I think I'm going to have to read Scourge out of order as my VERY next MTG novel though
As for Love in MTG: it's kind of acknowledged to exist in the worlds, sort of yeah,
but, basically, even having any kind of presence at all is strictly limited to the Block Novels and Extra-Cartal sources.
"You're not my Hanna!" and this new quote about Purphoros and Karametra on Opal Unicorn are actually the only two sources I can think of in the cards themselves that refer to love.
Love....really isn't going to be a major focus of card games about destroying the world with magic and monsters. Also see Yu-Gi-Oh! for this:
YES, Kaiba's great-great-Egyptian-grand-daddy fell in love with Kisara, Lady-of-the-Blue-Eyes-White-Dragon, BUT!!, that was like at the end of the 7th Season after virtually no references to love before then. Unless you count Tristan and Serenity, which you should not. XP
Even though the opportunity is ALWAYS there to tell a great, touching Love Story in a world of High Fantasy Warfare, for whatever reason, the topic is generally not given a lot of interest in nerd gamer culture.
Possibly this is why a lot of people in the world are jerks. The difference between sources of Mythology and Classics, and XBOX and popular media games that draw on practically ever other symbol and cliché from them: Gods, Monsters, Heroes, Magic, Cataclysms, Artifacts, Powers, Kingdoms, etc. ad infinitum,
I think for whatever reason people just don't think Kids age 8-12, or Youths age 13-20, are all that interested in Love. It seems to me that Nerd Media mostly appeals to the Human desire to Hit things more than the Human desire to Hug things.
I'm not saying that we need an explicit overt mechanic, because Lords, "Ally" creature type and "Soulbond" are pretty much as far as you can go in mechanical game terms that do service for flavor AND actually contribute to game play well enough, but we COULD see more emphasis on Love in the Block Novels, the Flavor Texts, the Plot of the Story, and really like it might seem like such a small thing, but to me it's the difference between a thing having meaning or not.
THEROS is the first time in a long time that reference to romance has appeared on card text. I think I might want to write a long letter about it to the Creative Team. It's clearly Creative's Job, not Design's, to figure out where to put Love in though, and that's why so far we haven't seen much reference to a Love Goddess.
Design's work on the "Devotion" mechanic has taken up MUCH more use of article space than even any references at all to the Minor Gods in the Pantheon. If there is a Love Goddess, it's in the minor gods.
And, although Red is the CLOSEST color to representing Love, it represents ALL PASSIONS really, and tends to come out WAY more Mars than Venus.
The Truth is that Love has a tiny sliver of each color's ''flavor pie'', and it doesn't get any mechanical design space because you can't really mechanically design for it very well.
Green Loves Nature: Lands and non-sentient Creatures
White Loves Society Things: Government and Religion mostly.
Blue Loves Knowledge: Cards and Libraries
Black Loves Itself: Winning
Red Loves Action: Fire
where in any of that is room for personal, tender, relationship love?
the closest you get is White for Family, not really Red, and the problem is the White is opposite/enemy of Red.
The design of the color wheel means that Love of the kind we'd like to see more of is CLOSEST to being almost-there when they are making a lot of Red-White cards.
Right now, Boros is being especially Spartanized. Mars. Ares.
Not directly opposite of Love, but that's just the way the game comes out:
It's basically about War, which is basically not Love.
If you took the sheer ENERGY of Red, and put it together with the Humanity of White, you'd get Love. They COULD choose to make a card every so often that tries to tap into this flavor, but there isn't enough room in their files usually.
I think part of Kaalia of the Vast's popularity stems from her awesome flavor as a Burned Heart: she's the Perfect card to represent a Scorned Lover, and honestly if Kaalia of the Vast is the most Romance I've seen since Kayla bin-Kroog, well....
it's not just that she's kind of like an Ex-Girlfriend....she's not even very good of an ex-girlfriend.....but her notability stems from her being one of a vast, huge dearth of characters and stories that have anything at all to do with Love. It's the most noteworthily Absent thing in Magic. A positive, Happy Love, not a broken, vengeful heart, would be W/G/R aligned maybe. The only W/G/R female character we have on hand is Mayael the Anima, and she's like just an oracle or something.
that kind of just means Magic will Never have very much of this stuff, like ever.
I think it's mainly because, since White, Red, and Green, are the colors THE most about love, that would call major attention to Blue's.....severe lacking in this area.
But the Modern World is so Science and Reason focused, and Blue is the most Popular and Powerful color among people who play and win, that Magic probably doesn't want to offend people who love Blue by pointing out that their color is the worst for Romance. Which was Urza's Problem.
