MTG Salvation

Quote from Grixh »

Isn't having associated merchandise ready when your product releases normal? You think they wait to see what characters people like before they start cranking out the Star Wars toys? Hell no.

I will grant that something does look a bit off about the plushy, though.

Quote from Morphling »

Well, WHY NOT, every franchise needs a Grogu, doesn't it?

Quote from 5colors »

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/a-legendary-crew-for-an-unbelievable-heist-outlaws-of-thunder-junction

Legends article, sadly they only feature the crew and the face commanders.

who just a few weeks ago were being predicted to not appear ever because of their debut in the Fallout precons

1. Sand Scout — you make the token when a land is put into your graveyard from anyway
2. Thieving Varmint — the restriction is “Spend this mana only to cast spell you don't own”
3. Elemental Eruption — “Create a 4/4 dragon with prowess” and it's a storm card
4. Tower Winder — It tutors for Command tower or regrowth it from the graveyard.
5. Smirking Spelljacker — “Smirking Spelljacker” also does the same thing difference is you have to attack with it to cast the card (so I guess you could call this “Magus of the SpellJack”)
6. Thunderclap Drake — Basically it has a sac ability that gives the next Instant or sorcery you cast storm for the number of times you cast your commander.
7. Rumbleweed — Ghalta, primal hunger cost reduction for lands in your graveyard and ETB is basically Overrun
8. Heartless Conscription — Hedonist's Trove as a boardwipe
9. Cactus Preserve — Can be a X/X equal to the highest cost commander (might be the chase card since it’s basically reflecting pool)
10. Cataclysmic Prospecting — “Make a tapped treasure token” for each desert your use for mana also damage wraths the board
11. Discreet Retreat — Let’s a land tap for two mana for outlaw spells, also the first outlaw spell you cast each turn lets you Phyrexian Arena.
12. Orochi Soul-Reaver — the other ability is “Manifest” from a opponents library on hit so a Saboteur version of Thieving Amalgam (Ps it gives all the creatures this ability but it’s “one or more”)

Quote from Spaz350 »

At first glance, this seems to be the weakest deck so far in terms of reprints.

• Brainstealer Dragon
  
• Three Visits
  
• Mind's Dilation
  
• Darkslick Shores
  
• Twilight Mire
  
• Underground River
  

• Dauthi Voidwalker
  
• Agent of Treachery
  
• Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor
  
• Wrexial, the Risen Deep
  
• Blatant Thievery
  
• Thada Adel, Acquisitor
  
• Arvinox, the Mind Flail
  

• Bloodthirsty Adversary
  
• Electrostatic Field
  
• Veyran, Voice of Duality
  
• Archmage Emeritus
  
• Niv-Mizzet, Parun
  
• Pongify
  
• Arcane Denial
  
• Windfall
  
• Rousing Refrain
  
• Winged Boots
  
• Propaganda
  
• Arcane Bombardment
  
• Cascade Bluffs
  

Quote from 5colors »

Just my thoughts (spoilers for length);

The main stories

Again its shown 5-6 chapters isn't enough space for the stories to shine and from MKM it shows 10 chapters really should be the minimum for the stories to both let the pacing flow better and to give us more character/ emotional beats. If wotc wants to keep doing these stories with large casts and showcase their characters then they need more space to give us those character moments that make people fall in love with them, which we aren't getting enough of with the word count atm.

That said, I enjoyed Annie and Kellan as our protagonists and I hope to see them pop up again (as I do feel like we seen the last of Kellan for the moment) and Oko was an awful bastard I hate him (aka author did a good job showing hes a scumbag). The plot itself was mostly predicable but the Jace twist made up for it and in theory a simple story would be a good way to show off character moments. Tinybones and Rakdos also stole the show in their ...friendship? Romance? anyways I hope Tinybones and his family get to move to Ravnica and become high ranking Rakdos members ^.^.

The pose was great in of itself, they have really been getting some great writers, they just need more word counts.

