It's worth noting that a whole lot of things make more sense if Ral is working for Bolas. The whole 'he created the Gatewatch' thing from the art book makes sense when you realize Ral (attempted to have) led Jace to Gideon in Project Lightning Bug, and also appears In This Very Arena where Liliana reveals they found Tezzeret and are all heading to Kaladesh.
Can you explain this a little further, please? There are a lot of things here I don't know/understand.
It connects a lot of dots.
In the artbook, Bolas' reason for releasing the Eldrazi is to see how planeswalkers would react. He also takes credit for the Gatewatch. That's more interesting when you realize that Jace and Gideon become aware of each other in Project Lightning Bugbecause of Ral Zarek.
During In This Very Area, Jace and Ral are having a meeting when Liliana shows up. She blurts out that they're heading to Kaladesh and they found Tezzeret. Ral is also the one who points Jace to Vraska in that story... and where do we see Vraska next? Ixalan, alongside Jace.
Plus, it's possible the mystery project of Ral's is that the Planar Bridge need Project Lightning Bug (which can track planeswalkers from plane to plane) as a kind of Navigation unit. Rashmi was able to use it to teleport on the same plane, but when she ducks her head into it there's a ton of different planes it cycles through all at once. That would explain why the Eternals weren't moved off-plane during the story. Bolas is still waiting on a final component, and Ral has only had the last two days to work on it.
Vraska also seems to be in Bolas's employ, or at least has some sort of arrangement with him in regards to Ixalan, based on the (decipherable) flavortext for one of the Story Spotlight cards, River's Rebuke:
"Carefully following the ??? [compass?] Bolas had given her, Vraska ??? ??? [made?] the River [Name] ???."
I'm not 100% sure that that's Vraska's name, but it starts with a V and the penultimate letter is a K, so I'm pretty confident. Bolas's name is clearly visible, though. If it is Vraska following Bolas's instructions, that means that two of the three known Ravnican walkers have a direct connection to him. Not sure if that means anything, but it's interesting.
2017 is apparently the year of squinting at blurry spoilers.
The last deck looks UB to me, but who knows. My eyes hurt.
It's probably Rogues.
Bowing figures: "You are the sneakiest one of all."
Center figure: "Yes! Yes, I am! THE SNEAKIEST ONE OF ALL! There is none more rogueish than me."
She looks like she's the leader of some sort of Thieves' Guild. (...I can't believe I had to use Google to figure out that the appropriate title was "guildmaster." Should've been self-evident.)
That'd be another kind of spin on Eminence: even when she's not physically present, her agents follow her orders at all times.
I would be incredibly surprised if those two decks aren't Mardu Vampires and Dimir Rogues. The only thing that gives me any pause is that that means that there are three aggro decks...but even then, it probably helps that they still play slightly differently; Cats are classic weenie aggro (and might end up with a tokens/anthems subtheme, given the colors of the deck), Vampires can go in an Aristocrats-y direction with some lifegain, and Rogues are all about evasion and saboteur effects. (And I guess it means it's easier for there to be some "generic tribal" cards that work in multiple decks - White cards for Cats and Vampires, Black cards for Vampires and Rogues.)
But for a slightly more outlandish prediction, based on the Dragon deck spoilers: while each deck will have the standard three legends that are in the right colors to command the precon as is, they'll also each have two new legends in a subset of their colors, a la Edric and co. from the first Commander precons. Wasitora and Taigam fill those slots for the Dragon deck, and then there'd be a mono-Green Cat, a mono-White Cat, a mono-Blue Rogue, a mono-Black Rogue, and...well, being tricolor makes the Vampire deck more variable.
I have...no clue who any of the Cat or Rogue legends would be, but my prediction for the "subset" Vampires are a Black/Red Anje Falkenrath (the Falkenrath seem even less like they'd have White than the other bloodlines, and her name-drop in Falkenrath Reaver's flavortext felt like a hint toward a future card, which didn't end up happening in EMN itself) and a mono-White Vamp from Ixalan (not a card that's going to be in XLN or RIX, but a card that's flavorfully set on the plane). Mono-Red and Black/White would also work, though...and that's assuming that the two bonus commanders combine to have all the colors of the deck the way Wasitora and Taigam do. And that's assuming that the bonus commanders are actually a cycle, which is hardly a given.
Why yes, I would love to put Thunderous Wrath on top of my library. How very considerate of you, Bloodwater Entity.
(Alternatively, this makes for a really clunky semi-lock with Devastation Tide: 5 mana a turn to clear the board in your draw step every turn, albeit at the cost of not drawing any new cards during your draw steps.)
So awhile back on the podcast Mark was talking about the different story ideas they were throwing around to explain the way Tarkir drafted. One such idea was doing a new world that's set in the past, then goes to the future, and then the third set would be the reveal that we were on Dominaria the whole time. Last we saw Ajani he was talking about going to Dominaria to recruit planeswalkers...but here he is on Ixalan. What if the Dominaria set in April is just the third act of the Ixalan story and Ixalan is just a continent? The test name for this world, Atlazan, seems to be a reference to Atlantis and would explain why we've never heard of this Dominarian continent until now. The continent resurfacing would also explain all the merefolk that populate it.