The way do things now, they can pretend that All Colors have Equal amounts of Love, because they all have Allies, Devotion to Gods, Soulbond, etc.
Blue is literally worse at love than Black though. I mean Black has some pretty dysfunctional relationships but at least it HAS relationships.
For a Blue Love Story, look at Urza and Kayla. That's what you get. Twilight's actually better than Urza and Kayla. :/
Magic deftly tries to avoid focusing on this in a negative way as much as possible, first by mentioning the loves in White, Green, and Red in self-aggrandizing pats on the back kind of ways, then as trying to evoke emotional response from Blue mentioning what it Loves....it's all very sensitive and politically correct and holistic.
But sometimes holism is incorrect if you're trying to equate things that are not equivalent.
Magic shows the Color Wheel as having equal amounts of Love in all 5 colors, because that's the image it wants to present.
This image is a lie, and Blue has the Least Love.
Blue is enemy with Red and Green, but the way they present even the contrasts there is skewered to make Blue look a little better than it really is and also emphasize the failings of Red and Green, so that, after adding up all the pluses and minuses, it looks like the Colors are Equal.
But, really, not every Color is equal, not by a million miles. Blue has the Most Power, I daresay, BECAUSE it has the Least Love.
Opaline Unicorn's reference to Purphoros is easily the closest to the wonderful G/W/R Love I have EVER seen on a Magic card. I have hope that this is the first, tiniest, sparks of Magic moving in a direction where the Lore and Flavor remember to make room for some good, honest Love Stories. They can be background and minor notes as SMALL as the rest of you like, as long as they're THERE!
Opaline Unicorn is One Card in One Set.
if we had One Card per One BLOCK that really, REALLY hinted at this kind of Epic Romance Love, it would be more focus than Love has got in, well, ever?
sometime, I kind of hope they give Sorin Markov a R/B Vampire or Demon Girlfriend XP
Or he could have something more demure, like a W/U/B Ice Queen.
But, like, Sorin Markov needs to be the Planeswalker they want to give a Girlfriend, if they do it at all. He's the one with the most potential to tell a story that, Good Ending or Bad One, is really enjoyable to read.
Gideon and Garruk both have it in them too, I think. Ajani x Elspeth is something I would be scratching my head if I heard rumors of, but I suppose it could work.
Really most of their characters they just haven't even developed as being very good at having the potential to love anything. Koth was the closest we had to that, and everything he loved is dead.
Jace, the one they've ACTUALLY explicitly-ish stated has a romance with Emmara Tandris, is...the worst one they could have picked for it, and it shows in his Blueness.
He is about as awesome at Relationships at Urza. Which is Not.
Tezzeret was better at Love than Jace, because his Black Ambitions at least gave him enough Passion to have some genuinely interesting, darker Angst, compared to the type of Angst Jace has, which is strictly limited to being Annoying because he's Stupid.
How they made the Bluest Planeswalker the Dumbest, I'll never know, but they accomplished it -_-
This is why I've been hoping since Lorwyn that Jace would go Blue-Black, and I'm kind of annoyed he's gone Blue-White. :/ Black is close enough to Red that it can actually compensate for how bad Blue is at Caring about People. Blue-Black can be a Mysterious Manipulator with conflicted agendas.
You could write an awesome tragedy with that!
Blue-White is about as dead-hearted as it gets though >:(
Black-White is the best alignment for a character you want to be in a Romance, because you could take that story literally any direction wanted, you have the most room for giving your character Highs and Lows. I could see Sorin Markov in Green-White, Green-Blue-Black, Red-Black, Blue-Black-Red, and Red-White hats. He's got the most Complex and Conflicted sets of ambitions and drives. He could REALLY be a Villain of near- or surpassing- Bolas Level Threat if they wanted. (His advantage would be that while Bolas can plan more intricately, Sorin can plan more practically and is less likely to be self-indulged in hubris) He could also be a Hero as noble as Gideon or Ajani. He knows how violent things can get like Garruk, Sarkhan and Koth, and he's not unwilling to take part in that violence. Like the Umezawas, he's willing to Fight for Good AND seek his own Advantage at the same time. And he knows at least as many, or many more, Multiversal Secrets as Tezzeret.
And I could even see him be moved to sympathy for Green Growing Things.
A Block Novel that included a love interest of Sorins, or many over the span of lifetimes, would be just a really really Epic Read.
