MTG was about 15 at the time of the old article. So, Xth Edition or so. I can't believe we are actually in post-20th Anniversary land.....
The timeline of the writing of the articles is MUCH easier to trace than the timeline of the actual frikkin story, so that's what I'm clarifying instead.
Because of this, conflicts must *not* resemble what real world challenges *look like*. There must be some outside-the-conflict perspective.
In Original STAR WARS, the surface conflict was the Empire vs. the Rebellion. The Jedi had all but been exterminated. Obi-Wan Kenobi not only gave Luke Skywalker a new weapon to tip the scales of the battles, but a new purpose and meaning to his life, so that winning and losing meant different things.
Darth Vader. Darth Vader is the example I would lift up as what fictional character deaths should look like. People who find ways to make some kind of partial amends for what they've done or failed to do, have completed a character growth arc, have grown as wise as they can--(which you don't have to gain omniscience to accomplish. You just have to fairly reasonably hit the limits of your opportunity), and because they are in a state of sympathy or grace from the perspective of the reader-- before they make any more grand mistakes with terrible consequences spawning ad nauseum stories, it would be better if the just, "ya know, not" as the writer of the article put it today on the Mothership about whether Urza should have created Karn or not.
You go on your adventure, you get messy, you learn a few new secrets and tricks, make some unusual friends, have a big climactic finish-- and then you should die, having fulfilled the purpose of your existence. Fictional wars have meanings and fictional characters *should* all die as a matter of keeping the moral compass of the story pointed right. This is opposite to reality where the conflicts seem meaningless but, if you asked me about *should*, I would say everyone *should* live forever.
The deaths of characters in story are supposed to motivate and guide people to immortality in real life. If you define that as a dynastic legacy, or an architectural or cultural legacy, that's fine. If you define it more literally as medicine and miracle and personal immortality that's fine, too. The important thing is that characters are supposed to chase immortality.
Liliana Vess is a protagonist who is against her nature finding a hero's role and path to the same purpose as Nicol Bolas. She freed Innistrad from Griselbrand who likely would have destroyed the Church of Avacyn that much sooner. She killed Kothoped with the same artifact he sent her to retrieve and who knows which planes he was terrorizing. She eliminated Razaketh on Amonkhet fulfilling prophecies that may have been by the Amonkhet Gods and may have been whitewashed history by Nicol Bolas, who knew of her contracts and could predict something then manipulate it to happen. She is going on a quest that will apparently end in achieving Immortality.
I would very surprised if, after killing Belzenlok, Liliana Vess survived Nicol Bolas' attention to Dominaria and the Gatewatch.
She's old, pre-Mending, and getting to be a too-powerful character for the confines of the story. She solves problems the other planeswalkers can't by her presence and willingness to use Black magic and Black mindset. She's nowhere near Superman levels of game-breaking, but after she frees herself from the 4 contracts, her next order of business would be to discard the Chain Veil or hack and master it more and then she'd really be a problematic character to write for.
I never wanted Jace to be killed off because I hadn't seen him grow as a character. I hadn't seen a path or a journey that resonated emotionally with me for him to *earn* a hero's sacrifice, bow-out scene. Jace just doesn't scream ''oh the humanity'' to me. Therefore I really see Jace more as a recurring Villain, someone who always has to be around to mess things up to keep the story going that way. Jace is obviously like URZA in that way, except without a lot of super-powers. (Urza was special even for a planeswalker-- Jace has mind reading powers which seem to be more a flavor of magic than a really overpowered skill. He doesn't use them to win Magic Battles nearly as well as Eragon did, for example. In Eragon Mind Magic is REALLY important and special. It doesn't feel that way in Magic.)
But now that Jace has the full weight of wrecking Alhammaret's mind bearing on his soul, and he has an actual side day job as the Living Guildpact he should be getting back to-- there's an out for Jace to leave the story in a dignified way that would be almost like a character death effectively without actually gruesomely killing him off. He should simply retire and be the Guildpact full time and quit the Gatewatch except for promising to watch Ravnica.
Jace could then become something like Ben Kenobi, actually, training and teaching a new Ravnican planeswalker to take his place on the Watch (Vraska, anyone?)
