Literally all that is brought up in Eldraine resurfacing once he's freed from the curse. In fact they even bring up his daddy issues from his father being dragged away and killed by the local cops and thats why he helps Will and Rowan after they free him from the curse and Oko since he wants to make sure they don't lose thier father like he did. Also why at the end instead of going right after Oko or Liliana, Garruk goes to after Will and Rowan to see if they are okay after sparking, showing his characters grows to truthing some humans again.
Cool, so 10+ years of story to put him back where he started. And then, what did they with him after that? What are they doing with him now? Where he was during the invasion? What happened to him with the omenpaths? We may never know.
The complaint I responded to was about Wizards not liking the characters. The fiercely independent, violent he-man and the seductress with an evil plan are both extremely overdone.
That said, I remember reading that comic. I don't remember much about it, but I know it wasn't some great work of art. People like to complain about the Magic story being bad now, but it's not like it was good then either. There have been a few high points, but for the most part it's mediocre filler and recalling how great the Magic story used to be is not easy without getting some serious rose tint put on your glasses.
I really don't get your point. "Magic story has sucked since 10+ years!" ok... why are you playing the game then? Why are enjoying something that sucks so much? And why you have to ruin it for people who enjoyed it?
Maybe the Hunter and the Veil was not a comic masterpiece, but it was good and established interesting characters. Your "*****-tint glasses" won't ruin it for me, especially since you are calling Garruk a "fiercely independent, violent he-man", showing me that you did not understood the comic at all, since the point of Garruk was the opposite of that.
Both down the gutter because Liliana discovering the power of friendship was not a trope overdone enough.
And honestly it's even possible to judge who's right about the comic... because it was completely erased by wotc. I don't even know if you can read elsewhere, i couldn't find anything.
I disagree. Garruk was a serviceable green character exemplifying certain traits of green. If you look under the hood he was surprisingly complex. He's not evil. He's not good. But he's not selfish either, but calling him altruistic would be a mistake as well. He walks his own path and all the nuances that come with that.
What does he like? The wilds. Does he have any friends? None that are people, no. Maybe the Kenrith twins if we count being protective as being friends. Could I see him having a casual conversation at a tavern? Absolutely not. Garruk wouldn't go to a tavern, at least not as a patron.
Garruk is an okay defined character and represent green very well while avoiding some of green's common tropes. Honestly he's one of my favourite MtG characters.
His main problem is that he was never developed because he never really showed up outside of a webcomic and in two sets where he played like a 5 minute role. But that's not on the ones who created the character.
This guy gets it. It's amazing how they managed to turned and interesting, complex characters into the most boring stereotype possible and people are defending the choice "it was overdone". No it wasn't. It was just that wizard couldn't handle the character and had a much easier time turning it into a bland caricature. Until that caricature hit them in the face with the triumph of ferocity controversy.
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How i feel about competitive players and casual players in EDH: The competitive are german tourists, the casual are italian tourists, both in a italian beach. The italians asking themselves "why are the germans here?" make a legitimate question, the answer is because the beach is beautiful, no matter the country you came from. The italians wanting to ban the germans are dumb, because if the germans pay for their stay and follow the rules like everyone else, they have the right to be in the beach. Hovewer, if the germans started to ask themselves "why are the italians here?"... they would be dumb as hell.
Cool, so 10+ years of story to put him back where he started. And then, what did they with him after that? What are they doing with him now? Where he was during the invasion? What happened to him with the omenpaths? We may never know.
And Koth spent 12+ years left on New Phyrexia, Elspeth was left dead in the underworld for 6+ and Bolas working his "master plan" for 11+ years. Magic's story can often shaft other character and/or take forever to get back to certain storylines. It has nothing to do with the characters being a stereotypical man. And again this has nothing to do with Ihop pancakes in 2023.
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“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"
Try to pick up a little more media literacy and reading comprehension if you wanna be a condescending ********.
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How i feel about competitive players and casual players in EDH: The competitive are german tourists, the casual are italian tourists, both in a italian beach. The italians asking themselves "why are the germans here?" make a legitimate question, the answer is because the beach is beautiful, no matter the country you came from. The italians wanting to ban the germans are dumb, because if the germans pay for their stay and follow the rules like everyone else, they have the right to be in the beach. Hovewer, if the germans started to ask themselves "why are the italians here?"... they would be dumb as hell.
What does he like? The wilds. Does he have any friends? None that are people, no. Maybe the Kenrith twins if we count being protective as being friends. Could I see him having a casual conversation at a tavern? Absolutely not. Garruk wouldn't go to a tavern, at least not as a patron.
