MtG Flavor, Lore and Fiction

there really was a reason why Bontu was the only one without a maskface

>>54166921
I suspected Bontu because all of the ambition thing, but the detail about her being the only unmasked god now makes much sense.

I'm still sore about Oketra. Cat mama goddess is best goddess.

>>54167044
*was

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>>54167173

>>54166921
>>54167044
What if the mindfuck that bolas gave them warped their faces? It all adds nicely to the tragedy.

I'm a little disappointed in, "Whoops, Black was evil the whole time." But, I suppose with Bolas there, that's all it could be.

>>54167293
Maybe they're all bugs under their masks, now.

>>54167437
Hazoret: "YOU KNEW THE WHOLE TIME? WHY, BONTU?"

Bontu: *Points at name tag that reads God of AMBITION with AMBITION in all caps, gold plated impact font*

Bontu: "Gee, I dunno."

>>54166445
Wait dog mom lives?

>>54167883
Yes, she's confirmed as the sole survivor of Amonkhet's gods.

>>54167437

Well, they were also the god of Ambition. It's not like they were a good guy even before Bolas turned up.

>>54167896
What about the buggods?

>>54167968
Didnt read the story but from my understanding they pin the scorpion god to a monument which prevents it from respawning

>>54167968
Scorpion God's impaled on an obelisk, Locust God and Scarab God are doing god knows what.

They just do their thing and disappear.

>>54167925
>ambition
>evil

>>54168130
Black will always be the default Evil color. It makes marketing and writing easier for lazy designers. The evil AMBITION of black mages and bad men. There's and evil skeleman right in the mana symbol, and who wants to live in a swamp!? We're not going to get a set where freedom leads to anarchy, and white needs to control the masses. We're not going to get a set where blue's thoughtfulness and logic are the good guys when white's equality/fairness and red's freedom/passion can win the day. We're lucky the Aetherborn exist at all, given ruthlessness, selfishness, and utilitarianism are never celebrated for the food they can bring.

>>54168820
Blue has been the hero color more times than red or black. Blue is a solid third

>>54168820
You're an idiot. We've had exactly that stuff before and will again. And that's on top of the fuckton of white villains we've had. The fact that the black character is Bad is something DIFFERENT recently.

>>54168922
>Blue is a solid third
You got me there.
W>G>U>R>B
But my point still stands that we're not gonna get a Black-Is-Good set because it's easier to just well black as edgy or evil.

>>54168820
I feel like it's slightly different with bontu.

She wasn't ALWAYS with the God-Pharaoh, but when the time arose when the gods were out matched she realized that the only way to not get brain washed was to get on Nicol Bolas' side and help him out. None of the other colors would betray their family as much as black would, so that's why it's the evil in this set.

Also we had white/blue/red be the bad guys in the last two sets, with Nahiri wanting to screw up innistrad and the consul having baral and dovin baan fight against the renegade.

Of course tezzeret was still the main baddy in kaladesh and Emrakul is colorless, but still wizards is improving on this somewhat

Oooh look at me I'm Nicol Bolas, I'm so powerful and evil! Watch me betray my only ally and tear shit up just because I can!

What? Midlife crisis? Me? No! No, I can still get it up... I mean, I'm still just as powerful as I was before the Mending! Totally!

>>54167968
>>54168009
Bolas will take them and the eternals and planeswalk away to whatever plane he is trying to conquest, thats why tezz wanted a portal capable of transporting something gearhulk sized.

>>54169479
How could Bolas kill Bontu? She was indestructible.

Can an individual with no magical powers become a Planeswalker and if so, do they gain magic with it?

>>54169564
-x/-x

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>>54166445
>Hazoret: WOW SAMUT YOU'RE SO COOL I TOTALLY WANT TO BE YOU

>>54166445
MtG "lore" is pure shit

You are literally a fucking retard, a worthless mental defective, if you spend any time thinking about the lore besides hating it.

It's the most derivative meaningless anti-art garbage. They are expressing nothing. It means NOTHING. It has no connection to the real world and it's made for people who are disconnected from reality in order to keep them that way.

It's entire point is 'OMFG LOOK HOW FUCKIN TOTALLY AWESOME THIS IS OMFG', which only appeals to infantilized retards with serious development issues.

Before (((Hasbro)))'s takeover, they actually made an effort to give the game the tiniest bit of substance in art direction. Since then it's just this acid trip conglomerate of every fantasy trope.

TL;DR
You're all totally fucking retarded. Kill yourselves.

>>54169746

Who shit in your cheerios today?

>>54169249
Toshiro Umezawa.

>>54169746
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c

>>54169249
Kamigawa block strongly disagrees with you. It's esentially 3 black legends go bitch slap white for being too controlling.

>>54166445
>perspective of the stick and the people is off

Cannot unsee

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>>54169746
Yet here you're. You know, with all the other retards.

>>54169746
The lore is empty shit, but there has to be something or else it would mean even less.

