SultaiAscendancy: I am pretty sure that Jace's 'PW to a specific person' is to explain what would otherwise be huge coincidences in getting people together.
It's pretty clear that either planes are really small, or PWs can control where they PW to when they arrive on a plane. Given that a narrative explanation was needed, the fact that we have one seems fine to me.
So far I think the rule has been that planeswalkers can either planeswalker to a plane at random, planeswalker to a location they already know about on the plane, or follow another planeswalker leaving from the same plane at the same time.
Before BFZ, there wasn't a lot of planeswalkers traveling together (and obviously pre-mending there were different rules), so I'll start there: Gideon and Jace planeswalked together from Ravnica to Zendikar. Nissa was already there. Kiora returned to Zendikar separately. They all met each other while on the plane. It could be considered a coincidence that they were all on Tazeem, but that's where all the action was happening, so it's no surprise.
Gideon and Jace later planeswalk together to Regatha to recruit Chandra. She declines and they planeswalker together back to Zendikar. Chandra later planeswalks on her own and also ends up on Tazeem, but again, she's already been to Zendikar and she should have some idea of where the main conflict is either from talking to Jace and Gideon or from her previous experience.
Jace planeswalkers to Innistrad alone. Later, he planeswalks back to Zendikar to get the rest of the Gatewatch. They follow him through the blind eternities to the correct location on Innistrad. Presumably, they all follow him to right spot on Ravnica after the events of Eldritch Moon.
Chandra and Liliana planeswalk to Kaladesh together. Nissa planeswalkers alone without ever having been to Kaladesh and somehow ends up in the same place. That's a coincidence. Later, Liliana goes back to Ravnica and has Gideon and Jace follow her to the right spot on Kaladesh. The rest of the Gatewatch save Ajani follow Liliana to Amonkhet after Aether Revolt.
The point is, planeswalkers can follow each other through the blind eternities, and they do so regularly, but only when they're planeswalking at the same time, from the same plane, to the same destination. Chandra ending up on Tazeem and Nissa in Ghirapur could be considered coincidences (though there might be explanations, I should probably re-read those stories) but outside of those two instances nothing is really coincidental. Everything could be explained through group planeswalking. No planeswalker homing required.
Granted, now that we know they can follow each other in this way, it would give a better explanation to Chandra getting to Tazeem and Nissa to Ghirapur, but it wasn't really bothering anyone that much that I know of. It would have been fine just to leave it alone. But now that this new type of planeswalking is formally introduced, it opens a whole new can of worms and creates a lot of unanswered questions about planeswalking.
The Jace part was certainly interesting. I don't know if I like that planeswalkers can planeswalk to specific people. What are the rules on that? Clearly Jace was able to do it without Gideon's knowledge or consent, hence his surprise at seeing Jace alive. So can you planeswalker to any planeswalker you know of, at least if you know what plane they're on? What if it's not an ally, but an enemy, such as Garruk following Liliana? Does it only work with other planeswalkers, or could Jace planeswalk to the location of Jori En or Lavinia if he so desired? The rules for planeswalking are messy enough as it is; expanding the ways that characters can planeswalker only makes it worse.
Maybe it is indeed a PW thing, with Jace being the best at it (yeah, again) because he's a telepath. Perhaps his psychic link to people assist him in his planeswalk process, therefore he could planeswalk to someone he connects to better than other PWs could.
This is definitely a possibility. For all we know, this could be a Jace-only thing. Or it might not. We don't know yet for sure, and we might not ever. Hopefully they revisit this discussion in the story once they show Jace planeswalking onto Dominaria in real time, probably near the end of Dominaria's story.
A lot of people seem to dislike the ending with the emperor, but I thought it was fine for what it was. It sets up a return to Ixalan nicely, though I'm unsure of how they're going to justify merfolk on Torrezon. I'm now leaning more towards the belief that the ending was decided from the start, because I can't imagine how the merfolk or vampires taking Orazca could really set up a future block on Torrezon rather than Ixalan. Even if it was truly able to be changed, the variable part of the story was much shorter than I expected, so it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway. That means that they really didn't need to dedicate that much time to writing four endings, since each was only 20% of the story. I would be a little more lenient in my criticism of the story knowing that they had to write four full articles for each possible outcome, but since that clearly isn't the case, they've lost their primary excuse for the less than well-written parts of the story and the inconsistencies across different mediums. On the bright side, it's incredibly reassuring to know that they're getting an actual writer to do Dominaria's story, and hopefully they continue to have professional authors to write future storylines.
From the story credits they had only Alison Luhrs and Kelly Digges writing all 13 (12 to them) Ixalan stories, which also might explain the gap between what happened on the cards and art book and the story. Only some much they can write before being burned out as well as what other jobs they do at wizards.
That's true; they probably could have divided up the workload a little better. All the more reason that bringing in a professional for Dominaria is an extremely good idea.
Commander 2018: Commander walkers return. I definitely think we'll see a card for Azor before he lost his spark. We could see Ramaz given the recent mention of Kaldheim in the story and the necessity of introducing more Bolas henchmen. Interestingly, Leshrac was referenced in flavor text in C16, maybe he could appear posthumously like Freyalise. Vronos and Sifa are also possibilities but being presumably white/blue and mono-black respectively, they would have to compete with Azor and Leshrac. Maybe we get two planeswalkers per deck? For example:
A deck with Azor and Vronos
A deck with Leshrac and Sifa Grent
A or deck with Ramaz and another planeswalker
A deck with Urza and Taysir?
Commander Anthology 2: It says 13 foil commanders instead of 12, so I guess we're getting a C16 deck. Here are my predictions:
Political Puppets
Eternal Bargain
Built from Scratch
Breed Lethality
Battlebond:Sounds like fun but why this over another Conspiracy? They seemed to be doing experimental draft sets every year with Conspiracy sets being every other year. Unstable was in 2017 so why not Conspiracy 3 in 2018 and hold off on Battlebond until 2019? It's not like Conspiracy 2 was unpopular or anything. The best explanation I can think of is that a standard-legal set on Fiora is on the horizon... which would be great, in my opinion. Regardless, Battlebond sounds cool and I hope that the world-building is as good as it was for Conspiracy. I don't know how many sports references they can make without making it feel too connected to real life rather than its own world. But I would love to see another world like Fiora that's slightly more comedic than most but still very much a part of the regular multiverse, unlike Bablovia. I think that they'll definitely bring back surge in this set. I'm not so sure about support; it plays well in 2HG but it was so generic that I think it was pretty unpopular in its first appearance, whereas surge was both functional and popular. I look forward to seeing new mechanics that also tie into 2HG (and hopefully work well in Commander as well).
Signature Spellbook: Jace:They're not putting Mindsculptor in a $20 product. It'll probably be Jace Beleren. Maybe Jace, Vryn's Prodigy if we're lucky (and/or if the rest of the cards have almost no value). Other Jace cards are either not particularly desirable or tied to specific planes and therefore not representative of Jace in general. Only Jace-related cards limits the options significantly but they can give new art to blue staples and throw them in. They've already reprinted Counterspell and Fact or Fiction with Jace-themed artwork; we'll definitely see those again. As for the "Signature Spellbook" product line in general, it looks promising. The low price tag means that it shouldn't be as rare as From the Vaults were. There are only a few planeswalkers with enough cards and story presence to fit, but that list should expand at roughly the same rate as they print to Signature Spellbook products. Currently I could only see this happening for Ajani, Bolas, Garruk, Sarkhan, Sorin, Tezzeret, and of course, the other 4 of the Origins 5.
Whatever the Chinese planeswalker decks are called: This seems... interesting. It. sounds like it's going to be a series, perhaps an annual release. The description says that introduces two planeswalkers to the Magic multiverse and calls it a new branch of Magic lore... so I guess it's canon? Making it non-canon would be the easy way out, but it could be really cool to give us glimpses of new planes this way. It seems like, at the very least, a replacement for duel decks that seems like a strict upgrade: the planeswalker duel decks were always more desirable and valuable because of the inherent value of anything with that card type, so switching to exclusively those (rather than the opposite like the last few duel decks have done) seems like the right move. Plus, these will introduce new and unique lore, something that duel decks never did. I'm pretty optimistic about these decks and very curious about what they'll actually look like.
Edit: Didn't realize the The Mimeoplasm was the background image on the article link. Obviously Devour for Power will be included in Anthology 2, rather than Political Puppets or any other Commander 2011 deck. I stand by my other predictions though: I think it will be Mimeoplasm, Oloro, Daretti, and Atraxa.