Anyway, that was about a thousand divergent topics, and we were talking about the THEROS minor Gods. But, well, then we started on Love, which I think is probably a bigger, and vaguer, subject than a Forum can really easily cover.
Does anyone honestly think they REALLY know anything solid about Phenax? Because as far as I can tell he's got a reference on Just One Card, and I don't even see any references that help me figure out his physical shape?
(Sorry For Editing a Modded Post. I was in the Middle of Deleting and Copying/Pasting them together when it interrupted my process.)
(They are now a Single Post xP )
I am probably every color-combination it is possible to be, though it's really hard to figure out what it would mean to be 4-colored....it doesn't seem logical to be 4-colored without being 5-colored.
I think love will be absent because of the bottom end of the games target market, putting Karametra as the fertility (Green) goddess but from the point of view of Hera (White/Marriage) not Aphrodite (Red/Love).
Love. Is that what we're calling it now? Aphrodite is also the goddess of sex, hence the Venus flytrap, the mons veneris, venery, venereal disease, and a bunch of other things that either relate to vaginas or look like them.
And Hera of course would say "What do you mean 'love'? I'm the goddess of marriage." (Seriously, she and Zeus did not get along. Mostly because he had this habit of sleeping with a whole bunch of women who weren't her, and she had the audacity to take umbrage at her husband's philandering.)
Indeed, Purphoros is described as governing passions, so...
What I don't get about Purphoros is that he's friends with Nylea, despite being the god of metalworking and green's favoritest thing in the multiverse, technology.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Biggest reason love is not much is magic is because magic is a game of combat and fighting. For gods of love it seems Heliod and Purphoros share the domain with Purphoros governs passion and Heliod governs marriage. Also remember Aphrodite is the goddess of not only love but of also of sorts of passion.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Biggest reason love is not much is magic is because magic is a game of combat and fighting. For gods of love it seems Heliod and Purphoros share the domain with Purphoros governs passion and Heliod governs marriage. Also remember Aphrodite is the goddess of not only love but of also of sorts of passion.
You can do love, but it has to be in a way that's game relevant, such as getting two men to kill each other over a woman.
Hey, Iliad card!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Although I've seen those images in the spoilers some time back, only now I realized that for the Born of the Gods art, EVERYTHING in the image is an enchantment, INCLUDING the mountains. Wow, so this is what Xenagos is trying to achieve, the impossible dream of rivaling the oldwalkers by creating a realm/plane for himself (and failing).
Although I've seen those images in the spoilers some time back, only now I realized that for the Born of the Gods art, EVERYTHING in the image is an enchantment, INCLUDING the mountains. Wow, so this is what Xenagos is trying to achieve, the impossible dream of rivaling the oldwalkers by creating a realm/plane for himself (and failing).
Honestly, I think what we're seeing is a little god brawl. It looks like those clouds might actually be Keranos throwing hands.
Honestly, I think what we're seeing is a little god brawl. It looks like those clouds might actually be Keranos throwing hands.
Eh, that kinda makes sense, I admit. And based on the art for Journey into Nyx (where at least an Erebos shrine has been wrecked), now it makes me think if Xeny is planning an assimilation plot, killing all other gods and absorbing their powers for himself to fuel his megalomania.... Oh well.
Eh, that kinda makes sense, I admit. And based on the art for Journey into Nyx (where at least an Erebos shrine has been wrecked), now it makes me think if Xeny is planning an assimilation plot, killing all other gods and absorbing their powers for himself to fuel his megalomania.... Oh well.
I believe that the braid-mask figure is Karametra, but don't quote me on it. :x
I'm inclined to think it's Pharika, the patron god of gorgons, what with the covered eyes.
But Pharika (or rather a statue of her) can be seen in the background of Pharika's Cure where you can see that she has a different headdress. (Theoretically it could also be a regular gorgon, but you can see two snakes growing out of her chest, so I'm inclined to believe it's actually Pharika herself.)
Additionally, the same braid-mask goddess can be seen in Commune with the Gods and that really doesn't look like a BG shrine at all.
Even her worshipers can fear her.
And wouldn't she have to wear a blindfold or something? Cause if she is the goddess of Gorgons, and she had their same power of turning people into stone when she looks at them, then without it, couldn't it be like
Worshiper "oh hi pharika"
Pharika (turns around) "oh. Woops"?
The situation of the statues is unclear, but could it be Karametra indeed? There's a short of greenish shield to her side, and the braids somehow remind me of how girls in Setessa look like (check out Setessan Battle Priest). This said, I'd love to see how they'll set up Pharika eventually.
