For anyone discovering or rediscovering Richard Kane Ferguson via this kickass version of the ole Blackblade, may I present my favorite piece of Magic art. It's got fire, a bad ass dude with a searing spear cutting another dude's arm off, and a HORSE PUNCHING A GUY IN THE FACE!
Path to Exile, Worship, and Rest in Peace. Some good modern playable cards in Gideon's Spell Book. If the msrp is going to be 20$, then those three cards combined already more than 20$.. which means the rest of the cards are FREE.
Huh, the Rest in peace art looks like being set in Theros.
Maybe he did indeed planeswalked to Theros in the last minute? Shielded by FaithTrue Conviction is hin fighting eldrazis aparently SbF is on Innistrad(?) and TC in Zendikar.
The rest in peace art does look like he was able to planeswalk to Theros.
Looks like he wanted to go back to the place where he was born.
Now if they'd make the frames that rich in colour... I'd buy it merely for the Rest in Peace and Path to Exile. Love the throwback to artists of old with RKF. Let's see more of that!
'buster
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'buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset. Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
Liliana better be grateful and at least Orzhov aligned next time I see her.
they already have Kaya for that and would leave the mono-black spot vacant in the gatewatch lineup.
(we curently have a white spot free, but I imagine Teyo will join soon).
To be honest I've never understood this "there can only be one PW aligned with each color combination" mantra. This feels incredibly restrictive. Planeswalkers can occupy different niches in the same color, can't they ?
Pretty sure it wouldn't break the gatewatch either ^^
(In Orzhov you can have a Blink-oriented Kaya and a Zombie-Oriented Liliana easy peasy)
This whole spellbook just really endears Gideon's character. That's one way to add oomph to a character death alright.
Agreed 100%. These 8 cards/arts (well really just Martyr's Bond, RiP and Worship) make me care about Gideon and his death more than maybe everything that has come before it.
Also, fantastic call on bringing back Richard Kane Ferguson to recreate blackblade. Perfect.
Oh and Seb knocks it out of the park AGAIN, I'm glad they've started having him do arts for key story characters.
Huh, the Rest in peace art looks like being set in Theros.
Maybe he did indeed planeswalked to Theros in the last minute? Shielded by FaithTrue Conviction is hin fighting eldrazis aparently SbF is on Innistrad(?) and TC in Zendikar.
Maybe Ajani takes what is left of Gideon to Theros and commissions the statue.
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i mean why not the whole gatewatch? planeswalking to theros for a few hours for some sort of memorial service would be trivial for any of them. its not like doing so commits anyone to helping ajani search for elspeth, and itd be pretty wack if the likes of jace, chandra, teferi, or karn couldnt be asked to show that level of respect for a fallen comrade. i could see kaya dipsetting cause whatever, or liliana disappearing over emotional turmoil or something similar.
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i mean why not the whole gatewatch? planeswalking to theros for a few hours for some sort of memorial service would be trivial for any of them. its not like doing so commits anyone to helping ajani search for elspeth, and itd be pretty wack if the likes of jace, chandra, teferi, or karn couldnt be asked to show that level of respect for a fallen comrade. i could see kaya dipsetting cause whatever, or liliana disappearing over emotional turmoil or something similar.
If there’s a funeral there’s a very high possiblity she will show up for it because she really turned a corner and she should honor the man who saved her life
This whole spellbook just really endears Gideon's character. That's one way to add oomph to a character death alright.
Agreed 100%. These 8 cards/arts (well really just Martyr's Bond, RiP and Worship) make me care about Gideon and his death more than maybe everything that has come before it.
I honestly kind of feel the exact opposite. Between this and Heartwarming Reunion, it feels to me like they're beating us over the head with it way too hard. "Gideon's dead! But he died heroically! He did a heroic sacrifice! But it's okay because he gets to rest in peace now! It's sad! BE SAD!" I know subtlety is hardly Magic's strong point, but it feels like they're cramming this into our faces so hard that it kind of just makes me resent him even more.
Then again I never liked Gideon in the first place, so I may be biased.
i mean why not the whole gatewatch? planeswalking to theros for a few hours for some sort of memorial service would be trivial for any of them. its not like doing so commits anyone to helping ajani search for elspeth, and itd be pretty wack if the likes of jace, chandra, teferi, or karn couldnt be asked to show that level of respect for a fallen comrade. i could see kaya dipsetting cause whatever, or liliana disappearing over emotional turmoil or something similar.
