I don't necessarily believe that the relocation of the thread is correct, respectfully of course.
Time travel spanning periods of thousands of years of MTG story is now a very canon plot device directly impacting the very lore of the MTG storyline. In this case, it was used to correct the mistake of Ugin being dead.
That implies that this plot device can now be used for the same purpose anywhere else in the MTG storyline and timeline as wizards sees fit.
MTG has had its full share of mistakes and stories that are vague, contradictory, and confusing.
While I understand the move with regards to my comments to the Elder war and the invasion, they were made not to illustrate whatif or fanfic for those particular events, but moreso, they were more to illustrate reasoning for using this plot device to generate the discussion about the use of time travel to correct the issues of vagueness, contradiction and confusion that have plagued MTG storyline for years. The number of threads (on this site alone) regarding the elder war is proof of that very concept.
So the original intent of the thread isn't a matter of what-if speculation type of discussion, but moreso, the exact use by WotC in the very manner that I'm describing to correct continuity problems within the current storyline itself shows the validity of the question to the current storyline outside of the realm of speculation as the suggestions above are legitimate problems regarding vagueness, (The elder war, bolas' battle with the leviathan), contradictions (The argument of the Elder status), and confusion (The image in the ice from dark depths being an eldrazi)
So I was thinking, with the whole Fate Reforged time travel thing, if it could be put to better use.
What I mean is, we see successful movies that have A LOAD of history use time travel recently to re-energize their brands, but also fix a whole lot of mistakes in their past. I'm of course talking about Star Trek and The X-men franchises. I can't help think that Ugin was so mysterious and the fan reacted to his lore so well, that Wizards sorta had to bring him back from the dead somehow and was put into a similar spot.
Anyway, with that said, What would you use time travel in the MTG storyline to visit, explain, or fix?
These are some of my suggestions:
1: The Elder Dragon War.
- Send someone back in time to see what really happened for whatever creative reason you can think of and Wizards can then properly build that legendary war and flesh out the legendary characters that we see people question about all the time and make it a relevant piece of magic history that everyone gets! Then maybe even have an effect on the outcome of the war, setting all sorts of ripple effects down the timeline or use it to have what was changed in the war to actually creating our current understanding of the outcome of the war. Maybe we will know who survived and who didn't. Maybe we can keep some elders around, and get rid of the elder wurms and maybe we can finally understand if Piru is an elder or not!!
2. Have a way to revisit sets that were perceived to be poor with the hindsight ideas and feedback from the fans. Think Kamigawa, prophecy and scourge.
3. Use it to restore Dominaria...or a what if scenario if the phyrexians won. Now that we have a much larger universe with so many characters and places, we could do an ala avengers sorta thing against that ancient evil.
4. Bolas' battle with the leviathan. See what happened and what the leviathan was.
5. Was Larik Mage an eldrazi. The very first Eldrazi encounter in MTG history.
I think he's really weak. I mean, think about the gameplay for a sec.
He's a 3 loyalty walker. He comes out, aand either uses his first ability to kill something 2 power or less to flip, or creates a 2/2 wolf.
Say he flips. Now he's a 1 loyalty walker.
Next turn (assuming you're opponent hasn't already killed him), you have to create a 1/1 deathwolf, or lose him to tutor for a creature.
And assuming you go for the deathwolf, he's still only 2 loyalty walker on turn 5.
If you're opponent can't kill a planeswalker with 2 loyalty on turn 5 then you're not facing a strong opponent.
Yes, his -1 ability is strong and making creatures are good, but this is going to be a combo planeswalker like Chandra Ablaze was, and he's strength is going to be limited to the set he's in, not outside like JTMS, or Gideon.
I was just reading the article M12 from the Inside: Part 2, when I saw this little snippit.
"Sometimes we nix certain card designs if we feel their flavor doesn't fit for some reason. (Example: Someone designed a very convincing "shovel" artifact in Scars of Mirrodin block. But Mirrodin doesn't really have soil—a shovel is out of place there. The design was fine mechanically, but problematic creatively, so the design had to go, perhaps to reappear when we visit a plane that has real dirt instead of a crust of metal plates.)"
If that doesn't scream ISD, I don't know what does. A shovel artifact would make perfect sense in a set where the graveyard was a major role.
Since there will definitely be a common line with the Oddessy block, i'm going to say spirit and phantom will make a return for W/G as was the way in Judgement, with human hunters for W as in a replacement for the white weenie soldier archetype.
