MTG Salvation

Funnily enough, I think the -3 is actually flavourful, because she's "shooting" the animal at something.

Also this is one of the few planeswalker deck walkers which I prefer the art for over their "normal" versions.

I wonder how much better off the people on Amonkhet, Zendikar, Innistrad, Tarkir, Ixalan and Dominaria (among other planes influenced directly and indirectly by Bolas and Ugin) would have been if the hunters got to the twins.

Quote from Chalsis »

I've been positively glowing about this story all day long. After months of poor to mediocre fiction, this is beyond anything I ever knew I wanted. I haven't been this enthused about the MTG story in years. Things I loved:

- The Elder Dragon eggstones falling to earth like meteors.

- Nicol Bolas not being pure evil from the start. Seeing him show empathy and actually caring about someone else, even as we also glimpse the early seeds of his future savagery. It gives him much-needed layer and nuance.

-Bolas and Ugin starting out as the runts. Bolas experiencing smallness and powerlessness from the very start.

-Seeing the primordial, neolithic Dominaria (I assume it's Dominaria?) It feels like the Elders have fallen right into a Jean M. Auel setting; an ancient, pre-civilized world full of wonder and possibility, where all of history still lies ahead.

-The twin girls paralleling Ugin and Bolas.

-Actually getting our earliest bit of MTG lore. It feels primal and even somewhat sacred; a privileged glimpse of primordial birth and creation. It even seems scriptural at times.

-The beautiful, violent, evocative imagery.

Until today, I had absolutely no curiosity whatsoever about the history of the Elder Dragons and their war. This story did me a 180. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm breathless for more.

This is probably the most positive comment I've seen about this story. I'm also interested to see where they go with this backstory, and this does shed some light on why Bolas thinks and acts the way he does. He clearly had the capacity to care about his family, and we see a lot of the "red" side of him with his impatience, lust for revenge and recklessness. However, as the flashback progressed, we start to see the more calculating and introspective side of him. Instead of just being hellbent on revenge, he stops for a moment and considers that maybe that's just how things are and he just has to be as high in the food chain as possible. This is more like the Bolas we currently know.

I remember Ugin saying something along the lines of "Well he's been acting more careless than I remembered." when he was told that Bolas orchestrated the release of the Eldrazi.

This twin relationship makes that line even more interesting.

Quote from willdice »

"By naming itself it takes control of its own destiny. No dragon would allow another to name it."
(...)

"You're Nicol, aren't you? That's your name."

"Of course it's my name. Hsst, quiet, Ugin."

They named each other. Could be relevant.

Each of them controls the destiny of the other. So no matter how much they hate each other, their fates are too tightly linked for one to just dispose of the other. Bolas's murder of Ugin failed because of time shenanigans, and Ugin's plan to trap Bolas on Ixalan also failed because Azor couldn't stop bragging to people.

Quote from NZB2323 »

Quote from ryuplaneswalker »

Wizards did a better job of making Angarth

I am still on the boat that Angrath is not evil, he was pushed into a situation where he had zero choice in what he did, There was obviously something keeping him on Ixalan, The Local Governments were unwilling and unable to aid him, and nobody else had any information on how he could escape. His only conceivable plan is total destruction until you can leave.

Angarth, Sorin, Vraska, Tezzeret, and Lily have all committed murder as a means to an end. You can try to justify and rationalize those means, but so can The Godfather, Walter White, and Urza. Also, it seems that Angarth could explore other alternatives to mass murder when trying to escape. If I was in a world and trying to escape, I wouldn’t try to kill everyone and see if that would let me leave.

Is there a particular reason you keep spelling "Angrath" as "Angarth", despite seeing the first spelling in other posts?

Angrath became desperate. He tried more civilized means first (IIRC, he sought help from the Sun Empire, and like with the Torrezon refugees, they ignored his pleas for help), and those didn't work, so he turned to the means we see him employ in the story. Most people in his situation would likely devolve in a similar manner, because unlike the other people you listed, Angrath has children he needed to get back to. Also, he's been there for over a decade, which would drive anyone in his situation insane. Also, unlike Liliana, Angrath's problems weren't caused by him. He had no idea Ixalan would trap him, and he wasn't the one who created the Immortal Sun.

Liliana's problems, on the other hand, have all been due to her actions. She was the one who took shortcuts to heal her brother, subsequently turning him into a lich. The Raven Man encouraged her, but she ultimately made the decision. She was the one who abandoned her family, and by extension Caligo Forest, to their fate. She was the one who agreed to the demon pacts with Bolas as the broker. She decided to hang on to the Chain Veil and to mistreat Jace.

Quote from AUTUMNTWILIGHT »

Quote from NZB2323 »

Quote from AUTUMNTWILIGHT »

Pretty much Lili never pays a high enough prize for her crimes...Gideon for his stupidity got all his friends killed...Teferi for the crime of peacing out lost Zhalfir and his spark for over 60 years. Lili for her crimes of mass murder? A few weeks under Bolas control...its a joke. She is a pretty bad girl so the worse thing that happens to her is Jace being mean to her.

