So, Wizards specifically posts the stories before spoiler season starts so that the previews don't spoil the story and you find it appropriate to post a story spoiler in a non-story thread without marking it as such?
I agree that it probably has to do with the offspring mechanic making token copies (maybe even the 1/1 part)
Ohh, I think you might be onto something. Kind of like how embalm creates a copy but changes some characteristics around, this mechanic creates a copy but makes it 1/1. Looking at the art, the bunny does look a bit like a child, like the weapon and clothes are too big for it.
I don't get why they marketed the set as one full of villains when half of them are just random legendaries. Getting Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths flashbacks.
Did they market the set as a villain set or is that just something MaRo (who has previously fed false hopes/expectations through unfortunate word choices that actually don't appear in any "proper" marketing i. e. anything that doesn'toriginate from blogatog) stated? there is a >50% chance you can trace misdirected hype back to blogatog from what I have observed whenever I actually research where it originates (this includes, btw, Ikoria - though the special Godzilla-themed card versions didn't help).
So, you actually have a point. I don't remember where exactly the "villain" part came from. I think it was from the preview panel: I'm preeeeetty sure that they said that they wanted to do a "villains of the multiverse" set. Maybe that was only the starting off point and they moved to "characters of the multiverse" down the line once they realised an all-villain cast is not only boring af but also probably not very color balanced or diverse in terms of types of characters. Who knows.
At any rate, it's something that shows up time and time again, so I think there was some sort of miscommunication happening somewhere.
However, big disagree on Ikoria. The name of the set was literally "Ikoria - Lair of Behemoths". This did not come from blogatog. The expectation was on the product itself. And it keeps showing up whenever Ikoria shows up in the story. It's definitely marketed as a kaiju world, if not by literal marketing, then still by whoever presents the product at any given moment.
They literally made individual tokens for squad the first time they used it. My assumption is that they expect you to use it the same way I do: One token card and abunch of beads/die to represent the multitude of tokens.
Those products weren't randomized though, but pre-constructed decks. There you can give out as many tokens as the deck needs.
Another thing that doesn't sit right with me in this case is just the flavour of the card itself. All cards with squad are concepted as creatures that make natural sense of have multiples of. However, this card is called "Warleader". How does it make sense for a card called warleader to come in groups most times you cast it?
I know, I know, Magic has been kinda hit-and-miss with individual card flavours, but looking back at squad cards, it doesn't mesh with the expectation.
All I'm saying is, everything we see here doesn't point towards something like squad. It's obviously not hard proof, but all I'm saying is I remain doubtful.
I don't get why they marketed the set as one full of villains when half of them are just random legendaries. Getting Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths flashbacks.
So, Ral assumes that the contents of the vault is something he can just carry away to another plane? But also wants to do that because he thinks it's dangerous?
That's quite a couple leaps of logic there. What if it's just ordinary treasure? Or a bunker with a lot of Fomori tech and even some stasis capsules in it. (Could also explain why Thunder Junction is uninhabited safe for cactus folk, some cataclysm wiped out most life and the Fomori tried to protect themselves)
As far as we know, nobody knows what's in the vault, so all of this feels very unmotivated. Why is a vault more likely to contain an ancient evil than, I dunno, some planeswalker's footprints?
Once again, everyone has read the script.
One thing I did like is that instead of them getting lucky with the Sterling Company attacking Tarnation, it was actually a plan put in motion by Oko. Only problem is that Oko couldn't have known how Akul would have reacted. What if he had killed them right away? What if he had picked a different time for the duel, an hour early or later?
As for the story as a whole, I feel like the Ixalan and the Ravnica sets were a complete waste of time for this arc. (Not saying I hated them. Murders of Karlov Manor was a better story than the arc's main story.) Kellan did NOTHING in those sets and then in Thunder Junction the entire arc of "I'm so happy I found my father :D" -> "mmh, my father's actions rub me the wrong way :/" -> "that's it I hate my father :(" happens at breakneck speed because two sets were entirely wasted instead of using them to set up the conflict at the end.
Would have been better to have Kellan find Oko in Ixalan and accompany him as Oko collects the various keys. As is the pacing is just insanely off.
I find squad a bit doubtful given the logistics behind giving each creature with squad its own token. It works with embalm and a hypothetical creature-adventure mechanic because there you only need one token for each card (barring flicker and bounce shenanigans), so it's feasible to get enough tokens for your cards but squad requires you to have multiples. It just doesn't seem like something that makes sense. They'd probably do generic copy tokens for squad.
