Do actual people actually care that they made Aragorn black?
Yes, some people who care both for Magic the Gathering (THE Trading Card Game par excellence) and Lord of the Rings (one of the last, if not the last true and exemplar modern product of a particularly European -specifically Germanic and Norse- sensibility and heritage), care that their favorite game represents their most beloved cultural product well.
When it comes to Tolkien, I think people should realize that a big section of the fans don't just see his works as "generic fantasy world". They see a manifestation of a culture they identify with. Just like the Japanese would see Ruruoni Kenshin or other Samurai/Yokai/etc stories. Everyone is entitled to feel pride for their culture. Does that mean that nobody else can enjoy Samurai anime or LOTR? Of course not, but that doesn't mean people are obligated to take well the inclusion of external ethnicities (for commercial reasons, at that) in your traditional/mythological/historical setting. Case in point: Dragon Ball Evolution. Heck, even Rings of Power to an extent.
Alright, putting aside the reasons for why WotC did this, this whole 'LotR is basically a manifestation of the culture of a certain ethnicity and how they see the world, and therefore external ethnicities should have no place in it' is... Let's just say, a very special kind of interpretation in and of itself. I love LotR, and yeah, Tolkien imagined it to be along the lines of Beowulf, a form of ancient myth for the British people, which he thought they were lacking. Notice that it was specifically british people. Nothing about skin tone or something, though Tolkien obviously couldn't escape the Zeitgeist of his time entirely (his description of Orcs as looking like 'the least lovely looking mongole types' in one of his letters and the fact that ALL people of color appearing in LotR are on the side of evil are good indicators of that). So what exactly is the ethnicity you mean whose 'cultural manifestation' LotR supposedly is, and what exactly does skin color change about the story? We can discuss all day long what Tolkien believed, but my point is that unless you follow his myth-making almost religiously (in which case yes, as a british person you could maybe become upset about this, since the 3rd age Numenorans can be interpreted as expies of you, just like the Hobbits are), this change means nothing. This is not a historic story, this is not changing historic people's ethnicities. There is no cultural baggage that would influence LotR if there were black Numenorans (or elves or whatever) into another direction, unless you believe some weird stereotypes. So... Is the change necessary? Not really. Is it a disgrace to LotR? No. It is pretty much a stylistic choice.
Oh and most legends and myths of cultures across the world are surprisingly diverse, the Japanese for example have stories of Yasuke, the first foreign, black Samurai (16th century). So no, that's not as monolithic as you think it is either. I understand and actually might agree that it is a corporate driven decision by WotC, but this kind of discussion always veers into the strangest directions.
Switching back to the cards, Aragorn and Arwen are interesting in GW, and Gollum's flavor is on point in my opinion.
I mean, you do remember that the multiverse almost WAS destroyed partly because of the Sylex, right?
I mean the 'partly' is the huge kicker here. The sylex did some damage and that only because Dominaria was the nexus. The 'real' damage was done by various oldwalkers doing oldwalker magic which isn't really possible anymore. Neither is Dominaria the nexus anymore, nor are there still oldwalkers so the damage is not comparable.
I also want to cast doubt on the idea that the time spiral crisis was threatening all of the multiverse. We didn't really see other planes being affected the same way Dominaria was. And it isn't unthinkable that even if the multiverse was coming apart by the rifts, that the eldrazi might have cleaned up the damage once Zendikar was destroyed.
We know so little about the multiverse mechanics, but we do know that it has existed for an unimaginably long time. Again, if it was this easy to destroy the multiverse, it would've happened already.
Fair enough, a multiversal collapse or something like that is very unlikely, I give you that. But I think (and maybe I misread that) the whole point was that the repercussions could be disastrous in any number of ways. There doesn't need to be a total destruction of the multiverse, destroying the planes connected to Realmbreaker or making them uninhabitable would probably at least give me pause on whether this was still such a great plan as well. As you said, the mechanics are very much unknown, the mission parameters were not the same as at the start of it all anymore now that Realmbreaker had already connected elsewhere. My point was that I can therefore understand Kaya and Kaito's position, too many unknowns and potential, uncontained dangers to follow through with the original plan.
