The way she's depicted in this planeswalker guide, Admiral Brass comes across as the biggest Mary Sue they've created in a long time.
Take the swordfighting tidbit, for instance. With intelligence, leadership qualities and skill in enchantment magic, Brass already had more than enough competencies to plausibly become a fleet admiral. But apparently that wasn't enough for WotC--they also had to make her a swordfighter of formidable reputation, for some reason. I understand them wanting to invoke the feeling of a "pirate of legend" like Blackbeard or Long John Silver, but making someone highly skilled in ALL relevant piratey and leadership proficiencies is a terrible way to do that.
A hypercompetent character only really becomes a Mary Sue if they're constantly in the story's spotlight. Otherwise they're just cool.
Yeah, if Beckett Brass was a major player in the story and she was portrayed as Mary Sue-ish as this article presented her, then we might have a problem, but luckily she hasn't appeared in the story at all. And I doubt that she's going to be appearing in the second set's story either. It seems like most of the major players are already in or around Orazca (Jace, Vraska, Huatli, Angrath, Tishana, Kumena), and if anyone faction gets reinforcements, I would bet on it being the vampires, since Mavren was mentioned in The Race Part 1 and is supposed to be finding Orazca, plus Vona (probably) died leaving the Legion without a representative at Orazca. Perhaps the Sun Empire could get reinforcements or Kopala could show up to help Tishana if the story demands it, but there's no reason for Beckett Brass or any other legendary pirate to show up. For one thing, the pirate faction already has more characters involved than any other faction, and I can't imagine Beckett Brass fitting a giant pirate ship down the small river Jace and Vraska used to get closer to Orazca. For better or worse, Beckett Brass will probably only be a minor footnote in the story.
So while I don't disagree that the way they wrote about Beckett Brass in that article was Mary Sue-ish, it doesn't really bother me unless she actually does something in the story. Mary Sues are really only a problem when it's a major character who is written that way. The most recent example I can think of would be Samut. At least Huatli has some hypocrisy going on and is at least kind of morally grey. That's more than I can say for Samut, who is so painfully obviously in the right just because of what she is fighting against. Plus Huatli's story has finished, so while she has been kind of boring so far, maybe the story of the second set will give her some more development and make her more interesting. I'm also interested to know what she does once she's given the opportunity to leave the plane. She better not choose to stay on her home plane. Not only does it defeat the entire point of planeswalkers, but it's been done so many times recently that's it's starting to get really old. Saheeli and Samut show 0% interest in exploring other planes, plus Ral and Narset also resolved to remain on their home planes at some point (thankfully both seem to have changed their minds since then).
Back on topic: I was kind of hoping that this article would tell us more about the other pirate captains rather than going on and on about Brass. From what I can tell, we have four pirate fleets: Fathom Fleet (UBR), Deadeye Fleet (UB), Dire Fleet (BR), and Storm Fleet (UR). Brass leads the Fathom Fleet of course, and Captain Storm must lead the Storm Fleet (I don't think it's been stated outright, but seriously, who else would it be?). I was hoping that this article would tell us a bit more about Captain Storm and also tell us about the leaders of the Deadeye Fleet and Dire Fleet. The leader of the Deadeye Fleet could be Captain Parrish (who "plunders secrets", according to the flavor text of Chart a Coure) or the siren captain mentioned on the plane page (seems like an odd detail to mention if they didn't intend to make a legendary siren pirate). The leader of the Dire Fleet should probably be an orc, since orcs are heavily associated with the Dire Fleet. It would have been nice if this article had shed some light on who leads those fleets (as well as on Captain Vance, who commands a volcanic fortress rather than a fleet of ships), but instead all we got was the biography of Beckett Brass.
I also really wish that creative did a better job of planning out how they put characters on cards. I get that they needed to make at least one non-planeswalker captain just as a pirate trope, but since none of them seem to be plot-relevant at all (and none of them except Beckett Brass, and to a much less extent, Captain Vance, if she even gets a card). I think it would have made a lot more sense to make cards for the members of Vraska's crew. They've already told us that this won't be happening because those characters didn't exist until after the cards were decided, but shouldn't they do something about that? It's the exact same thing that caused the outrage over Hal and Alena not getting printed, and what caused the easily-avoidable printing of a Rishkar card instead of a "Shadowblayde" card. Never mind the way that they put bios for Surash and the other lady who everyone thought would be a UR artifact legend on the website for Aether Revolt, and then didn't give them cards. It would have been so easy to avoid setting false expectations and yet they did it anyway.
What if the same thing happens with Arguel or Captain Vance? Both were mentioned in card titles, so you would think that they would get cards simply because Wizards learned from the Taigam mistake, but I'm not so sure anymore. We already have a mono-red pirate legend in the block, and yet instead of Vance, it's a different pirate who has no story role or lore. If they were going to put Vance in the set, why not put her in Captain Storm's place, in the same set as her blasting cannons, rather than waiting until the second set and having two different mono-red female legendary pirates? Plus Arguel has to compete with several other potential vampire or vampire-related legends (Elenda, Adanto, Aclazotz), and there's nothing tying him or Vance to the main story. Currently there are way more legends competing for spots in Rivals than it could possibly have. There's Kumena, the green elder dinosaur (and quite possibly two others, the red and white counterparts), the Sun Emperor, Captain Vance, the unnamed siren captain, Arguel, Aclazotz, Elenda... that's way too many for a small set. Someone isn't going to get a card, and will then end up on the "put this character in either a commander set or the next block when we visit their plane again". Characters seem to be getting added to that list far more quickly than they're getting taken off. Plus we already know that Breeches the goblin (and potentially the siren on Vraska's crew as well, especially if we don't get the siren captain in Rivals) will be getting added to that list as well. Why not just plan ahead and give cards to all the characters that need them? The way they go about this is unbelievably frustrating and inefficient. It seems like with just a little more effort into planning ahead, the vast majority of this could be avoided.
I'm pretty sure it's Azor. In addition to what others have already said, there's an azorius-crest triangle shape on his beard and another one beneath it, on his chest. Also, metal plate with blue, round stones is a prominent motif of Azorius guild wear. Of course, all that imagery could be deliberately misleading/a red herring, but honestly I see no good reason for it. Vraska with her hate for the Azorius, "new Jace" as the embodiment of the guildpact 2.0 and the author of the old guildpact ... these three characters alone are a good baseline for (one of) the conflict(s) of Ravnica 3, a point in the overarching storyline Wizards seems to be setting up pretty thoroughly.
Even if that really is Azor, i highy doubt he will have anything to do with Rav3, he's been away for 10,000 years, i don't think a small conflict between a wannabe Guildleader and the Guildpact will be enough for him to return, also the reason why i believe he and possibly other sphinxes are native to the plane is his armor, he's not wearing a comon Ixalan robe (like vraska) or anything similiar to what the other character we've see so far are wearing, from the box image we can see that his armor follows the same design as Orazca itself( or whichever place he is )
Except that Azor would have a keen interest in the events involving the plane he invested a lot of his efforts into maintaining the peace. Hearing that the Guildpact he created was shattered and replaced by a failed written Guildpact and then a failing Living Guildpact would at least give him pause. This is independent of whether or not this Sphinx is him.
For the second point, I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that the evidence that Ixalan has native Sphinxes is that his garb is different? Because that would support his being non-native as well. The point about it fitting Orazca doesn't exactly help if we're to believe he had a hand in the city's design or that he's been living there for some time, native or not. Also, the blue gems reminded me of Isperia's armor and the armor of other Azorius enforcers.
Sorry, i just can't se a guy who left for 10,000 years caring about anything involving Ravnica, i mean look at Sorin, he created balance in Innistrad (much like Azor) but not only that, everything he did for the last thousand years was for Innistrad, if Azor really wanted to protect the peace he created, where was he when Rakdos and Experiment Kraj almost destroyed Ravnica? or when the Gruul lost all of their influence over the city and became nothing but savages?.
Anyways i'll keep with my theory of the sphinx being native/protectors of Orazca, there's literally nothing that hints at it being Azor (aside from the fact he wears a triangle) but i won't disregard the fact that he could easily be a planeswalker (just not Azor)
Azor created the original Guildpact, and one part of the document prevented planeswalkers from entering the plane. If Azor left for whatever reason, he wouldn't have been able to get back into Ravnica.
We all know that the original Guildpact was broken and planeswalkers can now get into Ravnica, but Azor doesn't. He hasn't been trying to go back to Ravnica because he doesn't think he can. If only there were two planeswalkers on Ixalan that could tell him otherwise...
I'm on board with this being Azor. While he was portrayed by a human, that doesn't really mean anything. His species could have been lost in the translation (Azor hasn't been on Ravnica for centuries, and the few beings ancient enough to remember him probably don't care about the accuracy of a random play) or it just could have been ignored by those putting on the play (I assume that sphinx actors are hard to come by, so they would have to make do). The original line that made a lot of people assume that he was a planeswalker, and although the wording left the possibility that he was just transplanted onto Ravnica from another plane, it would make a lot more sense and be a lot more interesting if they were hinting at him being a planeswalker from the very start. And the fact that they made him surprisingly relevant in RTR despite him being a fairly minor footnote in the original Ravnica novels and RTR disregarded a lot of other details from the original block probably should have told us that he was going to appear.
This raises some questions though. Why hasn't Azor gone back to Ravnica? That one is easy to answer. Azor was the one who prevented planeswalkers from entering Ravnica, so after making the Guildpact and planeswalking away for whatever reason, he knew he couldn't get back in. Even though we all know that planeswalkers can get into Ravnica now, Azor had no way of knowing that. Except now with Jace and Vraska there, he's going to find out. What's Azor's motivation for presumably placing the spell on Ixalan? Is he kind of like Ugin, trying to do things for the greater good of the multiverse? If so, how will they differentiate the roles of Azor and Ugin in the story? Or is Azor more like Sorin, keeping his home plane safe at any cost (even if it means locking himself out of it, and then locking other planeswalkers into other planes)? Either way, the most logical explanation is that whatever the Immortal Sun is, it can potentially be a major threat to planes other than Ixalan. That's probably why Bolas wants it.
This whole thing is going to incite even more speculation for Ravnica 3. It's kind of weird that Ixalan's story is shaping up to be more about Ravnica than Ixalan, but it is what it is. If Ravnica 3 is going to be the first two sets after the next core set, it's going to be interesting to see what planeswalkers make it in. Jace, Vraska, and Azor are all probably going to be involved, but they will all have had cards very recently at that point. While they could do a set on a different plane as the fall set right after the core set and then do two Ravnica sets for winter and spring, it still wouldn't be very long after Ixalan. It's not like they're unwilling to give a planeswalker two new cards without much time in between (see our 30 Nissa cards, for example), but having three of the five planeswalkers in Ravnica 3 being the same as three of the five planeswalkers from Ixalan (which was just one year before it) would be kind of weird. Because of this, I suspect that at least one of those three will end up going somewhere other than Ravnica at the end of the block, so that Ravnica 3 isn't too similar to Ixalan in its planeswalker cast.
Lastly, with today's reveals in mind, I'm going to try some final predictions of the story of Rivals of Ixalan before it begins:
Offscreen, Kumena has already discovered Orazca, which is what caused it to rise out of the ground. It also awakened the elder dinosaur(s) (only the green one is confirmed, but it could be a mini-cycle with red and white ones as well).
Jace will have all of his memories come back. All of them. Even Vryn. We'll probably need an entire story dedicated to Jace remembering everything and involuntarily reenacting his memories with illusions, and it will probably be from the POV of Vraska, who experiences the whole thing with him.
Jace will still keep his post-amnesia personality and probably forgive Vraska. There was lot of his emphasis on his worldview that the past doesn't matter and only who you are currently is important. They even restated it in the 10 unanswered questions article. They're not trying to be subtle. Besides, they've put way too much time and effort into developing the relationship between Jace and Vraska, and having Vraska basically live through the entirety of Jace's memory seems like a way to continue that, not to put an end to it.
Vraska will see what Bolas did on Amonkhet (and what he indirectly caused on other planes) and no longer want anything to do with him. She'll still look for Orazca and the Immortal Sun with Jace, but only to escape the plane, not to give it to Bolas. She'll also not end up using the device to call an agent of Bolas after seeing Jace's memories. She might even end up taking an oath as a result.
Angrath and Huatli will continue making their way to Orazca. Angrath will fill Huatli in on what being a planeswalker actually is, and maybe Huatli will reveal what she knows about Ixalan's Binding and the Last Guardian (if she knows anything). We'll also probably get some more backstory for Angrath. Hopefully this story or part of a story will be told from Angrath's POV, since he's been underused in the story so far.
Kumena will need to be defeated at some point. Tishana will probably be the one to do it, since it seems that she's going to get to Orazca first. No room for legendary creatures in the finale, only planeswalkers (Tishana being a probable exception).
Mavren Fein is still unaccounted for, so he will likely show up at some point with vampire followers. He will likely have Adrian Adanto, Eldenda, and/or Arguel for backup, although they will need to explain how he teamed up with them before he arrives at or around Orazca. In the end, he'll be defeated by Huatli + Angrath, Jace + Vraska (and crew), or maybe both working together. Or maybe the vampires just get trampled by the elder dinosaurs that woke up. Who knows? The important thing is, they get defeated.
Jace, Vraska, Huatli, Angrath, and Tishana will all eventually end up in Orazca at the same time, where they will meet Azor. Vraska will probably have a less-than-friendly reaction at first, given her experience with the Azorius, but he's probably to powerful to be petrified by her. Azor will explain how and, more importantly, why he set up all the things he did: the Guildpact, the Implicit Maze, and Ixalan's Binding. The planeswalkers will need to get out somehow, so assuming that Azor isn't trapped on Ixalan along with them (which is very unlikely) and that he's the one who made the barrier (which is very likely), he'll lift the enchantment keeping them out (maybe only temporarily).
With the binding gone, Angrath will go back to his home plane. Huatli might go to Kaladesh (or she might stay on her home plane, Narset-style). I doubt that all three other planeswalkers (Jace, Vraska, and Azor) will go to Ravnica. Since Jace being the Guildpact seems to be a major inconvenience not only to Jace and everyone on Ravnica but also to the writers, I have a feeling that Azor, after being told about the state of affairs on Ravnica, will take away Jace's Guildpact privileges and probably assume those responsibilities himself.
Freed from his Guildpact responsibilities, Jace will go to meet up with the rest of the Gatewatch, most likely on Dominaria. Since Ixalan and Dominaria might be happening concurrently, he may not appear until the very end of Dominaria's story, if he appears at all. Vraska will probably tag along with him if she took an oath (or if she's going to in the near future). Otherwise, she'll go back to Ravnica and be a major player in the next block there.
Azor will tell Tishana to protect Orazca, just like he told her ancestors, if that's even still necessary by that point. After that he'll probably go to Ravnica immediately to fix all the problems Jace caused. It would be hilarious (and kind of practical from a narrative standpoint) for Ravnica 3 to also be happening more or less concurrently with Ixalan, so Azor is absent for the entire first set (allowing us to see Ravnica in complete chaos with the guilds going to war) only to have him return in the second set and fix everything.
This doesn't take into account the significance of the elder dinosaurs or the Immortal Sun, but I think that the broad strokes of the story will go something like that. We can be pretty certain, at the very least, that the planeswalkers will get off the plane, Azor will end up going back to Ravnica, and Jace will probably end up getting freed from his terrible desk job for maximum superhero potential. There's an argument to be made for Jace and Vraska going back to being enemies, but I think it's far more likely that they remain on good terms, and very possible that she joins the Gatewatch, replacing Liliana as both the token anti-hero and the love interest for Jace.
There's also a chance that Ixalan has one or more native sphinxes in Orazca and this artwork is just from a random blue creature and not a planeswalker. That mean that we've had a lot of excitement and speculation about nothing. I think it's very likely that it is Azor, but if it's just some random sphinx that would be an insane curveball for them to throw at us.
I wouldn't mind getting the emperor over another dino, as long he has a dino centric ability. I wouldn't mind him being white, with a red/green ability to make room for one more dino legend though.
I think pirates will have at least two more legends one being red/blue, the other blue/black.
Vamps should get a mono black legend and merfolk a mono green.
I'd like to see that happen, but the legendary creatures in Ixalan weren't symmetrical, and I don't expect the legends in Rivals to be either. The only thing that we can be certain of is that each faction will get at least one new legend. The only merfolk who seems to need a card so far is Kumena, and he's definitely at least partially blue. A mono-black vampire could happen with Arguel, however.
