Every set since War of the Spark has put a lot of emphasis on the villain Planeswalkers. Oko being the face of the set (as well as, y'know, Oko), Ashiok robbing Heliod of his spot as main antagonist, Lukka's... whatever the hell is canon in that garbled mess that is Ikoria's storyline... and now Nahiri and Tibalt.
Ashiok wasn't the antagonist in Theros Beyond Death. He/she/they leaves the story at the very beginning, after inducing Elspeth with nightmares that allow her to create the Shadowspear. Ashiok then planeswalks away to see New Phyrexia, and then everything else in the story--Heliod's machinations, the war between the gods, Elspeth's escape, Klothys creating Calix--follows from that point. Ashiok's only roll in the story is kicking off the circumstances that make Elspeth's escape possible. All of the actual evil in the plot is driven by Heliod, with Calix serving as something of a secondary, if ineffectual, antagonist to Elspeth on her way out of the Underworld.
I do understand your sentiment, though. Theros Beyond Death is the only set since Dominaria where the main villain wasn't a Planeswalker. It used to be that for the stories of each plane, the main heroes and villains were all (or mostly) from that plane, fighting over a world in which they had proper stakes. But nowadays, at least story-wise, MTG worlds are beginning to feel like the rotating backgrounds from fighting games like Mortal Combat or Street Fighter - pretty backdrops for our cast of plane-traveling characters to fight against, but of little consequence themselves.
Kaldheim is perhaps the worst offender so far. It seems our story's primary figures will be Kaya and Tibalt, neither of whom are from Kaldheim.
The art for Hullbreacher is really intense and dramatic; I love it. Feels like a still from a movie. I can almost feel the motion of the ship rocking and hear the sound of the thundering waves and the storm. I feel like I'm literally there. It's unexpectedly one of my favorite illustrations of the year.
"It is time. I have waited an eternity for you, Rebbec. You closed me out of Dominaria ninety centuries ago. As I grew to become a god in Phyrexia, you grew to become a goddess in Dominaria. Don't think I don't recognize you, Gaea. Don't think I don't smell your scent and know who you once were and who you once opposed.
I held you to my heart, Rebbec, thinking you loved me, but you made hate seem like love. It was a trick you'd learned from me. Now I reciprocate."
- Yawgmoth, Apocalypse
...
I've been waiting for Rebbec a long time, too! Thanks, Creative Team!
The Suits cashing in on fan-made memes is not particularly funny.
Memes are cool. But the Suits are uncool by definition. This is Corporate saying "Hey guys, GET IT? We're hip, too! Look, Yargle memes! Funny, right? Just $30!"
I can browse better Yargle memes on Reddit for free. /shrug
Hal and Alena finally getting cards is absolutely a good call.
I admire that they have individual cards, but also partner. I'd love to see this for Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis.
Partner being in the set seems to imply we may get reprints of the C16 legends? That would be amazing. May not get them all, though. But Partner appearing in a draftable Commander set definitely makes sense. Allows for diverse, flexible play.
I hope see Pavios and Thanasis in the future.
I'd be feeling the lands if they weren't Kylem themed. Meh.
Without fail, when I'm looking at new spoilers, I'll scroll down through the comments and usually by the end of the first page find one reply that irks me, usually because it's complaining in some petty way about the reveal.
Then usually the second part of that reply, there will be a comment about how the post wishes this new card/product had been connected to Theros somehow. Without fail, it will be this account.
It's fine to put your perpetually negative two cents in, and I guess it's fine to constantly lobby for more Theros, but do you really need to reply to this post 7 different times? At what point does a community member get flagged as a spammer? Really asking.
I'm actually with Tiro here. Vorthoses (Vorthi?) tend to get caught up on weird things like art, and I really don't like Kylem either. Had these illustrations featured Dominaria, Lorwyn, Kamigawa, Shandalar, Eldraine, Theros, Tarkir, New Phyrexia, or Innistrad, I'd be properly hyped, but as it is, I'm not all that interested.
I realize how ridiculous that sounds, and you're welcome to think it's stupid, since it's just not the way most Magic players tend to think. The notion that cool lands like these could be printed and that the art, of all things (which has nothing to do with gameplay anyway), should turn off certain players sounds, perhaps, laughably absurd. I'm not even going to try defending it as rational - it can't be defended with logic. But as someone who would probably never put Kylem-themed art in one of my decks, I get it. It's purely an emotional response, and Kylem itself is off-putting to me.