Yeah I dunno those aren't like super relatable or functional or even interesting traits. He kinda seems like an antisocial Unabomber type and while I can objectively say "yes sometimes you want a guy like that" I would never have him in the blunt rotation. I couldn't find any concrete data or mentions about his popularity as a character but on the poll here from 2013 he's on the bottom tier of characters. Not sure he'd fare better in a post-nissa world.
I disagree. Garruk was a serviceable green character exemplifying certain traits of green. If you look under the hood he was surprisingly complex. He's not evil. He's not good. But he's not selfish either, but calling him altruistic would be a mistake as well. He walks his own path and all the nuances that come with that.
What does he like? The wilds. Does he have any friends? None that are people, no. Maybe the Kenrith twins if we count being protective as being friends. Could I see him having a casual conversation at a tavern? Absolutely not. Garruk wouldn't go to a tavern, at least not as a patron.
Garruk is an okay defined character and represent green very well while avoiding some of green's common tropes. Honestly he's one of my favourite MtG characters.
His main problem is that he was never developed because he never really showed up outside of a webcomic and in two sets where he played like a 5 minute role. But that's not on the ones who created the character.
Where does Garruk not follow the common green tropes? He's solely the flora-and-fauna focus that makes people think Green is just plants and animals, no tradition, no focus on destiny, nothing else. Garruk occasionally has mentions of the stereotypical forest hermit type but that's window dressing to big hunter man.
Yes, she has a backstory that explicitly ties her to one of the villains of the game, she's not a weird antisocial hermit with no ties to any other character, she actually does magic instead of having a big axe. They clearly put more work into her than they did garruk. Pretty much every green planeswalker since has been put together better, from arlin to tyvar to wrenn. With liliana and chandra they put some work in to rehabilitate the characters since they were more popular, but it's no mistake they kinda just reset garruk and put him back on the shelf while nissa took his spot.
Where does Garruk not follow the common green tropes? He's solely the flora-and-fauna focus that makes people think Green is just plants and animals, no tradition, no focus on destiny, nothing else. Garruk occasionally has mentions of the stereotypical forest hermit type but that's window dressing to big hunter man.
I said he avoids some of green's tropes, for example the treehugger one. He avoids being a "friends with all animals" trope too. His relationship with the beasts of the forest is more complex. He represents the more vicious side of green which is more rarely explored for green characters than the "I love nature and nature loves me!" side like with Nissa.
He also represents an interesting conflict inherent to green but never really played up: Independence vs interdependence. Green is independent because it looks for answers within rather than without (like blue does) and it doesn't need society to function, unlike white and black. Yet, part of green's core is interdependence with the world as a whole, understanding itself as a part of something greater.
Garruk is a loner but quickly gets entangled in drama with Liliana and has to seek out another planeswalker (Jace) for help. I find it likely that Garruk's original arc was about exploring this conflict, with his hunter phase being the start of this long arc and befriending the Kenrith twins being a vestige of that original plan for the conclusion. They probably felt it was too close to Liliana's arc and since Liliana was more popular, well.
Yes, she has a backstory that explicitly ties her to one of the villains of the game, she's not a weird antisocial hermit with no ties to any other character, she actually does magic instead of having a big axe. They clearly put more work into her than they did garruk. Pretty much every green planeswalker since has been put together better, from arlin to tyvar to wrenn. With liliana and chandra they put some work in to rehabilitate the characters since they were more popular, but it's no mistake they kinda just reset garruk and put him back on the shelf while nissa took his spot.
????
If you believe a character is badly designed because they can't do magic then we're operating on entirely different assumptions of what makes an interesting, well-written and/or well-designed character.
Also, Vivien's backstory is literally "Bolas destroyed her home." That's more shallow than Garruk's origin story. It also doesn't help that they did absolutely nothing with Vivien's backstory. War of the Spark should have been her cathartic moment, finally getting revenge for her world (or fail dramatically), but no, she was just unimportant planeswalker #58 who just happened to be there. But as I said before with Garruk, that's hardly the fault of whoever created her.
Far as I know Garruk was always a solidly liked character, just not a run away character like Jace, Liliana, Chandra and later Gideon/Ajani*. Between the three main green walkers (Garruk, Nissa and Vivien) I believe they all are rough liked about the same with just different audiences and they been switching around the three as the face for green (which they did to all the colors post wots- MoM). Nissa gets more screen time overall but thats mostly due to her being tied up with Chandra and other more popular characters.
