MTG Salvation

Quote from SultaiAscendancy »

I already posted this in the thread about Jace's Defeat but it seems relevant so I'll put it here too: I'm predicting the Nicol Bolas is going to mind rape Jace, causing him to flee by planeswalking to a random plane (Ixalan). Once he gets there, most or all of his memories will be gone because of what Nicol Bolas did to him, and he won't even remember that he's a planeswalker, thus making him a castaway. Then maybe Ajani will rescue him in the second set. Maybe Bolas mind wiped and scattered the entire Gatewatch and Ajani will have to go to each random plane the others ended up on and rescue them. Or maybe not. But it would certainly let them fulfill their promise of less Gatewatch in each block if they spread them out in such a way.

I've actually been thinking the same thing since we found out Jace will be in the next set as a castaway. My hope is Vraska will find him, realize he's lost his memories, and invite him to join her crew as her servant. Later Ajani will have to rescue him. This would deepen the Jace/Vraska antagonism and sour Vraska on Ajani (another GW member), helping to set up the, I feel inevitable, Ob Nixilis led UnGate Watch.

Idk..generally big mana decks stomp all over control decks because they win the inevitability war. I think the ds meta we have now is much better for control than any meta dominated by big mana decks..

I think this is all good news, less GW fatigue, and the core-sets sound like they'll fill in stories from other parts of the multiverse. I love that we have a primary story arc w/ a primary cast of characters (I'm someone who generally likes the GW) but it will be cool if we can start getting slice of life stories again on various planes. How is the rebuilding on Zendikar going? What is Alara like now? Do the Obzedat still have Tajic imprisoned? Has Oona reformed on Shadowynn? Did Ajani's campaign to create atheism on Theros spread beyond Meletis? These are all the kinds of stories I'm hoping the new coresets can be used to tell. What is going on in the areas where the GW doesn't have a presence atm.

Also, if "there may be worlds we only visit for one set" means WOTC is willing to give a go to a Tamiyo focused return to Kamigawa set I will hyperventilate like a Dr. Who fangirl. #Sage's Path 2018

I already commented on this earlier today but I just want to reiterate and agree with other posters that "potentially limits future design space" is not a good reason to ban something/leave something banned.

-Snapcaster mage and past in flames for instants and sorceries
-Collected company for 3 drop creatures
-Traverse the ulvenwald for creatures and lands
-Ancient stirrings for colorless cards
-Oath of Nissa for planeswalkers
-Archbound ravager and cranial plating for artifacts
-Any tribal lord for cards of that tribe
-The expertise cycle for low-0 cost cards
-Tarmogoyf for card types (who knows right?)

These are all cards that could synergize well with future cards they print of a certain type/category. Many of them already synergize well with something in modern, just as SFM would. My point is, WOTC isn't going to ban any of these cards (and shouldn't) despite the fact that they are already good in modern and potentially make future cards better. However, as WOTC frequently says, they don't test or design for modern. So the constraints of a card in the modern pool shouldn't really limit design space in the first place. SFM is a powerful, synergistic card that would enable equipment decks, (potentially) control decks, and would probably be slotted into wx midrange. None of these are actually bad things. I know I'm basically preaching to the choir on this site but I guess I hope if I say things like this enough it will voodoo WOTC into unbanning it

I dont really understand the argument that SFM should stay banned because WOTC "might" print a busted equipment down the line. As others have pointed out they have really scaled back the power of equipment. Its also worth noting that there are better answers to sfm now. Sfm can be killed before it even cheats out what it tutored, and both can be k-commanded. Furthermore, it's hard to think any equipment cheated out turn 3 will be more powerful than turn 3 reality smasher/tasigur/karn/shadow/vizier combo/living end. Im not saying there are no risks to the card, but I am saying something being banned for the possibility of it being problematic down the line is a bad reason to leave something banned. That's like banning the merfolk lords because WOTC "might" print a super busted modern legal merfolk down the line.