Why? Xenagos has simple become a god; there's no word that other 14 gods of Theros died, and they probably won't die since we're going to get the other 10 god cards.
Why? Xenagos has simple become a god; there's no word that other 14 gods of Theros died, and they probably won't die since we're going to get the other 10 god cards.
The shattered statues at his feet obviously doesn't mean good things for them.
The situation of the statues is unclear, but could it be Karametra indeed? There's a short of greenish shield to her side, and the braids somehow remind me of how girls in Setessa look like (check out Setessan Battle Priest). This said, I'd love to see how they'll set up Pharika eventually.
This is true, however why then the covering of her eyes?
At least I know what flavor it was, at least...
Ha ha ha! Not helping!
I think I'm going to have to read Scourge out of order as my VERY next MTG novel though
As for Love in MTG: it's kind of acknowledged to exist in the worlds, sort of yeah,
but, basically, even having any kind of presence at all is strictly limited to the Block Novels and Extra-Cartal sources.
"You're not my Hanna!" and this new quote about Purphoros and Karametra on Opal Unicorn are actually the only two sources I can think of in the cards themselves that refer to love.
Love....really isn't going to be a major focus of card games about destroying the world with magic and monsters. Also see Yu-Gi-Oh! for this:
YES, Kaiba's great-great-Egyptian-grand-daddy fell in love with Kisara, Lady-of-the-Blue-Eyes-White-Dragon, BUT!!, that was like at the end of the 7th Season after virtually no references to love before then. Unless you count Tristan and Serenity, which you should not. XP
Even though the opportunity is ALWAYS there to tell a great, touching Love Story in a world of High Fantasy Warfare, for whatever reason, the topic is generally not given a lot of interest in nerd gamer culture.
Possibly this is why a lot of people in the world are jerks. The difference between sources of Mythology and Classics, and XBOX and popular media games that draw on practically ever other symbol and cliché from them: Gods, Monsters, Heroes, Magic, Cataclysms, Artifacts, Powers, Kingdoms, etc. ad infinitum,
I think for whatever reason people just don't think Kids age 8-12, or Youths age 13-20, are all that interested in Love. It seems to me that Nerd Media mostly appeals to the Human desire to Hit things more than the Human desire to Hug things.
I'm not saying that we need an explicit overt mechanic, because Lords, "Ally" creature type and "Soulbond" are pretty much as far as you can go in mechanical game terms that do service for flavor AND actually contribute to game play well enough, but we COULD see more emphasis on Love in the Block Novels, the Flavor Texts, the Plot of the Story, and really like it might seem like such a small thing, but to me it's the difference between a thing having meaning or not.
THEROS is the first time in a long time that reference to romance has appeared on card text. I think I might want to write a long letter about it to the Creative Team. It's clearly Creative's Job, not Design's, to figure out where to put Love in though, and that's why so far we haven't seen much reference to a Love Goddess.
Design's work on the "Devotion" mechanic has taken up MUCH more use of article space than even any references at all to the Minor Gods in the Pantheon. If there is a Love Goddess, it's in the minor gods.
And, although Red is the CLOSEST color to representing Love, it represents ALL PASSIONS really, and tends to come out WAY more Mars than Venus.
The Truth is that Love has a tiny sliver of each color's ''flavor pie'', and it doesn't get any mechanical design space because you can't really mechanically design for it very well.
Green Loves Nature: Lands and non-sentient Creatures
White Loves Society Things: Government and Religion mostly.
Blue Loves Knowledge: Cards and Libraries
Black Loves Itself: Winning
Red Loves Action: Fire
where in any of that is room for personal, tender, relationship love?
the closest you get is White for Family, not really Red, and the problem is the White is opposite/enemy of Red.
The design of the color wheel means that Love of the kind we'd like to see more of is CLOSEST to being almost-there when they are making a lot of Red-White cards.
Right now, Boros is being especially Spartanized. Mars. Ares.
Not directly opposite of Love, but that's just the way the game comes out:
It's basically about War, which is basically not Love.
If you took the sheer ENERGY of Red, and put it together with the Humanity of White, you'd get Love. They COULD choose to make a card every so often that tries to tap into this flavor, but there isn't enough room in their files usually.