I actually am hoping that Ajani isn't in rivals and was just used a placeholder to keep a secret.
Yep, at this point I think that most likely Ajani is in Dominaria and the fifth walker is either Ugin or the agent of Bolas that Vraska is supposed to call.
If Angrath is red/black (which I very much think he will be, Mardu wouldn't be bad colors for him but I just don't see that happening) then I don't see them hitting the same color balance we had in Ixalan without having a third walker.
They don't have to balance the colors in small sets. Black and red are the colors that have the least planeswalkers in standard right now anyway (black more so than red), so a BR planeswalker makes a lot of sense. The other walker could be basically anything, including colorless.
Anyway, here are the revised predictions:
Pirates: No non-planeswalker pirates are relevant to the story so far (including the ones that already have cards), and Maro commented that Breeches (and presumably Vraska's other crew members) were probably added to the story after the cards were already decided, much like Shadowblade or Hal and Alena, so they won't be getting cards. I still definitely think that Vance will get a card, with Parrish and Thorn being possibilities as well. The Ixalan plane page mentions that there's at least one siren captain, which they probably wouldn't put in there for no reason, so if we get two pirates they'll probably be Vance and a siren (who could in theory be Parrish or Thorn).
Sun Empire: The Emperor still seems likely. Huatli's cousin would be a candidate, except he's probably going to get killed by Vona before the first set's story ends. They could make a second legendary dinosaur with the right flavor justification, which seems especially likely because 1. dinosaurs are popular and 2. the Sun Empire is the only faction not to get a second legend in Ixalan, so it would make sense for them to get two in Rivals.
Vampires: This is a toss-up between Arguel, Adrian Adanto, Aclazotz, and Elenda. Arguel is the most likely because he appears in a card title and WotC won't pull another Taigam if they know what's good for them. Aclazotz might be mythological or a background force, and he could be partially represented by either Arguel or Elenda being either priests for him or directly possessed by him, so I don't think we'll see a card directly representing him. The second legend could be either Elenda or Adrian: the former seems important but could mythological or dead, while the latter seems unimportant but is definitely alive and real.
Merfolk: Kumena. Just Kumena. I don't see any reason to expect anyone else. Counting Kumena we're already at the same number of legends as the first set, so adding a second merfolk would put the second set at more than the first, which would be very unusual.
Mavren is the most entertaining mono-white character we’ve had in a long time. The thing with the navigator’s tools was hilarious. I agree with everyone saying that Vona feels too black and not enough white. I think it would have been better if she had tried to rationalize her feeding habits: something like “I only feed on the guilty, but all humans are guilty.” Similar to Avacyn’s “the seeds of men are rotten”. I’m not sure why they didn’t go that route, maybe they wanted to further differentiate Vona from Mavren? I did like how Mavren talks about how patient he is and then shortly after Vona talks about how she isn’t patient at all. There’s a nice compare and contrast between the two vampires going on here.
Tishana continues to prove that GU characters are ten times more likely to figure out the existence of planeswalkers on their own than characters of other color combinations. First Kruphix, then Rashmi, and now her. Or maybe she didn’t figure it out on her own, but instead Ugin told the merfolk leaders about it. He could have told them and enlisted them to protect Orazca centuries ago, with the current merfolk remembering their mission, the nature of planeswalkers, and that there was a “Guardian”, but not who exactly that “Guardian” was.
It seems incredibly likely the bat god is the source of vampirism on Ixalan (the plane, not the continent). The only question now is who stole the Immortal Sun in the first place: Aclazotz (to bait the Dusk Legion to go to Ixalan and turn them into vampires) or Ugin (presumably to protect it because it was some type of threat). I also want to know which characters will get cards in Rivals. For the Dusk Legion in particular, it seems particularly competitive: each faction will probably only get two new legends at most in the second set, but the Dusk Legion has Arguel, Adrian Adanto, Aclazotz (why do they all start with A?), and Elenda. Perhaps either Arguel or Elenda will somehow represent the bat god and Adanto won’t get a card because he doesn’t seem super relevant to the story.
So the finale of the first set’s story will involve Jace, Vraska, Angrath, Huatli, Tishana, Kumena, and Vona. Technically Adrian could appear as well, but Jace only sensed one vampire so I think that Adrian will team up with some combination of Arguel, Aclazotz, and/or Elenda in the second set to try and take Orazca after Vona fails. I’m guessing that the second set will have Vona kill Huatli’s cousin, but then get defeated by Huatli and Tishana, who then proceed to find Orazca. Jace and Vraska will probably talk some more and I assume that Vraska will reveal why they had a duel deck against each other, which Jace will forgive her for because he doesn’t remember it and he considers himself (and her) a new person now. Then Jace will fall off a waterfall as Orazca rises from the ground after Huatli discovers it, but Jace won’t die, of course, because he’s Jace. And thus the first set ends on an (almost) literal cliffhanger.
My extremely general prediction for the Rivals of Ixalan story is this: Jace finds Kumena after his fall and goes with him to Orazca. Angrath finds Vraska and they also work together because Angrath really, really wants to escape and he’s willing to work with another planeswalker to do it. Meanwhile, a group of vampires, led by some combination of Adrian, Arguel, and Elenda, also seek Orazca. The vampires, the pirates (Angrath and Vraska, possibly joined by Vraska’s surviving crew), and the merfolk (Kumena, his followers, and Jace) all reach Orazca, where Huatli and Tishana already are. There’s a big fight, and in the end the antagonists (the vampires and Kumena) are all defeated. (There might be multiple seperate fights instead, for example, Vraska and Angrath beat Kumena and rescue Jace, while Huatli and Tishana defeat the vampires, but the end result is the same: good guys win, bad guys lose.)
Now all four planeswalkers plus Tishana are in Orazca. Ugin appears, explains everything, restores Jace’s memories (because somebody has to do it), and takes down the barrier (maybe only temporarily) so that the four planeswalkers can leave. Before they leave, Jace, with his memories restored, might try to recruit Vraska (and maybe Huatli) to the Gatewatch, and they may or may not accept. One of the planeswalkers might take the Immortal Sun (whatever it is) with them or they might leave it on Ixalan, depending on what Ugin wants. Tishana is the only one remaining, so Ugin tasks her with restoring Orazca to its original state and keeping it protected from everyone, just like he probably told her ancestors to do originally.
(No idea how the agent of Bolas who Vraska is supposed to call is involved in this, but Tezzeret setting up the portal and letting Jace (who he hates) and Huatli (who would never work with/for Tezzeret/Bolas) seems wrong. The thing I'm most confident about is the four 'walkers all being together in Orazca and leaving in the end, which Tezzeret would probably prevent. Maybe it's Ral Zarek?)
If the Sun is what's fueling the Binding, wouldn't removing it allow walkers to walk out of Ixalan?
Most likely. There's no way that they leave all these planeswalkers trapped at the end of the block, especially since Jace is one of them. It's kind of unfortunate to see them use up a cool plot element so quickly, since it would have been better utilized if they left a few planeswalkers trapped there until the return block on Ixalan, but they definitely have plans for Jace before then, and Vraska too. They're getting off the plane somehow, and the Immortal Sun probably has something to do with it.
I honestly can't stand this kind of commentary. It's this kind of discussion that keeps sexism alive and strong.
Pretty sure it's the actual sexists who are keeping sexism alive and strong. If you think this is sexism, you need to get out more.
Let me be clear, whether they are male or female HAS ZERO influence over this story. I mean that insofar as the story could be just as compelling with a 3:1 male ratio as it can be with a 3:1 female ratio. Perhaps Wizards will explain the lopsided genders. Perhaps they won't. But the fact is, if they choose not to, then it wouldn't pull away from the story at all. In fact, why are you even counting? Why does it matter at all? I'm far from a social justice warrior. I'm not arguing that everything should be equal or that it should be lopsided one way or another. What I am arguing is that it has no bearing on the effectiveness of this story so you have no reason to be out there looking for something to pick at. It's absolutely ludicrous that this discussion even exists.
You're correct that it doesn't really affect the story. I just made the observation that the gender balance was a little off compared to real-world influences these pirates are clearly based on. Someone asked me why Ixalan's pirates would have to be the same way as real-world pirates, and I explained why. I'm not going to let it ruin the story for me, it's just a minor nitpick that I'm explaining my reasoning for.
And for the love of all that is good, can people PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, STOP thinking that this fantasy story needs to directly and accurately
reflect our history?!
It doesn't need to be a perfect reflection of history (obviously) but when we see pirates based on the 1500s showing an attitude towards gender roles from the 2000s, it's just a little strange. Yes, there's magic and dinosaurs on this world, but none of that would really affect how strong sexism is in that type of society. Age of Exploration pirates are Age of Exploration pirates, so seeing them being inexplicably progressive with regard to gender roles is a little odd and something for which an explanation might be nice.
It is inspired by tropes from our history.
There are a lot more tropes of male pirate captains from history than female ones, so even if they're aiming for the trope-based pop culture version of history they still aren't doing it very well in this regard. It's not like every captain has to be male by any means, but making them all female is really pushing it in my opinion.
This is not a story about the pirates that roamed the sea of earth, it is not about the meso-American people, and it has NOTHING to do with the dinosaurs that roamed the earth up to 65 million years ago.It is its OWN story in its OWN setting simply inspired by what we know as ALL STORIES SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME HAVE BEEN. Every story we tell is inspired by our experiences and learnings.
Which is exactly why having so many female captains feels so wrong. Our "experiences and learnings" tell us that pirates during the Age of Exploration were quite sexist and that their leadership positions were male-dominated, so when they not only ignore that but showcase the exact opposite, it's going to make people scratch their heads at the very least.
This is not the product for historically accurate ANYHING. Once you start realizing that, maybe, juuuusst maybe, you can enjoy the product and story for what it is and stop trying to find crap to be disappointed about.
If you look at the original post you'll see that the overall post was mostly positive, and I even explained how having a lot of female pirates actually made sense based on what we know about the world. My only complaint was that so many pirate captains being female was a little off-putting, which is of course the only part that people are focusing on now.
lol "sexism" - Sultai's post isn't sexist at all. Women cannot be as physically strong as their male counterparts. Their upkeep, especially every month, even more so if pregnant, is hindering to being out on high seas like that. And a woman on a ship with deprived men is a recipe for disaster. Men don't get ahead because they're superior, it's just a logistics thing. Here I can see WOTC wants representation. My issue with equal representation is it makes women less special. Usually, when a woman is a leader (like Queen Miralda for example) in a man's world, I always think to myself damn, she made it to the top in a male-dominated world, and I'm compelled to know more. For me it actually detracts not to have more scarcity. In history the women who defied the odds and made it to the top are always the most interesting, such as Queen Elizabeth being a more powerful monarch than any Tutor men. Here, that appeal feels cheapened "eh, so it's a female ruler in a world where women in leader roles is ubiquitous - and lately, the status quo"
What's sexist to me is hemorrhaging out female characters to get even by the same means. Just to get numbers? Seems disingenuous to me. Look at the native PWs lately from the past several worlds. Not that I mind, but it's pretty transparent. Yet people still complain. Don't even get me started on how people on Blogatog want Maro to be aware of every gender term they identify with.
At least the sexism debate is better than the stupid race/history debate from a few pages ago that made me cringe. I can't believe some of the things people were saying. Quit buying into propaganda and being media sheep by taking everything at face value. I blame the mods for allowing the bait to stay fresh for so long and banning anyone who takes it.
On the bright side - I love Ixalan. It's finally what I've been asking for - a relatively peaceful exploration story that takes a survey of the natural world and its denizens and showcases them all on cards. Not apocalyptic wastelands and war scenes everywhere in a dismal trash heap of world. Cynthia Shepherd took the art in a very welcoming vibrant direction too. Plane is gorgeous and the story is refreshing and equally compelling.
Yeah, basically this. Especially the part about how a female leader in a male-dominated world actually sends a much stronger message. When every world is as progressive as our world, it's kind of diminishes the importance of the individual female leaders. Vraska and perhaps one other female captain being captains would be a lot more interesting and impressive if there weren't female captains all over the place. I think a world where a few women manage to overcome the sexism of their time and take leadership roles is much, much more interesting than a world where there are female captains everywhere because these 16th-century pirates have modern views on gender for no discernable reason. Obviously there is a time and a place for progressive, modern/post-modern societies in Magic, Kaladesh and Ravnica being perfect examples, but Ixalan doesn't seem like the place for it.
Ok, enough about that, time for the actual story. Story was pretty good overall. Jarad being retconned into a villain annoys me. Vraska has gone from anti-hero to villain to anti-hero again. I’d like to see a character I actually like join the Gatewatch, so I kind of hope she replaces Liliana as the token anti-hero on the team. Vraska admitting that her plan to use Jace on Ravnica was clumsy, which seems like they’re admitting it wasn’t the best writing. I’m noticing a trend of them mocking their own writing and characters, between this, Jace’s self-depreciating humor, and of course, Bolas criticizing the Gatewatch. I like that they’re actually willing to point out the flaws in their own story rather than just repeating that “Gatewatch is great and everyone loves them”. Not taking themselves so seriously and making fun of themselves means that those of us who aren’t big fans of the Gatewatch or the modern style of story can still enjoy the writing quite a bit.
Bolas being able to info dump people is actually a pretty cool power, but of course you have to wonder why he hasn’t used it on his minions before. You also have to wonder why Bolas doesn’t simply mind control other planeswalkers instead of letting them retain their free will and potentially stop helping him or even work against him later. We’ve already seen this happen with Sarkhan, and both Tezzeret and Vraska have demonstrated a desire to not stay loyal to Bolas forever, and Bolas even knows that in both cases. Even if the writers don’t want Bolas to completely dominate those characters’ minds, they could at least have him use some sort of mental failsafe to prevent them from betraying him, like what he does on Tezzeret in Test of Metal (which has sadly also been retconned).
Bolas sending an associate to help Vraska is interesting of course. Here’s a crazy conspiracy theory that’s probably wrong: what if Bolas sent Jace as his “associate”? Jace had been a castaway for a long time when Vraska found him, so it’s entirely possible that Bolas didn’t enlist Vraska until after defeating Jace. Since Jace planeswalked away while Bolas was in his mind, it’s also entirely possible that Bolas influenced where Jace planeswalked to. And since Bolas’s explanation to Vraska was a flashback, we don’t for sure that she hasn’t used the device to call for the associate already. So what if instead of calling some planeswalker from across the multiverse, instead it changed the direction of Vraska’s compass (which she even said kept changing direction and pointed away from where they were supposed to go), causing it to temporarily point towards Jace instead of Orazca, thus explaining how Vraska somehow found Jace’s island in the middle of a giant ocean. Bolas, of course, knew that Jace would be there because he sent Jace there himself. And since Bolas claims that the Gatewatch are his pawns, what better way to show him actually using a Gatewatch member that way?
Yeah, there’s probably no way that this is correct, but it’s fun to speculate. More realistic predictions would probably be Ral Zarek, Tezzeret, and maybe Dovin Baan.
Jace has apparently been on Ixalan for 40 days:
The galley around them dissolved. Vraska remained seated in her chair, but now sat in a grove of bamboo taller than the masts of her ship. Jace sat in his chair, eyes aglow, and began an illusory summary of his last forty days.
Vraska's been there for at least 60 days, but likely longer:
She had spent the prior months assembling her crew.
So Vraska's been there longer.
The general timeline seems to be:
1) Flashbacks of Vraska and Marizek chatting; Pride of the Kraul
2) Meditation realm flashback, Vraska walks to Ixalan and starts gathering her crew; The Talented Captain Vraska
3) Marizek carries out his assassination and starts his power play; Pride of the Kraul
4) Gathewatch gets owned by Bolas and Jace ends up on Ixalan
5) Jace's story on Useless Island; Jace, Alone
6) The rest of The Talented Captain Vraska
I think the other Bolas agent will either be Tezzeret, as the story implies that Vraska will need the Planar Bridge to move the Immortal Sun (the likely macguffin) off-world. Or less likely Ral, assuming Ral's assignment was related to rebuilding/powering the Planar Bridge from the core that Tezzeret was able to acquire.
Good to know. Like I said, it was a pretty dumb theory in the first place so I was expecting to be proven wrong. Although it would have been nice to get an explanation for once of how planeswalkers always manage to run into each other by coinicidence.