More cards for you, I guess.
(Edit: My purpose here isn't to complain about the lands. I'm just saying that as a Vorthos, Tiro's objection makes a certain emotional sense of the kind that many Vorthoses like myself can relate to, even if it's not logical sense. Art and flavor are not "petty" concerns - to some people they can be everything.)
These are great lore bits -- Kamigawa is truly one of Magic's most developed, lore-rich worlds, and the player's guides add so much to what can be known about the plane. I really appreciate the background for Azusa, Godo, Oyobi, Maga, and Urami here; all characters who went otherwise unseen in the novels or online vignettes. Kamigawa is just too rich in legends to have a story for every single one, but that only adds to the richness of the plane.
I see just a couple interesting conflicts here with other canonical sources, however:
1.) The player's guides give Mochi (the Kami of the Crescent Moon) too much responsibility for the Kami War, even going so far as to suggest he'd influenced Konda. This directly contradicts the novels, where Konda alone is the mastermind behind the War, and Mochi merely tagged along. We even get a scene from Mochi's POV in the Saviors novel, where Mochi reflects on Konda starting the War, as well as his own motivations:
His (Mochi's) agents in Eiganjo had told him of Konda's plan to raid the spirit world as soon as the daimyo consulted them about it. Instead of seeing this as an outrageous blasphemy like any decent kami, Mochi saw only opportunity.... Konda was intending to disrupt the natural order of things, the balance between the physical and spiritual. Such an act would have dangerous, unpredictable repercussions, and so Mochi decided that he would not only allow it, but facilitate it.
In the twenty years of strife since Konda made his raid, Mochi had time to reflect on the wisdom of his actions and their true motivations. His introspection revealed three important things: One, he did not know what to expect as a result of Konda's crime, but he was sure he could capitalize on it for his own benefit; two, if Konda succeeded it meant the oldest and most sacred laws could be broken by someone with enough will and power, which he could capitalize on for his own benefit in the long-term; and three, it was a waste of time second-guessing his own genius because he made good decisions even when he didn't have all the facts.
When the kami attacks started, Mochi knew that Konda's reign would not survive. The daimyo had done a remarkable job uniting the different people's behind him, but once he was gone they would undoubtedly fall back into petty skirmishing and tribal warfare. Mochi knew the soratami would be largely unaffected, safe in their cloud cities, but he also thought the soratami destiny was to be more than elite survivors. They were exalted beings who worshipped him, after all. If anyone was fit to rule Kamigawa, it was the moonfolk.
If he had conceived of the plan on his own beforehand, Mochi might have tried to bring Konda down or perhaps even challenge him on the field of battle... Once Konda had decided his course, however, it became unnecessary to take action in order to topple him--he had doomed himself by his rash act. It might take decades, even centuries, but eventually the spirit world would come to claim what the Daimyo had stolen. When it did, Mochi intended for the soratami to rise in Konda's place as the dominant culture in Kamigawa.
(Guardian: Saviors of Kamigawa, pp. 156-8)
Of course, when Mochi's forces actually meet Konda's army a few chapters later, Konda realized the attempt at betrayal and utterly annihilates them. Mochi was always a smarmy little d***** who talked a bigger game than he could really deliver. The player's guide gives him too much credit.
(A side note: The soratami were still amazing bastards though. Tamiyo presents a kinder, more peaceful face of the moonfolk for newer generations of Magic players, but originally in the Kamigawa block they were an elitist, power-hungry, genocidal culture through and through. The above passage took place while Mochi watched the moonfolk razing Jukai Forest and exterminating the orochi snake-folk. That's the soratami I remember).
2.)The other clear discrepancy is the design and location of Shinka. The books describe Shinka not as a keep high in the mountains, but as an ogre hut in the lower slopes of the mountains - a relatively humble lodge that covers a larger, subterranean lair. Though the novels are typically considered the primary canon, in this case, however, I feel we can give preference to the player's guide version, since that interpretation comes not only from the player's guide, but from the cards as well--card art, card names, and card flavor texts. If we want to reconcile both versions, we can perhaps assume that the original Shinka Keep in the mountains was destroyed/dismantled and restructured/relocated by the time the novels occur, since the books cover only the 20th and final year of the Kami War.
