There has also been a lot of technological innovation over the last few decades. Magic came out of 1994 and the last age whenever print media was still popular. So the issue was the transition and integration of the new media with the old media. Originally they tried to turn Magic comic books over the years, but it has failed repeatedly and now we have Dack still on Theros.
Amazon Ebooks have revolutionized media. So having serials now makes more sense, it's episodic and quick term base. Liliana's in her 30's (minus being a century old). Chandra is early 20's, Gideon is late 20's early 30's. Jace is early 20's. Nissa is probably 20's as well. So for the most part the Gatewatch is still rather young. The oldest planeswalkers in terms of actual real age are Sarkhan Vol in his early 40's.
In the older Magic worlds there were hundreds of years of time skips that allowed change to occur with each Magic set. Between Invasion Block and Odyssey was about 300 years. Then over the last few years since we no longer have godwalkers anymore, the game has shifted towards lower power levels for planeswalkers. That means slowing down time.
The planeswalkers were too powerful to begin with, it's basically like being Super Sayain Blue. Liliana showed that a planeswalker can over time begin to approach some of their old power level, but it has a higher price and cost. Bolas similar has showed this to approach his old power level would require a massive power up.
Considering the age of the current planesewalkers, we'll probably eventually see different precepts. Urza had a son in the original storyline, but there wasn't any other planeswalker abilities about his son and it was hinted that his son might have been Urza's as well.
So thus far we can explore:
1. Planeswalker families
2. Children of planeswalkers
3. Marriage
Those are three things that only someone like Urza and Nahiri really had any patience for, and even then only Urza's wife was explored. Nahiri's husband was never explored, nor was it explained whether she bore any children. Since her going insane, we're not going to see any of that.
Concurrently, I think the movement towards having LilianaXJace ship is a good start. Especially whenever Liliana "grows up" and moves beyond being too selfish and embraces other aspects of black's emotional spectrum. But we're not at that level, yet.
Personally, Urza at his best was his relationship with his brother that defined him during The Brother's War. His blatant opportunism combined with his tendency to overplan made a more interesting character. A person who tried to change the world to be around his own expectations, rather than being passive like Jace. Tolarian Community College did a good job in looking at Jace vs. Urza dichotomy. Urza represents an old character doing what we try to accomplish as a teenager, while Jace is a young man living out what a middle aged person would with life events defining them.
To be honest, Chandra having a mother-daughter relationship in this new set returns to some of the better aspects of what made Urza a great character. In the end we have Karn as the culmination of the Legacy and truly one of his Urza's children. So we do have Urza 2.0. Wizards just needs to be more comfortable with using Karn more.
I would say that the use of Liliana comports also a return to some of the older aspects of the game, as well as a push to use Nicol Bolas. Characters like Sorin, Ugin, and Nahiri are also older 'walkers. A good move would also be returning Teferi to the multiverse once more to drum up better support for the past.
But I think Dominaria will be revisited but it is better off done with looking at a specific continent rather than the big world of Dominaria.
So where is the information that Bolas is involved in the Egypt set?
The last time Bolas had an area under his control he was Emperor Madara that was an area focused on black, red, and blue mana with Japanese mythology. My own speculation is that they're trying to insinuate that Bolas is similar to Apocalypse from X-Men.
But either way, the question that I come to is whether they're going to push mono color again or go with dual or tri color as a shard set.
Either way, we know one of the gods is a pseudo Anubis and this set with have a lot of death theme as well as mummies as zombies.
So far not liking any of the mechanics for Kozilek and friends. It makes me think of Kozilek wearing a fez and driving around in a tiny car. There's really not much in the way for mechanically ideal settings. There will be of course some great cards potential, but it will be selective.
So the Gatewatch (Avengers) may end up fighting Ultron (an Aetherborn)...
That Aetherborn is Ashiok
For starters Ashiok loses a bit of flesh off to vapors at random intervals. The head dress that he wears looks exactly like something from Ancient Egypt. The next block will probably delve more into Ashiok. As ancient Greece and Egypt were trade partners and heavily interwoven with Roman mythology and religion. Ashiok going to Theros and then going back home makes sense in that Ashiok worked with devotion and would thus be familiar with gods if coming from the Egyptian plane with 5 gods (confirmed).