And yeah, Tezzeret seems pretty likely at this point. He may or may not get a card in Rivals if he does make an appearance, this Angrath, Ugin, possibly Ajani, and an agent of Bolas are all competing for two planeswalker spots. We'll have to wait and see what happens I guess.
I get the hints that Ugin might be involved with the Immortal Sun and other Ixalani phenomena, but when did we conclude that he'd get a card here, even if does show up?
Much like Tezzeret (or pretty much anyone else besides Angrath), Ugin definitely doesn't have to get a card even if makes an appearance. While there's basically no way that they don't give a card to Angrath, the other planeswalker card in Rivals is a toss-up between a bunch of other characters who could appear, Ugin being only one of them.
Also, regarding the obviousness of Emrakul in Innistrad, while all the signs were there (to the point where people immediately suspected Emrakul when we were met with tentacles, lattice formations, Nahiri's disturbing synergy with Aeons Torn, the knowledge that she was originally intended to be in the third BFZ block set and the fact that she wasn't anywhere to be found on Zendikar), there was also a lot of "It can't possibly be Emrakul, because I hate Eldrazi/it must be Marit Lage/it must be the Stromkirk Sea God/etc." There was a mix of denial and ignorance going on where the clues were concerned, to the point where short of Emrakul actually being revealed, there were a few vocal individuals insisting that it couldn't possibly be her.
Lol, my logic for thinking it was something other than Emrakul early on in SOI was that the writers were deliberately trying to throw us off. I thought that WotC’s creative department would be able to tell a mystery story at least as well as your average episode of Scooby Doo. Evidently, I was wrong.
I liked the story. Interaction between Jace and Vraska is fun and its cool learning more about her character.
As for Bolas's agent, I'm hoping we finally see Ramaz in story. Although idk how we'll fit him in. I think Angrath is a lock and the leaked boosters suggest Ajani is in Rivals. That's 2 pw already in a small set. Although it leaves the option of 3 pw in a small set, a walker showing up in story but not in card form, or (plot twist) Ajani is Bolas's agent!!! (Jk bout that last one)
The art on the other leaked booster for Rivals was Huatli’s art from her planeswalker card in Ixalan, so the art doesn’t necessarily line up with the real set that is the equivalent of the fake set for the packaging test. As such, I think that the Ajani art might be not for Rivals, but for Dominaria. Kaladesh clearly set up Ajani going to Dominaria for allies while we’ve seen nothing to suggest that Ajani would go to Ixalan. He didn’t even know that the rest of the team went to fight Bolas, so he might not even know that they were defeated. Even if he does know that, how would he know where Jace is? Even if he knows where Jace is, how would he find a hidden plane like Ixalan? Plus there are several other planeswalkers that might need cards in Rivals, whereas Dominaria’s planeswalker spots are pretty much completely open aside from Liliana almost certainly being there.
The only thing we can really be sure of is Angrath getting a card. There’s no way that they don’t give him one. It’s probably BR (there’s a shortage of black planeswalkers in Kaladesh/Amonkhet/Ixalan standard); I suppose it could be mono-red but probably only if the other planeswalker is partially black (meaning Tezzeret most likely). I won’t rule Ajani or Ugin out completely, but unless they do something really unexpected with who Bolas’s associate is (like it being someone already on the plane, like Angrath) or they really downplay the Bolas agent’s role in the story (similar to Tezzeret only showing up at the end of Amonkhet), it seems pretty unlikely that they would not give the Bolas agent a card.
Is it so hard to believe that Ixalan just isn't sexist? There's no reason that, just because when we had pirates we were sexist, means that it has to be the same on a fantasy world that has pirates.
If it was a completely fantastical world, then sure. Same goes for the more science fiction-based worlds, because it makes sense for them to be more progressive. But when a world borrows very heavily from elements of a time period in our past, it's natural to assume that everything not explicitly different is about the same as was on Earth during that time. In Ixalan's case, it's based on about the 1500s, so while things that are obviously departures from that are fine (dinosaurs, vampires, magic), we kind of expect other things to line up with the time period. Even if it was just Vraska (whose species should make it easy to assume leadership regardless of gender roles) and one other female planebound captain, it wouldn't seem that out of place, but virtually every pirate with a leadership role is female, which has no basis in the actual history that Ixalan is based on.
On a different world with pirates that's heavier on fantasy or sci-fi than Ixalan, I wouldn't have a problem, but on a world where the pirates are based on real-world pirates from the real-world age of exploration, it just feels a bit off. It's so much that the pirates aren't sexist enough, because they did remove some of the more negative real-world aspects from all factions (like human sacrifice), it's just that real-world legendary pirates were almost invariably male, so not having a single one with a card in Ixalan doesn't feel very true to the source material. I guess there will be Angrath in the next set, but that's still a 3:1 ratio in favor of women (if not 4:1 or 5:1 since if we get more pirate legends in Rivals they will most likely be Vance and/or Parrish), when it should be 50/50 at the best if they're trying to be even a little historically accurate.
I honestly can't stand this kind of commentary. It's this kind of discussion that keeps sexism alive and strong.
Pretty sure it's the actual sexists who are keeping sexism alive and strong. If you think this is sexism, you need to get out more.
Let me be clear, whether they are male or female HAS ZERO influence over this story. I mean that insofar as the story could be just as compelling with a 3:1 male ratio as it can be with a 3:1 female ratio. Perhaps Wizards will explain the lopsided genders. Perhaps they won't. But the fact is, if they choose not to, then it wouldn't pull away from the story at all. In fact, why are you even counting? Why does it matter at all? I'm far from a social justice warrior. I'm not arguing that everything should be equal or that it should be lopsided one way or another. What I am arguing is that it has no bearing on the effectiveness of this story so you have no reason to be out there looking for something to pick at. It's absolutely ludicrous that this discussion even exists.
You're correct that it doesn't really affect the story. I just made the observation that the gender balance was a little off compared to real-world influences these pirates are clearly based on. Someone asked me why Ixalan's pirates would have to be the same way as real-world pirates, and I explained why. I'm not going to let it ruin the story for me, it's just a minor nitpick that I'm explaining my reasoning for.
And for the love of all that is good, can people PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, STOP thinking that this fantasy story needs to directly and accurately
reflect our history?!
It doesn't need to be a perfect reflection of history (obviously) but when we see pirates based on the 1500s showing an attitude towards gender roles from the 2000s, it's just a little strange. Yes, there's magic and dinosaurs on this world, but none of that would really affect how strong sexism is in that type of society. Age of Exploration pirates are Age of Exploration pirates, so seeing them being inexplicably progressive with regard to gender roles is a little odd and something for which an explanation might be nice.
It is inspired by tropes from our history.
There are a lot more tropes of male pirate captains from history than female ones, so even if they're aiming for the trope-based pop culture version of history they still aren't doing it very well in this regard. It's not like every captain has to be male by any means, but making them all female is really pushing it in my opinion.
This is not a story about the pirates that roamed the sea of earth, it is not about the meso-American people, and it has NOTHING to do with the dinosaurs that roamed the earth up to 65 million years ago.It is its OWN story in its OWN setting simply inspired by what we know as ALL STORIES SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME HAVE BEEN. Every story we tell is inspired by our experiences and learnings.
Which is exactly why having so many female captains feels so wrong. Our "experiences and learnings" tell us that pirates during the Age of Exploration were quite sexist and that their leadership positions were male-dominated, so when they not only ignore that but showcase the exact opposite, it's going to make people scratch their heads at the very least.
This is not the product for historically accurate ANYHING. Once you start realizing that, maybe, juuuusst maybe, you can enjoy the product and story for what it is and stop trying to find crap to be disappointed about.
If you look at the original post you'll see that the overall post was mostly positive, and I even explained how having a lot of female pirates actually made sense based on what we know about the world. My only complaint was that so many pirate captains being female was a little off-putting, which is of course the only part that people are focusing on now.
lol "sexism" - Sultai's post isn't sexist at all. Women cannot be as physically strong as their male counterparts. Their upkeep, especially every month, even more so if pregnant, is hindering to being out on high seas like that. And a woman on a ship with deprived men is a recipe for disaster. Men don't get ahead because they're superior, it's just a logistics thing. Here I can see WOTC wants representation. My issue with equal representation is it makes women less special. Usually, when a woman is a leader (like Queen Miralda for example) in a man's world, I always think to myself damn, she made it to the top in a male-dominated world, and I'm compelled to know more. For me it actually detracts not to have more scarcity. In history the women who defied the odds and made it to the top are always the most interesting, such as Queen Elizabeth being a more powerful monarch than any Tutor men. Here, that appeal feels cheapened "eh, so it's a female ruler in a world where women in leader roles is ubiquitous - and lately, the status quo"
What's sexist to me is hemorrhaging out female characters to get even by the same means. Just to get numbers? Seems disingenuous to me. Look at the native PWs lately from the past several worlds. Not that I mind, but it's pretty transparent. Yet people still complain. Don't even get me started on how people on Blogatog want Maro to be aware of every gender term they identify with.
At least the sexism debate is better than the stupid race/history debate from a few pages ago that made me cringe. I can't believe some of the things people were saying. Quit buying into propaganda and being media sheep by taking everything at face value. I blame the mods for allowing the bait to stay fresh for so long and banning anyone who takes it.
On the bright side - I love Ixalan. It's finally what I've been asking for - a relatively peaceful exploration story that takes a survey of the natural world and its denizens and showcases them all on cards. Not apocalyptic wastelands and war scenes everywhere in a dismal trash heap of world. Cynthia Shepherd took the art in a very welcoming vibrant direction too. Plane is gorgeous and the story is refreshing and equally compelling.
Yeah, basically this. Especially the part about how a female leader in a male-dominated world actually sends a much stronger message. When every world is as progressive as our world, it's kind of diminishes the importance of the individual female leaders. Vraska and perhaps one other female captain being captains would be a lot more interesting and impressive if there weren't female captains all over the place. I think a world where a few women manage to overcome the sexism of their time and take leadership roles is much, much more interesting than a world where there are female captains everywhere because these 16th-century pirates have modern views on gender for no discernable reason. Obviously there is a time and a place for progressive, modern/post-modern societies in Magic, Kaladesh and Ravnica being perfect examples, but Ixalan doesn't seem like the place for it.
Ok, enough about that, time for the actual story. Story was pretty good overall. Jarad being retconned into a villain annoys me. Vraska has gone from anti-hero to villain to anti-hero again. I’d like to see a character I actually like join the Gatewatch, so I kind of hope she replaces Liliana as the token anti-hero on the team. Vraska admitting that her plan to use Jace on Ravnica was clumsy, which seems like they’re admitting it wasn’t the best writing. I’m noticing a trend of them mocking their own writing and characters, between this, Jace’s self-depreciating humor, and of course, Bolas criticizing the Gatewatch. I like that they’re actually willing to point out the flaws in their own story rather than just repeating that “Gatewatch is great and everyone loves them”. Not taking themselves so seriously and making fun of themselves means that those of us who aren’t big fans of the Gatewatch or the modern style of story can still enjoy the writing quite a bit.
Bolas being able to info dump people is actually a pretty cool power, but of course you have to wonder why he hasn’t used it on his minions before. You also have to wonder why Bolas doesn’t simply mind control other planeswalkers instead of letting them retain their free will and potentially stop helping him or even work against him later. We’ve already seen this happen with Sarkhan, and both Tezzeret and Vraska have demonstrated a desire to not stay loyal to Bolas forever, and Bolas even knows that in both cases. Even if the writers don’t want Bolas to completely dominate those characters’ minds, they could at least have him use some sort of mental failsafe to prevent them from betraying him, like what he does on Tezzeret in Test of Metal (which has sadly also been retconned).
Bolas sending an associate to help Vraska is interesting of course. Here’s a crazy conspiracy theory that’s probably wrong: what if Bolas sent Jace as his “associate”? Jace had been a castaway for a long time when Vraska found him, so it’s entirely possible that Bolas didn’t enlist Vraska until after defeating Jace. Since Jace planeswalked away while Bolas was in his mind, it’s also entirely possible that Bolas influenced where Jace planeswalked to. And since Bolas’s explanation to Vraska was a flashback, we don’t for sure that she hasn’t used the device to call for the associate already. So what if instead of calling some planeswalker from across the multiverse, instead it changed the direction of Vraska’s compass (which she even said kept changing direction and pointed away from where they were supposed to go), causing it to temporarily point towards Jace instead of Orazca, thus explaining how Vraska somehow found Jace’s island in the middle of a giant ocean. Bolas, of course, knew that Jace would be there because he sent Jace there himself. And since Bolas claims that the Gatewatch are his pawns, what better way to show him actually using a Gatewatch member that way?
Yeah, there’s probably no way that this is correct, but it’s fun to speculate. More realistic predictions would probably be Ral Zarek, Tezzeret, and maybe Dovin Baan.
Jace has apparently been on Ixalan for 40 days:
The galley around them dissolved. Vraska remained seated in her chair, but now sat in a grove of bamboo taller than the masts of her ship. Jace sat in his chair, eyes aglow, and began an illusory summary of his last forty days.
Vraska's been there for at least 60 days, but likely longer:
She had spent the prior months assembling her crew.
So Vraska's been there longer.
The general timeline seems to be:
1) Flashbacks of Vraska and Marizek chatting; Pride of the Kraul
2) Meditation realm flashback, Vraska walks to Ixalan and starts gathering her crew; The Talented Captain Vraska
3) Marizek carries out his assassination and starts his power play; Pride of the Kraul
4) Gathewatch gets owned by Bolas and Jace ends up on Ixalan
5) Jace's story on Useless Island; Jace, Alone
6) The rest of The Talented Captain Vraska
I think the other Bolas agent will either be Tezzeret, as the story implies that Vraska will need the Planar Bridge to move the Immortal Sun (the likely macguffin) off-world. Or less likely Ral, assuming Ral's assignment was related to rebuilding/powering the Planar Bridge from the core that Tezzeret was able to acquire.
Good to know. Like I said, it was a pretty dumb theory in the first place so I was expecting to be proven wrong. Although it would have been nice to get an explanation for once of how planeswalkers always manage to run into each other by coinicidence.
And yeah, Tezzeret seems pretty likely at this point. He may or may not get a card in Rivals if he does make an appearance, this Angrath, Ugin, possibly Ajani, and an agent of Bolas are all competing for two planeswalker spots. We'll have to wait and see what happens I guess.
At first, I was surprised at the number of female pirates on Ixalan. Sure, there were a few female pirates in real life, but on Ixalam they make up at least half of all pirates, which isn't realistic at all. It's even stranger when you realize they didn't give the vampires the same PC treatment: virtually all the conquistadors are male, just like they were in real life. What gives?
But then I realized why this all makes sense: the pirates are refugees. Unlike in real life, where pirates were just a minority of sailors, Ixalan's pirates consist of all the non-vampires (save a few humans that are still being forced to serve the Dusk Legion) from Torrezon. All of them. All races and both sexes.
That still doesn't explain why 80% of pirate captains are female. We all know that sexism was still running rampant in the time period Ixalan was based on, so even if a lot of women were pirates, they would still have difficulty getting positions of leadership. I could see Vraska taking over by the virtue of being a deadly and intimidating gorgon, but that doesn't excuse four out of five planebound captains/admirals being female. So that part is revisionist history and perhaps overly PC. But the presence of so many female pirates in general makes a lot of sense.
As for the block's villain(s), I agree that Vraska has gone full anti-hero, so Angrath and Kumena are far more likely to take on antagonistic roles, especially in the second set. However, the villain I have my eye on is Arguel and the bat god whose name I don't care to look up or try to spell (I suspect that the latter will end up possessing the former).
Still, I'm really hoping for a "every faction is terrible in its own way" type of story, much like Tarkir and Ravnica. In general faction sets tend to result in storylines that are less black-and-white, which is a win in my book (New Phyrexia is obviously the exception to this).
The whole "Sun Empire doesn't kill people" thing, however, makes me skeptical that this block will be as morally grey as Tarkir, which would be disappointing. We haven't had a good moral debate since SOI, and that's a shame. Bolas and Tezzeret could not possibly be justified in their actions, which in my opinion makes those storylines much less interesting and compelling than something morally grey like SOI or Tarkir.
Is it so hard to believe that Ixalan just isn't sexist? There's no reason that, just because when we had pirates we were sexist, means that it has to be the same on a fantasy world that has pirates.