I kind of doubt it's just from a card that creates copies. Historically those cards have generic copy tokens in the set.
My money's on a new mechanic, something in the vein of Embalm, that creates a token that mostly has the characteristics of the card but changes some things around to warrant an extra token. Or something like adventure but to cast creatures instead of sorceries and instants. Or something that uses a similar templating as adventure but in a different way, more in the vein of Garth.
I liked Annie's story. Not sure why this isn't a main story, but whatever. Maybe what is considered a side and main story is dependent on the quality, huh.
One thing I find really really weird is... You have an entire plane populated by people coming from elsewhere. There was literally JUST an invasion of unthinkable scale, one that saw entire lands, entire planes, devastated.
And yet it's never mentioned and it never comes up in the backstory of ANY character, not even the one-of randos that are not important. Huh?!
I don't know what the writers will go with, most of the time my headcanons and fanfiction end up being more interesting than the actual story (goes for a lot of us) but it was a thought I had when I first learned about planeswalkers back in 2010. Omenpaths are a thing now, but most people are still limited in the planes they can go to, right? Rakdos can't just go to any plane he wants. Maybe there is some resource, a metal, an element that is rare or non-existent on Ravnica, but Ashiok as a Planeswalker has access to a world where it is plentiful. A lot of people would be very interested in dark steel, or cosmium, or aether, or Halo, you know? and those are just examples to come up since the creation of the Gatewatch.
But you're definitely right about it not being gold or something traditional like that.
The problem isn't people being on Thunder Junction. Especially in the wake of the Phyrexian Invasion, I can totally see countless of people who lost near everything want to escape the ghosts of their past or the ruins of their homes to start a life elsewhere.
The problem is that these specific characters have no reason to be involved in this specific situation. As was said, Satoru is a crime boss. He has his own gang. What can Ashiok offer him that he cannot get on Kamigawa. Money?! What.
And Kaervec has gone broke after his prisonbreak? What, is he gonna buy himself a new invasion force to take over Zhalfir a random piece of land, through employment???
Since when does Gisa care about money? What needs does she have for money? She's literally surrounded by zombies all the time.
And Eriette can simply charm people and take their wallet, without Ashiok.
And a minor nitpick that makes me laugh a little, but: Where does Rakdos bougth Rakdos-sized vest, bandanna anda bandolier? And who made Kaervek's hat-crown?
I mean, there's going to be a haunted mansion plane somewhat soonish. Is a mega-mall plane really such an unthinkable idea?
If I try to have an open mind and tell myself that this is trying to emulate the typical dime stories, that used to be cheesy, it is borderline acceptable.
It just seems they took a handful of villains across the planes and get them together. No motivations, no reference to previous lives, etc. Just for the cool. Looks to me like the Secret Wars from animated Spider-Man series, when the Beyonder just pulled several villains to his dimension and let them fight Spidey and his friends (to prepare Spidey and co. for their multiverse-saving task).
It really feels like a half-baked fanfic "what would happen if you took the biggest baddies and get them work together". Why the heck would Satoru Umezawa, a pragmatic crime lord, want to leave his world for this? What is the ****ing motivation of these characters to even work together?
It seems to me that they are now using established characters (Vraska, Kaervek) and tossing them around for "cool" short, shallow stories.
The shallowness is, in fact, what bothers me the most here. The previous stories (Eldraine, Ixalan, Karlov Manor) had at least some clear reason and motivations present. This is just "yee haw, boys, let's make Ocean's Eleven in Magic. Wild West time!"
This, basically. Calling it a half-baked fan-fic is pretty much on point. There is no rhyme or reason to these characters being here. It's just a senseless mashup.
Man, I wasn't sold at all on the whole omenpath thing since the beginning. Yet somehow they managed to disappoint me, still.
And the funniest slash saddest thing is that Annie is stealing everyone's show because she actually acts like a real character and has a reason to be here.
Huh, interesting. I mean, we already got told they used space-ship looking like ships to invade Ixalan, so I guess we'll see the Fomori as the big baddies in the space opera set.
Yeeeaaaah, we're getting into the territory where the story kind of falls apart. I can buy some of the characters being here, but some are just very forced. Why is Rakdos here? Eriette? Satoru? Gisa and Geralf? Even Breeches and Malcolm are such random inclusions.
Kaervec only works until you realize that he probably wouldn't join such a "small time crime" team given his power and ambition before he was imprisoned. It's like putting Bolas here, or Baron Sengir. I do have to say I actually enjoy the idea that he uses archaic speech, but that's just a little gimmick.