My main gripe is that we will never know whether Kaya is right or not. In a consistent universe it would make no sense for the sylex to be able to do as much damage as she claims, because if that was possible for a simple (aka not supernatural or godlike) artificer like Saheeli to create an artifact of such power to destroy the whole multivere, then it would've happened some time ago by pure chance.
Unfortunately, MtG is not a consistent universe.
And this is exactly the bad thing about inconsistent settings. Nothing the characters do or say matters. At all...
I mean, you do remember that the multiverse almost WAS destroyed partly because of the Sylex, right? Sure, many other things had to go wrong as well for that to happen, but the Time Spiral crisis was definitely partly caused by it and was headed that way. From what we know the Sylex itself wasn't the problem, Realmbreaker already breaching into the multiverse was. Everyone including the mirrans was more or less fine with getting Mirrodin destroyed, since it seemed like there was nothing really that could be done for it, and therefore it was a sacrifice and risk they were willing to take to save other worlds. But now it wasn't just Mirrodin that was potentially threatened. Neither Kaya nor Jace have perfect overview of the potential damage that the Sylex in combination with a connected Realmbreaker could cause, the combination of these two has never happened before after all. So you might say that this is still a risk that should have been taken given phyrexian virulence, but I don't quite see why this is a consistency problem. Their plan was to stop Realmbreaker before it connected, so that any destruction was limited to Mirrodin and they failed to do so.
Assuming MOM’s gonna feature multiple Planeswalkers across rarities I think I’ve figured out an apt name for Kiora:
Kiora, Zendikar’s last guardian
warning: speculation based on story spoilers leaked so far.
Alternatively they could treat the natives of worlds as competent fighters and guardians of their own. If the rumors are true that MOM will end with the worlds somewhat connected to allow non-planeswalkers to travel between worlds then this would be an excellent time to bring formerly plane-bound characters a bit more to the foreground.
Possible. My hunch is that the halo + sylex will give phyrexians agency and end its virulence- at least to some extent. New Phyrexia will then become a multiversal ‘UN’ and our Phyrexianized Planeswalkers will act as the jailers/diplomats that maintain order on New Mirrodin , the bridge between worlds.
This would allow planebound legends and factions to interact and trade with one another- or threaten each other if planebound/Planeswalker peacekeepers and agents don’t keep things under control. The struggle between legendaries within Commander would be made canon essentially.
As far as the story so far is concerned:
It’s clear to me now that WoTC is taking its IP nods from Marvel comics/MCU-meaning they would rather have a weak, nebulous story that can inspire but not ‘restrict’ future crossovers and platforms (like the upcoming Netflix series) which is likely more marketable than less ‘wooly’ franchises with a stricter canon.
What’s more: Teferi and/or Elspeth (somehow in conjunction with halo + sylex + realmbreaker) will also (accidentally) discover/weaken the barriers between the Universes Within and Beyond- Making Magic: the Gathering the ultimate crossover franchise.
I hope I’m wrong. Maybe the Netflix version of this particular arc will be more substantial. I think the writing was much better than Dominaria United, but I’m pretty sure these short stories are just the brushstrokes from which Hasbro hopes to build a more accessible franchise.
Also- yes I agree with some here that the oil is very problematic in terms of storytelling. Why is Phyrexia so virulent now as opposed to in the past? Dominaria should long ago have been completed by now if its properties were anything like it’s depicted in New Phyrexia.
WoTC is likely fully aware of the problem. But it’s a card game and they’d probably say I’m thinking too deeply about its story and narrative.
Maybe I am, which means I gotta be more detached.
<shrug>
I mean, they did mention Jin-Gitaxias upgrading the oil all the time, and New Phyrexia (especially its spheres) is positively saturated with the stuff by now. I can believe that it simply has evolved by quite a bit on Phyrexia, indicated by Melira still being immune, but having greater difficulty healing people (which was absolutely still possible with Jace and Nahiri, but not considered because it would take too long). It also seems to me (though it was never truly stated) that it is more infectious on New Phyrexia than elsewhere.