If it was a completely fantastical world, then sure. Same goes for the more science fiction-based worlds, because it makes sense for them to be more progressive. But when a world borrows very heavily from elements of a time period in our past, it's natural to assume that everything not explicitly different is about the same as was on Earth during that time. In Ixalan's case, it's based on about the 1500s, so while things that are obviously departures from that are fine (dinosaurs, vampires, magic), we kind of expect other things to line up with the time period. Even if it was just Vraska (whose species should make it easy to assume leadership regardless of gender roles) and one other female planebound captain, it wouldn't seem that out of place, but virtually every pirate with a leadership role is female, which has no basis in the actual history that Ixalan is based on.
On a different world with pirates that's heavier on fantasy or sci-fi than Ixalan, I wouldn't have a problem, but on a world where the pirates are based on real-world pirates from the real-world age of exploration, it just feels a bit off. It's so much that the pirates aren't sexist enough, because they did remove some of the more negative real-world aspects from all factions (like human sacrifice), it's just that real-world legendary pirates were almost invariably male, so not having a single one with a card in Ixalan doesn't feel very true to the source material. I guess there will be Angrath in the next set, but that's still a 3:1 ratio in favor of women (if not 4:1 or 5:1 since if we get more pirate legends in Rivals they will most likely be Vance and/or Parrish), when it should be 50/50 at the best if they're trying to be even a little historically accurate.
I honestly can't stand this kind of commentary. It's this kind of discussion that keeps sexism alive and strong.
Pretty sure it's the actual sexists who are keeping sexism alive and strong. If you think this is sexism, you need to get out more.
Let me be clear, whether they are male or female HAS ZERO influence over this story. I mean that insofar as the story could be just as compelling with a 3:1 male ratio as it can be with a 3:1 female ratio. Perhaps Wizards will explain the lopsided genders. Perhaps they won't. But the fact is, if they choose not to, then it wouldn't pull away from the story at all. In fact, why are you even counting? Why does it matter at all? I'm far from a social justice warrior. I'm not arguing that everything should be equal or that it should be lopsided one way or another. What I am arguing is that it has no bearing on the effectiveness of this story so you have no reason to be out there looking for something to pick at. It's absolutely ludicrous that this discussion even exists.
You're correct that it doesn't really affect the story. I just made the observation that the gender balance was a little off compared to real-world influences these pirates are clearly based on. Someone asked me why Ixalan's pirates would have to be the same way as real-world pirates, and I explained why. I'm not going to let it ruin the story for me, it's just a minor nitpick that I'm explaining my reasoning for.
And for the love of all that is good, can people PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, STOP thinking that this fantasy story needs to directly and accurately
reflect our history?!
It doesn't need to be a perfect reflection of history (obviously) but when we see pirates based on the 1500s showing an attitude towards gender roles from the 2000s, it's just a little strange. Yes, there's magic and dinosaurs on this world, but none of that would really affect how strong sexism is in that type of society. Age of Exploration pirates are Age of Exploration pirates, so seeing them being inexplicably progressive with regard to gender roles is a little odd and something for which an explanation might be nice.
It is inspired by tropes from our history.
There are a lot more tropes of male pirate captains from history than female ones, so even if they're aiming for the trope-based pop culture version of history they still aren't doing it very well in this regard. It's not like every captain has to be male by any means, but making them all female is really pushing it in my opinion.
This is not a story about the pirates that roamed the sea of earth, it is not about the meso-American people, and it has NOTHING to do with the dinosaurs that roamed the earth up to 65 million years ago.It is its OWN story in its OWN setting simply inspired by what we know as ALL STORIES SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME HAVE BEEN. Every story we tell is inspired by our experiences and learnings.
Which is exactly why having so many female captains feels so wrong. Our "experiences and learnings" tell us that pirates during the Age of Exploration were quite sexist and that their leadership positions were male-dominated, so when they not only ignore that but showcase the exact opposite, it's going to make people scratch their heads at the very least.
This is not the product for historically accurate ANYHING. Once you start realizing that, maybe, juuuusst maybe, you can enjoy the product and story for what it is and stop trying to find crap to be disappointed about.
If you look at the original post you'll see that the overall post was mostly positive, and I even explained how having a lot of female pirates actually made sense based on what we know about the world. My only complaint was that so many pirate captains being female was a little off-putting, which is of course the only part that people are focusing on now.
lol "sexism" - Sultai's post isn't sexist at all. Women cannot be as physically strong as their male counterparts. Their upkeep, especially every month, even more so if pregnant, is hindering to being out on high seas like that. And a woman on a ship with deprived men is a recipe for disaster. Men don't get ahead because they're superior, it's just a logistics thing. Here I can see WOTC wants representation. My issue with equal representation is it makes women less special. Usually, when a woman is a leader (like Queen Miralda for example) in a man's world, I always think to myself damn, she made it to the top in a male-dominated world, and I'm compelled to know more. For me it actually detracts not to have more scarcity. In history the women who defied the odds and made it to the top are always the most interesting, such as Queen Elizabeth being a more powerful monarch than any Tutor men. Here, that appeal feels cheapened "eh, so it's a female ruler in a world where women in leader roles is ubiquitous - and lately, the status quo"
What's sexist to me is hemorrhaging out female characters to get even by the same means. Just to get numbers? Seems disingenuous to me. Look at the native PWs lately from the past several worlds. Not that I mind, but it's pretty transparent. Yet people still complain. Don't even get me started on how people on Blogatog want Maro to be aware of every gender term they identify with.
At least the sexism debate is better than the stupid race/history debate from a few pages ago that made me cringe. I can't believe some of the things people were saying. Quit buying into propaganda and being media sheep by taking everything at face value. I blame the mods for allowing the bait to stay fresh for so long and banning anyone who takes it.
On the bright side - I love Ixalan. It's finally what I've been asking for - a relatively peaceful exploration story that takes a survey of the natural world and its denizens and showcases them all on cards. Not apocalyptic wastelands and war scenes everywhere in a dismal trash heap of world. Cynthia Shepherd took the art in a very welcoming vibrant direction too. Plane is gorgeous and the story is refreshing and equally compelling.
Yeah, basically this. Especially the part about how a female leader in a male-dominated world actually sends a much stronger message. When every world is as progressive as our world, it's kind of diminishes the importance of the individual female leaders. Vraska and perhaps one other female captain being captains would be a lot more interesting and impressive if there weren't female captains all over the place. I think a world where a few women manage to overcome the sexism of their time and take leadership roles is much, much more interesting than a world where there are female captains everywhere because these 16th-century pirates have modern views on gender for no discernable reason. Obviously there is a time and a place for progressive, modern/post-modern societies in Magic, Kaladesh and Ravnica being perfect examples, but Ixalan doesn't seem like the place for it.
Ok, enough about that, time for the actual story. Story was pretty good overall. Jarad being retconned into a villain annoys me. Vraska has gone from anti-hero to villain to anti-hero again. I’d like to see a character I actually like join the Gatewatch, so I kind of hope she replaces Liliana as the token anti-hero on the team. Vraska admitting that her plan to use Jace on Ravnica was clumsy, which seems like they’re admitting it wasn’t the best writing. I’m noticing a trend of them mocking their own writing and characters, between this, Jace’s self-depreciating humor, and of course, Bolas criticizing the Gatewatch. I like that they’re actually willing to point out the flaws in their own story rather than just repeating that “Gatewatch is great and everyone loves them”. Not taking themselves so seriously and making fun of themselves means that those of us who aren’t big fans of the Gatewatch or the modern style of story can still enjoy the writing quite a bit.
Bolas being able to info dump people is actually a pretty cool power, but of course you have to wonder why he hasn’t used it on his minions before. You also have to wonder why Bolas doesn’t simply mind control other planeswalkers instead of letting them retain their free will and potentially stop helping him or even work against him later. We’ve already seen this happen with Sarkhan, and both Tezzeret and Vraska have demonstrated a desire to not stay loyal to Bolas forever, and Bolas even knows that in both cases. Even if the writers don’t want Bolas to completely dominate those characters’ minds, they could at least have him use some sort of mental failsafe to prevent them from betraying him, like what he does on Tezzeret in Test of Metal (which has sadly also been retconned).
Bolas sending an associate to help Vraska is interesting of course. Here’s a crazy conspiracy theory that’s probably wrong: what if Bolas sent Jace as his “associate”? Jace had been a castaway for a long time when Vraska found him, so it’s entirely possible that Bolas didn’t enlist Vraska until after defeating Jace. Since Jace planeswalked away while Bolas was in his mind, it’s also entirely possible that Bolas influenced where Jace planeswalked to. And since Bolas’s explanation to Vraska was a flashback, we don’t for sure that she hasn’t used the device to call for the associate already. So what if instead of calling some planeswalker from across the multiverse, instead it changed the direction of Vraska’s compass (which she even said kept changing direction and pointed away from where they were supposed to go), causing it to temporarily point towards Jace instead of Orazca, thus explaining how Vraska somehow found Jace’s island in the middle of a giant ocean. Bolas, of course, knew that Jace would be there because he sent Jace there himself. And since Bolas claims that the Gatewatch are his pawns, what better way to show him actually using a Gatewatch member that way?
Yeah, there’s probably no way that this is correct, but it’s fun to speculate. More realistic predictions would probably be Ral Zarek, Tezzeret, and maybe Dovin Baan.
Now I am really scared that the pirate themed planeswalker deck is going to have Vraska as the cover card and is going to be Black Green, when pirates have nothing to do with green. If that was the case, it means that they are building the deck around the planeswalker, not around the theme, in which case I just wished they went back to theme decks. The worst part is, I can't think of any blue, red, or blue red planeswalker that can be the cover card of a pirate deck.
Unless you're asserting Vraska will get two cards in one block like Sarkhan in Tarkir there is absolutely zero chance of her being the face card of a Rivals of Ixalan Planeswalker deck. Those cards are exclusively jank variants of planeswalkers that are in THAT set.
“Zero change”? Lol. As others have said, Nissa was in an HOU planeswalker deck, which already completely disproves your statement, but even if she wasn’t in HOU it would still be too early in the history of planeswalker decks to say with absolute certainty that it could never happen. It clearly, it can. Also, Maro basically confirmed that Vraska will be in a planeswalker deck in Rivals already: http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/164867569798/i-was-wondering-why-you-guys-decided-not-to-give
Jace is a merfolk deck.
The other one is the dinosaur deck.
This leads me to believe that the 2 Rivals of Ixalan decks would be Pirates and Vampires
For all we know, the Pirate one is probably going to be Black Green just because WOTC probably wants to shoehorn Vraska in there. In that case, I really hope that Vraska isn't in any of the planeswalker decks. I'd rather have them do White Black Vampires, and Blue Red Pirates. Another reason for this is that so far, Green is the only color that is not missing in a set's worth of Planeswalker deck color pairs.
Kaladesh is black
Aether revolt is red
Amonkhet is blue
Hour of Devastation is white
Ixalan is black
WOTC could have sprinkled some green in the dinosaur deck to make a tri color deck, like the Hour of Devastation Nicol Bolas deck, but they didn't, which was why I would predict that the pirate deck would be blue red, and the fact that unless one of the decks was 3 color, both decks in the set won't share a color.
Now I am really scared that the pirate themed planeswalker deck is going to have Vraska as the cover card and is going to be Black Green, when pirates have nothing to do with green. If that was the case, it means that they are building the deck around the planeswalker, not around the theme, in which case I just wished they went back to theme decks. The worst part is, I can't think of any blue, red, or blue red planeswalker that can be the cover card of a pirate deck.
First, I think that you're vastly overestimating WotC's desire to balance the colors in these decks. We've just had three consecutive blocks with both GU and RW decks, while several other color pairs don't have a single deck. But I don't think that a Vraska PW deck would be pirate tribal. Planeswalker decks usually focus on the themes of a color pair that appears in the actual set, and for BG, that's explore, not pirate tribal. While Vraska is a pirate, a BG pirate deck would be not only hard to build but also misleading to new players. Instead I would expect a deck focusing on explore or perhaps another BG-focused mechanic that replaces explore in rivals.
Besides, there’s no reason that every tribe needs a planeswalker deck. There aren’t any good candidates for a face card for a vampire planeswalker deck, with Sorin being stuck in a wall and new W, B, or WB vampire planeswalker being unlikely because Sorin exists. Vampires and merfolk are kind of the minor tribes of the plane anyway, with dinosaurs and pirates being the major ones that truly need to have planeswalker decks. I think that Angrath will have a BR deck representing pirate tribal and Vraska will have a BG deck that features some pirates and some non-pirates, with the real focus being explore or whatever the BG archetype is in Rivals if it’s not explore (and before anyone tells me that there’s zero chance of decks with overlapping colors, I’d like to point out that both of HOU’s decks were partially blue.)
Now I am really scared that the pirate themed planeswalker deck is going to have Vraska as the cover card and is going to be Black Green, when pirates have nothing to do with green. If that was the case, it means that they are building the deck around the planeswalker, not around the theme, in which case I just wished they went back to theme decks.
I'd expect the pirate deck would be Angrath.
Pretty much guaranteed; that will make for an unusual Ajani deck, though, as he will have to splash black in order to fit Vampires.
Actually, I would bet that Ajani is not on Ixalan, but Dominaria. If you look at the art on the booster packaging for "Conquest of Power" (the pre-Rivals of Ixalan name), it's none other than Huatli, Warrior-Poet on the booster packaging. Huatli's in Ixalan, not Rivals, so we can't assume that Ajani is in Rivals. Instead, it makes perfect sense that he'd be on Dominaria -- you know, the plane that he told the rest of the Gatewatch to meet him on?
Cited booster art for reference.
I couldn't agree more. Huatli's art from Ixalan being on a Rivals booster definitely proves that the leaked boosters don't line up perfectly with the actual product, and Ajani would make way more sense in Dominaria for several reasons:
The story has already set up Ajani's presence on Dominaria, but has done nothing to suggest that he would be involved in Ixalan.
Ajani doesn't know where Jace is and probably doesn't know where Ixalan is either, it being a hidden plane and all. He's looking for allies right now, not tracking down defeated Gatewatch members (yet). He might not even know that Bolas kicked their asses yet, since they went to Amonkhet without telling him.
Ajani being in Dominaria would put more space between a new card and his previous card than him being in Rivals would.
There will already be a lot of green planeswalkers in standard when Rivals releases, so another GW Ajani does't make much sense for color balance.
If Ajani is in Dominaria, it opens up space for another planeswalker besides Angrath to be in Rivals, most likely either Ugin or the "associate" of Bolas that is supposed to help Vraska. There are a lot of planeswalkers competing for space in Rivals and not a lot for Dominaria.
In the Ixalan story podcast, it was stated that Jace is the only Gatewatch planeswalker on Ixalan. They could have been deliberately misleading us by referring to only Ixalan the set and not Ixalan the block, but if Ajani’s not actually on Ixalan at all it would open up the possibility of it just being an honest statement.
While it's not impossible that Ajani will show up in Rivals, it's far from a guarantee at this point. It’s an assumption that everyone has been making for quite a while now so most people will probably be fully expecting it until we actually start to see Rivals, when we’ll know for sure whether or not Ajani is in Rivals.
At first, I was surprised at the number of female pirates on Ixalan. Sure, there were a few female pirates in real life, but on Ixalam they make up at least half of all pirates, which isn't realistic at all. It's even stranger when you realize they didn't give the vampires the same PC treatment: virtually all the conquistadors are male, just like they were in real life. What gives?
But then I realized why this all makes sense: the pirates are refugees. Unlike in real life, where pirates were just a minority of sailors, Ixalan's pirates consist of all the non-vampires (save a few humans that are still being forced to serve the Dusk Legion) from Torrezon. All of them. All races and both sexes.
That still doesn't explain why 80% of pirate captains are female. We all know that sexism was still running rampant in the time period Ixalan was based on, so even if a lot of women were pirates, they would still have difficulty getting positions of leadership. I could see Vraska taking over by the virtue of being a deadly and intimidating gorgon, but that doesn't excuse four out of five planebound captains/admirals being female. So that part is revisionist history and perhaps overly PC. But the presence of so many female pirates in general makes a lot of sense.
As for the block's villain(s), I agree that Vraska has gone full anti-hero, so Angrath and Kumena are far more likely to take on antagonistic roles, especially in the second set. However, the villain I have my eye on is Arguel and the bat god whose name I don't care to look up or try to spell (I suspect that the latter will end up possessing the former).