People can definitely get invested in a story where everyone dies at the end--- but the trick is to have some of the deaths be written particularly to be surprises. It's when you can SEE all the deaths coming miles and miles and miles away, like in comic books, that it just doesn't work anymore.
Vagueness also helps. someone named Animorphs. in both Animorphs and Lord of the Rings, there's a decent sized list of characters that almost certainly "die" but the exact way it happens is more off screen or uncertain so it's just very very different than absurdities like Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis, or Final Crisis. the ones in space are in the middle of a mission and it seems guaranteed there's a moment after the explosion where things happen to the survivors-- the ones left behind have whole lives ahead of them before they clearly die normal deaths because they're retired and not gods. Hobbits all die because they're not elves, except Bilbo and Frodo and Sam. Every descendent of Aragorn dies, but they obviously all have royal funerals implied so that's cool. I mean even though Tolkien decided evil was still in the world in the Fourth Age, we're not assuming there'd actually be any crazy Denethors. the remaining evil is much smaller than the Evil that had been defeated before.
I can't quite say exactly why I'm strongly opposed to the tone of most of the posts above me but I think it comes down to--- death is something you should hope for characters *because you have to see how the character handles their own death*. Death is part of character arc. I can't get invested in a character that can never die and is also never learning anything. I just don't see the point of Chandra Nalaar. Pia Nalaar, with a 100th the screen time, is much cooler.
To talk about characters they just killed off and I think might really not be coming back-- Kozilek and Ulamog. Emrakul might come back but that's a long shot.
The reason why is that MaRo said himself that having Ice Age and Mirage on the same plane was a mistake. What makes Dominaria stand out more than the other planes, is that I don't actually care about having maps of the other planes. Not relevant enough to the world. Dominaria has REAL continents. Worlds within Worlds. Ice Age, Mirage, Freaking Corondor--- THEY'RE ALL Dominaria. And they're gonna homogenize it.
Kaladesh is the most boring plane ever, because they did a really old card that all on it's own did everything the flavor of Kaladesh did. Bazaar of Baghdad. There. There's your Kaladesh-in-a-Card. Want one less broken? High Market.
Now, Innistrad, Zendikar, Lorwyn, for a brief time, I had hopes, dreams, that I would want to have all the maps of all the planes in the multiverse. But as they kept on RETURNING to Planes and the geography -still- didn't seem to matter so much......not like DOMINARIA, where you could have a whole book about one region......You can't have a whole book about Havengul, or a whole book about the 9th District, or a whole book about.....well, ok, you Can have a whole book about the Black Portion of Mirrodin/New Phyrexia whose name I wish I could remember.
But seriously. For a game whose most fundamental moment in the lore is "Magic comes from the Lands", like, land doesn't matter ANYWHERE except Dominaria. The very magic system is portrayed incredibly vaguely and inconsistently in the books. They don't even -want- to clean up spell casting and mana tapping and creature summoning as much as they should.....questions as old as the game itself they have still refused to answer, like whether a creature summons is a creation, or a teleport. When is it which.
For the people who like what Dominaria is as a whole, prepare to be the ones making sacrifices. For the people who will be satisfied if you get something that is an overcompromise but they can legally prove they kept true to the easiest parts to keep true to and have unceremoniously ditched the rest......well, you're easily pleased and probably don't remember, or didn't appreciate, what they're dropping.
I'm the sort of guy who loves both the Silmarillion, and the Clockworking from Test of Metal. I like my worlds bigger and harder and more complex and more actually realistic even at the price of believability because it doesn't matter how unbelievable it starts out as if experience teaches you it's actually true.
Dominaria was the ONLY setting in the history of Magic the Gathering that had educational, valuable, lessons to learn. Because it was, frankly, a mess. But a beautiful mess. They're going to clean it up to make it ''fun''....and making it too fun will make it too uneducational and it will be a brief blip and forgettable.......but we've seen them abandon some of their new ideas before, so likely we'll get some reversal on this when it blows up in their face. They listened to us when we made them give us Real Slivers instead of that cheap mutant trash that could have been just ''Mutant'' but not ''Sliver''. They'll find to their shock once again that they aren't as smart as they think are, that people want Dominaria for exactly the reasons R&D thinks Dominaria needs to stop being, that we want a return to all the deep lovely lore of Ulgrotha, the kazillion and three mechanics of Time Spiral, and the Block That Doesn't End from Antiquities to The Dark to Ice Age because so much happens just on Terisiare.
