Well, there's your ****ing Gatewatch death, folks. And of course it was my favorite member of the team, continuing Magic's long-standing tradition of killing off itscoolestheroes. Happy now!?
The heroes most willing to sacrifice themselves for others are usually the ones who least deserve to.
I'm guessing this takes place right after Bolas "LOLNopes" Gideon. At least Gideon still has a hand in Bolas' downfall.
Nah, people are still griping about the story. Nothing would be a good story except a complete rout of the Gatewatch it seems.
Yep. It seems like it has to be some sort of Game of Thrones level of deaths, or the story just sucks. Including the death of the villain.
I mean, ffs. In Lord of the Rings, exactly one major face hero dies in the second act (Boromir), and one in the third act (Theoden). And the BBEG doesn't even die in the end. Sauron does NOT die in the LotR. He simply has all his power stripped from him, and is doomed to wander Middle Earth as a shattered fraction of his former self. Clearly, half of more of the Fellowship needed to die, and Sauron needed to die, or the story is garbage, right?
Same with a great many pieces of fiction, including some of the very best out there. Where there are major wars or the like, and virtually none of the heroes die. But many background characters die all around them, and it is the deaths of the many background characters that show the high stakes, not the deaths of the heroes.
And now and then, someone sacrifices themselves for the good of the others, becoming one of the only major deaths in the whole overarching story.
Because we're following the story of the survivors, in the end. The stakes didn't just disappear because most of the heroes lived to the end of so many top-notch fictional stories. We could have followed the story of one of the many background characters, watching them die tragically, but that does not, in fact, a better story make.
But yeah. The nonstop griping because *gasp* most of the heroes lived through to the end, except for those who heroically sacrificed themselves at a key moment, as the "only way the story could have been redeemed/good" doesn't remotely mesh with the vast majority of top-notch fictional narratives. Note: this is not a statement by me about the quality of this story either positively or negatively. Simply a statement that the assertion many seem to be making that a lot of planeswalkers printed in the set "needed" to die for the story to be good or the stakes to be high, while the dozen or more definitely dead planeswalkers whose sparks we see floating around indicating they definitely DIED (along with countless citizens of Ravnica) don't count as high-stakes-enough, comes across as absurd on its face. A massive number of fantastic narratives do not, in fact, have all that many heroes die. Not even during a great war/battle in the final act. Yet somehow manage to remain both high-stakes and great stories with most of the heroes themselves surviving.
Different art from the stainless too, master pieces maybe?
And finally Narset is mono-blue like she should have been.
Why should she be mono blue? Jeskai colors would be best but not seeing why mono blue makes the most sense.
Note: This is all personal opinion.
I really dislike the tend the world building team (its no long creative now apparently) have of making mono-colored walkers into multicolored. Sorin bugs me since for awhile he was a mono black heroic character...then they gave him white. The reason for this was Innistrad brought his white side and at the time. Then he shows up during Tarkir black/white. I was annoyed but I was thinking it was gonna be due to color balance reasons. Add in the formed Khan cycle in dragon of tarkir was mono-colored it would have fit IMO better if Narset was mono colored with them.
See, I view planeswalker cards very differently. They're not physically the planeswalker. They're you, one planeswalker, temporarily acquiring favor from another planeswalker. Each card, you are seeing a fragment of their power, the parts appropriate to the task you had at hand when you requested aid. Thus, having multiple planeswalker cards out of the same character is just you needing more aspects of their assistance at the moment.
But many planeswalkers have the ability to manipulate multiple colors of mana.
Therefore, very few planeswalkers are, themselves, actually "monocolored". If statted out as a roleplaying character, for example, they would have spells or magical abilities that take from multiple "colors" (roughly the equivalent of D&D schools of magic). Just because some of their cards don't show that, doesn't mean they can't. It's just that those specific cards aren't focusing on that aspect of their character. That's all.
Sorin, then, could always likely manipulate white mana as a character, and also happens to be somewhat noble in certain ways, as well as lawful and orderly. So in Innistrad, we simply saw a shift in focus on cards to highlight his abilities at manipulating white mana. Nothing more.
I feel the same way. What kind of War is this if only three planeswalkers bite the dust, and even the villain survives? I really expected many more planeswalkers to die (Ugin, Jaya, Nissa or Vivien, Dovin, Ral etc.)
