it's strange because in her card she is very big, but in iona's judgement she's not such a giant
I think that's more a trick of perspective. The location of the "camera" behind the foreground creature makes that creature appear larger relative to the distant Iona.
The last one, with the centaurs, reminds me of Still Life for some reason. I don't necessarily think it's getting reprinted (it seems kind of a random card to reprint, and not particularly in Selesnya's purview), but the picture hits the same notes for me.
I don't think they're supposed to be statues (I think they're just wearing masks/helmets) but they give that same "statue coming to life" vibe. And they're centaurs.
Looks like in place of Realms this week we get Planeswalker's Guide to Return to Ravnica, Part 1! I didn't realize it started this week; must have missed that.
It's nice to see they at least mentioned the whole "the Guildpact was broken, and there was some chaos, but the guilds are back" issue without major retconning. I'll buy that the guilds are back even without the magic of the 'Pact, because they were entrenched in Ravnican society for ten thousand years. I can see that sticking around even without magical backup.
This weeks focus was Selesnya, which is probably my least favorite guild. Some stunning artwork this week, though. The wall relief with the ten guild symbols is great, and the Topiary Grove is just beautiful.
(In fact, thanks to the wall picture, I now know how to arrange my 10 guild magnets from the previous Rav block.)
I started playing in 1996, and the Mirage block offered a lot of flavorful legends. Spirit of the Night was my very first rare card from my first booster pack, and I fell in love with it - The name sounded awesome, and it was powerful. I built a deck around it with the three key components in four-ofs: Urborg Panther, Feral Shadow and Breathstealer.
We totally bought a box of Mirage tournament packs and did a pseudo-sealed deck tournament when I was in college, and I managed to get a Spirit of the Night. I ended up trading it to my friend for an entire deck.:D
Come to think of it, that may have been how I wound up with my merfolk deck, which over 12-ish years of tweaking has somehow become a UR madness deck with only one (well, four copies of one) creature: Civilized Scholar! Not even a merfolk!
That Mirage deck ended up being an aweful BR monstrosity with the Spirit and multiple Kaervek's Torches. It basically did nothing for the first five turns.
If I recall correctly, she was one of Kaervek's lieutenants during his invasion of Zhalfir and Femeref, and she was the guard the Amber Prison that held Mangara during the Mirage War.
Didn't she kill Asmira? It's been a while since I've looked at any of the Mirage stuff.
Edit: beaten to the wiki...which confirms that yes, Asmira was killed by Purraj.
As you can see by my post count, I mostly just lurk around here, but I figured this was a good opportunity to pop out from my rock and introduce myself. My real name is Eric, and I'm a development chemist working for an instrumentation company based out of Charlotte, NC, USA. I specialize in peptide synthesis, for those of you with chemistry knowledge. I'm 31, and I've been playing Magic for...geez, since 1999, so 13 years.
I was one of the rare players who actually started during Masques block. My first deck was the rebels precon (Rebels' Call, I believe). Right away I got hooked on the lore of Magic--the majority of the decks I built back in the day were tied together more by flavor than functionality. (Fun fact--the first deck I even designed on my own was a Spike deck, as in the Stonghold/Exodus creatures made of +1/+1 counters. It was...less than good.)
It's something I still do today with my Commander decks--everything in my Kaalia deck has to fit with the Angel/Demon/Dragon/Heaven/Hell flavor (which is why I'm praying for a non-Judge foil reprint of Vindicate without the Gerrard/Weatherlite flavor at some point).
Completely unrelated note: Way back in the day, Wizards did a competition for the right to write Magic novels, and I sent them a treatment for a continuation of the post-Invasion block storyline, but I didn't get selected. (I believe this was before Kamigawa was out, maybe? It was a long time and two computers ago. I think the eventual winners were the co-authors on the Timespiral books.)
Was anyone else around back then, and if so, does anyone recall the details of that open call for stories? It's all a little foggy to me. Price of growing old, I suppose.
I'm more than a little biased here--Kaalia is one of my pet cards/decks.