I think part of Kaalia of the Vast's popularity stems from her awesome flavor as a Burned Heart: she's the Perfect card to represent a Scorned Lover, and honestly if Kaalia of the Vast is the most Romance I've seen since Kayla bin-Kroog, well....
it's not just that she's kind of like an Ex-Girlfriend....she's not even very good of an ex-girlfriend.....but her notability stems from her being one of a vast, huge dearth of characters and stories that have anything at all to do with Love. It's the most noteworthily Absent thing in Magic. A positive, Happy Love, not a broken, vengeful heart, would be W/G/R aligned maybe. The only W/G/R female character we have on hand is Mayael the Anima, and she's like just an oracle or something.
that kind of just means Magic will Never have very much of this stuff, like ever.
I think it's mainly because, since White, Red, and Green, are the colors THE most about love, that would call major attention to Blue's.....severe lacking in this area.
But the Modern World is so Science and Reason focused, and Blue is the most Popular and Powerful color among people who play and win, that Magic probably doesn't want to offend people who love Blue by pointing out that their color is the worst for Romance. Which was Urza's Problem.
The way do things now, they can pretend that All Colors have Equal amounts of Love, because they all have Allies, Devotion to Gods, Soulbond, etc.
Blue is literally worse at love than Black though. I mean Black has some pretty dysfunctional relationships but at least it HAS relationships.
For a Blue Love Story, look at Urza and Kayla. That's what you get. Twilight's actually better than Urza and Kayla. :/
Magic deftly tries to avoid focusing on this in a negative way as much as possible, first by mentioning the loves in White, Green, and Red in self-aggrandizing pats on the back kind of ways, then as trying to evoke emotional response from Blue mentioning what it Loves....it's all very sensitive and politically correct and holistic.
But sometimes holism is incorrect if you're trying to equate things that are not equivalent.
Magic shows the Color Wheel as having equal amounts of Love in all 5 colors, because that's the image it wants to present.
This image is a lie, and Blue has the Least Love.
Blue is enemy with Red and Green, but the way they present even the contrasts there is skewered to make Blue look a little better than it really is and also emphasize the failings of Red and Green, so that, after adding up all the pluses and minuses, it looks like the Colors are Equal.
But, really, not every Color is equal, not by a million miles. Blue has the Most Power, I daresay, BECAUSE it has the Least Love.
Opaline Unicorn's reference to Purphoros is easily the closest to the wonderful G/W/R Love I have EVER seen on a Magic card. I have hope that this is the first, tiniest, sparks of Magic moving in a direction where the Lore and Flavor remember to make room for some good, honest Love Stories. They can be background and minor notes as SMALL as the rest of you like, as long as they're THERE!
Opaline Unicorn is One Card in One Set.
if we had One Card per One BLOCK that really, REALLY hinted at this kind of Epic Romance Love, it would be more focus than Love has got in, well, ever?
sometime, I kind of hope they give Sorin Markov a R/B Vampire or Demon Girlfriend XP
Or he could have something more demure, like a W/U/B Ice Queen.
But, like, Sorin Markov needs to be the Planeswalker they want to give a Girlfriend, if they do it at all. He's the one with the most potential to tell a story that, Good Ending or Bad One, is really enjoyable to read.
Gideon and Garruk both have it in them too, I think. Ajani x Elspeth is something I would be scratching my head if I heard rumors of, but I suppose it could work.
Really most of their characters they just haven't even developed as being very good at having the potential to love anything. Koth was the closest we had to that, and everything he loved is dead.
Jace, the one they've ACTUALLY explicitly-ish stated has a romance with Emmara Tandris, is...the worst one they could have picked for it, and it shows in his Blueness.
He is about as awesome at Relationships at Urza. Which is Not.
Tezzeret was better at Love than Jace, because his Black Ambitions at least gave him enough Passion to have some genuinely interesting, darker Angst, compared to the type of Angst Jace has, which is strictly limited to being Annoying because he's Stupid.
How they made the Bluest Planeswalker the Dumbest, I'll never know, but they accomplished it -_-
This is why I've been hoping since Lorwyn that Jace would go Blue-Black, and I'm kind of annoyed he's gone Blue-White. :/ Black is close enough to Red that it can actually compensate for how bad Blue is at Caring about People. Blue-Black can be a Mysterious Manipulator with conflicted agendas.
You could write an awesome tragedy with that!