Power without equal seems to feature the number 3 prominantly, could be coincidence or could, as you say, be a callback to the 3 gods. Im inclined to think this shows the gods more than "Delight in the hunt" since hunt creates medium size horrors. I definitely think the creature beyond the gate could be Razaketh (although if so he's much larger than i expected) it also looks like the creature in "Power without equal" tho so it might be one of the missing gods?

I'd also like to add that the art for "The mighty shall fall" may be the most gangsta thing i've ever seen on a magic card. F&$@ing brutal.

I had a thought about Bontu's last reckoning. It is mentioned that when Bolas returns even the gods will have to prove themselves before him. Since the art seems to show Bontu fighting hordes of humans (or zombies) my guess is that either Bolas will tell the citizens of Amonkhet to rise up and kill the gods, or that all of the undead worthy will return through the gate and the gods will have to fight them, either way it would be a test for the gods to prove their worth.

I have to say one of the things I am most interesting in finding out is the purpose of the trials (for Bolas), it is seeming more and more like they weren't meant to be a planeswalker factory, and that Bolas just wants to feed off the plane's energy, so why would he care to make sure the trials were set up? Is it just to feed Razaketh as a thank you for watching the plane while Bolas is gone? Only time will tell oO

Im really hoping the gods break free from Bolas just so we can see how they react. For example, will Bontu be devastated at the role she played in the deaths of so many amonkhetu or was she always kind of like that? Will Hazoret turn into a zeal of passion over a zeal of fanaticism? Will Rhonas get to do anything in the storyline? So many questions

In Maro's mothership article today he mentions that Samut is a speedster. At first I thought he just meant she was quick but he goes on to specifically reference the Flash as an inspiration and mention why they gave her the keywords they did to emphasize speed. To my knowledge, honest to goodness superspeed like Maro seemed to imply, isn't a power other people on amonkhet seemed to possess. This combined w/ the fact tgat she is 3 colors, makes me wonder if she is in fact supposed to be a chosen champion of the misding 3 gods. It just seems like a pretty impressive power set for someone who is just a warrior (granted she could be a pw but i still think that will be Djeru)

I love everything about the format rn except that it means my jtms and sfm's arent going to be playable in modern anytime soon small sacrifice to pay tho since the format seems pretty sweet right now

Quote from Cythare »

The only jarring part to me was that he's able to hold his ground (even if only briefly) v Ulamog in the BFZ story but gets more or less tossed around by the ammit.

Let's be honest, that's an issue with the BFZ story, not this one.

A few people wanted to discuss the imagery of Nissa’s visions, and since I was one of the early instigators of the leyline conflict (which I could argue until the moon comes over the mountain), I decided to give my own take on the imagery. Long write-up follows, largely due to quoting the story text. I’ve broken up the sections according to their natural points:

---

“A dark snake, winged and venomous, cast its shadow upon the desert. The snake was huge, bigger than an oak, bigger than a forest of oaks. Its shadow covered the whole world.

The shadow spoke, its voice rumbling across the empty desert. "They would take away my power. They would take away what makes me me. This I will not abide."

The shadow of the snake wrapped its coils around the world.

"For what I require, I would drain every world. I would devour every single one. But I start here."

The shadow squeezed. The world screamed. Nissa screamed.

The scene crumbled, fleeing from the pain.”

- So it seems that Amonkhet was the first plane Bolas went to after losing his power (‘I start here’). When he says “They would take away my power,” he doesn’t mean it in a future sense, but in the way we walk out of meetings at work or at school, like, ‘They would have me do all this work?! I will crush them!’ And the fact that he says he will start with Amonkhet makes me feel it is of far more importance than the Conflux, unless that was a happy accident that he stumbled upon Alara after Amonkhet.

---

“She was looking up into space, into the stars. Eight stars. Eight stars in a loose circle and evenly spaced, lighting up the entire night sky.” – This, to me, indicates balance. The eight gods were evenly spaced in a circle. Which makes it stranger that the five remaining were monocolored. There’s no real combination for only three creatures/gods that would properly balance the five colors (unless all three were five-color).