I personally can't stand these new ninja. It's just grating.
Ninja were a super cool thing that Kamigawa had exclusively going for it, mechanically and flavor-wise. Yuriko was awesome, Sakashima's student was like seeing an old friend. They fit with the Japanese theme and Kamigawa's unique planar identity.
But now, naga ninja? Vedalken ninja? I'm not saying it CAN'T happen. Planeswalkers could have spread knowledge of the ninja arts among the planes. But flavorfully,this is taking one of the big things that made Kamigawa unique and diluting it among foreign planes and creature types
For fans of Kamigawa, who will likely never see a return to one of our favorite planes (even after second visits to Zendikar and Innistrad and three to Ravnica), the most we can look forward to are whatever crumbs they toss us to expand the world. Crumbs like O-Kagachi, Yuriko, and Silent-Blade Oni. And I get it - Kamigawa has its loyal cult following, but it wasn't successful enough of a block to justify a return. It's just the way things are, so crumbs are fine.
So when I heared that we were getting new ninja, I was super psyched for more Kamigawa. Turns out I'm Charlie Brown, and WotC is Lucy with the football.
This is my favorite kind of mythic card - the kind you need to be smart about, the kind that makes you plan instead of just slamming it down on the table and bulldozing everyone.
But the power is real, and so is the fun.
"Your life was meaningless. But your death will glorify Yawgmoth."
Do ninja exist on multiple planes? Looking at the background, the cobblestone and what little I can see of the architecture, this definitely isn't Kamigawa.
People talking about "stakes." Well, here are the stakes: if Bolas had won, the Multiverse would have been his forever, and he would reign over infinite Planes and infinite lives with an iron fist for eternity.
Who lives and who dies on Ravnica are not the stakes. The stakes aren't the number of named Planeswalkers we lose in this battle. The stakes are what happens if Bolas wins.
Now, we can debate whether or not our losses on Ravnica reflected, emotionally, the GRAVITY of those stakes. But the stakes in MTG's story have never been higher. Not even in Apocalypse.
Now, let's compare War of the Spark to other MTG finales.
Mirrodin: No heroes truly died in the final battle with Memnarch. Slobad lived, Raksha lived, Bruenna lived. Main heroine Glissa died briefly but came back. The world ended, but everyone came out okay. Bosh died back in Darksteel, but that was 5 years before the final clash.
Kamigawa: Widely considered to be one of the best blocks story-wise. Toshi, Michiko, Kyodai... All the good guys live. All of them. The only deaths in the finale were baddies; O-Kagachi and Mochi. Big Bad Konda didn't technically die, but I'll include him here anyway because he still got destroyed. But among the good guys, even randos like Pearl-Ear, Riko, and Sharp-Ear -- everyone comes out of the big final battle okay.
Ravnica Block: Kos dies in book 2, but his ghost is back as the main character in Book 3 so it doesn't really count. Feather, Pivlic, Faun, And Jarad all come out at the end. Jarad as a zombie, granted, but he's around. The only serious deaths in the final book are Nephilim and villains like Augustin, Momir, and Lyzolda.
Coldsnap (End of the Ice Age Block): Just the villain and Lovisa Coldeyes, but admittedly Lovisa's kind of hurt. (She went out like a badass, though. )
Time Spiral: Along with Apocalypse and War of the Spark, this is the Big One, with the whole Multiverse at stake and a vast host of heroes arrayed against the big threat. But really, among the heroes, only Freyalise and Jeska die. Windgrace sacrifices his spark.
Alara: Big huge planar war, but if I recall correctly, all the good guys live. Jazal dies, but that's at the beginning, and key to kicking off the actual plot.
Zendikar (Both blocks): No carded characters die save for villains Ulamog and Kozilek.
...I could go on through each and every block, but this post is already stretching long and you all likely get the idea. So let's go back to Apocalypse, the Big One that people love to bring up.
Villains Yawgmoth and Crovax both die. Among the heroes, we lose Urza and Gerrard, who are extremely significant. But after that... Who? Bo Levar and Commander Guff? I guarantee you that more people care about Dack dying than ever cared about those two. Eladmiri and Lin Sivvi go as well, if I recall, but those are legendary creatures, and in War of The Spark we can balance them off with the corruption (and perhaps... destruction?) of other beloved legends like the God-Eternals, esp. Oketra.