I'll believe that this will be good when I hear that they flat out kick out MaRo off of Dominaria, give his job to Richard Garfield, despite all of the changes that would involve, that would be what people WANT because what's the POINT of going back to Dominaria unless we are going Back to Pre-Modern Magic? honestly? except for how Time Spiral and Coldsnap was Pre-Modern in Modern Card Frames?
I've been listening to MaRo's talk about his plans for the future, the way he envisions what Magic is, and his problem is he wants to meddle with everything to keep it changing and some things -just- -don't- -need- -to- -be- -changed-. the stuff at the bottom of the pyramid is a longer wider base of bricks that shouldn't be moved than MaRo really acknowledges, and Magic is.....DIFFERENT now, than it used to be. And that.......Can be fine. It can be accepted but it needs to be said that it's Different. And it's practically deception to pretend that "We're Going Back" when what they -MEAN- is "We're Going Forward, and to Go Forward, We'll even Trample the Past".
MaRo is like Tony Stark. OK OK he's an Avenger and he even is frequently the one 'saving the day'-- but how many of the problems he solves are ones he caused? I am going to be as pessimist as possible. that way, the only surprises can be good ones.
And Jace is a Mary Sue. In the case of Jace, I LIKE that he's a Mary Sue, but omigosh he so is one, and that's part of why MaRo is just ignorant about what it's like to be someone other than the Head of R&D.
they do need to increase how to introduce to newer players. but taking away the depth for older players, and you basically give older players no reason to be interested because it will just be too below their level for a plane like Dominaria. I consider that the authors of Agents of Artifice and Test of Metal did a fantastic job with the worldbuilding lore in the way they used Ravnica, much better than any recent novels. I started Magic books on the best of them: the Artifacts cycle, and then I read Agents of Artifice, and almost everything since has been.....lower quality than their Platinum Hits.
It took pretty high word and page counts, but in the thick books, you get what you need to take a new player deep, wide, and far in the world to bring them up to speed and interested in all the stuff the old player is.
Much of Modern Lore just doesn't do that kind of plot hooks anymore, except, almost, the way that Liliana's Demon Pact Arc has consistently been hovering in the background actually interesting, even sometimes more interesting than the ''Plane of the Week'' part of the story. Bolas as a Character? Interesting. Amonkhet as a Plane? Had high hopes, turned out to be boring. Hour of Devastation as an epic battle moment? A hell of a lot better payoff than the Helvault at the endd of first Innistrad.d
OK, so-- the is NICOL BOLAS WORLD, as far as the eye can see. I am suspecting that, the same trick that Alara pulled with "Relic of Progenitus" "Skyward Eye Prophets", etc...(remember THOSE???), is going on here. The Cat Goddess has a Bolas Horn Bow, the Ibis God has Large Bolas Wings, the other Gods have Bolas Weapons and Ornaments as well.
What this means is, there's going to be an evil Conspiracy/Archenemy feeling from all of them. Duh. They're all going to be Gods of the kind that could roleplay as Chaotic or Lawful Evil. Even if they are two-colored Gods, the Green-White one will have some Blue-Black-Redness to it. Because Bolas.
What does that mean? It means that "Anubis is the Death God" is going to spread and extend to "Egyptian Gods are Death Gods more than Theros Gods are", so we don't need to be concerned too much, we just need to be braced for them all to feel pretty Anubis-y, in addition to anything else done. Remember, the Theros Gods lost direct analogy with Greek Gods quickly, but kept in the themes of ''this feels like Ancient Fantasy Setting with Cultural Inspiration'', so the overall tone of "Egyptian World" is "Bolas World", and, basically, Everyone is Anubis in addition to whatever else you want to call them. It fits with early powerful Magic cards and everything with Bolas' Legacy.
OK, so, what's the backstory on these guys? I think all of them are probably mortal servants of Nicol Bolas, promoted to Godhood by the Dragon. They're not constructs, or illusions, they'll have names, and be Legendary Creatures....unless they're Planeswalkers. They could be Bolas' New Infinite Consortium. THAT's totally possible.
