MTG Lore Thread: Ixalan Edition

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>>55155484
>On Vraska
BR: Oh, okay. So we do know however that he’s not the only Planeswalker there. We’ve already seen from art and whatnot that Vraska, Jace’s old nemesis from Ravnica, is also on Ixalan. And I’m sure that we’re going to find out more about that, I’m not asking you to give away what Vraska’s doing there or anything like that. Were there any hints that we might have known Vraska was getting involved in Ixalan?

AL: Yes! So back on Ravnica, Ral Zarek developed a neat device to track Planeswalkers entering and leaving the plane. He recorded the assassin Vraska leaving Ravnica, but was unable to tell where she ended up, and I swear there’s a good reason for that.

The other clue came from Vraska’s dear bug friend, Mazirek. He’s Kraul and leader of a very marginalized group among the Golgari. Vraska cares about people like her, disenfranchised and downtrodden, and she and Mazirek became close friends. She didn’t tell him her plans, but he knows that she’s gone and has big plans for whenever she returns.

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>>55155499
>On The Setting
AL: Ixalan is one continent on a larger world. This story focuses on the actual continent itself of Ixalan. It is lush jungles surrounded by rich azure seas, massive dinosaurs, and it’s home to empires all its own. It’s home to two major people: the dinosaur-riding Sun Empire and the merfolk River Heralds. And, to complicate all of this, these two groups are encountering two additional forces: the pirates of the Brazen Coalition and the vampire conquistadors of the Legion of Dusk.

BR: When you were writing this series of stories, where did you draw your inspiration?

AL: A lot of what inspires both the Sun Empire and the River Heralds comes directly from the Aztec and Maya and the succession of control from one to the other. One group having been there for much longer, the River Heralds in our case, now on the tail end of control over the continent of Ixalan, and another, the Sun Empire, directly confronting the other on their borders. Influence from the Incans can also be seen in the terraced farms near the Sun Empire cities of the mountains. So there’s a lot of real-world inspiration that went into all of this.

>>55155549
>On the Historical roots
Choosing the setting also meant actively deciding to tackle the imperialist baggage that comes along with it. The nice thing about fantasy is that we get to look at the real world and decide what stays and what goes. Those choices, in the creative for our set, were made thoughtfully with help from our Latin American office. We looked to them and asked them for help in making this not just a story that has a little bit of a foot in reality, but also recognizes that these places our real, these people are real. And we want to be able to make this about fun, not necessarily about drudging through the really heavy awful stuff that we don’t think belongs in our game.

The residents of Ixalan, to kind of go along with this, are technologically advanced. They make steel, they build immense cities, already have empires of their own. Their stories do not involve sacrifice, getting duped by invaders, or any other tired trope like that. Instead, we wanted to give them a quest of their own. The invaders are a delightfully thin metaphor here in the form of vampire conquistadors, and those that invade here lack the weapons and diseases that our true history had. Instead, the vampires, the Legion of Dusk, sail on cathedral-like ships from the east and arrive to a hot, humid jungle, in very clammy armor, driven by religious fervor to reclaim a relic stolen from them centuries before.

I can’t emphasize enough how much the vampires stick out here. It’s really funny to look at some of these pictures. But I really want to emphasize that this is not a story of invasion. This is not a “let’s make a cool place just to blow it up in the next set” set. It is not about one group dominating another and wiping it out, but a race to a single goal by all parties. It’s a race.

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>>55155560
>On Vampires
AL: So these vampires are part of the Legion of Dusk. It is an alliance between a powerful church and an iron-fisted monarch. The Legion of Dusk comes from the continent to the east, called Torrezon. The vampires who lead the Legion of Dusk are viewed as holy figures, dark paladins and their undead existence is full of ritual and taboo. Most importantly, they feed only on the blood of the guilty: enemies of war, rebels of the state, or heretics who defy the church. They seek an item called the Immortal Sun, which once belonged to them, but was stolen and brought across the sea to Ixalan. And they pray its power will allow the hopes of the church to be fulfilled and eternal life be available to all without the need to subsist on the blood of the wicked.

To kind of go into a bit more history about them, the Legion of Dusk began a series of wars centuries ago in Torrezon and eventually kind of took over the whole continent. So they spread their kingdom across this entire place, really disrupting pretty much everything else there. And they have brought their ships and their conquistadors to find this item that they think will allow them to live an eternal existence without needing blood to survive.