Indian world is a major plus.
Steampunk never interested me.
This having vehicles doesn't impress me much, and none of the mechanics scream "Modern" thus far. This set screams EDH and casual. The competitive side of me has an eye out for competitive Energy units. The casual side of me is looking at the dwarves. EDH side is looking at the colorless artifacts for my Kozilek deck. My Cube side is speculating on whether this will be a good draft set or not.
The characters draw me into this set, the mechanics do not.
I have taken a themed Enchantment Cube and tore a part a Cube I had been building for sometime. It was an artifact based cube, added it to the enchantment cube. Treated colorless as a "sixth color of Magic" in a similar style to your Eldrazi Guild section. Well more like ripped it off. Theros was an extremely weak base to build an enchantment cube off of along with the craziness of Urza Block.
So out of the gate, I'm just trying to think of what would be the best archetypes to approach with Heroic, Bestow, and Eldrazi's with the experience of your own Cube with the Eldrazi section?
A. Hair
B. Moon
C. Japanese
D. Able to defeat strange intergalactic beasts
E. A part of a team
While Sailor Moon and Tamiyo are very different. There is something to be said for each of the small an subtle differences that the connection betwixt Japanese popular culture with Kaguya legend and the moon is something that connects back to Tamiyo being a moonfolk, but the question is whether she will develop into a more of a "Sailor Moon?"
I hope that we see three new commanders, period and do not have wedge sub commanders taking up slots. This is something that we're really only going to see once every 4-5 years.
I'd say considering the passion that is going on here, they managed to do quite well with Nahiri. Like I said, she's more akin to Urza. Whenever Urza went to make the Metathran, he had to steal a dragon egg. The dragon that had the egg could only have one child in a life time, always female, and reproduced asexually. So he had a team of his students from Tolarian Academy steal the egg. The dragon caught the one student and kept in an illusion of reliving death over and over, meanwhile she confronted Urza. She then fried Urza with dragonfire and then he regenerated and quickly explained what he had done and why he took it. She wanted justice, so he offered her his student for a time which she punished him for one month and then released him. Meanwhile, the real mastermind was Urza.
Urza is after the big picture, irregardless of the small things in the multiverse. He was the person who initiated things, and caused a lot of harm. The Bloodlines Project created a lot of havoc, but also created Hannah and Gerard. The temporal experiments created the temporal rifts, but also gave us Karn as the start of the Legacy.
Her entire plan was to have Sorin sacrifice himself to save Innistraad, meanwhile he was willing to abandon it. He sees things, similar to Ugin, on a much larger intergalactic level. Sorin is about himself, Ugin is about the big balance. Nahiri was for others and Zendikar, now it's about the past and she's given way to madness in the oldwalker style similar to what happened to Urza. This doesn't make her totally evil, but similar to Taysir and friends there will probably be a redemption moment for her. Similar to Urza he found some peace in what he was able to build what wasn't evil.
Sorin can return. Avacyn, in a way, can as the Vault of the Archangel still exists.
Red burn is basically the Sharingan, Naya is the Mangekyou Sharingan where your eyes bleed and go blind if you overuse it.
And right now, debating what is better depends on the metagame. A person blind from overuse of the Mangekyou Sharingan is worthless, without becomming skilled enough as a pilot to awaken to the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan. And if you're damn good, you get the Rinnengan.
With each of these different layers of piloting ability and deck construction, therefore we must consider that his or her red burn deck is good for specific metagames. Those of us that play Naya Burn could learn from initial testing with some of the red burn, presuming with the deck's limitations there are attempts to combat and tournament results versus specific metagames. Limitations breed creativity and while deck designers have the capacity right now to have almost a decade of building experience. There are still unknown unknowns from good data that can help with some innovation through understanding those limitations from different builds.
Encouraging good game play is equally necessary and encouraging full tournament reports from the respective person. It opens up people to be more open to change as they can more easily see where the weaknesses are themselves.
