I have never watched Doctor Who, but when they first announced this product a few months back I watched a few clips on YT and read a few wiki pages. And you know what? It looked kind of fun! I could see why there's such a big fandom for it, and I even felt like I could've become a fan myself in a parallel universe where I grew up with it.
So it's not like I hate Doctor Who (or Warhammer, or LoTR, or any other franchises that have gotten UB cards) ... but I just can't bring myself to like the MtG crossover stuff. Yes, I know, Magic is very heterogenous. But searching on Scryfall and seeing that an interesting commander in the color combo I'm looking for is only available in the form of cross-promotion material for an outside IP, idk ... it just instantly kills all my interest in playing the game.
The problem there is Lord of the Rings has become such a foundational piece of more fantasy that literally anything can be a LotR-inspired world. Modern depictions of Shadalar count, pre-Time Spiral Benalia counts, some parts of Bant count, there's even some argument for both Eldraine and Lorwyn due to shared source material.
Eh, I think that's only true if you look at the broad strokes. I don't read a lot of fantasy anymore, but I'm under the impression that there are relatively few works that truly follow the feel and tone of LoTR. For better and for worse, modern fantasy books mostly focus on telling an enjoyable and gripping story that sells books. LoTR focuses more on building a mythology; it's not really "market-oriented." For a fantasy story, it takes itself very seriously and has a strong focus on morality that feels almost antiquated at times. I remember giving up halfway through the first book on my first try because it felt so boring and stuffy. It's obviously still an interesting work, but not in the meta-driven sense of contemporary pop-culture fantasy. Honestly, it's kind of weird that LoTR has become as "sellable" as it is now (I suppose the movies play a big role here).
It would be interesting to see another fantasy project that attempts this sort of myth-building, but in the context of the 21st century rather than the 20th. There are obviously element like all the orcs or southern/eastern peoples being on the evil side that deserve to be re-examined, in addition to other points that weren't really "a thing" in Tolkien's time. But that would require more effort than taking something that's already popular, doing a few palette swaps (without touching any of the underlying worldbuilding) and painting yourself as some sort of brave pioneer. It's so half-assed. But I guess it's the best you can reasonably expect from people who are always telling us that the most recent set was the best-selling set of all time.
The reason (as far as I'm aware) is that systematic racism against non-white people existed in the past and still exists today, so all media with a predominantly white cast has to be cleaned of that blemish through incorporating people of more ethnicities to make everyone feel included. The other way round it's fair game because those ethnicities have traditionally been pushed to the sides and deserve more attention. It's not about the internal consistency of the setting, but reflecting real-world ideals and issues.
I do get the line of reasoning, but man ... often it's just so tacked on. Especially for something like LotR, where the author clearly built off of real-world cultures and history. Maybe in an ideal society, skin color is literally just a color and nothing changes if you were to swap it around. But in the past (and even today) it is deeply tied to culture. That's where the dissonance strikes for me: This is simultaneously supposed to be medieval Europe and an idealized modern-day America, but the underlying world-building (which is mostly untouched) just ... doesn't really support it.
I would actually really like to see a completely re-imagined LoTR that goes beyond just changing some character's skin color. After all, we do already have the original novel and the movies, and another version being made doesn't erase them. But that would require too much effort for the money they'd be able to make off of it, so we're stuck with the superficial approach that works within the constraints of capitalism.
Ultimately, UB still sucks. I'm just looking at all the resources invested into this, and I'd rather have Wizards pour those into building and fleshing out their own LoTR-inspired world (or creative/storytelling for other planes). It started with one-off Un-Cards, now the game has full Non-Magic-IP sets. This set will obviously be successful, so I can only imagine it snowballing further from here. The Magic Super Smash Bros-Verse isn't far off.
Eh, it's very subjective I guess. I think if you're that bent on playing Sultai Faeries with those four ancient janky faerie cards + Maraleaf Pixie, you could just choose a generic goodstuff commander like Muldrotha, Damia, Yarok or Zimone and Dina and be done with it.
