What are you guy's thoughts on the Gatewatch? Personally

I don't know anything at all about MtG lore, but does the name "Gathering" not imply that the heroes are supposed to work together to achieve a greater good?

>>52394830
I don't care I just want Garruk to come back

>>52394894
"The Gathering" refers to the gathering of cards, and the Wizards' gathering of cash from your pockets, I'm sure.

>>52394908
Nissa has pretty much completely usurped his rightful place of Greenswalker. I hate her.

>>52394830
they make everything they show up in worse by taking the focus away from the setting and the interesting characters in it and make it about them.

Weatherlight was a mistake.
Gatewatch will also be a mistake.

>>52394830
Garruk > Hippy Elf

>>52395546
I liked the Weatherlight crew they felt like actual people and didn't hog the spotlight from the setting they were visiting.

>>52394894
"The Gathering" implies that Magic seemed too hard to trademark alone.

>>52394986
She would be more interesting if they kept the Elvish superiority/racism angle but can't have that in the current year.

I think my big issue with the Gatewatch isn't so much the team themselves but the block structure their stories must follow. Every block they need to blow out some big bad guy, it happens with a few setbacks that don't really matter, and then they move on.

Even the super heroes they thematically mimic don't follow this structure. Super heroes for the most part stay within pretty confined locations, and their victories are rarely as absolute as the Gatewatch. They also tend to have day jobs and act like regular people instead of being super powerful wizards 24/7.

I think my biggest issue is that not only are they heroes without stakes due to being powerful planar travelers, but they actively overshadow the people who do have a stake in their conflicts. Innistrad, Zendikar, and now Kaladesh were full of interesting characters who put their lives on the line, with two of the three fighting against unwinnable cosmic horrors. Then you just throw all of that shit out the window when the Gatewatch dream team show up, do some silly magic bullshit, and then the problem is solved.

>>52396017
I actually liked her back when she was a racist elf. The retcon was so godawful, and goes against everything you should do in terms of storytelling. Seriously, she's so bad.

>>52395546
I actually quite liked the Weatherlight. At least they have some moral ambiguity.

Liliana is the only interesting member of the gatewatch. The rest should die.

>>52397011
Wasn't she an evil seductress before that got deemed sexist?
Now she's just a morally ambiguous zombie fangirl.

>>52397323
yep just like the all ready mentioned nissa being a interesting character once as well

>>52394830
God i hated that scene
>oh no look the unkilliable titans are here run!
>lol their dead by the power of friendship

>>52394894
I always thought "the gathering" was about how nerds gathered to play a card game.

>>52394830
It's terrible.

>>52394830
is gideon earth-bending?

>>52397323

She was originally an anti-hero.

Then the evil seductress angle was played up.

I'm glad she's a sort of anti-hero now.

>>52397422

All the gatewatch haters ignoring this

>>52397378
I couldn't believe that this was how they decided to kill one of the greatest creatures in the multiverse.

Emrakul was even worse. It literally helps them trap it in the moon.

Nothing gets sacrificed.

Nothing gets changed.

No one gets tested.

>>52397413
In the actual story, he's literally bait for the titans. It's pathetic.

>>52397413
>Jace literally just waving

>>52397725

things that happened in that story:
>Bruna, Gisela, Avacyn dead
>Sigarda new head angel
>Church of Avacyn corrupted and questioned by the populace
>Sorin trapped in stone
>Castle Markov destroyed and the bloodline's numbers diminished considerably

What story are you reading dude?

>>52397971
I don't mean for the plane. I mean for the "main characters" themselves.

The Gatewatch defeat one of the greatest threats in the multiverse, then immedietly after, they take a vacation on Kaladesh.

Remember, Sorin, Olivia, Avacyn, and the rest are all just side characters now.

File: a7d2d9e4899bf6137e6715049edf0aa3.jpg (95KB, 1024x751px) Image search: [Google]

95KB, 1024x751px

>>52398029
Well Lili joined the gatewatch which is an interesting wrinkle to her character.

Serious question because I'm not sure I follow: What kinda change do you want?

>>52398172
Remember New Phyrexia, and how there was a bit of a "Gatewatch" there with Koth, Elspeth, and Venser? This is what needed to happen here.

Magic Lore is at its best not when heroes go around "saving" everyone. Even in Weatherlight Saga, the heroes get fucked up. They get lost. Even when they do try to help the people of other planes, they fuck up and sometimes make things worse.

At its core, Magic is about the conflicts between the colors and the resulting conflicts in the real world, between the factions. Even when the planeswalkers banded together to try to save Mirrodin, they still hated each other. Koth forces Venser and Elspeth to join him. And what happens once they lose? The Phyrexians start to fight among themselves, again, aligned with color.

In theory, Jace hates Chandra and vice versa because of what happened on Zendikar before. Nissa hates everyone who's not an elf (But remember, she got retconned straight into the garbage bin). But lets forget that.

1/?

>>52394830
I think they defeat the purpose of MtG, in two ways.
1:They take the spotlight away from the natives of the planes, turning them into side characters in their own setting
2:They force every block to have a big villain that needs to be stopped, instead of just letting Wizards go "oh hey here's this cool place that has shit going on in it"

>>52394830
They're surfing the wave of capeshit instead of going in depths into their multiverse. I liked it more when the planeswalkers were having their stories "on the side", like the set is about an event happening on the plane and sometimes I would go "Hey, planeswalker X is there too, neat."

And I feel like WotC went out of their way to choose the most boring walkers for their Gatewatch. At least Ajani is here now.

>>52398172
>>52398434
Then, there's my point about sacrifice.

Imagine how the story would be if when Jace and Emrakul made contact, he got infected by the crazy, even just a little bit, like you might think he would from a plane eating monster.