In the end, we're all Uchiha here and we need to support the Will of Fire.
Basically, she's an old 'walker. Urza did the same thing, it took him twenty years to become some what stable again. Even then, he was never one of the types to be really "normal" again after the Sylex Blast and chasing Phyrexia. He was immoral, calculating, and Machiavellian. Barrin, his friend, even stated that sanity among planeswalkers was difficult to judge. Whenever we consider the most stable and "normal" there were bouts where many made really bad decisions like Taysir.
Ugin is going to be the counterbalance to the entire theme, he wants to specifically get Nahiri back. Sorin and Ugin both learned lithomancy from her, and, for a dragon, is probably the most "normal" planeswalker that would be close to her in age. Probably one of the only few to understand Sorin very well and her as well, and considering he had a legitimate excuse for not coming as well. She will probably aim for Ugin and be brought into conflict with Sarkhan at some point. But that will probably be the end of her storyline, meaning redemption or death.
She is tied to community and a sense of balance. Too much devastation rocked her world.
STORYLINE SPOILERS found in the Artbook:
In the confusion Nahiri takes the chance and seals him into a stone prison saying that he has no other choice now but to stay and die with his plane.
Nahiri planeswalks away after she locks Sorin and before emrakul is trapped, with a creepy smile on her face.
So we just need Ugin to turn up with a chisel? That sounds doable.
*ETA: Actually, seeing as Sorin freed Ugin from *his* stone sarcophagus, there'd be a neat symmetry there.
Or... Sorin could just planeswalk out of the stone? Definitely need to wait for more details on this one.
Nahiri's instability and Sorin's own lack of humanity is from their all powerfullness since human 'walkers tended to go insane after a while from that power and become disconnected to reality. Only really Ugin has dealt with this to any degree as a "person" but they all took a "large world view" rather than a small world view of the people around them.
It irritates me though that they killed off Olivia, Bruna, and Gisela.
Nahiri is basically their new Boros 'walker for the time being, and I think with her popularity she will probably be around for a while. The unresolved storyline right now is Sorin, Nahiri, and Ugin along with the consequences for killing Umalog and Kozilek.
The allusion to the older storyline with Urza and Serra's Sanctum is pretty straight forwards, they revisited the disconnectedness and inhumanity and madness within the various old 'walkers. Urza particularly was big picture focused and was not a nice person. Sorin is selfish, while Nahiri has been warped and lost her humanity. Her defining trait will be finding her personality, Sorin will have to find his less selfish side and learn empathy.
I feel that Ugin right now is basically Yoda while Nicol Bolas is the Emperor. That's where the storyline is going next when we see Tarkir again and bringing together all the smaller storylines into what is Bolas doing along with the Legion of Doom/Consortium coming back.
It's Modern fodder and will find a home in some casual decks, there's people that are going to be trying to break this card for a few years and we might see something. I feel that this is probably one of the better "junk" cards in the game as with One With Nothing. Soul Splicer card was bad, this is a "good" bad card that has limited effect but can build an entire archetype potentially in Standard and/or Modern. That is worth the potential of having the cards sit for a number of years until the right cards are put together in the right deck. Even if it's tier 2.
Very fake. Ultimate templating is wrong: see Rest in Peace.
That and fifty zombies was overpowered, this isn't Naruto with Shadow Clones. You need Kiki Jiki for Naruto, not Liliana. If Nahiri stacked within for Emrakul, then we can expect Liliana to be the foil for Nahiri. Whatever that means.
The term is called Splendid Isolation for Britain thinking that it is different than mainland Europe. It's a historic concept, similar to the US and Manifest Destiny and rugged individualism having no real powers around the US during its rise.
Looking at some of the options, there are some decent picks I didn't see before. However, there's no leeway for political effects or punisher triggers.
Amazon Ebooks have revolutionized media. So having serials now makes more sense, it's episodic and quick term base. Liliana's in her 30's (minus being a century old). Chandra is early 20's, Gideon is late 20's early 30's. Jace is early 20's. Nissa is probably 20's as well. So for the most part the Gatewatch is still rather young. The oldest planeswalkers in terms of actual real age are Sarkhan Vol in his early 40's.