Still, I'm really hoping for a "every faction is terrible in its own way" type of story, much like Tarkir and Ravnica. In general faction sets tend to result in storylines that are less black-and-white, which is a win in my book (New Phyrexia is obviously the exception to this).
The whole "Sun Empire doesn't kill people" thing, however, makes me skeptical that this block will be as morally grey as Tarkir, which would be disappointing. We haven't had a good moral debate since SOI, and that's a shame. Bolas and Tezzeret could not possibly be justified in their actions, which in my opinion makes those storylines much less interesting and compelling than something morally grey like SOI or Tarkir.
Is it so hard to believe that Ixalan just isn't sexist? There's no reason that, just because when we had pirates we were sexist, means that it has to be the same on a fantasy world that has pirates.
If it was a completely fantastical world, then sure. Same goes for the more science fiction-based worlds, because it makes sense for them to be more progressive. But when a world borrows very heavily from elements of a time period in our past, it's natural to assume that everything not explicitly different is about the same as was on Earth during that time. In Ixalan's case, it's based on about the 1500s, so while things that are obviously departures from that are fine (dinosaurs, vampires, magic), we kind of expect other things to line up with the time period. Even if it was just Vraska (whose species should make it easy to assume leadership regardless of gender roles) and one other female planebound captain, it wouldn't seem that out of place, but virtually every pirate with a leadership role is female, which has no basis in the actual history that Ixalan is based on.
On a different world with pirates that's heavier on fantasy or sci-fi than Ixalan, I wouldn't have a problem, but on a world where the pirates are based on real-world pirates from the real-world age of exploration, it just feels a bit off. It's so much that the pirates aren't sexist enough, because they did remove some of the more negative real-world aspects from all factions (like human sacrifice), it's just that real-world legendary pirates were almost invariably male, so not having a single one with a card in Ixalan doesn't feel very true to the source material. I guess there will be Angrath in the next set, but that's still a 3:1 ratio in favor of women (if not 4:1 or 5:1 since if we get more pirate legends in Rivals they will most likely be Vance and/or Parrish), when it should be 50/50 at the best if they're trying to be even a little historically accurate.
The whole "Sun Empire doesn't kill people" thing, however, makes me skeptical that this block will be as morally grey as Tarkir, which would be disappointing. We haven't had a good moral debate since SOI, and that's a shame. Bolas and Tezzeret could not possibly be justified in their actions, which in my opinion makes those storylines much less interesting and compelling than something morally grey like SOI or Tarkir.
Agreed, both in that the Sun Empire/Huatli's nonviolence was cringy and forced, and that I'm hoping for a lot more grey area for all factions.
Where are you guys getting this "The Sun Empire is nonviolent" idea from? All the last fiction said was that Huatli and her warriors managed to triumph in their last battle without any lives lost on either side. Engagements like this have happened in real life.
Just because they won a bloodless victory doesn't mean they don't fight bloody battles as well. They're an expansionist empire, after all, who command dinosaurs with names like "Carnage Tyrant."
Nonviolent may not be the best word to describe it, cause martial combat is inherently violent, but when the story contains not one, but two instances where Huatli and Co deliberately avoid killing invaders it starts to feel forced and unnatural.
She and Intli had the element of surprise and a horde of dinosaurs at their disposal but instead just killing the pirates they burn their supplies and chase them off? Burning their supplies virtually guarantees that they'll HAVE to make a(nother) raid, likely against Sun Empire citizens, to resupply. By not simply crushing the pirates, they've now put their own citizens in danger.
That's simply not how you win a conflict, so it feels like WotC was trying too hard to say "These are the good guys!" and it feels contrived and artificial.
My thoughts exactly. If it was just the vampire thing, maybe I could believe that it was just a happy coincidence that no one died, but with the pirates they were clearly pulling their punches against their own best interests. Why would they burn the supplies of the pirates with said pirates nearby and then just leave? Either fight the pirates off for good, or don't provoke them in the first place. Otherwise, you're going to get ambushed by the pirates, which is exactly what happened with Angrath.
Not only are nonlethal tactics historically inaccurate for an Aztec-inspired faction and just plain stupid as a war strategy, but it also would be impossible to implement because they're fighting with dinosaurs on their side. Even if the people don't want to kill anyone, the dinosaurs will anyway. And, as you said, it feels like they're trying too hard to set up the good guys and bad guys, when it could (and should) be more complicated than that.
That being said, it's still early in the story. Hopefully at some point in the story we will see Huatli and/or the rest of the Sun Empire actually try to kill their enemies the way they logically should. The cards at least show dinosaurs killing pirates and especially vampires, and although that's not necessarily at the direction of the humans, it still gives me some amount of hope. Hopefully the utter absurdity of a dinosaur-riding Aztec warriors who refuse to kill anyone will prevent the writers from actually attempting it in anything more than this one story to not-so-subtly introduce Huatli as a protagonist.
At first, I was surprised at the number of female pirates on Ixalan. Sure, there were a few female pirates in real life, but on Ixalam they make up at least half of all pirates, which isn't realistic at all. It's even stranger when you realize they didn't give the vampires the same PC treatment: virtually all the conquistadors are male, just like they were in real life. What gives?
But then I realized why this all makes sense: the pirates are refugees. Unlike in real life, where pirates were just a minority of sailors, Ixalan's pirates consist of all the non-vampires (save a few humans that are still being forced to serve the Dusk Legion) from Torrezon. All of them. All races and both sexes.
That still doesn't explain why 80% of pirate captains are female. We all know that sexism was still running rampant in the time period Ixalan was based on, so even if a lot of women were pirates, they would still have difficulty getting positions of leadership. I could see Vraska taking over by the virtue of being a deadly and intimidating gorgon, but that doesn't excuse four out of five planebound captains/admirals being female. So that part is revisionist history and perhaps overly PC. But the presence of so many female pirates in general makes a lot of sense.
As for the block's villain(s), I agree that Vraska has gone full anti-hero, so Angrath and Kumena are far more likely to take on antagonistic roles, especially in the second set. However, the villain I have my eye on is Arguel and the bat god whose name I don't care to look up or try to spell (I suspect that the latter will end up possessing the former).
Still, I'm really hoping for a "every faction is terrible in its own way" type of story, much like Tarkir and Ravnica. In general faction sets tend to result in storylines that are less black-and-white, which is a win in my book (New Phyrexia is obviously the exception to this).
The whole "Sun Empire doesn't kill people" thing, however, makes me skeptical that this block will be as morally grey as Tarkir, which would be disappointing. We haven't had a good moral debate since SOI, and that's a shame. Bolas and Tezzeret could not possibly be justified in their actions, which in my opinion makes those storylines much less interesting and compelling than something morally grey like SOI or Tarkir.
Lorwyn was also described as a backwater plane, which explains why it has been visited by so few planeswalkers.
Zendikar actually does have a reputation among planeswalkers enough that several natives are familiar with them, so it might be more of a "remote and dangerous" backwater rather than "obscure" backwater.
Yeah, Zendikar has had way more planeswalkers than your average plane. Gideon, Jace, Ob Nixilis, Liliana, Chandra, Nissa, Kiora, Nahiri, Sarkhan, Sorin, Ugin... It's hardly a backwater plane. I don't think that we should judge the status of the world based on an offhand remark by Liliana.
Tarkir, on the other hand, is very much a backwater world. Every planeswalker that's been there is either native (Sarkhan, Narset, Ugin probably) or specifically searching for the plane to find Ugin (Sorin and Bolas). Vraska also found it but she could have been searching for it specifically or she could have stumbled upon it randomly. We already know that she does more exploring than most planeswalkers. Besides, the only reason that the whole time travel thing worked is because there were no planeswalkers going in or out of the plane for centuries, which I think definitely qualifies it as backwater even if it wasn't stated outright.
So... the list of backwater planes goes something like Lorwyn, Tarkir, Amonkhet, and Ixalan (but not Zendikar).
Yeah, yeah, I know that the full set of Ixalan was just spoiled and Rivals is months away, but to be fair, Ixalan really teased a lot of future characters for us: in card names alone, we have Arguel, Captain Vance, Kumena, and Angrath, and that’s not even counting flavor text. Those four are almost certainly going to get cards, because nowadays a character’s name appearing on a card almost always guarantees a legendary creature card (Djeru's Resolve in Amonkhet, Djeru in Hour of Devastation). Yes, there have been times in the past when they’ve failed to do so, at least right away (looking at you, Taigam), but it seems they’ve learned their lesson.
Before anyone asks, I know that Tillonalli, Ixalli, and Kinjalli appear in various card titles and flavor texts, but I think that the dino avatar mini-cycle is the closest we’re going to get. For one thing, they seem to be more of abstract concepts representing sun phases than actual characters, and I don’t think we’re going to be seeing more gods this block, both because we just go them in the last block and because WotC doesn’t want to offend anyone. The bat god might appear, but probably with not with the god creature type. Instead, I think he’ll appear in the form of Arguel (more on that later).
Anyway, all those card names referring to characters seem like obvious foreshadowing, and it got me thinking about what characters would show up in Rivals. I waited until today because I wanted to see all the flavor text before making this post. Interestingly, the legendary creatures of Ixalan hardly appear in flavor text at all. Captain Storm gets a couple references, but Beckett Brass, Gisharth, Vona, Mavren Fein, Tishana, and Kopala don’t even get referenced once. Instead, we get a bunch of other characters, most of which we haven’t heard of. Some are your run-of-the-mill throwaway flavor text characters that appear on one card and aren’t mentioned again, but there are actually quite a few that show up on multiple cards, and some even have some amount of lore already.
I’ve listed all the characters who show up in card names and/or flavor text in the set. In parentheses are cards that are related to them – some clearly depict them, others only reference them indirectly. I included characters that only appear in flavor text because even though they are unlikely to get cards, it’s not unheard of for it to happen. Take the seemingly meaningless flavor text on Fumigate that ended of referencing Sram, for example. By the time they’re writing flavor text for Ixalan, the legends in Rivals have already been decided, so they can and often will drop hints. Sometimes it’s obvious like with Baral or Yahenni, other times it’s more subtle like with Sram.
Enough introduction, let’s dive into the actual characters:
Grik Doobin is dead, so I think we can rule him out. Captain Rage’s only purpose seems to be telling us how dangerous the other factions are in flavor text. Captain Vance shows up in a card’s name, so she will almost certainly have a card, probably mono-red. My theory is that we will see a monocolored legendary pirate for each pirate color: Parrish is blue, Thorn is black, and Vance is red. If they want a Grixis legend to mirror a Naya legend in Rivals (probably the emperor), though, I could see Thorn being UBR instead. But it’s not like Grixis has any shortage of legends, so seeing a RGW legend but not a UBR legend wouldn’t be all that surprising.
Amautl and Caparocti are probably throwaway flavor text characters, but never say never. Chitlati seems to be some sort of religious/spiritual leader, considering that (s)he describes all the sun avatar, but “lightning rider” doesn’t scream priest to me. I guess Chitlati is probably some sort of religious warrior type, which might make for an interesting card. Lightning Rider definitely implies that Chitlati is at least partially red, probably RW. From the flavor text, Itzama seems to be associated with dinosaurs and not a fan of the invading forces. Itzama is probably at least partially white, perhaps GW.
The only one on this list I think is guaranteed is the Emperor. Not only is it an extremely important position in the empire, but he also showed up in the story already. He could be just GW I suppose but as the leader of the faction anything less than RGW would feel wrong. The Sun Empire is the only faction to get only one legend in Ixalan so the Sun Empire should be getting at least two in Rivals, maybe even three. In addition to the emperor, we could see Chitlati, Itzama, or both. Or it could be a character we haven’t hear of yet. I suppose that Huatli’s cousin from her story is a candidate as well.
Viceroy Elia is weird because the world guide shown at PAX said that a vampire named Relo was the current viceroy. Of course, that could have been changed along the way, so I assumed that Relo name was changed to Vona. But apparently Elia is the viceroy? Or at least a viceroy? It appears that there are more than one. I’m not terribly optimistic about Elia getting a card though.
Queen Miralda seems like an offscreen influence. Her name might have been changed as well, in fact, Miralda might have actually been renamed Elenda. The flavor text mentioning Elenda implies to me that she probably isn’t around anymore unless she’s the queen. Both (if they are two different people) would be good candidates for a Commander set, though, even if Elenda is dead.
I definitely think that Arguel will get a card. Not only was he mentioned in the name of the card (which virtually guarantees a legendary creature card, unless WotC wants another Taigam incident), but he also seems to have a story arc: he starts out as High Marshal, leading a force of vampires in search of Orazca (Queen’s Commission), but then he goes off on his own (maybe his minions were all killed), goes on a blood fast, has a vision of the bat god (Arguel’s Blood Fast), finds the temple (Temple of Aclazotz) and… we’ll see what happens next. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Arguel possessed by Aclazotz, maybe even as a DFC that transforms from a regular vampire into a possessed demon bat god vampire. He’ll probably be mono-black.
Adrian Adanto could get a card as well. He seems to be the vampire who led the first successful colonization attempt by the Dusk Legion, Adanto (named after him of course), and he’s probably in charge of the fort now and having to defend it from his enemies. He could easily be mono-white but I suppose that WB is a possibility as well.
Lots and lots of shapers. First off, no way that Kumena doesn’t get a card. Much like Arguel, he is both mentioned in a card name and he seems to have a story arc. He has an epiphany that he needs to claim Orazca for himself in spite of the rest of his species (Overflowing Insight), so he sets off with his own group of followers (Speaker of Kumena) and eventually comes into conflict with at least one rival faction (Spell Pierce). Kumena is definitely at least partially blue. Nonblue mages don’t use countermagic. While he could a blue character with green followers, it seems likely that he’s simply GU, especially since we already got a mono-blue merfolk legend this block. As for the other shapers, any of them could get cards, but none of them seem particularly important so far. There could also be a card for a merfolk who is completely unknown so far, or Kumena could be the only merfolk legend in rivals. Only time will tell.
These are only the characters I’m almost completely certain will get cards, and the color identities I think they’ll most likely have:
• Captain Vance (R)
• Emperor Apatzec Intli III (RGW)
• High Marshal Arguel (B)
• Shaper Kumena (GU)
And these are the characters I think are pretty likely to have cards, but there’s no guarantee:
• Captain Parrish (U)
• Captain Thorn (B)
• Either Chitlati, Lightning Rider (RW) or Itzama the Crested (GW)
• Adrian Adanto of Lujio (W)
It's possible that we get others, but eight is already pushing it for a small set. These characters might get cards if we're lucky, but it's more likely that they'll end up on the "put them in a Commander product" list:
Typical "this set is garbage" posts everywhere. Yeah, it probably does look like garbage when you just looked at a bunch of limited filler, but there's good stuff as well, and some cards are just meant for limited. Playing limited as well as constructed will make the final day of spoilers a lot more enjoyable. Dinosaurs (and the other tribes) are by no means completely unplayable in constructed and they will be getting further support in Rivals and probably Dominaria too. No one's forcing you to play the limited filler just because it has the dinosaur creature type. There are a fair number of decent cards for every tribe.
The lack of BG and WU uncommons irritates me to no end. With BG, at least, they actually made an effort to produce a draft archetype (explore matters), so why not give it an uncommon? WU was less defined (I was hoping it would be vehicles matter, but it clearly isn't) but it still could have used an uncommon for WU's stereotypical flying control deck. If the implication is that you generally shouldn't be playing BG or WU limited, then doesn't the colors unbalanced in that only red can pair up with any color? I'm still going to have to try making the BG explore deck anyway, just to see if it works, but I feel like BG and WU cards and better-supported draft archetypes would have been really easy to implement and they would have given a nice yet equally well-defined alternative to tribal strategies.
I feel like this set's mechanics were underutilized. There were only five vehicles, and none of them seem particularly good. I totally get pulling back on their power level from Kaladesh, but now they've gone too far in the opposite direction. Clearly they're still figuring out how to balance vehicles properly. At least they won't warp limited like they did Kaladesh. Still, it would have been nice to see a few more of them. Brining back the mechanic to make only five cards seems like a waste, and think they missed the opportunity to make a WU vehicle draft archetype.
Explore didn't appear as much as I hoped, and it's all over the place in terms of color distribution, just in case making an explore deck wasn't difficult enough anyway. There's zero repeatable explore at common and uncommon. I feel like Emperor's Vanguard's ability could have easily appeared on an uncommon. They also missed the chance to do "target creature explores" or even "each creature you control explores". Hopefully they try this in Rivals; the second set often expands the design space of mechanics from the first.