“A line of darkness, somehow visible even against the night, a line that shone darkness, wove its way through the eight stars. The line twisted and turned and vibrated, its pulsing a violent cry. When the line ceased moving, it was a figure eight on its side, a snake eating its own tail. It encompassed all eight stars, each star twinkling desperately against the curtain of dark now nestled close against them.” – Clearly, to me, Bolas’ influence on the gods. The fact that Bolas pulled them out of their perfect circle into an infinity symbol, instead of just maintaining them in the circle, implies to me that Bolas needs them to be out of balance and attuned to something specific. And from the description, the natures of the gods seemed to struggle to return to how they were before.

“Three of the stars winked out. Their generation of light and heat snuffed. Their lives vanished.

But Nissa could still see movement where those three stars had been. Stars no more, just three dark rents in the fabric of the sky. Three dark holes, possessed of an energy and fury all their own, pulsing to a rhythm malevolent.” – Accident, or design? I don’t think we have enough data to tease this one out. However, the writer does write ‘snuffed,’ which implies an action, instead of a reaction. So maybe it was by design, instead of accident. Since we’re talking stars, this description makes me think of the death of massive stars into black holes. Still there, but not at all what it once was, and now ‘dark holes possessed of an energy and fury all their own.’ So, to me, it seems the three gods that were ‘snuffed’ are not dead, but may be the Amonkhet version of a dead god. If a human or any living thing becomes a zombie/mummy on Amonkhet because whatever dies doesn’t stay ‘dead,’ then the ‘curse’ could logically hold true for the gods as well. So maybe the three gods, the three stars, are ‘undead’ in the same way black holes are ‘undead’ stars.

“The five remaining stars moved, their new alignment warped, all bending to the shadowy line woven through their constellation. Their new outline suggested a pair of horns.” – My visualization is that one side of the infinity symbol of the eight gods dissolved, so all three of the snuffed gods were on one side. That would leave the five in a pattern similar to Bolas’ horns. But it would also make an incomplete pattern. We’ve gone from a balanced circle, to a forced infinity symbol, to a broken shape. Will this have an impact on the story? Will the broken shape make it easier to dissolve Bolas’ influence? If so, why would he allow the other three gods to be snuffed? Back to the accident or design argument.


---

“Awkward figures wrapped in white linen bent and dug in the harsh sands. Mummies, they called them. The anointed. Hundreds, thousands of the mummies dug into a deep pit, pulling out a blue ore. Cartloads of the ore snaked their way in a large procession toward the city.” – The Anointed seem to be Bolas’ design for Amonkhet, so I feel this takes place after Bolas’ influence campaign. Bolas seems to have a need for lazotep. We don’t know much about it apart from Wizards describing it as a ‘mysterious mineral.’

“Farther away, three young children stopped before a barrier. The beautiful city on one side, the stark emptiness of the desert on the other. They're whispering to each other. They look around, look at each other. Uncertain. A child presses through. The two others follow. All three are swallowed by the hungry sands.” – Like others, I’m leaning toward these three children being the other three gods that were snuffed. Which would place this moment AFTER the circle becoming an infinity symbol, but right BEFORE they were snuffed. The city and the desert, I feel, are representations of life and death. The fact that they chose to wander into godly ‘undeath’ goes back to the ‘accident or design’ argument. Maybe they knew that removing themselves from the equation would weaken Bolas’ design for the gods (circle -> infinity -> broken symbol/horns), leading to an inevitable cataclysm, thus sticking it to Bolas?

---

“She saw a young man, his face erased, stumbling among a garden of statues. High above the man a growing cloud of dusk attacked the sun. From somewhere outside the garden there was a mighty roar.” – Like others, I’m leaning Ashiok, for the host of reasons other people have mentioned over the months, from his shoulder-armor appearing elsewhere on Amonkhet art, to his knowledge or at least interest in the gods of Theros, and the fact that his face is erasing itself into mist. Garden of statues? The Trial of Strength requires you to get a basilisk scale (basilisks kill you/turn you to stone?), and involves jungles/’gardens.’ Which would imply Ashiok’s face started poofing before his ‘death’ on Amonkhet. So was he a walker before the Trial of Strength? Who can say.