Him being shelved for Nissa wasn't due to popularity, creative has said when drafting the gatewatch they picked the most popular character in each color for the first five members (Gideon, Jace, Liliana and Chandra) except for green as it was just kinda Nissa at that point. Garruk was BG at the moment and they felt like it felt more natural to use Nissa when wanting to connect the gatewatch forming with the eldrazi storyline.
*Ajani wasn't as popular as first but grew more popular over time
“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"
Garruk is the kind of guy that untaps your Cradle (and whatever else is making you a ton of mana right now) with a smile or jumps into the battlefield to instantly sacrifice himself to draw you a *****ton of cards. Very cool and selfless dude. Can't say anything bad about him.
Now does Vivian do that? Not that i remember. It's probably the type of person that turns your lands into into dumb 4/4 beaters that will be useless if you played them this turn because giving them haste was to much of a hassle for madam and also die to Terror, err, Doom Blade... Not impressed.
So Garruk 1 - Vivian 0. It's pretty easy when you think about it.
---
On a more serious note: This guy captures a lot of what's going on with Magic right now quite well. Seeing this from what is obviously a small scale creator almost makes me want to go on a rant how crazily neutered most Magic content is these days (either out of fear of alienating potential adsense revenue or because they have a proverbial gun in their back - when you look even a little closer it's pretty easy to spot the channels where the second is likely to be true since they have a couple of trademark antics that are largely non-existent outside of Magic's content industry) but i won't because a good part of that would open a whole other can of worms.
Now does Vivian do that? Not that i remember. It's probably the type of person that turns your lands into into dumb 4/4 beaters that will be useless if you played them this turn because giving them haste was to much of a hassle for madam and also die to Terror, err, Doom Blade... Not impressed.
I think, you are mixing up Nissa and Vivien. Vivien is the gal that puts counter on your creatures, specifically gets you access to more creature cards... and obviously lets them bite stuff.
Nissa is the queen of lands.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
Seeing this from what is obviously a small scale creator almost makes me want to go on a rant ... but i won't because a good part of that would open a whole other can of worms.
Wait, you're Red Bobcat? I love your channel and my favorite are the Commander Scrambles with Dr. Hands!
With regards to the increasing power levels of sets, I'd say Garruk isn't quite the embodiment. As you pointed out, he's been somewhat powerful in the past, while ALL Nissa is the most powerful one I can think of with the others being mediocre, and Vivien's cards are usually a similar strength as Garruk for the card advantage she provides as SI noted.
I will admit that I don't keep fully up to date on all the formats and their metas though.
If you believe a character is badly designed because they can't do magic then we're operating on entirely different assumptions of what makes an interesting, well-written and/or well-designed character.
The game's called magic the gathering not big axe the axening.
Also, Vivien's backstory is literally "Bolas destroyed her home." That's more shallow than Garruk's origin story.
Garruk's backstory is "some random soldiers destroyed his home now he wears one of their hats." At lease vivien shoots arrows made of the dead animals from her destroyed home.
Now does Vivian do that? Not that i remember. It's probably the type of person that turns your lands into into dumb 4/4 beaters that will be useless if you played them this turn because giving them haste was to much of a hassle for madam and also die to Terror, err, Doom Blade... Not impressed.
I think, you are mixing up Nissa and Vivien. Vivien is the gal that puts counter on your creatures, specifically gets you access to more creature cards... and obviously lets them bite stuff.
Nissa is the queen of lands.
Actually that's quite possible. I tend to run only a single non-Garruk plainswalker (in mono green at least) and i couldn't remember it's (more probably her) name if my life depended on it, so i just blindly assumed it must be Vivien.
Haha, i wish i was because as you say that guy is pretty brilliant. I just randomly stumbled across his channel and was like "Yeah, he gets it!" but i have to admit his way of analyzing topics is right down my alley and given he seems to be British i feel flattered by the confusion being not even a native speaker myself. All that years of rambling on the internet seem to have paid of
With regards to the increasing power levels of sets, I'd say Garruk isn't quite the embodiment. As you pointed out, he's been somewhat powerful in the past, while ALL Nissa is the most powerful one I can think of with the others being mediocre, and Vivien's cards are usually a similar strength as Garruk for the card advantage she provides as SI noted.
