They'll most likely go with another "Bolas after WAR" type ending. Most of the Phyrexians are purged from the invaded planes, and New Phyrexia (with the Praetors) is sealed off. The physical damage done to the planes remains, but in a way they are able to recover from. That way, they can easily bring back Phyrexia again in 5-10 years.
On the other hand, the single card from Aftermath look like the battles will actually happen and have real high-profile casualties. I really do not know how the planes could return to any semblance of their former selves (again, Theros with seas turned to oil seems to be the worst).
Eh, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Wizards does recognize the planes they've made as valuable marketing tools for their brand, so they'll be careful to not **** them up too much. Some important characters will get killed off, some important landmarks destroyed ... but everything will be more or less back to normal pretty fast. Thinking about planes like Innistrad, Zendikar, and Dominaria after Time Spiral here.
Yeah, I'm getting old ... I don't even feel like reading the rules text anymore. I don't play anyway. Lots of neat artwork, although I'm getting tired of New Phyrexia and the "Marvel vibe" already. It's good to know this story will end here for now.
Hm, I don't like that the first look at my favourite plane (Lorwyn) in years is going to be of it being invaded by Phyrexia. But you've got to take what you can get.
Anyway, considering how there seems to be time for a long and ceremonious funeral for Linden and Kenrith in Aftermath, I guess most of the planes will be fine in the end. I'm suspecting they will go with a "if you kill the queen all the goons die too" solution of sorts.
Also, I guess we'll just have to forget the whole "Phyrexian oil is filled with nanobots and one scratch is enough" thing from ONE. Because if that was taken to its logical conclusion, Phyrexia wouldn't really have to send troops anywhere. Just hook the world up to Realmbreaker, let the oil seep in, and you're done. But that wouldn't make for a very exciting final battle now, wouldn't it...
On a more positive note, if this is going to lead to the planes being "semi-connected" to each other in the way the realms from Kaldheim are, I'm looking forward to it. It removes the constraints for the story to exclusively focus on PWs plane-hopping and allows for interesting new storytelling opportunities (in theory, at least).
Yeah, my main Vorthos area of interest has always been art and worldbuilding, and it's the main thing that keeps me coming back to online communities and keeps me low-key engaged with MtG even though I've stopped playing the game after the whole UB nonsense started.
I've read some of the stories and books, and sure, some of them are fine ... but especially with the modern story, you're simply setting yourself up for disappointment if you're expecting genuinely good fantasy stories. Wizards have said themselves that what they're aiming for is Marvel comics level storytelling, so that's the best you're going to get.
I really wish they'd step up their worldbuilding game though. New planes in 202X aren't being allowed to develop complexities, because "the average person wouldn't get it" or "why go into this much detail when it could make it difficult to revisit the plane later." There's too much marketing, risk-hedging and trope-flinging and not enough interesting substance/texture.
Still a lot of the things that come out (like the planeswalkers guide to New Phyrexia) come across as "we can't be bothered" which may (or may not) come as a result of an understaffed creative team.
Yesterday, I read through some of the old Planeswalker's Guide to Innistrad because of a Reddit thread I saw ... and I was really taken aback by how much material there was. All this info on random locations and people, lots of concept art, explanations of concepts and local culture that show up on 1-2 cards from the sets at best... And there's multiple parts, one for each major region on the plane, each at least as long as the recent PW guide on ONE. When people talk about the old lore being better, they usually refer to the Brother's War and other stuff mostly from the 90's - but OG Innistrad was 2011. It's painfully clear that the concepting/worldbuilding time new planes get nowadays has gone down significantly, and it shows.
....all this for a ****ing OFFSCREEN compleation after being stuck with that idiot Lukka and turned into a toy for Elesh Norn to activate the Realmbreaker?
What makes this even funnier is that the story doesn't even describe a scene like the one shown on the card All Will be One (the art of which the story ends on). Nissa just appears alongside the other goons and doesn't seem to play any special role in the "Realmbreaker ritual."
Real Vorthoses are truly doomed to suffer. I count myself lucky that I'm not that big of a lorehead.
What even are aspirants? What is the internal structure of each faction? How are the mirrans holding up and how are they surviving (look, I've given up on the "what do they eat" but is it too much to ask for to get some information over the biggest/most important resistance cells and how they deal with a world that is drenched in glistening oil?)? What happened to bladehold and the other mirran holdouts? The whole thing with the phoenixes is completely absent, even though that's such a cool detail. The list goes on.
