MTG Salvation

Quote from krishnath »

Quote from Catherine Cook »

You know what I find to be amusing? The fact that, until not long ago, most MtG characters (Liliana very much included) were nothing but cardboard cut-outs of the most common stereotypes related to their alignments and color identities, and people complained about it. But now that the characters are more well-rounded and complex, now that they have relatable motivations and layered personalities we can identify with, now that we're being shown that their decisions and mistakes and problems are dictated by their life experiences and their innermost feelings, rather than just by their color identities, people are trying to pigeonhole these characters back into their stereotypical color-coded roles. I guess there really is no pleasing the internet.

Please enlighten me on what kind of heroic character commits acts of mass murder and threatens someone with having their friends eaten alive? Go on. I am waiting.

Lily is a villain through and through. She is in it for herself, and herself only. If you want a heroic black aligned character, you have Toshiro Umezawa and Sorin Markov.

Quote from AUTUMNTWILIGHT »

Yeah I suppose it works because Gideon is Captain America.

Quote from AUTUMNTWILIGHT »

Quote from Crazy Pierre »

The Gatewatch have to take a personal hit at some point for me to care about them. They have had losses on a personal level, but they only get "defeated" in the same way a character in a Steam game gets defeated. Permanent defeat/extinction would be much more dramatic, and welcome, from this player's standpoint.
I know we're supposed to be "planeswalkers" when we play the game, but let's be honest, that is simply artifice. I get no additional poiwers over my opponent, I can't alter games going on around me, I sometimes lose and my opponents sometime lose. Not much of a planeswalking bunch if we have no powerrs at all, and need to call on another planeswalker to do our job for us.

I've been reticent to use planeswalkers in my Magic deck for a long time for this very reason. I connect with very few of them outside Liliana or Tezzeret and the payback isn't there for putting them on the battlefield, outside of them acting as a "fog" for a few rounds.

Bolas has at least died once, so I can respect that from him. I still prefer the Weatherlight crew since they did, indeed, cease. And that takes courage from a writing crew that is absent from DIgges and co. They just don't have the nerve to kill their sacred lamb. More's the pity.

Well also its the Gatewatch outside of Ajani has no real beef with Bolas.
Nissa: He helped the Eldrazi get lose on Zendikar but that was reliant on Gatewatch Incomptence. Zendikar is also damaged.
Jace: Has Plans for Ravnica? Jace has beef against Tezz I guess.
Chandra: Zilch, I mean I guess he is tangentially related to her father getting killed but that is several degrees off again Tezz more beef.
Liliana: Before the end of this story again no beef. In fact he helped her out.
Gideon: No Beef.
Ajani: Tried to destroy Alara so beef.
Teferi: Will see how the story ends but now not really. I mean he did rekt Teferi in a fight but Bolas did his part with the Time Rifts.

Again usually the heroes have way more motivation to take down the big bad which most of the Gatewatch is lacking. Its not Personal for us or really the reader yet. For Samut its personal but for most of the Gatewatch Bolas hasn't done much to them. Ajani is the only one with real issue with Bolas. Lili didn't read the fine print. And Zendikar was mostly caused by Gatewatch Incompetence.

Quote from RxPhantom »

I want to build a Mardu vampire deck, but I won't use Edgar Markov out of principal.

Quote from AUTUMNTWILIGHT »

Quote from Gutterstorm »

So according to her bio card Niambi was born a full decade after the events of Time Spiral. Plenty of time for Teferi to realize he doesnt have the power to being back Zhalfir and meet a nice Femerefan woman who is actually emotionally available to him instead of pineing over Jhoira. And that would have been a perfectly good ending for him. Its so rare that the hero gets a happily ever after these days. So can the *****ing stop?

Sure if you consider that a happy ending. I don't so it changes nothing. I could care less about Teferi settling down with some no name and having a normal kid while Zhalfir is lost to the void. I also don't get why one would want to have a kid that they know will die before them.

Quote from Gutterstorm »

So can the *****ing stop?

Quote from Zemarr »

Quote from AUTUMNTWILIGHT »

Well you consider Bolas whole plot is regaining Omnipotence so obviously he isn't now.

My problem with the Gatewatch is inconsistent power level (they go from killing Eldrazi Titans to having trouble with Baral). I know you can expect some of that but that level of difference is absurd.

The other end is they don't pay a high enough price for their screwups. Bolas should have put at least one of the Gatewatch in the ground. Since Nissa is warming the bench for the forseeable future it should have been her.

The other problem is of course they don't dig deep enough into their colors, they are all far to surface level representations of the their color. Gideon is Captain America, Jace is a introvert nerd, Chandra is impulsive, etc.

I agree with you completely. The main difference between the weatherlight saga and the new story is that life/death was a big factor for the characters. A lot of them made self sacrifices, or became corrupted, or died trying to do what they thought was right. The new Planeswalker characters, especially the ones we follow as protagonists, may feel like they are in life or death situations, but never have any real consequences to their injuries. Venser was the only one to die on Phyrexia in sacrifice to restore Karn, but he was an older character. It feels like WOTC is extremely precious about any new characters they have as planeswalker protagonists, where even if they are corrupted (Garruk, Apex Predator) or are killed (Elspeth Tirel), they are not considered permanently dead or out of the running. And since planeswalkers are the stories we follow (the settings they go to don't matter that much as if one quirky plane fails, big whoop, travel to the next), it just becomes hard to get invested in characters whose lives aren't at stake (as WOTC isn't interested in nailing the coffin for any "good guy").

And I'm not saying the old school story wasn't full of problems -- magic text has always read like it was written by people who went to an online school to get their creative writing degree. It's always been amateur fantasy literature tacked onto a wonderfully complex strategy game.

I'm just saying that when the main characters were human (or didn't have a spark), their mortality was at stake. Their actions seemed like real triumphs. They lost people along the way to achieve their goals. The people around them died, and they had to immediately deal with it, and then try to overcome their threat at the time. It's time WOTC brings the same amount of mortality to the Gatewatch, and let big actions have consequences.

Bolas winning in Amonkhet felt like a James Bond villain slapping someone and being like "hope you learned your lesson, okay, get outta here champ."

But Bolas recruiting Liliana might be interesting for the future. Maybe they are taking the story into a more dramatic direction.

... Card is okay.

Quote from AUTUMNTWILIGHT »

Well you consider Bolas whole plot is regaining Omnipotence so obviously he isn't now.

My problem with the Gatewatch is inconsistent power level (they go from killing Eldrazi Titans to having trouble with Baral). I know you can expect some of that but that level of difference is absurd.

The other end is they don't pay a high enough price for their screwups. Bolas should have put at least one of the Gatewatch in the ground. Since Nissa is warming the bench for the forseeable future it should have been her.

The other problem is of course they don't dig deep enough into their colors, they are all far to surface level representations of the their color. Gideon is Captain America, Jace is a introvert nerd, Chandra is impulsive, etc.

Quote from Etherium Sage »

Quote from clod5 »

Wizards found the coolest possible way to word Fog.

This is on a whole other level, since it's temporary Fog + Leyline of Sanctity + all your permanents are untouchable.

Quote from RichardCardfield »

I'm beginning to think WOTC has definitely lost its way. If you want to hire someone, give them a test about [a] game mechanics, [b] lore, [c] have them create a few cards. If the buyers of your product know more than your employees, you know the ship is sinking.