Bontu is a fucking dumb ass. If they even thought for about 30 minutes about what Nicol Bolas was planning and is trying to get out of Amonkhet, she would have realized that once she has done what Nicol wants, he'd kill her.
The right move would have been to free the other god's from the mind-blocking shit as soon as Nicol left so the plane could get as ready as possible to fight back once Nicol comes back.

>>54168009
>>54169513
I assume they need to kill the Scorpion God because Bolas "programmed" it to kill the Amonkhet gods when it woke up, so while Locust and Scarab have fulfilled their duties already, Scorp presumably will keep trying to murder Hazoret until it's dealt with.

DO YOU THINK BONTU AND NICKY FUCKED

>>54169986

Um, yah. It's obvs she wanted the dragon D super bad.

Nissa needs bangs.

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>>54166445
Imagine being Bolas in that set and having to be all like "damn, Bontu, you fuckin' fine, all playable with your indestructible body and horrific useless activated ability. I would totally play you, both as a Planeswalker and as a Legendary Creature." when all he really wants to do is read another book in his cave. Like seriously imagine having to be Bolas and not only sit on the throne while Bontu flaunts her disgusting body in front of you, the collapsing pyramids barely concealing her summoning sickness and crocodile head, and just sit there, play after play, hour after hour, while she perfected that attack. Not only having to tolerate her monstrous fucking visage but her haughty attitude as everyone on the plane tells her Black's STILL GOT IT and DAMN, CARD ADVANTAGE LOOKS LIKE *THAT*?? because they're not the ones who have to sit there and watch her mannish fucking gator face contort into types of grimaces you didn't even know existed before that day. You've been manipulating nothing but a healthy diet of Alarans and Madarans and later alleged Tarkirans for your ENTIRE CAREER coming straight out of the boonies in Dominaria. You've never even seen anything this fucking unplayable before, and now you swear you can taste the sweat that's breaking out on her reptilian stomach as she sucks it in to attack her sister, smugly assured that you are enjoying the opportunity to get paid to sit there and revel in her "ambitious (for that is what she calls herself)" servitude, the servitude she worked so hard for with personal viziers in the previous months. And then R&D calls for another set, and you know you could kill every single person on this plane before MaRo could put you on the ban list, but you sit there and endure, because you're fucking Bolas. You're not going to lose your future spinoff format deck over this. Just bear it. Hide your face and bear it.

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>>54169746

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>>54169986
I mean could you resist this?

>>54166445
Bolas is just great at exploiting gaps in reason and mental fortitude. It doesn't necessarily mean his pawns are all utterly evil.

Consider these pawns:

>Order of the Skyward Eye
>Gwafa Hazid
>The Marisi
>The Seekers of Carmot
>Malfegor
>Rakka Mar
>Tezzeret
>Sarkhan Vol
>Yasova Dragonclaw
>The Five Gods of Amonkhet
>The Three Corrupted Gods of Amonkhet

Sarkhan Vol notably just wanted an object of adoration. The mental weakness created by this zealotry was exploited by Bolas and turned him into a drooling slave at one point. The same can arguably be said for The Seekers of Carmot, The Marisi and Rakka Mar.

As for Bontu being evil, it can be said she succumbed to it due to self-preservation overriding compassion towards the initiates and her siblings. That made it easy for Bolas to control her.

>>54170111
I remember this.

>>54169579
I was about to say Jeska, but even before all the Phage and Karona shit, I think she slung some fireballs. It's hard to find M:tG characters who don't use magic at all.

Consider an Alt-Alara, where each shard was colored after the wedge tri-colors. How would each shard be like, and what would they lack from missing the enemy colored pairs?

>>54169940

Black has always been self serving above all else, and I can't recall any Black only Aligned Characer really being that great when it comes to long term planning. Combine that with Nicol Bolas completely wiping the floor with them last time and Bontu having no indication he would lose most of his power, it makes total sense for her to keep up the betrayal.

>>54170393
Garruk maybe? I'm not very familiar with him so does he use any magic before his spark ignites?

>>54169868
Well, Umezawa was very selfish and a dick sometimes, only we get to sympathize with him cuz we see things through his pov.

>>54169746
And here you are, screaming in to the wind "I'm not a retard unlike THOSE retards"

>>54169868
>>54169886
That's mainly why I was talking about he future. How long ago was Umezawa? Since then there hasn't been a strictly black hero. Liliana barely counts, and Sorin is more an antihero. We got metal green elf, white-red ghost patrol, green->GW elf boy, white-red revenge cat, Jace and Gideon, Retcon Nissa, Koth, kind of the red preator, white hero girl, Samut, and a bunch of other nonblack characters as the good guys (or least shitty guys).

>>54169340
I guess I should have said, "Black will usually be bad guy by default, but other colors get a regular variety of good and bad." Nahiri being a dick, Nissa fucking up, Dovin, Barral, white porcelain preator who's name I'm forgetting, Tezzeret, and the color variety of Eldrazi and Innistrad horrors do a good job making bad guys in all colors.