Let's finally talk about the Colors: The Cat is obviously base White, the Snake is obviously base Green. The question is: How many colors?
There's no reason at all to think that 4-colored Gods are being done this soon, and there's enough uniqueness to call that these aren't 5 colored either. Let's be complete with the other options:
Mono Colors: As the "Defining 5 Gods of the World", on a Large Set of a New Block, they could easily keep the Colors simple, and expand on God Mechanics and possibilities in other ways. They *COULD*. This is unlikely. There's too much Gold all over the World Art. It looks like City of Brass. It's Nicol Bolas World. Nicol Bolas' thing is Gold. Everywhere there's Gold in Magic, there's Nicol Bolas, even Ravnica (books only). These are Gold Gods, but that's not at first obvious.
I don't think they're Enemy Pair Gold Gods. The Ibis God doesn't look very Izzet (although, Orzhov, Golgari, Simic all *could* have been these Designs, and a Boros Jackal is not the weirdest thing ever.)
These are therefore, either 2-colored, or 3-colored, so which is it?
First, let's see if the Top and Bottom give us more clues:
The Cat Goddess: looks more Orzhov than Bant to be honest. This is the Bolas effect. The suggestion of shadow is to be expected, but if she were Bant, you'd think Blue or White would be more obvious.
The Snake God/Goddess: Snakes are a long mainstay of Black/Green as a Dual Color, and this is Bolas World. This Snake has glowing Green Eyes. This could easily be a Green/Black Snake. Could it be a Naya Snake? Well, it could be maybe. It doesn't seem like it, though.
The Ibis God/Goddess: This looks like it could be a White/Blue Flier classic. It looks so very like a White-Blue flier, that it's hard to imagine it being any other colors. This does call to mind remembering to ask if Khans are possible at all-- WEDGE Gods? Nah, don't really think so. But if the Cat was Abzan, this could have been Jeskai.
if we lay out a chart and ask each one individually, then compare the answers to each other, let's see:
Cat GW? WB? W? GWU? GWB? most likely? : W or WB
Ibis: WU? UR? U? WUB? WUR? most likely? WUB
Crocodile: UB? BG? B? UBR? UBG? most likely? UBG or BG
Snake: RG? GU? G? RGW? RGU? most likely? G
Jackal: BR? RW? R? BRG? BRW? most likely? *equally*-- this is the "tone setter" that looks the *very most at home on the whole plane*,
and the rest of the cards look like its colors, too.
the Jackal looks more Jundish than the Snake, and the Crocodile looks more Jundish than the Jackal,
which is enormously skewing the color palette. this is because of the "Gold in the Desert" effect.
the Jackal in general throws off guessing by the arts a lot.
the whole aesthetic looks "Jund + Esper + Mardu" really.
the Snake looks non-Green.
the Most-Jund-looking is the Crocodile, but Jund in no way would be listed 3rd, that's crazy.
the Crocodile is more like a Dragon than a Bird or a Jackal or a Snake, and the Bird is not likely to be UB, it's more likely to be UW.
the Crocodile could really, really go UBR, or BRG, either way, very strongly.
if we could get our *bearings* as to where we were in the Color Wheel, the other 4 images are a simple wrap-around, but it's not so easy as it looks
based on these arts. I don't even remember what the Green God looked like at all on original Theros, but it might help to reference the Theros cycles further to ask what kind of cycle this might be.
Lastly: I know that MTG Demons have a particular ''Lord of the Pit'' shape to them--- but "Kazaveth" was recently named as the 2nd or 3rd Demon, more powerful than Griselbrand or Kothoped, and it's plausible that the Crocodile "Sobek" God is also a Demon. It would be new and different, but not completely out of character for Liliana to face a non-mono-B, wingless Demon. A God on Nicol Bolas World is a big deal and all....
So here's how I'm calling it: there's no way the Ibis is Izzet, so there's no way the Cat is Orzhov, so there's no way this is Enemy Guilds.
I can't be sure whether to start the count at W/G or W/U to test for Allied Guilds, but it seems all wrong for Allied Guilds too.
