However, even if it is an angel, as pointed out, the visual callback to emrakul is just as weird. I kinda have to assume it's a fluke, that they didn't plan to, but everything from the pose, to the fronds, the belt, the hood, the shape of the wings and even their colour scheme is just too perfect a match. If this wasn't a judge promo this would have baffling implications. As is it just raises a ton of questions about the creative intent.
I'm 99% sure this is a coincidence, but the art on the Omniscience also kinda resembles Emrakul. Look at the aurora, the eclipse, the lightning, and the 'rivers' of energy on the ground (which forms the 'tentacles').
I'll bet the Frog Samurai is the "Frog twenty-six years in the making" - because it is probably a callback to Chub Toad, which is kinda sorta the original "Bushido" card.
(I'm somewhat shamed to admit it, but I had an incredibly jank deck for 4+ player games that used Leveler, Demonic Consultation or Thought Lash to empty my library, Platinum Angel and/or Glacial Chasm to keep myself safe, and either Shared Fate or Timesifter to lock out other players or skip all of my remaining turns until everyone else decked themselves or removed one of the components. It never actually worked as a deck, of course.)
I've always had a soft spot for this card in casual play because of the silly combos it enables. I'm not a huge fan of the old brown artifact border, but Leveler always felt like a Mirage-era card to me anyway, so in this case, I'm happy with this.
Does anything else think that if they printed Leveler today, it would cost 2 or 3 mana and have Trample?
This is an amazing first impression. I'd like to point out that our diligent speculators on the other threat collectively nailed the enemy-color theming (which has been long-overdue) and got the names correct, except I think transposing Prismari and Quandrix.
I agree with everyone who thinks Jin-Gitaxias is likely to appear. I know it would be utterly absurd, but a small part of me just really wants him to be one of the professors at Strixhaven, hiding in plain sight. Can you imagine the classes he would teach? (Maybe that would be more appropriate for the next Un-set?)
Both the Cosmo Serpent and the Cosmo Wolf have Norse-style runes on the their bodies; between that and their names, I think it's same to assume they both share a keyword.
On Nahiri and kor nationalism, her Arena quotes pretty much confirm she wants to restore the kor empire.
In potential spoiler territory, if the Arena quotes can be trusted, it seems both Nissa and Nahiri will go too far in their attempts to defend their vision of Zendikar (Nissa embracing her B side, and possibly channeling the blight) and both will regret what they have done.
If this is accurate, this could represent a surprising level of nuance we haven't seen in the story in many years, provided it is handled well. (We've had too many mustache-twirling villains for too long. As story where everyone is somewhat right, somewhat wrong, and blind certainty is the real enemy would be a nice palate cleanser.)
And if it's handled poorly, it will further twist the knife in everyone already angry about Nissa+Chandra and undo what little character development Nissa has actually gotten while presenting a false moral equivalence with someone who effectively attempted to cause a genocide on Innistrad.
But I will give WotC the benefit of the doubt. For now.
The short flashbacks to the battle at seagate highlight for me the fact that Magic story telling at its core works best as vignettes, rather than continous storylines following the same five planeswalkers. The descriptions of Zareth's and Akiri's experiences at seagate had more atmosphere and feeling than any of Gideon's "I whip my hair back and forth" and Nissa's "Zendikar is crying!" segments, like by a magnitude. The multiverse is a setting of countless worlds, and as a result of countless stories. They need to be told from the perspective of its countless peoples, not someone who's just passing through.
I completely agree - I understand WotC's idea of wanting players to experiencing new worlds from the perspective of an outsider (i.e. a planeswalker) but (to me) the execution has been severely lacking in recent years - we've been getting a tourist's superficial view of a world, not the detailed and diverse perspectives a new setting deserves. If you want people to enjoy a setting, because players are extremely diverse with different desires and perspectives, having diverse perspectives on the setting increases the chances people will enjoy that setting. (WotC usually understands this Planeswalkers - why is it such a difficult lesson for them re: planes?)
And to be clear, this isn't just a problem with focusing on planeswalkers as POV characters. Even in cases where the inhabitants were the focal characters, because the focus was only on small number of characters, we were only getting a very limited view of what the worldbuilding set up to be a far more interesting world - see Ikoria.