>>54170574
>BWG
A world that worships death and reputation. Life and energy are treated like currency to be used, spent, or stollen because it all evens out in the end. Without red or blue there's no thought or planning for the future as far as changing the endless cycle of power grabbing and accepting the inevitable.
Lifelink tribal go!

>RWU
Progress. Progress progress progress. Nature is a resource. Death should be overcome. Knowledge and study fuel inspiration and inspiration breeds progress. But everything is a little too equal, with no help given to the lazy, the stagnant, or inefficient.

>GUB
A more violent, consuming Naya right out of the Phyrexia handbook. No white or red leads to only cold feeling of survival and trade-offs.

>WBR
Anti-Bant. Fortifications and armies and... basically a plane of Marduu marauders. No green leads to a massive consumption of resources by the war machine, and no blue means people tend to get caught up in the cause rather than think everything through. Like the BWG plane the whole place goes through cycles, but because of the resource problems. Everything gets eaten up, everyone starves, natures regrows, populations and armies regrow, repeat.

>URG
Not really sure. Not sure a plane of nature documentary researchers would make sense...

>>54170574
You mean Tarkir?

>>54170879
>How long ago was Umezawa
60 years ago (when the mending happened) + XXX years ago, due to Kamigawa block being essentially a history lesson made into a set.

>Lilliana isn't really B
She's super deep in black. She has been putting her selfish personal interests before the gatewatch the whole time by just doing the bare minimum for them to keep her there so they'll help her kill her demons.
When she got to amonkhet, she didn't even warn any of them about 1 of the demons being there, and Jace only knew because mind reading.

>>54171183
>Liliana
I meant she didn't count as a hero or a good guy. She's posterchild black.

>How long
I was more asking in real time. It was what, 2006? A decade.

>>54171166
I think anon means a situation like Alara's shards, where the five mini-planes lack two colors.

>>54171131
>mardu shard
>massive battleworld full of nation states throwing armies at each other until every side loses

Please wizards, I don't ask for much. Please make mardu great

>>54170879
Oooh I get ya about the black evil thing

>>54171131
>URG is all about nature
>with no Black, there is no ambition and things are killed only through the need to survive
>with no white, there is chaos, but in the sense that you aren't really safe at any given moment
>the only humans that live there are basically a clan of biologists, learning more about the beasts and nature around them as they study from one central city.

How does this sound?

>>54171131
>>54171720
I thing URG would be something like a weirder Naya, with vast colorful jungles full of plants and beasts that look mutant and surreal. The lack of Black and White means that civilization is limited to tribes and small city-states, while Blue keeps it from total primitivism

>>54171720
>zombie apocalypse
>replace "zombie" with "lions and tigers and bears"
This idea I like. The main city being a less mutanty, more survivalist Simic guild.

>>54171861
Technology and survival techniques evolve and adapt, but society doesn't. Also a cool idea. Honestly, I wish Magic would take a risk and release another set or two with unbalanced color distribution. A mostly blue plane, or a plane lacking white and black, or a plane missing one color, followed by a set that balances the color totals out.

>>54170111
Underrated

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So if you were the head of the design team to make a set with non-Eldrazi colorless mana as basically a sixth color, how would you go about it lore and mechanics wise?

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>>54170111
>before Maro puts you on the ban list
I fucking love it

>>54168820

>what is Heliod
>what is Elesh Norn
>what is Nahiri
>what is Konda
>what is Radiant

>>54170672

Sengir, Yawgmoth, the Dimir and several others were good longer term thinkers

>>54172535
I want to penetrate it.

>>54172656
>>54170879
NORN! That's that bitch's name. Thanks anon!

>>54172535
> Newly born plane full of pure not yet coloured mana. Everything is new and free mana surge from everywhere, eager to take new form
> Mysterious mystery about how the multiverse actually works
> Elemental everywhere
> Future elder beings/civilisation in their infancy (carefree and curious cephalids, young sprout treefolks, freshly spawned imp tricksters that don't know all the tricks yet...)
> Little to no graveyard interactions because no past
> Manifest
> Manaburn

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>>54170574

http://forum.nogoblinsallowed.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5767&sid=25b645680d9cc4c8fde451852036ef5c

>>54167896
Where was this confirmed?
Artbook?

>>54172862

Awesome, fangz.

>>54172883

Artbook + "Undying Fury"

>>54171518
Sounds like the plane Ob Nixilis was originally from. I hope we get a flashback set located there someday.

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>>54171518
Well shit, I guess we know what Valla and the Immersturm is.

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Really tempted to drop £100 on all 4 "Art of" books, not into the Magic game but the lore and art really do it for me. The books sound like they'd be my thing but are they worth the investment?
Is there a "best" book of the bunch if I instead limit myself to 1 + Amonkhet?