• Tainted remedy
  
• Josu Vess, lich Knight
  
• Final parting

You really think that Jace being mean to her is the worst thing that’s happened to her?

Yes, she lost her brother sorry if I don't consider that on the level of losing all your friends or your entire country.

She lost her entire family though.

Besides that, what makes her losing her brother any less painful than Gideon losing his 4 Irregulars? Statistics?

Quote from AUTUMNTWILIGHT »

Quote from EasyLover »

A breeze of fresh air to see an innovative ability like Tezzerets Ultimate.
Im just sick of Ob Nix Template

I appreciate an innovative template but does it have to be garbage.

Reminder that this is a planeswalker deck planeswalker, which is supposed to be "garbage".

Quote from Manite »

At least Tezzeret's back to looking cool again. I mean, I guess Tezzeret the Schemer looked kinda cool, but this is much closer to the cyborg Lobo we saw in Mirrodin Besieged. Although, his left arm here almost looks like he's wearing a T-shirt.

Tezzeret the Schemer looked more subdued because he was trying not to attract too much suspicion about what he was doing on Kaladesh. We see it in the art, but he often kept his Etherium arm hidden.

Quote from BlazingRagnarok »

If you're looking for hope, then just try to take less stock in the comments on this site. The new Karn got absolutely panned here, and look at how much play he's seeing now.

Maybe I missed something, but most of the complaints I've seen of Vivien had less to do with her being playable, and more to do with her being relatively dull.

Quote from mikeyG »

Quote from Etherium Sage »

Ob Nixilis Reignited is a fair planeswalker with decent effects, but the problem with him is that he's very "boring". This criticism was leveled at the card long before now. His first two effects are just generic black things that just tick the checkboxes for what a "good" planeswalker card is supposed to do (give you advantage and protect itself), and those are what you'd expect to use him for 99% of the time. His ultimate is a bit more interesting though.

Interesting, thank you. I wasn't following things when that card came out, I never knew it was considered boring. I use it a bunch for budget utility and he serves that role well,I guess I just never thought about how exciting the card is. Hmm.

One thing to consider here is that planeswalker characters need to have their cards do things that differentiate themselves from the others, or they'll eventually look too similar to tell apart.

Liliana, outside of one card, does necromancer things. Sorin usually has drain effects or creates Vampire tokens, because he's a vampire. Vraska routinely kills things because she's a Gorgon assassin.

Ob Nixilis Reignited was so generic that it didn't really establish what his cards are supposed to do as a rule of thumb.

Stop saying the majority agrees with you unless you have a means of proving it, axman.

https://twitter.com/ElleOsiliWood/status/969187209998987264

First printed in Future Sight.



Number Crunch .:. Spreadsheet: Cards per Set

By the gods the boohooing and entitlement in this thread is unbelievable. They spent more than half of Magics's history on Dominaria in the same story. Lord forbid they try amd so something else that not only keeps with the current story but harkens back to the old stories. Not everyone is a fan of Urza. As a matter of fact the majority of magic players probably aren't as the majority are newer players who weren't around for the early stuff. I started in RTR. I don't give a damn about Urza. The shoutouts and callbacks are cool and all but I wouldn't miss them if they weren't there. Nothing satisfies you people.
"I want old magic back!"
-"k here's Jaya, Jhoira, Karn, Teferi all on Dominaria fighting the cabal with the Gatewatch."
"Gatewatch! No this is awful now WotC why do you hate everything good?"

Seriously people. Chill out, let them tell the story they want to tell. If you don't like it don't like it go read something else or go tell the story you want told.

Quote from EstravenEternal »

I can't believe they are doing yet another Gatewatch story for Dominaria. I don't get it. 25 years of magic and all we get is this failure over and over.

Speak for yourself. I actually enjoy the characters of the Gatewatch and Planeswalkers being the lens through which we explore the multiverse. There is nothing to complain about from what we know so far about the return trip to Dominaria, as we are having a meeting of both New AND Old magic here, Weatherlight meets Gatewatch.

I'm kind of sick of the all the complaining. Yes there was much good in the Old stories and some weaknesses in the New but even just reading and trying to sort out Old magic the gathering stories informs me that the storytelling was imperfect then too; lots of continuity issues, author vanities, character inconsistencies and tired tropes as well.

Each period of Magic Storytelling is a reflection of its time. If things stayed the same, cardwise or lorewise, the game would die.
What the announcement is telling fans however is that the company accepts that the stories of Magic the Gathering deserves a higher quality of writing than it received in the past. Magic's story team has done their best but they're stretched thin and TBH they aren't and shouldn't have to be professional writers. They are World- and Arc-builders, and that's ok.

The meeting of both Amateur and Professional writers and storytellers is something that ought be celebrated just as the meeting of Old and New MTG, because like it or not, sometimes the amateur writers understand us fans better than the Professional, the Sophisticated.
They just can't always express it quite as well. I like Doug and his team, I am happy they are getting allies.