Zendikar's main problem as a setting is that if you start looking too closely, the worldbuilding falls apart a bit. So best not look too closely.
True, although I feel this applies on some level to most settings. (Admittedly, Zendikar requires a much higher suspension of disbelief than many worlds.) Zendikar feels to me like a world that would have worked better pre-Mending, where food and other supplies could have been brought in via portals from other worlds, and settlements on Zendikar could have existed solely as a series of frontier outposts for cross-planar travelers looking for adventure and loot.
It's a fairly elegant if boring design. What's particularly interesting (to me) is that Wind Strider seems like it would fit the ZNR better. Either there was an attempt to balance the number of Clerics / Rogues / Warriors / Wizards in the ZNR, or Elementals are relevant to a future set (and either Kaldheim or Strixhaven could make sense) and this is a case of future compatibility.
"And a cycle that players have been asking us to make for over ten years"
My guess is that this is a cycle of Lands, probably completing one of the Future Sight implied cycles.
I see Nimbus Maze as most likely, followed by Grove of the Burnwillows. I seem to recall MaRo stating years ago that River of Tears proved to be more confusing (and less playable) then they had hoped, so I think we can rule it out.
Other than Krosan Verge which Ryperior74 mentioned above, are there any other potential Land cycles from more than 10 years ago people are waiting on? Has anyone been demanding enemy-colored Mirage fetchlands? (e.g. Bad River)
Based on the existing art, we already (probably) have:
- Avalon
- Knights of the Round Table
- Camelot
- Hansel and Gretel / the Gingerbread House
- The Frog Prince
- Baked into a Pie? (Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds? Jack Horner?)
- The Lady of the Lake
- Sleeping Beauty / True Love's Kiss (role-reversed if the former)
- Wicked Stepmother
- Overgrown by Brambles (from Sleeping Beauty)
- Wicked Queen w/ Apple (Snow White)
- Little Mermaid
- The Gingerbread Man
- Goldilocks (now a bear hunter)
- Little Red Riding Hood (who is apparently Rowan Kenrith) -> could mean Will Kenrith is Little Boy Blue, or both double as Hansel and Gretel
I agree Big Bad Wolf, Rapunzel, Glass Slippers, the Holy Grail, Excalibur, Merlin, Mordred, and Morgan Le Fay are all very likely, and I hope we see the Pied Piper, Puss in Boots, Rumpelstiltskin, and the Green Knight. I also second the request for a few (probably won't be many, sadly) more obscure Fairy Tale references - the Blue Light, Bearskin, and Snow White and Briar Rose, for example.
With what little we have to go on right now, based on the art and the formal invitations, I'm guessing an Arthurian / Chivalric Romance traditional High Fantasy set, and that it will be Kasmina's home plane. (She is a wizard who trains other wizards, so she could easily be the world's Merlin analogue.)
While I agree a Viking / Norse plane (probably Kaldheim, Valla, or a renamed-for-trademark-reasons version of one of those two) seems most likely, I just heard another theory today about the Fall set: a true Dungeons & Dragons crossover set.
Last fall, WotC published the Guildmaster's Guild to Ravnica for D&D 5th Edition. D&D is huge right now, including streaming D&D games, and WotC is clearly looking to bring the Twitch crowd to Magic and especially Arena. So maybe it's time for MtG to return the favor and visit a D&D plane (such as Faerûn)? We've been promised a new plane, but that could just mean new to Magic.
So my original pet theory was that Ugin would ultimately take out Bolas like Flynn takes out CLU in Tron Legacy. I had heard War will happen on more than one plane, and I thought it might happen in the Meditation realm.
However, I was perusing Maro's Tumblr and he says that the mythic walkers are the main players of the story (Bolas, Gideon, Liliana), and that Ugin will be rare because he's only a supporting character, with 'a role to play.' Which is kind of disappointing, after the core set last year set up their history.
So if what Maro says is true, then it's Liliana and Gideon that are most likely to take down Bolas? And I think Maro also said the other plane isn't Amonkhet. So which plane might it be? Dominaria?
Since you brought it up, the Meditation Realm actually makes the most sense - perhaps the final battle against Bolas will be fought there, or alternatively, there will be some sort of epilogue set there (e.g. if Bolas is defeated but survives or is sealed away).