>>55155484
>Make all female characters prude, even a seductress like Liliana.
>Turn Jace into a sexy shirtless Twink Boy that makes panties moist.

What did they mean by that?

>>55155628
>>55155628
>On Dinos
AL: Dinosaurs. So dinosaurs are native to Ixalan. They have colorful feathers, like in science! The dinosaurs are closely tied with the Sun Empire, one of the four key groups of Ixalan. Like South America and Mesoamerica’s great empires, the Sun Empire are an empire with a capital and a central power structure. The Sun Empire has awakened after long years of quiet. Besieged by pirate raids and the advance of the Legion of Dusk, caught between the invaders from the sea and the wall of jungle behind them, the Sun Empire rises with the ferocity of a dinosaur and the righteous light of the radiant sun to fight off its enemies.

BR: Also with actual dinosaurs.

AL: Also with actual dinosaurs. The Sun Empire is in a new era of prosperity. Fueled by the magic of their sun priests and the dinosaurs that they command. Their cities are built to accommodate their dinosaur riders with high arches to allow their knights to pass through unobstructed. And just for some chronological stuff, the Legion of Dusk only started arriving maybe two years ago, like fairly recently. And the Sun Empire is strong enough that they can fight them off fairly easily. Also they have dinosaurs.

BR: And they ride them?

AL: And they ride them, yes. They can ride dinosaurs, they can command them, they are their steeds in their fight to not only rule their own empire on Ixalan but also to prevent other people from coming onto it.

BR: So are the dinosaurs all—domesticated isn’t quite the right word—but are there wild dinosaurs?

AL: Oh yes. There’s a lot of them. They are definitely not just like cows and horses. There are definitely wild dinosaurs, there are pterosaurs, there are all sorts of very familiar looking dinosaurs to our modern sensibilities. And there are also ones that the Sun Empire uses and rides for domestic tasks.

BR: Mkay. And with feathers?

AL: With feathers. Because they’re pretty and awesome and historically accurate.

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>>55155751

>>55155560
>This is not a “let’s make a cool place just to blow it up in the next set”
Calling bullshit on this, that describes 99% of the plots for every set Wizards has done.

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>>55155751
>On Merfolk
AL: Yes. So merfolk are the River Heralds, that is the name of their group. So they are people of the water. They wield the natural, raw force of nature to protect the world from disaster. They were once the dominant inhabitants of Ixalan with a large power of their own, and their strength was once enough to drive the Sun Empire out of the interior. Nowadays that the Sun Empire is a lot bigger and a lot more powerful, they live a more nomadic lifestyle. Powerful shamans can shape the rivers and jungles around them and they believe that this place that—no one really knows where it is—called the Golden City, houses the Immortal Sun and must be kept hidden from all, even themselves.

The merfolk in the set are visually striking; jade jewelry and weapons and armor. And their appearance is one of my favorite depictions of them in Magic. Their fins are colorful and bright like tropical freshwater fish and a lot of Ixalan, the continent’s, history is between the struggle of the merfolk and the humans who live there. Kind of like struggling against each other like who’s in charge, who’s not. Their history is pretty vast. I’m certain part of it will end up in the art book later, which you should totally buy because it’s really pretty, but yeah.

So most of Ixalan’s history is kind of this power struggle. And at the center of it all is this mysterious place known as the Golden City that houses that Immortal Sun that was stolen all those years ago. But no one knows where it is.

BR: Hmm. Interesting.

So, not even the pirates?

AL: Not even the pirates, not even the merfolk, not even the Sun Empire. No one knows where it is.

The merfolk have kind of taken it on themselves to defend the Golden City since they believe that no one should have the power that lies inside of there. So to protect its secrets, the kind of know where it is, but not the exact location. They’ve been making sure no one gets there for centuries.

>>55155781
They became aware of the meme and are working to deal with it. Thats why Ixalan lived and Innistrad just got slightly more monstrous.

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>yfw Baron Sengir is the villain of Ixalan

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>>55155804
>On Pirates
BR: Let’s talk pirates!

Is it all treasure, walking the plank, and adorable monkeys and parrots?