Quote from Bartel_Runeaxe »

No to exploring a plane with such a deep lore and history through the lenses of characters that have zero connection (emotional or otherwise) to the places visited. Just the thought of Liliana going around places I wished to see again for over a decade acting snarky, dismissive and know-it-all, not giving a single damn about what are those places she visits and what has transpired there, makes my eyes roll.

You do realize Liliana is from Dominaria right?

You said it yourself, I think its too soon to cry out that the gatewatch is stealing all the spotlight in this set, all we have is the hook, Gideon and Liliana go to kill her last demon and explore the plane. From the end of todays story we do know Gideon is on the rebuilt weatherlight with Jaya so the more reasonable guess is that Gideon and Liliana end up crossing paths with the old characters and they all become a party of sorts.

Quote from SavannahLion »

It's too bad they'll keep their prized Planeswalkers. Magic can allow an infinite number of planes so it would behoove WotC to introduce side stories or sets that really don't have their main characters appearing. Hitler may get all the attention for WWII but his isn't the only story.

So everyone can then complain that creative is wasting story time on filler stories/characters who we won't see until the return set?

Side storylines and such are being told in the supplement sets, like Conspiracy or Commander, as well as core sets being used for background/set up for the major storyline (i.e. all of nahiri backstory before SoI could have been the storyline of a core set).

^ This is one more thing that's so vexing. They actually conveyed the moral nuance quite well in the artbook and supplementary materials. It was THERE; they had a compelling conflict laid out between four factions whose virtues and flaws were well thought out. But again, like practically everything in the story aside from the Jace and Vraska arc, the great ideas laid out in the creative boardroom did not translate to the keyboard of whoever ended up writing the online fiction.

As someone else here already observed, it feels like this world and it's story were planned out by a team that really took the effort and cared, only for the writing to be handed off to people who didn't really care much at all.


All the ingredients for a wild, amazing story were right there! It's almost like a perverse imp troll was sitting on the writers' shoulder:

"Exciting adventure world to explore? Cut the adventure and exploration parts. Just make it a race, people loved that in Dragon's Maze."

"Realistic, morally nuanced villain?(*) Delete his coolest parts, relegate him to a side character, and chuck him out a window in the first scene of RIX."

"Badass guardian golem mechs? Cut 'em."

"Five newly-awakened Elder Dinosaurs, one for each color? Mention them briefly, then move on."

"A SIXTH Elder Dinosaur? A Super three headed Cerberus Rex Primal Calamity? Make it a Taxi."

"Four factions locked in an epic battle for the Immortal Sun? Make it a seven-person playground brawl with no casualties or sacrifices."

"Dangerous and powerful doomsday artifact that's difficult to control? Phase it out before anyone mishandles it and we see what it's truly capable of. Whew, that was close."

"A couple villains are slated to claim the Immortal Sun regardless? Eh, just have them stand on it for a bit without actually using it's power."

"Zacama blasting through the Temple of the Sun? Yawn. No one wants to read about that."

"Intense emotions to capture in prose? Hit caps lock. The readers will get it."


(EDIT: I love Ixalan. I love the world, the art, the factions, and the feathered Dinosaurs. I admire the creativity and inspiration that went into its design and mythology, and it truly is one of my favorite planes. But I abhor, and in fact deeply resent, the amateur and dishonest way the story has been presented to us.)

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(*)Note: The artbook shows Kumena as originally set up to be the Big Bad, who the other factions had to fight through as he (along with a band of renegade River Heralds!) wielded the might of the Immortal Sun and tried to stop them from reaching the temple. But that would have been cool, so it had to go.

Combat tricks seem an avenue that fits RW (It feels right but I'll have to get concrete examples later) as a potential archetype, akin to Heroic. What are your thoughts on possibly allowing some highly specific cost reduction as a facet of this?

Monk of the Silver Feather 1W
Creature - Bird Monk
Instants you cast during combat cost 1 less to cast.
Prowess
1/2

Akroan Aspirants 2RR
Creature - Human Soldier
Instants you cast during combat cost 1 less to cast.
Heroic - Whenever you cast a spell that targets Akroan Aspirants, put a +1/+1 counter on Akroan Aspirants.
3/3

Boros Spellsword 1RW
Creature - Human Cleric
Instants you cast during combat cost 1 less to cast.
3/2

EDIT - templating

One of the best moments in this chapter was a very subtle and overlooked one, but I felt it was extremely moving. That was, Tishana crying out in despair for Kumena, catching him when he fell, and then having her followers tend to him. This was the guy who defied her, broke with centuries of tradition, and physically attacked her -- but to Tishana, he is still her former apprentice, "the one student she failed the most."

She could have been angry. She could have lectured him, cursed him, banished him, or even just let him splatter. But instead she did everything that Kumena, in her place, surely would not have done.

That sequence was short, but it was probably my favorite moment from Rivals so far.

Angrath, the Flame-Chained

Gain control of target creature until end of turn. Untap it. It gains haste until end of turn. Sacrifice it at the beginning of the next end step if it has converted mana cost 3 or less.

Angrath to Huatli after abandoning her: I want to kill you, but you're too hefty.
Huatli: Huh?