What if controlling all those zombies drained Liliana, and she turns to the power of the Chain Veil, causing her to spiral further?

What if Emrakul didn't just fucking help the Gatewatch trap itself? Nissa had to sacrifice themselves to trap Emrakul because of her expertise on leylines.

Hell, lets get a little crazy. What if Garruk was on Innistrad, looking for Liliana, and find them as they're trying to fight the Eldrazi, screwing up their plans? Hell, what if they had to kill him, just to put him out of his current unexistance?

Any one of these ideas, and more, could have made the story at least seem like it has a higher stake than what we ended up with. Don't get me wrong, I loved SOI. That was what I was looking for. But then ending of EMN was so bad, and such a disappointment that it ruined any buildup we might have had.

There were so many opportunities to make a good story, and Wizards somehow managed to ignore all of them. It hurts me. It hurts me how their stories are so bad.

>>52397971
That happened before the gatewatch mobilized. It's not a hard fought victory when all the loses are before the fight and the fight itself costs nothing.

>>52398584
It's my theory that they specifically pushed planeswalkers out of their original colors in order to have five and only five mono-colored walkers. And of course, they are the most non-offensive, generic walkers of their colors.

>>52398614
Exaclty, they don't want to commit to their storylines.

Gatewatch cool/interesting character rank

Ajani>Liliana>POWER GAP>Jace>POWER GAP>Gideon>Nissa>Chandra

>>52398732
Switch Liliana with Ajani, and Chandra with Gideon, and it's perfect.

>>52398732
While I think your list is close Anon, Jace gets a decent amount of characterization in some of the novels (which I think a majority carried over to origins) so I think It would look more like.

Ajani>Jace≥Liliana>POWER GAP>Gideon>POWER GAP>Chandra>Nissa

>>52398653
They're dumbed down to benefit the non vorthos player in a story more digest, and sacrificing any originality deemed too complex I guess.

Also, what would you want the mono-colored walkers to behave like? Here's my take:

>White: Focus on the Order, make him/her a control freak, the others trying to teach him/her that sometimes there are grey areas. Play with the tax side of White.

>Blue: A curious character, always trying to acquire more knowledge, maybe a thief, a spy or something? Play with the control side of Blue.

>Black: Someone that went throught a lot of tough shits in his/her life, and try to become more powerful as a result of this, because he's/she's sick of people stomping on him/her. Play with the most "high risk, high reward" side of Black .

>Red: Focus on the emotional side, maybe a family man/woman, a genuinely kind-hearted person. I don't really know about the gameplay here tho.

>Green: I would say someone like Garruk. Nothing to add there.

>>52394830
It's taken a narrative which was specifically about powerful individuals and their interactions with each other, temporary alliances and fueds across the planes, and turned it into a saturday morning serial.

It's garbage. If there was any justice in the world Garruk would come back and murder the fuck out of all of them with a big fucking axe.

>>52398614
>>52398434
>>52398172
And lets not even talk about the absolute garbage that was Kaladesh.

Yay, we beat the Eldrazi... Why do we still exist? The Gatewatch was formed to fight the Eldrazi right? Why do they still exist? Are they actually going to "save" the multiverse now?

Not to mention that the entire set took place IN ONE CITY. This isn't Ravnica, remember. The whole plane is not one city. The entire thing is zoomed into the Gatewatch IN ONE CITY. It's the antithesis, the anathema of what Magic story should be.

On Theros, which was more focused on Elspeth, you got a glimpse of the other cities, each aligned to a different color. You don't even get that. It's literally factions within ONE CITY.

Story wise, this is the worst set I've seen. Even worse than BFZ and OGW, which introduced us to this garbage in the first place. It's shameful.

>>52398732
>>52398789
I'd say that Nissa is the worst here just because of lost potential. Imagine the story with her still as a racist elf. She has to fight with those she hates most to save her world. What if, by the end of the set, she ACTUALLY LEARNS SOMETHING? Then, maybe they can have her as the hippie she is. As she is right now, I hate her. I hate her more than Tibalt. At least Tibalt was interesting in how bad he was. Nissa got retconned straight into the garbage. It's like Wizards just put her into the juicer and squeezed anything interesting out. Jesus.

>>52394830

They're obviously a lazy, uninspired Avengers rip-off. I mean holy shit. It's just such a disgusting and cynical attempt to exploit the popularity of super heroes.

>>52398905
Racist elf is such a boring stereotype though
Though i guess it would work as a starting point for some character development.

>>52398991
Its better than a literal self insert by one of the writers

File: il_kamahl_fistofkrosa[1].jpg (45KB, 500x363px) Image search: [Google]

45KB, 500x363px

>>52399026
Most green characters are boring anyway.
It has been ages since the last good one.

>>52399084

and even he used to be red

>>52398893
Remember, though, that we had different characters to represent the different aspects of each color.

Chandra was the fire and lightning aspect. Tibalt was the chaotic aspect. Koth was the earth bending/geomancer aspect. Sarkhan had dragons.

Elspeth was the commander, while Gideon was the soldier, and Ajani was the soul/life magic guy.

Jace was focused on the mind magic aspect, while Tamiyo was the curious researcher, and Tezzeret was the tinkerer.

Liliana had her zombies, Sorin had his blood, and Ob had his demons.

Garruk had nature and beasts, and Nissa had elves.

Now, outside of the Gatewatch, all of the characters on this list have either been shifted or have been missing for years. I'll grant that some of these shifts make sense. Sorin was always black and white. Garruk's story about the curse is pretty cool. Ajani's evolution over the years is kind of cool to see.