In the older Magic worlds there were hundreds of years of time skips that allowed change to occur with each Magic set. Between Invasion Block and Odyssey was about 300 years. Then over the last few years since we no longer have godwalkers anymore, the game has shifted towards lower power levels for planeswalkers. That means slowing down time.
The planeswalkers were too powerful to begin with, it's basically like being Super Sayain Blue. Liliana showed that a planeswalker can over time begin to approach some of their old power level, but it has a higher price and cost. Bolas similar has showed this to approach his old power level would require a massive power up.
Considering the age of the current planesewalkers, we'll probably eventually see different precepts. Urza had a son in the original storyline, but there wasn't any other planeswalker abilities about his son and it was hinted that his son might have been Urza's as well.
So thus far we can explore:
1. Planeswalker families
2. Children of planeswalkers
3. Marriage
Those are three things that only someone like Urza and Nahiri really had any patience for, and even then only Urza's wife was explored. Nahiri's husband was never explored, nor was it explained whether she bore any children. Since her going insane, we're not going to see any of that.
Concurrently, I think the movement towards having LilianaXJace ship is a good start. Especially whenever Liliana "grows up" and moves beyond being too selfish and embraces other aspects of black's emotional spectrum. But we're not at that level, yet.
Personally, Urza at his best was his relationship with his brother that defined him during The Brother's War. His blatant opportunism combined with his tendency to overplan made a more interesting character. A person who tried to change the world to be around his own expectations, rather than being passive like Jace. Tolarian Community College did a good job in looking at Jace vs. Urza dichotomy. Urza represents an old character doing what we try to accomplish as a teenager, while Jace is a young man living out what a middle aged person would with life events defining them.
To be honest, Chandra having a mother-daughter relationship in this new set returns to some of the better aspects of what made Urza a great character. In the end we have Karn as the culmination of the Legacy and truly one of his Urza's children. So we do have Urza 2.0. Wizards just needs to be more comfortable with using Karn more.
I would say that the use of Liliana comports also a return to some of the older aspects of the game, as well as a push to use Nicol Bolas. Characters like Sorin, Ugin, and Nahiri are also older 'walkers. A good move would also be returning Teferi to the multiverse once more to drum up better support for the past.
But I think Dominaria will be revisited but it is better off done with looking at a specific continent rather than the big world of Dominaria.
The last time Bolas had an area under his control he was Emperor Madara that was an area focused on black, red, and blue mana with Japanese mythology. My own speculation is that they're trying to insinuate that Bolas is similar to Apocalypse from X-Men.
But either way, the question that I come to is whether they're going to push mono color again or go with dual or tri color as a shard set.
Either way, we know one of the gods is a pseudo Anubis and this set with have a lot of death theme as well as mummies as zombies.
For starters Ashiok loses a bit of flesh off to vapors at random intervals. The head dress that he wears looks exactly like something from Ancient Egypt. The next block will probably delve more into Ashiok. As ancient Greece and Egypt were trade partners and heavily interwoven with Roman mythology and religion. Ashiok going to Theros and then going back home makes sense in that Ashiok worked with devotion and would thus be familiar with gods if coming from the Egyptian plane with 5 gods (confirmed).
Indian world is a major plus.
Steampunk never interested me.
This having vehicles doesn't impress me much, and none of the mechanics scream "Modern" thus far. This set screams EDH and casual. The competitive side of me has an eye out for competitive Energy units. The casual side of me is looking at the dwarves. EDH side is looking at the colorless artifacts for my Kozilek deck. My Cube side is speculating on whether this will be a good draft set or not.
The characters draw me into this set, the mechanics do not.
So out of the gate, I'm just trying to think of what would be the best archetypes to approach with Heroic, Bestow, and Eldrazi's with the experience of your own Cube with the Eldrazi section?