Faerie Noble is literally a Lord for Fairies in monogreen. Willow Priestess even cheat out fairies from hand to play for FREE and even gain additional protection abilities on green creatures.
Those cards are MADE for being a fairy tribal, and currently not a single sultai legendary creature is remotely appropriate in both flavor or mechanics for a Sultai fairy tribal.
OK, I guess there were two more green Faerie tribal cards, one an Elvish Piper sidegrade and the other a mediocre lord (which they made a better version of in Time Spiral). The rest of your list is basically just "if tribe X could play an additional color it would be an easy power boost," which is true for all tribes.
Personally I just don't see the reason for why this handful of faerie cards (some of which are very old and underpowered) absolutely warrants a Sultai faerie tribal commander. The playstyles of tribal decks already tend to blend together, I don't think it's a good thing to randomly add colors for "value."
EDIT: Oh, and also we got only 3 monowhite fairies in all the entire game (plus other crappy 3 white/blue) but apparently this was enough of a good reason to make an Esper Fairy tribal the first time we went to eldraine. How hypocritical, really.
It's not really faerie tribal though ... Alela is a faerie, boosts (most) faeries and makes faerie tokens, but she's really an "artifacts and enchantments matter" commander (because that's what it wants you to build around).
I'd be fine with a similar commander that is Sultai, happens to be a faerie and does something that allows for a faerie tribal subtheme. But a faerie commander in the strict sense that is connected to the creature type directly (searching for cards of that type, scaling off of tribe members on the battlefield, generating CA whenever a tribe member does something...) should be UB imo. In that sense, a Dimir faerie tribal commander doesn't really exist yet, since Nymris, Wydwen and even Oona herself only care about the tribe indirectly.
Oh, there's a UB "Fae Dominion" commander precon. I still think of Eldraine as a discount Lorwyn of sorts, but more Dimir faeries are always a good thing
Still no Sultai Faerie tribal in a set that literally have also UG faeries with stuff like Maraleaf Pixie? Boo
Aside from Maraleaf Pixie and Ivy, Gleeful Spellthief, there's maybe one other green Faerie you'd want to include in a commander deck (Scryb Ranger). Why are people so bent on expanding a tribe's colors, especially when there's so little material to work with? Faerie tribal is fine as Dimir.
Oh, there's a UB "Fae Dominion" commander precon. I still think of Eldraine as a discount Lorwyn of sorts, but more Dimir faeries are always a good thing
Are they doing a timeskip? Will and Rowan look much older than before - easily ~10 years.
Edit: Nevermind, the box art shows them as their usual around-20 selves. So maybe it's just a "different artists" thing. But maybe the witch could have something to do with it?
3. Plus or minus Kaya and Elspeth, I almost expect WotC to decide that only Chandra, Jace, Garruk, Liliana, and Ajani retain their sparks, as a nod to them being the original "neowalkers".
I could see this. I also expect Quintorius to keep his newly acquired spark though. They're clearly not planning to retire the planeswalker card type, so they're going to slowly build a new cast of characters. Quint could be the first member of the "new generation."
I guess they could also do the "shipwrecked explorer" trope with him in Ixalan 2.0. They already did that with Jace though...
I'm fine with planeswalkers desparking. Planebound characters are more interesting anywhere, and random omenpaths crisscrossing the multiverse lead to a bigger sense of adventure (instead of everyone who matters just being able to go everywhere on a whim). I just wish there was any explanation/hint for why the desparking happened, and why some were unaffected. Maybe we'll still get this?
Anyway, I hope they do some interesting stuff with the planes now. Looking forward to seeing more of Eldraine, New Capenna, and even Ravnica (*gasp*). I'm not getting up my hopes too much, because branding dictates that most planes will more or less go back to what they were before. I hope they wait a few years until the next "big bad" shows up and do more small-scale storytelling for the time being. That works better with the current story format anyway.