Why is Sarkhan Temur? Why is Tamiyo Bant? To me, these are obviously made to make sure that there's one planeswalker per color that they can sell us.

In my mind, one planeswalker cannot and should not be able to represent every aspect of a color. The fact that they're trying to do something like this makes me angry.

>>52398991
You're right, but it's leagues better than the Nissa we have now.

>>52399084
I actually didn't play back when he was around. I've heard good things though.

>>52399193
I started playing when he was around

I bought a tournament deck because i didn't know what i was doing, and it had a Kamahl, and he was fucking amazing i always won against my friends when i played him.
Then a nigger stole the card and i stopped playing magic for 10 years

File: Feels Bad.jpg (32KB, 579x570px) Image search: [Google]

32KB, 579x570px

>>52399247
Dang dude. Sorry that happened.

>>52398980
This.

Ultimately, the core of the problem is that some Hasbro higher-up looked at Magic's story from like Otaria to Tarkir, and said "Exploring fantasy worlds is dumb. make it superheroes. Superheroes are popular these days." And then Creative had to retrofit five planeswalkers to be the most focus-group likeable inoffensive cutouts they can.

"People like the colors. Let's make characters who are literally just a color, that way people will like them!"

"But we don't have a generic looking green planes walker who's relatable. One is a racist elf and the other's turning evil."

"Fuck it, Make the elf not racist. Gary is too big and muscular to be on the team, people won't like him."

"But one of our color's philosophies is individualism and explicitly ignoring the greater good!"

"Fuck it, put her in anyway. No one cares."

The long and short of it, The Gatewatch is 100% money driven. It takes the bare bones understanding of the Avengers formula and shoehorns it into Magic the Gathering's completely different setting.

That's why the casual fan who looks at card names and art loves it while those of us who read books, go on the story website, and follow Magic's history fucking hate it.

At it's core the Gatewatch setup is a heartless, cynical cash grab, and that's why, even when they hire good writers to do good pieces for Magic Story, the actual story itself is rotten.

>>52399433
The most hilarious part is they ignored Garry for being evil when Lil is the exact reason he's turning evil.

>>52397971
One last thing, because I'm autistic.

Sorin and Nahiri's story actually had no consequence to the larger story (at least with respect to the Gatewatch). In fact, the Gatewatch actually have no idea that she even caused this. Think about how good the story might be if they ended up chasing her to a new plane (not Kaladesh), where they now have to explore the world to find her. Literally she doesn't matter now that she's got her revenge on Sorin (who the Gatewatch don't know about either).

The Gatewatch is like a fucking black hole. They're actually just sucking everything good that might have taken place out of the story. Seriously, it'd be funny if it were so sad and infuriating.

>>52399433
I donno, i consider myself a super casual fan who doesn't even know much about the lore and even i think the gatewatch is lame as fuck. Not to mention, I'm so fucking sick of jace

>>52399470
I personally think Garruk being a big muscular guy with a mask and an axe was what ultimately made them jump for Nissa. The Gatewatch all has to look like vaguely relate-able late teen to mid twenty year olds in order to maximize profitability. If they wanted Garruk on the Gatewatch they would've waved their arms and cured his curse. Honestly it'd be a better story than just straight-up retconning Nissa.

>>52399519
Almost everyone is. He's been around and insufferable for so long now, that it's a fucking meme.

>>52399535
The missed the chance for the hulk to get... Fuck, what's a vague related marvel superhero that's a girl

>>52399084
Oldfag here, Kamahl wasn't actually that great of a character, but he was fucking cool.

>>52399519
I honestly feel bad for Jace. He could just be an edgelord trapped doing paperwork in Ravnica, but these assholes keep rocking up to his house to bug him and knocking over his things.

>>52394830
>elemetal heroes get together to periodically save the universe against giant monsters

I've never been too deep into magic's lore but I thought a less meta pov worked well for establishing stories and characters inside the various planes.

>>52399790
>my feet hurt
>the sand keeps getting in my eyes
>Nicol Bolas could destroy our minds at any moment
>i wish i was in Ravnica signing some papers

>>52399790
Honestly I like the jace we see in the stories. Just a tired-ass dude who should probably be doing his job back home and also has mind powers. I wish we'd see more "I have not had enough coffee for this" Jace in flavor text.

>>52396017
yeah, that was stupid. "Hey, let's make our elf walker with a unique and multifaceted personality into a boring land-whore". Best decision ever.

>>52399140
Sarkhan is a bad example, since he switched through r/b and r/g before

>>52394830
The Gatewatch is essentially a less interesting rehash of the Weatherlight crew. After WotC somehow fucks their storyline sideways, they'll pull a five block hiatus and introduce some new donuts.

>>52399026
every Gatewatch member is quickly degenerating into one, so that they can have romances and other shit the LGBTAQUIAZTVWXY crowd loves

>>52399026
How is Nissa a self insert?
Not disagreeing with you, I just haven't caught that if it's true.

>>52399901
Yeah, jace is surprisingly not insufferable as he appears in the game. But seriously enough is enough. There hasn't been a standard cycle that didn't have some form of jace for years now.

>>52398897
this.
Give me back stories where Sarkhan fucks over Tarkir to turn it into a dragon-dominated dystopia to reanimate one specific dragon, or where Liliana unleashes hordes of demons upon a plane so she can kill one specific demon. It shows the power and grandeur of being a planeswalker more than being a part of the Jacetice League and bumbling from plane to plane to play white saviour

I think kaladesh would of been fun if it didn't tie in to the the overarching jace story. I just want to see planeswalkers defending their home planes or exploring exotic ones.

>>52401636
> LGBTAQUIAZTVWXY

Wait, hold, I can do this.