Blue-White is about as dead-hearted as it gets though >:(
Black-White is the best alignment for a character you want to be in a Romance, because you could take that story literally any direction wanted, you have the most room for giving your character Highs and Lows. I could see Sorin Markov in Green-White, Green-Blue-Black, Red-Black, Blue-Black-Red, and Red-White hats. He's got the most Complex and Conflicted sets of ambitions and drives. He could REALLY be a Villain of near- or surpassing- Bolas Level Threat if they wanted. (His advantage would be that while Bolas can plan more intricately, Sorin can plan more practically and is less likely to be self-indulged in hubris) He could also be a Hero as noble as Gideon or Ajani. He knows how violent things can get like Garruk, Sarkhan and Koth, and he's not unwilling to take part in that violence. Like the Umezawas, he's willing to Fight for Good AND seek his own Advantage at the same time. And he knows at least as many, or many more, Multiversal Secrets as Tezzeret.
And I could even see him be moved to sympathy for Green Growing Things.
A Block Novel that included a love interest of Sorins, or many over the span of lifetimes, would be just a really really Epic Read.
Anyway, that was about a thousand divergent topics, and we were talking about the THEROS minor Gods. But, well, then we started on Love, which I think is probably a bigger, and vaguer, subject than a Forum can really easily cover.
Does anyone honestly think they REALLY know anything solid about Phenax? Because as far as I can tell he's got a reference on Just One Card, and I don't even see any references that help me figure out his physical shape?
(Sorry For Editing a Modded Post. I was in the Middle of Deleting and Copying/Pasting them together when it interrupted my process.)
(They are now a Single Post xP )
People need to read this fanfiction, though:
www.hpmor.com
I am probably every color-combination it is possible to be, though it's really hard to figure out what it would mean to be 4-colored....it doesn't seem logical to be 4-colored without being 5-colored.
Love. Is that what we're calling it now? Aphrodite is also the goddess of sex, hence the Venus flytrap, the mons veneris, venery, venereal disease, and a bunch of other things that either relate to vaginas or look like them.
And Hera of course would say "What do you mean 'love'? I'm the goddess of marriage." (Seriously, she and Zeus did not get along. Mostly because he had this habit of sleeping with a whole bunch of women who weren't her, and she had the audacity to take umbrage at her husband's philandering.)
What I don't get about Purphoros is that he's friends with Nylea, despite being the god of metalworking and green's favoritest thing in the multiverse, technology.
On phasing:
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Diaochan, Artful Beauty says otherwise, even if she's a bit overcosted.
You can do love, but it has to be in a way that's game relevant, such as getting two men to kill each other over a woman.
Hey, Iliad card!
On phasing:
Well this bodes ill for the pantheon.
Nah, she's got better back up this time.
Not to mention it's only really Nyx that is clearly hard up there.
He should've asked Lord Zedd for a better weapon because Elspeth is clearly getting ready to power up her White Tigerzord.
Also,
Sigged.
Honestly, I think what we're seeing is a little god brawl. It looks like those clouds might actually be Keranos throwing hands.
Eh, that kinda makes sense, I admit. And based on the art for Journey into Nyx (where at least an Erebos shrine has been wrecked), now it makes me think if Xeny is planning an assimilation plot, killing all other gods and absorbing their powers for himself to fuel his megalomania.... Oh well.
I believe that the braid-mask figure is Karametra, but don't quote me on it. :x
I'm inclined to think it's Pharika, the patron god of gorgons, what with the covered eyes.
Level 1 Judge
I write flavor articles for RoxieCards.
I play and judge at Giga Bites Cafein Marietta, Georgia.
But Pharika (or rather a statue of her) can be seen in the background of Pharika's Cure where you can see that she has a different headdress. (Theoretically it could also be a regular gorgon, but you can see two snakes growing out of her chest, so I'm inclined to believe it's actually Pharika herself.)
Additionally, the same braid-mask goddess can be seen in Commune with the Gods and that really doesn't look like a BG shrine at all.
Level 1 Judge
I write flavor articles for RoxieCards.
I play and judge at Giga Bites Cafein Marietta, Georgia.
But what does that have to do with anything I said?
Level 1 Judge
I write flavor articles for RoxieCards.
I play and judge at Giga Bites Cafein Marietta, Georgia.
And wouldn't she have to wear a blindfold or something? Cause if she is the goddess of Gorgons, and she had their same power of turning people into stone when she looks at them, then without it, couldn't it be like
Worshiper "oh hi pharika"
Pharika (turns around) "oh. Woops"?
Why? Xenagos has simple become a god; there's no word that other 14 gods of Theros died, and they probably won't die since we're going to get the other 10 god cards.
The shattered statues at his feet obviously doesn't mean good things for them.
This is true, however why then the covering of her eyes?
Well, indeed. Also the head seems to have broken "horns" of sort. We'll have to wait for more art eventually to be sure.