MTG Salvation

Quote from MinaHarcourt »

Quote from user_938036 »

Quote from MinaHarcourt »

The Kraul bugdude from C16 comes to mind. He is, yet again, something with sacrifice.
Or Kambal. Yet again WB has something to do with lifegain/lifeloss. They really need to shake things up.
It's getting annoying.

So you go back two years ago to find a BG legend that cares about sacrifice when you could go back one year and find two that don't. You look at the last set to find a WB that drains life, when again you could have gone to last year and found one that was all about reanimation.

So it seems exactly like I said, the problem isn't the color pie or even its execution. The problem is on your end, you look at the most 'popular' focus of a color or color pair and declare the color pie as too restricting regardless of how many other representations are available.

Those are two legends I had lying in front of me. That doesn't mean I can't find more.

New ground desperately needs to be broken.

BG
We just got Gitrog Monster. An interesting blend of Lands and Grave effects.

Ikra Shidiqi focuses on Toughness with no sacrifice mechanics.

Pharika and Reyhan both broke new ground as well.

WB
We got Daxos, an Enchantment-focused Legendary.

Quote from Qanglaagix »

A LOT of her actions are fueled by hotheaded, instinctual and emotion-driven reactions and she often dislikes/hates authority as they tend to take away various freedoms from her.

Chandra is way too much of a rebellious person to be part of Boros or Iroas ( ) . Which is what Gideon is like. Soldiers, martial prowess, order, etc.
She also is not very Rakdos or Mogis ( ). Which is kind of known for sadistic pleasure, brutal maimings, wanton violence, etc.
She is not really an Izzet or Keranos person ( ) . Because she does not have the personality of Dack Fayden or Ral Zarak.

So where does that leave her? She would be right at home among the Gruul or maybe in one of Xenagos's revels if she was into that.

Quote from Gruuls Biggest Strengths and Weaknesses »

Red/Green's greatest strength is the force of its brutality. With nothing making it hold anything back, Red/Green packs a powerful punch. Even colors with answers to Red/Green often fall to the speed and raw power of Red/Green. To paraphrase a famous pro player (Dave Price): "There are wrong answers; there are never wrong threats."

Red/Green's greatest weakness is its complete lack of foresight or preparation. If Red/Green's Plan A doesn't work, Red/Green has problems because it didn't bother to come up with a Plan B. Heck, plan A wasn't that well thought out either. In addition, Red/Green has problems solving things that aren't straight-forward. Once the option of blowing it up and then hitting it are exhausted, Red/Green starts to run out of options.

You are generalizing all colour pairs based on Ravnica guilds. Not all ( ) characters are fans of orgy-massacres. It is also about just enjoying life.

Quote from Mercury01 »

Except one of the fundamental parts of the MtG lore is that the game takes place in a multiverse. Important events should be happening in lots of places. We get two, maybe three, glimpses a year at stories that have nothing to do with the fab five. It's frustrating to know that thousands upon thousands of worlds exist and we're stuck watching Jace and pals stumble into one victory after another.

To be fair, before the Gatewatch we still barely explored the multiverse. There were only a dozen or so planes that had been explored in any detail, with usually 1 or maybe 2 each year. Now we are consistently getting 2 a year plus the small side adventures from Commander and such. And holding a story over multiple disconnected places is hard unless you follow the overlap, which just happens to be Planeswalkers. We used to just follow Urza and the Weatherlight crew. We did it post-mending with 2 main casts: Elspeth and friends, and what eventually became the Gatewatch. The only thing that has changed is who we are focusing on as the main characters. And the Gatewatch lets us see them interact on a regular basis, not just in pairs scattered over the years. There were few situations where more than 2 Planeswalkers were in the same place, only the awakening of the Eldrazi and the Infinite Consortium that one time.

We now have characters who we can see develop. We can follow them and not have to wait 3 years for them to appear again like Elspeth or Sarkhan. They interplay off of each other and grow. Chandra just had a good story last week with Gideon also getting some good moments. We are still getting excellent stories of Plane-bound characters like Tazri and Yahenni, but we get a narrative that transcends blocks.

Quote from Tim_T »

Karlov of the ghost council

Karlov is positive? He is a decadant and corrupt ghost.

I like them. The story hasn't changed too much, and characters dying has little to do with the existence of the Gatewatch.

As for the members, the writing team has started to hit their stride. The characterization is good, and each character has clear traits with a bit of complexity. There havent been any bad stories since Kaladesh started.