Saheeli did more in the first quarter of this story than in the entirety of Kaladesh block.
Some of the misleading cards representing Vraska's new memories is interesting. It's certainly much better than having those cards be completely incorrect, but I still think it would have been better to only show things that actually happened. Regardless, Shake the Foundations is still unexplained, and will evidently remain that way forever.
I still resent how they hand-waved away the fact that Jarad was a protagonist in the original Ravnica books. By this point I'm convinced that no one on the current creative team has read said books. I'm glad that they're giving us a BG protagonist in the form of Vraska but they don't have to erase another BG protagonist to do so. I don't understand how he went from the only sane and halfway decent person in the Golgari to a racist dictator with no explanation in between. Sure, a lot can happen in 60-ish years, but - say it with me now - show, don't tell.
The Jace part was certainly interesting. I don't know if I like that planeswalkers can planeswalk to specific people. What are the rules on that? Clearly Jace was able to do it without Gideon's knowledge or consent, hence his surprise at seeing Jace alive. So can you planeswalker to any planeswalker you know of, at least if you know what plane they're on? What if it's not an ally, but an enemy, such as Garruk following Liliana? Does it only work with other planeswalkers, or could Jace planeswalk to the location of Jori En or Lavinia if he so desired? The rules for planeswalking are messy enough as it is; expanding the ways that characters can planeswalker only makes it worse.
A lot of people seem to dislike the ending with the emperor, but I thought it was fine for what it was. It sets up a return to Ixalan nicely, though I'm unsure of how they're going to justify merfolk on Torrezon. I'm now leaning more towards the belief that the ending was decided from the start, because I can't imagine how the merfolk or vampires taking Orazca could really set up a future block on Torrezon rather than Ixalan. Even if it was truly able to be changed, the variable part of the story was much shorter than I expected, so it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway. That means that they really didn't need to dedicate that much time to writing four endings, since each was only 20% of the story. I would be a little more lenient in my criticism of the story knowing that they had to write four full articles for each possible outcome, but since that clearly isn't the case, they've lost their primary excuse for the less than well-written parts of the story and the inconsistencies across different mediums. On the bright side, it's incredibly reassuring to know that they're getting an actual writer to do Dominaria's story, and hopefully they continue to have professional authors to write future storylines.
Lots of people have had this idea, of course, because it's cool. People like combining things and like factions. I've seen multiple custom sets, good ones too, based on this premise. Unfortunately, I don't think it'd ever be done on Ravnica specifically simply because there are tricolor faction worlds already and R&D wouldn't want to dilute the premise of Ravnica being ten bicolor factions.
Exactly.
Combining guilds takes away from Ravnica's identity, as well as taking up design space from the two different three colour associated planes.
Agreed. I don't think that they can fit a Bolas invasion in with the normal guild stuff we expect, so I'm predicting we'll see three sets, all to be drafted separately as per the new model. The first two will take place before Bolas invades (Ral Zarek and other agents could still be preparing for the invasion though), and they will be pretty typical Ravnica sets with a mechanic for each guild. The one exception is hybrid mana, which shouldn't be necessary since you'll only have five color pairs in each draft format rather than 10 (there could also be less mana fixing for that reason). The third set will be when Bolas invades, and it will have all 10 guilds. This will be where they bring back split cards (specifically the ones that are a different guild on each half). They could use fuse (RTR throwback), aftermath (sort of Bolas-related?), or have a new split card mechanic. Hybrid mana will return and be used more so than RTR or Gatecrash to support a format with ten guilds, and they'll be more mana fixing. We also might see a mechanic that rewards playing multicolor or lots of colors, or at least a subtheme if they choose not to keyword it. Afflict might return to represent the Eternals. Alternatively, they could bring back cycling since it's sort of Bolas-related now and would help with mana fixing.
I feel like trying to do 10 guilds and a Bolas invasion in two sets would be really difficult to do properly, so I think this would be the best route to take. We'll see what they actually choose to do though, and whether they can pull it off well.
This is easily the worst story we've had in months. Granted, some of those months had no stories at all, but it's still most certainly the worst story for this set (so far) and quite possibly the entire block. It's clear that this was intended to be part of a longer story and was written to condense several large events into a relatively short span. Eventually, the decision was made to split up the last story into two, so one would think that they would add more detail to the rushed first half. But they didn't. The solution was so blindingly obvious and they still just left it the way it was. And as a result, things like Huatli calling Zacama - which should have been one of the most epic moments in the story - is instead reduced to a few lines the have no relevance to anything else except for calling out a card in the set. It was absolutely pathetic. The exchange with the emperor could have been longer as well. And, of course, there's the fact that Huatli gets visibly upset about the emperor' revisionist history... and then proceeds to leave the plane for a week instead of doing something about it. What? They had more than enough time to have her give a speech telling what actually happened and THEN planeswalk away. But they didn't, and the story - as well the character of Huatli - suffers.
And the fact that Huatli's cousin survived adds insult to injury: we already - in this exact same set - had them try to make us think that Vona and Kumena had died. They kind of did it with Tishana in the previous set as well. They pulled this FOUR times in one block. Why would they do that? It's so obvious what they're doing. We know not to consider a character dead until we see the body. We're not idiots. They've pulled this stunt so many times recently that not only will we never fall for it again, but that it causes more irritation than suspense. And they really could have used an actual death too. This whole storyline stinks of Kaladesh and Aether Revolt's constant death-teasing with no actual death (except Yahenni, but that was related to the conflict). At least Kaladesh block had the excuse of the revolution being somewhat civil with neither side wanting to completely destroy the other. Ixalan is about four very different cultures that hate each other and are at actual war with one another. They can't kill off a single named character in the conflict? Seriously? They've passed up so many chances to kill characters and have teased us to the point where it's become annoying. Amonkhet block, to its credit, was not afraid to kill off relatively major characters. What happened to that mindset? Why does everyone have to start constantly surviving near-death experiences again?
There was also, of course, plenty of awful dialogue. Vona is still the most aggressively terrible and Bond villain-esque character we've had in a while. Mavren yelling an extended "no" was almost a funny way to mock a cliche, but kind of undermined by how the rest of the dialogue uses tons of cliches without any irony or self-awareness. People seem to truly enjoy Breeches but his outbursts seem like comedic low-hanging fruit to me, and it hasn't been very funny since the first time they used it. Angrath's all-caps dialogue has also gotten old and seems to undermine their attempt at making a more sympathetic and less stereotypical BR character. When we see Angrath actually talking normally, it shows us an insightful and reasonable version of the BR philosophy (even if he does repeat the word "freedom" way to much). But that's only 10% of his dialogue. The other 90% is just YELLING ANGRY THINGS IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT'S FUNNY. It's such a waste of what could and should be an amazing character. I really did enjoy the unexpected yet perfectly in-character timing of Angrath's exit. I just don't like the way most of his dialogue has been.
This storyline had the potential to be really great. It had everything it needed for me to like it: only one Gatewatch member instead of five, another returning character who I actually like getting an equal role to said Gatewatch member, well-conceived new characters like Angrath and Kumena, a morally grey conflict between factions for the first time in years, exploration of the plane itself instead of just the main plot, etc. But the writers seem to have really stumbled in resolving the story. I could have thought of a dozen better ways to end the story than this. Part of the issue is writing quality. You would think that they would have figured out who should be writing which types of stories (and who shouldn't be writing any at all) by this point, especially since they seem to be losing creative team members rather than gaining them. They have a few writers who can actually write, so give them the reigns and stop letting the weaker ones keep writing to spare their feelings. I thought that the writing quality was significantly better throughout Hour of Devastation and Ixalan, but in parts of previous stories for Rivals and the entirety of this one, the writing simply hasn't been that good.
But I think that the greater issue is disorganization. Let us not forget that they took two months off from writing stories. Two months. And yet still we see tons of issues. There have been huge disconnects between the story and the cards. At least three cards show characters doing things that they never actually did in the story. There are also inconsistencies between the fat back booklet and the actual stories (like the former saying that Huatli and Angrath leave Ixalan together), and the art book, while not technically incorrect, leaves out major details of the story. Several missed legendary creature cards, which I thought might be a thing of the past after Amonkhet and was proven overwhelmingly wrong. Malcolm, Breeches, Inti, and the emperor all play significant roles in the story but don't have cards; while Arguel, Captain Vance, Hadana, and the "Grim Captain" are all called out on cards in such a way that would likely make players want to see cards for them. Instead, we get five dinosaur legends that do nothing in the story and one that was a glorified taxi. Then, of course, there's the last minute change from five stories to six that gave us this absolute gem of a story: short, poorly-written, and in desperate need of details that they could have easily added. This, of course, is the result of the tribe poll, which in itself has been a dumpster fire: complete inconsistencies in scoring up to this point and a horribly designed poll on the mothership released today that accidentally made everyone vote for vampires. As a result, many people have lost faith in the poll and believe that it was rigged from the start (personally, I think that their intention was to have an actual vote and simply managed it horribly, but I don't know for sure that it wasn't rigged).
