My impression from the people who are disappointed with the set is different from yours though. I think people are complaining that buying a low number of boosters is much more risky than in regular sets, which you point out in the end:
This means that for people not to lose when buying masters 25 they have to cash out on a box (or something close to that), which is already a high entry barrier for what is supposed to be a celebration set.Buying individual packs is much more of a gamble, given the higher price, but booster boxes will pay out their expected value.
I don't know, just leaves a bad taste in your mouth knowing that WoTC is basically forcing you to spend a lot of money for you to get a decent return on your investment. Not to mention that I'm a bit skeptical about the value retention capacity of many cards from the mythic and rare list after the market gets flooded with more copies. Anyway, I think the conclusion is that if you have the money to buy a box and wants to, there is no harm in doing that, but don't try to gamble on individual packs.
Ugin: So, Jace, remember when you were flying around in zendikar chasing a pyromancer who stole a scroll? You guys there released the greatest threat that the universe has ever conceived.
Jace: Uhh, sorry about that.
Ugin: Sorry? Is that all you have to say?
Jace: No, I mean... *tries to mind wipe Ugin*
Ugin: I'm more than 33 thousand years old, and I have gathered more power than you can ever hope to achieve, and you try to erase my mind?
Jace: ...
Ugin: Alright, here is the deal, you're gonna have to put the eldrazi back there. I don't care how, just seal them back, if you want to ask Sorin, go ahead, I can't stand vampires, they are preposterous.
Jace: Is that all?
Ugin: Hum, while you are at it, try to beat the crap out of bolas as well will you? The devious bastard owns me one for using external interference in our fight.
Jace: I thought you were the one that first called a ***** ton of dragons to attack him in the first place.
Ugin: Don't question me young man! I am the Spirit Dragon! I am the most powerful being in all of the multiver..
Jace: How can a Dragon Spirit die anyway? Aren't you dead already?
Ugin: Oh boy, I hate blue mages.
First, ignore retcons. Think that you don't have any information about Nissa or even Lorwyn or Zendikar when you are going to read that piece of uncharted realms. Tell me: do you like it now? I seriously hope you don't, because it sucks. Every turning point in the story made no sense, it is like the writer couldn't put the pieces together and just went with what he had: Nissa and her mother being expelled of their tribe because she was having bad dreams? Really? Her friend Mazik easily the worst character in all stories, because he didn't NEED TO EXIST. He did nothing in favor of the plot, he was just useless and I see no reason why he was conceived or created in the first place. The way that things happened in Lorwyn, everything was just so rushed, so 'wtf?', that it felt ridiculous. She meets some random elves, agrees to go hunting with them and suddenly boom, fight, boom, aurora, boom, run. Blergh, that was TERRIBLE.
Now, to address the issues with all the stories: it seems like they had excellent general ideas of what could happen. It is like someone gave people a guide: here, Nissa starts as being a seer, she is then tormented by bad dreams and her tribe grows scared of her as bad things happen around them. They blame Nissa, who has to go alone, running into the world and understanding the whole of what Zendikar represents until she finally has to confront the Eldrazi prison and fail to release them. That failure is so big that makes her planeswalk into Lorwyn, where she meets other elves and learn their culture and ways, until she develops a guilty conscious about what they do to other living beings, ultimately making her confront her mentor and return to Zendikar, where she realizes she belongs in the first place. There, this is the guide, use it! And the writer goes: "sure! I will ruin everything, don't worry!". This happened in Liliana's story, Chandra's and to some extent in Gideon's (towards the end). Honestly Jace's was the best, it had some cliches, but the person who wrote didn't overextended, he went just as far as it was necessary for a short story while keeping it interesting at the same time (of course it could have been written better, but it is the one that I have the least number of complaints about).