I did expect a darkest hour in this set (it was never likely that the Sylex plan would succeed outright, with the Phyrexians still being able to invade in March of the Machine) so I feel this was just how it should be. And I wouldn't even say that either Jace or the others were idiots when it came to detonating the Sylex. They were too late (can't stop phase one after all) to stop Realmbreaker from opening Omenpaths to the other planes. They already were aware that detonating the Sylex might or might not have disastrous consequences for Mirrodin, but were fine with that. But the open pathways change things considerably, and we know that the Sylex can have strong effects on space-time and the blind eternities (the original one created the shard after all in which Dominaria stayed for a long time). So there definitely is a considerable risk for the connected planes and maybe even beyond, the interaction of realmbreaker and the Sylex being very unpredictable. Jace was still of the opinion that the risk is worth it to destroy such a virulent enemy, while Kaya, Kaito and Elspeth weren't and feared that this might make things even worse. And I think both are right to a degree in this scenario.
The pacing, as nearly always since they started to compress it into 5 articles per set, is awful, and leaves many interesting worldbuilding and character interactions in the dust. I hope there are at least a few more side stories, otherwise the compleation of Nissa, the rebellion of Urabrask, the life of Mirrans in New Phyrexia are all very much just side notes, and I feel like this is definitely a story that could have used some space to better explain where our characters came from, why Phyrexia is as infectious now as it is or give more closure to some of these character's stories and decisions. Unfortunately and for some reason, 5 chapters will have to do. I really actually like most of the plot points and the worldbuilding, but they are pretty much all given not enough room to breathe.
It had a rocky start though. In the first side story (why are those the side stories and the fill-in-the-blanks of the war the main stories???) they talked about mobilizing the planes? Mobilizing for what? As far as anyone knows there is no possibility to move the fight to New Phyrexia except through planeswalkers. What exactly are they mobilizing? Warning of a coming threat, sure. Building up defenses, maybe. But mobilizing? It makes no sense.
I think they mean both raise defense and mobilize for war. Each planes is likely both getting ready in case they get invaded as well as forming their own version of the Coalition if there is already enough phyrexian discovered.
Sure ... this makes sense if you think of the MtG story as "just" a side thing to a card game that people shouldn't have too high expectations towards (I'd agree with that). It's necessary to move the story along to keep up with the breakneck set release schedule. Still, ignoring that context for a bit and judging the story purely as a stand-alone thing, it does seem a bit absurd that whole planes have been mobilized to fight in a war against some opponent that most people living there have never even seen.
I'm not sure it is THAT absurd, seeing as we don't really know whether they literally meant "the whole plane" was mobilized. Seems much more likely that they meant "all the people we could reach on a certain plane believed us and are trying to rally as many forces as possible". And many of the named planes could actually conceivably be mobilized for the most part: Ravnica makes sense (seeing that it has dealt with an interplanar invader before and has a central government that could ready the whole plane in Niv-Mizzet and the guilds), Kaldheim is a plane defined by its dealings with inter-realm conflicts (and consists of a bunch of realms with fighting-capable populations) so they probably believe stories about invaders from other, previously unknown realms, Kaladesh's new government includes the mother of a planeswalker and has scientists and engineers who have personally worked on interplanar technology... the list goes on. Only Ixalan is very questionable, since it doesn't have any experience with planeswalkers and doesn't have a unified government. Maybe this was shorthand for Huatli and Vraska being able to convince the River Heralds, the Sun Empire and the Brazen Coalition respectively of the danger? I agree that this leaves out some crucial details, which is still the case because of the relative brevity of MtGs story articles, but I don't find all of that too unbelievable (unless taken very literally).
But wasn't his white-skinned appearance after the brother's war? I think he was tortured for failing both during the war and to infiltrate Dominaria using sleeper agents before the Shard developed and cut off Dominaria from Phyrexia for a very long time. Always thought that this caused the shift in his appearance, but I might be wrong.
Pretty sure that Teferi time-travelling to the Brother's war to find out how to activate the Sylex will be the only time-travel part of the story. I would feel redundant to make it the resolution for everything. That would mean the story would boil down to "Teferi travels into the past for information on the Sylex - Sylex fails - Phyrexians entirely victorious - Teferi goes back in time and stops Phyrexia" which would make half the story useless and the other half entirely illogical (why didn't he START with eradicating New Phyrexia in the past?) and as I said redundant. Think about the storylines whatever you want, but that would be too much even for Wotc to do.