If Path of the Enigma and the Nahiri story are any indication, I assume the next story arc is going to revolve around the suppression of interplanar travel.
I still don't get the mass desparking. What purpose does it serve?
I do like it as a worldbuilding fact (since I never really cared for PWs all that much), but yeah ... can't really say I get it, either.
Wizards is going "well, explosions destroy stuff ... and the Sylex exploded in the Blind Eternities ... and PWs use them to planeswalk ... so their sparks went away." It's some kind of dream logic that only works when you think about it in the broadest possible terms. It feels like something they came up with to justify MOM as the trigger for the big change they promised, but there's no real rhyme or reason to it. Especially with those weird exceptions, like Chandra and Ajani.
It would be one thing if MOM had been set up in a way that foreshadowed this. The best we got was "something bad could happen", and well ... something bad happened, but it doesn't feel satisfying. It's like if Emrakul being imprisoned in the moon also caused 10 random walkers to suddenly become super powerful. Cool, I guess, but ... why?
I can only hope they build something out of this, because I do think that it is interesting as a starting-off point. But I'm not very optimistic after this first story.
To me it looks like the majority of planeswalkers are going to be desparked (because I see no real reason for only a few of them being affected). However, it also appears that the planes have been brought "closer together" so they can be traversed even by people without working sparks, as many predicted.
I find it pretty lame that they included so many generic "random person/animal from plane X" cards. If you're doing a mini-set that's supposed to be focused on the story, why not fill it to the brim with story relevant stuff?
Exactly what I was thinking as well. This set is not built for limited. It does not suffer from the same design constraints as the other sets. It's vision statement was being an epilogue to the MoM story.
Why is there a random oni in it? To tell us that Oni didn't go extinct? I don't think anyone thought they were going to???
And why is Nassari alive and well? Didn't she get compleated? Or did the elder dragon spell revert all the professors (and students)?
Also, very suspicious we don't have a single not desparked walker. I still want to hold onto my theory that all walkers despark and anyone can cross the blind eternities now. Of course, it's simply more likely they just didn't open a planeswalker as there's probably like only one or two in the whole set. Still!
Some cards seem like they are special showcase versions, and we already know from the official Jolrael spoiler that there's a ridiculous amount of different printings. So I'm kind of hoping that at least the "regular versions" with a non-crowded textbox will have some flavor text? Otherwise they really exaggerated big time when they said that the Kenrith's Royal Funeral was "the least spoilery card they could show." Well, never trust a marketer...
I guess you could take the oni and go "well, the Phyrexians caused a lot of death and destruction, and that lead to a resurgence of oni activity on Kamigawa." But that's like, neat fluff at best. Certainly not something that would have to be included in a story-focused mini-set. And then you have cards like the Frillback, which don't even allow for that level of mental gymnastics. Just a dino on Ixalan, living in the jungle, no connection to anything whatsoever ... why? To show that the conflict is over? I don't think we need a special slot for that!
So it's not like I hate Doctor Who (or Warhammer, or LoTR, or any other franchises that have gotten UB cards) ... but I just can't bring myself to like the MtG crossover stuff. Yes, I know, Magic is very heterogenous. But searching on Scryfall and seeing that an interesting commander in the color combo I'm looking for is only available in the form of cross-promotion material for an outside IP, idk ... it just instantly kills all my interest in playing the game.
It would be interesting to see another fantasy project that attempts this sort of myth-building, but in the context of the 21st century rather than the 20th. There are obviously element like all the orcs or southern/eastern peoples being on the evil side that deserve to be re-examined, in addition to other points that weren't really "a thing" in Tolkien's time. But that would require more effort than taking something that's already popular, doing a few palette swaps (without touching any of the underlying worldbuilding) and painting yourself as some sort of brave pioneer. It's so half-assed. But I guess it's the best you can reasonably expect from people who are always telling us that the most recent set was the best-selling set of all time.