MaRo 100% confirmed that the eternals stripping a spark kills a planeswalker.
So most of the 37 planeswalkers on the stained glass are simply the survivors of this war. That's it. They're the ones who, like in most fictional stories, we see navigate a war, most making it through but seeing many others around them perish.
The dozen to dozens of sparks flying in the air to Bolas in the art and in the trailer? Each and every one represents a dead, dead, dead, dead, dead planeswalker.
Just like in many war stories, the simple fact that a small handful of known people die in the spotlight, but untold numbers die in the background, doesn't diminish the deaths occurring all around.
Many planeswalkers 100% for certain bite it in this War of the Spark. And just like the untolds thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands to millions of Ravnicans who die, is real tragedy. Them being faceless masses doesn't make it any less tragic. And they could easily write in later stories of the tragic deaths of planeswalkers whose sparks we see, of Ravnican citizens caught in the horrors of this invasion of their home. After all, this is an ecumenopolis; this is essentially the Coruscant or Trantor of the Magic multiverse. A planet-sized city that has had a continuous civilization for over 10,000 years. The death toll could be staggering indeed.
But with absolute certainty, many planeswalkers are DEAD in the aftermath of these events. Them being background characters doesn't diminish their deaths, or make them not dead. They're still dead as can be. Dack died on-screen. Domri died "on-screen". We'll see who else when this is all done. And at least a dozen, possibly many more, died off-screen.
He got sneak attacked and died, something that the way people talk about him should be impossible. He beat his equal by bringing in outside help. And he couldn’t even blow up Alara properly.
And you have zero idea what all specifically causes his downfall. That one element, his connection to another plane that is personally his, is involved is not bad writing. The guy isn’t omnipotent or omniscient.
He also invaded an ECUMENOPOLIS with high-tech magics, and many still-living founders of guilds who have been in control of major portions of a planet-sized city's infrastructure for 10,000 years EACH.
And summoned dozens of planeswalkers to the plane, then put them into a desperate life-or-death situation.
On a world-sized city.
He may have had a fair number of eternals. But ffs. A conservative estimate of Ravnica would have absurd numbers of citizens, with high-tech levels of magic. They have, in canon, the equivalent of guns, bamsticks, at all levels of society; not just the police powers.
It was a major tactical error, and a major oversight of one of the most powerful walkers he thought he killed still being alive.
Sure, needing all those walkers in one place might have been necessary. But he invaded one of the most powerful planes in the known multiverse of Magic.
I´m glad they are making more cards showing people dying but I still want to see who´s dying from all of those sparks flying around, so far only 2 Planeswalkers have died
I think a lot more planeswalkers ended up on Ravnica than the 37 we're shown, and the majority of the casualties, the sparks we see in the trailer, belong to them. It seems more likely that a lot of the 'walkers shown in the set end up the survivors, dealing with the dozen to dozens of planeswalkers who perished all across Ravnica who we might never know.
So many Ravnican natives, and many 'walkers end up dead, even if we don't know who most of those individuals are.
Love that art. Anyone have a clue what he's holding?
My guess is either Nicol Bolas' spark, or Bolas' spirit, which he has brought back to the Meditation Realm, either in memory of or to prevent the influence on the multiverse forever more of his now lost twin.
I can just tell the gist of the ending. I could be wrong and I hope I am. A real plot twist would be Bolas doesn't lose, but he doesn't win either.
Also Ugin needs to show up already.
I'm pretty sure there's a reason we haven't seen a specific trio of walkers, yet.
Last we saw Sarkhan and Narset, they were bonding anew, Sarkhan being a temporal anomaly stuck out of time that Narset didn't remember, and could suddenly manipulate blue mana. But in this new future, Narset had sparked. So the pair went off to explore the multiverse together.
These two are also intimately tied to Ugin.
I would wager there's a very specific reason Ugin and the two walkers most closely tied to him outside of Bolas haven't shown up, yet.
And I would not be the least bit surprised if Sarkhan is not, in fact, a red walker, but a multicolor Izzet or Temur walker (despite what MaRo has said; he has a history of intentionally misleading). Sarkhan just so happens to fit between Role Reversal and Solar Blaze in the multicolor cards not yet revealed.
