Maybe. It's a obvious end point for her arc, but she still has some baggage re: the Raven Man and such that players want explored. My personal guess is that she doesn't die, but gets turned into an impossibly old and hideous haglike woman, as her contract of youth and beauty is void. It doesn't compute fully however since she's so old she should probably die. But she's a necromancer after all. She might have a backup spell.
The incomplete Raven Man arc is what really tells me she's not gonna die, unless they give the arc so someone else to carry on her legacy or make the Raven Man a big villain to have his story arc be fleshed out.
If Niv Mizzet can be "reborn" everyone else can too.
And with Time Manipulation from Teferi AND Karn , they can do literally whatever they want, so they have multiple "get out of jail" cards in their sleeves to mess with the story in every possible way.
I would not believe WotC has the balls to REALLY kill an actual main character of their new "franchise" of planeswalkers, they could do that in the past, but NOW they wont do it, no chance.
And with Time Manipulation from Teferi AND Karn , they can do literally whatever they want, so they have multiple "get out of jail" cards in their sleeves to mess with the story in every possible way.
So the story has zero stakes. Because while we've seen a few planeswalkers die here and there, the mere existence of those kinds of temporal shenanigans leads to the "why wouldn't Ugin/Sorin/Nahiri just kill the Eldrazi?" kind of scenario where even if there's an in-story reason for it (in the Eldrazi case, Ugin wasn't sure what the ramifications would be on the multiverse if they died, which was promptly forgotten when two of them got Channel Fireball'd), that reason will never not come across as a hackneyed contrivance because characters should never have the tools to invalidate the plot to begin with.
Lazy writing meets plot contrivances might be the direction the story's taken since the Mending but it's still not good writing by any stretch of the imagination. Hell they've even straight-up killed Nicol Bolas before so him dying here wouldn't even have any impact because players would just go "okay now how'd be survive another death?"
But when you want the story to be less "who cares about the plot? You're here to turn off your brain and watch superheroes fight supervillains and you aren't interested in anything else" and Wizards thinks that's a good approach to take, well, that's when you start developing opinions.
As I said in many forums, it’s like wizards watched Avengers: Infinity Wars and trailers for Endgames and said “Let’s make a story that involves the Gatewatch as the Avengers and involve time travel....just like Endgames is going to do and bring people back!”
Release date for the original Avengers movie in the US: May 4, 2012
Battle for Zendikar release date, where the Gatewatch became an official thing: October 2, 2015
We know that Magic set design is about a 2-3 year process. If anyone seriously thinks that the Gatewatch wasn't an attempt to cash in on the superhero franchise, well, there's not much else that can be said.
Yeah, kinda. This has always been the main problem with most superhero media. Brainiac is going to destroy the world, oh no! But we know that the writers are unwilling to allow the world to end, so the threat is meaningless. The worst thing they could possibly do is kill Superman, but that's happened many many times already, so whatever.
It's not like it's easy being on the writer's side though: it's your job to make the stakes matter, but it's also your job to follow a basic trail provided by your corporate sponsors, and it's your job to make it possible for any amount of stories to follow. If DC tells you to make a story about Brainiac and Superman going at it on Earth, how are you supposed to produce stakes that feel real when you have to have a soft reset at the end of the arc? Kill Jimmy Olsen? It's not easy to walk that tightrope, and the results are very often called "lazy writing" no matter how much struggle went into it.
They've got the "we can't destroy the world" problem and the "we can't perma-kill our characters, 'cause they're our bread and butter" problem. It produces very constrained storytelling.
Yeah, kinda. This has always been the main problem with most superhero media. Brainiac is going to destroy the world, oh no! But we know that the writers are unwilling to allow the world to end, so the threat is meaningless. The worst thing they could possibly do is kill Superman, but that's happened many many times already, so whatever.
It's not like it's easy being on the writer's side though: it's your job to make the stakes matter, but it's also your job to follow a basic trail provided by your corporate sponsors, and it's your job to make it possible for any amount of stories to follow. If DC tells you to make a story about Brainiac and Superman going at it on Earth, how are you supposed to produce stakes that feel real when you have to have a soft reset at the end of the arc? Kill Jimmy Olsen? It's not easy to walk that tightrope, and the results are very often called "lazy writing" no matter how much struggle went into it.