I do get the line of reasoning, but man ... often it's just so tacked on. Especially for something like LotR, where the author clearly built off of real-world cultures and history. Maybe in an ideal society, skin color is literally just a color and nothing changes if you were to swap it around. But in the past (and even today) it is deeply tied to culture. That's where the dissonance strikes for me: This is simultaneously supposed to be medieval Europe and an idealized modern-day America, but the underlying world-building (which is mostly untouched) just ... doesn't really support it.
I would actually really like to see a completely re-imagined LoTR that goes beyond just changing some character's skin color. After all, we do already have the original novel and the movies, and another version being made doesn't erase them. But that would require too much effort for the money they'd be able to make off of it, so we're stuck with the superficial approach that works within the constraints of capitalism.
Ultimately, UB still sucks. I'm just looking at all the resources invested into this, and I'd rather have Wizards pour those into building and fleshing out their own LoTR-inspired world (or creative/storytelling for other planes). It started with one-off Un-Cards, now the game has full Non-Magic-IP sets. This set will obviously be successful, so I can only imagine it snowballing further from here. The Magic Super Smash Bros-Verse isn't far off.
Personally I just don't see the reason for why this handful of faerie cards (some of which are very old and underpowered) absolutely warrants a Sultai faerie tribal commander. The playstyles of tribal decks already tend to blend together, I don't think it's a good thing to randomly add colors for "value."
It's not really faerie tribal though ... Alela is a faerie, boosts (most) faeries and makes faerie tokens, but she's really an "artifacts and enchantments matter" commander (because that's what it wants you to build around).
I'd be fine with a similar commander that is Sultai, happens to be a faerie and does something that allows for a faerie tribal subtheme. But a faerie commander in the strict sense that is connected to the creature type directly (searching for cards of that type, scaling off of tribe members on the battlefield, generating CA whenever a tribe member does something...) should be UB imo. In that sense, a Dimir faerie tribal commander doesn't really exist yet, since Nymris, Wydwen and even Oona herself only care about the tribe indirectly.
Edit: Nevermind, the box art shows them as their usual around-20 selves. So maybe it's just a "different artists" thing. But maybe the witch could have something to do with it?
I guess they could also do the "shipwrecked explorer" trope with him in Ixalan 2.0. They already did that with Jace though...
Anyway, I hope they do some interesting stuff with the planes now. Looking forward to seeing more of Eldraine, New Capenna, and even Ravnica (*gasp*). I'm not getting up my hopes too much, because branding dictates that most planes will more or less go back to what they were before. I hope they wait a few years until the next "big bad" shows up and do more small-scale storytelling for the time being. That works better with the current story format anyway.
If Path of the Enigma and the Nahiri story are any indication, I assume the next story arc is going to revolve around the suppression of interplanar travel.
Wizards is going "well, explosions destroy stuff ... and the Sylex exploded in the Blind Eternities ... and PWs use them to planeswalk ... so their sparks went away." It's some kind of dream logic that only works when you think about it in the broadest possible terms. It feels like something they came up with to justify MOM as the trigger for the big change they promised, but there's no real rhyme or reason to it. Especially with those weird exceptions, like Chandra and Ajani.
It would be one thing if MOM had been set up in a way that foreshadowed this. The best we got was "something bad could happen", and well ... something bad happened, but it doesn't feel satisfying. It's like if Emrakul being imprisoned in the moon also caused 10 random walkers to suddenly become super powerful. Cool, I guess, but ... why?
I can only hope they build something out of this, because I do think that it is interesting as a starting-off point. But I'm not very optimistic after this first story.
I guess you could take the oni and go "well, the Phyrexians caused a lot of death and destruction, and that lead to a resurgence of oni activity on Kamigawa." But that's like, neat fluff at best. Certainly not something that would have to be included in a story-focused mini-set. And then you have cards like the Frillback, which don't even allow for that level of mental gymnastics. Just a dino on Ixalan, living in the jungle, no connection to anything whatsoever ... why? To show that the conflict is over? I don't think we need a special slot for that!