Enrage was criminally underused as well. An enrage matters deck seems difficult to build in both limited and commander simply because there aren't that many cards with the ability. Raid got plenty of appearances but it's not very exciting. Yeah, it's a good mechanic, but not a great one. It plays well and it rewards you for doing what you should be doing anyway, but it's not terribly innovative or exciting. The only mechanic that I think was a home run in this set was the DFCs.
Interestingly, there's not much as much tribal at common and uncommon as one might expect. I guess this shows they learned their lesson from Lorwyn? The pirate and dinosaur factions definitely feel more tribal-focused while the merfolk and vampires feel more mechanic-focused: the GU draft archetype relies as much on +1/+1 counters as merfolk tribal, and the same goes for WB with life gain and vampires, but the other two can go in various directions as long as you play lots of pirates or dinosaurs. There are definitely some tribal cards at lower rarities, but not many, which as someone who isn't a fan of tribal I can appreciate. They also took measures to make the tribal cards less parasitic: merfolk that can target themselves with "put a +1/+1 counter on a merfolk" abilities and a lot of creatures that only require one creature of certain creature type to get a buff (even if you're not drafting tribal you're likely to be able to trigger them consistently just because those creature types are so common in their respective colors).
The keeper cycle is interesting. Trilobite is a creature type now, and apparently they're going for a battlecruiser magic/ramp subtheme in limited. On one hand, tribal strategies tend to be aggressive so it seems counterintuitive for them to try this. But dinosaurs are often big and expensive, while vampires and merfolk both seem to want to grind out the game with incremental advantage (one with life gain, the other with counters). Pirates seem like the only truly aggressive tribe, and even they have some slower aspects. And Ixalan won't have overpowered vehicles or exert creatures ruining the format. Unlike Amonkhet and Kaladesh, there might actually be a chance to use synergies and slower strategies before you get ran over by undercosted and evasive beaters at appallingly low rarities. Explore and treasures in addition to the regular amounts of green and artifact ramp seem to make the keeper abilities (and expensive dinosaurs) actually attainable goals in limited. Those same factors will also make it possible to play tricolor, usually RGW or UBR of course. It won't always be the correct option to play tricolor in this format but the option is there for when you want it.
I think that this set looks pretty good for limited. They didn't push one mechanic too hard like they did with vehicles in Kaladesh and exert in Amonkhet (though it could be argued that they didn't push most mechanics hard enough). There's a lot of synergy but it's not like they're awkwardly forcing mechanics at you, like what Amonkhet did with embalm and eternalize. There's a lot of interesting effects at all rarities, common included. Hell, even the vanilla creatures have synergy because of tribal. Tribal is definitely there but it's not too forced. Most color pairs have a tribal theme but also a mechanical theme beyond "play lots of [creature type]s". Aggressive, slow, and midrange decks all look to be somewhat playable. Explore and treasures will offer a lot of versatility for both mana curves and how many colors you play. There seem to be fewer cards that are bombs in any deck than usual and more that are powerful only when built around, which should be more skill-testing. Only time will tell if the limited is as good as it looks, but for now I'm cautiously optimistic.
This is weird. This is the second time today someone has replied to me, ignored the part where I say something, then tell me the very thing they ignored as if it's supposed to be news to me. I say above "It is looking more likely the tenth DFC is red and rare though (as each of the other colors got a rare DFC)."
One of two balances has to be upset (every color gets two mythics or every color gets one fliprare) and I agree with you that it seems most likely the fliprare is the balance that gets completed (as I said two and a half hours before you told me!). That's why my original post had that emoji. I realized what I was saying was incredibly unlikely.
"Every color gets X mythics" is a balance that's upset in basically every set. It's less common to see an equal distribution of colors among the mythics than to not see it. And even if they were going to use the DFC slot to make up this difference, it's *green* that's down a Mythic, not Red, and Angrath is 100% Red (with other color(s) tbd).
MaRo has also commented about the color balance of Planeswalkers in this set. Huatli is RW and not RWG because Huatli's RW complements Vraska's BG and Jace's U to cover all five colors. That wouldn't be a meaningful comment for MaRo to make if there was another Planeswalker in Ixalan.
Not only that, but Maro explicitly confirmed that Ixalan (the set) has three planeswalkers, as well as that all the DFCs are lands on the back. Angrath is not in this set. He will be in Rivals. The art we saw is probably art for a noncreature spell of some kind that appears in Ixalan.
With Ixalan's 'sticky' nature, shouldn't we expect to see a higher number of Planeswalkers in this block? Kinda weird not to, isn't it?
Yeah, it bothers me too. The plane should be crawling with planeswalkers right and left, yet apart the recent guests (Jace + Vraska) and one local, Angrath seems to be the only one actually stuck here.
Well, we know that Ixalan is hidden from the rest of the multiverse, so presumably that greatly reduces the chance of planeswalkers finding it. Huatli was born there of course, and Jace only found it because he planeswalked randomly in desperation. For all we know, Vraska and Angrath may have found it under similer circumstances to Jace. It's also possible, of course, that there are other planeswalkers trapped there, but they just aren't relevant to the story so they won't appear at all in the set. If a planeswalker was on the other continent for example. Or other planeswalkers that planeswalked to Ixalan could have died. Ixalan seems like one of the more dangerous planes for planeswalkers to visit, between the dinosaurs, pirates, and vampires. Maybe someone planeswalked right in front of a dinosaur and got eaten, or maybe they planeswalked into the ocean and drowned.
Yeah, if Beckett Brass was a major player in the story and she was portrayed as Mary Sue-ish as this article presented her, then we might have a problem, but luckily she hasn't appeared in the story at all. And I doubt that she's going to be appearing in the second set's story either. It seems like most of the major players are already in or around Orazca (Jace, Vraska, Huatli, Angrath, Tishana, Kumena), and if anyone faction gets reinforcements, I would bet on it being the vampires, since Mavren was mentioned in The Race Part 1 and is supposed to be finding Orazca, plus Vona (probably) died leaving the Legion without a representative at Orazca. Perhaps the Sun Empire could get reinforcements or Kopala could show up to help Tishana if the story demands it, but there's no reason for Beckett Brass or any other legendary pirate to show up. For one thing, the pirate faction already has more characters involved than any other faction, and I can't imagine Beckett Brass fitting a giant pirate ship down the small river Jace and Vraska used to get closer to Orazca. For better or worse, Beckett Brass will probably only be a minor footnote in the story.
So while I don't disagree that the way they wrote about Beckett Brass in that article was Mary Sue-ish, it doesn't really bother me unless she actually does something in the story. Mary Sues are really only a problem when it's a major character who is written that way. The most recent example I can think of would be Samut. At least Huatli has some hypocrisy going on and is at least kind of morally grey. That's more than I can say for Samut, who is so painfully obviously in the right just because of what she is fighting against. Plus Huatli's story has finished, so while she has been kind of boring so far, maybe the story of the second set will give her some more development and make her more interesting. I'm also interested to know what she does once she's given the opportunity to leave the plane. She better not choose to stay on her home plane. Not only does it defeat the entire point of planeswalkers, but it's been done so many times recently that's it's starting to get really old. Saheeli and Samut show 0% interest in exploring other planes, plus Ral and Narset also resolved to remain on their home planes at some point (thankfully both seem to have changed their minds since then).
Back on topic: I was kind of hoping that this article would tell us more about the other pirate captains rather than going on and on about Brass. From what I can tell, we have four pirate fleets: Fathom Fleet (UBR), Deadeye Fleet (UB), Dire Fleet (BR), and Storm Fleet (UR). Brass leads the Fathom Fleet of course, and Captain Storm must lead the Storm Fleet (I don't think it's been stated outright, but seriously, who else would it be?). I was hoping that this article would tell us a bit more about Captain Storm and also tell us about the leaders of the Deadeye Fleet and Dire Fleet. The leader of the Deadeye Fleet could be Captain Parrish (who "plunders secrets", according to the flavor text of Chart a Coure) or the siren captain mentioned on the plane page (seems like an odd detail to mention if they didn't intend to make a legendary siren pirate). The leader of the Dire Fleet should probably be an orc, since orcs are heavily associated with the Dire Fleet. It would have been nice if this article had shed some light on who leads those fleets (as well as on Captain Vance, who commands a volcanic fortress rather than a fleet of ships), but instead all we got was the biography of Beckett Brass.
I also really wish that creative did a better job of planning out how they put characters on cards. I get that they needed to make at least one non-planeswalker captain just as a pirate trope, but since none of them seem to be plot-relevant at all (and none of them except Beckett Brass, and to a much less extent, Captain Vance, if she even gets a card). I think it would have made a lot more sense to make cards for the members of Vraska's crew. They've already told us that this won't be happening because those characters didn't exist until after the cards were decided, but shouldn't they do something about that? It's the exact same thing that caused the outrage over Hal and Alena not getting printed, and what caused the easily-avoidable printing of a Rishkar card instead of a "Shadowblayde" card. Never mind the way that they put bios for Surash and the other lady who everyone thought would be a UR artifact legend on the website for Aether Revolt, and then didn't give them cards. It would have been so easy to avoid setting false expectations and yet they did it anyway.
What if the same thing happens with Arguel or Captain Vance? Both were mentioned in card titles, so you would think that they would get cards simply because Wizards learned from the Taigam mistake, but I'm not so sure anymore. We already have a mono-red pirate legend in the block, and yet instead of Vance, it's a different pirate who has no story role or lore. If they were going to put Vance in the set, why not put her in Captain Storm's place, in the same set as her blasting cannons, rather than waiting until the second set and having two different mono-red female legendary pirates? Plus Arguel has to compete with several other potential vampire or vampire-related legends (Elenda, Adanto, Aclazotz), and there's nothing tying him or Vance to the main story. Currently there are way more legends competing for spots in Rivals than it could possibly have. There's Kumena, the green elder dinosaur (and quite possibly two others, the red and white counterparts), the Sun Emperor, Captain Vance, the unnamed siren captain, Arguel, Aclazotz, Elenda... that's way too many for a small set. Someone isn't going to get a card, and will then end up on the "put this character in either a commander set or the next block when we visit their plane again". Characters seem to be getting added to that list far more quickly than they're getting taken off. Plus we already know that Breeches the goblin (and potentially the siren on Vraska's crew as well, especially if we don't get the siren captain in Rivals) will be getting added to that list as well. Why not just plan ahead and give cards to all the characters that need them? The way they go about this is unbelievably frustrating and inefficient. It seems like with just a little more effort into planning ahead, the vast majority of this could be avoided.
Azor created the original Guildpact, and one part of the document prevented planeswalkers from entering the plane. If Azor left for whatever reason, he wouldn't have been able to get back into Ravnica.
We all know that the original Guildpact was broken and planeswalkers can now get into Ravnica, but Azor doesn't. He hasn't been trying to go back to Ravnica because he doesn't think he can. If only there were two planeswalkers on Ixalan that could tell him otherwise...
This raises some questions though. Why hasn't Azor gone back to Ravnica? That one is easy to answer. Azor was the one who prevented planeswalkers from entering Ravnica, so after making the Guildpact and planeswalking away for whatever reason, he knew he couldn't get back in. Even though we all know that planeswalkers can get into Ravnica now, Azor had no way of knowing that. Except now with Jace and Vraska there, he's going to find out. What's Azor's motivation for presumably placing the spell on Ixalan? Is he kind of like Ugin, trying to do things for the greater good of the multiverse? If so, how will they differentiate the roles of Azor and Ugin in the story? Or is Azor more like Sorin, keeping his home plane safe at any cost (even if it means locking himself out of it, and then locking other planeswalkers into other planes)? Either way, the most logical explanation is that whatever the Immortal Sun is, it can potentially be a major threat to planes other than Ixalan. That's probably why Bolas wants it.
This whole thing is going to incite even more speculation for Ravnica 3. It's kind of weird that Ixalan's story is shaping up to be more about Ravnica than Ixalan, but it is what it is. If Ravnica 3 is going to be the first two sets after the next core set, it's going to be interesting to see what planeswalkers make it in. Jace, Vraska, and Azor are all probably going to be involved, but they will all have had cards very recently at that point. While they could do a set on a different plane as the fall set right after the core set and then do two Ravnica sets for winter and spring, it still wouldn't be very long after Ixalan. It's not like they're unwilling to give a planeswalker two new cards without much time in between (see our 30 Nissa cards, for example), but having three of the five planeswalkers in Ravnica 3 being the same as three of the five planeswalkers from Ixalan (which was just one year before it) would be kind of weird. Because of this, I suspect that at least one of those three will end up going somewhere other than Ravnica at the end of the block, so that Ravnica 3 isn't too similar to Ixalan in its planeswalker cast.
Lastly, with today's reveals in mind, I'm going to try some final predictions of the story of Rivals of Ixalan before it begins:
This doesn't take into account the significance of the elder dinosaurs or the Immortal Sun, but I think that the broad strokes of the story will go something like that. We can be pretty certain, at the very least, that the planeswalkers will get off the plane, Azor will end up going back to Ravnica, and Jace will probably end up getting freed from his terrible desk job for maximum superhero potential. There's an argument to be made for Jace and Vraska going back to being enemies, but I think it's far more likely that they remain on good terms, and very possible that she joins the Gatewatch, replacing Liliana as both the token anti-hero and the love interest for Jace.
There's also a chance that Ixalan has one or more native sphinxes in Orazca and this artwork is just from a random blue creature and not a planeswalker. That mean that we've had a lot of excitement and speculation about nothing. I think it's very likely that it is Azor, but if it's just some random sphinx that would be an insane curveball for them to throw at us.
I'd like to see that happen, but the legendary creatures in Ixalan weren't symmetrical, and I don't expect the legends in Rivals to be either. The only thing that we can be certain of is that each faction will get at least one new legend. The only merfolk who seems to need a card so far is Kumena, and he's definitely at least partially blue. A mono-black vampire could happen with Arguel, however.
Yep, at this point I think that most likely Ajani is in Dominaria and the fifth walker is either Ugin or the agent of Bolas that Vraska is supposed to call.
They don't have to balance the colors in small sets. Black and red are the colors that have the least planeswalkers in standard right now anyway (black more so than red), so a BR planeswalker makes a lot of sense. The other walker could be basically anything, including colorless.
Anyway, here are the revised predictions:
Pirates: No non-planeswalker pirates are relevant to the story so far (including the ones that already have cards), and Maro commented that Breeches (and presumably Vraska's other crew members) were probably added to the story after the cards were already decided, much like Shadowblade or Hal and Alena, so they won't be getting cards. I still definitely think that Vance will get a card, with Parrish and Thorn being possibilities as well. The Ixalan plane page mentions that there's at least one siren captain, which they probably wouldn't put in there for no reason, so if we get two pirates they'll probably be Vance and a siren (who could in theory be Parrish or Thorn).
Sun Empire: The Emperor still seems likely. Huatli's cousin would be a candidate, except he's probably going to get killed by Vona before the first set's story ends. They could make a second legendary dinosaur with the right flavor justification, which seems especially likely because 1. dinosaurs are popular and 2. the Sun Empire is the only faction not to get a second legend in Ixalan, so it would make sense for them to get two in Rivals.
Vampires: This is a toss-up between Arguel, Adrian Adanto, Aclazotz, and Elenda. Arguel is the most likely because he appears in a card title and WotC won't pull another Taigam if they know what's good for them. Aclazotz might be mythological or a background force, and he could be partially represented by either Arguel or Elenda being either priests for him or directly possessed by him, so I don't think we'll see a card directly representing him. The second legend could be either Elenda or Adrian: the former seems important but could mythological or dead, while the latter seems unimportant but is definitely alive and real.
Merfolk: Kumena. Just Kumena. I don't see any reason to expect anyone else. Counting Kumena we're already at the same number of legends as the first set, so adding a second merfolk would put the second set at more than the first, which would be very unusual.
In conclusion, I think the legends will be:
Tishana continues to prove that GU characters are ten times more likely to figure out the existence of planeswalkers on their own than characters of other color combinations. First Kruphix, then Rashmi, and now her. Or maybe she didn’t figure it out on her own, but instead Ugin told the merfolk leaders about it. He could have told them and enlisted them to protect Orazca centuries ago, with the current merfolk remembering their mission, the nature of planeswalkers, and that there was a “Guardian”, but not who exactly that “Guardian” was.