I like that we get to see the walkers interact on a larger scale than just 1 on 1 encounters. There is carry-over in the story and much more character inter-play.

Quote from HugSeal »

Quote from Hotspur000 »

But that's in Modern in a tournament. I'm fine with that (although I know how annoying and un-fun that is to play against ... but still, it's a competitive environment and if someone builds a deck like that and I can't beat it, then so be it).

I'm just saying people shouldn't play cards like that in casual formats.

But EDH isn't a casual format, it's a social format where a lot of players like to play casually. Nothing wrong with playing competitive EDH decks and having a blast with it, except when you mix decks with vastly different powerlevels in a game. A lot of the time it is okay since it turns into Archenemy without the schemes but a good stax-deck can easily lock down 3 weak casual decks.

I guess my point is that this thread in my opinion should be more along the lines off "This opponent acted like a douche and his rudeness was so hilariously arrogant" rather than "There was this guy who played a card I don't like playing against, how rude!".

Dude, EDH is a casual format. It was created by judges in their off time to have fun. The banlist isn't run by Wizards and they take a hands-off approach except for releasing product.

Urza was born ~4500 years before the Mending, so 4500-4600 depending on how long it has been since the Mending. This places him (along with Karn) as younger than Sorin, Nahiri, and Ugin who were all around ~6000 years ago to seal the Eldrazi. Freyalise was born sometime in the Ice Age around ~2000 years ago. Teferi was born around 1300 years ago, while Karn was forged a few decades later. Ob Nixilis is a wildcard but was born at least 1000 years ago when Nahiri sealed him in his demonic form. Sorin is definitely older than Nahiri as he was her mentor when she sparked. Ugin and Bolas are probably older than Sorin, but since their exact origins is unknown we aren't sure which of them is older.

Pre-Mending Order:
1/2- Nicol Bolas, Ugin
3- Sorin Markov
4- Nahiri
5- Freyalise
6- Teferi
7- Karn
8?- Ob Nixilis
9- Liliana

Venser definitely come next and may have used some Youth water or something to live 100 years post-Mending.

New walkers ages are unknown but some can be infered. Tezzeret and Arlinn both appear to be late 30's to early 40's. Garruk and Ajani are both in their 30's. Chandra appears to be 20 as her sparking occurred 12 years ago when she was 8. Jace is ~4 years older than her, with Gideon a year older than him. Elspeth is a year older than Gideon, making her ~26 when she died. Nissa is unknown as she is an Elf. Sarkhan appears to be in his 30's but he did have a harsh living condition before sparking, so he may have aged poorly. Domri is probably the youngest current walker. And all the others are either ~20's or ~30's based on appearance. They are either in Jace's generation or Ajani's. Few seem to older than that.

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Quote from EleshNornn »

Going off what you said in the spoiler tag, I think it would be best for Magic to have two weekly story columns. One called Magic Story or whatever that follows the Gatewatch and whatever they're doing, the main storyline - like what we've been getting recently. The other column, call it Uncharted Realms, could be something secondary, that explores the world we are visiting and maybe only tangentially/not at all, relates to the main storyline. Maybe it could be biweekly rather than weekly, or something. A couple vignettes about interesting characters around the world (like the story about The Gitrog Monster) or a small side series about some legendary creature dealing with a problem or whatever (like expanding upon Hal and Alana and Arlin Kord that we got in the very first SOI story), because I agree with you: the story feels like it is lacking depth. I feel like huge failings of these last two worlds is that I didn't really feel connected to the loss - personally I didn't care about the Zendikari, I didn't care about Avacyn very much because I felt like the roles in the story were glossed over, and I think partially this is because they didn't have enough words to tell us about them. I think that it might help with the official story's pacing because that often feels rushed in the end, but I'm a little more skeptical because the early parts of the story feels extremely slow.

I don't know how logistically and financially feasible this is, and I don't want the quality of the story to suffer for this, but I think it would go a long way to help out magics story problems.

I really like this idea. The smaller stories are some of the best parts. But it also disrupts the flow of the main plot to have the smaller stories interspersed in them. I think it is just a matter of budget and resources. Creative seems to be expanding significantly even now. I imagine they could eventually do it, but I don't think they have the manpower at the moment.

Have the Uncharted realms be standalone stories following characters on the plane we are visiting. You could have a 2 or 3 part story following Arlinn for example that occurs over 2/3 weeks. Then also have the smaller horror tales, and side stories. It gives more time to develop sideplot, like Thalia's march on Thraben.