AL: So it is, but our pirates are also the descendants of refugees. Their ancestors are from Torrezon, the continent to the east. The Legion of Dusk conquered the continent over hundreds of years of war, and the pirates we see today are the children’s children etc. of those that escaped to the sea. They formed the Brazen Coalition, a society that answers to no one but themselves. They may not have a land to call their’s, but they own the seas. They seek the Immortal Sun as well, an ancient prize rumored to be more valuable and powerful than any other in existence. One that could possibly be the key to returning to Torrezon and driving out the Legion of Dusk to reclaim their ancestral lands.

BR: Mkay. But there’s definitely adorable monkeys and parrots?

AL: There is, there is. There definitely are.

>>55155904
>On Story
so with those four groups, you’ll notice a common theme in that all of them want something and there is this mysterious item somewhere in the jungle that can help each of them attain that.

BR: That sounds like a plot point.

AL: Sure does!

BR: So let’s go back to Vraska. Were you writing stories when Return to Ravnica was a thing?

AL: I was not.

BR: So Vraska’s a new character for you as far as writing is concerned. So how did you catch up on Vraska for these stories?

AL: So I reread her old story appearances in Jenna Helland’s The Shadows of Prahv and Doug Beyer’s The Gorgon and the Guildpact. Those provided a great background for her, but not a good bridge to get her from sneaky, isolated assassin to brave and bold pirate captain.

So most of the work that I did was investigating what it would take to get someone with a history like her’s into a headspace where she would want to take this sort of leadership job. The answer was in Jenna’s story. Vraska’s backstory is horribly sad and all of it comes down to things happening to her that she had no choice in. So when I think of Vraska, I think of someone who was never allowed to be anything other than what they were born to do. She’s a gorgon, so what would she be good for other than killing? I don’t buy that. Vraska has been imprisoned, beaten nearly to death, marginalized again and again. And until now she compensated by injecting her sense of justice into which assassin contract she would accept, but I think she’s tired of being unseen. She deserves more agency than that, and I can’t wait to explore what she wants to do when someone believes in her talents.

BR: Ooo. Someone believes in her talents. Interesting.

AL: Yeah! Interesting.

>>55155904
>refugees from a war-torn land who become pirates and seek treasure and riches on other continents

Don't know where I've heard this one before.

>>55155859
Don't play with my heart like that. I've been waiting for a new Baron Card for more than a decade. Had high hopes with the Vampire Commander Set, but The Baron is obviously mono B, not like that pretender Edgar Markov.

Only thing that could make me more exited than a new Sengir card would be motherfucking GIX in Dominaria.

>hey guys can we have our life sustaining relic back
>FUCK OFF REEEEEEEEEEEE
The Legion of Dusk did nothing wrong

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RIP this game is all I can say after the Ixalan reveals.

>>55155965
Current events?

>>55155974
Nobody know where it is though.

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>>55155957
>Story Hook

BR: We obviously can’t go deep into the Ixalan story, as that’s the point of reading the story, but can you tell us some tidbits that we can maybe look forward to in the Ixalan story? Are there vampires riding dinosaurs? Are there pirates battling dinosaurs? Are there merfolk fighting dinosaurs? Are there dinosaurs riding dinosaurs?

AL: [laughs] So when I was trying to workshop how all of these stories would fit together, I literally made a chart of “Pirates vs. Dinos, Dinos vs. Pirates, Dinos vs. Merfolk, Dinos vs. Vampires” and made sure that one of those ended up in every single story that we did.

BR: Ah, that’s amazing.

AL: Or at least in the really action-heavy parts of the story. That’s not a guarantee like “every single one” but that was definitely part of it; making sure that we saw all of those combinations that make the actual gameplay of this set so much fun.

But as for an overarching theme to this set, this is a story about desire. It is desire for power, desire for companionship, desire for approval, desire for discovery, and everyone is racing to get what they want first. Everyone wants the Immortal Sun, no one knows where it is inside the Golden City that no one also knows where it is, but everyone needs to be the one to get there first.

>>55155974
They genocided an entire continent.

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>>55155904
>"Fuck you if you expected pirates, have a fat grandma and strong independent womens who don't need no man of ebony color instead" - Wotc
The dinosaurs are alright, I guess, but the """pirates""" surely aren't what I expected...

>>55156026
>genocided
>he Legion of Dusk began a series of wars centuries ago in Torrezon and eventually kind of took over the whole continent
It's more comparable to the roman empire/Napoleon than a genocide.