Enemy Khans actually helps to resolve the Art Palette themes a lot better-- Abzan Cat, Jeskai Ibis, Sultai Crocodile, Mardu Jackal, Temur Snake
!!!!!!!!!!!!
Confusing and Confounding any final say is that Bolas was the central villain of BOTH Alara AND Tarkir, so there's just no telling at all-- except it seems safe to assume that the pile of evidence points towards THREE colored Gods, instead of Mono-Colored or Dual Colored!
Which basically leaves the question: Who the hell would be Bant?! The bird looks the most Bant in the end, and that would just be wrong too.
OK, in a very long process, I think it's actually something you can bet on:
These are.......WEDGE GODS.
wow. jumping straight to wedges. OK, they have my attention.
WAIT. TWO-SET BLOCK CYCLE. I FIGURED IT OUT.
These are SHARD, *AND* WEDGE GODS, MIXED TOGETHER! with both cycles to be completed in Amonkhet Part Deux!
OK now that really feels like a very good guess. It's either that, or just very wacky choices for arts for Mono Color Gods with some truly fantastic red herrings distracting people.
but it won't be for lack of Wizards trying to ruin it by trying to fix something that wasn't even broken.
Wonderful. Classic Wizards. Of course they will always keep putting out amazing stuff, but good luck hoping for them to realize what the actual best things they've done were when it comes time for the remakes.
Classic Ravnica, Zendikar, Innistrad, and probably Theros will always be better than Return Blocks.
First things First, Dear Admins: Please Move this Post if it needs to be moved, I'm just guessing here.
I would REALLY, REALLY, like to play Ultimate Showdown as a format one day. And every few months I check to see
if any interest in it has increased. I haven't seen very much discussion of it in over a year though, so I thought now would be
a good time for me to start a conversation about it.
The time seems Ripe for Super Interest in Ultimate Showdown.Format
1. Oath of the Gatewatch has come out, cementing SuperFriends.Concept as Canonical Lore. Before now, Planeswalkers
simply have not been coordinating in any of the story plots-- rather they've been stumbling around bumping into each
other and remembering each others' phone numbers at best. With the Gatewatch, we have a Real Team.
2. Avengers. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is reaching Phase III very soon, and I expect that all the anticipatory discussion of
Thanos and the Infinity Stones is going to pay off in Greater Nerd-dom on the Interwebs. The #1 Complaint about Ultimate Showdown
is, "How would the politics work?". The politics, essentially, would work like Infinity War. To crystalize the concept imagine the Archenemy
in question is Thanos and he has the Gauntlet. THAT is why the 15 other players around him are all Teamed Up Against Him but Able to Attack Each Other.
That's a Vorthos, Flavor Based explanation. Some of you might want an actual Rules Based Explanation. For something as insane as Ultimate Showdown, you need
a Great Vorthos Foundation so that you have some Go-To intuition for the Touch-and-Go areas where, really, what the Rulebook Actually Says is "Why Are You Doing This To Me. It Hurts."
So picture the Battle for Zendikar like the part in Avengers 1 where they catch Loki in Germany. The first Team-Up. Imagine whatever Shadows Over Innistrad and the Next Block to be building up as their real Battle For New York-- AVENGERS UNLEASHED. I think it would just be TOTES AWESOME for Internet Nerd-Dom
if the First Recorded Game of Ultimate Showdown hit the YouTubes right in the middle of this smorgisbord of Magic and Gatewatch and Avengers Hype.
I was directly inspired by Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinity War to shove as many main characters around a table as I could and to hell with everything, Let Their Be Chaos and Awesome and Everything is Fight!!!!
3. So what this post is about is a big huge recruitment drive: Can I get 16 players to respond to this saying they'd be willing to play Ultimate Showdown on Skype and put in on YouTube? Or through some other method? Can anyone put me in direct direct with Channel-Fireball or StarCityGames maybe?
I really want to do this and just feel like the format can get the greatest exposure now that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is being all Crazy and Awesome
and people can warp their brains enough to imagine Greater Epicness and can put Playing the Greatest Game of Magic in the History of Ever above a silly thing
like the Rules. I need to find people who are ready to actually sit down to a game that will require to make rules callings based on Comic Book Logic because
it is Designed and Intended to be Such a Comic Book Format.
