We are inches away from mythics being strictly better rares.
This set is awful on every level. The flavor sucks, the rarity distribution sucks, and the cards aren't even slightly interesting.
The salt is real. The set is fine, its the Gatewatch storyline that's the problem. The horror theme of this set is pretty great, its just that its ACTUALLY horror rather than the homogenized horror of the first Innistrad block.
I just finished the Uncharted realms for Oath of the Gatewatch and I am deeply disappointed. I can't see any threat going forward that will be credible now that Kozilek and Ulamog were dispatched with such ease. I begin to wonder why Wizards even bothered creating such over the top lovecraftian horrers, if they were going to just discard them like a Saturday morning cartoon villains.
Loving the cards in this set compared to BFZ, but the the Titans losing is just comical and was a huge punt by the design team. Zendikar should have died at the hands(tentacles?) of Ulamog and Kozilek.
You're missing the big purposes for this: They need a threat so large no single PW could solve, but TOGETHER they can. They need to win, otherwise the Gatewatch fails at its first and primary purpose. They need their first win, and it needs to be a spectacular win, to unite the GW together. Furthermore, if Zendikar is destroyed, WotC loses that property for revisiting. It's lose-lose for WotC's PoV.
Now, will the NEXT Gatewatch intervention go so easily? Probably not; there is always a wrinkle in the second story. But it makes perfect sense for their first outing as the GW to be a success or the idea fails.
I completely disagree. 1. People care more about the Eldrazi titans than they do planeswalkers 2. Sacrificing one plane to heighten then drama associated with the Eldrazi is well worth the cost 3. Dumping and creating planes happens all the time and there is infinite design space to do both 4. The planeswalkers we have now a days are shadows of there former selves. Its completely unrealistic that Jace and his band of merry men could so easily succeed when other planeswalkers of much greater power had failed over and over again.
This easy victory completely undermines the mythos that wizards has been cultivating with the Eldrazi titans. They might as well be another demonic bad guy or some crappy god from Theros or a praetor from New Phyrexia.
The Eldrazi aren't the heroes; the GW is. More people like the Joker than Batman, but that doesn't mean he should win in The Dark Knight. WotC are setting this group up as the new Faces of Magic; ever since Origins their faces are plastered across MTG's art. This is the first outing that puts them "together" and WotC wants them to have a success, not a failure, as their first outcome. If they didn't, you might preserve the "menace" of the Eldrazi, but you've completely undermined the heroes and proven them ineffective, weak and useless. They might as well stay home or run far, because their is nothing they can do against powerful foes. Heroes often succeed where "more powerful" mentors fail: Dumbledore can't stop Voldemort, Yoda and Obi-Wan can't stop the Sith, Elrond, Gandalf and Galadriel can't take the Ring to Mt. Doom.
Yeah, its the classic "heroes unite to stop ultimate menace" that is as old as dirt, but it sells well because it works. Sorry that WotC doesn't share your interest in a dystopian Magic setting.
Unfortunately, there is a pattern in speculative fiction, where a lore's original writers will craft a genuinely Lovecraftian threat, in order to create a sense that there are forces in the universe that cannot be defeated, but must instead be worked around. And then a bunch of less talented writers will come in and completely destroy the threat's raison d'etre, by having the heroes miraculously find a way to beat it.
In the Star Trek: TNG episode Q Who, Roddenberry created the quasi-Lovecraftian Borg, as nemesis to Picard's hubris. It was awesome to hear Picard boast about Starfleet's capabilities, only for Q to show him how little his little Federation really was in the grand scheme of things. When Picard realised he couldn't defeat the Borg, he evolved as a character, as he was forced to eat humble pie and beg Q to help him escape. And the Borg themselves, a force against whom resistance really was futile, made the Star Trek universe suddenly seem far larger, more dangerous, and more compelling. That made me want to watch further.
Contrast that with Voyager's depiction of the Borg, where Brannon Braga (et al.) had Captain Janeway run through the Borg city, *****-slapping them to death before finding and hulk-smashing the "Borg Queen" (which was another stupid idea). Thus, Janeway single-handedly defeated what was by all accounts the gravest threat in the galaxy, invalidating any reason to suppose that she or her crew would ever be in any real danger again. And I stopped watching.
A similar case occurred with Games Workshop. In the late 1980s, Rick Priestley, Andy Chambers, and others created the Chaos Gods. They began as very much Lovecraftian beings, with one Chaos God, Tzeentch, described as sitting at the centre of a nine-dimensional labyrinth, and having daemonic servants who took the form of twisted Birds of Paradise, with plumages of incomprehensible colours. Their merest presence warped human flesh, and their gazes caused insanity.
Early in GW's lore, Tzeentch and his brother Gods would toy with human beings from their realm beyond the universe, playing them like puppets for unknown reasons, but speculated to be merely their own amusement. Meanwhile, they sought to enter our universe by ripping open holes in space, but were prevented by The Emperor of Mankind, a drooling, psychic savant-carcass sitting on a life-support machine. As time went on , the Emperor got weaker and weaker, and the fabric between our universe and the Realm of Chaos (known as the Warp) became more fragile.
I found this universe utterly riveting, and it was in no small part due to the sense of scale, terror and mystery exuded by the Chaos Gods.
In the mid 90s, Games Workshop was floated on the stock exchange, and suddenly had to start catering to shareholders. GW fired Rick Priestley and the other writers who'd created the original lore, and replaced them with new blood. They then decided to take Warhammer 40K into a new direction: maximum profitability.