They've got the "we can't destroy the world" problem and the "we can't perma-kill our characters, 'cause they're our bread and butter" problem. It produces very constrained storytelling.
The best stories are the "one-shot" spin-off alternative reality comics that totally allow the world to end and characters to die permanently in that particular universe, as the writers can do whatever they want and everything can happen.
Stuff like Old-Men Logan, flashpoint paradox and the like , which are particularly cool in my book.
Scratch previous writing. But yeah I dislike time travel because its used to negate stakes. The only time this was handled right in MTG was pre-mending featuring Urza and Teferi.
And with Time Manipulation from Teferi AND Karn , they can do literally whatever they want, so they have multiple "get out of jail" cards in their sleeves to mess with the story in every possible way.
So the story has zero stakes. Because while we've seen a few planeswalkers die here and there, the mere existence of those kinds of temporal shenanigans leads to the "why wouldn't Ugin/Sorin/Nahiri just kill the Eldrazi?" kind of scenario where even if there's an in-story reason for it (in the Eldrazi case, Ugin wasn't sure what the ramifications would be on the multiverse if they died, which was promptly forgotten when two of them got Channel Fireball'd), that reason will never not come across as a hackneyed contrivance because characters should never have the tools to invalidate the plot to begin with.
Lazy writing meets plot contrivances might be the direction the story's taken since the Mending but it's still not good writing by any stretch of the imagination. Hell they've even straight-up killed Nicol Bolas before so him dying here wouldn't even have any impact because players would just go "okay now how'd be survive another death?"
But when you want the story to be less "who cares about the plot? You're here to turn off your brain and watch superheroes fight supervillains and you aren't interested in anything else" and Wizards thinks that's a good approach to take, well, that's when you start developing opinions.
They haven't "promptly forgotten" the Eldrazi. In the span of the story it's been a short time since their death, that doesn't mean they aren't ever going to pick it up again, it just means they haven't yet. It's bad story telling to toss a bunch of different issues in all at one time and not be able to give each of them proper focus. Bolas is the focus right now, Eldrazi aren't.
I'd also say it's bad story telling to have "unbeatable" villains. You either have to jump through ridiculous hoops to make the story work or you just kill the story because the villain wins. Bolas losing in the end isn't bad and doesn't mean there are no stakes, it just means the stakes aren't "the story ends here".
It's bad story telling to toss a bunch of different issues in all at one time and not be able to give each of them proper focus. Bolas is the focus right now, Eldrazi aren't.
Introducing the Phyrexians and the ELdrazi and all that other stuff while Nicol Bolas was supposed to be the main villain is the exact kind of bad storytelling you're talking about. There are so many plot threads strewn about because they want to be able to milk a storyline as long as they can (otherwise Nicol Bolas' storyline would've been wrapped up years ago) and that means you've got all kinds of stuff on the "maybe we'll come back to this some day between original worlds" docket. Subject, of course, to the whims of executives who base story directives on sales, not anything to do with story. If good storytelling brushes up against the need to hit a sales target, Hasbro is going to ensure the sales target wins every time.
I'd also say it's bad story telling to have "unbeatable" villains.
Yawgmoth is a hell of a lot better of a villain than Nicol Bolas is ever capable of being, and that guy could kill oldwalkers just by touching them. The story showed the actual gravitas of the Phyrexian threat and built them up as credible villains, not a moustache-twirling "literally no matter how this goes, it's all a part of my plan you'll never learn" cardboard cutout. And as a result, Apocalypse felt way heavier than War of the Spark.
It's bad story telling to toss a bunch of different issues in all at one time and not be able to give each of them proper focus. Bolas is the focus right now, Eldrazi aren't.