I would like to think that most if not all of this storyline's issues were caused by the polling experiment. Writing four stories instead of one would have to take a long time, plus planning out how to poll people on social media, distribute and track geocaching materials, etc. This probably took up a lot of the time on their two month story break that could have otherwise been devoted to actually giving us stories during that time or having better quality control for this set's story. Hopefully the realize that the poll was a failed experiment that only distracted them from more important things, and as a result, we see the quality increase significantly for Dominaria since it has no such poll. I just wish that they had realized from the start that the voting was a bad idea. Why they thought that devoting time to an arbitrary gimmick instead of more important things was a good idea is beyond me. And I don't know why they would think we would rather have them write four stories and release one than just write four stories and release all of them. But if the polling was the main cause of some of these issues and we see far fewer issues in Dominaria as a result, I'll be relieved. The resolution of Ixalan left a lot to be desired, but I'll call myself cautiously optimistic for Dominaria.
Finally got around to read the latest chapter, and I gotta say I'm conflicted: plot-wise it was REALLY well written, it gave us some MASSIVE news for understanding where the plot is going from here, and they seem to be building towards a stint on Dominaria followed by Ravnica part 3, which I'm absolutely pumped for.
But grammar-wise, this episode was horrible. Typos, words repeated twice, misplaced punctuation. Lately it has felt like the company's intention is to step up their game in regards to the lore, and build a true-blue multimedia universe... But if that is the case, they need to step up the quality of their writing too, or they'll end up embarrassing themselves.
I only noticed one or two typos, but I read it pretty quickly. I've also noticed repetition of the exact same words/phrases WAY too close to each other in past weeks, but I didn't see a problem with it this week. Granted, that doesn't mean it wasn't there; I probably just missed it. You're definitely right that they should clean up their act. To their credit, they are willing to edit things after publishing the stories. At least twice during the Ixalan story they accidentally said "ogre" and later edited it to say correctly say "orc", and of course, there was the infamous Chandra/Nissa friendzone edit. So at least they're willing and able to correct their mistakes. It would be much better if they corrected the mistakes BEFORE publishing the articles rather than after, but it's better than nothing I suppose.
Speaking of Tezzeret, I didn't read the entire Kaladesh story saga, but did Ajani ever comment on Tezzeret being from the same plane as him? Does Ajani even know?
[Tamiyo:]"I don't know. Not precisely. It was at the behest of a planeswalking criminal named Tezzeret. He wanted them to bend their necks. To serve his consortium."
[Ajani:]"Tezzeret? I've heard of this man. Elspeth...she met him on Mirrodin."
[Tamiyo:]"Two years? Impossible, Ajani. Tezzeret died...three years ago, I think? Betrayed by his comrades. Nashi's village, those that survived, they killed him. A dragon bargained for the corpse."
[Ajani:]"...a dragon?"
Later, Ajani says:
"Where are you going?"
"To find the man who killed your family. Our friends found him in a place called Kaladesh. Someone's given him money and secrets. He used them to buy his way into power."
So what I assume happened is that Dovin Baan spoke with Tamiyo before she left for Innistrad (this story takes place before SOI). He told her something ambiguous about a planeswalker with a metal arm taking control of Kaladesh. When Tamiyo and Ajani talk to each other afterward, Tamiyo learns that Tezzeret is still alive and assumes that the planeswalker on Kaladesh in Tezzeret. Ajani infers that Tezzeret is working for Bolas and realizes that he needs to be stopped. And so Ajani goes to Kaladesh. Later, after SOI and Eldritch Moon, Tamiyo talks to Dovin again, and tells him about the Gatewatch, which causes him to try to recruit them. Of course, this whole explanation requires a lot of convenient missing details - namely that Dovin isn't specific about which planeswalker took over Kaladesh and doesn't make an enemy of Tamiyo by revealing that he's working for him - but it's the only way I can think of to make the timeline line up.
So ultimately, the three people that Ajani gets information from regarding Tezzeret are Elspeth, Tamiyo, and presumably Dovin (indirectly). None of those people know about where Tezzeret is from. It makes sense that Tezzeret, being a pretty secretive person and possibly without some of his memories due to mental intrusions from both Jace and Bolas, wouldn't tell anyone about his plane of origin. So it's safe to say that Ajani doesn't know where Tezzeret is from and it's just a giant coincidence that two planeswalkers from the same plane ended up clashing on an entirely different plane. But in a story in an infinite multiverse that revolves around only a handful of planes and planeswalkers, such things are bound to happen. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that Tezzeret and Ajani will ever have the chance to have a civil conversation and bond over their home plane, on account of them being enemies now, but maybe we could see it become relevant if they ever decide to return to Alara.
I think that Nicol Bolas's plan is to use the Immortal Sun to create a new Shard (a la Shard of Twelve Worlds) based on Ravnica in the hopes that isolating part of the multiverse will increase the magical power of that part of the multiverse sufficiently to regain oldwalker status.
A theory of my brother's is that Niv-Mizzet's price for helping Jace will be the spark in the Immortal Sun.
Still not sure what the Eternals are for. We now know why the Eternals had to be made on Amonkhet (lazotep protects them from the Blind Eternities) and we can infer why Nicol Bolas destroyed Amonkhet (no one else can have an army that can move between planes), but... really, what are they for? Are they just enforcers?
The glaring hole here in most theories (including mine) is that the Bridge is tied to Tezzeret. I don't think Bolas will show up on a plane where the Immortal Sun is located without a surefire means off that plane. What's to stop Tezzeret from turning on Bolas and trapping him somewhere?
I could be wrong but I think that Bolas is able read/speak into/control Tezzeret's mind even if they aren't on the same plane. Presumably, if Tezzeret traps Bolas, Bolas could mind control Tezzeret to teleport the Sun away and free himself, and afterward Bolas would probably kill or at least horribly torture Tezzeret for his betrayal. Being a partially black-aligned character with his own best interests in mind, and someone who has already suffered the consequences of betraying Bolas in the past, Tezzeret's best bet is to not betray Bolas unless he has absolute certainty that it will kill Bolas permanently. He could potentially even help the Gatewatch if they can actually fotrmulate a quick, effective, and permanent solution to the Bolas problem. But given how extremely negatively Tezzeret has been portrayed in stories recently, I have a feeling that Tezzeret will stay with Bolas to the end. Either Tezzeret will be killed in the Gatewatch vs. Bolas conflict or he'll outlive Bolas and pick up the pieces of Bolas's empire and become a future main antagonist.
Also, since presumably the floor falling out from under everyone on the Immortal Sun is from Tezzeret bringing it into the portal (would it really be that difficult for them to line up the timing properly?) wouldn't it make sense for them all to fall into the portal as well? I feel like they'll most likely have the portal disappear just in time and let all the characters hit the ground and survive, but it would be a great plot twist if they all ended up in the blind eternities instead. Huatli and Angrath would survive, of course, since they're planeswalkers; Tishana and Vona would be vaporized (though it would be kind of cool for Tishana's last words to be a resolution of her cryptic nature metaphors about planeswalking, right before she's vaporized); while the rest of the characters were all either above or to the side of the Immortal Sun so they wouldn't fall in. Again, I don't think this is the direction they'll go, especially since we're yet to see Huatli summon Zacama, but it would be an abrupt plot twist that would result in a couple unexpected deaths. But the portal will probably conveniently close just in time to keep them alive, what a surprise.
Why would Jace decide to ask for Niv Mizzet's help instead of Ugin's? He knows for a fact that Ugin knows about Bolas and wants to kill him, while Niv could be either completely in the dark about Bolas or be working for Bolas already thanks to the Ral Zarek connection. Plus Ugin presumably has his own plans and planeswalker minions that would be more helpful to combat Bolas. This seems like something that should have been addressed - at the very least, they could have said that Jace thought of Ugin but decided he couldn't trust him due to the manipulation. Regardless, it's clear that while they're setting up for Bolas on Ravnica, they've consciously decided to keep Ugin mostly or entirely out of the picture. Since there doesn't seem to be much else to do with Ugin than to set up a giant interplanar war with Bolas, I have a feeling that we're not going to see the last of Bolas on Ravnica. Obviously WotC won't completely sacrifice Ravnica because they want to continue making money, so either Bolas is driven off of Ravnica but lives to fight another day, or he conquers Ravnica successfully but leaves the guilds somewhat intact, so that eventually we can have another true Ravnica set.