Lesbian, gay, bi, trans, ally, queer, undecided, incel, asexual, zoophiliac, transylvanian, vorthos, woke, klinefelter/turner, and the last man.

I won't be happy until each one has a representative on the Gatewatch, personally.

>>52401817
Trick would make a terrible planeswalker. Ampersand, on the other hand, would do great things.

The Gate watch are being miss used,
Even marvel knows better not to put every avenger in every movie....
Have them split up investigate different planes and reconvene with what they learned...
How it should go
>Jace: OK I'm taking Chandra and Nissa and exploring Autokhemet, see what we can learn
>Gideon: while Ajani, Liliana and me go to Dominara and dig up some stuff on Bolas, reconvene with you at Autpkehemt
>Jace: sounds like a plan
Imo

File: Mirth.jpg (54KB, 640x516px) Image search: [Google]

54KB, 640x516px

>>52401575
It's really funny to me how dumb I thought the Weatherlight was at the time and have since had to look back on it and go "Wow... I guess it wasn't that terrible after all."

>>52402012
Remember, things can always get worse.

>>52401994
Jinkies! this mysterious plane sure is mysterious.

>>52402091
Are you implying they aren't Mystery Inc. At this point?

>>52394830
It's a lazy decision to have a set of consistent characters across all of the sets, rather than introducing new and interesting protagonists.

It doesn't help that the Gatewatch's individual characters from this have gone from moderately interesting at best to painfully generic.

File: wotm.jpg (101KB, 640x478px) Image search: [Google]

101KB, 640x478px

>>52402068
Yes. Yes they can.

>>52399858
Someone make this please

File: Wizards Shotgun.gif (25KB, 600x263px) Image search: [Google]

25KB, 600x263px

>>52394894
Originally the metaphor was that you and your opponent(s) were dueling archwizards. Your library represented an actual library, each spell the fruit of a tome on your many shelves. You sap the lands within your domain for their characteristic energies and use it to fuel your magic and pull creatures from other times and places or drive your domain's inhabitants to fight on your behalf, mystically driven to serve you and fight to their death.
The Gathering was the crazy-ass wizards fighting for pride and knowledge (because this is also when the rules had you lose a random card after losing a three-set game)

>>52394894
Back then, the idea was that ever set would be something like Magic: the gathering, Magic: the quickening, Magic: the storm
with different subtitles on every set's card back.

Then they realized you couldn't mix and match the sets that way and managed to get the backs changed just in time to avoid the issue.

The first set was called "the gathering" because it was the first set: the initial gathering of the players.

>>52398614
>What if controlling all those zombies drained Liliana, and she turns to the power of the Chain Veil, causing her to spiral further?

But that happened! Every story battle she has now mentions her tapping into the chain veil, bleeding out of all her tattoos, and talking to the weird demons inside the thing.

>>52403098
And what have been the consequences?

>>52402670
This was also a central theme within a lot of the plot in the early storylines. The Brothers' War sapped the land. Same with the Weatherlight and its combined storyline.

They're fine. Who gives a shit. The Magic storyline has always been dumb as hell. The Gatewatch characters aren't actively worse than fucking Gerrard Capashen. The story during BFZ/OGW was dumb as shit but it's been better since then, and it clearly hasn't stopped them from making other characters or exploring other worlds.

Really, the only actual problem with the Guildwatch is that Jace is both completely terrible and stupid, and completely overemphasized.

File: 1460087455758.jpg (132KB, 396x554px) Image search: [Google]

132KB, 396x554px

As a completely new player here is how it goes down for me:

>Install Magic Duels
>Play the Origin stories
>Oh look each color has their own guy
>Oh hey I have a basic idea of what the color is about and what a planeswalker means in this setting
>Check out the Kaladesh stories, it feels like YA Fantasy, which is actually completely fine by me because I'm a sucker for YA Fantasy shlock
>End up liking Chandra quite a lot because she's stupid but tries her best
>End up liking Ajani the most once we actually get introduced to him
>End up using Ajani as a segway to learning about the rest of the lore

Basically the Gatewatch helped make this big Magic multiverse deal really accessible to me. I know everything is supposed to be about the planes and the environments but I need a human connection of some sort even if it's caricaturization, at least as a starting point.

If I started off straight in the middle of the whole Ajani / Bolas / Uzemaki / etc stuff I'd probably be totally overwhelmed. Call me retarded but there's a lot to take for granted in this setting that's really intimidating to the uninitiated. But that's what the Gatewatch are supposed to be in the end, right? A starting point for new players?

I hope Liliana gets focus in the next story, she seemed cool.

>>52399433
>Gary

Kek, I can imagine a corporate guy giving directions, like J. Jonah Jameson:

>Put more of that blue guy!
>Who, sir?
>That James guy, use it more, my kid loves him!
>O-Ok... And what about-
>Oh and do a block about that redhead, Cassandra! And make her funnier!
>I-It's Chandra, sir...
>Ahhh whatever!!!

>>52394830
What is Jace doing in that image. Just standing around with flowing hands?

>>52407744
I'm curious, when did you start playing?

>>52407744
I've heard that before and I'm glad more people are getting into it, but as someone who has watched these flaming faggots stagnate for like nine years or some shit, give me someone else for fuck's sake.

>>52403770
Nothing... yet, specifically. She mentions that the more she uses it, the harder it gets to stop using it, so I think it will be one of those slow burn things.

It's only been what, six months since she got it? A year, tops, in-universe? We're on the outside seeing years pass, but inside it's weeks.

>>52409707
He caught a fish thiiiis big.