>>55156069
They drink the blood of nonbelivers and PoWs. I doubt their are any non Vamps left in their empire.

Unless they have like blood farms of orcs , sirens and humans like how the Catholics used jews for banking.

>>55155628
That Legion of Dusk lore sounds great.

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>vampires
>merfolk
>pirates
>dinosaurs

What colors are all four? I'm curious to see how the color pie is broken down for each tribe seeing it's not evenly split.

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AL: So if we’re talking about we as in “the focus of the story,” Nicol Bolas, big, big, bad dragon, just stomped all over Amonkhet. Like all over. It wasn’t pretty, like a lot of the gods died—one god survived! But the Gatewatch went there without a plan, without any real idea of how to defeat him, and got their butts kicked. Like really hard. So yeah, it was kind of a smack down.

BR: Cool.

>>55156546
If I recall correctly:
>Vamps: WB
>Merfolk: UG
>Pirates: UBR
>Dinos: WRG

>>55155965
A thousand times during human history?

>>55156546
WB Vampires
RBU Pirates
GRW Dinosaurs
GU Merfolk

Wait a few weeks to discuss Ixalan lore. Hopefully people will have stopped incessantly posting their /pol/ scripts by then.

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>>55155751
>like in science!
Just a daily reminder that if you put feathers on anything that's not a small/medium theropod, it's quite the opposite of "scientifically accurate".

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>>55156041
Bruh, why are you getting mad at women being pirates? They're still pirates. What the fuck are you looking for? Lazy pirate stereotypes?

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Ugh, so many female pirates.

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The toxic amount of female and non-white pirates in this game is really problematic.

>>55156687
True but these are also magical dinosaurs so I guess it's fine and that pteranodon looks dope. The team does sound pretty gosh darn dumb saying it's historically accurate though since it's still theoretical.

>>55156546
it is symmetrical actually. Both the native factions (sun empire + merfolk) and invading factions (pirates + vampires) have 5 colors each.

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Like, could Wizards just stop with all these female pirates? It's so gross.

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Ugh. Look at all of those black pirates. So SJW.

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Super problematic female pirates all over the place.

>>55156817
Well, black people are known for violence and thievery...

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Like, all of these female pirates is really yucky and there's no male pirates in any positions of power, like as captains.

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>>55156779
>>55156792
>>55156803
>>55156817
Bruh, I get what you're doing and you're right but you look salty for no reason. Especially since it was one dude who complained and he already looked like a retard in his post.

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So many yucky niggers in this art. Ugh.

>>55156041
At least post a different card at this point. You've managed to make your shitposts stale in less than a week

I was considering checking out the story again after stopping from the lackluster ending of innistrad 2, this person being interviewed for the summaries however makes me hesitant. Have they got their shit more together yet? Like do they actually complete all their plot points and give proper resolutions to the people of the plane?

>>55156796
No, you see, we all know they went this way simply because apparently no one at wizards knows anything about dinosaurs (or how science actually works), but they could have used the feathered serpents mythos as an excuse. Anmd it would have been fiiiine.The problem is they didn't and instead insisted on every given chance that feathers are here cuz they're scientifically accurate while they simply aren't.
>still theoretical
it's theoretical in the same way God is theoretical. No actual proof for and a lot of valid arguments against, supported by actual fossils that show scales were everywhere. At best what's debatable is whether large theropods had some proto-feathers on them (note: not really feathers), but the discussion whether actual feathers could exist beyond small/medium theropods is impossible (it's an advanced trait that was developed long after the main differentiation of dinosaur categories happened).

>>55156321
> I doubt their are any non Vamps left in their empire.
If the lore so far is to be believed, there're, they only drink the blood of their enemies and heretics, so that means they don't drink the blood of their allies and fellow believes. Clerics fast themselves. It's pretty implied that there're still living beings in the old Empire that follow their beliefs

>>55156935
I think Kaladesh and Amonkhet were both pretty lackluster? I didn't keep up with Amonkhet but I know the only thing that people really took away from Kaladesh was Chandra talking like a teenage girl and that she almost went Nuclear until Gideon used his fucking ABS OF STEEL MAGIC to save her and people got hot in their genitals for it.

>>55156967
Kaladesh and Amonkhet sucked because instead of focusing on worldbuilding they focused on advertising diversity.