Introducing the Phyrexians and the ELdrazi and all that other stuff while Nicol Bolas was supposed to be the main villain is the exact kind of bad storytelling you're talking about. There are so many plot threads strewn about because they want to be able to milk a storyline as long as they can (otherwise Nicol Bolas' storyline would've been wrapped up years ago) and that means you've got all kinds of stuff on the "maybe we'll come back to this some day between original worlds" docket. Subject, of course, to the whims of executives who base story directives on sales, not anything to do with story. If good storytelling brushes up against the need to hit a sales target, Hasbro is going to ensure the sales target wins every time.
It is a hallmark of bad story telling if you just jump from one threat to the next, Dragonball Z style. We defeated Nicol Bolas, the greatest enemy ever... Oh wait, now it is the Phyrexians... Oh wait now it is the Eldrazi... Oh wait now it is the blah blah blah. Proper, good story telling, is all about introducing new threats slowly, peppering them into an existing narrative, until you are ready to finally deal with them more directly.
The real problem we have right now is that we are following the same 5 people around, plane to plane, while they try to solve all the multiverse's problems in a few months.
This should become less of a problem post-Ravnica once we are able to jump from plane to plane every set. Being tied to one plane for a whole year was one of the root causes for the constrained story we have experience since the mending. Some stories deserved a years worth of content, some definitely did not. If we do not need to stick around on a plane for a whole year, then every threat encountered does not need to be world shattering. Removing that requirement, and allowing us to jump more freely around, will allow the story to flourish far more than it has in the past.
Granted, we will still be following the same 5 people around but at least their stories can have different levels of stakes.
It is a hallmark of bad story telling if you just jump from one threat to the next, Dragonball Z style.
Well, not necessarily, because that's how you get Nicol Bolas Thanos going "time to take action" then a ton of movies later he's still doing nothing.
Compare this to actually good writing, such as Lord of the Rings. Sure, Ungoliant is still kicking around somewhere because they never actually confirmed she died. Morgoth will return in Middle-Earth: Ragnarok. The blue wizards are still probably ******* around wherever they went. But Tolkien don't make you feel like you got left hanging. There's no "... and then what?" to those stories because Tolkien knew how to make a decent story. With Magic, there's always a tease of a story to come, but it's obviously written in a "well you'll get something, maybe, if corporate allows it, but we don't know what it looks like yet."
What you're missing here is that introducing new threats without having dealt with the old ones first only works if the story is paced and planned well and Magic's storyline is anything but paced and planned well. Though I will agree that the utter failure of Nicol Bolas to be an engaging, effective, or even interesting villain isn't as bad as the blatant "we want our own Avengers team because that's popular now!" marketing the Gatewatch gets.
The Phyrexians are currently planar bound, and they handled the Eldrazi as much as they can. I’m also of the opinion neither make for very good villains but that’s another matter. They’ve actually been pretty focused since the Gatewatch, but given that’s what most people are complaining about it’s kind of clearly a “can’t please them all” deal.
You’re also comparing a serial writing style with a novel, those are two very different styles. Also not really of the opinion LotR is all that good, mostly a pacing issue.
You’re also comparing a serial writing style with a novel, those are two very different styles.
The Ring cycle is six books in three volumes, plus all the supplementary material like The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and various other books like The Children of Hurin.
But you want to know the main difference between an actually good story like Lord of the Rings and a hack story like Magic? I'll boil it down to a simple microcosm: The orcs. Tolkien, being a devout Catholic, actually worked various themes he believed in into the work. Such as the fact that evil cannot create, but only corrupt. Hence why orcs aren't their own race, but elves that have been corrupted to evil. And yet he still struggled with the idea of a race that's intrinsically, purely evil. His faith led him to dislike the idea that a people could be beyond redemption. While he never really solved that moral dilemma while he was alive (though he did posit that Mordor would've had huge farms and other industry offscreen, implying civilians existed), the fact that there was a clear theme the author actually believed in means that you can tell the work actually has weight to it.
Compare that to the Eternals. Oh look they just have to touch a planeswalker to de-spark them and also they're only as strong as the plot demands. Their defeat doesn't even have any real weight to it because there's no thematic culmination to anything (compare to the Witch-King dying in Lord of the Rings). And the corrupted Amonkhet gods? Well, in the Ring cycle, the Nazgul were once great kings but have been so thoroughly corrupted by evil that they're indistinguishable by now, having lost their humanity through their greed. It's an actual literary theme, unlike "here, evil zombie gods, look isn't that cool?"