So I'm guessing this third act starts with Niv-Mizzet rising anew, Jace has unlocked the memories of Vraska again (thus why they're working together in the background of Contentious Plan and turned her against Bolas). But that, during next week's previews, Narset and Sarkhan show up together, confront Bolas, and when asked what they think they can do, they reveal that oh yeah... we also have your brother, here. Then Ugin appears at long last, and likely is the key piece of ending Bolas.
They've set up a final resolution between the elder dragon twins for a while, now.
But I'm guessing Ugin is the keystone of the final act, brought in by the pair of intimately linked walkers--to both one another and the spirit dragon--we haven't seen, yet.
What? Oh god, he has a bident in his picture... Is Kiora dead?
Bidents, fortunately, are an Amonkhet staple. Look at the bidents the eternals carried in the trailers, including the one that stabbed Dack, for example. More important, look at the bident Kefnet the Mindful carries in the art on the Masterpiece Series: Amonkhet Invocations version of the card. Same weapon; bident on one end, blade on the other.
Strange card. Library manipulation is definitely a Blue characteristic but we have so few ways of doing that right now. We do have Surveil, but Scry would obviously be the better choice.
The ult is a bit blah. The static ability is hit or miss.
I mean, it's not really an ult. You get to use it immediately and still have 2 loyalty left over. Like many of this set's planeswalkers, she has no ult. Think of her in terms of being a Regrowth for 2GU with multiple extra upsides (including potentially more and more Regrowths as the game progresses, synergy with Scry and Surveil, and filling your yard with extra targets to regrow, on top of protecting you from discard and sacrifice effects), and she looks very different indeed.
Doesn't make it less terrible. It's like calling Nissa just "Vital Force" or Chandra "Torch of Defiance". The only character that should be referred to by title only is The Ineffable, and he's been dead for centuries that this point.
Disagree. It's a well-used and rock-solid trope to have a character who no longer goes by their name, but is instead known only by a nickname, title, or another moniker. This is a very well-established and VERY old literary technique. Not simply literary, either, but in real life for people whose names are not known, although their actions are. See Jack the Ripper. They become or start off as urban legends.
Moreover, it makes perfect sense for a thrill-kill assassin in the guild of over-the-top-performers to have just such a memorable stage name, who is not known by anything else. Her name and history are intentionally a mystery. There's a bounty on her head. She keeps getting away with murder, mass murder, literally. No one knows her by anything but Massacre Girl, just like Jack the Ripper, etc. Why would anyone know her name, including we the audience? That would break the mystique.
Massacre Girl is essentially a Ravnican urban legend that we the audience get to see is real, but still don't get to know her name and history. Only her deeds. Which includes massacres with no witnesses left alive, it seems.
It needs to be added to the spoiler, or people will likely keep posting threads about it.
Many people will also continue not seeing the MTGSalvation-specific card pop-up until it's added to the spoiler. Instead, using the card formatting will only show a blank link and no pop-up.
+1: create a 2/2 spirit. Exile top card of your library face down, you may look at it. When the spirit leaves the battlefield, put the exile card into your hand.
I can't imagine this ability is real. When you have multiple spirits it would be too easy to cheat and put whatever card you want into your hand
We only have a rumored version of the wording of this ability. Not the actual wording of the possible card.
I would wager that this card, if real, is worded more like, "Put the top card of your library onto the battlefield face down as a 2/2 Spirit creature with the ability, "When this card is turned face-up or leaves play, place it in your hand." (You may look at a face-down permanent you control at any time.)"
Or something very close to that in wording. Making it abundantly clear that the face-down card is the 2/2 creature to avoid any shenanigans, until it leaves play for any reason. That resolves basically any nonsense people could try to pull in paper Magic, even if Arena would 100% avoid this issue with such an exile clause instead.
That would make sense with Ugin's connection to Morph - but in that case, the "Spirit" type is suspect, as face-down creatures don't have a creature type.
That is not, in fact, the case. While currently all existing cards and rule effects enabling face-down creatures do not provide a creature type, the rule in question itself is:
"707.2. Face-down spells and face-down permanents have no characteristics other than those listed by the ability or rules that allowed the spell or permanent to be face down. Any listed characteristics are the copiable values of that object's characteristics."