There's no guarantee that Ugin is still on Zendikar. If Jace goes to Zendikar and Ugin isn't there, he has no way to find him. Also, Ugin's not a fan of when Jace's own plans messing up with his own agenda. Assuming he does tell Ugin of his plan, Ugin might just outright kill Jace in fear of Jace ruining any surprise factor Ugin might have for Bolas.
That's definitely true. But I just wish they would have let the thought occur to Jace, even if they had him decide otherwise for entirely valid reasons like the one you mentioned. It just seems like with all the focus on Ugin and how effective he could be against Bolas, it would be at least worth mentioning at that point in the story, even if they ultimately go in an entirely different direction.
Why would Jace decide to ask for Niv Mizzet's help instead of Ugin's? He knows for a fact that Ugin knows about Bolas and wants to kill him, while Niv could be either completely in the dark about Bolas or be working for Bolas already thanks to the Ral Zarek connection. Plus Ugin presumably has his own plans and planeswalker minions that would be more helpful to combat Bolas. This seems like something that should have been addressed - at the very least, they could have said that Jace thought of Ugin but decided he couldn't trust him due to the manipulation. Regardless, it's clear that while they're setting up for Bolas on Ravnica, they've consciously decided to keep Ugin mostly or entirely out of the picture. Since there doesn't seem to be much else to do with Ugin than to set up a giant interplanar war with Bolas, I have a feeling that we're not going to see the last of Bolas on Ravnica. Obviously WotC won't completely sacrifice Ravnica because they want to continue making money, so either Bolas is driven off of Ravnica but lives to fight another day, or he conquers Ravnica successfully but leaves the guilds somewhat intact, so that eventually we can have another true Ravnica set.
I initially thought that Ravnica was going to be two sets - five for each guild - but now that seems unlikely. Players want and expect a mechanic for each guild and a large amount of attention to whatever their favorite guild is. As a result, trying to cram Bolas's invasion and the associated mechanics and themes in with all the guild stuff seems like a mistake. Instead, I think that the first two sets will happen take place before Bolas's invasion, and that each will feature five guilds with the same amount of focus on each one as we've seen in past Ravnica blocks. The stories will focus on the conflicts that have broken out in Jace's absence, as well as Gatewatch's efforts to clean up the damage and create an alliance of Ravnican leaders against Bolas. This could also include Vraska (and possibly Ral, given all the hints about how he loves Ravnica) being turned to the Gatewatch's side.
I think the third set will still have a little bit of each guild, similar to Dragon's Maze, but will also have a large focus on the Bolas invasion and the Eternals, which might include the return of Afflict. I don't think that Eternalize will return because it represents the Eternals being created, which has already happened. Cycling could also return (assuming that it doesn't return in Dominaria), which would help to smooth out mana fixing in a limited format with all 10 guilds (but the set would have significantly less multicolor than past Ravnica sets anyway, both to make room for Bolas and to not repeat the mistakes of Dragon's Maze).
It's possible that they could do it in two sets, but in that case we probably couldn't have a mechanic for every guild. Instead, they would likely choose a few mechanics and apply each one to some or all of the guilds. I would expect split cards (with or without fuse) to be in all guilds in this case, as well as some sort of multicolored matters mechanic (think radiance, but less awful). Investigate would also work nicely, since it's popular, it plays well, and it fits the flavor of several guilds quite well (Azorius, Dimir, Boros, maybe others if it's flavored as uncovering Bolas's influence before he gets there).
I also think it's worth noting that there's been a repeated failure to recruit new members since Ajani in Aether Revolt, despite what was promised by WotC at the conception of the Gatewatch. Since I assume that they weren't being completely dishonest and Ajani said that he was going to recruit allies, I think that Dominaria could feature several new Oaths. Obviously Ravnica 3 should have Oaths as well - Vraska's, obviously, but perhaps Domri or Ral. If they stall the Bolas invasion until the third set in the block (meaning the spring of 2019), it gives them more time to build up a large team of planeswalkers that should be a given for a massive Bolas confrontation.
It's also worth noting that this year's core set was originally planned to be a second set on Dominaria, and between that and the fact that the new core sets are supposedly going to be different from the old ones, I think it's safe to say that a large portion of the core set will take place on Dominaria, similar to how Shandalar was utilized in past core sets (and now that I think about it, Shandalar doesn't bring much to the table that Dominaria doesn't have already, and they probably should have started using Dominaria as the default core set setting years ago). So while Dominaria might only get three planeswalker cards (presumably Jaya, Karn, and an arbitrary Gatewatch member), we could see 3-5 more planeswalker cards for different planeswalkers in the core set. If the core set is integrated with the main story the way that Origins was, and sincerely hope that it is, that means that the planeswalkers in the core set might actually be planeswalkers who are present on Dominaria in real time, and we could even theoretically see more oaths printed in the core set.
So TL;DR:
Dominaria and the core set will both take place on Dominaria and the story will be focused on recruitment.
The fall and winter sets will be free of Bolas (except for indirect influence via planeswalker agents) and will also be focused on gaining allies to fight Bolas, including Vraska and Niv-Mizzet among others. Mechanically, they'll focus primarily on the guilds.
The third set on Ravnica will focus on Bolas's invasion with less emphasis on the guilds. It will ultimately have to result in neither Ravnica nor Bolas being completely destroyed, and will set up a future rematch against Ugin and/or the Gatewatch, though it might at least take Bolas out of the picture for a little while so that there can be a different big bad for a while.
One thing that has always really, really bothered me about Ravnica is the impossible and simplistic notion that ten guilds could last largely unchanged, and in a constant balance of power, ten thousand years. (Tarkir has a similar problem)
Ten competing guilds, established with specific names, identities, cultures, and goals, remain more or less intact for ten thousand years. Not one of them splintered, not one of them fell apart, not one of them was replaced or subsumed or conquered, not one of them struck off to forge a new identity for itself or underwent significant revolution.
The Simic were pretty much completely destroyed in the events of Dissension. The new version of the Simic had just recently been established in Return to Ravnica, meaning that there was no Simic guild at all for decades. Also, the new version of the guild is the same as the old in name only: the original Simic were run by elves and vedalken, and their creations often looked completely alien and were based on cytoplasts. The new Simic consist primarily of merfolk with only a handful of elves, and their creations are actual hybrids of existing animals, most often at least partially aquatic. Additionally, the old Simic used green means to exclusively blue ends, trying to improve nature as much as possible with no concern for the natural order, while the new Simic embody both philosophies by trying to balance nature with progress. Some of the other guilds have changed over time as well, but the Simic is the only one that clearly fell apart and was reborn as an almost completely different entity.
That being said, your point still stands: 10,000 years of stagnation is a lot and is pretty difficult to believe. Tarkir at least has a gap of only 1280 years, but while the lack of technological advancements could be explained away by the constant warfare, you would think that one or more clans would have been completely destroyed or at least splintered into multiple factions. In Khans of Tarkir they mentioned that originally one empire had ruled Tarkir that eventually became the Sultai, but in Fate Reforged we go back centuries and there's still five completely separate clans with no mention of the war starting recently. As others have said, they could easily avoid this by not choosing unnecessarily large numbers to try to make things seem impressive. Things change over time. You can pick a number of years that is relatively large but not completely unbelievable.
Due to what's in standard it has to be an enemy cycle, and they won't start a brand new cycle with enemy lands, so they'll either reprint an old cycle or complete a cycle that's already been started by allied lands.
Possibilities, from most likely to least likely (in my opinion):
Enemy Checklands - They did the allied ones in Ixalan, which seems weird since the enemy ones are less-reprinted and more expensive (theoretically, they could have printed allied or enemy lands in Ixalan, since the dual lands were already balanced in standard, as long as they did the other one in Dominaria). This decision would make more sense if they were planning to do the rest of the cycle shortly after in Dominaria.
Enemy Painlands - They've already printed these into oblivion but that didn't stop them with the allied checklands. These ones have been in core sets more recently than than the allied checklands but they are specifically tied to Dominaria, so they can't be reprinted in sets on other planes and they add nostalgic value. I'm really hope that they don't go with these ones again, though.