It somewhat depends on the perspective, i guess. As far as ramping is concerned i don't think any planeswalker will beat the original Garruk. Untapping 2 lands at the mere investment of 4 mana is just crazy since even if you don't sit on a Cradle chances are his real cost will be something between zero and him actually being mana positive (all it takes is an Ancient Tomb and an Overgrowth on a Forest). His Primal Hunter incarnation is admittedly a little mediocre basically being a draw spell for 5 a lot of the time which green has plenty of these days and beyond that i kind of lost track of him.
The other green planeswalkers might do bigger things in theory but practically i always end up feeling that they are a little clunky due to being heigher costed and doing way less untapping (if any at all), which also generally gets nerved by the "becomes a creature" part (unless i have a Timber Protector out my interest in launching my lands into combat is pretty much zero).
and the third nevered visited but seen plane. Maro kind of goofed and mentioned something about that one that instantly gives it away from where the bug folk came from.
he said it’s a dinosaur plane so we finally after all these years going to muraganda, but this is spooky to me why do a prehistoric plane debut visit for a race set I don’t think cars are prehistoric
If they waste Muraganda for that *****ty Fast&Furious set, i'm quitting magic for real.
Cool, so 10+ years of story to put him back where he started. And then, what did they with him after that? What are they doing with him now? Where he was during the invasion? What happened to him with the omenpaths? We may never know.
I really don't get your point. "Magic story has sucked since 10+ years!" ok... why are you playing the game then? Why are enjoying something that sucks so much? And why you have to ruin it for people who enjoyed it?
Maybe the Hunter and the Veil was not a comic masterpiece, but it was good and established interesting characters. Your "*****-tint glasses" won't ruin it for me, especially since you are calling Garruk a "fiercely independent, violent he-man", showing me that you did not understood the comic at all, since the point of Garruk was the opposite of that.
Both down the gutter because Liliana discovering the power of friendship was not a trope overdone enough.
And honestly it's even possible to judge who's right about the comic... because it was completely erased by wotc. I don't even know if you can read elsewhere, i couldn't find anything.
This guy gets it. It's amazing how they managed to turned and interesting, complex characters into the most boring stereotype possible and people are defending the choice "it was overdone". No it wasn't. It was just that wizard couldn't handle the character and had a much easier time turning it into a bland caricature. Until that caricature hit them in the face with the triumph of ferocity controversy.
Wayback and mtglore have the comic (https://mtglore.com/web-comics/the-hunter-and-the-veil/) Found it in one Google search. Not seeing the part where Garruk isn't that.
And Koth spent 12+ years left on New Phyrexia, Elspeth was left dead in the underworld for 6+ and Bolas working his "master plan" for 11+ years. Magic's story can often shaft other character and/or take forever to get back to certain storylines. It has nothing to do with the characters being a stereotypical man. And again this has nothing to do with Ihop pancakes in 2023.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
"i voted for him only because i liked his taxation plan" funny things spin and how karma works
Here:
Do you take your card games as seriously as you take your country? Or is it the other way around? Explains a lot either way.
"They call me a monster. They're wrong. I am a thousand of them" is precisely the kind of thing I'm talking about.
Yeah I dunno those aren't like super relatable or functional or even interesting traits. He kinda seems like an antisocial Unabomber type and while I can objectively say "yes sometimes you want a guy like that" I would never have him in the blunt rotation. I couldn't find any concrete data or mentions about his popularity as a character but on the poll here from 2013 he's on the bottom tier of characters. Not sure he'd fare better in a post-nissa world.
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/opinions-polls/515579-whos-your-favorite-planeswalker-character
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
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Spoiler EditorYes, she has a backstory that explicitly ties her to one of the villains of the game, she's not a weird antisocial hermit with no ties to any other character, she actually does magic instead of having a big axe. They clearly put more work into her than they did garruk. Pretty much every green planeswalker since has been put together better, from arlin to tyvar to wrenn. With liliana and chandra they put some work in to rehabilitate the characters since they were more popular, but it's no mistake they kinda just reset garruk and put him back on the shelf while nissa took his spot.
I said he avoids some of green's tropes, for example the treehugger one. He avoids being a "friends with all animals" trope too. His relationship with the beasts of the forest is more complex. He represents the more vicious side of green which is more rarely explored for green characters than the "I love nature and nature loves me!" side like with Nissa.
He also represents an interesting conflict inherent to green but never really played up: Independence vs interdependence. Green is independent because it looks for answers within rather than without (like blue does) and it doesn't need society to function, unlike white and black. Yet, part of green's core is interdependence with the world as a whole, understanding itself as a part of something greater.