>>54173838
Zendikar is probably the best one of the bunch, but I haven't read the Amonkhet one yet. Zendikar's got some really great art spreads and choices, nice details about the world, and a thankfully pretty short section on the whole channel-fireball gatewatch debacle, that still has good art.

Innistrad isn't terrible, but I question some of its choices pretty heavily. It kind of focuses at little too hard on SOI and EMN, and not enough on original Innistrad, but it's got great things. I'm still pissed they used the shitty picturing of Griselbrand though.

Kaladesh is a really nice artbook, but much like the plane, is full of a lot of cool stuff that never gets explored. I don't give a shit about Ghirapur, I want to know about all the other cities, and the top of the world, and the Dark Schematic, and everything they just ignored for the actual set. That said, the gallery-section where they put the Masterpiece arts as if they were proper gallery pieces is great.

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>>54173838
>but are they worth the investment?
Yes, as I own all the current ones, expect for Amonkhet, which ships in few weeks. Pick one between Zendikar and Innistrad, Kaladesh wasn't that good DESU.

>>54172859
Reminds me a bit of the planeforger threads from a month or so ago.

And hell yes manaburn. That lantern from Ravnica was so fun to ping people without mana dumps with.

>>54173838
>>54173909
>>54173924

Which is the best setting book to run DnD with? The Planeshift articles always say to look to the Art Books, but I'm having a hell of a time picking just one.

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>>54173909
>>54173924
Sweet, thanks for the input, I've played a lot of Ravenloft adventures which Innistrad reminds me pretty heavily of so I'll just stick to Zendikar for now

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>>54174000
Zendikar before the Eldrazi invasion

>>54174000
I'd love to do a Kaladesh one, as a weird high-society kind of magic shadowrun, but for classical d&d adventuring nothing beats pre-eldrazi Zendikar.

That said, Innistrad's pretty fun too

>>54169579
Almost everyone in Magic uses SOME sort of magic.
Except the people from Kaladesh, and all three planeswalkers from Kaladesh are mages, which are exceedingly rare on the plane.

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>>54169564
and he -4'd dealing 7 damage

>>54169653
I literally read it as
>"samut, do something useful for once and defend people while i save the day"

>>54174197
Eh, mages arent "exceedingly" rare afaik. Pyromancers are, but mages, while not common, are not that rare either. They just keep in hiding to avoid persacution.

>>54169579
Yes, but there are no nuwalker examples yet.

And as other anons pointed out, most planes have "magic". On Kaladesh it's rare, on Dominaria is was forgotten for a long time, but places like Ravnica feature magic as matter-of-course.

>>54169579
Pretty sure you have to have some proclivity toward magic since planeswalkers are described as mages

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>>54169746
>MtG "lore" is pure shit
and so is your life

>>54174297
>>54174286
To be fair, I only wanted to know if there was an example of it in canon after I read a MLP crossover fanfic

>>54174280
I know one of the Masterpiece flavour texts expresses disbelief in the idea of mages, and it's written by a consulate worker.

>>54174350
Theres inconsistency or something else then because Barals role as enforcer is specifically to contain mages which is why he specilizes in counter magic

>>54174417
I always figured it was a combination of Kaladesh not having a lot of mages as a matter of course combined with a general kind of distrust and secrecy about them, ADDITIONALLY combined with Baral's job being "get rid of them before they wreck things" and being specialized in just noping their stuff. People don't think they exist because either they're in hiding or they get Baral'd.

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>>54173909
>the whole channel-fireball gatewatch debacle

>>54174545
The gatewatch killed two eldrazi titans by pulling a channel fireball combo. It was pretty dumb.

>>54174330
Urza was an ordinary guy with no magic training or previous spell use. Didn't even grow up knowing magic was a thing. I think he's an exception to the rule though.

>>54174297
Is anyone technically not able to use magic? Not just not adept, or untrained, or not predisposed, but actually unable?

>>54174787
I feel almost certain weve had that but I cant recall any specific examples. I was under the impression the people kaladesh were totally unable to use magic unless they were born with it. Maybe it specifies in the Kaladesh art book.

>>54174591
Oh right that was retarded.

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>>54166445
>You know...
We still haven't really gotten an understanding of how the gods were before The Bolas-Event.
With the exception of Bontu? (Probably?)

It's still 50/50 that all the gods could as nurturing as they are now OR could have been just as big of dicks as the Theros ones, and that it was Bolas's tampering that made them nice/nurturing for his purposes.

Just feel like I should point that out.

>>54174944
And this was an assumption, but I thought that was more of a no one is teaching magic situation. You have the Chandras and Jaces of the multiverse that are hard wired to a specific type of magic, you have your average person that has to be taught, and you have the person who is shit at magic.

An Anon posted this story.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/arcana/lorans-smile-2014-10-27
In it it says Loran couldn't use magic, but doesn't go into any detail. It's so pre Mending lore, so who the fuck knows.