It seems incredibly likely the bat god is the source of vampirism on Ixalan (the plane, not the continent). The only question now is who stole the Immortal Sun in the first place: Aclazotz (to bait the Dusk Legion to go to Ixalan and turn them into vampires) or Ugin (presumably to protect it because it was some type of threat). I also want to know which characters will get cards in Rivals. For the Dusk Legion in particular, it seems particularly competitive: each faction will probably only get two new legends at most in the second set, but the Dusk Legion has Arguel, Adrian Adanto, Aclazotz (why do they all start with A?), and Elenda. Perhaps either Arguel or Elenda will somehow represent the bat god and Adanto won’t get a card because he doesn’t seem super relevant to the story.
So the finale of the first set’s story will involve Jace, Vraska, Angrath, Huatli, Tishana, Kumena, and Vona. Technically Adrian could appear as well, but Jace only sensed one vampire so I think that Adrian will team up with some combination of Arguel, Aclazotz, and/or Elenda in the second set to try and take Orazca after Vona fails. I’m guessing that the second set will have Vona kill Huatli’s cousin, but then get defeated by Huatli and Tishana, who then proceed to find Orazca. Jace and Vraska will probably talk some more and I assume that Vraska will reveal why they had a duel deck against each other, which Jace will forgive her for because he doesn’t remember it and he considers himself (and her) a new person now. Then Jace will fall off a waterfall as Orazca rises from the ground after Huatli discovers it, but Jace won’t die, of course, because he’s Jace. And thus the first set ends on an (almost) literal cliffhanger.
My extremely general prediction for the Rivals of Ixalan story is this: Jace finds Kumena after his fall and goes with him to Orazca. Angrath finds Vraska and they also work together because Angrath really, really wants to escape and he’s willing to work with another planeswalker to do it. Meanwhile, a group of vampires, led by some combination of Adrian, Arguel, and Elenda, also seek Orazca. The vampires, the pirates (Angrath and Vraska, possibly joined by Vraska’s surviving crew), and the merfolk (Kumena, his followers, and Jace) all reach Orazca, where Huatli and Tishana already are. There’s a big fight, and in the end the antagonists (the vampires and Kumena) are all defeated. (There might be multiple seperate fights instead, for example, Vraska and Angrath beat Kumena and rescue Jace, while Huatli and Tishana defeat the vampires, but the end result is the same: good guys win, bad guys lose.)
Now all four planeswalkers plus Tishana are in Orazca. Ugin appears, explains everything, restores Jace’s memories (because somebody has to do it), and takes down the barrier (maybe only temporarily) so that the four planeswalkers can leave. Before they leave, Jace, with his memories restored, might try to recruit Vraska (and maybe Huatli) to the Gatewatch, and they may or may not accept. One of the planeswalkers might take the Immortal Sun (whatever it is) with them or they might leave it on Ixalan, depending on what Ugin wants. Tishana is the only one remaining, so Ugin tasks her with restoring Orazca to its original state and keeping it protected from everyone, just like he probably told her ancestors to do originally.
(No idea how the agent of Bolas who Vraska is supposed to call is involved in this, but Tezzeret setting up the portal and letting Jace (who he hates) and Huatli (who would never work with/for Tezzeret/Bolas) seems wrong. The thing I'm most confident about is the four 'walkers all being together in Orazca and leaving in the end, which Tezzeret would probably prevent. Maybe it's Ral Zarek?)
Most likely. There's no way that they leave all these planeswalkers trapped at the end of the block, especially since Jace is one of them. It's kind of unfortunate to see them use up a cool plot element so quickly, since it would have been better utilized if they left a few planeswalkers trapped there until the return block on Ixalan, but they definitely have plans for Jace before then, and Vraska too. They're getting off the plane somehow, and the Immortal Sun probably has something to do with it.
Much like Tezzeret (or pretty much anyone else besides Angrath), Ugin definitely doesn't have to get a card even if makes an appearance. While there's basically no way that they don't give a card to Angrath, the other planeswalker card in Rivals is a toss-up between a bunch of other characters who could appear, Ugin being only one of them.
Lol, my logic for thinking it was something other than Emrakul early on in SOI was that the writers were deliberately trying to throw us off. I thought that WotC’s creative department would be able to tell a mystery story at least as well as your average episode of Scooby Doo. Evidently, I was wrong.
The art on the other leaked booster for Rivals was Huatli’s art from her planeswalker card in Ixalan, so the art doesn’t necessarily line up with the real set that is the equivalent of the fake set for the packaging test. As such, I think that the Ajani art might be not for Rivals, but for Dominaria. Kaladesh clearly set up Ajani going to Dominaria for allies while we’ve seen nothing to suggest that Ajani would go to Ixalan. He didn’t even know that the rest of the team went to fight Bolas, so he might not even know that they were defeated. Even if he does know that, how would he know where Jace is? Even if he knows where Jace is, how would he find a hidden plane like Ixalan? Plus there are several other planeswalkers that might need cards in Rivals, whereas Dominaria’s planeswalker spots are pretty much completely open aside from Liliana almost certainly being there.
The only thing we can really be sure of is Angrath getting a card. There’s no way that they don’t give him one. It’s probably BR (there’s a shortage of black planeswalkers in Kaladesh/Amonkhet/Ixalan standard); I suppose it could be mono-red but probably only if the other planeswalker is partially black (meaning Tezzeret most likely). I won’t rule Ajani or Ugin out completely, but unless they do something really unexpected with who Bolas’s associate is (like it being someone already on the plane, like Angrath) or they really downplay the Bolas agent’s role in the story (similar to Tezzeret only showing up at the end of Amonkhet), it seems pretty unlikely that they would not give the Bolas agent a card.
Good to know. Like I said, it was a pretty dumb theory in the first place so I was expecting to be proven wrong. Although it would have been nice to get an explanation for once of how planeswalkers always manage to run into each other by coinicidence.
And yeah, Tezzeret seems pretty likely at this point. He may or may not get a card in Rivals if he does make an appearance, this Angrath, Ugin, possibly Ajani, and an agent of Bolas are all competing for two planeswalker spots. We'll have to wait and see what happens I guess.
Pretty sure it's the actual sexists who are keeping sexism alive and strong. If you think this is sexism, you need to get out more.
You're correct that it doesn't really affect the story. I just made the observation that the gender balance was a little off compared to real-world influences these pirates are clearly based on. Someone asked me why Ixalan's pirates would have to be the same way as real-world pirates, and I explained why. I'm not going to let it ruin the story for me, it's just a minor nitpick that I'm explaining my reasoning for.
It doesn't need to be a perfect reflection of history (obviously) but when we see pirates based on the 1500s showing an attitude towards gender roles from the 2000s, it's just a little strange. Yes, there's magic and dinosaurs on this world, but none of that would really affect how strong sexism is in that type of society. Age of Exploration pirates are Age of Exploration pirates, so seeing them being inexplicably progressive with regard to gender roles is a little odd and something for which an explanation might be nice.
There are a lot more tropes of male pirate captains from history than female ones, so even if they're aiming for the trope-based pop culture version of history they still aren't doing it very well in this regard. It's not like every captain has to be male by any means, but making them all female is really pushing it in my opinion.
Which is exactly why having so many female captains feels so wrong. Our "experiences and learnings" tell us that pirates during the Age of Exploration were quite sexist and that their leadership positions were male-dominated, so when they not only ignore that but showcase the exact opposite, it's going to make people scratch their heads at the very least.
If you look at the original post you'll see that the overall post was mostly positive, and I even explained how having a lot of female pirates actually made sense based on what we know about the world. My only complaint was that so many pirate captains being female was a little off-putting, which is of course the only part that people are focusing on now.
Yeah, basically this. Especially the part about how a female leader in a male-dominated world actually sends a much stronger message. When every world is as progressive as our world, it's kind of diminishes the importance of the individual female leaders. Vraska and perhaps one other female captain being captains would be a lot more interesting and impressive if there weren't female captains all over the place. I think a world where a few women manage to overcome the sexism of their time and take leadership roles is much, much more interesting than a world where there are female captains everywhere because these 16th-century pirates have modern views on gender for no discernable reason. Obviously there is a time and a place for progressive, modern/post-modern societies in Magic, Kaladesh and Ravnica being perfect examples, but Ixalan doesn't seem like the place for it.
Ok, enough about that, time for the actual story. Story was pretty good overall. Jarad being retconned into a villain annoys me. Vraska has gone from anti-hero to villain to anti-hero again. I’d like to see a character I actually like join the Gatewatch, so I kind of hope she replaces Liliana as the token anti-hero on the team. Vraska admitting that her plan to use Jace on Ravnica was clumsy, which seems like they’re admitting it wasn’t the best writing. I’m noticing a trend of them mocking their own writing and characters, between this, Jace’s self-depreciating humor, and of course, Bolas criticizing the Gatewatch. I like that they’re actually willing to point out the flaws in their own story rather than just repeating that “Gatewatch is great and everyone loves them”. Not taking themselves so seriously and making fun of themselves means that those of us who aren’t big fans of the Gatewatch or the modern style of story can still enjoy the writing quite a bit.
Bolas being able to info dump people is actually a pretty cool power, but of course you have to wonder why he hasn’t used it on his minions before. You also have to wonder why Bolas doesn’t simply mind control other planeswalkers instead of letting them retain their free will and potentially stop helping him or even work against him later. We’ve already seen this happen with Sarkhan, and both Tezzeret and Vraska have demonstrated a desire to not stay loyal to Bolas forever, and Bolas even knows that in both cases. Even if the writers don’t want Bolas to completely dominate those characters’ minds, they could at least have him use some sort of mental failsafe to prevent them from betraying him, like what he does on Tezzeret in Test of Metal (which has sadly also been retconned).
Bolas sending an associate to help Vraska is interesting of course. Here’s a crazy conspiracy theory that’s probably wrong: what if Bolas sent Jace as his “associate”? Jace had been a castaway for a long time when Vraska found him, so it’s entirely possible that Bolas didn’t enlist Vraska until after defeating Jace. Since Jace planeswalked away while Bolas was in his mind, it’s also entirely possible that Bolas influenced where Jace planeswalked to. And since Bolas’s explanation to Vraska was a flashback, we don’t for sure that she hasn’t used the device to call for the associate already. So what if instead of calling some planeswalker from across the multiverse, instead it changed the direction of Vraska’s compass (which she even said kept changing direction and pointed away from where they were supposed to go), causing it to temporarily point towards Jace instead of Orazca, thus explaining how Vraska somehow found Jace’s island in the middle of a giant ocean. Bolas, of course, knew that Jace would be there because he sent Jace there himself. And since Bolas claims that the Gatewatch are his pawns, what better way to show him actually using a Gatewatch member that way?
Yeah, there’s probably no way that this is correct, but it’s fun to speculate. More realistic predictions would probably be Ral Zarek, Tezzeret, and maybe Dovin Baan.
“Zero change”? Lol. As others have said, Nissa was in an HOU planeswalker deck, which already completely disproves your statement, but even if she wasn’t in HOU it would still be too early in the history of planeswalker decks to say with absolute certainty that it could never happen. It clearly, it can. Also, Maro basically confirmed that Vraska will be in a planeswalker deck in Rivals already: http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/164867569798/i-was-wondering-why-you-guys-decided-not-to-give
First, I think that you're vastly overestimating WotC's desire to balance the colors in these decks. We've just had three consecutive blocks with both GU and RW decks, while several other color pairs don't have a single deck. But I don't think that a Vraska PW deck would be pirate tribal. Planeswalker decks usually focus on the themes of a color pair that appears in the actual set, and for BG, that's explore, not pirate tribal. While Vraska is a pirate, a BG pirate deck would be not only hard to build but also misleading to new players. Instead I would expect a deck focusing on explore or perhaps another BG-focused mechanic that replaces explore in rivals.
Besides, there’s no reason that every tribe needs a planeswalker deck. There aren’t any good candidates for a face card for a vampire planeswalker deck, with Sorin being stuck in a wall and new W, B, or WB vampire planeswalker being unlikely because Sorin exists. Vampires and merfolk are kind of the minor tribes of the plane anyway, with dinosaurs and pirates being the major ones that truly need to have planeswalker decks. I think that Angrath will have a BR deck representing pirate tribal and Vraska will have a BG deck that features some pirates and some non-pirates, with the real focus being explore or whatever the BG archetype is in Rivals if it’s not explore (and before anyone tells me that there’s zero chance of decks with overlapping colors, I’d like to point out that both of HOU’s decks were partially blue.)
I couldn't agree more. Huatli's art from Ixalan being on a Rivals booster definitely proves that the leaked boosters don't line up perfectly with the actual product, and Ajani would make way more sense in Dominaria for several reasons:
- The story has already set up Ajani's presence on Dominaria, but has done nothing to suggest that he would be involved in Ixalan.
- Ajani doesn't know where Jace is and probably doesn't know where Ixalan is either, it being a hidden plane and all. He's looking for allies right now, not tracking down defeated Gatewatch members (yet). He might not even know that Bolas kicked their asses yet, since they went to Amonkhet without telling him.
- Ajani being in Dominaria would put more space between a new card and his previous card than him being in Rivals would.
- There will already be a lot of green planeswalkers in standard when Rivals releases, so another GW Ajani does't make much sense for color balance.
- If Ajani is in Dominaria, it opens up space for another planeswalker besides Angrath to be in Rivals, most likely either Ugin or the "associate" of Bolas that is supposed to help Vraska. There are a lot of planeswalkers competing for space in Rivals and not a lot for Dominaria.
- In the Ixalan story podcast, it was stated that Jace is the only Gatewatch planeswalker on Ixalan. They could have been deliberately misleading us by referring to only Ixalan the set and not Ixalan the block, but if Ajani’s not actually on Ixalan at all it would open up the possibility of it just being an honest statement.
While it's not impossible that Ajani will show up in Rivals, it's far from a guarantee at this point. It’s an assumption that everyone has been making for quite a while now so most people will probably be fully expecting it until we actually start to see Rivals, when we’ll know for sure whether or not Ajani is in Rivals.If it was a completely fantastical world, then sure. Same goes for the more science fiction-based worlds, because it makes sense for them to be more progressive. But when a world borrows very heavily from elements of a time period in our past, it's natural to assume that everything not explicitly different is about the same as was on Earth during that time. In Ixalan's case, it's based on about the 1500s, so while things that are obviously departures from that are fine (dinosaurs, vampires, magic), we kind of expect other things to line up with the time period. Even if it was just Vraska (whose species should make it easy to assume leadership regardless of gender roles) and one other female planebound captain, it wouldn't seem that out of place, but virtually every pirate with a leadership role is female, which has no basis in the actual history that Ixalan is based on.
On a different world with pirates that's heavier on fantasy or sci-fi than Ixalan, I wouldn't have a problem, but on a world where the pirates are based on real-world pirates from the real-world age of exploration, it just feels a bit off. It's so much that the pirates aren't sexist enough, because they did remove some of the more negative real-world aspects from all factions (like human sacrifice), it's just that real-world legendary pirates were almost invariably male, so not having a single one with a card in Ixalan doesn't feel very true to the source material. I guess there will be Angrath in the next set, but that's still a 3:1 ratio in favor of women (if not 4:1 or 5:1 since if we get more pirate legends in Rivals they will most likely be Vance and/or Parrish), when it should be 50/50 at the best if they're trying to be even a little historically accurate.
My thoughts exactly. If it was just the vampire thing, maybe I could believe that it was just a happy coincidence that no one died, but with the pirates they were clearly pulling their punches against their own best interests. Why would they burn the supplies of the pirates with said pirates nearby and then just leave? Either fight the pirates off for good, or don't provoke them in the first place. Otherwise, you're going to get ambushed by the pirates, which is exactly what happened with Angrath.
Not only are nonlethal tactics historically inaccurate for an Aztec-inspired faction and just plain stupid as a war strategy, but it also would be impossible to implement because they're fighting with dinosaurs on their side. Even if the people don't want to kill anyone, the dinosaurs will anyway. And, as you said, it feels like they're trying too hard to set up the good guys and bad guys, when it could (and should) be more complicated than that.
That being said, it's still early in the story. Hopefully at some point in the story we will see Huatli and/or the rest of the Sun Empire actually try to kill their enemies the way they logically should. The cards at least show dinosaurs killing pirates and especially vampires, and although that's not necessarily at the direction of the humans, it still gives me some amount of hope. Hopefully the utter absurdity of a dinosaur-riding Aztec warriors who refuse to kill anyone will prevent the writers from actually attempting it in anything more than this one story to not-so-subtly introduce Huatli as a protagonist.