Over the next decade, the Chaos Gods ceased to be an unfathomable threat from beyond. Instead, they became more and more like Bond Villains, with human plans and human motivations. New GW writers like Matt Ward came along, and created new heroes, one of whom was a guy called Draigo. This guy was so powerful that he personally entered the Warp (akin to the Blind Eternities), destroyed the daemonic armies of the Chaos Gods, and then proceeded to lay the smack-down on the Gods themselves. While beating down one of the Gods, Draigo grabbed the God, held him down, and then LITERALLY wrote a signature on the God's heart.
Needless to say, GW has seen massive depreciation of its stock, and faces doubts over its future.
Yet, neither it nor other companies have learned the lesson. The same pattern, of unfathomably powerful villains being reduced to hero-fodder, can be found in pretty much any mainstream franchise featuring "Lovecraftian" entities, to such an extent that the very word "Lovecraftian" is now misused more often than it is used.
All the signs point to WOTC's writers continuing the trend, which really depresses me. If nothing else, I just hope they understand one simple point: Lovecraftian monsters exist to tell us that there are some problems in life that HAVE NO solutions. The compelling part comes not in "how will our heroes defeat them?", but in "how will our heroes learn to live with the knowledge that they can't defeat them?"
Like I pointed out in another thread, heroes can still be heroes in a Lovecraftian story, but they need to be heroic with subtlety, such as by successfully evacuating some innocents, or sacrificing themselves to save their friends. But if the heroes defeat the Eldrazi -- the most powerful beings in the entire lore -- then there will no longer be sufficient grounds to take any future threat seriously.
Oh, what's that, Jace is up against a grand alliance of Bolas, Liliana, Nixilis and Phyrexia? Bah, he'll beat them, just like he beat the Eldrazi.
Loving the cards in this set compared to BFZ, but the the Titans losing is just comical and was a huge punt by the design team. Zendikar should have died at the hands(tentacles?) of Ulamog and Kozilek.
You're missing the big purposes for this: They need a threat so large no single PW could solve, but TOGETHER they can. They need to win, otherwise the Gatewatch fails at its first and primary purpose. They need their first win, and it needs to be a spectacular win, to unite the GW together. Furthermore, if Zendikar is destroyed, WotC loses that property for revisiting. It's lose-lose for WotC's PoV.
Now, will the NEXT Gatewatch intervention go so easily? Probably not; there is always a wrinkle in the second story. But it makes perfect sense for their first outing as the GW to be a success or the idea fails.
I completely disagree. 1. People care more about the Eldrazi titans than they do planeswalkers 2. Sacrificing one plane to heighten then drama associated with the Eldrazi is well worth the cost 3. Dumping and creating planes happens all the time and there is infinite design space to do both 4. The planeswalkers we have now a days are shadows of there former selves. Its completely unrealistic that Jace and his band of merry men could so easily succeed when other planeswalkers of much greater power had failed over and over again.
This easy victory completely undermines the mythos that wizards has been cultivating with the Eldrazi titans. They might as well be another demonic bad guy or some crappy god from Theros or a praetor from New Phyrexia.
Loving the cards in this set compared to BFZ, but the the Titans losing is just comical and was a huge punt by the design team. Zendikar should have died at the hands(tentacles?) of Ulamog and Kozilek.
It's just the first week and the competition was an SCG open, comparable to a glofified FNM. Calm down, Treasure Cruise is not good.
I cant tell if you are being serious. I thought the card was "fine" at first until I started to play with it(30+ games over a few different build). The card is just insane.
I would say if you are playing at events with a lot of people you don't know and are worried about this happening wear headphones. Music will help you stay focused and it will drown out your surroundings.
Comparing two cards with completely different mana costs.
Stay free MTGsalvation.
I'm not saying this card is amazing, but it's standard playable. But comparing it to another card that is 100% different and has a completely different cost of mana, like really? You must be new.
So 2UG is completely different then 2UU? I agree they are not the same but pretty damn close. Also, they are very similar cards.
2UG AND 2UU Are not even close to the same. How is this even a discussion?
I'm just saying, this card is fine and will be played. The posts in this thread are absolutely laughable.
Control will be shifting towards green anyways because of courser and Kiora. I would beyond amazed if this card found a home in any competitive decks.
I understand seeing the glass half full people but this card is dead space. If UWx control is playing any copy's this it is no longer a competitive deck.
The salt is real. The set is fine, its the Gatewatch storyline that's the problem. The horror theme of this set is pretty great, its just that its ACTUALLY horror rather than the homogenized horror of the first Innistrad block.
Bhogal83 summed it up:
I completely disagree. 1. People care more about the Eldrazi titans than they do planeswalkers 2. Sacrificing one plane to heighten then drama associated with the Eldrazi is well worth the cost 3. Dumping and creating planes happens all the time and there is infinite design space to do both 4. The planeswalkers we have now a days are shadows of there former selves. Its completely unrealistic that Jace and his band of merry men could so easily succeed when other planeswalkers of much greater power had failed over and over again.
This easy victory completely undermines the mythos that wizards has been cultivating with the Eldrazi titans. They might as well be another demonic bad guy or some crappy god from Theros or a praetor from New Phyrexia.
I cant tell if you are being serious. I thought the card was "fine" at first until I started to play with it(30+ games over a few different build). The card is just insane.
Control will be shifting towards green anyways because of courser and Kiora. I would beyond amazed if this card found a home in any competitive decks.