I liked the rather florid vocabulary, as it seemed to fit the tone of Luneau, though perhaps a little contrast in style between the descriptions of the city and aristrocrats and Vivien's internal monologue might have heightened the effect. It's a little showy, but that's a minor complaint compared to the original Ixalan story's inability to keep its tenses and numbers consistent.
That being said -- Vivien sure seems to be a chump, huh? Waiting all through a long torture party before doing anything? Then going down against a single vampire baron and a bunch of mook guards? Nissa she ain't.
Maybe this is the original neo-walker power level they always intended, before they let the Gatewatch get over-leveled. But it's not very impressive.
This is one of the reasons why I don't like color combos being named after particular in-universe organizations (the other being simply the barrier of remembering what combos the names refer to -- how easy is it for a new player to remember what "Mardu" and "Jeskai" mean, especially if they didn't even start playing until after Tarkir rotated out? While much fewer people are going to be confused by just calling them WBR or WUR).
Three-color combos, even more than two-color pairs, can have a wide variety of flavor and mechanical identities. Your UBR card could come from a wide variety of places, from Admiral Beckett Brass to Mairsil, the Pretender, from Sedris, the Traitor King to Nicol Bolas. How many of these cards are "Grixis"? Only one of those four. Calling the entire color combination by one name does a disservice to the variety of the game, both mechanically and lorewise.
So it appears that there is something close to 800-900 years betwen the Tarkir section of this story and Nicol Bolas's defeat by Tetsuo Umezawa. I guess Nicol just kinda back-burnered the whole Immortal Sun thing, huh?
None of this really bothers me. The main thing I'm hoping for is more writing of this high quality. Wizards, give Kate Elliott more work!
Vraska (the planeswalker gorgon from Ravnica) and Jace fell in love during the Ixalan block story (the only well-done part of an otherwise poor story). Then Jace had to erase all of her memory of him to prevent Nicol Bolas from finding out about their plan to stop him on Ravnica. It was pretty tragic. Until he restores her memory, she'll have no recollection of their relationship.
Visara is a completely different gorgon from the old Onslaught block storyline, who lived on Dominaria and wasn't a planeswalker.
Overall, fabulous story, great characters, excellent writing, and I'm suuuper pumped for an eventual return to Tarkir. I liked the Tarkir parts much more than all the dragon history.
I think they did the best they could to justify the ending. Yeah, it's pretty hard to come up with a plausible scenario for Bolas not beating a bluff with telepathy (or just, you know, Death Starring Tarkir from orbit for the lulz), but our heroes weren't exactly going to stab him to death, now were they? The twin thing was a clever bit of justification: every time he'd try to mind-control Naiva, it would work on the real Naiva back in the hedron cave, but then the ambient protection of Ugin helped her resist. Sure, maybe Bolas could have/should have read Yasova and figured out the ruse, but hey, I'm willing to give the story team credit for coming up with a reasonable explanation for why he didn't.
Now, why Bolas wouldn't go do a little research, come back a year later and nuke 'em all then...ah well.
Speaking of which, on the timeline, how much time elapses between this story and Bolas's defeat by Tetsuo Umezawa?
The phrase 'Events on Zendikar didn't unfold as he had planned, since the appearance of Ugin, whom he had though dead.' makes no sense to me. How did Ugin affect the events on Zendikar (he didn't)? Why is the sentence structure so bad? It is not proper English at all.
I have trouble trusting this paragraph.
I'd say (as a non-native speaker) that the clauses in the sentence may be meant independently, so that Nicol knows that the events on Zendikar didn't unfold as he had planned, and we know, that it was because of Ugin, whom he had thought dead.
Anyway, we'll probably see the next week, when Nicol will try to find it out. I am honestly thrilled what will happen, since we know that he cannot kill Ugin.