Re: Nissa and Vivien's respective chances for survival - I don't see *both* of them dying.
To my mind, Vivien is being potentially being positioned as the next focal green planeswalker to replace Nissa. For Nissa, given everything that happened in Amonkhet (and the subtitle of her War of the Spark card), I believe she will play a big role in defeating Bolas. From a narrative standpoint, that would be a good place to end her story arc (such as it is), since there doesn't really seem to be anywhere else her character can go. It would also be a good bait and switch with Liliana - the trailer makes you think they will kill one of the iconic Gatewatch members and then they instead kill a different one.
My one reservation about Nissa's potential death is this: WotC has been building up some kind of significant relationship (not necessarily romantic) between Chandra and Nissa (even Maro recently made a joking reference to it here) and from that perspective, I'm not sure they would want to kill both Jaya *and* Nissa (probably two of the three most important people in Chandra's life) off at the same time. For a variety of reasons other people have already brought up, I feel a lot more certain about Jaya's death.
Quick Edit - For the record, I would prefer that no preexisting character be killed off except Bolas. Every character is someone's favorite character, and even bad characters have plenty of potential in the hands of a good writer. Killing off characters just to show how serious the situation / how high the stakes are is one of the worst comic book cliches out there, but I can at least see the narrative case for Nissa, Liliana, Gideon, or Jaya dying (or Jace, as the Living Guildpact, but *no one* thinks that is going to happen).
I'm 99% sure this is a coincidence, but the art on the Omniscience also kinda resembles Emrakul. Look at the aurora, the eclipse, the lightning, and the 'rivers' of energy on the ground (which forms the 'tentacles').
Stifle and Beacon of Tomorrows (or any Beacon, really) were both options, back in the day. And then there was Shared Fate...
(I'm somewhat shamed to admit it, but I had an incredibly jank deck for 4+ player games that used Leveler, Demonic Consultation or Thought Lash to empty my library, Platinum Angel and/or Glacial Chasm to keep myself safe, and either Shared Fate or Timesifter to lock out other players or skip all of my remaining turns until everyone else decked themselves or removed one of the components. It never actually worked as a deck, of course.)
Does anything else think that if they printed Leveler today, it would cost 2 or 3 mana and have Trample?
I agree with everyone who thinks Jin-Gitaxias is likely to appear. I know it would be utterly absurd, but a small part of me just really wants him to be one of the professors at Strixhaven, hiding in plain sight. Can you imagine the classes he would teach? (Maybe that would be more appropriate for the next Un-set?)
For some reason, I'm reminded of the keyword "Interplanar" on the Mystery Booster test card Interplanar Brushwagg (https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=476208).
In potential spoiler territory, if the Arena quotes can be trusted, it seems both Nissa and Nahiri will go too far in their attempts to defend their vision of Zendikar (Nissa embracing her B side, and possibly channeling the blight) and both will regret what they have done.
If this is accurate, this could represent a surprising level of nuance we haven't seen in the story in many years, provided it is handled well. (We've had too many mustache-twirling villains for too long. As story where everyone is somewhat right, somewhat wrong, and blind certainty is the real enemy would be a nice palate cleanser.)
And if it's handled poorly, it will further twist the knife in everyone already angry about Nissa+Chandra and undo what little character development Nissa has actually gotten while presenting a false moral equivalence with someone who effectively attempted to cause a genocide on Innistrad.
But I will give WotC the benefit of the doubt. For now.
I completely agree - I understand WotC's idea of wanting players to experiencing new worlds from the perspective of an outsider (i.e. a planeswalker) but (to me) the execution has been severely lacking in recent years - we've been getting a tourist's superficial view of a world, not the detailed and diverse perspectives a new setting deserves. If you want people to enjoy a setting, because players are extremely diverse with different desires and perspectives, having diverse perspectives on the setting increases the chances people will enjoy that setting. (WotC usually understands this Planeswalkers - why is it such a difficult lesson for them re: planes?)
And to be clear, this isn't just a problem with focusing on planeswalkers as POV characters. Even in cases where the inhabitants were the focal characters, because the focus was only on small number of characters, we were only getting a very limited view of what the worldbuilding set up to be a far more interesting world - see Ikoria.