Enemy Cycling Lands - These would require the return of cycling despite Dominaria being so soon after Amonkhet, but cycling is strongly tied to Dominaria and it would create inter-block synergy, so I could see it happening. However, I don't see this set going full Time Spiral with tons of returning mechanics and there are numerous other old mechanics to revisit that we haven't seen recently, such as morph and flashback, so it would be somewhat surprising.
Enemy Battlelands/Tangolands - Definitely something that they will want to print eventually, but it doesn't have to be in Dominaria. These would't make as much sense in a nostalgia set as either a reprinted cycle or a cycle featuring a mechanic originally from Dominaria (cycling lands), so they would probably be better off waiting on these ones. We also should be seeing Ravnica 3 shortly after Dominaria, so that should give people there fix of duals with basic land types anyway.
Enemy filterlands - Filterland reprints are LONG overdue and doing part of the cycle in Dominaria would be a nice nod to Graven Cairns originally being in Time Spiral, even if it wouldn't be included in the set because they need enemy duals rather than allied, and there's not enough space for 10 rare duals in one set. The problem with this is that players would get irritated unless they reprinted the allied counterparts shortly after, and it might be tough to find space for that with Ravnica (and the arbitrary shockland reprints) on the horizon. Maybe they can print the enemy ones in Dominaria, the allied ones in core set, and then have no rare duals in the following set and do two Ravnica sets with shocklands in winter and spring? It still seems like a bit much. I think it's a long shot that any filters get reprinted on Dominaria but I would love it if they did.
The fact that they made what seems like such a sloppy and easily avoidabld mistake leads me to believe that some kind of last minute change was made.
I just don't think that "story" is a real priority for WOTC. They want a "Brand" but that is just throwing the Gatewatch at every promotional material they can.
There has been quite a bit of shoving the Gatewatch down the audience's throats, but they've also committed to making the story somewhat visible through the cards alone. Obviously the goal of this is the same - to get the audience more invested and, ultimately, sell more cards - and in most cases the Gatewatch are still heavily featured because of how prominent they've been through Kaladesh and Amonkhet, although less so in Ixalan. But it's a combination of trying to push the main characters and making the story visible.
It's possible, probable in fact, that this is case. But it still doesn't sit well with me.
For one thing, we've had cards in the past that depict specific story moments despite lacking the story spotlight watermark, such as Impeccable Timing in Kaladesh and Hour of Devastation's defeat cycle. This is what I assumed that Sphinx's Decree and Shake the Foundations would be in this set. Apparently they aren't. They show main characters doing things that they don't actually do in the story, which is new. I guess we've seen it a little bit in plameswalker decks but those have to stretch to create tie-ins between the face of the product and the deck theme (Jace + Merfolk for instance). But cards in the actual set are ALWAYS going to be assumed to be canon.
And that's just for those of us who are invested in the story. What about players who aren't? Many people thought that the Gatewatch had died after the defeat cycle, and many thought Jace had died again after seeing the card where he fell down a waterfall. Granted, some of that may have been wishful thinking, but the cards were ambiguous. If cards that, strictly speaking, represent the story accurately (if ambiguously) can mislead people like that, imagine the damage that cards depicting the story inaccurately could cause. And all of this could have been avoided had they just flavored the cards differently, even just different art.
The fact that they made what seems like such a sloppy and easily avoidabld mistake leads me to believe that some kind of last minute change was made. For example, perhaps they had originally planned for Azor to regain his spark and appear in the next Ravnica block (which will inevitably be very soon) as a WU planeswalker. But maybe after seeing the popularity of Dovin Baan, they decided to make him the WU planeswalker instead. As a result, they hastily rewrote Azor as a blatant antagonist and changed his ultimate fate in this block, which didn't require any actual changes to the cards themselves. By this point, however, the art was already done and they were forced to print a card art depicting a scene that had been removed. That's just one possibility of many, but you get the idea: there very well might have been a last minute story change involved.
This would also explain why they included only three story spotlight cards, and why this story has a serious case of Journey into Nyx sydrome: that being a card depicting what looks like the climax/conclusion of the block (Deicide, Mastermind's Acquisition, but with more important information being ommitted from the cards entirely. People who didn't read the story won't know that Elspeth died, and now they won't know important details like Ugin's involvement, Azor's banishment, who controls the city, etc. This seems to completely contradict their policy of showing the story through the cards, so I think it's likely that they were forced to do so from a last-minute change. We already know that something similar happened in Eldritch Moon.
I could be wrong, but a lot of things feel off about this story and its representation in the cards, and a last minute change would explain a lot of that.
The problem for SOI/EMN came from the absurd decision to change the block structure in the middle of a blocks design/development cycle. What made them choose to do that and utterly wreck BFZ and SOI is beyond me. They should have had that decision affect blocks that were in the exploratory phase and no later. But I digress.
I should have been more clear but I wasn't really referring to the block model; I was thinking about the much smaller-scale change to Eldritch Moon's story where they originally intended to have a scene depicted in Spreading Flames. If I remember correctly, it was so last minute that the art book still talked about how the Gatewatch (specifically Chandra) had to burn down an entire town because it was overrun by Eldrazi, but that scene never actually happened in the story articles, probably because they ran out of time. Still, this wasn't as bad as what happened in this set, because at least "Chandra burns Eldrazi" was still something that happened in the story or could conceivably happened offscreen, while Sphinx's Decree clearly shows two characters who never actually met, unless the story takes a weird turn in the remaining two articles.
You know what not having every beat shown in cards and daving juicy details for the actual stories does? It solves the problem of spoiler seasons also spoiling the story. As much(justifiable) *****ing as people did over Anguished Unmaking I think this is a reasonable path. And if a player doesnt care enough about the story to know that Elspeth dies after Deicide then let them be confused when she doesn't show up for years and then the next story about her is rescuing her from the underworld. That's fine. Either they will continue npt caring or they'll go "wait what?" And then go investigating it and will learn about what a dick Heliod is. Not all of us Vorthosi are born loremongers. Some have to be drawn into it. And if they dont care thats cool too.
There are certain things that are minor enough that they can be avoided on the actual cards and saved for the stories themselves. But there are also certain things that are major enough events that players should be aware of them just by seeing the cards. It's hard to define exactly what the line is and everyone will have a different opinion, but personally I think that Emrakul trapping herself in the moon was absolutely genius - it gave a legitimate twist to the story in the actual articles that no one expected, while still allowing them to give non-readers a general idea of what happened through Imprisoned in the Moon without spoiling it. On the other hand, Elspeth being killed was a huge event in the story, and it's something that virtually all players should know about. Vorthoses who actually read the books are not responsible for telling everyone about something that important. There are many cases when it's acceptable to leave certain details for Vorthoses to find out about and educate other players as needed, but when it's the death of a beloved, recurring main character, that's something that the creators are responsible for making clear to everyone.
Granted, that was before they fully committed themselves to showing the story through the cards, and since they started to do so, I would say they've done a pretty good job with it. It's only in this set where I've noticed that they seem to be slipping, between putting blatantly incorrect artwork on cards and having only three story spotlights that don't give anything close to the full story.
But hey you could very well be right. Creative has been in turmoil for the past several years and now they have to deal with possibly three planes-worth of stories a year, plus whatever they intend to do with the core sets. I mean ***** can you imagine the pressure they're feeling with Dominaria on the horizon? Like the Prof said in his video today Dominaria could very well be the make or break set for Magic. So yeah. Something screwy could have happened.
I really hope that they can do justice to Dominaria. It seems like the "make or break" part of it will probably be the mechanics of the set since those matter to more people, but they have Richard Garfield on the team plus play design taking effect, so I'm not too worried about that. And even if it somehow is bad, it shouldn't be the end of Magic if that's what he was implying (I haven't seen the video); Magic survived BFZ after all. But they can't blame us for not having much faith in them in terms of flavor in storytelling lately. I was thinking that the writing quality was looking up but this most recent story really brought my expectations crashing down, between the bad dialogue, cartoonish portrayal of Azor, and general inconsistency (with past stories and what's depicted on the cards). Even ignoring that, the huge break periods between the stories of main releases, which haven't always happened, indicates that they are severely understaffed and/or disorganized. People talk about the writing quality steadily increasing but they ignore that 1. the writing quantity is actually decreasing and 2. the writing quality, though better overall, still varies quite a bit from week to week, or even within the same story. We'll see what happens with Dominaria, but as usual, it's probably advisable to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.