Therefore, if an ability of a card gives a face-down card a creature type as part of its effect (or the ability to place that card in your hand if it's turned face-up or leaves play, for that matter), that face-down card can explicitly, per the rules, have that type (or such an ability), and those would even be copyable values on that face-down creature. Thus, if such an Ugin does so, the face-down creature could and would indeed be a Spirit, and the "Manifest"-type card used to cover the face-down card likely included in the set would simply have the Spirit name/creature type, in addition to whatever reminder text is necessary.
In fact, allowing it to be a creature at all is a characteristic that needn't be the case. It could just as readily be a face-down card turned into a land, or an artifact with some ability, etc, etc, etc. It's just that Morph and Manifest have given us creatures with no type. But the design space explicitly set aside in the rules for face-down permanents is enormous and almost entirely unexplored.
+1: create a 2/2 spirit. Exile top card of your library face down, you may look at it. When the spirit leaves the battlefield, put the exile card into your hand.
I can't imagine this ability is real. When you have multiple spirits it would be too easy to cheat and put whatever card you want into your hand
We only have a rumored version of the wording of this ability. Not the actual wording of the possible card.
I would wager that this card, if real, is worded more like, "Put the top card of your library onto the battlefield face down as a 2/2 Spirit creature with the ability, "When this card is turned face-up or leaves play, place it in your hand." (You may look at a face-down permanent you control at any time.)"
Or something very close to that in wording. Making it abundantly clear that the face-down card is the 2/2 creature to avoid any shenanigans, until it leaves play for any reason. That resolves basically any nonsense people could try to pull in paper Magic, even if Arena would 100% avoid this issue with such an exile clause instead.
Yep. It seems like it has to be some sort of Game of Thrones level of deaths, or the story just sucks. Including the death of the villain.
I mean, ffs. In Lord of the Rings, exactly one major face hero dies in the second act (Boromir), and one in the third act (Theoden). And the BBEG doesn't even die in the end. Sauron does NOT die in the LotR. He simply has all his power stripped from him, and is doomed to wander Middle Earth as a shattered fraction of his former self. Clearly, half of more of the Fellowship needed to die, and Sauron needed to die, or the story is garbage, right?
Same with a great many pieces of fiction, including some of the very best out there. Where there are major wars or the like, and virtually none of the heroes die. But many background characters die all around them, and it is the deaths of the many background characters that show the high stakes, not the deaths of the heroes.
And now and then, someone sacrifices themselves for the good of the others, becoming one of the only major deaths in the whole overarching story.
Because we're following the story of the survivors, in the end. The stakes didn't just disappear because most of the heroes lived to the end of so many top-notch fictional stories. We could have followed the story of one of the many background characters, watching them die tragically, but that does not, in fact, a better story make.
But yeah. The nonstop griping because *gasp* most of the heroes lived through to the end, except for those who heroically sacrificed themselves at a key moment, as the "only way the story could have been redeemed/good" doesn't remotely mesh with the vast majority of top-notch fictional narratives. Note: this is not a statement by me about the quality of this story either positively or negatively. Simply a statement that the assertion many seem to be making that a lot of planeswalkers printed in the set "needed" to die for the story to be good or the stakes to be high, while the dozen or more definitely dead planeswalkers whose sparks we see floating around indicating they definitely DIED (along with countless citizens of Ravnica) don't count as high-stakes-enough, comes across as absurd on its face. A massive number of fantastic narratives do not, in fact, have all that many heroes die. Not even during a great war/battle in the final act. Yet somehow manage to remain both high-stakes and great stories with most of the heroes themselves surviving.
It's quite astonishing, really.
See, I view planeswalker cards very differently. They're not physically the planeswalker. They're you, one planeswalker, temporarily acquiring favor from another planeswalker. Each card, you are seeing a fragment of their power, the parts appropriate to the task you had at hand when you requested aid. Thus, having multiple planeswalker cards out of the same character is just you needing more aspects of their assistance at the moment.
But many planeswalkers have the ability to manipulate multiple colors of mana.