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>>54166445
Hey based on what we knew of Yawgmoth

and the (mostly) defined definition of what gods on Amonkhet are

Can we more accurately (or a better guess) assume Yawgmoth when through the Godding process way back when? It was very undefined then, but between Theros and Amonkhet I feel the assumption that yaw was Creature Type - God is safer to make.

>>54175142
Im kinda pissed o kagachi wasnt made a god. Probably couldnt fit on thr type line but meh. I also wish theyd update he myojin to be gods since thats literally what they are, they just predated the god type.

>>54174286
Does Karn count? He couldn't, to my knowledge, do any magic when he was a golem; but after becoming a planeswalker, he gained all the same godlike powers as the rest of them (for instance, creating Mirrodin).

>>54175217
O kagachi I agree.

The rest there is an argument because of Kamigawa`s powerful inclination to spirits that they are just that - powerful spirits. Especially the Myojin - Gods can`t planeswalk being tied to that specific world and all that, but at least one of the Myojin can.

>>54175245
He's outside the norm like Urza. Neither could do magic, or did magic at least, but a large part of their planeswalker power was the Thran powersstone. Whether or not that had anything to do with Urza's spark igniting or if it was just merged into him for a power boost I'm not sure. As far as I remember the Artifact books don't say either.

>>54175142
By the way, from what I understand, it went like this:

>Phyrexians invade Dominaria
>Urza and Karn use the legacy stones to sacrifice Urza to destroy Yawgmoth and the invading Phyrexians
>Later, Karn basically terraforms a planet, but while doing so, slowly releases the Phyrexian Oil that probably got inside him when he battled Yawgmoth
>The oil corrupts all living things and eventually, after some wars, Venser sacrifices himself to cleanse Karn, but the invading Phyrexians take the plane from Karn.

I know I'm probably wrong about a lot of this, so please correct me, but I had a theory that perhaps Yawgmoth could still be alive. How?

He lives through the oil. He, perhaps, is made of it, and he corrupts any living thing he comes into contact with. Maybe Karn had been carrying him around this whole time within his body, slowly dripping piece by piece onto the plane's surface.

I dunno. What do you guys think?

>>54175498
I think Yawgmoth has been declared officially, 100%, Word of God dead.

They had to make the clarification because the novel version of Judgement, among its many flaws, sort of implied Yawgmoth might still be alive, which was totally not what the creative team intended.

>>54169579
Did Radha use magic? iirc she kinda sliced Teferi to pieces even before she ascended, but that was because of Keld Warlord shenanigans.

>>54175498
I don't think Karn terraformed a planet and released the oil so much as his Phyrexian core sprinkled oil everywhere and it flourished in his terraformed Mirroden. It corrupted Memnark first (well not first, but I think this is the only reference in the first Mirroden block), and replicated(?) and spread and corrupted over a long time.

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>>54175541
Yeah. Teferi also appeared in a vision to Karona in a similar manner (except as the white mana avatar for some reason) and in Time Spiral he confirmed that it didn't happen, or if it happened he had no recollection of it.

Btw I wonder if she'll ever come back as a god card.

>>54175245

He didn't actually create Mirrodin, but "terraformed" a near empty plane.

>>54175498

Actually Karn carried oil because he was given the "heart" (some sort of life matrix) of a Phyrexian Newt who was a failed sleeper agent named Xantcha, and that heart was contaminated by Glistening Oil, which later Fucked everything up.

So I may be drunk, and not understand the point they were trying to pull across, but im still a bit confused by the beginning of the story "Hour of revelation". I know its in italics but can someone explain to me why it depicts the gods in whole fighting bolas straight on? We've learned now that that it not how the story goes at all. Here's an excerpt for those unsure of what im talking about.

"The gods were stunned. This dragon possessed enough power to defy the laws of nature.

Hazoret called for the children and elderly to retreat to the mausoleums for safety, and the attendants spread the word. She took up her spear and urged the gods to attack.

The gods' distraction to protect the mortals amused the dragon. These gods cared far more about their plane than he ever did about the worlds he created.

Kefnet, caretaker of the Hekma, was straining to keep the magical barrier together. The dragon tipped his chin and fractured Kefnet's mind in two.

Kefnet's body and wings went limp and he plummeted to the ground, crumpled and still."

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>another thread with urza and yawgmothfags

Yeah yeah, they'll return, kill the jacetice league and save magic :^)

>>54175859
And nostalgia will command us to believe that this is better, and not low-tier cape comic writing.

If this is what it takes to get another New Phyrexia set that isn't about channel+fireballing the plane to death with the power of lesbian overtones, sure. Whatever. More Phyrexian mana spells please.

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>>54175715
>Btw I wonder if she'll ever come back as a god card.
>Who is Jeska

Basically no Anon. Also Karona isn't really a god, just powerful and honest to goodness literally crazy (at the time). She 'thought' she talked to alot of different people.

>>54175965
>If this is what it takes to get another New Phyrexia set that isn't about channel+fireballing the plane to death with the power of lesbian overtones, sure. Whatever. More Phyrexian mana spells please.
Ha. Know what? Yes please as well.