B. Moon
C. Japanese
D. Able to defeat strange intergalactic beasts
E. A part of a team
While Sailor Moon and Tamiyo are very different. There is something to be said for each of the small an subtle differences that the connection betwixt Japanese popular culture with Kaguya legend and the moon is something that connects back to Tamiyo being a moonfolk, but the question is whether she will develop into a more of a "Sailor Moon?"
Urza is after the big picture, irregardless of the small things in the multiverse. He was the person who initiated things, and caused a lot of harm. The Bloodlines Project created a lot of havoc, but also created Hannah and Gerard. The temporal experiments created the temporal rifts, but also gave us Karn as the start of the Legacy.
Her entire plan was to have Sorin sacrifice himself to save Innistraad, meanwhile he was willing to abandon it. He sees things, similar to Ugin, on a much larger intergalactic level. Sorin is about himself, Ugin is about the big balance. Nahiri was for others and Zendikar, now it's about the past and she's given way to madness in the oldwalker style similar to what happened to Urza. This doesn't make her totally evil, but similar to Taysir and friends there will probably be a redemption moment for her. Similar to Urza he found some peace in what he was able to build what wasn't evil.
Sorin can return. Avacyn, in a way, can as the Vault of the Archangel still exists.
And right now, debating what is better depends on the metagame. A person blind from overuse of the Mangekyou Sharingan is worthless, without becomming skilled enough as a pilot to awaken to the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan. And if you're damn good, you get the Rinnengan.
With each of these different layers of piloting ability and deck construction, therefore we must consider that his or her red burn deck is good for specific metagames. Those of us that play Naya Burn could learn from initial testing with some of the red burn, presuming with the deck's limitations there are attempts to combat and tournament results versus specific metagames. Limitations breed creativity and while deck designers have the capacity right now to have almost a decade of building experience. There are still unknown unknowns from good data that can help with some innovation through understanding those limitations from different builds.
Encouraging good game play is equally necessary and encouraging full tournament reports from the respective person. It opens up people to be more open to change as they can more easily see where the weaknesses are themselves.
In the end, we're all Uchiha here and we need to support the Will of Fire.
Ugin is going to be the counterbalance to the entire theme, he wants to specifically get Nahiri back. Sorin and Ugin both learned lithomancy from her, and, for a dragon, is probably the most "normal" planeswalker that would be close to her in age. Probably one of the only few to understand Sorin very well and her as well, and considering he had a legitimate excuse for not coming as well. She will probably aim for Ugin and be brought into conflict with Sarkhan at some point. But that will probably be the end of her storyline, meaning redemption or death.
She is tied to community and a sense of balance. Too much devastation rocked her world.
Nahiri's instability and Sorin's own lack of humanity is from their all powerfullness since human 'walkers tended to go insane after a while from that power and become disconnected to reality. Only really Ugin has dealt with this to any degree as a "person" but they all took a "large world view" rather than a small world view of the people around them.
It irritates me though that they killed off Olivia, Bruna, and Gisela.
Nahiri is basically their new Boros 'walker for the time being, and I think with her popularity she will probably be around for a while. The unresolved storyline right now is Sorin, Nahiri, and Ugin along with the consequences for killing Umalog and Kozilek.
The allusion to the older storyline with Urza and Serra's Sanctum is pretty straight forwards, they revisited the disconnectedness and inhumanity and madness within the various old 'walkers. Urza particularly was big picture focused and was not a nice person. Sorin is selfish, while Nahiri has been warped and lost her humanity. Her defining trait will be finding her personality, Sorin will have to find his less selfish side and learn empathy.
I feel that Ugin right now is basically Yoda while Nicol Bolas is the Emperor. That's where the storyline is going next when we see Tarkir again and bringing together all the smaller storylines into what is Bolas doing along with the Legion of Doom/Consortium coming back.
http://powerpuffgirls.wikia.com/wiki/Bunny
Therefore, I dub Brisela "Bunny" to complete the cycle.
That and fifty zombies was overpowered, this isn't Naruto with Shadow Clones. You need Kiki Jiki for Naruto, not Liliana. If Nahiri stacked within for Emrakul, then we can expect Liliana to be the foil for Nahiri. Whatever that means.