Therefore, very few planeswalkers are, themselves, actually "monocolored". If statted out as a roleplaying character, for example, they would have spells or magical abilities that take from multiple "colors" (roughly the equivalent of D&D schools of magic). Just because some of their cards don't show that, doesn't mean they can't. It's just that those specific cards aren't focusing on that aspect of their character. That's all.
Sorin, then, could always likely manipulate white mana as a character, and also happens to be somewhat noble in certain ways, as well as lawful and orderly. So in Innistrad, we simply saw a shift in focus on cards to highlight his abilities at manipulating white mana. Nothing more.
MaRo 100% confirmed that the eternals stripping a spark kills a planeswalker.
So most of the 37 planeswalkers on the stained glass are simply the survivors of this war. That's it. They're the ones who, like in most fictional stories, we see navigate a war, most making it through but seeing many others around them perish.
The dozen to dozens of sparks flying in the air to Bolas in the art and in the trailer? Each and every one represents a dead, dead, dead, dead, dead planeswalker.
Just like in many war stories, the simple fact that a small handful of known people die in the spotlight, but untold numbers die in the background, doesn't diminish the deaths occurring all around.
Many planeswalkers 100% for certain bite it in this War of the Spark. And just like the untolds thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands to millions of Ravnicans who die, is real tragedy. Them being faceless masses doesn't make it any less tragic. And they could easily write in later stories of the tragic deaths of planeswalkers whose sparks we see, of Ravnican citizens caught in the horrors of this invasion of their home. After all, this is an ecumenopolis; this is essentially the Coruscant or Trantor of the Magic multiverse. A planet-sized city that has had a continuous civilization for over 10,000 years. The death toll could be staggering indeed.
But with absolute certainty, many planeswalkers are DEAD in the aftermath of these events. Them being background characters doesn't diminish their deaths, or make them not dead. They're still dead as can be. Dack died on-screen. Domri died "on-screen". We'll see who else when this is all done. And at least a dozen, possibly many more, died off-screen.
He also invaded an ECUMENOPOLIS with high-tech magics, and many still-living founders of guilds who have been in control of major portions of a planet-sized city's infrastructure for 10,000 years EACH.
And summoned dozens of planeswalkers to the plane, then put them into a desperate life-or-death situation.
On a world-sized city.
He may have had a fair number of eternals. But ffs. A conservative estimate of Ravnica would have absurd numbers of citizens, with high-tech levels of magic. They have, in canon, the equivalent of guns, bamsticks, at all levels of society; not just the police powers.
It was a major tactical error, and a major oversight of one of the most powerful walkers he thought he killed still being alive.
Sure, needing all those walkers in one place might have been necessary. But he invaded one of the most powerful planes in the known multiverse of Magic.
I think a lot more planeswalkers ended up on Ravnica than the 37 we're shown, and the majority of the casualties, the sparks we see in the trailer, belong to them. It seems more likely that a lot of the 'walkers shown in the set end up the survivors, dealing with the dozen to dozens of planeswalkers who perished all across Ravnica who we might never know.
So many Ravnican natives, and many 'walkers end up dead, even if we don't know who most of those individuals are.
As others have pointed out, if it included enchantments it would mean sagas, and that would be just busted.
My guess is either Nicol Bolas' spark, or Bolas' spirit, which he has brought back to the Meditation Realm, either in memory of or to prevent the influence on the multiverse forever more of his now lost twin.
I'm pretty sure there's a reason we haven't seen a specific trio of walkers, yet.
Last we saw Sarkhan and Narset, they were bonding anew, Sarkhan being a temporal anomaly stuck out of time that Narset didn't remember, and could suddenly manipulate blue mana. But in this new future, Narset had sparked. So the pair went off to explore the multiverse together.
These two are also intimately tied to Ugin.
I would wager there's a very specific reason Ugin and the two walkers most closely tied to him outside of Bolas haven't shown up, yet.
And I would not be the least bit surprised if Sarkhan is not, in fact, a red walker, but a multicolor Izzet or Temur walker (despite what MaRo has said; he has a history of intentionally misleading). Sarkhan just so happens to fit between Role Reversal and Solar Blaze in the multicolor cards not yet revealed.