This was an M. Night Shyamalan-level twist. Not Sixth Sense Shyamalan, but Happening Shyamalan. Seriously, the Kaalia connection came out of nowhere and doesn't necessarily hold up with what we know from Kaalia's commander precon bio.
Kaalia's Previous Bio:
Kaalia of the Vast sits within her mountain chapel pondering both the heavenly host and the infernal horde, tormented by her past, scarred by devastation. Her once simple life as a cleric was reduced to ashes when shadowy beings massacred her congregation. Somehow she survived, but her soul was fractured and a growing hatred soon grew in the cracks. Now, driven by a righteous fury and a thirst for revenge, Kaalia broods feverishly, amassing her vast power, waiting to unleash her apocalyptic might upon any who stand in her way.
Here's my theory, which I'm sure someone has mentioned before. I don't think Lia was supposed to be Kaalia. I think the first part of the story was written and then someone said "Make it about Kaalia."
Can we shoehorn this new story in with her previous bio (or vice versa)? Sure. Lia's mother was a healer, and Lia herself showed some aptitude for magic. Could Lia have been destined to be a cleirc? Certainly that's what her mother seemed to be pushing for.
However, Lia's talent was destruction. She was a stonekiller--she could pulverize rocks. That doesn't strike me as a very cleric thing. (Armageddon aside.) Maybe the same magical talent could be expanded to killing artifacts, which would at least be more white/cleric-y.
Pulling some Scars of Mirrodin-level stretching/retconning, it can work:
Maybe Lia made a new start of it elsewhere, still scarred, but trying to move on. Maybe she trained as a cleric, like her mother, and grew up a damaged but functional woman. Maybe the death cult finally caught up to her, and tried to get revenge by leveling her new home, and she finally snapped (see also Elspeth).
Or, maybe her mother was more than just a healer. Maybe she was the village cleric, and the village was her (and by extension her daughter's, as Lia was heir apparent) congregation. Maybe after the attack, Kaalia began wandering Alara, made a few summoning pacts with some Bant angels, some Jund dragons, and some Grixis demons. Maybe she then settled in the ruins of her childhood village and began her "feverish brooding" and pooling of "apocalyptic might".
But, even making all those leaps and stretches, here's what I can't justify:
Why would someone who lost their family to a demon murder cult start summoning demons themselves?
I can buy angels. I can buy dragons. But demons? The very entities that slaughtered everyone she ever loved?* That doesn't make sense to me.
I enjoyed this story on its own merits, but I don't think Kaalia had any place in it. Lia, at least to me, wasn't supposed to be Kaalia.**
*Okay, technically they were slaughtered by a cult of humans in service of a demon. Close enough.
**Am I going to use "Kaalia was a stonekiller as a kid" as flavor justification for Return to Dust and/or Divine Offering (Fifth Edition flavor text, of course) in my Kaalia deck? Hell yes.
Yeah! In retrospect, I'm surprised Avacyn didn't take that route as well.
Just wait for Return to Innistrad in 7-ish years. She and Sorin will have their "I AM YOUR FATHER" moment and she'll go full-on Radiant.
With regards to this week's story, I didn't find "epidermis" as jarring as others seemed to. We've seen plenty of intelligent goblins on Ravnica before (though, to be fair, they were of the Izzet varietal), and to my mind at least, it makes sense that if someone's going to rise to become a Mob Boss they'd at least be more intelligent than their underlings.
In fact, possibly due to my love of the RAV block novels, I think this one was my favorite Realms story yet. You get the sense that, yes, the Boros are trying to hang on in the wake of the breaking of the Guildpact, but things are certainly not where they were pre-Dissension.
I liked the Garruk story, and I LOVED last week's piece, but this week's story just didn't do it for me.
I think it was a style problem--it reminded me of my early college years (circa 1999) on various fan fiction boards. The idea was a good one (clockwork creation runs amok and turns on its quite insane maker) but the prose just wasn't at the level I'd expect from the Mothership. I also found the "twist" ending hard to follow, though I admit I was reading it at 12:15 AM while trying to comfort a scared doggy during a storm, so I wasn't exactly operating a peak efficiency.