The grammar is correct, but there are a couple of confusing factors. The OP might be mistaking the manner in which the word "since" is being used. Here it's being used with the meaning of "after," not "because." And also, "though" is a typo, it should be "thought." So a rephrasing might be:
"Events on Zendikar didn't unfold as {Nicol Bolas} had planned, after the appearance of Ugin, whom {Nicol Bolas} had thought dead."
In other words, Bolas had planned for things on Zendikar to go a certain way, but then Ugin showed up. Bolas didn't expect that, because he though Ugin was dead. Ugin's appearance threw off his plans.
That's still messed up from a continuity standpoint, since in the official stories Bolas still doesn't know that Ugin isn't dead, and he definitely didn't find it out during Battle for Zendikar. Plus yeah, Ugin's appearance didn't seem to do much to change what happened on Zendikar, unless his interference somehow gave Jace and the Gatewatch the idea of how to kill the Eldrazi.
I love Bolas's super creepy appearance here. I'm not worried for Ugin -- but I am worried for all these poor Temur tribe folks! I hope the bond between the twins works out positively, and Naiva withstands the temptation to recapitulate Bolas's story. It could go tragically, though.
I'm bummed that I have to find out that there's no story by visiting the website and discovering that it's not there. It would have been really nice to have been informed. And I'm extra bummed, because this set of stories is great!
Really good story this time, continuing the high quality of this whole block.
The story voice this time reflects Nicol Bolas's perspective, not Ugin's. That's why it is so fawning and aggrandizing toward him. This is the Bolas propaganda version of the Elder Dragon War.
I'm really loving the Tarkir sections, especially. I think the author is doing a great job of creating believable, differentiated characters with understandable personalities and motivations. And the depiction of Tarkir as a setting, with the beauty and danger of the landscape, the weather, and the material living conditions of the Atarka tribe -- man, it's great.
It's making me want a new Tarkir set, that's for sure.
This whole story is aces so far. Great pacing and structure. I love the return to Tarkir, it's such a great story setting, and such a nice break from the high tech/verging on sci-fi worlds that we've been visiting so much recently. And primordial Dominaria is pretty cool, too.
And nice to see an author who seems to be able to write teenage girls who are both realistic and not annoying!
I think this new Tarkir story by Kate Elliott is pretty great. Well-written, revisiting a very interesting and under-used setting, and providing tons of very cool backstory development. It's a little baggy and over-long in places, probably as a result of word-count targets, but I like it a lot.
Her writing quality has gone downhill. There are many inexplainable problems in the narrative- some parts too slow, some parts too fast, others...with some obvious handwaving.
This would not bother me as much if it was produced by the creative team but Martha was hired For her story writing and I haven’t been very impressed lately
I told you guys that the Story being meh wasn't a function of the writers being terrible, trying to tell a story at the scale they are trying to tell it with the amount of space they are trying to tell it in will fail.
I largely agree with this. I definitely think Martha's been a massive improvement over what came before, but you can still see issues arising from the structure of the storytelling. They needed WAY more space to tell this Dominaria story right.
This was the first story that didn't really work for me. It seemed rushed and a bit poorly structured. Chandra's plan to find Jaya doesn't make much sense, Jaya's plan to help Argive was confused (did she just bail on them in the middle of the dragon-slaying quest? Or were they already done? Or what?), Chandra beating Jaya to Karn is weird too...the story wasn't so much weak in concept -- Chandra goes and finds Jaya, Jaya finds Karn fighting Multani, okay seems good -- but the execution and organization was troublesome.
If I were to theorize, I'm wondering if this particular story wasn't as thoroughly outlined as the others before it was written.
I'm not surprised that Karn is torn up over Venser. He's not the most rational robot ever; he's given to pretty strong emotional reactions over things happening to his friends.
Great write-up. I've been an advocate of the Lim-Dul theory for a long time, but this is far more evidence than I've ever seen before for it. I'm really hoping that the Dominaria set gives us the big reveal. It would be a fabulous payoff for all of us old-time Vorthoses.