I think they have bad writers. That is it, they have good ideas, but don't know how to make these ideas appealing in the paper. This is sad. Give me two weeks for each character and I can write better stories for every single one of them (although I would have to create the aspects of the worlds as I write, because I barely read any novels to understand their essence). It makes me really sad that these people are the ones that we are going to have writting stories from now on, because they are clearly unprepared.
In any case, I agree with most of the things, except for two:
- I think Chandra's story was worse than Liliana's. Captain Baral was too unidimensional to me, and Liliana's story at least had the cool part of talking to Bolas and with Demons afterwards (also, the Raven Man was pretty cool), while Chandra had none of that. I do think that Jace is the best so far followed by Gideon.
- I think it is pretty reasonable that Jace is considered a freak. You see, he lives in the outskirts of society, in a small town, where he is developing as a telepath. Because of that he can do things that no one can, like solve impossible tests. Add that to his shyness and you have the perfect target for bullies. I don't think it is an original story by any stretch, but it was very well handled and beliavable, and that is all that I'm asking for.
I will say what was the original argument given last time: yes, fine, bad people can get away with bad things IF IT IS BELIAVABLE. Terror King said that everytime someone has plenty of reasons to punish Liliana or at least trying to confront her they let her go with no justification whatsoever. This is bad for the plot, it is TERRIBLE for a story if any character (good or bad) gets aways with things because he is a protagonist. This is the real problem with Liliana.
Is something that ANY writer should avoid. When you read a quote like that you see the expectation that the writer have of how you, the reader, should feel. You should feel that the Irregulars are a family to Gideon. But if up to that point their relationship felt bland or unexploited to you, then this sentence will just fall flat. Of course, there is a thing such as perspective writing, where he is telling the story from Gideon's perspective and things get mixed, in a way that you see how Gideon is feeling about his friends. But again: if up to that point there wasn't enough interaction between the characters to support this feeling, it will mean nothing to you, as it meant nothing to me. If someone else reads and thinks that there was a good relationship developing there, who am I to argue?
On a relatede note: to me if they didn't cast Hixus aside, use him a little bit more and afterwards kill HIM instead of his friends, I would feel the loss much more, because Gideon's interaction with Hixus was much more vivid and realistic.
About Jace's story:
I will not say why I disagree with things such as 'Jace story was crappy'. I gave reasons why his story was the best some posts ago, if the person that wrote this actually cares, he can go back and argue against them. I will just say that I didn't like Jace beforehand, my first contact with him was pretty neutral, and one of the aspects that I most enjoyed about Jace story was Alhammarret. So, in any case, it is just ridiculous to judge, generalize and feel like you are on top of things because YOU didn't like Jace's story where others did. Comical really.
I'm not saying the story was bad, I enjoyed up until a point. From this point on, I think it lost its own pace. But this could be a matter of taste after all.
To care about the well being of others is also a modern conception of heroes. That is not related to being fearless, he can be a martyr and jump to face danger while also being afraid. That would make him more relatable, less of a 'superman' version of a planeswalker. He got some punches and scars, but I never felt that he was in real danger, that he was afraid, that he had some obstacle to overcome. And I also didn't feel bad about his friends, they had almost no screen time up to their deaths, so that when they died I was yawning. I had barely seen any of them speak. To Gideon that was a great loss, but to me it was nothing, and it is bad for you as a reader when the loss of a main character isn't felt by you.
I think it went out of hand. I like the idea of using hieromancy to fight enemies bigger than yourself, but to use the cyclops and then a Titan was not very creative in my opinion, and the whole last act could have happened in a different way. It would be great to see Gideon being scared or afraid at some of the threats that he faced. To be brave doesn't mean to be fearless, it means being capable of overcome your fears. The way that he was depicted he just seemed ready to face ANYTHING no matter what, and that makes the character less of a human to me (or more of an idiot).