And it would be mighty strange putting two nostalgia-heavy blocks before an entire cosmic retcon that pretty much does away with all previous continuity anyway. Why then two returns afterwards if you want to start brand-new? None of that makes any sense whatsoever. There might be a restructuring of the multiverse similar to the Mending again, but definitely not a cosmic retcon in my opinion.
Okay but how many major character deaths have they retcon'd? I can think of only 4, Bolas, Elsepth (who was never set up to be permanently dead), Ugin and now Ertai. Braids fate was unclear enough I don't buy it as a retcon.
Also, how many of those had deaths significant to the storyline?
Ugin's death and its consequences were established at the same time he was "resurrected" and it had been his plan to be rescued via time-travel from the start apparently.
Bolas' death was a significant part of the Legends story, but that didn't have any consequences and wasn't even put into perspective (i.e. the consequences of that storyline) until they decided to bring him back as a villain.
Elspeth, as you said, was never set up to be dead because she was clearly at the "journey into the underworld" part of the monomyth, and they weren't even subtle about her coming back.
Was Ertai's death that significant? From what I can tell (but please correct me I am wrong) he was accidentally incinerated by Squee of all people after torturing the Goblin, without any interesting further developments coming out of that aside from Squee becoming immortal.
On the other hand, Gideon is and will stay dead (they even swatted away the possibility of resurrecting him via Witherbloom knowledge in Strixhaven). The gods of Amonkhet (aside from Hazoreth) are and will remain dead. Dack Fayden, Domri Rade, Ulamog, Kozilek and Avacyn are and will stay dead. And the list goes on. Sure, maybe other people should have died instead, or some people have unneeded plot armor or what have you, but I find it a bit disingenuous to say that death is handled like in a comic book now.
did wizards forget Ertai is dead? Squee killed him by accident with the phyrexian healing device.
Actually, they did not:
Jaya, despite the fire in her hands, chilled down to her guts. Ertai. She'd heard of him, sure—one of the original crew of the Weatherlight. He'd been dead for centuries—and still had death's pallor, though some force reanimated his twitching features. His eyes possessed a terrible intelligence.
Seems like Sheoldred's forces found his corpse and reanimated him.
Aside from that I really find Meria intriguing, an elf who is interested in artifice and science outside of Kaladesh. Pretty rare in MtG.
My guess who the spy is is probably not surprising:
It's Ajani. At some point he has been captured and compleated off-screen, but as a sleeper agent himself to keep an eye on the Gatewatch, the Dominarian resistance etc.
I would be shocked beyond words if Liliana ends up on Phyrexia's team. My guess is her infection will be the test case for whatever plot relevant cure the heroes think of.
technqiuelly it’s arcavios/strixhaven nix in danger of getting phyresis and make phyrexians native in arcavios
because liliana washing the mound in arcavios… she may have done a mistake even dumber than her other two she could have potentially done karns stupid mistake that he did in mirrodin with failing to check xantcha heart for any more glistening oil. Touch glistening oil you catch phyresis and it slowly works on turning the victim into a phyrexian.
(Let’s face it we’re already theorizing the kennrith twins will end up in the phyrexian war somehow.)
I think you are overestimating glistening oil a little. While yes, it can lead to phyresis and compleating people, it still needs someone to implant the metallic parts to finalize the transformation (I really think it works similar to the Borg and their nanoprobes, just not even that effective). It was so successful on Mirrodin because the whole world and its inhabitants were already infused so extremely with metal. It is mentioned somewhere that Urborg is full of the stuff too still, but under normal circumstances the danger of some random people being compleated is rather limited without an organized invasion force behind it. We'll see where this all leads.
This...is...insane
So far one of the best Horror Stories in MtG lore ever
The paranoia, the horribleness.
I think Sheoldred may have been one of the first to be portaled in by Tezz. It seems the extent of the infestation on Dominaria is massive. The advancement of these New Phyrexians is ridiculous. They seem way more deadly than even the old.
The plane is falling and will fall
This will lead to the need for the time travel set of the Brothers War as the only way to save it.
That picture in the Liliana story, wow her face is beautiful.
If time-travel is involved then it is more likely used by Karn to figure out where the Sylex comes from and how to use it. He is the only one who can safely travel through time anyways (excepting very special circumstances like what happened to Sarkhan and Ugin).