>>55156863
I think his point was that all the captains and pirates in power were females? Wasn't there a planeswalker male pirate captain?

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>>55155768
>all those random spikes an patches of flight feathers all over the place

Anyone has that cathedral warship art from previous thread?

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>>55156938
I'm not trying to argue with you. They fucked up with that line and they didn't bring in any dinosaur experts like when they brought in experts on black people and Egypt.

I'm just saying that while they goofed hard I think it provides a fun artistic opportunity for the art team to make some pieces that make MTG Dinosaurs more unique than your generic Jurassic Park dudes, even though the art director is pretty stupid for not looking into this and catching any of the dinosaur issues as well.
Gonna be mad if Steve Prescott didn't get any dinosaur cards to do though.

>it's theoretical in the same way God is theoretical
Like, I agree? That was my point. Even if there was harder evidence a theory is still just a theory and isn't completely true or cemented in stone.

So how does Vraska manage being a pirate captain when her crew will turn to stone if they look at her?

>>55157128
Very carefully.

>>55157128
A gorgon's stone gaze is activatable.

>>55156864
I like that flavor text
>"Keep your friends close and your enemies within range."

>>55156722
I'm not getting mad at women being pirates. If anything I'm mad about the complete absence of noteworthy male pirate cards, or at least some female pirates that don't look like complete dogshit.

>>55157224
See:
>>55156864
>>55156844
>>55156834
>>55156817
>>55156803
>>55156779

>>55157071
holy fuck, that's by Steve Prescon? I'm getting a boner. Where is this from, some sort of social profile or an artbook?

>it provides a fun artistic opportunity for the art team to make some pieces that make MTG Dinosaurs more unique than your generic Jurassic Park dudes
Yea, a lot of people like the idea of feathered dinosaurs and think it looks cool (hence why the movement is so successful even within scientists). Sadly I'm not one of them. I've been obsessed with dinosaurs since I was in kindergarten and feathered dinosaurs are simply painful to watch at. Tho that's just my taste.

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>>55157258
Dinosaur sketchbook. He has a pretty baller instagram page.

>>55157277
neat, thanx.
I'm a sucker for spiky dinos.

>>55156967

Yea the writing has gotten really atrocious save for a select few stories. The problems aren't so much to do with the plot, which is boring but at least ties up neatly, but more with the complete lack of depth of any of the characters, the tween speaking style of the characters, and the lack of imagination in general (this plane will be Egypt with magic, this one will be cyberpunk india with magic, this one will be pirates v. dinosaur rawr!). Again, there are some exceptions, but for the most part I would avoid it. Alison luhrs, while I'm sure is well-intentioned, is the "Narrative Designer," a sterile title for essentially what the position entails now, which is appealing to the greatest mass of potential new players as possible while relegating to the sidelines the type of depth that only invested players appreciate.

>>55157071
Makes me think of Monster Hunter

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>>55155560
>imperial baggage
For fucks sake, if the whole plot is a race for treasure, why the fuck bring up sjw talking points

>>55157350
I like that they're avoiding the tropes, they're just doing it for the wrong reasons.

>>55157071

Yea I don't know why they went jurassic park themed when there is a deep pool of beasts to draw inspiration from, especially in green (ravenous baloth, rhox, feral throwback, blastoderm, thragtusk, etc). Onslaught-era beasts looked really cool and i was always impressed with the weird designs and names.

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>>55155484
>You will not see any of the Gatewatch other than Jace here.
So no Ajani?

>>55157224
>I only want Strong White Male characters on my cards. black guys are okay if they're cool black guys and subordinate to the Strong White Male in the lore.

>If there are going to be women characters, they must be young, busty, beautiful white women OR of an indeterminate brown with white facial features. Asians are okay too, as long as they're the GOOD Asian women.

>>55157457
Not in this part. Maybe in the second set.

>>55157457
He'll probably show up when the new set is introduced to save Jace's stupid ass.

>>55157368
>for the wrong reasons.
Not putting political bullshit in your card game that people play for fun is a pretty good reasons.

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>>55157459
I agree, like you can have all the other shit but give me like a handful of cards like this.

>>55157459
>I want a game created by mostly white people with a playerbase dominated by white males to pander to woman and non-asian non-whites despite neither groups being actually interested in the game

>>55155560
>>55157350

The fact that they have to harp on about "imperialism" and "racism" and shit like that shows how shallow their understanding is.