Fundamentally, the problem is that Wizards does not want Magic to be a story. This seems counter-intuitive, but look at how they market things. They market plot points, they put watermarks on cards that represent key moments in the plot, but they spend almost no time on character or theme. They want epic moments, but not the slow buildup that makes them have impact. It's a very "have your cake and eat it too" approach to storytelling, and it leads to things like them thinking Nicol Bolas is Ozymandias when really he's Snidely Whiplash.
Remember, the reason I'm comparing everything to Tolkien is because Western fantasy literature almost invariably traces itself back to one of two sources: J.R.R. Tolkien or Robert E. Howard. And Magic is much more in the vein of Lord of the Rings than it is Conan the Barbarian.
Release date for the original Avengers movie in the US: May 4, 2012
Battle for Zendikar release date, where the Gatewatch became an official thing: October 2, 2015
We know that Magic set design is about a 2-3 year process. If anyone seriously thinks that the Gatewatch wasn't an attempt to cash in on the superhero franchise, well, there's not much else that can be said.
Why yes, that's why its also called the Jacetus League, which is more fitting because Avengers was a good movie and Justice League sucked. But, like the DC movies, the one off stories that don't focus on the Jacetus League are entertaining enough, and occasionally good.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
WOTC doesn't care how awful the story is as long as they can post an image of a cosplayer on their website. I genuinely will never understand why someone would read, let alone imitate, MtG story and characters.
Release date for the original Avengers movie in the US: May 4, 2012
Battle for Zendikar release date, where the Gatewatch became an official thing: October 2, 2015
We know that Magic set design is about a 2-3 year process. If anyone seriously thinks that the Gatewatch wasn't an attempt to cash in on the superhero franchise, well, there's not much else that can be said.
Mark Rosewater said as much, and with his comic book love as well that's even more evidence. Avengers hit pop culture, so turn Magic into the Avengers.
As I said in many forums, it’s like wizards watched Avengers: Infinity Wars and trailers for Endgames and said “Let’s make a story that involves the Gatewatch as the Avengers and involve time travel....just like Endgames is going to do and bring people back!”
Poor non-original predictable storytelling!
To be fair, death has always been a revolving door in comics. For example, in the Spider-Man/Deadpool series, Patient Zero is brought back from the dead by making a deal with Mephisto. Patient Zero hires Deadpool to kill Peter Parker. When Deadpool discovers he's been duped, he calls in a favor with his ex-girlfriend (Lady Death) to bring Peter back to life.
Then Patient Zero creates Itsy Bitsy with the powers of both Spider-Man and Deadpool, who subsequently decides to be a violent hero like Deadpool and slices Patient Zero into cubes.
https://youtu.be/b5W9t62t10I
In some way or another she will still be there.
And with Time Manipulation from Teferi AND Karn , they can do literally whatever they want, so they have multiple "get out of jail" cards in their sleeves to mess with the story in every possible way.
I would not believe WotC has the balls to REALLY kill an actual main character of their new "franchise" of planeswalkers, they could do that in the past, but NOW they wont do it, no chance.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
So the story has zero stakes. Because while we've seen a few planeswalkers die here and there, the mere existence of those kinds of temporal shenanigans leads to the "why wouldn't Ugin/Sorin/Nahiri just kill the Eldrazi?" kind of scenario where even if there's an in-story reason for it (in the Eldrazi case, Ugin wasn't sure what the ramifications would be on the multiverse if they died, which was promptly forgotten when two of them got Channel Fireball'd), that reason will never not come across as a hackneyed contrivance because characters should never have the tools to invalidate the plot to begin with.
Lazy writing meets plot contrivances might be the direction the story's taken since the Mending but it's still not good writing by any stretch of the imagination. Hell they've even straight-up killed Nicol Bolas before so him dying here wouldn't even have any impact because players would just go "okay now how'd be survive another death?"
