MtG fluff/story wednesday!

>>50466725
It's actually not bad this time. I'm shocked.

I mean, it's not the best we've seen, but it's not "beefslab." I like the moral quandary Yahenni runs into - it's good that it's been expanded - and Gonti was characterized damn well. Chandra was impulsive without being a preteen, Gideon was straightforward without being an idiot (although bellowing after a wanted criminal at the top of his lungs was pretty dumb), Nissa was comforting without being a moeblob, and Jace was tactical without being a prick. I just hope this is a sign of an upswing after the black mark on all of Magic that was "beefslab."

Nissa a cutest

I read the story when I really have nothing better to do; I put little stock in it. But this one was bretty gud

>>50466725
>MTG
>lore

>>50467853
I'll be honest, I stopped reading after "beefslab."

I looked at the synopsis of the plot from Kaladesh. Gotta say, I'm not impressed.

I mean, really? Some pleb consul built a box that kept planeswalkers from using their spark? And two people were dumb enough to get caught in it? Then beefslab and his bluboi show up just 'cause?

Bored.

>>50470492
What? That's just a bit of terminology I'm using. It's basically shorthand for "the characters are all behaving like Tumblr preteens and undoing whatever meager characterization they've been given, reducing themselves to flat caricatures." After that one anon's shitfit about that particular term, it seems apt.

...wait, did you mean that you stopped reading the LORE after they wrote the beefslab story, or that you stopped reading my post as soon as I typed "beefslab?" Because honestly I was responding to the latter interpretation. If you meant the former, then you missed the Ajani and Tamiyo one, which was actually pretty good.

>>50471134
I mean the former.

Still, I've been a Chandra fan since I started playing, and how juvenile she was presented in the story quietly killed my enthusiasm for this block (amongst other things. It wasn't JUST her, but she was a big blow.) Tamiyo and Ajani are ok characters, but I've only ever been tangentially interested in them.

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>>50466725
Neat story, even coming from Alison. I liked the inner conflict of the character, pretty interesting concept of a short-living being who knows exactly when it's going to die.

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>>50466725
I need a Yaheeni card. They're two-for-two on the good reading for Kaladesh. The fact that this picture is planeswalker dimensions also gets my hopes up.

>>50470492
Well, planeswalkers need mana to planeswalk. If the box happens to shunt out your ability to use mana, then you can't planeswalk.
IIRC, they didn't want to planeswalk anyway because that would have meant the lady next to them die alone and they're too noble to leave an ally to die by themselves.

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>>50466725
You can tell someone with a vagina wrote this.

>>50472371
How, exactly?

>>50472371
Well yeah, they kind of tell you that at the start of the article.

>>50472510
kek

>>50472338
I doubt it's going to be a PW. We already have 2 from Kaladesh (Saheeli and Dovin).

>>50473080
You forgot Chandra.

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>>50473080
There was a possibility, but chances got shot down anyway.

That said, he's been name dropped in set, so that guarantees a card.

>>50473314
Sup Ludevic.

>>50473314
This will let me pull shit like Living End, right?

>>50474584
Ludevic was mostly dropped on flavor text, save for his test subject. This is a card of Yahenni doing something. This is more along the line of "Tezzeret's gambit" or "Saheeli's artistry"
Yahenni's pretty much getting a card

>>50474602
Yup, it's the same loophole that lets you cast it with stuff like Mind's Desire.

>>50474584
Ludevic doesn't count. I still can fathom how badly they fuck him up.

I guess I should have expected that, fucking wizards.

>>50470492
The Box never stopped them from planeswalking. They just didn't want to abandon the old lady they brought into a prison break.

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>>50472338
Yahenni fags rejoice.

>>50476596
Fuck yeah.

Allison is one of their better story writers (even if they're a little too silly at times), and this story rekindled my interest in the new set. GJ WotC, you keep me as an addict.

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Weird question but the other day I saw an image of three people cosplaying Chandra, Liliana, and Nissa in what looked like someone's back yard. Anyone have it?

How many planeswalkers do they usually print in a set

cause I'm hoping for naya color Ajani, esper color Tezzeret and BW Yahenni

>>50476838
Ajani's pretty much confirmed G/W from here on out. Any color change will probably come from a set where he's playing a bigger role.

>>50476838
On average they do 3-4 PWer cards in a block, but the past couple blocks they've done 4-5 because of story reasons (them setting up the Gatewatch).

There's going to be 5 PWer cards from Kaladesh block - Chandra, Nissa, Dovin (all from Kaladesh), and the next two in Aether Revolt (which are almost guaranteed to be Tezzeret and Ajani).

>>50475478
>bring old lady with them
...literally why?

And why not just walk out and get help?

Christ. Being smart shouldn't be this hard.