More named characters die in Apocalypse than in War of the Spark, certainly. But not by all that much.
----
In the end, War of the Spark delivers the casualty of the hero, which is something that (if my memory is complete) only Apocalypse and Time Spiral Block can claim as well. Gideon, meanwhile, was not just a member of the Gatewatch. He was the leader, and along with Liliana, one of the two heroes of this final story.
Would I have liked to see Nissa, Vivien, Jaya, and Jace bite it as well? Absolutely. But the fact that they don't doesn't ruin the story for me. It would just have made it better if they had.
But in the end, Magic stories have always have a pattern of most of the cast walking out of even the most apocalyptic cataclysms intact.
I just want to say that this is the worst example and the greatest reach that I've seen so far.
You're comparing this story to the older ones and yet you choose to exclude the entirety of the Urza saga, focusing only on the ending, to try to prove a point. Apocalypse is being brought up because it is the end of a years long saga, just like WAR is.
I explicitly said, multiple times, that I was only comparing finales. Why would I compare War of the Spark to the entirety of the Urza/Weatherlight Saga? That would be stupid.
I'm comparing War (the final act in this saga) vs. the final acts in other MTG sagas (Apocalypse, Fifth Dawn, Saviors of Kamigawa, dissension, Future Sight, etc.)
Though I just realized Freyalise and Windgrace sacrificed themselves in Planar Chaos. So the only good guy we really lost in Fifth Dawn was Jeska. Leshrac and Dinne, two of the villains, also died. But if memory serves, those three were it for that finale.
Ashiok wasn't the antagonist in Theros Beyond Death. He/she/they leaves the story at the very beginning, after inducing Elspeth with nightmares that allow her to create the Shadowspear. Ashiok then planeswalks away to see New Phyrexia, and then everything else in the story--Heliod's machinations, the war between the gods, Elspeth's escape, Klothys creating Calix--follows from that point. Ashiok's only roll in the story is kicking off the circumstances that make Elspeth's escape possible. All of the actual evil in the plot is driven by Heliod, with Calix serving as something of a secondary, if ineffectual, antagonist to Elspeth on her way out of the Underworld.
I do understand your sentiment, though. Theros Beyond Death is the only set since Dominaria where the main villain wasn't a Planeswalker. It used to be that for the stories of each plane, the main heroes and villains were all (or mostly) from that plane, fighting over a world in which they had proper stakes. But nowadays, at least story-wise, MTG worlds are beginning to feel like the rotating backgrounds from fighting games like Mortal Combat or Street Fighter - pretty backdrops for our cast of plane-traveling characters to fight against, but of little consequence themselves.
Kaldheim is perhaps the worst offender so far. It seems our story's primary figures will be Kaya and Tibalt, neither of whom are from Kaldheim.
He was greatest, most brilliant artificer of the Thran, the genius of his time.
With Rebbec, he shut Yawgmoth and Phyrexia out of Dominaria for 9,000 years.
His soul dwells in the Mightstone and Weakstone that became Urza's eyes.
It's implied that Urza's Planeswalker's spark might actually be Glacian's.
And this is his card?
I held you to my heart, Rebbec, thinking you loved me, but you made hate seem like love. It was a trick you'd learned from me. Now I reciprocate."
- Yawgmoth, Apocalypse
...
I've been waiting for Rebbec a long time, too!
The Suits cashing in on fan-made memes is not particularly funny.
Memes are cool. But the Suits are uncool by definition. This is Corporate saying "Hey guys, GET IT? We're hip, too! Look, Yargle memes! Funny, right? Just $30!"
I can browse better Yargle memes on Reddit for free. /shrug
I'm actually with Tiro here. Vorthoses (Vorthi?) tend to get caught up on weird things like art, and I really don't like Kylem either. Had these illustrations featured Dominaria, Lorwyn, Kamigawa, Shandalar, Eldraine, Theros, Tarkir, New Phyrexia, or Innistrad, I'd be properly hyped, but as it is, I'm not all that interested.