If there’s a funeral there’s a very high possiblity she will show up for it because she really turned a corner and she should honor the man who saved her life
maybe. but coming to terms with your own situation and choosing to put your life on the line and having someone sacrifice themselves for you for reasons that go against your understanding of human nature are quite different. so yeah if there is some funeral/memorial type thing she should go, but its not difficult to imagine liliana not being able to reconcile how events turned out; possibly with some denial mixed in.
or maybe she just vanishes because chain veil reasons, who knows. just hypotheticals. maybe there is no service and the statue is never explained, letting the players create their own interpretation. that was my original take on the RIP/reunion art, but then people started asking how exactly scenes set on theros happened.
I don't understand why people keep forgetting a couple of basic financial lessons:
A) Reprints cause cards to lose value
B) Cards whose cost depends only on the number of copies available tank after a large reprint.
The only two cards that are really valuable here are PtE and RiP, with Worship following those two. You'll find the other 5 around 1$ immediatly after the release because they're either marginal or unplayed.
I'm not saying it's a bad product: the art is gorgeous and I will purchase it for sure if I find it at the right price, but it's not the super product some people are implying it is and I think we can safely put as a fact that it contains less playable cards than Jace's one, too.
I don't understand why people keep forgetting a couple of basic financial lessons:
A) Reprints cause cards to lose value
B) Cards whose cost depends only on the number of copies available tank after a large reprint.
The only two cards that are really valuable here are PtE and RiP, with Worship following those two. You'll find the other 5 around 1$ immediatly after the release because they're either marginal or unplayed.
I'm not saying it's a bad product: the art is gorgeous and I will purchase it for sure if I find it at the right price, but it's not the super product some people are implying it is and I think we can safely put as a fact that it contains less playable cards than Jace's one, too.
If you look at it the other way around, Martyr's Bond, Rest in Peace, Path to Exile, and Worship are all above $7 currently. Without this product, they remain above $7. So, yes, this product *will* drop those prices (except for Path to Exile in the long term) to make them less valuable. I think the exciting factor (beyond the art) *is* the financial impact to these cards. I don't want to have to pay $9 for a Rest in Peace for example. This is a great sideboard card and being able to get it cheaper is good news to those that don't already have it.
I would argue that the only "dud" in this box is Shielded by Faith (and maybe Blackblade) but the rest all see play across different formats. Jace's box had Blue Elemental Blast and Threads of Disloyalty as "duds". Not much of a difference in count to be honest. Maybe the playable cards in Jace's box were more powerful (thanks to Brainstorm, Counterspell, and Mystical Tutor) but the number of playable cards are the same. And 6 out of the 8 cards in Jace's box are around $2 or below so saying Gideon's cards will do that same is just saying that is how these types of products work.
I didn't expect the next Signature Spellbook to focus on Gideon (I was hoping for Liliana or Nicol Bolas), but I guess it makes sense since he bites it in the story...
The choice of cards is spot on, and yes, that alt art Rest in Peace hits hard. And that comes from someone who doesn't even like Gideon.
If you look at it the other way around, Martyr's Bond, Rest in Peace, Path to Exile, and Worship are all above $7 currently. Without this product, they remain above $7. So, yes, this product *will* drop those prices (except for Path to Exile in the long term) to make them less valuable. I think the exciting factor (beyond the art) *is* the financial impact to these cards. I don't want to have to pay $9 for a Rest in Peace for example. This is a great sideboard card and being able to get it cheaper is good news to those that don't already have it.
Agreed on that. Hopefully, the reprint brings down the price of r.i.p, so more people would have access to the useful sideboard card.
I love how on Rest In Peace his statue reflects his pose when he swore his oath, and the flavour text is more or less an epitaph of him giving his oath. That’s a fitting and touching tribute to him.
When I saw the thumbnail for Worship it looked like he was snapping a pic of Oketra’s monument on a smart phone
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'buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset. Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
Path to Exile, Worship, and Rest in Peace. Some good modern playable cards in Gideon's Spell Book. If the msrp is going to be 20$, then those three cards combined already more than 20$.. which means the rest of the cards are FREE.
Huh, the Rest in peace art looks like being set in Theros.
Maybe he did indeed planeswalked to Theros in the last minute? Shielded by FaithTrue Conviction is hin fighting eldrazis aparently SbF is on Innistrad(?) and TC in Zendikar.
The rest in peace art does look like he was able to planeswalk to Theros.
Looks like he wanted to go back to the place where he was born.
Plot twist: With his last breath he planeswalked to Theros, died there, and is now tagging along with Elspeth in the underworld...