As always, it could be made to work, to give each character a reason to be here, but Magic stories never have the scope for that so I think this story would have been served better to have most of the characters be new ones. Eh, whatever.
thats Actually a power suit from the fomori this is revealed from unused concept art of caverns of ixalan so they was three cards that were gonna mention the formori in Caverns of Ixalan.
and for the gunfight now we know its after they figure it out so the most logical and obvious guess is kellan comes to his sense's and comes back to team good and stops his own father.
I mean... Oko literally ended this chapter with saying having a son is useful, which... doesn't really bode well for their relationship. I assume at some point Kellan will realize that his father only uses him and becomes disillusioned with him (pun intended).
it's nice to see a trans character come up in a decent way, where it's just one part of what he has going on. too many franchises think that just being a trans character is enough, instead of being a good, interesting character who is also trans. Yuma should be very popular!
Honestly, yeah. He's a more interesting character than Kellan.
But... It feels more like setting up the character for later use. We learn about his history but... that's it. But being a side story I assume we'll only get one story of him, so... a bit of a waste really. I feel like the story wanted to be something different if that's the only time (in the foreseeable future) where we see Yuma.
One detail I found interesting is Yuma saying that Thunder Junction is a new plane. I wonder if it was meant literally.
Looks like we got our answer why Oko and Kellan will duel. Kellan is part of Ral's security and Oko's team might get in the way of the Sterling company at some point. (Or the other way around, whichever way you wanna look at it.)
Oko's son, Kellan, has at last tracked down his wayward father, but his schemes threaten to sweep Kellan into the role of a villain.
And given that he's gonna be called "Kellan, the Kid"....
Oh yeah, Kellan is definitely going to end up on Oko's team.
I'm thinking more like, Oko will run into the sterling company and/or Ral, Kellan will prepare to duel the intruder, he finds out that it is Oko and then however it goes from there. I doubt they will actually duel. It'll just be a high tension moment before Kellan goes like "Dad?!" and then Oko will be like "Uhh, which one are you again?" and then Ral is all like "Well, this is awkward."
So, Wizards specifically posts the stories before spoiler season starts so that the previews don't spoil the story and you find it appropriate to post a story spoiler in a non-story thread without marking it as such?
Ohh, I think you might be onto something. Kind of like how embalm creates a copy but changes some characteristics around, this mechanic creates a copy but makes it 1/1. Looking at the art, the bunny does look a bit like a child, like the weapon and clothes are too big for it.
So, you actually have a point. I don't remember where exactly the "villain" part came from. I think it was from the preview panel: I'm preeeeetty sure that they said that they wanted to do a "villains of the multiverse" set. Maybe that was only the starting off point and they moved to "characters of the multiverse" down the line once they realised an all-villain cast is not only boring af but also probably not very color balanced or diverse in terms of types of characters. Who knows.
At any rate, it's something that shows up time and time again, so I think there was some sort of miscommunication happening somewhere.
However, big disagree on Ikoria. The name of the set was literally "Ikoria - Lair of Behemoths". This did not come from blogatog. The expectation was on the product itself. And it keeps showing up whenever Ikoria shows up in the story. It's definitely marketed as a kaiju world, if not by literal marketing, then still by whoever presents the product at any given moment.
Those products weren't randomized though, but pre-constructed decks. There you can give out as many tokens as the deck needs.
Another thing that doesn't sit right with me in this case is just the flavour of the card itself. All cards with squad are concepted as creatures that make natural sense of have multiples of. However, this card is called "Warleader". How does it make sense for a card called warleader to come in groups most times you cast it?
I know, I know, Magic has been kinda hit-and-miss with individual card flavours, but looking back at squad cards, it doesn't mesh with the expectation.
All I'm saying is, everything we see here doesn't point towards something like squad. It's obviously not hard proof, but all I'm saying is I remain doubtful.
I don't get why they marketed the set as one full of villains when half of them are just random legendaries. Getting Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths flashbacks.
That's quite a couple leaps of logic there. What if it's just ordinary treasure? Or a bunker with a lot of Fomori tech and even some stasis capsules in it. (Could also explain why Thunder Junction is uninhabited safe for cactus folk, some cataclysm wiped out most life and the Fomori tried to protect themselves)
As far as we know, nobody knows what's in the vault, so all of this feels very unmotivated. Why is a vault more likely to contain an ancient evil than, I dunno, some planeswalker's footprints?