I realize how ridiculous that sounds, and you're welcome to think it's stupid, since it's just not the way most Magic players tend to think. The notion that cool lands like these could be printed and that the art, of all things (which has nothing to do with gameplay anyway), should turn off certain players sounds, perhaps, laughably absurd. I'm not even going to try defending it as rational - it can't be defended with logic. But as someone who would probably never put Kylem-themed art in one of my decks, I get it. It's purely an emotional response, and Kylem itself is off-putting to me.
More cards for you, I guess.
(Edit: My purpose here isn't to complain about the lands. I'm just saying that as a Vorthos, Tiro's objection makes a certain emotional sense of the kind that many Vorthoses like myself can relate to, even if it's not logical sense. Art and flavor are not "petty" concerns - to some people they can be everything.)
I see just a couple interesting conflicts here with other canonical sources, however:
1.) The player's guides give Mochi (the Kami of the Crescent Moon) too much responsibility for the Kami War, even going so far as to suggest he'd influenced Konda. This directly contradicts the novels, where Konda alone is the mastermind behind the War, and Mochi merely tagged along. We even get a scene from Mochi's POV in the Saviors novel, where Mochi reflects on Konda starting the War, as well as his own motivations:
Of course, when Mochi's forces actually meet Konda's army a few chapters later, Konda realized the attempt at betrayal and utterly annihilates them. Mochi was always a smarmy little d***** who talked a bigger game than he could really deliver. The player's guide gives him too much credit.
(A side note: The soratami were still amazing bastards though. Tamiyo presents a kinder, more peaceful face of the moonfolk for newer generations of Magic players, but originally in the Kamigawa block they were an elitist, power-hungry, genocidal culture through and through. The above passage took place while Mochi watched the moonfolk razing Jukai Forest and exterminating the orochi snake-folk. That's the soratami I remember).
2.)The other clear discrepancy is the design and location of Shinka. The books describe Shinka not as a keep high in the mountains, but as an ogre hut in the lower slopes of the mountains - a relatively humble lodge that covers a larger, subterranean lair. Though the novels are typically considered the primary canon, in this case, however, I feel we can give preference to the player's guide version, since that interpretation comes not only from the player's guide, but from the cards as well--card art, card names, and card flavor texts. If we want to reconcile both versions, we can perhaps assume that the original Shinka Keep in the mountains was destroyed/dismantled and restructured/relocated by the time the novels occur, since the books cover only the 20th and final year of the Kami War.
Ninja were a super cool thing that Kamigawa had exclusively going for it, mechanically and flavor-wise. Yuriko was awesome, Sakashima's student was like seeing an old friend. They fit with the Japanese theme and Kamigawa's unique planar identity.
But now, naga ninja? Vedalken ninja? I'm not saying it CAN'T happen. Planeswalkers could have spread knowledge of the ninja arts among the planes. But flavorfully,this is taking one of the big things that made Kamigawa unique and diluting it among foreign planes and creature types
For fans of Kamigawa, who will likely never see a return to one of our favorite planes (even after second visits to Zendikar and Innistrad and three to Ravnica), the most we can look forward to are whatever crumbs they toss us to expand the world. Crumbs like O-Kagachi, Yuriko, and Silent-Blade Oni. And I get it - Kamigawa has its loyal cult following, but it wasn't successful enough of a block to justify a return. It's just the way things are, so crumbs are fine.
So when I heared that we were getting new ninja, I was super psyched for more Kamigawa. Turns out I'm Charlie Brown, and WotC is Lucy with the football.
This is my favorite kind of mythic card - the kind you need to be smart about, the kind that makes you plan instead of just slamming it down on the table and bulldozing everyone.
But the power is real, and so is the fun.
"Your life was meaningless. But your death will glorify Yawgmoth."
I explicitly said, multiple times, that I was only comparing finales. Why would I compare War of the Spark to the entirety of the Urza/Weatherlight Saga? That would be stupid.
I'm comparing War (the final act in this saga) vs. the final acts in other MTG sagas (Apocalypse, Fifth Dawn, Saviors of Kamigawa, dissension, Future Sight, etc.)
Though I just realized Freyalise and Windgrace sacrificed themselves in Planar Chaos. So the only good guy we really lost in Fifth Dawn was Jeska. Leshrac and Dinne, two of the villains, also died. But if memory serves, those three were it for that finale.
That is literally the saddest, most flaccid-looking Bolas I've ever seen.