---

“Nissa saw a world, then tens of worlds, hundreds of worlds. Thousands. She saw this world, the world of Amonkhet, and wrapped around it was a dark sinewy line. That line stretched back through all the worlds, all the thousands of worlds, and she saw an unbroken line of darkness from Amonkhet all the way back to the beginning of the line.” – Now, if Amonkhet was the first world Bolas went to after the Mending, this passage would make it sound like the last in a long line of planes. Which flusters me. And thousands of worlds is a tall order for even Bolas, if the line means conquest or influence, instead of just passing through. However, Dominaria is/used to be the center of Dominia, and so what happened on Dominaria impacted all the other planes. What if Bolas is creating a ‘network’ among planes, in order to make one specific location the new center of Dominia and the planar universe? That would make him even more powerful than his oldwalker self. Otherwise, the thousands of planes seem a little arbitrary.

---

“A large golden disc, shaped and stylized like a sun, descending from the sky. The sun disc approached a large circular stone tablet covered with strange sigils, and the two discs merged, becoming a single golden disc. Cracks appeared in the golden disc, small at first, then widening, growing. The disc crumbled away into nothingness.” – I think this is what happens when the two ‘suns’ of Amonkhet meet. But the constant-dusk-sun seems to travel along the horizon toward the horns, and isn’t ‘descending.’ So is the horizon sun the ‘circular stone tablet’ and the second sun is the ‘large golden disc’? And when they meet, do they leave the plane in darkness, unleashing whatever Bolas had planned? Or maybe that’s what the three ‘undead’ gods have been waiting for?

---

“The scenes shifted faster now, barely even an image forming before being replaced. A fizzling torch. A broken clock with a clean face. A mummified head facing backward atop a mummified body. A split tree, its sap oozing into the ground. A shattered shield, its shiny metallic pieces torn and scattered.” – Call me crazy, but I think this is the Gatewatch being broken. A fizzling torch = Chandra. A split tree, oozing sap = Nissa. A shattered shield = Gideon. I’m leaning Liliana being the mummified head (moving forward but always looking back?) and Jace being the broken clock with a clean face (mind broken when he was younger, new personality/persona ever since?). What does this ultimately mean? I have no idea, but it seems that they’re going to be (or likely to be) slammed.

“She closed her eyes against the onslaught, but still the images came tumbling through her head, crumpling her in mid-air. A falling dragon. Giants, covered in metallic blue, stomping through streets. A massive flash of light, consuming a world.” – A falling dragon could be anything. Bolas, Ugin, the collapse of Bolas’ system. The giants, covered in metallic blue, could be the reason for mining lazotep. But what they are/where they are, who can know. The massive flash of light, consuming a world, seems pretty clear on its face: Some massive cataclysm.

---

That’s about it for my input for these scenes. A fun question: What happens on a plane where anything that dies rises in undeath, when the plane itself dies?:

“I lived, once, the plane seems to whisper in a hoarse, sand-scraped voice.

She senses life, but it is not alive. What is left of the plane defiantly groans.

He could never truly kill me. I abhor death.

An image: half-eaten, undead antelope being trailed by hungry happy vultures. An elephant mother caressing the newly-arisen body of her dead child.

Those that die will always return. That is the Curse of Wandering. My gift.”

Quote from Mangod »

Yes, I dislike the storytelling; why the f*** do you think I'm complaining? The storytelling of MtG as a whole has deteriorated since BfZ, and I blame the s*** writing where the Gatewatch are concerned for that - not because the idea of a group of planeswalkers working together bothers me, but because I consider the writing to be bad. Threats like Tezzeret I can accept them fighting and beating, but the Eldrazi? Gods?

Chandra, per Wizards own established canon, is just a pyromancer who can planeswalk: how do you expect me to take the story seriously when she kills Cthulhu? Or when Nissa mindr**** a God into submission despite never even trying something like that before, while she's under direct mental assault?