But when you want the story to be less "who cares about the plot? You're here to turn off your brain and watch superheroes fight supervillains and you aren't interested in anything else" and Wizards thinks that's a good approach to take, well, that's when you start developing opinions.
Poor non-original predictable storytelling!
Battle for Zendikar release date, where the Gatewatch became an official thing: October 2, 2015
We know that Magic set design is about a 2-3 year process. If anyone seriously thinks that the Gatewatch wasn't an attempt to cash in on the superhero franchise, well, there's not much else that can be said.
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Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
Yeah, kinda. This has always been the main problem with most superhero media. Brainiac is going to destroy the world, oh no! But we know that the writers are unwilling to allow the world to end, so the threat is meaningless. The worst thing they could possibly do is kill Superman, but that's happened many many times already, so whatever.
It's not like it's easy being on the writer's side though: it's your job to make the stakes matter, but it's also your job to follow a basic trail provided by your corporate sponsors, and it's your job to make it possible for any amount of stories to follow. If DC tells you to make a story about Brainiac and Superman going at it on Earth, how are you supposed to produce stakes that feel real when you have to have a soft reset at the end of the arc? Kill Jimmy Olsen? It's not easy to walk that tightrope, and the results are very often called "lazy writing" no matter how much struggle went into it.
They've got the "we can't destroy the world" problem and the "we can't perma-kill our characters, 'cause they're our bread and butter" problem. It produces very constrained storytelling.
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
The best stories are the "one-shot" spin-off alternative reality comics that totally allow the world to end and characters to die permanently in that particular universe, as the writers can do whatever they want and everything can happen.
Stuff like Old-Men Logan, flashpoint paradox and the like , which are particularly cool in my book.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
They haven't "promptly forgotten" the Eldrazi. In the span of the story it's been a short time since their death, that doesn't mean they aren't ever going to pick it up again, it just means they haven't yet. It's bad story telling to toss a bunch of different issues in all at one time and not be able to give each of them proper focus. Bolas is the focus right now, Eldrazi aren't.
I'd also say it's bad story telling to have "unbeatable" villains. You either have to jump through ridiculous hoops to make the story work or you just kill the story because the villain wins. Bolas losing in the end isn't bad and doesn't mean there are no stakes, it just means the stakes aren't "the story ends here".
Introducing the Phyrexians and the ELdrazi and all that other stuff while Nicol Bolas was supposed to be the main villain is the exact kind of bad storytelling you're talking about. There are so many plot threads strewn about because they want to be able to milk a storyline as long as they can (otherwise Nicol Bolas' storyline would've been wrapped up years ago) and that means you've got all kinds of stuff on the "maybe we'll come back to this some day between original worlds" docket. Subject, of course, to the whims of executives who base story directives on sales, not anything to do with story. If good storytelling brushes up against the need to hit a sales target, Hasbro is going to ensure the sales target wins every time.
Yawgmoth is a hell of a lot better of a villain than Nicol Bolas is ever capable of being, and that guy could kill oldwalkers just by touching them. The story showed the actual gravitas of the Phyrexian threat and built them up as credible villains, not a moustache-twirling "literally no matter how this goes, it's all a part of my plan you'll never learn" cardboard cutout. And as a result, Apocalypse felt way heavier than War of the Spark.
It is a hallmark of bad story telling if you just jump from one threat to the next, Dragonball Z style. We defeated Nicol Bolas, the greatest enemy ever... Oh wait, now it is the Phyrexians... Oh wait now it is the Eldrazi... Oh wait now it is the blah blah blah. Proper, good story telling, is all about introducing new threats slowly, peppering them into an existing narrative, until you are ready to finally deal with them more directly.
The real problem we have right now is that we are following the same 5 people around, plane to plane, while they try to solve all the multiverse's problems in a few months.
This should become less of a problem post-Ravnica once we are able to jump from plane to plane every set. Being tied to one plane for a whole year was one of the root causes for the constrained story we have experience since the mending. Some stories deserved a years worth of content, some definitely did not. If we do not need to stick around on a plane for a whole year, then every threat encountered does not need to be world shattering. Removing that requirement, and allowing us to jump more freely around, will allow the story to flourish far more than it has in the past.