On the rest I agree, holy frick, the new sleepers are truly the cybernetic version of the Thing from another world, and it seems the fight is terribly lopsided in favor of Phyrexia right now. They certainly learned from the first attempt of invading Dominaria it seems.
It also shows the limitations of Glistening Oil though in my opinion, if only a little bit: While it is almost unbeatable in an environment rich in metal and already kind of cybernetic organisms (like Mirrodin), it seems to not have as much substrate on Dominaria. It can certainly poison people and compleat them, but without the support of already compleated beings, the process is slow, and the oil can't generate a catalyst like Mycosynth here. It's still a formidable danger, just not quite as potent as it was on Mirrodin (and it was on Dominaria already, a large quantity of it is still in Urborg). So yeah, more like a very viral form of the Borg right now. And those were always quite terrifying in their own right, soo...
One thing I do find extremely hilarious is the resolution to who the sleeper agent is. Let's see:
Is it one of three popular legacy characters, two of which are planeswalkers who can't be compleated without the Reality Chip, or is it the one Dominarian who was newly introduced and knew suspiciously much about the Phyrexian invader's sleepers and was the only one who went alone in the tower for a longer period of time? It really is a mystery...
Kidding aside, I liked Stenn then morbidly transforming into an antenna to signal Sheoldred the false location (clever of Karn, though it grates on me a little how Compleated!Stenn fell for it so easily). That's just the type of Phyrexian body horror I like.
All in all way more intriguing than I thought at first!
I like them showing that Sheoldred is just the humanoid bits and her scorpion was something she could pop out of. The art is very H.R. Giger which is very appropriate.
Also can the lore people just let Karn be happy for once, poor golem can't catch a break.
oh and Rona is already working with new phyrexia so clearly one clue for brothers war of being canon somehow (sheoldred has plans for karn according to Rona and I’m sure it’s not to trap him nor compleat him (jins instructions he created).)
Yeah makes sense that Rona and other modern phyrexia lovers would be willing to jump on board to truly be compleated.
I do wish we knew how canon "Quest for Karn" is since Karn should be immune to being compleated (again) and wonder if that is all Phyrexia has in store for him.
I've been thinking that planeswalkers might be turned into planar gates for phyrexia and seemly Vorniclex putting a "seed" in Tibalt and the info we got the leaks makes that more certain for me.
Regarding the canonicity of Quest for Karn, the story definitely states that Karn is immune against completion through glistening oil at the very least (via Venser's spark), so I guess QfK is still canon for the most part. It's not clear though whether it stops him from being compleated via the Reality Chip, Tezzeret at least seems to fear that the immunity he got might not stop the Phyrexians from compleating him.
Karn really deserves a hug, that poor golem. Also shows once again how terrible Urza was. 'Well, I gave you pain so that people feel worse about destroying or damaging you' is a horrible statement, even just said jokingly (and I am pretty sure he wasn't joking).
I'm likely an outlier but I strongly prefer Magic to be swords and sorcery aka typical fantasy themed. Sets like Neon Kamigawa, New Capena, this Wild West one and so forth are sets I avoid, no matter how well they're designed or how much fun they are to draft it's not appealing to me in the slightest.
I am likely an outlier as well, but I actually prefer any fantasy world that leaves swords and sorcery medieval high fantasy behind. For me the genre is already way too focussed on either that or low fantasy urban settings. For a genre called "Fantasy" it seems so... creatively limited this way. And the huge pull of MtG for me is that it pushes these boundaries to a degree in a way not many other fantasy settings do. And it's fine to have some standard high fantasy from time to time (like Zendikar, Eldraine and Shandalar) but the most interesting worlds for me are the more out there settings (like Kaladesh, Ravnica, and especially Kamigawa now). And I am all for a Western set with strange, magic guns. If the artwork is not fake, then I quite like their design too.
I'm more familiar with the Dragonlance setting than Baldur's Gate. I can thank the countless bus rides between my house and college reading the Dragons of Autumn Twilight series for that wealth of flavourful knowledge
'buster
The collective lore of all MtG settings combined is a kiddy pool compared to the Forgotten Reams.
Well yeah, D&D's been around a lot longer than MTG, and MTG got its inspiration from D&D. Not sure what the point here is...