There are only three story cards in this set right? That's why Sphinx's Decree or Shake the Foundations aren't happening in the story. The art is just meant to depict the magic.
It's possible, probable in fact, that this is case. But it still doesn't sit well with me.
For one thing, we've had cards in the past that depict specific story moments despite lacking the story spotlight watermark, such as Impeccable Timing in Kaladesh and Hour of Devastation's defeat cycle. This is what I assumed that Sphinx's Decree and Shake the Foundations would be in this set. Apparently they aren't. They show main characters doing things that they don't actually do in the story, which is new. I guess we've seen it a little bit in plameswalker decks but those have to stretch to create tie-ins between the face of the product and the deck theme (Jace + Merfolk for instance). But cards in the actual set are ALWAYS going to be assumed to be canon.
And that's just for those of us who are invested in the story. What about players who aren't? Many people thought that the Gatewatch had died after the defeat cycle, and many thought Jace had died again after seeing the card where he fell down a waterfall. Granted, some of that may have been wishful thinking, but the cards were ambiguous. If cards that, strictly speaking, represent the story accurately (if ambiguously) can mislead people like that, imagine the damage that cards depicting the story inaccurately could cause. And all of this could have been avoided had they just flavored the cards differently, even just different art.
The fact that they made what seems like such a sloppy and easily avoidabld mistake leads me to believe that some kind of last minute change was made. For example, perhaps they had originally planned for Azor to regain his spark and appear in the next Ravnica block (which will inevitably be very soon) as a WU planeswalker. But maybe after seeing the popularity of Dovin Baan, they decided to make him the WU planeswalker instead. As a result, they hastily rewrote Azor as a blatant antagonist and changed his ultimate fate in this block, which didn't require any actual changes to the cards themselves. By this point, however, the art was already done and they were forced to print a card art depicting a scene that had been removed. That's just one possibility of many, but you get the idea: there very well might have been a last minute story change involved.
This would also explain why they included only three story spotlight cards, and why this story has a serious case of Journey into Nyx sydrome: that being a card depicting what looks like the climax/conclusion of the block (Deicide, Mastermind's Acquisition, but with more important information being ommitted from the cards entirely. People who didn't read the story won't know that Elspeth died, and now they won't know important details like Ugin's involvement, Azor's banishment, who controls the city, etc. This seems to completely contradict their policy of showing the story through the cards, so I think it's likely that they were forced to do so from a last-minute change. We already know that something similar happened in Eldritch Moon.
I could be wrong, but a lot of things feel off about this story and its representation in the cards, and a last minute change would explain a lot of that.
So far I think the rule has been that planeswalkers can either planeswalker to a plane at random, planeswalker to a location they already know about on the plane, or follow another planeswalker leaving from the same plane at the same time.
Before BFZ, there wasn't a lot of planeswalkers traveling together (and obviously pre-mending there were different rules), so I'll start there: Gideon and Jace planeswalked together from Ravnica to Zendikar. Nissa was already there. Kiora returned to Zendikar separately. They all met each other while on the plane. It could be considered a coincidence that they were all on Tazeem, but that's where all the action was happening, so it's no surprise.
Gideon and Jace later planeswalk together to Regatha to recruit Chandra. She declines and they planeswalker together back to Zendikar. Chandra later planeswalks on her own and also ends up on Tazeem, but again, she's already been to Zendikar and she should have some idea of where the main conflict is either from talking to Jace and Gideon or from her previous experience.
Jace planeswalkers to Innistrad alone. Later, he planeswalks back to Zendikar to get the rest of the Gatewatch. They follow him through the blind eternities to the correct location on Innistrad. Presumably, they all follow him to right spot on Ravnica after the events of Eldritch Moon.
Chandra and Liliana planeswalk to Kaladesh together. Nissa planeswalkers alone without ever having been to Kaladesh and somehow ends up in the same place. That's a coincidence. Later, Liliana goes back to Ravnica and has Gideon and Jace follow her to the right spot on Kaladesh. The rest of the Gatewatch save Ajani follow Liliana to Amonkhet after Aether Revolt.
The point is, planeswalkers can follow each other through the blind eternities, and they do so regularly, but only when they're planeswalking at the same time, from the same plane, to the same destination. Chandra ending up on Tazeem and Nissa in Ghirapur could be considered coincidences (though there might be explanations, I should probably re-read those stories) but outside of those two instances nothing is really coincidental. Everything could be explained through group planeswalking. No planeswalker homing required.
Granted, now that we know they can follow each other in this way, it would give a better explanation to Chandra getting to Tazeem and Nissa to Ghirapur, but it wasn't really bothering anyone that much that I know of. It would have been fine just to leave it alone. But now that this new type of planeswalking is formally introduced, it opens a whole new can of worms and creates a lot of unanswered questions about planeswalking.
This is definitely a possibility. For all we know, this could be a Jace-only thing. Or it might not. We don't know yet for sure, and we might not ever. Hopefully they revisit this discussion in the story once they show Jace planeswalking onto Dominaria in real time, probably near the end of Dominaria's story.
That's true; they probably could have divided up the workload a little better. All the more reason that bringing in a professional for Dominaria is an extremely good idea.
Edit: Didn't realize the The Mimeoplasm was the background image on the article link. Obviously Devour for Power will be included in Anthology 2, rather than Political Puppets or any other Commander 2011 deck. I stand by my other predictions though: I think it will be Mimeoplasm, Oloro, Daretti, and Atraxa.
Some of the misleading cards representing Vraska's new memories is interesting. It's certainly much better than having those cards be completely incorrect, but I still think it would have been better to only show things that actually happened. Regardless, Shake the Foundations is still unexplained, and will evidently remain that way forever.
I still resent how they hand-waved away the fact that Jarad was a protagonist in the original Ravnica books. By this point I'm convinced that no one on the current creative team has read said books. I'm glad that they're giving us a BG protagonist in the form of Vraska but they don't have to erase another BG protagonist to do so. I don't understand how he went from the only sane and halfway decent person in the Golgari to a racist dictator with no explanation in between. Sure, a lot can happen in 60-ish years, but - say it with me now - show, don't tell.
The Jace part was certainly interesting. I don't know if I like that planeswalkers can planeswalk to specific people. What are the rules on that? Clearly Jace was able to do it without Gideon's knowledge or consent, hence his surprise at seeing Jace alive. So can you planeswalker to any planeswalker you know of, at least if you know what plane they're on? What if it's not an ally, but an enemy, such as Garruk following Liliana? Does it only work with other planeswalkers, or could Jace planeswalk to the location of Jori En or Lavinia if he so desired? The rules for planeswalking are messy enough as it is; expanding the ways that characters can planeswalker only makes it worse.
A lot of people seem to dislike the ending with the emperor, but I thought it was fine for what it was. It sets up a return to Ixalan nicely, though I'm unsure of how they're going to justify merfolk on Torrezon. I'm now leaning more towards the belief that the ending was decided from the start, because I can't imagine how the merfolk or vampires taking Orazca could really set up a future block on Torrezon rather than Ixalan. Even if it was truly able to be changed, the variable part of the story was much shorter than I expected, so it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway. That means that they really didn't need to dedicate that much time to writing four endings, since each was only 20% of the story. I would be a little more lenient in my criticism of the story knowing that they had to write four full articles for each possible outcome, but since that clearly isn't the case, they've lost their primary excuse for the less than well-written parts of the story and the inconsistencies across different mediums. On the bright side, it's incredibly reassuring to know that they're getting an actual writer to do Dominaria's story, and hopefully they continue to have professional authors to write future storylines.
Agreed. I don't think that they can fit a Bolas invasion in with the normal guild stuff we expect, so I'm predicting we'll see three sets, all to be drafted separately as per the new model. The first two will take place before Bolas invades (Ral Zarek and other agents could still be preparing for the invasion though), and they will be pretty typical Ravnica sets with a mechanic for each guild. The one exception is hybrid mana, which shouldn't be necessary since you'll only have five color pairs in each draft format rather than 10 (there could also be less mana fixing for that reason). The third set will be when Bolas invades, and it will have all 10 guilds. This will be where they bring back split cards (specifically the ones that are a different guild on each half). They could use fuse (RTR throwback), aftermath (sort of Bolas-related?), or have a new split card mechanic. Hybrid mana will return and be used more so than RTR or Gatecrash to support a format with ten guilds, and they'll be more mana fixing. We also might see a mechanic that rewards playing multicolor or lots of colors, or at least a subtheme if they choose not to keyword it. Afflict might return to represent the Eternals. Alternatively, they could bring back cycling since it's sort of Bolas-related now and would help with mana fixing.