So I'm guessing this third act starts with Niv-Mizzet rising anew, Jace has unlocked the memories of Vraska again (thus why they're working together in the background of Contentious Plan and turned her against Bolas). But that, during next week's previews, Narset and Sarkhan show up together, confront Bolas, and when asked what they think they can do, they reveal that oh yeah... we also have your brother, here. Then Ugin appears at long last, and likely is the key piece of ending Bolas.
They've set up a final resolution between the elder dragon twins for a while, now.
But I'm guessing Ugin is the keystone of the final act, brought in by the pair of intimately linked walkers--to both one another and the spirit dragon--we haven't seen, yet.
Bidents, fortunately, are an Amonkhet staple. Look at the bidents the eternals carried in the trailers, including the one that stabbed Dack, for example. More important, look at the bident Kefnet the Mindful carries in the art on the Masterpiece Series: Amonkhet Invocations version of the card. Same weapon; bident on one end, blade on the other.
I mean, it's not really an ult. You get to use it immediately and still have 2 loyalty left over. Like many of this set's planeswalkers, she has no ult. Think of her in terms of being a Regrowth for 2GU with multiple extra upsides (including potentially more and more Regrowths as the game progresses, synergy with Scry and Surveil, and filling your yard with extra targets to regrow, on top of protecting you from discard and sacrifice effects), and she looks very different indeed.
And? The point is, effects like this have existed within Magic for a decade longer than Hearthstone has even existed.
Disagree. It's a well-used and rock-solid trope to have a character who no longer goes by their name, but is instead known only by a nickname, title, or another moniker. This is a very well-established and VERY old literary technique. Not simply literary, either, but in real life for people whose names are not known, although their actions are. See Jack the Ripper. They become or start off as urban legends.
Moreover, it makes perfect sense for a thrill-kill assassin in the guild of over-the-top-performers to have just such a memorable stage name, who is not known by anything else. Her name and history are intentionally a mystery. There's a bounty on her head. She keeps getting away with murder, mass murder, literally. No one knows her by anything but Massacre Girl, just like Jack the Ripper, etc. Why would anyone know her name, including we the audience? That would break the mystique.
Massacre Girl is essentially a Ravnican urban legend that we the audience get to see is real, but still don't get to know her name and history. Only her deeds. Which includes massacres with no witnesses left alive, it seems.
It is not.
It needs to be added to the spoiler, or people will likely keep posting threads about it.
Many people will also continue not seeing the MTGSalvation-specific card pop-up until it's added to the spoiler. Instead, using the card formatting will only show a blank link and no pop-up.
That is not, in fact, the case. While currently all existing cards and rule effects enabling face-down creatures do not provide a creature type, the rule in question itself is:
"707.2. Face-down spells and face-down permanents have no characteristics other than those listed by the ability or rules that allowed the spell or permanent to be face down. Any listed characteristics are the copiable values of that object's characteristics."
Therefore, if an ability of a card gives a face-down card a creature type as part of its effect (or the ability to place that card in your hand if it's turned face-up or leaves play, for that matter), that face-down card can explicitly, per the rules, have that type (or such an ability), and those would even be copyable values on that face-down creature. Thus, if such an Ugin does so, the face-down creature could and would indeed be a Spirit, and the "Manifest"-type card used to cover the face-down card likely included in the set would simply have the Spirit name/creature type, in addition to whatever reminder text is necessary.
In fact, allowing it to be a creature at all is a characteristic that needn't be the case. It could just as readily be a face-down card turned into a land, or an artifact with some ability, etc, etc, etc. It's just that Morph and Manifest have given us creatures with no type. But the design space explicitly set aside in the rules for face-down permanents is enormous and almost entirely unexplored.
We only have a rumored version of the wording of this ability. Not the actual wording of the possible card.
I would wager that this card, if real, is worded more like, "Put the top card of your library onto the battlefield face down as a 2/2 Spirit creature with the ability, "When this card is turned face-up or leaves play, place it in your hand." (You may look at a face-down permanent you control at any time.)"
Or something very close to that in wording. Making it abundantly clear that the face-down card is the 2/2 creature to avoid any shenanigans, until it leaves play for any reason. That resolves basically any nonsense people could try to pull in paper Magic, even if Arena would 100% avoid this issue with such an exile clause instead.