Anyone with a modicum of common sense and education would know that the events of the Conquista were decided long before anyone involved was born. A combination of lack of tamable animals in the Americas (because they ate them while they were still hunter gatherers) while Eurasia beasts had time to adjust to humans all lead to cities in Europe/Asia/Fertile Crescent and no cities in the Americas.

No proper animals to tame because they've all been eaten = no tamed animals.
No tamed animals = no cities.
No cities and tamed animals- no plagues.
No cities = no advancement of technology
No advancement of technology = no demand for greater and greater resources
No demand for greater resources = no exploration.

Simply by showing us that the Sun Empire has actual cities, metal tools, and tamed dinosaurs is enough to show (not tell) us that while they may be stylistically similar they function very differently from historical civilizations.

>>55157524
Actually, they're trying to avoid one kind of political bullshit so much that they've fallen into the opposite, and the only reason they can't tell is because it's clear that WOTC is an ideological echo chamber.

>>55157548

this. wotc's disdain for the fans who've supported the game for so long is really disappointing. I can understand having some sort of proportional representation, but they've gone completely off the rails recently.

>>55156687
The set has a literal yutyranus, which is a feathered big dino

Also funny enough you are posting a pic of a pteradon, which isnt a dino irl but is in mtg (like how they had arachnids as insects or hounds for all dogs)

>>55156722
Ignore/report this guy, this is the third time he has shat post this same stupid thing

>>55157566
I'm not arguing against what you are saying in general, but to me the whole "they're uncivilised because no animals for taming" thing sounds like bullshit. Non-egyptian africans doesn't have any non-european origin cities too, but they had plenty of animals to choose from and even domesticated several in certain regions.

>>55157566
Which is exactly what they said.
>The residents of Ixalan, to kind of go along with this, are technologically advanced. They make steel, they build immense cities, already have empires of their own.

They're purposefully separating themselves from stereotypical imperialist stories by having tamed animals and cities in their Not!Mesoamerica. This was intentional on their part. Rather than "harp on about" imperialism and racism, they've taken steps to avoid it that include providing their Not!Mesoamericans with the necessary technology to make Conquista-style imperialism impossible.

The creative team has gone through the necessary hoops to avoid imperialism being a problem. This story isn't a melodramatic tale about how bad imperialism is, this story sidesteps the issue of imperialism entirely to tell another story unrelated to it.

>>55156935
BR: So at the time we’re recording this, you’ve written this whole story, right?

AL: Yes.

BR: Yeah, so you know what’s going to happen.

AL: I do.


Iclipped that because it wasnt story details but yeah they do.

They even stopped indivdual credits since the writers room produces it all

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>>55157063
>Its a 4/6
>That only takes 2 power to crew

I don't get it. It's a fuckin' card game. What is there to read? It's cards. Like how.... I'm not even trolling I'm literally confused.

>>55157623
>The set has a literal yutyranus, which is a feathered big dino
No it doesn't. I bet noone at wizards even knows yutyranus's name. And yutyranus wasn't feathered you dingus. Proto-feathers aren't actual feathers, try to grasp it. And it lived in colder climate (hence the proto-feather layer for heat-insulation).

>>55157623
>Also funny enough you are posting a pic of a pteradon, which isnt a dino irl but is in mtg
you understand that how we classify things has nothing to do with the argument, right? It's not technically a dinosaur, but still a reptile that lived among dinosaurs, so they just called it a dinosaur for simplicity's sake (because anormie doesn't know those things and puts it among dinosaurs). The point is that they have skin membrane, not feathers as their wings, which is as far as anti-scientific as you can get.

>>55157623

I remember that shroud hasty bug.

>>55157745
I really wish there was a better P/T scale. Because stuff like this makes zero sense.

I understand its nothing some exactly feasible, there always will be odd situations and outliers.

But this giga-ship could be taken by 3 bears.

>>55157524
>>55157566
To draw comparisons to other 'dodgy' stuff they've pulled over the years:

Kynaios and Tiro, the interracial gay Theros kings. Acceptable because A) Ancient Greece was both very gay and was a melting pot from around the Mediterranean, as well as the difficulty in creating a four color legendary.