>>54175541
Yeah the Phyrexians were deems 100% dead with the death of their master too...

>>54175995
Am I the only one who doesn't think the god creature type was a good idea? Magic was pretty okay before when really powerful motherfuckers were comparative gods and they could be spirits, planeswalkers, elementals, dragons, dragon planeswalkers, or whatever.

>>54175792
Read it in the morning. That part refers to the far past, when Bolas first invaded the plane and brainwashed them.

>>54175541
>>54175676
>>54175716
>>54176031
That's such a shame. I really wanted to see a Yawgmoth legendary creature card...

:'(

>>54172535
Let colorless be the "color" for dicking around with exile. Exile is a relatively unexplored mechanical space but should not be used often, so pair it with another mechanic that should only be used infrequently.

He would either get the Emrakul treatment or the Ludevic treatment.

So good that it's either a format staple or banned, or a complete fucking waste of the flavor of Yawg.

>>54169746
I also despise jacetice league and think mtg's fluff used to be better, but wew lad

>>54176061
>Am I the only one
Never

>>54176677
This isn't true because you can think of almost any combinations of things that make somelthing unique.

For example a motor cycle that uses a sentient dog that is formed through astral magic as a flail.

The dog is capable of phasing through objects and regularly rotates around the sentient motor cycle. The Sentient motor cylce is able to fly when it's wheel is pointed vertically, causing the astral shifted dog flail to cause a resolution thus creating galactic energy.

I am the first person who thought of that idea, sure it was made up on the spot but it is an example of how you can create ideas nobody has ever thought of just given the sheer scale of how many combinations there could be.

>>54176346
Exile matter was demed a mistake.

>>54176801
ok

>>54176805
exile is a direct counter to indestructible.

And it is proven that people hate sets with -1/-1 counters.

And sacrifice and bouncing the monster isn't even really reliable counters to indestructible or cards that consistently come back.

>>54176914
Really exile just needs good interaction and options that can help deal with it. Pull from Eternity was a cool start, and I'd love to see an "exile matters" kind of set/faction with stuff like Champion.

>>54177059
Gotta be careful of exile becoming a second graveyard/deck like in yugioh

>>54176801
>I am the first person who thought of that idea
Maybe, but you're not the only one to have that idea now.

>>54177251
Yeah. I think the biggest problem with exile is how difficult it is to interact with it at all. I like cards like Pull from Eternity and Nova Chaser for being interesting ways of working with it, but exile should continue to be the "the fuck out of the game" zone. Definitely no pulling cards back to easy playability unless its hugely costed.

>>54171131
>>54171720
>>54171861
I wanna take a crack at this RUG wedge plane.

I imagine a plane that's a natural wonderland, ripe for exploration and adventure. There are dense jungles and vast mountains, deep caves and storm tossed seas. There are civilizations that clash, but more often they survive against the monstrous beasts that stalk the plane. But none of it quite makes sense. Natural features don't line up where they should, someone torn limb from limb by a terrible predator shows up the very next day fit as a fiddle, and everything changes constantly. What existed one day may be gone the next and what seems like natural law might be completely reversed next time you attempt it. Creatures have a habit of suddenly melting together to form a new, bizarre combination of the two in a mockery of evolution...or split apart into a dozen tinier creatures at a whim.

There's a skewed, circuitous logic to it, though. For example, in the coldest, most arctic region of the plane, there is a thriving kingdom. They live on the slopes of a massive volcano, because of course it keeps them warm. Each day, the kids march up all the old people they can find and toss them into the volcano where they die screaming. But it's okay, because the old people come out of the caves at the bottom, except they're all young again, because the oldness got burned away. Now they can join the village again!

>>54177479
We take the progress and curiosity of Blue, the creativity and emotion of Red, and the natural savagery and growth of Green. Without Black and White, we lack intentional kindness and cruelty - like a child, the plane can be kind and it can be cruel, but it's more out of a sense of 'What would happen if?' rather than mercy or malice. It also lacks White and Black's sense of consequence, whether that be the laws of man, or the inevitability of death. Sure, things die, but only because they're supposed to when certain things. But things come back too, because it's more interesting that way!

I picture the plane as actually being the sole playground of some singular, childlike being. But unlike Karn's somewhat aloof detatchment from Mirrodin, or Bolas' calculated plans on Amonkhet, this plane only serves to entertain. Much of the mystery of the plane would come from who this being is and why the plane was created for it.

>>54175217
O-Kogachi should've been a Spirit God, with no Dragon.
And if he had anything other than Spirit and God, it should've been fucking Hydra.
HIs card is a combination of 'this is the only deck we can fit him in so has to be a dregen' and 'Dev hit him with a giant nerfbat' and it sucks ass

>>54175715
>Karona having a god card.
>Karona, False God

>>54176312
Being dead doesn't mean you can't have a card made of you.
Freyalise is just as dead as Urza and Yawgmoth, and they made a card for her.
All it means is that it'll be in a supplemental product rather than a regular release.