I'll probably give it another shot tonight and see if I like it better on a second read. Reaction on here seems more positive that negative, so maybe it's just me.
We have the elders of Mirrodin, infected with mycosynth, were all sent home to their native planes back in Fifth Dawn.
It's been a while since I read Fifth Dawn, but if I recall correctly, the people brought to Mirrodin by Memnarch's soul traps were returned home as if they had never been to Mirrodin; no memories and no metal enhancements. No metal enhancements means no mycosynth.
There are other Phyrexian factions out there, because of Karn's traipsing about the multiverse dripping oil everywhere he went, but that continuation of the Great Work was completely independent of the Vanishing.
I started looking through possessives, given Koth's Courier and Victory's Herald. Here's what I checked, though only one of them was something previously unknown:
sun's 7 (!--could be related to the new beacon-like cycle we've heard rumors of)
I think that's more a trick of perspective. The location of the "camera" behind the foreground creature makes that creature appear larger relative to the distant Iona.
I don't think they're supposed to be statues (I think they're just wearing masks/helmets) but they give that same "statue coming to life" vibe. And they're centaurs.
It's nice to see they at least mentioned the whole "the Guildpact was broken, and there was some chaos, but the guilds are back" issue without major retconning. I'll buy that the guilds are back even without the magic of the 'Pact, because they were entrenched in Ravnican society for ten thousand years. I can see that sticking around even without magical backup.
This weeks focus was Selesnya, which is probably my least favorite guild. Some stunning artwork this week, though. The wall relief with the ten guild symbols is great, and the Topiary Grove is just beautiful.
(In fact, thanks to the wall picture, I now know how to arrange my 10 guild magnets from the previous Rav block.)
We totally bought a box of Mirage tournament packs and did a pseudo-sealed deck tournament when I was in college, and I managed to get a Spirit of the Night. I ended up trading it to my friend for an entire deck.:D
Come to think of it, that may have been how I wound up with my merfolk deck, which over 12-ish years of tweaking has somehow become a UR madness deck with only one (well, four copies of one) creature: Civilized Scholar! Not even a merfolk!
That Mirage deck ended up being an aweful BR monstrosity with the Spirit and multiple Kaervek's Torches. It basically did nothing for the first five turns.
Didn't she kill Asmira? It's been a while since I've looked at any of the Mirage stuff.
Edit: beaten to the wiki...which confirms that yes, Asmira was killed by Purraj.
As you can see by my post count, I mostly just lurk around here, but I figured this was a good opportunity to pop out from my rock and introduce myself. My real name is Eric, and I'm a development chemist working for an instrumentation company based out of Charlotte, NC, USA. I specialize in peptide synthesis, for those of you with chemistry knowledge. I'm 31, and I've been playing Magic for...geez, since 1999, so 13 years.
I was one of the rare players who actually started during Masques block. My first deck was the rebels precon (Rebels' Call, I believe). Right away I got hooked on the lore of Magic--the majority of the decks I built back in the day were tied together more by flavor than functionality. (Fun fact--the first deck I even designed on my own was a Spike deck, as in the Stonghold/Exodus creatures made of +1/+1 counters. It was...less than good.)
It's something I still do today with my Commander decks--everything in my Kaalia deck has to fit with the Angel/Demon/Dragon/Heaven/Hell flavor (which is why I'm praying for a non-Judge foil reprint of Vindicate without the Gerrard/Weatherlite flavor at some point).
Completely unrelated note: Way back in the day, Wizards did a competition for the right to write Magic novels, and I sent them a treatment for a continuation of the post-Invasion block storyline, but I didn't get selected. (I believe this was before Kamigawa was out, maybe? It was a long time and two computers ago. I think the eventual winners were the co-authors on the Timespiral books.)
Was anyone else around back then, and if so, does anyone recall the details of that open call for stories? It's all a little foggy to me. Price of growing old, I suppose.
This was an M. Night Shyamalan-level twist. Not Sixth Sense Shyamalan, but Happening Shyamalan. Seriously, the Kaalia connection came out of nowhere and doesn't necessarily hold up with what we know from Kaalia's commander precon bio.
