrances itself, I don't know, but there could be any number of reasons. Even the guide states though that it is already pressing on multiple entrances, so it is not like it doesn't know their location.
I am also more iffy on "abuelo" being a word the Oltec use than "gnome". I thought it was pretty well established in the guide that this is a loanword they explicitely took to remind themselves of where this technology comes from by virtue of it being so foreign to them. Seems reasonable to me.
I also think the set covered many if not most underground tropes pretty well. "Hollow world" definitely can be part of an underground theme overall, so I don't mind the prominence of the core. Caves, the multiple cards showing mining, deep chasms, underground threats (like being caught in a flooding cavern or falling rocks, as well as dangerous lifeforms like the Mycotyrant), ancient cultures and artifacts hidden throughout the underground, adaptations to that kind of world (the deep goblins for example)... that was all present. The set was not JUST an underground set, but the theme was definitely recognizable. And mechanically the various forms of Descent showed the underground part of the set well.
I don't know, normally even if I don't agree with you I at least can see where you are coming from, but this is just accentuating the negative even if there isn't that much (in my opinion) to accentuate. I thought this Planeswalker's Guide was a surprising treat, they really worked on the worldbuilding a lot, and I personally was positively surprised by it. Ixalan went from one of my less liked to one of my favorite planes through this set.
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No, apparently, according to the main story, millenia ago, the ancestors of the Oltec were close to being conquered by who they call "the colonizers", which were giants in enormous flying machines that appeared out of nowhere. They were the ones who closed the inner sun off in the first place. Quint thinks that they are equivalent to the "coin empire" he is researching that has left artifacts all over the multiverse and seemingly was present on multiple planes ages ago. The main story even ends with him exploring one of the downed ships that's been left in a closed off part of the core and accidentally waking one giant up from what appears to be some kind of suspended animation.
Well, and the card here now indicates that the coin empire was in fact run by the ancestors of the Fomori (which are indeed from Ir) who have apparently once travelled the multiverse and tried to colonize it. Not a retcon, but a twist I certainly wouldn't have seen coming.
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Also if LotR is a myth for Great Britain basically about a long gone era of humanity (which Tolkien states is the case) then people having dark skin makes perfect sense, seeing as this was the case for the civilizations of Britain only 6000 years ago (considering how long ago when compared to the modern era LotR needs to be, that fits perfectly). So even from that standpoint it seems fine to me (even though Tolkien wouldn't have known about that fact).
But yes, no one has to like it. I do. You can't argue about taste though. Either side is valid.
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I think he implied that he isn't sure whether he has always been immutable in contrast to the other gods, but it definitely appears like him and Klothys aren't as reliant on followers as the others, both have none or almost no believers and still seem to be pretty damn powerful. The DnD book stated (if I remember correctly) that their domains are so ingrained in the nature of the world and sapient consciousness that they are generated no matter how many people specifically believe in them. I have to say though, that doesn't mean that they would be immune to compleation, since it doesn't state that they can't be changed to some degree by belief.
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Alright, putting aside the reasons for why WotC did this, this whole 'LotR is basically a manifestation of the culture of a certain ethnicity and how they see the world, and therefore external ethnicities should have no place in it' is... Let's just say, a very special kind of interpretation in and of itself. I love LotR, and yeah, Tolkien imagined it to be along the lines of Beowulf, a form of ancient myth for the British people, which he thought they were lacking. Notice that it was specifically british people. Nothing about skin tone or something, though Tolkien obviously couldn't escape the Zeitgeist of his time entirely (his description of Orcs as looking like 'the least lovely looking mongole types' in one of his letters and the fact that ALL people of color appearing in LotR are on the side of evil are good indicators of that). So what exactly is the ethnicity you mean whose 'cultural manifestation' LotR supposedly is, and what exactly does skin color change about the story? We can discuss all day long what Tolkien believed, but my point is that unless you follow his myth-making almost religiously (in which case yes, as a british person you could maybe become upset about this, since the 3rd age Numenorans can be interpreted as expies of you, just like the Hobbits are), this change means nothing. This is not a historic story, this is not changing historic people's ethnicities. There is no cultural baggage that would influence LotR if there were black Numenorans (or elves or whatever) into another direction, unless you believe some weird stereotypes. So... Is the change necessary? Not really. Is it a disgrace to LotR? No. It is pretty much a stylistic choice.