'buster
You'd be surprised at how many folks don't realize that, like I've folks when CLB was first announced be like how are they going to find enough major characters for this set and I'm just laughing my ass off because you could make 50 Commander Legend Forgotten Realms sets and barely scratch the surface.
Interestingly enough the Forgotten Realms is older then D&D in the sense that Ed Green would started building the setting and maps abd stuff back in the 60-70s's (this might be why there is so many naked Goddesses and sex in FR) and then TSR bought the setting off of Ed back in the 80's for dirt cheap.
And made it a shared world setting and hafit devour a few other settings so the lore just grows and growa.
That's where I feel the problem lays. MTG's original lore that wasn't told through the cards is phenomenal. In fact, reading it on the fandom page reignited my love of creative writing.
But then all this planejumping occurred and we're knee-deep in a lot of locations just barely standing on a patch of ground w/o going further to explore. If they had stuck with a handful of locations (planes) and built on that, particularly Shandalar and Dominaria--even Dominaria post-planar overlay with Rath (which itself is a cool concept to expand upon)--then I think it would've garnered a rich experience like that you mention in the D&D/Forgotten Realms world(s).
'buster
That's your opinion, but a) we did stay on Dominaria for a VERY long time and its lore is quite rich already and b) while I agree that other planes could use some time to breathe and develop more, the problem lies in the fact that this is no roleplaying game and can therefore not convey the lore the same way. I for one love variation, and staying at Shandalar (which I find very boring) and Dominaria (which I think has had much of the story devoted to it already) for even longer times would make for a miserable experience for me, especially because I can't interact with the lore the same way you could in a pen-and-paper roleplaying game. So while I would like to get more stories and lore from the supplementary material, I much prefer MtG itself switching between planes and developing them by returning to them later on.
Alright, putting aside the reasons for why WotC did this, this whole 'LotR is basically a manifestation of the culture of a certain ethnicity and how they see the world, and therefore external ethnicities should have no place in it' is... Let's just say, a very special kind of interpretation in and of itself. I love LotR, and yeah, Tolkien imagined it to be along the lines of Beowulf, a form of ancient myth for the British people, which he thought they were lacking. Notice that it was specifically british people. Nothing about skin tone or something, though Tolkien obviously couldn't escape the Zeitgeist of his time entirely (his description of Orcs as looking like 'the least lovely looking mongole types' in one of his letters and the fact that ALL people of color appearing in LotR are on the side of evil are good indicators of that). So what exactly is the ethnicity you mean whose 'cultural manifestation' LotR supposedly is, and what exactly does skin color change about the story? We can discuss all day long what Tolkien believed, but my point is that unless you follow his myth-making almost religiously (in which case yes, as a british person you could maybe become upset about this, since the 3rd age Numenorans can be interpreted as expies of you, just like the Hobbits are), this change means nothing. This is not a historic story, this is not changing historic people's ethnicities. There is no cultural baggage that would influence LotR if there were black Numenorans (or elves or whatever) into another direction, unless you believe some weird stereotypes. So... Is the change necessary? Not really. Is it a disgrace to LotR? No. It is pretty much a stylistic choice.
Oh and most legends and myths of cultures across the world are surprisingly diverse, the Japanese for example have stories of Yasuke, the first foreign, black Samurai (16th century). So no, that's not as monolithic as you think it is either. I understand and actually might agree that it is a corporate driven decision by WotC, but this kind of discussion always veers into the strangest directions.
Switching back to the cards, Aragorn and Arwen are interesting in GW, and Gollum's flavor is on point in my opinion.
Fair enough, a multiversal collapse or something like that is very unlikely, I give you that. But I think (and maybe I misread that) the whole point was that the repercussions could be disastrous in any number of ways. There doesn't need to be a total destruction of the multiverse, destroying the planes connected to Realmbreaker or making them uninhabitable would probably at least give me pause on whether this was still such a great plan as well. As you said, the mechanics are very much unknown, the mission parameters were not the same as at the start of it all anymore now that Realmbreaker had already connected elsewhere. My point was that I can therefore understand Kaya and Kaito's position, too many unknowns and potential, uncontained dangers to follow through with the original plan.