Granted, we will still be following the same 5 people around but at least their stories can have different levels of stakes.
Well, not necessarily, because that's how you get
Nicol BolasThanos going "time to take action" then a ton of movies later he's still doing nothing.Compare this to actually good writing, such as Lord of the Rings. Sure, Ungoliant is still kicking around somewhere because they never actually confirmed she died. Morgoth will return in Middle-Earth: Ragnarok. The blue wizards are still probably ******* around wherever they went. But Tolkien don't make you feel like you got left hanging. There's no "... and then what?" to those stories because Tolkien knew how to make a decent story. With Magic, there's always a tease of a story to come, but it's obviously written in a "well you'll get something, maybe, if corporate allows it, but we don't know what it looks like yet."
What you're missing here is that introducing new threats without having dealt with the old ones first only works if the story is paced and planned well and Magic's storyline is anything but paced and planned well. Though I will agree that the utter failure of Nicol Bolas to be an engaging, effective, or even interesting villain isn't as bad as the blatant "we want our own Avengers team because that's popular now!" marketing the Gatewatch gets.
You’re also comparing a serial writing style with a novel, those are two very different styles. Also not really of the opinion LotR is all that good, mostly a pacing issue.
The Ring cycle is six books in three volumes, plus all the supplementary material like The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and various other books like The Children of Hurin.
But you want to know the main difference between an actually good story like Lord of the Rings and a hack story like Magic? I'll boil it down to a simple microcosm: The orcs. Tolkien, being a devout Catholic, actually worked various themes he believed in into the work. Such as the fact that evil cannot create, but only corrupt. Hence why orcs aren't their own race, but elves that have been corrupted to evil. And yet he still struggled with the idea of a race that's intrinsically, purely evil. His faith led him to dislike the idea that a people could be beyond redemption. While he never really solved that moral dilemma while he was alive (though he did posit that Mordor would've had huge farms and other industry offscreen, implying civilians existed), the fact that there was a clear theme the author actually believed in means that you can tell the work actually has weight to it.
Compare that to the Eternals. Oh look they just have to touch a planeswalker to de-spark them and also they're only as strong as the plot demands. Their defeat doesn't even have any real weight to it because there's no thematic culmination to anything (compare to the Witch-King dying in Lord of the Rings). And the corrupted Amonkhet gods? Well, in the Ring cycle, the Nazgul were once great kings but have been so thoroughly corrupted by evil that they're indistinguishable by now, having lost their humanity through their greed. It's an actual literary theme, unlike "here, evil zombie gods, look isn't that cool?"
Fundamentally, the problem is that Wizards does not want Magic to be a story. This seems counter-intuitive, but look at how they market things. They market plot points, they put watermarks on cards that represent key moments in the plot, but they spend almost no time on character or theme. They want epic moments, but not the slow buildup that makes them have impact. It's a very "have your cake and eat it too" approach to storytelling, and it leads to things like them thinking Nicol Bolas is Ozymandias when really he's Snidely Whiplash.
Remember, the reason I'm comparing everything to Tolkien is because Western fantasy literature almost invariably traces itself back to one of two sources: J.R.R. Tolkien or Robert E. Howard. And Magic is much more in the vein of Lord of the Rings than it is Conan the Barbarian.
Why yes, that's why its also called the Jacetus League, which is more fitting because Avengers was a good movie and Justice League sucked. But, like the DC movies, the one off stories that don't focus on the Jacetus League are entertaining enough, and occasionally good.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Mark Rosewater said as much, and with his comic book love as well that's even more evidence. Avengers hit pop culture, so turn Magic into the Avengers.
Then Patient Zero creates Itsy Bitsy with the powers of both Spider-Man and Deadpool, who subsequently decides to be a violent hero like Deadpool and slices Patient Zero into cubes.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
Yes I noticed that too today here... http://mythicspoiler.com/war/cards/gideonssacrifice.html
It looks like Gideon is the one who dies instead. Not sure how Jace and the rest of the Gatewatch are going to react. Probably not very well.