I feel like trying to do 10 guilds and a Bolas invasion in two sets would be really difficult to do properly, so I think this would be the best route to take. We'll see what they actually choose to do though, and whether they can pull it off well.
This is easily the worst story we've had in months. Granted, some of those months had no stories at all, but it's still most certainly the worst story for this set (so far) and quite possibly the entire block. It's clear that this was intended to be part of a longer story and was written to condense several large events into a relatively short span. Eventually, the decision was made to split up the last story into two, so one would think that they would add more detail to the rushed first half. But they didn't. The solution was so blindingly obvious and they still just left it the way it was. And as a result, things like Huatli calling Zacama - which should have been one of the most epic moments in the story - is instead reduced to a few lines the have no relevance to anything else except for calling out a card in the set. It was absolutely pathetic. The exchange with the emperor could have been longer as well. And, of course, there's the fact that Huatli gets visibly upset about the emperor' revisionist history... and then proceeds to leave the plane for a week instead of doing something about it. What? They had more than enough time to have her give a speech telling what actually happened and THEN planeswalk away. But they didn't, and the story - as well the character of Huatli - suffers.
And the fact that Huatli's cousin survived adds insult to injury: we already - in this exact same set - had them try to make us think that Vona and Kumena had died. They kind of did it with Tishana in the previous set as well. They pulled this FOUR times in one block. Why would they do that? It's so obvious what they're doing. We know not to consider a character dead until we see the body. We're not idiots. They've pulled this stunt so many times recently that not only will we never fall for it again, but that it causes more irritation than suspense. And they really could have used an actual death too. This whole storyline stinks of Kaladesh and Aether Revolt's constant death-teasing with no actual death (except Yahenni, but that was related to the conflict). At least Kaladesh block had the excuse of the revolution being somewhat civil with neither side wanting to completely destroy the other. Ixalan is about four very different cultures that hate each other and are at actual war with one another. They can't kill off a single named character in the conflict? Seriously? They've passed up so many chances to kill characters and have teased us to the point where it's become annoying. Amonkhet block, to its credit, was not afraid to kill off relatively major characters. What happened to that mindset? Why does everyone have to start constantly surviving near-death experiences again?
There was also, of course, plenty of awful dialogue. Vona is still the most aggressively terrible and Bond villain-esque character we've had in a while. Mavren yelling an extended "no" was almost a funny way to mock a cliche, but kind of undermined by how the rest of the dialogue uses tons of cliches without any irony or self-awareness. People seem to truly enjoy Breeches but his outbursts seem like comedic low-hanging fruit to me, and it hasn't been very funny since the first time they used it. Angrath's all-caps dialogue has also gotten old and seems to undermine their attempt at making a more sympathetic and less stereotypical BR character. When we see Angrath actually talking normally, it shows us an insightful and reasonable version of the BR philosophy (even if he does repeat the word "freedom" way to much). But that's only 10% of his dialogue. The other 90% is just YELLING ANGRY THINGS IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT'S FUNNY. It's such a waste of what could and should be an amazing character. I really did enjoy the unexpected yet perfectly in-character timing of Angrath's exit. I just don't like the way most of his dialogue has been.
This storyline had the potential to be really great. It had everything it needed for me to like it: only one Gatewatch member instead of five, another returning character who I actually like getting an equal role to said Gatewatch member, well-conceived new characters like Angrath and Kumena, a morally grey conflict between factions for the first time in years, exploration of the plane itself instead of just the main plot, etc. But the writers seem to have really stumbled in resolving the story. I could have thought of a dozen better ways to end the story than this. Part of the issue is writing quality. You would think that they would have figured out who should be writing which types of stories (and who shouldn't be writing any at all) by this point, especially since they seem to be losing creative team members rather than gaining them. They have a few writers who can actually write, so give them the reigns and stop letting the weaker ones keep writing to spare their feelings. I thought that the writing quality was significantly better throughout Hour of Devastation and Ixalan, but in parts of previous stories for Rivals and the entirety of this one, the writing simply hasn't been that good.
But I think that the greater issue is disorganization. Let us not forget that they took two months off from writing stories. Two months. And yet still we see tons of issues. There have been huge disconnects between the story and the cards. At least three cards show characters doing things that they never actually did in the story. There are also inconsistencies between the fat back booklet and the actual stories (like the former saying that Huatli and Angrath leave Ixalan together), and the art book, while not technically incorrect, leaves out major details of the story. Several missed legendary creature cards, which I thought might be a thing of the past after Amonkhet and was proven overwhelmingly wrong. Malcolm, Breeches, Inti, and the emperor all play significant roles in the story but don't have cards; while Arguel, Captain Vance, Hadana, and the "Grim Captain" are all called out on cards in such a way that would likely make players want to see cards for them. Instead, we get five dinosaur legends that do nothing in the story and one that was a glorified taxi. Then, of course, there's the last minute change from five stories to six that gave us this absolute gem of a story: short, poorly-written, and in desperate need of details that they could have easily added. This, of course, is the result of the tribe poll, which in itself has been a dumpster fire: complete inconsistencies in scoring up to this point and a horribly designed poll on the mothership released today that accidentally made everyone vote for vampires. As a result, many people have lost faith in the poll and believe that it was rigged from the start (personally, I think that their intention was to have an actual vote and simply managed it horribly, but I don't know for sure that it wasn't rigged).
I would like to think that most if not all of this storyline's issues were caused by the polling experiment. Writing four stories instead of one would have to take a long time, plus planning out how to poll people on social media, distribute and track geocaching materials, etc. This probably took up a lot of the time on their two month story break that could have otherwise been devoted to actually giving us stories during that time or having better quality control for this set's story. Hopefully the realize that the poll was a failed experiment that only distracted them from more important things, and as a result, we see the quality increase significantly for Dominaria since it has no such poll. I just wish that they had realized from the start that the voting was a bad idea. Why they thought that devoting time to an arbitrary gimmick instead of more important things was a good idea is beyond me. And I don't know why they would think we would rather have them write four stories and release one than just write four stories and release all of them. But if the polling was the main cause of some of these issues and we see far fewer issues in Dominaria as a result, I'll be relieved. The resolution of Ixalan left a lot to be desired, but I'll call myself cautiously optimistic for Dominaria.
I only noticed one or two typos, but I read it pretty quickly. I've also noticed repetition of the exact same words/phrases WAY too close to each other in past weeks, but I didn't see a problem with it this week. Granted, that doesn't mean it wasn't there; I probably just missed it. You're definitely right that they should clean up their act. To their credit, they are willing to edit things after publishing the stories. At least twice during the Ixalan story they accidentally said "ogre" and later edited it to say correctly say "orc", and of course, there was the infamous Chandra/Nissa friendzone edit. So at least they're willing and able to correct their mistakes. It would be much better if they corrected the mistakes BEFORE publishing the articles rather than after, but it's better than nothing I suppose.
In Release, we get the following exchange:
Later, Ajani says:
So what I assume happened is that Dovin Baan spoke with Tamiyo before she left for Innistrad (this story takes place before SOI). He told her something ambiguous about a planeswalker with a metal arm taking control of Kaladesh. When Tamiyo and Ajani talk to each other afterward, Tamiyo learns that Tezzeret is still alive and assumes that the planeswalker on Kaladesh in Tezzeret. Ajani infers that Tezzeret is working for Bolas and realizes that he needs to be stopped. And so Ajani goes to Kaladesh. Later, after SOI and Eldritch Moon, Tamiyo talks to Dovin again, and tells him about the Gatewatch, which causes him to try to recruit them. Of course, this whole explanation requires a lot of convenient missing details - namely that Dovin isn't specific about which planeswalker took over Kaladesh and doesn't make an enemy of Tamiyo by revealing that he's working for him - but it's the only way I can think of to make the timeline line up.
So ultimately, the three people that Ajani gets information from regarding Tezzeret are Elspeth, Tamiyo, and presumably Dovin (indirectly). None of those people know about where Tezzeret is from. It makes sense that Tezzeret, being a pretty secretive person and possibly without some of his memories due to mental intrusions from both Jace and Bolas, wouldn't tell anyone about his plane of origin. So it's safe to say that Ajani doesn't know where Tezzeret is from and it's just a giant coincidence that two planeswalkers from the same plane ended up clashing on an entirely different plane. But in a story in an infinite multiverse that revolves around only a handful of planes and planeswalkers, such things are bound to happen. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that Tezzeret and Ajani will ever have the chance to have a civil conversation and bond over their home plane, on account of them being enemies now, but maybe we could see it become relevant if they ever decide to return to Alara.