Once again, everyone has read the script.
One thing I did like is that instead of them getting lucky with the Sterling Company attacking Tarnation, it was actually a plan put in motion by Oko. Only problem is that Oko couldn't have known how Akul would have reacted. What if he had killed them right away? What if he had picked a different time for the duel, an hour early or later?
As for the story as a whole, I feel like the Ixalan and the Ravnica sets were a complete waste of time for this arc. (Not saying I hated them. Murders of Karlov Manor was a better story than the arc's main story.) Kellan did NOTHING in those sets and then in Thunder Junction the entire arc of "I'm so happy I found my father :D" -> "mmh, my father's actions rub me the wrong way :/" -> "that's it I hate my father :(" happens at breakneck speed because two sets were entirely wasted instead of using them to set up the conflict at the end.
Would have been better to have Kellan find Oko in Ixalan and accompany him as Oko collects the various keys. As is the pacing is just insanely off.
My money's on a new mechanic, something in the vein of Embalm, that creates a token that mostly has the characteristics of the card but changes some things around to warrant an extra token. Or something like adventure but to cast creatures instead of sorceries and instants. Or something that uses a similar templating as adventure but in a different way, more in the vein of Garth.
One thing I find really really weird is... You have an entire plane populated by people coming from elsewhere. There was literally JUST an invasion of unthinkable scale, one that saw entire lands, entire planes, devastated.
And yet it's never mentioned and it never comes up in the backstory of ANY character, not even the one-of randos that are not important. Huh?!
The problem isn't people being on Thunder Junction. Especially in the wake of the Phyrexian Invasion, I can totally see countless of people who lost near everything want to escape the ghosts of their past or the ruins of their homes to start a life elsewhere.
The problem is that these specific characters have no reason to be involved in this specific situation. As was said, Satoru is a crime boss. He has his own gang. What can Ashiok offer him that he cannot get on Kamigawa. Money?! What.
And Kaervec has gone broke after his prisonbreak? What, is he gonna buy himself a new invasion force to take over
Zhalfira random piece of land, through employment???Since when does Gisa care about money? What needs does she have for money? She's literally surrounded by zombies all the time.
And Eriette can simply charm people and take their wallet, without Ashiok.
What is going on with these people???
I mean, there's going to be a haunted mansion plane somewhat soonish. Is a mega-mall plane really such an unthinkable idea?
This, basically. Calling it a half-baked fan-fic is pretty much on point. There is no rhyme or reason to these characters being here. It's just a senseless mashup.
Man, I wasn't sold at all on the whole omenpath thing since the beginning. Yet somehow they managed to disappoint me, still.
And the funniest slash saddest thing is that Annie is stealing everyone's show because she actually acts like a real character and has a reason to be here.
And she's the only one who's a new character.
Huh, interesting. I mean, we already got told they used space-ship looking like ships to invade Ixalan, so I guess we'll see the Fomori as the big baddies in the space opera set.
Kaervec only works until you realize that he probably wouldn't join such a "small time crime" team given his power and ambition before he was imprisoned. It's like putting Bolas here, or Baron Sengir. I do have to say I actually enjoy the idea that he uses archaic speech, but that's just a little gimmick.
As always, it could be made to work, to give each character a reason to be here, but Magic stories never have the scope for that so I think this story would have been served better to have most of the characters be new ones. Eh, whatever.
Huh. Got a link for that?
I mean... Oko literally ended this chapter with saying having a son is useful, which... doesn't really bode well for their relationship. I assume at some point Kellan will realize that his father only uses him and becomes disillusioned with him (pun intended).
Honestly, yeah. He's a more interesting character than Kellan.
What's a cokepoke?
But... It feels more like setting up the character for later use. We learn about his history but... that's it. But being a side story I assume we'll only get one story of him, so... a bit of a waste really. I feel like the story wanted to be something different if that's the only time (in the foreseeable future) where we see Yuma.
One detail I found interesting is Yuma saying that Thunder Junction is a new plane. I wonder if it was meant literally.
Oh yeah, Kellan is definitely going to end up on Oko's team.
I'm thinking more like, Oko will run into the sterling company and/or Ral, Kellan will prepare to duel the intruder, he finds out that it is Oko and then however it goes from there. I doubt they will actually duel. It'll just be a high tension moment before Kellan goes like "Dad?!" and then Oko will be like "Uhh, which one are you again?" and then Ral is all like "Well, this is awkward."