I'm especially intrigued by the possible connection between Lim-Dul and Nicol Bolas's army of Eternals. I could certainly see Bolas making a deal with Lim-Dul to open the way for him to dominate his host in exchange for the promise of service as a general. And Bolas was brokering those demonic pacts fairly soon after he first set up his plan for Amonkhet, too...
Do we know the time period for Liliana's initial meeting with the Raven Man and planeswalker ascension? Could it have been during or immediately after the last time Lim-Dul was known to be active on Dominaria?
That being said -- Vivien sure seems to be a chump, huh? Waiting all through a long torture party before doing anything? Then going down against a single vampire baron and a bunch of mook guards? Nissa she ain't.
Maybe this is the original neo-walker power level they always intended, before they let the Gatewatch get over-leveled. But it's not very impressive.
Three-color combos, even more than two-color pairs, can have a wide variety of flavor and mechanical identities. Your UBR card could come from a wide variety of places, from Admiral Beckett Brass to Mairsil, the Pretender, from Sedris, the Traitor King to Nicol Bolas. How many of these cards are "Grixis"? Only one of those four. Calling the entire color combination by one name does a disservice to the variety of the game, both mechanically and lorewise.
None of this really bothers me. The main thing I'm hoping for is more writing of this high quality. Wizards, give Kate Elliott more work!
Visara is a completely different gorgon from the old Onslaught block storyline, who lived on Dominaria and wasn't a planeswalker.
I think they did the best they could to justify the ending. Yeah, it's pretty hard to come up with a plausible scenario for Bolas not beating a bluff with telepathy (or just, you know, Death Starring Tarkir from orbit for the lulz), but our heroes weren't exactly going to stab him to death, now were they? The twin thing was a clever bit of justification: every time he'd try to mind-control Naiva, it would work on the real Naiva back in the hedron cave, but then the ambient protection of Ugin helped her resist. Sure, maybe Bolas could have/should have read Yasova and figured out the ruse, but hey, I'm willing to give the story team credit for coming up with a reasonable explanation for why he didn't.
Now, why Bolas wouldn't go do a little research, come back a year later and nuke 'em all then...ah well.
Speaking of which, on the timeline, how much time elapses between this story and Bolas's defeat by Tetsuo Umezawa?
The grammar is correct, but there are a couple of confusing factors. The OP might be mistaking the manner in which the word "since" is being used. Here it's being used with the meaning of "after," not "because." And also, "though" is a typo, it should be "thought." So a rephrasing might be:
"Events on Zendikar didn't unfold as {Nicol Bolas} had planned, after the appearance of Ugin, whom {Nicol Bolas} had thought dead."
In other words, Bolas had planned for things on Zendikar to go a certain way, but then Ugin showed up. Bolas didn't expect that, because he though Ugin was dead. Ugin's appearance threw off his plans.
That's still messed up from a continuity standpoint, since in the official stories Bolas still doesn't know that Ugin isn't dead, and he definitely didn't find it out during Battle for Zendikar. Plus yeah, Ugin's appearance didn't seem to do much to change what happened on Zendikar, unless his interference somehow gave Jace and the Gatewatch the idea of how to kill the Eldrazi.
The story voice this time reflects Nicol Bolas's perspective, not Ugin's. That's why it is so fawning and aggrandizing toward him. This is the Bolas propaganda version of the Elder Dragon War.
I'm really loving the Tarkir sections, especially. I think the author is doing a great job of creating believable, differentiated characters with understandable personalities and motivations. And the depiction of Tarkir as a setting, with the beauty and danger of the landscape, the weather, and the material living conditions of the Atarka tribe -- man, it's great.
It's making me want a new Tarkir set, that's for sure.
And nice to see an author who seems to be able to write teenage girls who are both realistic and not annoying!
I largely agree with this. I definitely think Martha's been a massive improvement over what came before, but you can still see issues arising from the structure of the storytelling. They needed WAY more space to tell this Dominaria story right.
If I were to theorize, I'm wondering if this particular story wasn't as thoroughly outlined as the others before it was written.