Ashiok and Aetherborn- Both groups are genderless, Ashiok because they've became more nightmare than human, and Aetherborn because they're not biological at all. Aetherborn are even pushing it, since, for example, Yahenni was written as female while Gonti was written as male. Additionally, since Wizards have exclusively been using they/them (a format accepted by many credible places) and haven't tried pushing it on bullshit stuff, is acceptable.

>>55157672
Yeah, yeah, I get what you're saying. I suppose it's better for everyone that they divulged this information solely through a podcast rather than in the story itself (fingers crossed) but I'd still prefer if it didn't need to be said at all.

>>55157778

Actually 6+ bears.

Assuming you are talking about Grizzly Bears the card.

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>>55157745
hey, Skysovereign is similar in that matter. Still the biggest failure is Demolition stomper, which demands a crew of 5 while we clearly see that one single dude is enough to control it.

>>55157758
MTG has always had stories associated with the cards. It used to be that they produced books that could be bought at a book store that told a story of what was happening during the events of the set and the cards would sometimes reference those events.

Now it's all posted online to read with new sets. Legendary creatures are legendary because they play large roles in the plot of the stories. Planeswalkers as well.

>>55157791
?
6 bears would be 12 power, 6 power over.

Three bears would destroy the boat, alongside the bears, but that still doesnt make any sense.

>>55157795

.... Crewing isn't just controlling it.

Or do you pretend that only a pilot is needed to launch an airplane and ignore fueling and such.

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>>55157258
I like it when they are like hair or headdress/crests.

Like Tyrantrums beard and pimp collar

>>55157795
Maybe that guy is just on the level of Magus of the Arena or something.

>>55157817
>I block your dreadnought with my three bears
>My three bears block it by invading the ship
>No one on your ship is prepared for three invading bears
>The bears destroy the ship from the inside
>They sink with the ship.

>>55157314
MTg story was never good.

The lore/worldbuilding are the best parts.

They basically make campaign settings.

>>55157779
>Yahenni was written as female while Gonti was written as male.
You mean, Yahenni had some effeminate mannerisms while Gonti had some masculine mannerisms. Why is this a problem? How would you write a race of genderless creatures that interacts with gendered creatures in their formative years without them acquiring gendered mannerisms? Heck, how would you even write a character that solely has genderless mannerisms?

I don't see much of a problem with that. You can get camp guys, you can get butch girls, you can get camp and butch genderless Aetherborn. What's hard to understand there?

>>55157826
>Crewing isn't just controlling it.
but it is. That's literally what the mechanic is about. One dude sitting inside the vehicle and controlling it. Google the definition of the words "to crew something"

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>>55157817

Observe these two bears.

>>55157817
Based on the art and name, the card Grizzly Bears represents a pair of bears, not just one.

>>55157864
>>55157878
apologies.
I wasn't thinking of the plurality of the card.

>>55157847
even with 6 bears such an non-plausible situation given the size of the boat as it dwarfs the fleet of boats around it.

>>55157566
What the fuck are you talking about no cities? When Cortes arrived in Tenochtitlan it had upwards of 200,000 people. Fuck bro, the entire city was built on an artificial island in the middle of a lake. They had floating farmland to ensure irrigation. An aqueduct was built to flush water out and prevent the city from being re-flooded.

Are you fucking retarded?

>>55157566
Wasnt Tenochitlan in the running for biggest city in the world for a time? It was top 5 easy.

>>55157862

a crew is the group of people that operate a vehicle/operation.

Ground crew is still needed to have an airplane fly, even if they don't go into the craft.

They fuel it up, make sure it taxies okay, and so on.

>>55157566
The arent going to put mass rape and genocide in a childrens card game.

Its the same reason you probabaly wont see Vampires with Gas ovens or Rwadan monkeymen piling up skulls or Serbian vampire rape camps.

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>>55157795
>one single dude
If he has power 5 or more it's ok.

>>55156026
They only drink from criminals and heretics, so why should they do that?

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>>55157917
>I'm retarded
Look through the crew cards you dingus. A giant ship requires only 3 people to support it completely? Are you actually retarded?

>>55156606
>legit criticism is /pol
back to tumblr

>>55157779
Some people would inevitably accuse them of writing an imperialist narrative so they need to talk about it in order to settle the issue.

And the issue has been settled. It's not an imperialist story, it's a story about different factions from different parts of the world seeking a mystical artifact in a lost city.