>>54166445
Unironically lost my shit when Bolas finally fucking showed up. It feels like it's been millennia in the making. So fucking hype and he immediately contributes to the shitstorm engulfing Naktamun. How could his return be more perfect. Hail Lord Bolas.

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>>54170111
This is incredible.

>>54174216
I need that art as a wallpaper. It's outstanding.

>>54176801
Has anyone really been far as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

>>54176031
Yawgmoth is dead, anon, and he isn't going to be coming back. You'll just have to learn how to deal with that.

>>54176061
>Impliying creature types actually matter.

>>54168820
(You) haven't actually read that much Magic lore if you think this is the case.

>>54169940
Bontu's characterization reminded me of Saren from the original Mass Effect. She thought that if she could prove herself useful, that Nicky B would spare if not elevate her. The thought of betrayal probably occurred to her, but she would have Hazorekt for sure if she resisted.

>>54179371
Neither have the people currently writing magic lore

>>54177479
>>54177498
I feel like such a plane would be really heavy on Elementals. They're living creatures that are constantly in a state of flux, and are also not truly alive or dead at all, and could likely reform.

The world would certainly still have to be somewhat consistent about what any given thing does, but when that thing happens is much harder to predict. The water from this geyser might give creatures that are touched by it wings, but who could say when it'll erupt?

I picture it being very much like a thunderstorm. Unpredictable like Red, driving changes like Blue, but also expected to happen as it has before and will continue to, like Green.

>>54180242
So red would get polymorph, green would get keyword soup and blue would get flicker with benefits?

>>54182330
Evolve might be something that makes a return as well, maybe doing something similar with keywords "At start of upkeep, this creature may gain X Y or Z until EOT, you cannot choose the same one 2 turns in a row"

>>54182411
Flash + Emerge sounds like a flavourful combo

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>>54174311

>>54182468
Yeah, I'm feeling this planelet

I'm thinking theres lots of modular instants / sorceries, more enchants along the lines of demonic pact where each upkeep you get to pick an effect from limited list. Not many artifacts if any for this planelet.

All of them get elementals, G and R gets "beasts" as most of the life is too young or wild to really get shapes, U and G gets fairies because they're also fairlyly wild as they go and nature asdsociated enough to just be spawning out of thin air, and R and U get horrors? as its other main creature type, as the chaotic and wild mana on the plane just snatches up wild emotions, dark thoughts and twisted desires from people and gives them form.

Main humanoid races aren't present as planelet is too young for them to really form, but stuff like the more intelligent elementals or whatever are likely to be shamans over any other type.

Mechanicswise- Elementals are the ones with the upkeep "Gain X until EoT, cant pick the same choice 2 turns in a row"

Green elementals are largely pure creature buffs, gains life, stompy keywords. R ones are either damage, fast keywords or gaining activated abilities. U ones tend to be evasion ones, flickers, or +1-1 effects and so on.

RG beasts get emerge and evolve as their main mechanics, GU fairies flash, flying, flickers, and benefits to flickering- maybe something like ninjutsu where you can pay costs to swap them around "after blockers are declared, exile X and up to one other attacking creature you control, return them to the battlefield tapped and attacking, but are blocked by the other creature" or something like it "when creature would etb from exile, pay X, do not and instead put this card onto battlefield." to represent fairy vanishing tricks.

Horrors? get flash and spellslinger mechanics- modular etb effects, "when an effect has you choose one, you may choose X+1 effects" etc

So I'm reading the old novels right now and I'm at Bloodlines. How the Fuck did Urza get such an amazing reputation during the brothers war when the most impressive things were built by Tawnos while Urza just built ornithopters all day? He's like the Rodney Dangerfield of the first novel.

>>54186112
Urza managed all his own infrastructure. Hes like edison at first then becomes a little more tony stark once he sparks.

>>54186112
I think it's because not only was he the main driving force of innovation early in the war, but that he directly ended it by destroying a whole continent. Bookending the war with his name and presence overshadowed anyone else's legacy.

How'd you like Planeswalker? Was my favorite of that cycle.

>>54187111
I meant during the actual war. Urza built some ornithopters that he straight up plagiarized, and the other robot he built got its shit pushed in during its first fight. Meanwhile Tawnos built clay tokens that wrecked his Yotian soldiers, built clockwork Birds that were still used thousands of years later, and made the Triskellion. But Urza gets all the fame from the world because he dicked the Yotian princess.

Planeswalker was an odd one. Ratepe was built up but was just kind of there, but Urza turning mad and even more oblivious than before was pretty cool. It's a better book than Time streams at least, where it feels like they finished it at the 80% mark but then realized that they needed a different ending so they just went and genocided some angels.

>>54170111
Oh my god, he's Aku.

>>54187688
During the war? Probably just because he was at the head of it. Whether or not it's his machines doing the lifting, it's his policies eating up the forests and changing peoples' way of life.