>>52407744
>Start the same way
>Pick Garruk
>Love his Beastmaster vibe
>Go mean Green
>Start reading fluff
>Garruk is now an edgemaster

Welp, I pretty much never bought new cards again because Wild barbarians are my jam and Magic seems to hate them.

>>52410599
>Please immortal killer outer beings
>Kill me

>>52409707
Holding open a telepathic channel between all the walkers so they don't have to waste time and energy yelling over the cacophony of battle.

>>52411324
Well, something better start happening pretty fucking quick.

If you're right, then I'll hold out hope. I hope you're right Anon, I really do.

>>52403770
>>52411324
If she doesn't start getting some actual god damn consequences I'm gonna be pissed.

Same with the Demon Pacts. We have seen zero reason to care about it. Why do the pacts matter at all? What is the nature of them? Its not like there's a "Don't kill me" clause in any of them, she killed two of them already.

Hell, Griselbrand was trapped in the Helvault, and she released him just so she could kill him! Why? What effect is Griselbrand being alive trapped in the Helvault having on her? We see literally no difference in Lili pre-AVR and post-AVR, so what was the point?

Liliana needs some god damn consequences.

Not only are they boring, but as others have stated, they shift the focus of the fluff in the wrong direction, so I depose them, honestly. Thanks to them existing we know just how big an autist maro is, though, so that is cool I guess

They're still dumb.

>>52410083
Around when Kaladesh came out. Magic was one of those things I was always interested in distantly but it was always too expensive for me so finding out about Magic Duels was really good and the trailers for Kaladesh grabbed my interest. Shit was so colorful.

>>52417685
One the one hand, I'm glad you joined us. Magic is a good game, and I hope you have fun with it. On the other, I feel a little sorry for you, because you haven't been able to experience everything beforehand.

It's like in the bible, where after Jerusalem was sacked, and all of their gold was stolen. They began performing their rituals with bronze. The children who grew up at that time saw nothing else, and was struck by the majesty of the bronze. You'll never know what it's like to play back in Innistrad, Zendiakr, and Scars of Mirrodin.

But welcome nonetheless.

>>52418043
>Implying Innistrad, Zendikar and Scars are "gold".

Thanks for making me feel old as shit man.

>>52418648
A lot of people are partial to the Weatherlight, and I can see where they're coming from. But as complete and separate packages, I think Innistrad, Zendikar and Scars are among the best of the best. Obviously, something has to be said for Ravnica as well.

>>52418772
None of those are desperate. They've all had sets released expanding on those settings with the exception of Mirrodin block, which set up Scars.

>>52418823
I mean, they were at the time. Only Scars wasn't, which I'll grant you.

File: 209[1].jpg (69KB, 312x445px) Image search: [Google]

69KB, 312x445px

>>52395546
YOU TAKE THAT SHIT BACK

>>52399084
um excuse me, john cena is still active

>>52418932
Eh, I prefer Odyssey/Onslaught over those. Separate from the weatherlight aside from the Mirari being a Karn probe/baby Memnarch. Still on Dominaria but different continent with no impact on the Weatherlight shit. That standard format was also the shit.

File: 16464513_363333164050697_8188044559263989760_n[1].jpg (33KB, 480x480px) Image search: [Google]

33KB, 480x480px

>>52409707
Isn't his specialty illusion? Maybe he just looks like he's doing something.

>>52407744
The problem isn't that they exist, or existed for a couple sets. It's that they are the norm now, and all that nice lore from before is really stifled in its evolution because we have to focus on the Jacetice League.

>>52419159
>the Mirari being a Karn probe/baby Memnarch

Why is everything old connected to Urza somehow. I always got only bits of the story back then, but every time I learn the hidden factor its the urza ties

>>52421721
Cos one time he fucked up REAL bad.

>>52397725

There were three major villain threads in the greater MTG universe at the time of Battle for Zendikar. To show the gatewatch could beat any of them, they had to come together to beat one of them. The options were:

>The Gatewatch forms and defeats Nicol Bolas, reigning king bastard of the surviving old-school planeswalkers and the most powerful planeswalker left in the series by a very wide margin post-Mending, one of Magic's long-running villians
>The gatewatch forms and defeats New Phyrexia, the much-enjoyed return of what many consider to be the iconic villains of MTG's story and the deadliest force in the universe
>The Gatewatch forms and defeats the Eldrazi, three recently-introduced and highly controversial super-kaiju that by definition can't have personalities because they are beyond comprehension and all that lovecraft-lite bullshit

Saccing the Eldrazi to the Gatewatch before Bolas beats them and they need to level up a lot to be ready to fight Phyrexia is the obvious narrative choice.

>>52421721

The only real important thing to understand about the old-era MTG story goes thusly.

"Once there was an extremely powerful dickass planeswalker named Urza, who fucked up.

Constantly.

So hard he saved and destroyed worlds and made life both more interesting and more difficult for everyone he ever met.

The end."

>>52423096
This fucking idea that of COURSE they have to beat the baddies and of COURSE new phyrexia will fall

>>52423779

...Yes?

The borg don't beat the Federation, anon. Phyrexia loses. Life goes on.

This already happened once. The notion that Phyrexia is unbeatable was NEVER on the table and if you expected it to be you haven't been paying attention.

>>52423769
You forgot

>He spent 10,000 years planning to destroy Yawgmoth and when the time finally came he said "fuck it, Imma join this mother fucker"

>>52423837
>The notion that Phyrexia is unbeatable was NEVER on the table
except that Wizards has said Phyrexia is the be all end all villain of MTG so unless they plan to actually end the current universe and start over they are in essence unbeatable

>>52423096
The problem is that they beat them without any form of sacrifice or tension. What made New Phyrexia so great was that there were actual stakes to the whole fight. Venser died to bring Karn back. Koth goes on a suicide mission to give everyone else time to escape. They were actually pushed to their limits. And even then they did not succeed.