There are sooo many things like that. The Mirran faction feels left vague on purpose because it doesn't really make sense when you think about it. Yeah, there's Urabrask, but you tell me the the Phyrexians converted the complete world and yet can't deal with one village worth of leftover Mirrans? One reason I can imagine kind of making sense it that they're secretly left alone on purpose to serve as "crops" for more organic material to phyrexianize, Matrix-style.
I'd also really like to know why Elesh Norn has become so fond of mites, what they are used for and what makes Skrelv legendary.
Bummer. I really wanted some info on Ovika, Enigma Goliath (one of my favorite cards from the set art-wise) and they even had her (?) picture under "unaligned Phyrexians," but then ... nothing. I'm not getting my hopes up, but maybe we get a "Legends of ONE" article later? I remember there being articles like this for other sets.
They mentioned that the Domini "roam the spheres" - I wonder how Mondrak moves around. Does he float? Or does he roll? Also, things veer very close to the comical whenever Phyrexians are described doing rather mundane and human-like things, e.g. thinking of Urabrask as a "glorified factory manager" or "renovating" Mirran research facilities.
Yeah, although both of the Mite tokens look good in their own right, it's a bit disappointing that neither of them resemble the mites depicted on the cards from the set.
Maybe I'm just imagining things (because he just did a basic land cycle in DomU), but it feels like card art by Seb McKinnon is dwindling and there is an increase in other artists with similar/adjacent styles (Eli Minaya, Tiffany Turrill, A.M.Sartor). I think WotC hasn't written him off completely, but they're trying to diversify their range of artists so that one of them "going bad" has less of an impact going forward.
Anyway, considering how there seems to be time for a long and ceremonious funeral for Linden and Kenrith in Aftermath, I guess most of the planes will be fine in the end. I'm suspecting they will go with a "if you kill the queen all the goons die too" solution of sorts.
Also, I guess we'll just have to forget the whole "Phyrexian oil is filled with nanobots and one scratch is enough" thing from ONE. Because if that was taken to its logical conclusion, Phyrexia wouldn't really have to send troops anywhere. Just hook the world up to Realmbreaker, let the oil seep in, and you're done. But that wouldn't make for a very exciting final battle now, wouldn't it...
On a more positive note, if this is going to lead to the planes being "semi-connected" to each other in the way the realms from Kaldheim are, I'm looking forward to it. It removes the constraints for the story to exclusively focus on PWs plane-hopping and allows for interesting new storytelling opportunities (in theory, at least).
I've read some of the stories and books, and sure, some of them are fine ... but especially with the modern story, you're simply setting yourself up for disappointment if you're expecting genuinely good fantasy stories. Wizards have said themselves that what they're aiming for is Marvel comics level storytelling, so that's the best you're going to get.
I really wish they'd step up their worldbuilding game though. New planes in 202X aren't being allowed to develop complexities, because "the average person wouldn't get it" or "why go into this much detail when it could make it difficult to revisit the plane later." There's too much marketing, risk-hedging and trope-flinging and not enough interesting substance/texture.
Yesterday, I read through some of the old Planeswalker's Guide to Innistrad because of a Reddit thread I saw ... and I was really taken aback by how much material there was. All this info on random locations and people, lots of concept art, explanations of concepts and local culture that show up on 1-2 cards from the sets at best... And there's multiple parts, one for each major region on the plane, each at least as long as the recent PW guide on ONE. When people talk about the old lore being better, they usually refer to the Brother's War and other stuff mostly from the 90's - but OG Innistrad was 2011. It's painfully clear that the concepting/worldbuilding time new planes get nowadays has gone down significantly, and it shows.
Real Vorthoses are truly doomed to suffer. I count myself lucky that I'm not that big of a lorehead.
I'd also really like to know why Elesh Norn has become so fond of mites, what they are used for and what makes Skrelv legendary.
They mentioned that the Domini "roam the spheres" - I wonder how Mondrak moves around. Does he float? Or does he roll? Also, things veer very close to the comical whenever Phyrexians are described doing rather mundane and human-like things, e.g. thinking of Urabrask as a "glorified factory manager" or "renovating" Mirran research facilities.