Huh, the Rest in peace art looks like being set in Theros.
Maybe he did indeed planeswalked to Theros in the last minute? Shielded by FaithTrue Conviction is hin fighting eldrazis aparently SbF is on Innistrad(?) and TC in Zendikar.
Maybe he did, but only after the war was over since Bolas baited all planeswalkers to Ravnica and created an aura around it that disabled their planeswalking ability.
Or maybe his spirit is attached to Theros. There is a card called Heartwarming Redemption, on which he clearly is with his people in the afterlife.
Gideon is definitely on Theros at the moment that he actually perishes. We know that planeswalkers follow the rules of the afterlife of the plane they are currently on when they die, and the card Heartwarming Redemption shows Gideon going by Kytheon, dressed in Therosi civilian clothing, talking to who I'm sure must be Kytheon's Irregulars, who were killed in Gideon's origin story (as seen on Tragic Arrogance). Which, if that's all correct, means that Gideon is in the Underworld of Theros. The same place that Elspeth, Knight-Errant is. The same place that is ruled by Erebos, God of the Dead, the character whose antagonism shaped Kytheon, Hero of Akros into the the heroic Gideon we know today by killing his friends, the Irregulars.
Now I had previously thought that Gideon wouldn't die because it would leave his story in an unsatisfying place. He has run from his past in Theros since he's become a planeswalker, and I felt that there should be some struggle for him to face on Theros to complete the "invincible brat becomes stoic protector" arc. But that was assuming that if he died, it would be on Ravnica because The Immortal Sun wouldn't let him leave so he'd just be a ghost on Agryem. But if the Immortal Sun is deactivated/destroyed/moved to the Meditation Realm or whatever happens to it within a few hours of Gideon taking on the punitive damages of Liliana's breach of contract, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that he could planeswalk (espcially with help of his friends such as Jace helping his mind stay clear in spite of the pain for instance) to Theros and be laid to Rest in Peace there.
Y'all remember the Wrath of Khan? Spock sacrifices himself to save the rest of the crew, allowing the character to go out in what Leonard Nimoy described as a "blaze of glory." But then the next movie comes out two years later and was called the Search for Spock, was directed by Nimoy, and had Spock resurrected at the end. The character only finally left us when the actor did, in 2015, so Spock still had more than 30 years left when it first looked like he was gone. And while that might seem like that would take the stakes out of that death scene, it is still one of the most iconic and beloved scenes in all of Star Trek, which I'm pretty sure is what WotC would like to emulate if they could.
So yeah, I'm calling it. Ajani and company go to Theros to rescue Elspeth and Gideon from the Underworld. The Search for Gideon is a bit of an one-the-nose reference, but it doesn't sound like a bad set title (to me). Surrounding factors I'm less sure about but make sense to me:
1.) Phyrexia corrupts Theros. The contrast is so extreme that the compleated Therosi would be satisfyingly unnerving. Like how it's eerier to see a possessed child's doll than to see a possessed suit of armor, the insidiousness is more apparent the less threatening the thing was to begin with. Which leads to...
2.) Erebos fights Elesh Norn. Other than Xenagos and Elspeth, the gods haven't fought anything that could defeat even one of them. Elesh Norn's Phyrexia actually has the power to kill all of the Gods. So, desperate times call for desperate measures, and maybe Erebos either willingly lets the dead return to fight alongside the rest of Theros to stop the compleation, or maybe he gets killed (expunged? "killed" seems off considering the blurry line between dead and alive here) and then all the denizens of the Underworld are free to leave.
3.) Xenagos gets out too and becomes another looming multiverse threat. That way even if there is a victory and Theros is saved, there could still be enough fallout where the story continues to have a struggle while still feeling like the Theros-Phyrexia conflict has concluded.
So yeah, I'm in total denial about Gideon's death. If this was the real world, I'd try to move to the next stage of grief, but this is fiction, baby! Resurrections are fair game! Look, he's the soul of the Gatewatch, easily the most heroic of all of them, embodying the concept of using your strength of body and will to shelter the innocent from those who would overpower them. He'd be a one-man Gatewatch if no one had joined his cause, and I don't think that applies to any other member. Writing him out of the story would be like writing Superman out of the Justice League story, since they are both the most physically powerful and morally righteous of their groups who leads the group in an emotional sense. And wouldn't you know it? Superman died and was resurrected in the recent DC movies.