I could be wrong but I think that Bolas is able read/speak into/control Tezzeret's mind even if they aren't on the same plane. Presumably, if Tezzeret traps Bolas, Bolas could mind control Tezzeret to teleport the Sun away and free himself, and afterward Bolas would probably kill or at least horribly torture Tezzeret for his betrayal. Being a partially black-aligned character with his own best interests in mind, and someone who has already suffered the consequences of betraying Bolas in the past, Tezzeret's best bet is to not betray Bolas unless he has absolute certainty that it will kill Bolas permanently. He could potentially even help the Gatewatch if they can actually fotrmulate a quick, effective, and permanent solution to the Bolas problem. But given how extremely negatively Tezzeret has been portrayed in stories recently, I have a feeling that Tezzeret will stay with Bolas to the end. Either Tezzeret will be killed in the Gatewatch vs. Bolas conflict or he'll outlive Bolas and pick up the pieces of Bolas's empire and become a future main antagonist.
That's definitely true. But I just wish they would have let the thought occur to Jace, even if they had him decide otherwise for entirely valid reasons like the one you mentioned. It just seems like with all the focus on Ugin and how effective he could be against Bolas, it would be at least worth mentioning at that point in the story, even if they ultimately go in an entirely different direction.
So TL;DR:
The Simic were pretty much completely destroyed in the events of Dissension. The new version of the Simic had just recently been established in Return to Ravnica, meaning that there was no Simic guild at all for decades. Also, the new version of the guild is the same as the old in name only: the original Simic were run by elves and vedalken, and their creations often looked completely alien and were based on cytoplasts. The new Simic consist primarily of merfolk with only a handful of elves, and their creations are actual hybrids of existing animals, most often at least partially aquatic. Additionally, the old Simic used green means to exclusively blue ends, trying to improve nature as much as possible with no concern for the natural order, while the new Simic embody both philosophies by trying to balance nature with progress. Some of the other guilds have changed over time as well, but the Simic is the only one that clearly fell apart and was reborn as an almost completely different entity.
That being said, your point still stands: 10,000 years of stagnation is a lot and is pretty difficult to believe. Tarkir at least has a gap of only 1280 years, but while the lack of technological advancements could be explained away by the constant warfare, you would think that one or more clans would have been completely destroyed or at least splintered into multiple factions. In Khans of Tarkir they mentioned that originally one empire had ruled Tarkir that eventually became the Sultai, but in Fate Reforged we go back centuries and there's still five completely separate clans with no mention of the war starting recently. As others have said, they could easily avoid this by not choosing unnecessarily large numbers to try to make things seem impressive. Things change over time. You can pick a number of years that is relatively large but not completely unbelievable.
Possibilities, from most likely to least likely (in my opinion):
There has been quite a bit of shoving the Gatewatch down the audience's throats, but they've also committed to making the story somewhat visible through the cards alone. Obviously the goal of this is the same - to get the audience more invested and, ultimately, sell more cards - and in most cases the Gatewatch are still heavily featured because of how prominent they've been through Kaladesh and Amonkhet, although less so in Ixalan. But it's a combination of trying to push the main characters and making the story visible.
I should have been more clear but I wasn't really referring to the block model; I was thinking about the much smaller-scale change to Eldritch Moon's story where they originally intended to have a scene depicted in Spreading Flames. If I remember correctly, it was so last minute that the art book still talked about how the Gatewatch (specifically Chandra) had to burn down an entire town because it was overrun by Eldrazi, but that scene never actually happened in the story articles, probably because they ran out of time. Still, this wasn't as bad as what happened in this set, because at least "Chandra burns Eldrazi" was still something that happened in the story or could conceivably happened offscreen, while Sphinx's Decree clearly shows two characters who never actually met, unless the story takes a weird turn in the remaining two articles.
There are certain things that are minor enough that they can be avoided on the actual cards and saved for the stories themselves. But there are also certain things that are major enough events that players should be aware of them just by seeing the cards. It's hard to define exactly what the line is and everyone will have a different opinion, but personally I think that Emrakul trapping herself in the moon was absolutely genius - it gave a legitimate twist to the story in the actual articles that no one expected, while still allowing them to give non-readers a general idea of what happened through Imprisoned in the Moon without spoiling it. On the other hand, Elspeth being killed was a huge event in the story, and it's something that virtually all players should know about. Vorthoses who actually read the books are not responsible for telling everyone about something that important. There are many cases when it's acceptable to leave certain details for Vorthoses to find out about and educate other players as needed, but when it's the death of a beloved, recurring main character, that's something that the creators are responsible for making clear to everyone.
Granted, that was before they fully committed themselves to showing the story through the cards, and since they started to do so, I would say they've done a pretty good job with it. It's only in this set where I've noticed that they seem to be slipping, between putting blatantly incorrect artwork on cards and having only three story spotlights that don't give anything close to the full story.
I really hope that they can do justice to Dominaria. It seems like the "make or break" part of it will probably be the mechanics of the set since those matter to more people, but they have Richard Garfield on the team plus play design taking effect, so I'm not too worried about that. And even if it somehow is bad, it shouldn't be the end of Magic if that's what he was implying (I haven't seen the video); Magic survived BFZ after all. But they can't blame us for not having much faith in them in terms of flavor in storytelling lately. I was thinking that the writing quality was looking up but this most recent story really brought my expectations crashing down, between the bad dialogue, cartoonish portrayal of Azor, and general inconsistency (with past stories and what's depicted on the cards). Even ignoring that, the huge break periods between the stories of main releases, which haven't always happened, indicates that they are severely understaffed and/or disorganized. People talk about the writing quality steadily increasing but they ignore that 1. the writing quantity is actually decreasing and 2. the writing quality, though better overall, still varies quite a bit from week to week, or even within the same story. We'll see what happens with Dominaria, but as usual, it's probably advisable to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.
It's possible, probable in fact, that this is case. But it still doesn't sit well with me.
For one thing, we've had cards in the past that depict specific story moments despite lacking the story spotlight watermark, such as Impeccable Timing in Kaladesh and Hour of Devastation's defeat cycle. This is what I assumed that Sphinx's Decree and Shake the Foundations would be in this set. Apparently they aren't. They show main characters doing things that they don't actually do in the story, which is new. I guess we've seen it a little bit in plameswalker decks but those have to stretch to create tie-ins between the face of the product and the deck theme (Jace + Merfolk for instance). But cards in the actual set are ALWAYS going to be assumed to be canon.
And that's just for those of us who are invested in the story. What about players who aren't? Many people thought that the Gatewatch had died after the defeat cycle, and many thought Jace had died again after seeing the card where he fell down a waterfall. Granted, some of that may have been wishful thinking, but the cards were ambiguous. If cards that, strictly speaking, represent the story accurately (if ambiguously) can mislead people like that, imagine the damage that cards depicting the story inaccurately could cause. And all of this could have been avoided had they just flavored the cards differently, even just different art.
The fact that they made what seems like such a sloppy and easily avoidabld mistake leads me to believe that some kind of last minute change was made. For example, perhaps they had originally planned for Azor to regain his spark and appear in the next Ravnica block (which will inevitably be very soon) as a WU planeswalker. But maybe after seeing the popularity of Dovin Baan, they decided to make him the WU planeswalker instead. As a result, they hastily rewrote Azor as a blatant antagonist and changed his ultimate fate in this block, which didn't require any actual changes to the cards themselves. By this point, however, the art was already done and they were forced to print a card art depicting a scene that had been removed. That's just one possibility of many, but you get the idea: there very well might have been a last minute story change involved.
This would also explain why they included only three story spotlight cards, and why this story has a serious case of Journey into Nyx sydrome: that being a card depicting what looks like the climax/conclusion of the block (Deicide, Mastermind's Acquisition, but with more important information being ommitted from the cards entirely. People who didn't read the story won't know that Elspeth died, and now they won't know important details like Ugin's involvement, Azor's banishment, who controls the city, etc. This seems to completely contradict their policy of showing the story through the cards, so I think it's likely that they were forced to do so from a last-minute change. We already know that something similar happened in Eldritch Moon.
I could be wrong, but a lot of things feel off about this story and its representation in the cards, and a last minute change would explain a lot of that.