You know, i'm still puzzled over the set symbol for ISD, still doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Sure it does, three confirmed monster-like tribes (vampires, zombies, werewolves), all tying into the whole "horror lurks within" (since they were all human once), each "probably" going to get a walker (garruk being cursed like how werewolves consider themselves cursed". With all three fighting for dominance or whatever the trigger is, the symbol makes alotta sense
How about this for trying to tie all the stories together?
During his time on Phyrexia, Good ol' Yawg found a way through the phyrexian nanotech to merge his "essence" with the Phyrexian oil, which is what gave him complete control over his creations and what made him "the father of machines". When I say "essence" I don't mean intelligence or soul or anything, just the stuff that made him just freakin' evil i.e no emotion, no caring, and with amibitions to fulfill a need. (kinda like the borg on star trek)
So when Yawg was killed (and he was killed dead) that was it for him. But the essence lived on in the oil. When Karn picked up some of it (and note only a little bit of it) the essence in the oil started to take over him to be the next "father of the machines". Which would cause him, subconsciencely to spread the oil and continue the phyexian "agenda" and fulfill the need.
Meanwhile, during the whole Karona thing, the entity that she coulda ran into that claimed to be Yawg, could actually be the essence in the oil trying to corrupt her (but being false god and all, it said "pfftt, screw that, this chick is crazy!" or something along those lines). Tying that little annoyance down once and for all.
So now you can have all these stories to tell of Karn and all the damage he's done spreading the oil unknownlingly, which is a plus.
And skipping to modern times, you now have the ability to have a powered down "Karn, Father of Machines" type of yawg figure, which can be put into a PW card, without actually raising yawg. Plus the whole corruption puts venser in a real bad spot, seeing as Karn was infected all during the time he known him and considered him his friend.
And somewhere in there throw in how bolas is behind all of it wanting to kill Karn, take over the essence and use the oil to control the eldrazi.....for multiverse domination....
Fun trivia, btdub: If you add up the decklists for all Worlds Top 8s, Llanowar Elves has seen more play than Birds of Paradise among them. This fact is made less significant by the fact that Elves was the most played creature and Birds was the second, beating every other creature by a wide wide margin (which is mostly because they're utility cards that have each been in every standard except 2).
I would submit that this is not because the elf is a better choice or creature then the birds, but that the Elf creature type are a staple tribe of MTG and are bound to appear in the worlds every so often, thus accounting for the numbers...
Including Llanowar Elves would be a no brainer in such decks.
With the dual lands and other mana fixing lands that have been in the Core sets and in every Advanced set as far back as Lorwyn (if memory serves), there have been no need for the Birds ability.
I agree with the comment that once Shards disappears from Standard and they take a break from the mana fixing lands in the core sets, then the birds will reclaim some of their former glory.
Look at the placement of capitals and punctuation.
In the Zendikar place name it is the "Eye of Ugin", with Eye capitalised because it is a place name, a proper noun.
In the Ghostfire flavour text it reads "Only those gifted with the eye of Ugin, the spirit dragon, can see his fiery breath." In this example, eye is not capitalised, as it is not referring to the place, also notice that Ugin, is immediately followed by 'the spirit dragon', this is meant to be read together, not
"eye of Ugin", the spirit dragon
more-
eye of "Ugin, the spirit dragon"
From this this we can figure out that the two lines of text are referring to completely different things, one is referring to the place, and another to something else that is referred to as an 'eye'. I would imagine this 'something else' is a manifest ability or power, as I doubt Ugin would go around literally giving his eyes to people.
Actually, in the latest web comic didn't Chandra say that the Eye wasn't the place, but the POWER in the place??
I keep thinking that if we figured out what the hedrons were for, the whole story would be blown open and we could take educated guesses at alot of the questions we have.
Since everyone is choosing powerful cards, I'll pick personal favorites that just are fun.
1: Draco - Cause who doesn't love a big lumpy hard to cast dragon!??
2: Sabertooth Nishoba - Loves me some pro blue and red
3: Phantom Nishoba - A ghost with a beatdown mentality problem
4: Any of the other elder dragons besides bolas.
So anyway, there's been something that has been bugging me about the whole Zendikar block. The Hedrons. I really haven't heard much about them, yet they've been pretty prominent in the artwork throughout the sets.