Here, they kill tow Eldrazi with the equivalent of a big fireball.

Then they seal Emrakul WITH ITS HELP.

Then they go on a nice vacation to visit Chandra's mom.

There's no tension. There's no sacrifice. It's like the Eldrazi were the villains of the week, instead of the world killing gods they were hyped to be.

I understand that the Eldrazi needed to go. I even agree with your point. The problem is how they did it.

>>52423979

I agree that Zendikar should probably have died in the process of channeling all its mana to kill the Eldrazi, but I suppose it's not really a stirring argument for "we can accomplish more together" if the only audience to that victory is Gideon, Chandra, and Jace after Nissa immediately kills herself rather than live in a multiverse without Zendikar. "We forced a tie in a fight that only started because two of the three of us got played by Bolas" ain't exactly a promising launch to a team title.

I kinda think the Eldrazi WERE just meant to be villains of the week, though. They were impossible to develop, had extremely limited design space compared to the other big threats of the series, and hadn't been around long enough for them to have the longstanding lore the others had going for them. Many people hated the Eldrazi for just being big planet-munchy monsters without personalities or any comprehensible ideology as being the third-block gimmick that ruined Zendikar, much as people still hate Emrakul for ruining Innistrad.

As long-running villains they don't work because anywhere they succeed is dust and therefore impossible to return to, and there isn't any satisfaction writing from their perspective. People are interested by Phyrexia's alien ideology and twisted virtues or Bolas being a bastard in a very understandable way, but Cthulu has distinctly niche appeal and the Eldrazi weren't even particularly good Cthulu ripoffs. Narratively they work much better as a springboard for the Gatewatch to think they're hot shit and then get a crushing reality check from Bolas on Amonkhet than they work as long-running villains.

>>52423979
perhaps we see repercussions to that later. Ugin at least seemed not to favour the approach

>>52423979
I don't know. This seems to boil down to you just disagreeing about what genre the MTG story should be. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with it being a somewhat lighter adventure-oriented pulp rather than an insane over-the-top intense epic. And I think that's what they're going for.

Not an insane idea, either. I mean, there are worse concepts than Magic Stargate SG-1

>>52423979
>no tension
>half of Zendikar is fucking dead
>the other half has to put itself back together
>barely eking out a win at the cost of literally millions of lives as the entirety of Zendikari civilization threw itself at them and was obliterated
>with a broken team of walkers at the epicenter, facing off against gods of destruction and having to pull on the power of an entire plane of existence and risk that plane's total extinction to even have a shot

>no tension

I fully agree that Kaladesh should've been more tense, but don't stand there and say that the current writing team can't make an engaging story.


...Which I suppose why it's so frustrating, but still

>>52424085
Except the Eldrazi were actually supposed to be world breaking gods. Remember that Ugin, Nahiri, and Sorin couldn't get rid of them as Oldwalkers. They could only seal them on Zendikar. Maybe they retconned it into "Ugin didn't want to kill them", but before, it was because they actually couldn't.

As for the reception of the Eldrazi, I don't know what the general consensus is, but I remember liking them, and my friends liking them.

Again, I agree with you on the Eldrazi needing to to, but not like this.

>>52424369
I have no problem with Wizards having a super team of heroes. The problem I have is the way they're doing it. I had no problem with Weatherlight because the characters were much more complex and imperfect. They did their fair share of saving, but they also fucked up a lot of the places they went to. Furthermore, they actually had an end goal: Gather pieces of the Legacy, kill Yawgmoth.

Here, the characters just aren't good. What was the last thing that the heroes fucked up? And I mean more than a minor inconvenience. When was the last time that a character flaw actually changed the course of the story? Even Lili bent to the will of the Gatewatch. What is the Gatewatch's end goal, now that the Eldrazi are defeated? That's why they were created in the first place wasn't it?

You're right that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the story being lighter adventure oriented pulp, but they're fucking up even that. Indiana Jones was adventure oriented pulp, and Indie was still an interesting character and still had a story we can actually care about. Star Wars was adventure oriented pulp, and it still had good characters, and a story we can actually care about.

>>52425549
>Remember that Ugin, Nahiri, and Sorin couldn't get rid of them as Oldwalkers
Wrong, they could have, but Ugin was against it, since there are likely repercussions for the multiverse at large. So they looked for an alternative and found it on Zendikar

>>52425549
>What was the last thing that the heroes fucked up? And I mean more than a minor inconvenience. When was the last time that a character flaw actually changed the course of the story?
The middle of the Kaladesh story when Chandra chased after Baral and almost literally turned herself into a suicide nuke and the whole thing was just a distracting trap to help the Consulate regain the Aether tower? I remember that being a big deal. Even the other rebels openly started to hate her for a while until Chandra did her bit to take out the gate.

>>52425549
>Remember that Ugin, Nahiri, and Sorin couldn't get rid of them as Oldwalkers. They could only seal them on Zendikar. Maybe they retconned it into "Ugin didn't want to kill them", but before, it was because they actually couldn't.
They're not locked into that lore. They can "retcon" whatever they please.
The situation that became is that Ugin is conspiratorial, refuses to share his hoarded knowledge, and will manipulate others to his own ends. If he had colors, I have no doubt he'd be Orzhov.
Thus, the fact that lays is that the Eldrazi were always mortal. Extremely large, deadly mortals, and you're fighting their fingertips instead of their bodies, but not more powerful than Zendikar, the living plane who's mana is repeatedly and consistently said to be superior to other planes.