>>50476895
When 90% of situations these characters get in can be solved with planeswalking away then back again, they need something to keep them from doing that every time

>>50476895
>Planeswalk away
>Oh shit, where's the box
>Can't planeswalk back to the box with the help because they don't know where the box is
>Old Lady dies
Real smart.

They brought the old lady because the old lady was the one who knew her way through the sewers or whatever they were sneaking through before they got caught.

>>50476914
It's not easy to planeswalk to a specific location. You need to be really familiar with it or it doesn't work. Notably, Jace couldn't just go
>Ally camp, Zendikar->Ral Zarek's bedroom, Ravnica->Eye of Ugin, Zendikar->Lavinia's closet, Ravnica->Ally Camp, Zendikar
Because he wasn't familiar enough with the Eye of Ugin to get there in the first place, plus trying to planeswalk repeatedly, even just back and forth like that, will tire you the fuck out.

>>50476957
You don't need to be exact.

If you fall into a trap and the villain is monologuing at you just walking away then back to somewhere on the plane should be good enough to buy you whatever time you need.

Sure in the middle of a fight it's probably not gonna work, I'm going to assume planeswalking requires some kind of mental focus like you said. Maybe someone like Jace is better at it than the others, I don't know. Point is if your story calls for a Planeswalker to be trapped in a certain location, you need a reason for them not to be able to just planeswalk away.

Was "if we do this old lady will die alone" the best of excuses? Not really, but eh, I'll take it. It also was an excuse to have Ajani join up with them

>>50477053
I brought that up because he mentioned "Planeswalk away and get help."
The problem with that was that if they weren't exact, and they couldn't be, they'd probably never find the box before the old lady was a corpse, which is why they didn't leave.

Since the old lady was the only one that knew where they were going, "try and save her instead of bailing out" is a really fair sentiment. It was basically an escort mission.

>>50476957
And yet all the gatewatch planeswalked to the same place in Innistrad without ever having been there.

And even if they couldn't go back to the box, they could still get pretty damn close considering Chandra knows her home plane.

The writers could very easily use the same level of hand waving to explain the main cast doing smart things as they do to make them do dumb things. It's all just setting up a lazy plot so the others have a reason to come in and save the day. It's transparent drama with no real weight.

>>50477093
>he
Anon, did you just assume my gender?

Check your fucking privileges, scum.

>>50477097
>And yet all the gatewatch planeswalked to the same place in Innistrad without ever having been there.
They had Jace to guide them. Planeswalkers can follow each other pretty well. Always could. Planeswalkers get into multi-plane spanning fights like it's a game of planechase all the time. If he wanted to: Gideon could punch Tibalt, let him planeswalk away, follow him, and punch him again immediately after.

Chandra doesn't "Know" her home plane anymore than you "know" the entirety of Earth. Chandra could probably planeswalk to her childhood home, a factory she played in, or where her father was executed, but she doesn't know every nook and cranny of Kaladesh, especially since she hasn't been around for like 20 years.

The characters weren't doing anything dumb, they just aren't acting like a bunch of RPG players trying to "subvert" the DMs plan with "Lol, I planeswalk away, fuck the story"

>>50477161
>Chandra doesn't "Know" her home plane anymore
I bet she knows it better than Jace knows Innistrad.
>>50477161
>They had Jace to guide them
Case and point. Not only is it her home plane, she'd had a few days to get reacquainted with the immediate area. Why not just guide Nissa back you say? Welp. Good question. If everyone in the box is going to die if they stay in the box, then why not planeswalk out and back to try and save everyone? You have a better chance of coming out on top then just sitting there waiting for something good to happen. Besides, sitting and waiting isn't Chandra's style.

>20 years.
12, actually.

> "Lol, I planeswalk away, fuck the story"
That actually sounds exactly like something Chandra would do.

>"Fuck you Baral you can't keep me in this fucking box u fekkin cant Imma come out there and wreck ya face ya snogga jus you wait here I come"
>>"Chandra no! Don't!"
>*planeswalks away*
>>"God fucking dammit."

>>50477359
>Chandra doesn't "Know" her home plane anymore
That's not what I said, I said she doesn't know her whole plane. Do you know everything in California, down to what the air feels like, the land looks like, or which street corner this bum lives? No? That's how planeswalking works. You have to have memories of a place, know where it is, otherwise you can't planeswalk directly to a place. It'd be like you taking a plane and flying to hawaii despite not knowing shit about navigation or how to read any of the instruments that could lead you to hawaii, or even where hawaii is or what it looks like.

They were in a cave, under the factory, in the sewers and they had no idea where the fuck they were. Chandra included. And so they couldn't planeswalk back to the box exactly.