Kaalia's Previous Bio:
Kaalia of the Vast sits within her mountain chapel pondering both the heavenly host and the infernal horde, tormented by her past, scarred by devastation. Her once simple life as a cleric was reduced to ashes when shadowy beings massacred her congregation. Somehow she survived, but her soul was fractured and a growing hatred soon grew in the cracks. Now, driven by a righteous fury and a thirst for revenge, Kaalia broods feverishly, amassing her vast power, waiting to unleash her apocalyptic might upon any who stand in her way.
Can we shoehorn this new story in with her previous bio (or vice versa)? Sure. Lia's mother was a healer, and Lia herself showed some aptitude for magic. Could Lia have been destined to be a cleirc? Certainly that's what her mother seemed to be pushing for.
However, Lia's talent was destruction. She was a stonekiller--she could pulverize rocks. That doesn't strike me as a very cleric thing. (Armageddon aside.) Maybe the same magical talent could be expanded to killing artifacts, which would at least be more white/cleric-y.
Pulling some Scars of Mirrodin-level stretching/retconning, it can work:
Or, maybe her mother was more than just a healer. Maybe she was the village cleric, and the village was her (and by extension her daughter's, as Lia was heir apparent) congregation. Maybe after the attack, Kaalia began wandering Alara, made a few summoning pacts with some Bant angels, some Jund dragons, and some Grixis demons. Maybe she then settled in the ruins of her childhood village and began her "feverish brooding" and pooling of "apocalyptic might".
Why would someone who lost their family to a demon murder cult start summoning demons themselves?
I can buy angels. I can buy dragons. But demons? The very entities that slaughtered everyone she ever loved?* That doesn't make sense to me.
I enjoyed this story on its own merits, but I don't think Kaalia had any place in it. Lia, at least to me, wasn't supposed to be Kaalia.**
*Okay, technically they were slaughtered by a cult of humans in service of a demon. Close enough.
**Am I going to use "Kaalia was a stonekiller as a kid" as flavor justification for Return to Dust and/or Divine Offering (Fifth Edition flavor text, of course) in my Kaalia deck? Hell yes.
Just wait for Return to Innistrad in 7-ish years. She and Sorin will have their "I AM YOUR FATHER" moment and she'll go full-on Radiant.
With regards to this week's story, I didn't find "epidermis" as jarring as others seemed to. We've seen plenty of intelligent goblins on Ravnica before (though, to be fair, they were of the Izzet varietal), and to my mind at least, it makes sense that if someone's going to rise to become a Mob Boss they'd at least be more intelligent than their underlings.
In fact, possibly due to my love of the RAV block novels, I think this one was my favorite Realms story yet. You get the sense that, yes, the Boros are trying to hang on in the wake of the breaking of the Guildpact, but things are certainly not where they were pre-Dissension.
I think it was a style problem--it reminded me of my early college years (circa 1999) on various fan fiction boards. The idea was a good one (clockwork creation runs amok and turns on its quite insane maker) but the prose just wasn't at the level I'd expect from the Mothership. I also found the "twist" ending hard to follow, though I admit I was reading it at 12:15 AM while trying to comfort a scared doggy during a storm, so I wasn't exactly operating a peak efficiency.
I'll probably give it another shot tonight and see if I like it better on a second read. Reaction on here seems more positive that negative, so maybe it's just me.
It's been a while since I read Fifth Dawn, but if I recall correctly, the people brought to Mirrodin by Memnarch's soul traps were returned home as if they had never been to Mirrodin; no memories and no metal enhancements. No metal enhancements means no mycosynth.
There are other Phyrexian factions out there, because of Karn's traipsing about the multiverse dripping oil everywhere he went, but that continuation of the Great Work was completely independent of the Vanishing.
sun's 7 (!--could be related to the new beacon-like cycle we've heard rumors of)
Others of note:
moon's 0
master's 1 (Master's Call)
war's 0
Mirran's 0
Mirrans' 0
Ur-Golem's 0
Victory's 2 (both Victory's Herald)
Elspeth's 0
Venser's 0
Karn's 0
Tezzeret's 0