I mean, you do remember that the multiverse almost WAS destroyed partly because of the Sylex, right? Sure, many other things had to go wrong as well for that to happen, but the Time Spiral crisis was definitely partly caused by it and was headed that way. From what we know the Sylex itself wasn't the problem, Realmbreaker already breaching into the multiverse was. Everyone including the mirrans was more or less fine with getting Mirrodin destroyed, since it seemed like there was nothing really that could be done for it, and therefore it was a sacrifice and risk they were willing to take to save other worlds. But now it wasn't just Mirrodin that was potentially threatened. Neither Kaya nor Jace have perfect overview of the potential damage that the Sylex in combination with a connected Realmbreaker could cause, the combination of these two has never happened before after all. So you might say that this is still a risk that should have been taken given phyrexian virulence, but I don't quite see why this is a consistency problem. Their plan was to stop Realmbreaker before it connected, so that any destruction was limited to Mirrodin and they failed to do so.
I mean, they did mention Jin-Gitaxias upgrading the oil all the time, and New Phyrexia (especially its spheres) is positively saturated with the stuff by now. I can believe that it simply has evolved by quite a bit on Phyrexia, indicated by Melira still being immune, but having greater difficulty healing people (which was absolutely still possible with Jace and Nahiri, but not considered because it would take too long). It also seems to me (though it was never truly stated) that it is more infectious on New Phyrexia than elsewhere.
The pacing, as nearly always since they started to compress it into 5 articles per set, is awful, and leaves many interesting worldbuilding and character interactions in the dust. I hope there are at least a few more side stories, otherwise the compleation of Nissa, the rebellion of Urabrask, the life of Mirrans in New Phyrexia are all very much just side notes, and I feel like this is definitely a story that could have used some space to better explain where our characters came from, why Phyrexia is as infectious now as it is or give more closure to some of these character's stories and decisions. Unfortunately and for some reason, 5 chapters will have to do. I really actually like most of the plot points and the worldbuilding, but they are pretty much all given not enough room to breathe.
I'm not sure it is THAT absurd, seeing as we don't really know whether they literally meant "the whole plane" was mobilized. Seems much more likely that they meant "all the people we could reach on a certain plane believed us and are trying to rally as many forces as possible". And many of the named planes could actually conceivably be mobilized for the most part: Ravnica makes sense (seeing that it has dealt with an interplanar invader before and has a central government that could ready the whole plane in Niv-Mizzet and the guilds), Kaldheim is a plane defined by its dealings with inter-realm conflicts (and consists of a bunch of realms with fighting-capable populations) so they probably believe stories about invaders from other, previously unknown realms, Kaladesh's new government includes the mother of a planeswalker and has scientists and engineers who have personally worked on interplanar technology... the list goes on. Only Ixalan is very questionable, since it doesn't have any experience with planeswalkers and doesn't have a unified government. Maybe this was shorthand for Huatli and Vraska being able to convince the River Heralds, the Sun Empire and the Brazen Coalition respectively of the danger? I agree that this leaves out some crucial details, which is still the case because of the relative brevity of MtGs story articles, but I don't find all of that too unbelievable (unless taken very literally).
And it would be mighty strange putting two nostalgia-heavy blocks before an entire cosmic retcon that pretty much does away with all previous continuity anyway. Why then two returns afterwards if you want to start brand-new? None of that makes any sense whatsoever. There might be a restructuring of the multiverse similar to the Mending again, but definitely not a cosmic retcon in my opinion.
Why?
Also, how many of those had deaths significant to the storyline?
Ugin's death and its consequences were established at the same time he was "resurrected" and it had been his plan to be rescued via time-travel from the start apparently.
Bolas' death was a significant part of the Legends story, but that didn't have any consequences and wasn't even put into perspective (i.e. the consequences of that storyline) until they decided to bring him back as a villain.
Elspeth, as you said, was never set up to be dead because she was clearly at the "journey into the underworld" part of the monomyth, and they weren't even subtle about her coming back.
Was Ertai's death that significant? From what I can tell (but please correct me I am wrong) he was accidentally incinerated by Squee of all people after torturing the Goblin, without any interesting further developments coming out of that aside from Squee becoming immortal.