But then I realized why this all makes sense: the pirates are refugees. Unlike in real life, where pirates were just a minority of sailors, Ixalan's pirates consist of all the non-vampires (save a few humans that are still being forced to serve the Dusk Legion) from Torrezon. All of them. All races and both sexes.
That still doesn't explain why 80% of pirate captains are female. We all know that sexism was still running rampant in the time period Ixalan was based on, so even if a lot of women were pirates, they would still have difficulty getting positions of leadership. I could see Vraska taking over by the virtue of being a deadly and intimidating gorgon, but that doesn't excuse four out of five planebound captains/admirals being female. So that part is revisionist history and perhaps overly PC. But the presence of so many female pirates in general makes a lot of sense.
As for the block's villain(s), I agree that Vraska has gone full anti-hero, so Angrath and Kumena are far more likely to take on antagonistic roles, especially in the second set. However, the villain I have my eye on is Arguel and the bat god whose name I don't care to look up or try to spell (I suspect that the latter will end up possessing the former).
Still, I'm really hoping for a "every faction is terrible in its own way" type of story, much like Tarkir and Ravnica. In general faction sets tend to result in storylines that are less black-and-white, which is a win in my book (New Phyrexia is obviously the exception to this).
The whole "Sun Empire doesn't kill people" thing, however, makes me skeptical that this block will be as morally grey as Tarkir, which would be disappointing. We haven't had a good moral debate since SOI, and that's a shame. Bolas and Tezzeret could not possibly be justified in their actions, which in my opinion makes those storylines much less interesting and compelling than something morally grey like SOI or Tarkir.
Yeah, Zendikar has had way more planeswalkers than your average plane. Gideon, Jace, Ob Nixilis, Liliana, Chandra, Nissa, Kiora, Nahiri, Sarkhan, Sorin, Ugin... It's hardly a backwater plane. I don't think that we should judge the status of the world based on an offhand remark by Liliana.
Tarkir, on the other hand, is very much a backwater world. Every planeswalker that's been there is either native (Sarkhan, Narset, Ugin probably) or specifically searching for the plane to find Ugin (Sorin and Bolas). Vraska also found it but she could have been searching for it specifically or she could have stumbled upon it randomly. We already know that she does more exploring than most planeswalkers. Besides, the only reason that the whole time travel thing worked is because there were no planeswalkers going in or out of the plane for centuries, which I think definitely qualifies it as backwater even if it wasn't stated outright.
So... the list of backwater planes goes something like Lorwyn, Tarkir, Amonkhet, and Ixalan (but not Zendikar).
Yeah, yeah, I know that the full set of Ixalan was just spoiled and Rivals is months away, but to be fair, Ixalan really teased a lot of future characters for us: in card names alone, we have Arguel, Captain Vance, Kumena, and Angrath, and that’s not even counting flavor text. Those four are almost certainly going to get cards, because nowadays a character’s name appearing on a card almost always guarantees a legendary creature card (Djeru's Resolve in Amonkhet, Djeru in Hour of Devastation). Yes, there have been times in the past when they’ve failed to do so, at least right away (looking at you, Taigam), but it seems they’ve learned their lesson.
These are only the characters I’m almost completely certain will get cards, and the color identities I think they’ll most likely have:
Before anyone asks, I know that Tillonalli, Ixalli, and Kinjalli appear in various card titles and flavor texts, but I think that the dino avatar mini-cycle is the closest we’re going to get. For one thing, they seem to be more of abstract concepts representing sun phases than actual characters, and I don’t think we’re going to be seeing more gods this block, both because we just go them in the last block and because WotC doesn’t want to offend anyone. The bat god might appear, but probably with not with the god creature type. Instead, I think he’ll appear in the form of Arguel (more on that later).
Anyway, all those card names referring to characters seem like obvious foreshadowing, and it got me thinking about what characters would show up in Rivals. I waited until today because I wanted to see all the flavor text before making this post. Interestingly, the legendary creatures of Ixalan hardly appear in flavor text at all. Captain Storm gets a couple references, but Beckett Brass, Gisharth, Vona, Mavren Fein, Tishana, and Kopala don’t even get referenced once. Instead, we get a bunch of other characters, most of which we haven’t heard of. Some are your run-of-the-mill throwaway flavor text characters that appear on one card and aren’t mentioned again, but there are actually quite a few that show up on multiple cards, and some even have some amount of lore already.
I’ve listed all the characters who show up in card names and/or flavor text in the set. In parentheses are cards that are related to them – some clearly depict them, others only reference them indirectly. I included characters that only appear in flavor text because even though they are unlikely to get cards, it’s not unheard of for it to happen. Take the seemingly meaningless flavor text on Fumigate that ended of referencing Sram, for example. By the time they’re writing flavor text for Ixalan, the legends in Rivals have already been decided, so they can and often will drop hints. Sometimes it’s obvious like with Baral or Yahenni, other times it’s more subtle like with Sram.
Enough introduction, let’s dive into the actual characters:
• Captain Brandis Thorn (Cancel, Walk the Plank, Headstrong Brute)
• Captain Brinely Rage (Run Aground, Thundering Spineback)
• Captain Parrish (Chart a Course)
• Captain Vance (Vance’s Blasting Cannons, Spitfire Bastion)
• Grik Doobin (Lightning Strike)
Grik Doobin is dead, so I think we can rule him out. Captain Rage’s only purpose seems to be telling us how dangerous the other factions are in flavor text. Captain Vance shows up in a card’s name, so she will almost certainly have a card, probably mono-red. My theory is that we will see a monocolored legendary pirate for each pirate color: Parrish is blue, Thorn is black, and Vance is red. If they want a Grixis legend to mirror a Naya legend in Rivals (probably the emperor), though, I could see Thorn being UBR instead. But it’s not like Grixis has any shortage of legends, so seeing a RGW legend but not a UBR legend wouldn’t be all that surprising.
• Amautl, Knight of Atzocan (Bonded Horncrest)
• Caparocti Sunborn (Shining Aerosaur)
• Chitlati, Lightning Rider (Wakening Sun’s Avatar, Burning Sun’s Avatar, Verdant Sun’s Avatar)
• Emperor Apatzec Intli III (Tocatli Honor Guard, Emperor’s Vanguard, Sky Terror)
• Itzama the Crested (Goring Ceratops, Steadfast Armasaur, Spreading Rot, Nest Robber)
Amautl and Caparocti are probably throwaway flavor text characters, but never say never. Chitlati seems to be some sort of religious/spiritual leader, considering that (s)he describes all the sun avatar, but “lightning rider” doesn’t scream priest to me. I guess Chitlati is probably some sort of religious warrior type, which might make for an interesting card. Lightning Rider definitely implies that Chitlati is at least partially red, probably RW. From the flavor text, Itzama seems to be associated with dinosaurs and not a fan of the invading forces. Itzama is probably at least partially white, perhaps GW.
The only one on this list I think is guaranteed is the Emperor. Not only is it an extremely important position in the empire, but he also showed up in the story already. He could be just GW I suppose but as the leader of the faction anything less than RGW would feel wrong. The Sun Empire is the only faction to get only one legend in Ixalan so the Sun Empire should be getting at least two in Rivals, maybe even three. In addition to the emperor, we could see Chitlati, Itzama, or both. Or it could be a character we haven’t hear of yet. I suppose that Huatli’s cousin from her story is a candidate as well.
• Adrian Adanto of Lujio (Legion’s Landing, Adanto, the First Fort, Regisaur Alpha)
• Elenda, the First Vampire (Hierophant’s Chalice)
• High Marshall Arguel (Queen’s Commission, Arguel’s Blood Fast, Temple of Aclazotz)
• Queen Miralda
• Viceroy Elia Sotornes (Vicious Conquistador)
Viceroy Elia is weird because the world guide shown at PAX said that a vampire named Relo was the current viceroy. Of course, that could have been changed along the way, so I assumed that Relo name was changed to Vona. But apparently Elia is the viceroy? Or at least a viceroy? It appears that there are more than one. I’m not terribly optimistic about Elia getting a card though.
Queen Miralda seems like an offscreen influence. Her name might have been changed as well, in fact, Miralda might have actually been renamed Elenda. The flavor text mentioning Elenda implies to me that she probably isn’t around anymore unless she’s the queen. Both (if they are two different people) would be good candidates for a Commander set, though, even if Elenda is dead.
I definitely think that Arguel will get a card. Not only was he mentioned in the name of the card (which virtually guarantees a legendary creature card, unless WotC wants another Taigam incident), but he also seems to have a story arc: he starts out as High Marshal, leading a force of vampires in search of Orazca (Queen’s Commission), but then he goes off on his own (maybe his minions were all killed), goes on a blood fast, has a vision of the bat god (Arguel’s Blood Fast), finds the temple (Temple of Aclazotz) and… we’ll see what happens next. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Arguel possessed by Aclazotz, maybe even as a DFC that transforms from a regular vampire into a possessed demon bat god vampire. He’ll probably be mono-black.
Adrian Adanto could get a card as well. He seems to be the vampire who led the first successful colonization attempt by the Dusk Legion, Adanto (named after him of course), and he’s probably in charge of the fort now and having to defend it from his enemies. He could easily be mono-white but I suppose that WB is a possibility as well.
• Shaper Falani (Deeproot Warrior)
• Shaper Kumena (Overflowing Insight, Spell Pierce, Speaker of Kumena)
• Shaper Pashoma (Star of Extinction)
• Shaper Tuvasa (One With the Wind, Crushing Canopy)
Lots and lots of shapers. First off, no way that Kumena doesn’t get a card. Much like Arguel, he is both mentioned in a card name and he seems to have a story arc. He has an epiphany that he needs to claim Orazca for himself in spite of the rest of his species (Overflowing Insight), so he sets off with his own group of followers (Speaker of Kumena) and eventually comes into conflict with at least one rival faction (Spell Pierce). Kumena is definitely at least partially blue. Nonblue mages don’t use countermagic. While he could a blue character with green followers, it seems likely that he’s simply GU, especially since we already got a mono-blue merfolk legend this block. As for the other shapers, any of them could get cards, but none of them seem particularly important so far. There could also be a card for a merfolk who is completely unknown so far, or Kumena could be the only merfolk legend in rivals. Only time will tell.
• Captain Vance (R)
• Emperor Apatzec Intli III (RGW)
• High Marshal Arguel (B)
• Shaper Kumena (GU)
And these are the characters I think are pretty likely to have cards, but there’s no guarantee:
• Captain Parrish (U)
• Captain Thorn (B)
• Either Chitlati, Lightning Rider (RW) or Itzama the Crested (GW)
• Adrian Adanto of Lujio (W)
Thoughts?
Updated list:
Sources:
It's possible that we get others, but eight is already pushing it for a small set. These characters might get cards if we're lucky, but it's more likely that they'll end up on the "put them in a Commander product" list:
The lack of BG and WU uncommons irritates me to no end. With BG, at least, they actually made an effort to produce a draft archetype (explore matters), so why not give it an uncommon? WU was less defined (I was hoping it would be vehicles matter, but it clearly isn't) but it still could have used an uncommon for WU's stereotypical flying control deck. If the implication is that you generally shouldn't be playing BG or WU limited, then doesn't the colors unbalanced in that only red can pair up with any color? I'm still going to have to try making the BG explore deck anyway, just to see if it works, but I feel like BG and WU cards and better-supported draft archetypes would have been really easy to implement and they would have given a nice yet equally well-defined alternative to tribal strategies.
I feel like this set's mechanics were underutilized. There were only five vehicles, and none of them seem particularly good. I totally get pulling back on their power level from Kaladesh, but now they've gone too far in the opposite direction. Clearly they're still figuring out how to balance vehicles properly. At least they won't warp limited like they did Kaladesh. Still, it would have been nice to see a few more of them. Brining back the mechanic to make only five cards seems like a waste, and think they missed the opportunity to make a WU vehicle draft archetype.
Explore didn't appear as much as I hoped, and it's all over the place in terms of color distribution, just in case making an explore deck wasn't difficult enough anyway. There's zero repeatable explore at common and uncommon. I feel like Emperor's Vanguard's ability could have easily appeared on an uncommon. They also missed the chance to do "target creature explores" or even "each creature you control explores". Hopefully they try this in Rivals; the second set often expands the design space of mechanics from the first.
Enrage was criminally underused as well. An enrage matters deck seems difficult to build in both limited and commander simply because there aren't that many cards with the ability. Raid got plenty of appearances but it's not very exciting. Yeah, it's a good mechanic, but not a great one. It plays well and it rewards you for doing what you should be doing anyway, but it's not terribly innovative or exciting. The only mechanic that I think was a home run in this set was the DFCs.
Interestingly, there's not much as much tribal at common and uncommon as one might expect. I guess this shows they learned their lesson from Lorwyn? The pirate and dinosaur factions definitely feel more tribal-focused while the merfolk and vampires feel more mechanic-focused: the GU draft archetype relies as much on +1/+1 counters as merfolk tribal, and the same goes for WB with life gain and vampires, but the other two can go in various directions as long as you play lots of pirates or dinosaurs. There are definitely some tribal cards at lower rarities, but not many, which as someone who isn't a fan of tribal I can appreciate. They also took measures to make the tribal cards less parasitic: merfolk that can target themselves with "put a +1/+1 counter on a merfolk" abilities and a lot of creatures that only require one creature of certain creature type to get a buff (even if you're not drafting tribal you're likely to be able to trigger them consistently just because those creature types are so common in their respective colors).
The keeper cycle is interesting. Trilobite is a creature type now, and apparently they're going for a battlecruiser magic/ramp subtheme in limited. On one hand, tribal strategies tend to be aggressive so it seems counterintuitive for them to try this. But dinosaurs are often big and expensive, while vampires and merfolk both seem to want to grind out the game with incremental advantage (one with life gain, the other with counters). Pirates seem like the only truly aggressive tribe, and even they have some slower aspects. And Ixalan won't have overpowered vehicles or exert creatures ruining the format. Unlike Amonkhet and Kaladesh, there might actually be a chance to use synergies and slower strategies before you get ran over by undercosted and evasive beaters at appallingly low rarities. Explore and treasures in addition to the regular amounts of green and artifact ramp seem to make the keeper abilities (and expensive dinosaurs) actually attainable goals in limited. Those same factors will also make it possible to play tricolor, usually RGW or UBR of course. It won't always be the correct option to play tricolor in this format but the option is there for when you want it.
I think that this set looks pretty good for limited. They didn't push one mechanic too hard like they did with vehicles in Kaladesh and exert in Amonkhet (though it could be argued that they didn't push most mechanics hard enough). There's a lot of synergy but it's not like they're awkwardly forcing mechanics at you, like what Amonkhet did with embalm and eternalize. There's a lot of interesting effects at all rarities, common included. Hell, even the vanilla creatures have synergy because of tribal. Tribal is definitely there but it's not too forced. Most color pairs have a tribal theme but also a mechanical theme beyond "play lots of [creature type]s". Aggressive, slow, and midrange decks all look to be somewhat playable. Explore and treasures will offer a lot of versatility for both mana curves and how many colors you play. There seem to be fewer cards that are bombs in any deck than usual and more that are powerful only when built around, which should be more skill-testing. Only time will tell if the limited is as good as it looks, but for now I'm cautiously optimistic.
Not only that, but Maro explicitly confirmed that Ixalan (the set) has three planeswalkers, as well as that all the DFCs are lands on the back. Angrath is not in this set. He will be in Rivals. The art we saw is probably art for a noncreature spell of some kind that appears in Ixalan.
Well, we know that Ixalan is hidden from the rest of the multiverse, so presumably that greatly reduces the chance of planeswalkers finding it. Huatli was born there of course, and Jace only found it because he planeswalked randomly in desperation. For all we know, Vraska and Angrath may have found it under similer circumstances to Jace. It's also possible, of course, that there are other planeswalkers trapped there, but they just aren't relevant to the story so they won't appear at all in the set. If a planeswalker was on the other continent for example. Or other planeswalkers that planeswalked to Ixalan could have died. Ixalan seems like one of the more dangerous planes for planeswalkers to visit, between the dinosaurs, pirates, and vampires. Maybe someone planeswalked right in front of a dinosaur and got eaten, or maybe they planeswalked into the ocean and drowned.