For anyone who forgot what Ultimate Showdown is and wants to know what the heck I've been ranting about, or anyone new enough that they've
never seen the original article about Ultimate Showdown, here it is:
http://archive.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ftl/96
I will say that at this time I intend to not rain on anyone's parade at all, and any cards, decks, or rules you can think of should be considered
when we reach the stage of actually playing. But for the moment, I do think it is safe to tentatively ban Storm/Mind's Desire Combos and Scherezade.WasteThanos'time2016. Because FFS
I am also going to post links to other places I have found Ultimate Showdown discussed on here in an attempt to help people catch each others' attention.
If you are interested, be sure to try to contact anyone you see that has shown interest after you contact me!
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/602774-the-ultimate-showdown-format
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/community-forums/water-cooler-talk/the-versus-forum/464814-ultimate-showdown
http://legitmtg.com/competitive/ultimate-showdown/ for the music video, posted somewhere MTG-related
I am going to try to recruit everyone I can to this.
I LITERALLY. can't. even.
This isn't even really an Unhinged card-- it's not TRYING to be funny at all. It just IS.
I posted this on my old High School English teacher's wall, because she is ALWAYS saying she "Literally Can't Even"
She doesn't even know the difference between mana costs and MSRP.
But I know, that she will understand this card perfectly.
It's the best card in the set.
White Girls: The Gathering
Battle for Starbuck's Mocha Frappe
Literally. Can't. Even.
Don't you GEDDIT?! IT'S KEEPS YOU FROM EVEN EVENING!
I love this card far, far, more than I should.
....
I predict Duel Dekcs: Sarkhan vs. Narset/Sorin
I saw a someone compare Ugin to Galactus to which another commenter immediately followed up "No no he's more like the Watcher".
Magic is predominantly High Fantasy but Sci Fi, Horror, Pirates, Ninjas, and other genres have been creeping in since all the way back to
Antiquities putting the whole Phyrexian Problem Thing on a more Star Warsy Trekky path than a Lord of the Rings path.
One of the options Wizards could do is to try to keep each setting, each plane, specific and centered around established Genres.
"This is the Metal Plane"
"This is the Indiana Jones Plane"
"This is the Trantor/Coruscant Plane"
"This is the Drive-In Movie Monsters Plane"
"This is the Dragon Plane"
"This is the Nicolas Cage Plane"
But. Well. See.
Planeswalkers.
And Eldrazi.
Marvel has war heroes, super heroes, gods, spies, mutants, aliens, cosmic beings, magic beings, and horror stories kind of all happening in
"The Multiverse of New York City"
And I'm wondering--- when will the Planes start to feel like a Multiverse of interacting and diverse characters with shared stories repeatedly
interacting with each other to solve problems, learn life lessons, and keep on living and enjoying Magic? And Dance Offs?
The fact that some beings can Planeswalk and others cannot is something that.....just....doesn't make sense anymore.
The Weatherlight could Planeswalk. The Phyrexians could Planeswalk. Many beings on Ravnica and Zendikar know what Planeswalkers are.
How long can the planes keep going their independent ways without curious inventors cropping up on different worlds and eventually inventing Portals?
Why wouldn't the Planeswalkers overtly help this enterprise? Do Planeswalkers tend to think themselves high and mighty and assume nobody on their native world
could possibly be smart enough to understand the Multiverse because they aren't a Planeswalker? Where are the Jane Fosters?
Further, it seems like a very good way to tell the Battle of Zendikar story would be to have the Planeswalkers form a New Coalition and enlist the aide of all the Planes
they know that might be important enough to be able to help.
I would really like to see an Actual Block set not on a Plane, but in the Multiverse. Does anyone think this is a thing that could happen?
Or do they see no signs of the Planehopping leading to this?
Wizards doesn't themselves actually see this as Omega-- it's not going to be a sendoff set to the Core Set-- it's just the last Core Set, without being specially designed to be about being the last Core Set. It's going to be looking back only as far as the Webcomics for ''nostalgia'' and ''sendoffness''.
The romance in MTG rarely is harder core than Lord of the Rings-- a couple of instances notwithstanding.
War is a theme that it's a matter of philosophical debate whether it's appropriate for children or not, and every single Magic story is going to be about War.