But then we had the latest piece of art (along with the set symbol for ROE) seeming to have been activated and changed into a star formation (again like the set symbol), and now glowing as if some powersource??
Given the cost of the Eldrazi, and how prominent the hedrons have been in the artwork, do you think that these newly changed hedrons are a powersource for the eldrazi? and if so, do you think it'll be represented in card form to help get them out quicker. Sort of like an Artifact card.
Artifact - Hedron - CMC 3
Tap Hedron:
When Hedron is tapped, Eldrazi creatures cost 3 less
When Hedron is tapped, it doesn't untap during your upkeep.
The thing is, I don't see why have those things everywhere and then have them suddently activated without it being immensely important to the story.
Time travel spanning periods of thousands of years of MTG story is now a very canon plot device directly impacting the very lore of the MTG storyline. In this case, it was used to correct the mistake of Ugin being dead.
That implies that this plot device can now be used for the same purpose anywhere else in the MTG storyline and timeline as wizards sees fit.
MTG has had its full share of mistakes and stories that are vague, contradictory, and confusing.
While I understand the move with regards to my comments to the Elder war and the invasion, they were made not to illustrate whatif or fanfic for those particular events, but moreso, they were more to illustrate reasoning for using this plot device to generate the discussion about the use of time travel to correct the issues of vagueness, contradiction and confusion that have plagued MTG storyline for years. The number of threads (on this site alone) regarding the elder war is proof of that very concept.
So the original intent of the thread isn't a matter of what-if speculation type of discussion, but moreso, the exact use by WotC in the very manner that I'm describing to correct continuity problems within the current storyline itself shows the validity of the question to the current storyline outside of the realm of speculation as the suggestions above are legitimate problems regarding vagueness, (The elder war, bolas' battle with the leviathan), contradictions (The argument of the Elder status), and confusion (The image in the ice from dark depths being an eldrazi)
Your reconsideration is appreciated.
What I mean is, we see successful movies that have A LOAD of history use time travel recently to re-energize their brands, but also fix a whole lot of mistakes in their past. I'm of course talking about Star Trek and The X-men franchises. I can't help think that Ugin was so mysterious and the fan reacted to his lore so well, that Wizards sorta had to bring him back from the dead somehow and was put into a similar spot.
Anyway, with that said, What would you use time travel in the MTG storyline to visit, explain, or fix?
These are some of my suggestions:
1: The Elder Dragon War.
- Send someone back in time to see what really happened for whatever creative reason you can think of and Wizards can then properly build that legendary war and flesh out the legendary characters that we see people question about all the time and make it a relevant piece of magic history that everyone gets! Then maybe even have an effect on the outcome of the war, setting all sorts of ripple effects down the timeline or use it to have what was changed in the war to actually creating our current understanding of the outcome of the war. Maybe we will know who survived and who didn't. Maybe we can keep some elders around, and get rid of the elder wurms and maybe we can finally understand if Piru is an elder or not!!
2. Have a way to revisit sets that were perceived to be poor with the hindsight ideas and feedback from the fans. Think Kamigawa, prophecy and scourge.
3. Use it to restore Dominaria...or a what if scenario if the phyrexians won. Now that we have a much larger universe with so many characters and places, we could do an ala avengers sorta thing against that ancient evil.
4. Bolas' battle with the leviathan. See what happened and what the leviathan was.
5. Was Larik Mage an eldrazi. The very first Eldrazi encounter in MTG history.
I'm pretty sure this version of Garruk is the reason why Giant Growth isn't in M12.
He's a 3 loyalty walker. He comes out, aand either uses his first ability to kill something 2 power or less to flip, or creates a 2/2 wolf.
Say he flips. Now he's a 1 loyalty walker.
Next turn (assuming you're opponent hasn't already killed him), you have to create a 1/1 deathwolf, or lose him to tutor for a creature.
And assuming you go for the deathwolf, he's still only 2 loyalty walker on turn 5.
If you're opponent can't kill a planeswalker with 2 loyalty on turn 5 then you're not facing a strong opponent.
Yes, his -1 ability is strong and making creatures are good, but this is going to be a combo planeswalker like Chandra Ablaze was, and he's strength is going to be limited to the set he's in, not outside like JTMS, or Gideon.
I'm going to stick with lilly in this set.