In case you're wondering, yes I did read the article and it did suggest otherwise. But they felt like leading questions from the interviewer, more like "You guys aren't stupid like the Avengers movies who kill 69% of the universe's population, just to bring them back in the next movie, are you? Because if you were that would be dumb and I'd hate you and I'd never want to learn how to play your game for losers." and then Gavin Verhey was like "We, um, don't do that ALL the time, so you're still allowed to like us." and then they were like "Good, we'll put that Gideon is dead forever and always in the title, and if he returns at a later date we'll sue your ass for damages caused by the lack of faith our readers since you erred in your reporting. That was a binding oral agreement you just put on your entire company in perpetuity, Gavin, so watch yourself." So, yeah, I think Gavin just said what the interviewer was nudging him to say, because the interviewer thought that the readers would like hearing that this death is final. Gavin knew that by the time Gideon comes back no one would remember this article, including the people who wrote and edited it.
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More importantly this is Martyr's Bonds FIRST reprinting.
This Spellbook is looking a whole lot better than Jace's.
They were fools to let go of the old artists.
Behold, the glory of Searing Spear Askari.
My 720 Peasant Cube
The rest in peace art does look like he was able to planeswalk to Theros.
Looks like he wanted to go back to the place where he was born.
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'buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset.
Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
To be honest I've never understood this "there can only be one PW aligned with each color combination" mantra. This feels incredibly restrictive. Planeswalkers can occupy different niches in the same color, can't they ?
Pretty sure it wouldn't break the gatewatch either ^^
(In Orzhov you can have a Blink-oriented Kaya and a Zombie-Oriented Liliana easy peasy)
Modern : Solemnity Prison Martyr Proc Devotion to Green 8 Whacks Eldrazi Processor Bogles Landfall Aggro
Legacy : Goblins
Probably wielding Godsend later.
Agreed 100%. These 8 cards/arts (well really just Martyr's Bond, RiP and Worship) make me care about Gideon and his death more than maybe everything that has come before it.
Also, fantastic call on bringing back Richard Kane Ferguson to recreate blackblade. Perfect.
Oh and Seb knocks it out of the park AGAIN, I'm glad they've started having him do arts for key story characters.
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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
Maybe Ajani takes what is left of Gideon to Theros and commissions the statue.
Standard - Some kind of control
Modern - UB Mill (casual)
EDH - Meren's Grave Shenanigans
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)If there’s a funeral there’s a very high possiblity she will show up for it because she really turned a corner and she should honor the man who saved her life
Then again I never liked Gideon in the first place, so I may be biased.
maybe. but coming to terms with your own situation and choosing to put your life on the line and having someone sacrifice themselves for you for reasons that go against your understanding of human nature are quite different. so yeah if there is some funeral/memorial type thing she should go, but its not difficult to imagine liliana not being able to reconcile how events turned out; possibly with some denial mixed in.
or maybe she just vanishes because chain veil reasons, who knows. just hypotheticals. maybe there is no service and the statue is never explained, letting the players create their own interpretation. that was my original take on the RIP/reunion art, but then people started asking how exactly scenes set on theros happened.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)A) Reprints cause cards to lose value
B) Cards whose cost depends only on the number of copies available tank after a large reprint.
The only two cards that are really valuable here are PtE and RiP, with Worship following those two. You'll find the other 5 around 1$ immediatly after the release because they're either marginal or unplayed.
I'm not saying it's a bad product: the art is gorgeous and I will purchase it for sure if I find it at the right price, but it's not the super product some people are implying it is and I think we can safely put as a fact that it contains less playable cards than Jace's one, too.
I would argue that the only "dud" in this box is Shielded by Faith (and maybe Blackblade) but the rest all see play across different formats. Jace's box had Blue Elemental Blast and Threads of Disloyalty as "duds". Not much of a difference in count to be honest. Maybe the playable cards in Jace's box were more powerful (thanks to Brainstorm, Counterspell, and Mystical Tutor) but the number of playable cards are the same. And 6 out of the 8 cards in Jace's box are around $2 or below so saying Gideon's cards will do that same is just saying that is how these types of products work.
The choice of cards is spot on, and yes, that alt art Rest in Peace hits hard. And that comes from someone who doesn't even like Gideon.
Agreed on that. Hopefully, the reprint brings down the price of r.i.p, so more people would have access to the useful sideboard card.
Nexus MTG News // Nexus - Magic Art Gallery // MTG Dual Land Color Ratios Analyzer // MTG Card Drawing Odds Calculator
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
When I saw the thumbnail for Worship it looked like he was snapping a pic of Oketra’s monument on a smart phone
‘Buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset.
Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
(sets aside $20)
Plot twist: With his last breath he planeswalked to Theros, died there, and is now tagging along with Elspeth in the underworld...
Maybe he did, but only after the war was over since Bolas baited all planeswalkers to Ravnica and created an aura around it that disabled their planeswalking ability.
Or maybe his spirit is attached to Theros. There is a card called Heartwarming Redemption, on which he clearly is with his people in the afterlife.
Now I had previously thought that Gideon wouldn't die because it would leave his story in an unsatisfying place. He has run from his past in Theros since he's become a planeswalker, and I felt that there should be some struggle for him to face on Theros to complete the "invincible brat becomes stoic protector" arc. But that was assuming that if he died, it would be on Ravnica because The Immortal Sun wouldn't let him leave so he'd just be a ghost on Agryem. But if the Immortal Sun is deactivated/destroyed/moved to the Meditation Realm or whatever happens to it within a few hours of Gideon taking on the punitive damages of Liliana's breach of contract, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that he could planeswalk (espcially with help of his friends such as Jace helping his mind stay clear in spite of the pain for instance) to Theros and be laid to Rest in Peace there.
Y'all remember the Wrath of Khan? Spock sacrifices himself to save the rest of the crew, allowing the character to go out in what Leonard Nimoy described as a "blaze of glory." But then the next movie comes out two years later and was called the Search for Spock, was directed by Nimoy, and had Spock resurrected at the end. The character only finally left us when the actor did, in 2015, so Spock still had more than 30 years left when it first looked like he was gone. And while that might seem like that would take the stakes out of that death scene, it is still one of the most iconic and beloved scenes in all of Star Trek, which I'm pretty sure is what WotC would like to emulate if they could.
So yeah, I'm calling it. Ajani and company go to Theros to rescue Elspeth and Gideon from the Underworld. The Search for Gideon is a bit of an one-the-nose reference, but it doesn't sound like a bad set title (to me). Surrounding factors I'm less sure about but make sense to me:
1.) Phyrexia corrupts Theros. The contrast is so extreme that the compleated Therosi would be satisfyingly unnerving. Like how it's eerier to see a possessed child's doll than to see a possessed suit of armor, the insidiousness is more apparent the less threatening the thing was to begin with. Which leads to...
2.) Erebos fights Elesh Norn. Other than Xenagos and Elspeth, the gods haven't fought anything that could defeat even one of them. Elesh Norn's Phyrexia actually has the power to kill all of the Gods. So, desperate times call for desperate measures, and maybe Erebos either willingly lets the dead return to fight alongside the rest of Theros to stop the compleation, or maybe he gets killed (expunged? "killed" seems off considering the blurry line between dead and alive here) and then all the denizens of the Underworld are free to leave.
3.) Xenagos gets out too and becomes another looming multiverse threat. That way even if there is a victory and Theros is saved, there could still be enough fallout where the story continues to have a struggle while still feeling like the Theros-Phyrexia conflict has concluded.
So yeah, I'm in total denial about Gideon's death. If this was the real world, I'd try to move to the next stage of grief, but this is fiction, baby! Resurrections are fair game! Look, he's the soul of the Gatewatch, easily the most heroic of all of them, embodying the concept of using your strength of body and will to shelter the innocent from those who would overpower them. He'd be a one-man Gatewatch if no one had joined his cause, and I don't think that applies to any other member. Writing him out of the story would be like writing Superman out of the Justice League story, since they are both the most physically powerful and morally righteous of their groups who leads the group in an emotional sense. And wouldn't you know it? Superman died and was resurrected in the recent DC movies.
In case you're wondering, yes I did read the article and it did suggest otherwise. But they felt like leading questions from the interviewer, more like "You guys aren't stupid like the Avengers movies who kill 69% of the universe's population, just to bring them back in the next movie, are you? Because if you were that would be dumb and I'd hate you and I'd never want to learn how to play your game for losers." and then Gavin Verhey was like "We, um, don't do that ALL the time, so you're still allowed to like us." and then they were like "Good, we'll put that Gideon is dead forever and always in the title, and if he returns at a later date we'll sue your ass for damages caused by the lack of faith our readers since you erred in your reporting. That was a binding oral agreement you just put on your entire company in perpetuity, Gavin, so watch yourself." So, yeah, I think Gavin just said what the interviewer was nudging him to say, because the interviewer thought that the readers would like hearing that this death is final. Gavin knew that by the time Gideon comes back no one would remember this article, including the people who wrote and edited it.