I'm gonna wait for the planeswalker guild to say more but so far I will say I do think Thunder Junction is gonna rank kinda low in my overall favorite planes BUT I did think it work perfectly for the ancient aliens feel the Fomori have going (as aliens often feature in Weird West stories) and ties together nicely with some of the stuff we saw in Ixalan.

Epilogue

Hands down some of the best magic fiction overall with Alison showing she knows and loves these characters so well. The call backs, emotional beats, the humor, all over it was great and I hope they bring her back in when she is able to make it work.

Biggest thought is I do feel like it worked for how the two decompleated themselves. We saw that compleated planeswalkers do have a bit of true selves as they still had souls to hold their sparks and makes sense that Jace as a telepath and Vraska with the "trap door" Jace made her would be able to keep their own minds more. And of big note Jace had the halo from Luxior that help him keep enough of himself together in order to seal off this true mind from corruption (which imo also goes back and makes New Capennas story more important). And I do like that even with this Jace and Vraska still pretty much could not control themselves until (from what I guessed) Phyrexia was phased out/Norn was killed and the signal was lost. Finally while I personally would like to see of most of the post-compleated walkers have more visible showing of what they went through, I felt the use of a phoenix feather as a way to both be a magical organ repalcement as well as the metaphore for what Jace and Vraska have planned works. Honesty now the only compleated walkers I don't like is Nahiri, with Ajani/Nissa and Jace/Vraska making more sense in how they where healed.

And oh boy I do feel like we are heading to Jace and Vraska as antagonists and there are so many way it can go (and even these oculd mix). We could see their plan ultimately hurting many to work, Loot growing dangerous or otherwise becoming a force that Jace and Vraska ended up unleashing or the Fomori being enable to return.

In another place I saw someone say this also could lead to magics version of civil war, with maybe many desparked planewalkers (like Ob and Rowan) joining Jace and Vraska side in hopes that they can regain their sparks while others (like Chandra and Nissa) will stand against them having learned that they need to accept this new multiverse. Would also be a good reason for the desparking to happen since they would do a Wots like set with less planeswalker cards but with the desparked there as legendary creatures.

That said for this moment, the little family of a telepath, a gorgon and an alien GPS is happy and I hope things don't end up too bad for them overall.

The Omenpath Arc aka the Kellan arc

Honesty while there are some weak points, I do think this arc overall worked. Personally I liked Kellan, as Annie said

"The Multiverse is full of people who do bad things for selfish reasons,...But the people who do good and expect nothing in return? I reckon they're worth protecting."

This why I liked Will and Rowan and why I like Ajani, Niko and other similar characters. As a biracial person I really felt Kellans story arc, while I did know my parents and raised in a mixed culture home, my father has passed and I do feel that loss of not being able to just ask him aspect of his side of the families culture.

I do think they need to figure out the balance of "main character/face", the gatewatch leaned a bit into stealing the spotlight while I felt we could have had Kellan more features and showing steps in his character arc during Ixalan. Ravnica was better overall, I do like how we saw him learn to fly I just wish that had been more tied to his own characters growth. I feel like there is a balance there that wotc can get with having recurring characters with Kellan doing a lot better as well being a singel character with a single arc vs the gatewatch each having their own arc that intermixes with other characters.

However the biggest thing positive I felt about this arc was how well it all felt tied together. While Kellan was the front and center character and arc we had Jace and Vraska doing stuff behind the scenes in parallel with Kellan. We had Eldraine introduce Kellan as well as being the first stop Jace as Ashiok made to recruit a person for the heist, Ixalan and Ravnica where steps along the way for Kellan while we saw Vraska reuniting with Breeches and Malcom and Jace learning Profts illusions skills and it all coming to a head in Outlaws. Really good way to let all these stories stand mostly on their own while connectign them all together into an overarching storyline. Makes me really excited to see how the next two arcs shake up and see how all these sets and storylines will ties together.

Anyways until we hopefully get a pw guild and a legends article thats all my thoughts for now.