Oh and most legends and myths of cultures across the world are surprisingly diverse, the Japanese for example have stories of Yasuke, the first foreign, black Samurai (16th century). So no, that's not as monolithic as you think it is either. I understand and actually might agree that it is a corporate driven decision by WotC, but this kind of discussion always veers into the strangest directions.
Switching back to the cards, Aragorn and Arwen are interesting in GW, and Gollum's flavor is on point in my opinion.
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I'm not sure it is THAT absurd, seeing as we don't really know whether they literally meant "the whole plane" was mobilized. Seems much more likely that they meant "all the people we could reach on a certain plane believed us and are trying to rally as many forces as possible". And many of the named planes could actually conceivably be mobilized for the most part: Ravnica makes sense (seeing that it has dealt with an interplanar invader before and has a central government that could ready the whole plane in Niv-Mizzet and the guilds), Kaldheim is a plane defined by its dealings with inter-realm conflicts (and consists of a bunch of realms with fighting-capable populations) so they probably believe stories about invaders from other, previously unknown realms, Kaladesh's new government includes the mother of a planeswalker and has scientists and engineers who have personally worked on interplanar technology... the list goes on. Only Ixalan is very questionable, since it doesn't have any experience with planeswalkers and doesn't have a unified government. Maybe this was shorthand for Huatli and Vraska being able to convince the River Heralds, the Sun Empire and the Brazen Coalition respectively of the danger? I agree that this leaves out some crucial details, which is still the case because of the relative brevity of MtGs story articles, but I don't find all of that too unbelievable (unless taken very literally).
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Also, how many of those had deaths significant to the storyline?
Ugin's death and its consequences were established at the same time he was "resurrected" and it had been his plan to be rescued via time-travel from the start apparently.
Bolas' death was a significant part of the Legends story, but that didn't have any consequences and wasn't even put into perspective (i.e. the consequences of that storyline) until they decided to bring him back as a villain.
Elspeth, as you said, was never set up to be dead because she was clearly at the "journey into the underworld" part of the monomyth, and they weren't even subtle about her coming back.
Was Ertai's death that significant? From what I can tell (but please correct me I am wrong) he was accidentally incinerated by Squee of all people after torturing the Goblin, without any interesting further developments coming out of that aside from Squee becoming immortal.
On the other hand, Gideon is and will stay dead (they even swatted away the possibility of resurrecting him via Witherbloom knowledge in Strixhaven). The gods of Amonkhet (aside from Hazoreth) are and will remain dead. Dack Fayden, Domri Rade, Ulamog, Kozilek and Avacyn are and will stay dead. And the list goes on. Sure, maybe other people should have died instead, or some people have unneeded plot armor or what have you, but I find it a bit disingenuous to say that death is handled like in a comic book now.
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I am likely an outlier as well, but I actually prefer any fantasy world that leaves swords and sorcery medieval high fantasy behind. For me the genre is already way too focussed on either that or low fantasy urban settings. For a genre called "Fantasy" it seems so... creatively limited this way. And the huge pull of MtG for me is that it pushes these boundaries to a degree in a way not many other fantasy settings do. And it's fine to have some standard high fantasy from time to time (like Zendikar, Eldraine and Shandalar) but the most interesting worlds for me are the more out there settings (like Kaladesh, Ravnica, and especially Kamigawa now). And I am all for a Western set with strange, magic guns. If the artwork is not fake, then I quite like their design too.
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Ok, what exactly where his arguments for that it sucks? Granted, New Capenna wasn't at all a masterwork of fiction, but I am pretty sure I got the gist of what happened and was pretty intrigued by some of the plot elements without being particularly angry about any specific plot point. Ob Nixilis is there because that's his whole stick, trying to conquer worlds, why not start with one that's only a single city and is also already ruled by demonic mafia heads? Elspeth is there to find out more about her apparent home plane and find something that will help against the Phyrexians. The motivations seem clear to me.
And the world-building itself was pretty great in my opinion, certainly better than Ikoria's, but not as great as Neon Dynasty's admittedly. Yes, the format they chose is restrictive (5 stories is definitely not enough) and leads to below par pacing. It is also annoying that they can't seem to be able to line up the actual story and the cards properly, but being this angry about THIS set specifically seems... strange. I also don't see how New Capenna's lore is telling us (literally too apparently) to buy cards and turn our brains of. Care to elaborate? Also the Weatherlight saga definitely had its ups and serious downs as well (*cough* Prophecy *cough*).