Garruk is a loner but quickly gets entangled in drama with Liliana and has to seek out another planeswalker (Jace) for help. I find it likely that Garruk's original arc was about exploring this conflict, with his hunter phase being the start of this long arc and befriending the Kenrith twins being a vestige of that original plan for the conclusion. They probably felt it was too close to Liliana's arc and since Liliana was more popular, well.
????
If you believe a character is badly designed because they can't do magic then we're operating on entirely different assumptions of what makes an interesting, well-written and/or well-designed character.
Also, Vivien's backstory is literally "Bolas destroyed her home." That's more shallow than Garruk's origin story. It also doesn't help that they did absolutely nothing with Vivien's backstory. War of the Spark should have been her cathartic moment, finally getting revenge for her world (or fail dramatically), but no, she was just unimportant planeswalker #58 who just happened to be there. But as I said before with Garruk, that's hardly the fault of whoever created her.
Him being shelved for Nissa wasn't due to popularity, creative has said when drafting the gatewatch they picked the most popular character in each color for the first five members (Gideon, Jace, Liliana and Chandra) except for green as it was just kinda Nissa at that point. Garruk was BG at the moment and they felt like it felt more natural to use Nissa when wanting to connect the gatewatch forming with the eldrazi storyline.
*Ajani wasn't as popular as first but grew more popular over time
EDIT;
From Maro;
https://www.tumblr.com/markrosewater/767155873188610048/what-is-the-most-popular-planeswalker-of-each?source=share
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Now does Vivian do that? Not that i remember. It's probably the type of person that turns your lands into into dumb 4/4 beaters that will be useless if you played them this turn because giving them haste was to much of a hassle for madam and also die to Terror, err, Doom Blade... Not impressed.
So Garruk 1 - Vivian 0. It's pretty easy when you think about it.
---
On a more serious note: This guy captures a lot of what's going on with Magic right now quite well. Seeing this from what is obviously a small scale creator almost makes me want to go on a rant how crazily neutered most Magic content is these days (either out of fear of alienating potential adsense revenue or because they have a proverbial gun in their back - when you look even a little closer it's pretty easy to spot the channels where the second is likely to be true since they have a couple of trademark antics that are largely non-existent outside of Magic's content industry) but i won't because a good part of that would open a whole other can of worms.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Gk_htz6ufHA
I think, you are mixing up Nissa and Vivien. Vivien is the gal that puts counter on your creatures, specifically gets you access to more creature cards... and obviously lets them bite stuff.
Nissa is the queen of lands.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
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Wait, you're Red Bobcat? I love your channel and my favorite are the Commander Scrambles with Dr. Hands!
With regards to the increasing power levels of sets, I'd say Garruk isn't quite the embodiment. As you pointed out, he's been somewhat powerful in the past, while ALL Nissa is the most powerful one I can think of with the others being mediocre, and Vivien's cards are usually a similar strength as Garruk for the card advantage she provides as SI noted.
I will admit that I don't keep fully up to date on all the formats and their metas though.
The game's called magic the gathering not big axe the axening.
Garruk's backstory is "some random soldiers destroyed his home now he wears one of their hats." At lease vivien shoots arrows made of the dead animals from her destroyed home.
Actually that's quite possible. I tend to run only a single non-Garruk plainswalker (in mono green at least) and i couldn't remember it's (more probably her) name if my life depended on it, so i just blindly assumed it must be Vivien.
Haha, i wish i was because as you say that guy is pretty brilliant. I just randomly stumbled across his channel and was like "Yeah, he gets it!" but i have to admit his way of analyzing topics is right down my alley and given he seems to be British i feel flattered by the confusion being not even a native speaker myself. All that years of rambling on the internet seem to have paid of
It somewhat depends on the perspective, i guess. As far as ramping is concerned i don't think any planeswalker will beat the original Garruk. Untapping 2 lands at the mere investment of 4 mana is just crazy since even if you don't sit on a Cradle chances are his real cost will be something between zero and him actually being mana positive (all it takes is an Ancient Tomb and an Overgrowth on a Forest). His Primal Hunter incarnation is admittedly a little mediocre basically being a draw spell for 5 a lot of the time which green has plenty of these days and beyond that i kind of lost track of him.
The other green planeswalkers might do bigger things in theory but practically i always end up feeling that they are a little clunky due to being heigher costed and doing way less untapping (if any at all), which also generally gets nerved by the "becomes a creature" part (unless i have a Timber Protector out my interest in launching my lands into combat is pretty much zero).
https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/767829369769082880/hey-mark-are-we-ever-going-to-get-a-set-on#notes
I believe you are saying goodbye to magic