They weren't just fireballed. They were dragged out of the blind eternities and fully into realspace, and then the sum might of Zendikar got channeled through its most beloved arcanist (again: alive. It favors Nissa) and into a pyromancer who unleashed enough flame to destroy two small planets.

It wasn't some minor spell. It was the single biggest blast of mana since the Legacy Weapon.

>>52425520
All you have to do is to look at New Phyrexia on how to do it correctly. Say instead of the Phyrexians winning, Venser gave his life to save Karn, who came back and shitstomped the Phyrexians, and Mirrodin lived happily ever after. That's still more than what we got out of BFZ.

>>52425607
I'd give that to you if because of her impulsiveness, the rebellion got put down, and the the team failed. As it stands now, it was actually just a minor inconvenience, and everything turned out alright in the end.

>>52425573
It's solidly implied that Sorin and Nahiri didn't think destroying them was possible, but that would be because Ugin deliberately molded them to think that way. Ugin knows the most about the Eldrazi, and he feared the consequences of their nonexistence more than he feared the possibility of their escape.

If anything, creating a colossal planar-wide network of lithomancy over the course of 40 years was the significantly more difficult option.

>>52425697
>I'd give that to you if because of her impulsiveness, the rebellion got put down, and the the team failed. As it stands now, it was actually just a minor inconvenience, and everything turned out alright in the end.
But it DID happen because of her impulsiveness, the rebellion did get crippled, and everything did turn out alright in the end, but that happened at the very END of the story, like they do in a lot of stories.

I mean really that's generally how most adventure stories go. Are all conflicts irrelevant if there's a happy ending? It was a big set-back that successfully demanded character development from Chandra to overcome. Wanting further inconvenience to fall on her beyond that is more a matter of tone than of writing.

>>52425661
Maybe it's because I have a different interpretation of the events, but when I read them killing the Eldrazi, I thought that they literally just pumped 5,000,000,000,000 mana into a fireball and distributed the damage. I do get the dragging them out of the Blind Eternities part though.

>>52425740
You're right. I was being a bit of a dick there. You still haven't changed my mind overall though.

>>52425697
So you think that character death was needed on Zendikar? Didn't we get just that with their leader succumbing to his wounds and leaving Gideon and Tazri to organize an army to retake Sea Gate?

I'd love to extensively talk about this, as you're one of the first I've talked to on this site who has legitimate arguing points, but I need to sleep. If the thread's still up tomorrow, I'll hop back in.

>>52425770
Well that's alright because I only really entered this conversation to point out this one single thing.

>>52425759
Sure, but once they're completely in realspace, that's all you need to do. They are utterly gigantic organisms, but they are not "gods" and they never have been.

The general fanon that's built up is that they're thought to be planar recycling systems. Ulamog breaks a plane down, Kozilek rebuilds it anew, and Emrakul fills it with life.
If so, it'd at least explain why humans, goblins, elves, and vampires are so prolific across a wildly different multiverse, since they would all find common origin within Emrakul.

>>52425798
I don't care about him in the same way that I don't care about the countless Mirari that died in the Phyrexian invasion. Off the top of my head, I don't even remember his name. But I damn well remember Venser sacrificing himself for Karn. And I damn well remember Elspeth getting betrayed by by Heliod,

>>52394830
I pray every single day that Bolas would kill all of them. Safe for Ajani. Ajani is a swell guy.

>>52425962
If that's the case, then I take back what I said about them. They're not the massive disappointments I thought they were. They're just regular disappointments.

>>52424085
Nissa is better off dead at this point.

>>52398172
>Lili will never be real

why live

>>52428697
And what would a member of the Gatewatch dying actually do for the narrative? What would Chandra immolating herself during the channeling or Gideon being drowned by Ob Nixilis do to make the story more interesting? The Eldrazi had already cast their presence over Zendikar and were actively destroying it. A single walker dying in the conflict is to be expected at that point in the face of such an antagonist, which is why all of them surviving is such an achievement. We EXPECT them to die, making their triumph against such odds all the more dramatic.

Now, as for Innistrad, character death would've been fantastic. Tamiyo, Ulrich or even Odric dying in the struggle with Emrakul in order to trap her would've been infinitely more interesting than 'I need more time so I'll be chillin in the moon.'

But I think I understand where you're coming from. Post-BFZ, you'd think we'd be seeing more actual loss in the subsequent battles, or at least more attention given to how the struggles affect the planes the Gatewatch visits (entire villages thrown into war over Emrakul, or revolutionaries being publicly executed for defying the Consulate, etc.), but we never really see that. Am I hitting the mark here?

>>52396149
any place to read the full lore of each block?

the mtg site is not for navigating, and all their shorts are fucking separated anyway.

>>52428938
it's the catdick isnt it ?

I haven't followed MtG lore since Apocalypse. Are there any blocks/sets that take the setting back to Dominaria?

>>52431931
Not that guy, but at least I'd know the heroes were actually threatened by something. If you're going to hype up your world-eating monstrosities as world-eating monstrosities, at least have them eat somebody with a name and face and not just countless offscreen randoms. Sure, eating two continents of people is bad in the abstract, but it's got no punch if we didn't know any of those people. Living through to the end because the writers draped you in +2 Plot Armor doesn't make the story more impressive or dramatic, I just find it bland.

Of course, that's just BfZ. With each subsequent set I just get more incredulous for the reasons you outline.

>>52431931
At no point during the story did I expect them to die. They had obvious plot armor. Killing one of them would have shown the author had the guts to do it, and that the stakes were real.

>>52432184
Time Spiral did.
Origins did, very briefly, for Liliana Vess only (who lived in some backwater wartorn region).