I agree 100%. It is very annoying when bad characters get away from everything bad that they do. Heck, even the fact that Liliana is getting away killing the Demons with whom she made a pact annoys me. They are some of the most powerful beings in the multiverse, they should at least be able to curse her for life or something. I've read few things about lili and ob nixilis, but I already like ob nixilis much more. And I was cheering for Garruk as well, he should have chopped liliana's head off, now we have Nissa instead of Garruk as our green planeswalker (and Nissa is much less interesting than Garruk to me) and Liliana keeps flying around not getting any retribution. Man, I hope when she crosses Gideon's path he bringes her to justice.
1. I never read agents of the artifice and I have read only the first two books of Return to Ravnica block. In the latter jace was clearly a good person, in any way you can slice it. He was of course afraid and had difficulty facing his problems (sometimes trying to run away from them), but that doesn't make him bad, it just makes him human. In any case, I was talking about his personality as to how it was depicted in the Uncharted Realms short story, and that CLEARLY is a good person trying to do the right thing while sometimes making mistakes along the way.
2. Alhammaret didn't seem shallow to me, he was clearly a much better character than the Captain that faced Chandra and on par with the Raven Man (I consider Alhamamaret better because he actually had more story time dedicated to him, so we could see him better). Anyway, this is a matter of taste.
3. In the way that iw was written it seemed that the Sphinx was making a distinction, in the same way that in D&D a wizard is someone that has to study to cast a spell and a sorcerer just know them by heart or instinct if you will. I don't think that the spark being magical should make every planeswalker a magic-yielding character, that seems pretty linear and boring, and there are only so many ways that you can describe magic in a text without sounding too ridiculous or over the top. In Magic the Gathering Lore, as it is, clearly we do not have rules about how the characters use their magic, in the sense that you can't tell for instance how exhausted Liliana was after summoning a horde of zombies or how big of a horde she could summon, or anything like that. You just get few hints saying "felt the black mana" or in the case of Chandra "channelized her anger" (something like that).
That is truly bad for any story in general because you basically don't know what the character limit is or how many different things he can do, and every time he does something new and crazy using magic it will look like he did that just out of plot convenience. That is why Jace's story stands out to me: he actually had a conundrum to solve - how could he know about the bad things his master telepath had done unto him without the master finding out and making he forget? The only possible way was if he had to forget as well, and then using some magic to accomplish that. This is a good use of magic because it poses a real problem that a magic world with telepaths floating around would have, and it gives you a clever and objective way of using magic without looking over the top: you erase your own memories. I didn't see anything even remotely similar to that in Chandra's or Liliana's story. One example of how it could have been done in Liliana's case would be if she somehow needed to acquire information from someone and the person kills himself to conceal it. Then she uses her necromancy to revive him and force him to speak anyway. That is a good use of magical power, you are using magic to support a clever solution for a problem that you otherwise wouldn't be able to solve, not just making random shadow claws ripping people apart. Claws that you just can't grasp the limitations or how they are suppose to work whatsoever.
Yeah, you are right. Complexity. Like Darksteel Forge, or Jenara, or Lotus Cobra, or Mox Opal, or Novablast Wurm, etc. Mythics aren't always complex, they just need to have unique/powerful effects. Sometimes that can be pretty simple.
This Merfolk is pretty good for a standard monoblue devotion deck. That being said, I would be astonished if it saw play in Modern. Merfolks have problems with mass removals (decks such as tron), and they don't need a card to gain this sort of tempo advantage, they just need to beatdown strong and fast. Most of their creatures will be bigger than their opponents, and if they start dying this card won't help with that. This card does not address any of merfolk's major weaknesses, and I can't see it being playable outside of one or two lonely copies on sideboard possibly against twin.
I didn't feel like this was a rip-off or an unoriginal story, specially because a telepath would probably hurt someone one day, and would need the help of other telepath. I think everyone is focusing too much on the short scene with the three kids, where the writer was just clearly displaying how hard it was for Jace to handle his powers in many situations. If there is something that bothers me is the fact that all three walkers so far were 'spellcasters' as the sphinx define, meaning that they knew how to use spells without actually learning them, and that is getting boring and repetitive, I hope Gideon and Nissa can kick some asses without using any spells at first.