On the other hand, Gideon is and will stay dead (they even swatted away the possibility of resurrecting him via Witherbloom knowledge in Strixhaven). The gods of Amonkhet (aside from Hazoreth) are and will remain dead. Dack Fayden, Domri Rade, Ulamog, Kozilek and Avacyn are and will stay dead. And the list goes on. Sure, maybe other people should have died instead, or some people have unneeded plot armor or what have you, but I find it a bit disingenuous to say that death is handled like in a comic book now.
Actually, they did not:
Seems like Sheoldred's forces found his corpse and reanimated him.
Aside from that I really find Meria intriguing, an elf who is interested in artifice and science outside of Kaladesh. Pretty rare in MtG.
My guess who the spy is is probably not surprising:
I think you are overestimating glistening oil a little. While yes, it can lead to phyresis and compleating people, it still needs someone to implant the metallic parts to finalize the transformation (I really think it works similar to the Borg and their nanoprobes, just not even that effective). It was so successful on Mirrodin because the whole world and its inhabitants were already infused so extremely with metal. It is mentioned somewhere that Urborg is full of the stuff too still, but under normal circumstances the danger of some random people being compleated is rather limited without an organized invasion force behind it. We'll see where this all leads.
If time-travel is involved then it is more likely used by Karn to figure out where the Sylex comes from and how to use it. He is the only one who can safely travel through time anyways (excepting very special circumstances like what happened to Sarkhan and Ugin).
On the rest I agree, holy frick, the new sleepers are truly the cybernetic version of the Thing from another world, and it seems the fight is terribly lopsided in favor of Phyrexia right now. They certainly learned from the first attempt of invading Dominaria it seems.
It also shows the limitations of Glistening Oil though in my opinion, if only a little bit: While it is almost unbeatable in an environment rich in metal and already kind of cybernetic organisms (like Mirrodin), it seems to not have as much substrate on Dominaria. It can certainly poison people and compleat them, but without the support of already compleated beings, the process is slow, and the oil can't generate a catalyst like Mycosynth here. It's still a formidable danger, just not quite as potent as it was on Mirrodin (and it was on Dominaria already, a large quantity of it is still in Urborg). So yeah, more like a very viral form of the Borg right now. And those were always quite terrifying in their own right, soo...
One thing I do find extremely hilarious is the resolution to who the sleeper agent is. Let's see:
Kidding aside, I liked Stenn then morbidly transforming into an antenna to signal Sheoldred the false location (clever of Karn, though it grates on me a little how Compleated!Stenn fell for it so easily). That's just the type of Phyrexian body horror I like.
Regarding the canonicity of Quest for Karn, the story definitely states that Karn is immune against completion through glistening oil at the very least (via Venser's spark), so I guess QfK is still canon for the most part. It's not clear though whether it stops him from being compleated via the Reality Chip, Tezzeret at least seems to fear that the immunity he got might not stop the Phyrexians from compleating him.
Karn really deserves a hug, that poor golem. Also shows once again how terrible Urza was. 'Well, I gave you pain so that people feel worse about destroying or damaging you' is a horrible statement, even just said jokingly (and I am pretty sure he wasn't joking).
I am likely an outlier as well, but I actually prefer any fantasy world that leaves swords and sorcery medieval high fantasy behind. For me the genre is already way too focussed on either that or low fantasy urban settings. For a genre called "Fantasy" it seems so... creatively limited this way. And the huge pull of MtG for me is that it pushes these boundaries to a degree in a way not many other fantasy settings do. And it's fine to have some standard high fantasy from time to time (like Zendikar, Eldraine and Shandalar) but the most interesting worlds for me are the more out there settings (like Kaladesh, Ravnica, and especially Kamigawa now). And I am all for a Western set with strange, magic guns. If the artwork is not fake, then I quite like their design too.
That's your opinion, but a) we did stay on Dominaria for a VERY long time and its lore is quite rich already and b) while I agree that other planes could use some time to breathe and develop more, the problem lies in the fact that this is no roleplaying game and can therefore not convey the lore the same way. I for one love variation, and staying at Shandalar (which I find very boring) and Dominaria (which I think has had much of the story devoted to it already) for even longer times would make for a miserable experience for me, especially because I can't interact with the lore the same way you could in a pen-and-paper roleplaying game. So while I would like to get more stories and lore from the supplementary material, I much prefer MtG itself switching between planes and developing them by returning to them later on.