It's also been like a decade since I read Brother's War...

>>54175995
>Basically no Anon. Also Karona isn't really a god, just powerful and honest to goodness literally crazy (at the time). She 'thought' she talked to alot of different people.
Which is a shame, because I was genuinely excited by the prospect of Serra still being alive and kicking around somewhere.

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>>54170111

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>>54170111

>>54182481
I do not condone suicide... but what if life itself is pointless?
We keep searching for answers to where we come from and what we are, our brain doesn't know what makes it work but does so automatically and tries to discover the reason.
What if we have no reason, that it is just a thing that can occur in the vastness of the emptiness that is the void of space.
Throughout history we as a species have done things to make our lives have some purpose. Religion, kings, country. We try to make ourselves have more purpose to our choices that inevitably gives us a false impression that there must be a reason for life, which there may not be... which imo is scarier than thinking what is death, Knowing you will not feel anything or do anything for eternity, or feel everything and know your life is meaningless in the end.

>>54168820
>mfw the "good guys" party in kamigawa was three B chucklefucks and all of the real, major villains were W or U
>Tezzeret was an evil murderer who was still mono-U before being semi-zombified
>Bolas was taken down first time by an UBR character, second time he was chased away by Ajani who was using red magic at the time
> plenty of villains are in W and U like Konda, Norn, Baan, Baral, Radiant, Akroma, Ixidor, Nahiri
Sure.

>>54175498
Yawgmoth is absolutely dead. The Legacy Weapon killed him so hard it pretty much erased him from existence. The oil doesnt even have much to do with Yawg anyway. He didn't create Phyrexia, he found it. He never became a Phyrexian either, by the end he was basically a plane sized sentient cloud of pure black mana.

>>54174417
>>54174350
Pretty sure the other thing is that there's a big Magic Energy Economy Conspiracy (see: Kambal, Consul of Allocation), and Mages can just make their own energy, which would fuck everything up they didn't suppress it. Imgine if 3% of the population could just fart legal tender.

>>54190593
It's almost like you don't read reply chains.

>>54171131
>GUB
I'd personally disagree with you here, mainly because this is something that MtG doesn't know how to do themselves. Every UGB, from Sultai to Mimeoplasm is missing the real color interaction, Sultai being too UB to the point where the G was just 'we have naga', and Mimeoplasm basically being a BG fatty.

Let's look at the color interactions between each of the three first.
> BG: Golgari colors. Everything dies, comes back, dies again to feed something else. Power is conserved between units, and you mercilessly feed on everything you've got. Tradeoff between black using all it's power and killing its own dudes for even the slightest advantage, and green's intense hatred of graveyard interaction as anything other than a slow and gradual process (put into the library, not on the battlefield)
> UG, Simic: Evolve, evolve, evolve. Nature exists, it has rules, but everything needs improvement. The intense focus of U on knowing everything is narrowed by G focus and less of an interaction on tradition. Easy to associate with, which is why it's a really popular guild.
> UB: Power and knowledge, omnipotence and omnipotence combined. It takes U desire to know and expands it to knowing things that are within B scope - how to control people, what they're thinking, etc. etc. Dimir are pretty good fits for this.
Now, let's take a look at all three combined.
UG and GB seem simple enough. It's not enough that the energy cycle of life/death has to be fast, it has to improve by doing so. Death isn't even a transitory process for most creatures, and even as something dies, something else is being born or *adapted* (not created, artifacts aren't G ally) that can take it out. Mimeoplasm is a good example of this.
> Cont

>>54193045
Now we add UB to the mix. This is where we can take what we've already got and really kick it up a notch. There's a whole lotta knowledge about adapting, and death magic is pretty much as standard for getting ahead. Here, I'd say there's room for spells to really spread their wings, where before we're focussing mainly on creatures, now we're getting into UB's denial of creatures and counterspells. It's probably the thing that shapes magic the most - with all the green, we're thinking leylines or 'natural' sources, but U/B are all about tearing it out fast, using it as much as you can, and if it regenerates, then that's just good luck. There's thinking forwards to the future, and long-term control planning in secrecy, but the plane itself would be fraught with subtle conflicts.

So, that gives us:
> Evolving, undead, or sentient creatures that swap in and out of power.
> Lichs in all 3 colors.
> Little tradition or worship, so a very materialistic plane. Shamans are out, wizards and mutant-mancers are in. Any sort of government or control is in small cabals where power and knowledge of their Masters rule.
> Very little elemental or wild magic. Leylines draw power, that power is native to the living species that lets them adapt and outthink so fast.
Naturally, no mountains or plains, so we're looking at a massive mangrove forest, or some kind of mostly-underwater plane, with 'forests' of kelp and similar. Alternatively, if you want a very industrialized setting, the forests cover the whole plane, with waist-high lakes and swamps stretching for miles and miles, kind of like the Deepwoods in the Edgeworld Chronicles, and all the slaving and brutality that comes with it.