I'm not projecting; I just consider the story about the GW to be a poorly thought out, poorly told mess, on par with fanfiction. When you keep pitting them against threats that they should by all rights not even be in danger of inconveniencing, yet keep having them come out on top, it robs the setting of any gravitas it might have had.

For starters I'd say that the largest portion of readers would agree that the writing has improved substantially since BFZ.

Secondly; mindrape? That's your choice of words. You haters really, REALLY like to exaggerate and overblow these events. She barely managed to tweak a tiny piece of Kefnet's code so he wouldn't kill her. That's hardly mind*******. If that's how you describe it is love to hear what you would call what a real, master telepath like Jace would do to him. If Jace even could do anything to him.

Seriously. Every major event with the exception of Gideon mildly inconveniencing (not pushing back like you haters like to say) Ulamog has had an explanation that was entirely reasonable within world.

Quote from idSurge »

Well, forget it. A complete disgrace, frankly a total embarrassment.

One could say, a cat-astrophe.

I don't see how this is a question. They all clearly have their mummies.

...

...

Okay I'll just see myself out.

Quote from MinaHarcourt »

Quote from Dynamite_Private »

Rather than die, I'd prefer seeing a relevant, formerly friendly Planeswalker (not asking for gatewatch because it won't happen and if it would it's too soon for it) being forced to serve Bolas.

I'd like to make a good case for that someone being Tamiyo. She stood by as Innistrad was going to be devoured, preferring to watch rather than do the right thing. Someone like that might be a good target for Nicol Bolas, who probably has oodles of forbidden knowledge. If there's anything that Tamiyo wants, it's knowledge.

I think Narset better fits the bill of a Planeswalker who would want knowledge. Tamiyo is more interested in history, specifically. Tamiyo wasn't interfering because she had know way of knowing what would happen when Avacyn died (and remember, she was adamant about Jace not trying to kill Avacyn) and she's acutely aware of "How large their [Planeswalker] feet are."

Someone like Bolas, who encourages Planeswalkers interfering in the affairs of non-walkers, likening them unto gods, above mortal judgment and laws? That doesn't seem like her cuppa.

Quote from Kruphix7 »

I don't think it's print limited but I've kind of been waiting for orzhov charm to blow up. It can already reanimate DS at instant speed, I figure it's only a matter of time till more solid 1 drops are printed.

While I don't know about it blowing up in popularity, this looks like one of the perfect pieces for an Esper Delver build I have been working on, and recently thought of adding DS.... This is a really great card I totally forgot about. Time to buy foils for $1!

Quote from Kruphix7 »

I have never played with or against RUG Delver and as others have stated I haven't seen notable results from the deck posted anywhere, but lets all remember that every deck from DS Jund to Eldrazi started off as some person's jank brew until other people picked it up and it got enough interest and spotlight to be refined and perfected by the community. If Kovo's doing well with the deck than I say good for him and I hope we can see it put up some results somewhere because an interactive blue deck would be a breath of fresh air that many people have been asking for. I'm not saying anyone is actually wrong in the current debate, high performing and highly played decks are high performing and highly played because they have proven success and saying "people are uncreative" is not fair to all the brewers. However to say that just because something doesn't have top tier results yet it is bad is also not fair. BW Eldrazi processors was a cute pet deck until it morphed into heartless summoning eldrazi and ate the format.

No, no. If a pro isnt playing it, its bad. End of story.


Also, if people want access to black, then brew with a Sultai shell, instead. It's doable, I just like my Blood Moons.

Well, the silver lining of the "no changes" announcement is that blue will continue to remain terrible, which means blue staples will remain extremely cheap to pick up. Which also means foil Scalding Tarns will continue to drop in price. I had been holding my breath on foil Tarns for a while, especially after hearing about a reprint. But if an unban happened before release, they would spike up considerably. Now, without an unban or the possibility of blue being any good for the next couple of months, my patience has paid off. Once MM17 actively gets into circulation, I fully expect foil Tarns to dip well below $100, and possibly as low (or lower!) than $80.

Sweet work! Love the flavor and balance.