Her story was much better than Chandra's, and I think that is mainly because we could see her not only young, but after gaining incredible power. The way I see it, the worst part of the story was precisely the one with her brother: the way that the 'zombification' of her brother happened was badly handled. It would have been much better if he actually makes a recovery and slowly turns himself into a zombie, acting weirdly and losing his mind bit by bit. That is much more horrifying than him turning into some powerful black mana zombie that talks ans shoots darkness from his fingertips. Besides that, I hate the way they initially developed Liliana's power. It makes sense that Chandra will have a power based upon instinct, but necromancy should come with precision, rituals and study, and although they point out that Liliana did study a lot, when she was casting her spells it felt like it was more of a 'I guess if I follow my gut it will work' type of spell, and that to me does not fit necromancy (fits very well with pyromancy).
I liked more the characters appearing in her short story than the ones from Chandra: The Raven Man, Kothoped and of course, Nicol Bolas. All of them had something to offer (lady Ana did too, but she was much more secondary the way I see it). It bothers me that she mentions having bested the Raven Man with no further explanation, what does that even mean? This kind of cliffhanger is not great. I think that her fight with Kothoped was a little too extended, but I liked the personality of the Demon, and the Raven Man was great, a very misterious character that I hope it will show up again with more to offer. Overall Liliana's personality was fitting, although I think she changed too quickly into her 'evil being' once the Raven Man convinced her to use her power. I think more effort should have been dedicated to this development.
I didn't miss that. That simply does not matter. It does not matter because it doesn't change the way the character (Baral) was handled. He was unidimensional and with no identifiable motivations.
The thing about writing is: once you make a good character, and use him well, it will be clear to you and any other reader the main traits of his personality (like being cold and oppressive). Explicitly saying it so one or twice is fine, but doing this a lot is excessive guidance, and you take away the different interpretations the reader can have of your character (which would hardly happen with Baral in the first place, because he is a bad character).
I will say the story was medium, at best. The story was predictable, to read everything was a real drag even from a small story arch such as this one. The whole thing with the soldiers clearly was blown out of proportion, going as far as the Captain spending a lot of resources to track one single pyromancer. Captain Baral himself was a bad character. Do you know how you tell a bad character? One-dimensionality. You couldn't feel any motivation in him, he was just evil for the sake of being evil, it was not clear what about pyromancers made him so angry, and why he was willing to go as far as burning down innocent people to incriminate a pyromancer. Chandra being attacked by the constructs also made no sense, what exactly triggered the constructs in the foundry? Was it a defense system? That would happen to anyone? So why did Pashiri told her it was safe in there?
Given the problems, I will mention some good things: I think they were spot-on with Chandra's personality, which is a very good thing, and the way they described her power and how it made her feel was very vivid and interesting. I think if they had dedicated the same effort they did on Chandra to some of the other characters, the story would have been better.
About the writing itself, and not the story, I think it was good. It is complicated to judge since english isn't my mother tongue, but it was overall a good vocabulary range and use of metaphors, things that make the story more animated. I do think that the writer went a little too far in some parts, giving one simple example:
“I don’t think you understand, child. You’re already in violation of the law in a half-dozen ways. Comply, or I will make you comply.” He put his hand on Chandra’s shoulder—gently, but with no tenderness in it. It was a clinical touch, somehow revolting in its cold detachment.
This was extracted from the text. The last phrase was not needed, describing the way the touch felt takes away some of the reader's interpretation. It was clear from the first part: gently, but with no tenderness. Now you can interpret that as you wish, but if the author gives this kind of excessive description it makes the story clunky, and undermines the reader experience by taking away the way he or she can see things when reading.
Anyway, that is my first analysis, I will look at Liliana later and say what I think.
EDIT: just fixed some grammar mistakes (I'm sure there are plenty still).