Then have the Magic Story follow the Gatewatch/Planeswalkers. Continuing to use SOI, Follow Jace and his investigations. Without the side-stories clogging it up, there is time to have a red herring. Once he comes across the drownyard and suspects Liliana, shift to Sorin's plot for a couple weeks. Build up the conflict with Nahiri and interact with the rest of the Vampires. Then return to Jace and he deals with Lili, then goes to Thraben. There he meets Tamiyo and Sorin's plot intersects with Jace's.

Eldrich Moon: Emrakul shows up. Jace leaves to find the Gatewatch. Now we shift to Liliana as our POV. First week is setting the broad conflict with various perspectives of Emrakul appearing, then second week is Liliana beginning her zombie horde. Then we return to Sorin's plot and resolve his conflict with Nahiri. This ends with Olivia abandoning Sorin so she can go fight Emrakul. While this is happening, Thalia is marching on Thraben. Have stories of the march and them encountering the horrors along the way. A few side characters as well with a few references to Thalia's march and Liliana's horde. Perhaps Arlinn gathers the Werewolf packs to go and deals with the Were-drazis. This culminates in the battle with Brisela. At this point concurrently Jace and the Gatewatch make their appearance. They fight Emrakul while the side stories continue to show how side characters fight the Eldrazi and show them slowly losing. Then Emrakul does her thing. Now we get a small epilogue. If the Magic Story comes before the Uncharted Realms we get 1 week of epilogue for the Gatewatch with some bits from each of their perspective like in Oath of the Gatewatch; and 2 weeks of Uncharted Epilogue. Perhaps 1 dealing with Thalia's Order of St. Traft and Sigarda's new church establishing themselves, and the other devoted to Arlinn with some payoff of her story that has been sprinkled in the Uncharted Realms.

I could go on, and maybe I should properly plan out how I would do it. But the general outline is: Magic Story; follows main Gatewatch(Jace+Liliana) plot with intersecting secondary 'walker plot(Sorin vs Nahiri). Uncharted Realms; side stories, establishing the setting and tone, and a couple plot threads that carry through (Arlinn gets 2/3 part story in SOI, 1 story in EMN, participates in climax and gets 1 epilogue; Thalia gets large part of EMN). This way you have one exploring the interplanar plot, while the other stays plane-bound with some intersections. Inbetween sets you can have stuff like the Conspiracy story, while Magic Story could have a 2/3 part story following a walker we haven't seen in a while or the going-ons of Ravnica. Perhaps see how Ajani is doing on Theros, what Garruk is hunting, or Narset on Alara for a bit.

Quote from shinquickman »

"Counter ALl Eldrazi".

FTFY.

I don't see how two planes would be brought into conflict, or at the very least, not these two. There hasn't been any indication that non planeswalker inhabitants have had any sort of contact, and just because they may have similar plane specific conflicts (over the power sources), doesn't mean they would be fighting with each other. Besides, the aether on Kaladesh seems to be in short supply, thus the trafficking, and the "revolt" will likely be from Kaladesh's people. This is supported by the fact that the set is called "Aether Revolt", a substance the normal citizens are deprived of, plus the plane is ruled by the consuls, which is implied to be extremely controlling of its people and displays certain aspects in common with a dictatorship. A prime example is the public, attempted execution of Chandra. So, as I said, the revolt will be from Kaladeshi people that want more freedom and access to the valuable aether to fuel their machines. Vryn is simply going through a civil war, which has likely ended since Alhemmeret's death by Jace. Without the arbiter, one side would probably have gained the upper hand seized the mage rings for themselves. If a portal is what the rings are fueling, and Kaladesh is what is controlling it, we would likely have seen some of Kaladesh technology present on Vryn.

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Quote from Raptorchan »

When we've seen any standard block without returning mechanics last time?
SOI - Madness
BFZ - Landfall
Tarkir - Morph
Theros - Scry
RTR - Hybrid mana
Innistrad - Flashback
Scars - Imprint
Zendikar - Kicker
Alara - Cycling
Lorwyn - Hybrid mana
Time Spiral - Madness, Echo, Morph, Storm, Buyback, etc
So... First Ravnica IIRC?

TIL Lorwyn had hybrid mana. (Or maybe you meant Shadowmoor? I'm just Saiyan...)