True, although I feel this applies on some level to most settings. (Admittedly, Zendikar requires a much higher suspension of disbelief than many worlds.) Zendikar feels to me like a world that would have worked better pre-Mending, where food and other supplies could have been brought in via portals from other worlds, and settlements on Zendikar could have existed solely as a series of frontier outposts for cross-planar travelers looking for adventure and loot.
It's a fairly elegant if boring design. What's particularly interesting (to me) is that Wind Strider seems like it would fit the ZNR better. Either there was an attempt to balance the number of Clerics / Rogues / Warriors / Wizards in the ZNR, or Elementals are relevant to a future set (and either Kaldheim or Strixhaven could make sense) and this is a case of future compatibility.
My guess is that this is a cycle of Lands, probably completing one of the Future Sight implied cycles.
I see Nimbus Maze as most likely, followed by Grove of the Burnwillows. I seem to recall MaRo stating years ago that River of Tears proved to be more confusing (and less playable) then they had hoped, so I think we can rule it out.
Other than Krosan Verge which Ryperior74 mentioned above, are there any other potential Land cycles from more than 10 years ago people are waiting on? Has anyone been demanding enemy-colored Mirage fetchlands? (e.g. Bad River)
- Avalon
- Knights of the Round Table
- Camelot
- Hansel and Gretel / the Gingerbread House
- The Frog Prince
- Baked into a Pie? (Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds? Jack Horner?)
- The Lady of the Lake
- Sleeping Beauty / True Love's Kiss (role-reversed if the former)
- Wicked Stepmother
- Overgrown by Brambles (from Sleeping Beauty)
- Wicked Queen w/ Apple (Snow White)
- Little Mermaid
- The Gingerbread Man
- Goldilocks (now a bear hunter)
- Little Red Riding Hood (who is apparently Rowan Kenrith) -> could mean Will Kenrith is Little Boy Blue, or both double as Hansel and Gretel
I agree Big Bad Wolf, Rapunzel, Glass Slippers, the Holy Grail, Excalibur, Merlin, Mordred, and Morgan Le Fay are all very likely, and I hope we see the Pied Piper, Puss in Boots, Rumpelstiltskin, and the Green Knight. I also second the request for a few (probably won't be many, sadly) more obscure Fairy Tale references - the Blue Light, Bearskin, and Snow White and Briar Rose, for example.
Last fall, WotC published the Guildmaster's Guild to Ravnica for D&D 5th Edition. D&D is huge right now, including streaming D&D games, and WotC is clearly looking to bring the Twitch crowd to Magic and especially Arena. So maybe it's time for MtG to return the favor and visit a D&D plane (such as Faerûn)? We've been promised a new plane, but that could just mean new to Magic.
Any thoughts?
Since you brought it up, the Meditation Realm actually makes the most sense - perhaps the final battle against Bolas will be fought there, or alternatively, there will be some sort of epilogue set there (e.g. if Bolas is defeated but survives or is sealed away).
To my mind, Vivien is being potentially being positioned as the next focal green planeswalker to replace Nissa. For Nissa, given everything that happened in Amonkhet (and the subtitle of her War of the Spark card), I believe she will play a big role in defeating Bolas. From a narrative standpoint, that would be a good place to end her story arc (such as it is), since there doesn't really seem to be anywhere else her character can go. It would also be a good bait and switch with Liliana - the trailer makes you think they will kill one of the iconic Gatewatch members and then they instead kill a different one.
My one reservation about Nissa's potential death is this: WotC has been building up some kind of significant relationship (not necessarily romantic) between Chandra and Nissa (even Maro recently made a joking reference to it here) and from that perspective, I'm not sure they would want to kill both Jaya *and* Nissa (probably two of the three most important people in Chandra's life) off at the same time. For a variety of reasons other people have already brought up, I feel a lot more certain about Jaya's death.
Quick Edit - For the record, I would prefer that no preexisting character be killed off except Bolas. Every character is someone's favorite character, and even bad characters have plenty of potential in the hands of a good writer. Killing off characters just to show how serious the situation / how high the stakes are is one of the worst comic book cliches out there, but I can at least see the narrative case for Nissa, Liliana, Gideon, or Jaya dying (or Jace, as the Living Guildpact, but *no one* thinks that is going to happen).