"Sometimes we nix certain card designs if we feel their flavor doesn't fit for some reason. (Example: Someone designed a very convincing "shovel" artifact in Scars of Mirrodin block. But Mirrodin doesn't really have soil—a shovel is out of place there. The design was fine mechanically, but problematic creatively, so the design had to go, perhaps to reappear when we visit a plane that has real dirt instead of a crust of metal plates.)"
If that doesn't scream ISD, I don't know what does. A shovel artifact would make perfect sense in a set where the graveyard was a major role.
Thoughts, opinions?
As for blue....no clue.
Sure it does, three confirmed monster-like tribes (vampires, zombies, werewolves), all tying into the whole "horror lurks within" (since they were all human once), each "probably" going to get a walker (garruk being cursed like how werewolves consider themselves cursed". With all three fighting for dominance or whatever the trigger is, the symbol makes alotta sense
Why did Bolas sent Tez to Mirrodin? Bolas never works directly, he's always moving the pieces into place, THEN makes his move.
So that might give us a clue as to what happens.
Flying,
You Can't Lose the Game, Opponents Can't Win the Game
Metalcraft - Creatures you control gain indestructibility and protection from infect
4/4
Basically it upgrades from a protector to a weapon. It is war afterall..
During his time on Phyrexia, Good ol' Yawg found a way through the phyrexian nanotech to merge his "essence" with the Phyrexian oil, which is what gave him complete control over his creations and what made him "the father of machines". When I say "essence" I don't mean intelligence or soul or anything, just the stuff that made him just freakin' evil i.e no emotion, no caring, and with amibitions to fulfill a need. (kinda like the borg on star trek)
So when Yawg was killed (and he was killed dead) that was it for him. But the essence lived on in the oil. When Karn picked up some of it (and note only a little bit of it) the essence in the oil started to take over him to be the next "father of the machines". Which would cause him, subconsciencely to spread the oil and continue the phyexian "agenda" and fulfill the need.
Meanwhile, during the whole Karona thing, the entity that she coulda ran into that claimed to be Yawg, could actually be the essence in the oil trying to corrupt her (but being false god and all, it said "pfftt, screw that, this chick is crazy!" or something along those lines). Tying that little annoyance down once and for all.
So now you can have all these stories to tell of Karn and all the damage he's done spreading the oil unknownlingly, which is a plus.
And skipping to modern times, you now have the ability to have a powered down "Karn, Father of Machines" type of yawg figure, which can be put into a PW card, without actually raising yawg. Plus the whole corruption puts venser in a real bad spot, seeing as Karn was infected all during the time he known him and considered him his friend.
And somewhere in there throw in how bolas is behind all of it wanting to kill Karn, take over the essence and use the oil to control the eldrazi.....for multiverse domination....
Crazy no?
I would submit that this is not because the elf is a better choice or creature then the birds, but that the Elf creature type are a staple tribe of MTG and are bound to appear in the worlds every so often, thus accounting for the numbers...
Including Llanowar Elves would be a no brainer in such decks.
With the dual lands and other mana fixing lands that have been in the Core sets and in every Advanced set as far back as Lorwyn (if memory serves), there have been no need for the Birds ability.
I agree with the comment that once Shards disappears from Standard and they take a break from the mana fixing lands in the core sets, then the birds will reclaim some of their former glory.
Actually, in the latest web comic didn't Chandra say that the Eye wasn't the place, but the POWER in the place??
1: Draco - Cause who doesn't love a big lumpy hard to cast dragon!??
2: Sabertooth Nishoba - Loves me some pro blue and red
3: Phantom Nishoba - A ghost with a beatdown mentality problem
4: Any of the other elder dragons besides bolas.
So anyway, there's been something that has been bugging me about the whole Zendikar block. The Hedrons. I really haven't heard much about them, yet they've been pretty prominent in the artwork throughout the sets.
But then we had the latest piece of art (along with the set symbol for ROE) seeming to have been activated and changed into a star formation (again like the set symbol), and now glowing as if some powersource??
Given the cost of the Eldrazi, and how prominent the hedrons have been in the artwork, do you think that these newly changed hedrons are a powersource for the eldrazi? and if so, do you think it'll be represented in card form to help get them out quicker. Sort of like an Artifact card.
Artifact - Hedron - CMC 3
Tap Hedron:
When Hedron is tapped, Eldrazi creatures cost 3 less
When Hedron is tapped, it doesn't untap during your upkeep.
The thing is, I don't see why have those things everywhere and then have them suddently activated without it being immensely important to the story.
Thoughts?