Jace meanwhile, had memories of Thraben, he was there, he got attacked by Avacyn, he was there again, he got familiar with it when looking for clues, and he saw the eldrazi attacking it. That's a pretty concrete memory of Thraben to planeswalk back to.

>12
Wasn't she like, 10 when she left, and she's like, 28 or something now. Even then, that's a fuck-long time, especially when most of your memories are when you were a snot-nosed child.

>Something Chandra would do
Only if she really didn't care, which she did at the start of BfZ
>Chandra we have to fight the eldrazi.
>Fuck you I'mma monk!
Here though she likes the old lady and needs the old lady to rescue her mom, so she's not going to ditch her.

>>50477359
Oh god that greentext.

I never knew how much I needed cockney brawler Chandra until just now.

Fucking yes.

>>50477493
Aw man, dudebro. That looks like a whole lot of text for a wrong opinion.

Ye nah, I don't think I'ma read all that.

>>50477359
>Chandra is a cockney twat
Can not unhear.

>>50477359

Actually, we have 2 different ways of planeswalking: oldwalker stile and newalker stile

Oldwalker actually moved the multiverse under them, and could control the shifting with extreme accuracy, down to the weponization of it (urza teleported several times into phyrexians to kill them)

Newalker ca planeswalk, but, unless they know the place, they do it more or less at random. Jayce popped up randomly on innistrad, and had to treck to various places.

Following another walker is always very easy and lands you in proximity of it.

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>>50481187
>Jayce
That's either a typo, or the Izzet gave him some nice toys.

>>50481187
From what I understand we, the players, are oldwalkers, right?

>>50481541
I'm still questioning that. The Timespiral screwed up the entire Multiverse and when it was resolved the individual plains became more "locked in" for lack of a better term and the nature of the Spark changed as a result, and it apparently effected all the 'walkers, even Ugin who was only brought back by Sarkhan's dragon fetish transcending time and space. But mechanically, there's nothing stopping a player from spamming enough Angels to make Serra blush or casting spells that summon giant explosions of life (ie: Genesis Wave, Boundless Realms).

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Gonna dump these because I never get tired of them

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>>50481672

>>50481637
Previous years had Wizards comparing players to walkers in order to get a sort of emotional investment or whatever, but later years have had a schizm of sorts develop. Plus there's always going to be a gap in the relationship between lore and mechanics. 15 flying squirrels would not really be able to take down any eldrazi, let alone the tentacularly rapetastic queen of em.

>>50481660
>>50481672
>>50481683
These are awesome.

>>50481762
Of course 15 squirrels with flying wouldn't be enough to kill Emma. She's got Annihilator 6, you need to play Favorable Winds too.

Honestly it's all Kioria's fault.

>>50481808
To be fair, Kiora is the one of only 2 walker in current fiction to use planeswalking in a life-threatening situation.

Seriously, I thought it was hilarious. Might as well have flipped Thassa the bird on the way out.

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She's never coming back, is she?

>>50482495
Nope

>>50477584
>Can't argue because someone knows more about this crap than you
>"Lalalala, tl;dr XD"
I don't know what else was honestly expected.

>>50483210
>le witty reply
Pfft

>>50483210
>>50483254
Now you're both acting like idiots.

Now I've pissed you both and you'll turn on me instead of each other because people get angry for dumb reasons.

NOTICE ME SEMPAI

>>50483582
But anon

I love you

You complete me

But the Gaywatch is the most retarded of us all

>>50481902
Honestly its because planeswalking, at least the way it is currently described, is literally made for getting out of sticky situations. Or you could use it to rob banks. Or steal from Nicol Bolas's treasure vault because there are currently no anti-planeswalker trap out on the market. Fuck the only way that Nahiri pinned Sorin to Innistrad was to freeze him in carbonate basically.

So what's up with Lord Windgrace? Is he just a genius locus or did he fuse with Urborg? And if Yawgmoth's blood is corrupting Urborg, wouldn't that corrupt him too? Or does being a Walker fuck with that?

I demand to know what actually happened to the buff panther.

>>50484120
Pretty much. I mean, you could walk into a bank, pocket all the money, then poof out to another plane. Poofing into a bank might take some finesse though.

I feel that planeswalking, as it is currently, is something akin to flying without a map and no clear destination except "that way". You know where you're going....kind of. It's there, you'll know it when you see it...but you don't know exactly the airstrip is gonna be until you set down.

On that note, there is an airstrip. Both commercial and private. The commercial equivalent is where you land if you just kinda aim for a plane. Most planeswalkers land *here*. Private is a spot you come to know real well, either by repeated visiting that particular location or by having some strong emotions tied to that spot. You can go there instead of the generic spot...and maybe even bring some friends. Or some not-so-much friends might follow you there. Either way, you can lead people there instead of the generic spot.

But these are just thoughts I've had about it with no real or specific references to back it up.