"There's another way," said Ajani. "Bolas has a lot of enemies. And we have a lot of friends waiting in the wings. Give me time to get some of those friends together. Go find your own allies. Figure out what Bolas is actually planning, and what part of that plan is weakest."
[...]
"Please," he said. "Don't go to Amonkhet. Not yet. Stay here, or go find allies elsewhere. In the morning we can pick a rendezvous point. We can meet up in a few weeks' time, count our allies, compare notes, and plan our next move."
He's on Ixalan to recruit at least one of those friends (maybe the woman in the Rivals of Ixalan key art?), before meeting the rest of the Gatewatch on Dominaria. Ixalan is 100% its own plane.
A mechanic called Eternalize, and "Eternal" seemingly being used as a noun, on a Zombie outside of the normal Zombie colors (even for Amonkhet)... Hm...
So I don't think these are real and mostly that because of what I'm interpreting as a syntax error on Wasitora:
"If the player can't..." is and unusual phrasing of this ability for MTG rules text. Typically this would be "If that player does not..."
Also "you create..." instead of just "create." Both of these are weird phrasing for MTG rules text. The word 'you' here is completely unnecessary.
The first example actually introduces rules confusion, because now I have to define "can't" or 'not being able to do something' as an event in the rules distinct from that particular thing simply not happening.
So setting aside my general lack of enthusiasm for more indulgent five color bulk, I doubt these are real at all.
Cruel Reality uses the exact same templating as the condition on Wasitora (with the condition itself also being almost identical), and the Masterpiece version of Sword of Body and Mind uses the same "you create" wording for a similar "combat damage to a player" trigger. (As has been mentioned, there are other cards with that Oracle text, but SoBaM has it literally printed that way on the card. The thing that all of those cards have in common is that they muck around with multiple players in one way or another, with two of them being combat damage triggers like Wasitora's.)
If the cards are fake, it's not because of the phrasing.
You get a blue-ish pyramidal die, and one of the women talks about the laborer mummies and how they "mine a mysterious substance called 'Lazotep.'"
Is Lazotep a creation solely to describe a fun die? Is it instead something very important, if Bolas is having the mummies mine this specific "mysterious" substance? Was this substance explained before and I am just an unaware bum?
Just thought his was interesting, if others didn't notice it.
Lazotep seems to be an actual thing on Amonkhet: it's referenced in the flavor texts of Stone Quarry and Shimmerscale Drake, and, based on what it looks like in the Quarry art, also seems to be depicted in Sacred Excavation.
If it had actual story significance - even if it was just in Hour of Devastation - it probably would have gotten more references than that. But at the very least, it's not something that was made up purely for the dice.
Also, Mark Rosewater said that there is only one embalm card in both green and red With the Hydra already having been spoiled, Tah-Crop Skirmisher must be white.
Naga were a primarily G/U race in Tarkir, and Blue is one of the primary Embalm colors: I'm betting Skirmisher's Blue, not White.
I like that it works against both modes of Deem Worthy: prevents it from being cast (or prevents the damage if you can flash in Intervention somehow), prevents the damage it would deal when it gets cycled. Flavor!
"Carefully following the ??? [compass?] Bolas had given her, Vraska ??? ??? [made?] the River [Name] ???."
I'm not 100% sure that that's Vraska's name, but it starts with a V and the penultimate letter is a K, so I'm pretty confident. Bolas's name is clearly visible, though. If it is Vraska following Bolas's instructions, that means that two of the three known Ravnican walkers have a direct connection to him. Not sure if that means anything, but it's interesting.
That'd be another kind of spin on Eminence: even when she's not physically present, her agents follow her orders at all times.
But for a slightly more outlandish prediction, based on the Dragon deck spoilers: while each deck will have the standard three legends that are in the right colors to command the precon as is, they'll also each have two new legends in a subset of their colors, a la Edric and co. from the first Commander precons. Wasitora and Taigam fill those slots for the Dragon deck, and then there'd be a mono-Green Cat, a mono-White Cat, a mono-Blue Rogue, a mono-Black Rogue, and...well, being tricolor makes the Vampire deck more variable.
...wonder if this is payoff enough to make a viable deck with all of that W/B "lifegain matters" stuff from BFZ block, at least as an FNM-level thing.
(This fits about as well on Amonkhet as Craterhoof Behemoth fit on Innistrad, but it's a super-cool card.)
(Alternatively, this makes for a really clunky semi-lock with Devastation Tide: 5 mana a turn to clear the board in your draw step every turn, albeit at the cost of not drawing any new cards during your draw steps.)
He's on Ixalan to recruit at least one of those friends (maybe the woman in the Rivals of Ixalan key art?), before meeting the rest of the Gatewatch on Dominaria. Ixalan is 100% its own plane.
"Born by death...to rise eternal."
Well...they weren't wrong?
If the cards are fake, it's not because of the phrasing.
If it had actual story significance - even if it was just in Hour of Devastation - it probably would have gotten more references than that. But at the very least, it's not something that was made up purely for the dice.