To corrupt their innocence at too young an age, or to delay preparing them for the world, which is the greater evil?
Technology, Nature, and Magic are all big themes too, and there's no telling what your kid will make of which is 'right' or 'wrong' or if they're all 'neutral'.
The choices and attitudes of Planeswalkers are not like the choices and attitudes of Barney and Friends. They get into very real deep issues and will be a big part of how
you end up understanding issues like abortion, eugenics, global warming, the works.
Is it more important to be part of a Coalition? To be one of Nine Titans? Or is it more important to follow your own Spark and seek life, liberty, and happiness wherever it takes you?
Is it ok to kill evil? Is it ok to kill for fun and profit? Does anyone have the right to force sacrifice from another instead of or in addition to personal sacrifice?
Is religion too tyrannical or does it protect people from terrible horrors? All these cans of worms and more will be opened if you try to share Magic: the Gathering stories with your kids.
And don't even get started on just the terrifyingness of Eldrazi or the confusing mystery of who or what Ashiok, the Nightmare Weaver is.
Should you leave a child unattended with science fiction and fantasy themes? Never. It's all to one degree or another 'Dangerous Knowledge', and your child at any age, 4, 14, or 40 will probably want and need their parent's help with the big tough scary stuff as it can get hardcore. But it's all absolutely as fascinating as it can be mind-torturing. Figuring out how to tell such stories to a 4-year old without making yourself laugh at yourself because of how much you're oversimplifying it would be a challenge. Telling the straight truth with nothing withheld will probably make sharing real world history and current events and explaining lots of things a lot easier.
For a 4 year old, I wouldn't be concerned with moral appropriateness as much as I would be about simplicity, making sure they understand who is who. I would also recommend not looking for the simplest, 'meant for children' stories. Instead I would go straight to the heart of hell, to Phyrexia, to Yawgmoth, to Test of Metal, to Tezzeret, to the streets of Tidehollow. I would read the stories yourself, and figure out what you want to say to your kid about them, and don't put off the most unpleasant ones for last. Instead start with the middling horrific stuff, then go to the worst stuff, then more middling horrific stuff, then end on the lightest note you can find, then wait for the inevitable time when they rediscover the absolute worst and it starts to hit them harder. I would look for card arts to help illustrate your story.
The Comics about Ice Age and Fallen Empires are good, I just picked them up last week at a comic store (you might need to look for them online).
There's no point in showing your kid science fiction and fantasy anything if you're going to try to turn it into Candyland. It's not Candyland, and that's kind of the point. It's way better than Candyland, and after they've had a taste of Magic: the Gathering, they'll want Candyland to be more like Magic.
I also recommend Jazz music. Lots and lots of Jazz music can help you get through it all when the really epic ***** goes down.
I would say the Real World isn't all that Suitable for Children and that's why Magic isn't all that Suitable for Children. You might end up with a very bright Young Adult if you feed it all the right books.
I can't think of anything off the top of my head in Magic Lore anywhere that isn't all hardercore than Pokemon. If Lord of the Rings and Star Wars is intense for you and you don't want it to get too much more intense, maybe stay away. Those are just par for the course and almost required to understand what's going on here.
Try watching Star Wars and Star Trek movies with them, and reading outloud from Lord of the Rings and maybe Narnia, or if not Narnia, maybe the trilogy of "Out of the Silent Planet", "Perelandra", and "That Hideous Strength". The Man of Steel is a good modern sci-fi movie that has some of the themes in Magic.
Stuff like Maelstrom Nexus, Knowledge Pool, the Blind Eternities....that kind of stuff might make your kid want to listen to the Dark Side of the Moon with the Wizard of Oz.
I don't really know what's "Suitable for Children" though, I just know if you give kids tons of awesome ***** at whatever age they tend to figure out how to like it eventually at some point. When I was little my parents dragged me around to boring old museum-y type places from colonial days and me back then wouldn't have called it Child Friendly but I'm glad they did that now. Even though old colonial museum-y places are still kinda dusty and boring compared to the frakkin Interwebs.
Alternatively, you could ignore absolutely everything I've said and don't help your kid go insane any faster than they already will at their own pace, and like, only show them The Brady Bunch or Leave it To Beaver. That sounds Safe.