>>52432665
That's not answering the original question, though. "The author having guts" isn't a legitimate reason to kill a character. We'd already seen Ob Nixilis overpower the team and only being driven back once he realized his revenge wasn't worth being consumed alongside the rest of Zendikar, as well as the entirety of Sea Gate, the last bastion of Zendikari civilization, one that they had to reclaim tooth and nail and claw from Ulamog, being scattered to the winds by Kozilek's return. With the channeling of Zendikar itself and the subsequent weaponization of the plane's life force being the absolute last option, I fail to see how a dead Gatewatch member would help to add to the tension in a way that isn't superficial. The Eldrazi have already "won" in that Zendikar no longer HAS a populace worth protecting. It's an all-or nothing shot to stop them from ravaging another plane like that ever again. The stakes are that if they fail, there will be no one else capable of stopping the Titans from consuming all of existence. How is one dead walker going to suddenly make the story impactful again when an entire civilization has already fallen to the Eldrazi?

>>52432184
Technically the blocks that immediately followed were also in Dominaria, albeit in Otaria, a continent that had been unintroduced at that point. They were distantly related to the aftermath of the Apocalypse, and one of the novels tried to bring back Yawgmoth, but that got nixed as noncanon pretty quickly to my knowledge.

>>52432421
Normally I'd agree, but the audience is given extensive exposure to the rampaging horror of Ulamog and its' brood choking all life out of Zendikar, it's native people being forced to run for their lives from an alien force of pure destruction, and finally rallying despite their cultural pasts and difference in a balls-out assault on Sea Gate, as the Zendikari lash out against this parasite. It's a concerted effort that shows how these nameless, faceless masses can actually have an impact on the story, which is why Kozilek's return is such a crushing moment. It's not 'ooh big baddy number 2', it's the summary negation and destruction of the Zendikari's last, best hope for victory.

>>52431931
>We EXPECT them to die, making their triumph against such odds all the more dramatic.

Actually, no. In my mind, I know that Wizards wanted to build a team of Planeswalkers. I've known that since Gideon went to Ravnica to search for allies. I know that Planeswalkers weren't going to die because they're the face of the game now, and you can't kill the main characters of your game. That's what made Elspeth and Venser's deaths so surprising and memorable. I mean Teferi gave up his spark and didn't die that one time right? I mean Elspeth was Heliod's champion. He'd never kill his own champion would he?

>>52433491
We know that the characters on the actual plane can die any time. After all, they're not gifted with the powers we are (remember that we're actually planeswalkers in the universe). We know that at the end, the plane can be fundamentally changed by the end of their struggles, because that's what's been happening in literally every set forever now. None of this is new to me.

>>52433366
We know that the Eldrazi weren't going to win. After all, you said it, if they did, we'd never be able to stop them. And that's the end of the game I guess, because every other plane succumbs to Eldrazi until they find New Phyrexia, then every plane succumbs to Phyrexian Eldrazi.

We expect the Gatewatch to win already, so there's no tension in the actual conflict of the story. And because we already know that Wizards wants to build a super team, we know that none of the planeswalkers were going to die. Well, what's left?

I've said this in another post, but the characters on the actual plane can die any time. Hell, they can die by the thousands, millions, even and we still wouldn't care. They've died on New Phyrexia, they've died on Dominaria, in the first Phyrexian invasion, and they'll die on Zendikar. We're not being shown anything new. The plane can change dramatically by the time we leave. This has happened in literally every set we've had so far. Again, we're not being shown anything new.

So I ask again, where's the tension in the plot? Where are the surprises?

>>52434275
>>52434539
"We expect the Gatewatch to win, so there's no tension in the actual conflict of the story. And because we already know that Wizards wants to build a super team, we know that none of the planeswalkers were going to die."

I think this is where our arguments deviate. You're arguing on the basis of knowing WotC's marketing directives and allowing that to influence your opinion of the story. Take that out of your head, and look at the conflict anew. Presented as its' own story, is the audience given any inclination that the Gatewatch has this assured victory you speak of? No. They could all just as easily be destroyed in the cataclysmic fury of their own assault as they could be unscathed. I will not dispute that the nature of the Eldrazi does present a narrative problem of "what happens if they lose?", which does hurt the story, but I will dispute the idea that the complete unraveling of Zendkari civilization is a moot point because

>"The characters on the plane can die at any time. Hell, they can die by the thousands, millions, even and we still wouldn't care."

The destruction caused by the Eldrazi is precisely the reason why the struggles of the nameless are so interesting. Not only are we given exposition on the plane's various inhabitants and their cultures, we get to see the impact Ulamog has, and the horrors it inflicts upon them in grotesque detail. It's this zooming in of the conflict that makes it work so well, and why the buildup to and through the Siege of Sea Gate is so engaging.

You seem to be pointing to the Gatewatch themselves as the reason for a lack of tension at the climax, rather than the problematic nature of the antagonists.

>>52435356
But it's not its own story. These fuckers have been around for almost a decade and they're still boring as fuck because they develop at a glacial pace.

>>52432042
If you look up the different planes on MTG Wiki, each one gives you the lore of it, either from the books or the webcomics.

>>52435356
How about this: I don't expect them to die because they're the main characters of the set, in the same way I didn't expect Elspeth to die, and I didn't expect Venser to die. Which is also why I don't find the Zendikar natives dying as engaging.

Look at Innistrad. The main character were NOT Liliana or Garruk. The main characters were Thalia and Odric and their fight against the werewolfs, zombies, and vampires. The planeswalkers play a large part, but overall, the story was about the humans' fight against the horrors that exist, with Garruk and Liliana being one of the subplots. BFZ was about the Gatewatch's fight against the Eldrazi, with the Zendikar natives being the subplots.