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>>55157763
I am saying its ironic your are harping about the technicalities of dino science, bit still calling a pterodactyl a dinosaur.

>>55157843
>>55157953
let's be honest, you agree with my point and your "explanation" is bullshit at it's finest.

>>55157763
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yutyrannus#Feathers

In fact, I dig how they are using "display feathers" here more rather than "covering ones" given how warm Ixalan is.

A lot of the dinos here seem to have feathers lile humans have hair

>>55157992
>I posted a picture of a creature that's referred to as dinosaur in magic and is based on a not-actual dinosaur in reality
I say:
>if you put feathers on anything that's not a small/medium theropod, it's quite the opposite of "scientifically accurate".

Where the fuck am I insisting on it being a dinosaur you collosal moron? MTG calls it a dinosaur for simplicity, not me. I'm calling it an "anything" that shouldn't have feathers.

>>55157900
>>55157910
Congratulations, you got one city. Europe has had over a hundred continuously inhabited cities all dating from hundreds of years before the Aztecs even founded Tenochtitlan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_continuously_inhabited_cities#Europe

>>55157980
That thing is the size of the city, but I mean, the Enterprise only needed one pilot.

I imagine you have the main operators then little servos aiding operation like r2d2.

Like, that ship props only needs one dude to steer the wheel, its just big so you need two vamps or one buff vamp to do so

>>55158054
Yeah, but you said "no cities," which is kinda different from "one or more cities."

>>55158028
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yutyrannus#Feathers
when they say "feathers" they aren't talking about actual feathers, you know. Proto-feathers are not what modern birs have, and what Ixalan's dinosaurs have is the feathers of modern birds, enlarged and colored in baseless colours.

>>55157986

Magic Bro.

Why does a sedan require less of a crew compared to a boat.

.. Also, 3 power isn't 3 people.

It would take infinite baby Jaces to pilot anything, and need 3 power from something else.

>>55158054
That doesn't refute the fact that you were wrong and unaware of the existence as Tenochtitlan as a city.

>>55158054
You're entire argument was based on a string of anthropoligical causes and effects that is directly contradicted by reality on several points.

>>55158070
What are talkin gabout. Is it so hard to grasp that the scale is inconsistent when it comes to Magic? You have a crew 1 for a racing car, crew 3 for a flying huge ship, and crew 5 for a thing that has art depicting a single dude sitting in relatively small construction vehicle. Defending/trying to rationalize it is beyond stupid.

>>55158075
>While it has been known since 2004, upon the description of Dilong, that at least some tyrannosauroids possessed filamentous "stage 1" feathers,[4] according to the feather typology of Richard Prum, Y. huali is currently the largest known species of dinosaur with direct evidence of feathers, forty times heavier than the previous record holder, Beipiaosaurus.

Literally the exact opposite of what you said, its so special BECAUSE its the biggest dino that doesnt just have "stage 1 feathers"

>>55158075


.... All Dino colors are baseless.

Pigment changes are not really detectable in the fossil record.

>>55155715
>>Turn Jace into a sexy shirtless Twink Boy that makes panties moist.

ummmm anon we need to talk

>>55158084
And given he is talking about the coquesy of the Aztec Empire specifically, his grasp of history must be REALLY thin.

Its like doing a five page rant on the civil war and not knowing the confederacy existed.

>>55158131
we have some pigment examples. Not many, but there are some. Anyways, the point is they put colorful FLIGHT feathers on dinos and call it "science".

>>55158127
the article is written for normies you retard, read the actual article, look at the goddom pictures of fossils. It's proto-feathers, because actual feathers coudn't exist on it since it was a trait developed long adfter large theropods splitted from the lesser ones.

>>55158125
I no, I agree its silly, just that the kore does allow elephant boots type stuff and 15 squirrels beating an eldrith god and such.

That dude in the walker is just buff asf.

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>>55156011
>AL: [laughs] So when I was trying to workshop how all of these stories would fit together, I literally made a chart of “Pirates vs. Dinos, >Dinos vs. Pirates, Dinos vs. Merfolk, Dinos vs. Vampires” and made sure that one of those ended up in every single story that we did.
>BR: Ah, that’s amazing.

>>55158127
>Literally the exact opposite of what you said, its so special BECAUSE its the biggest dino that doesnt just have "stage 1 feathers"
nopt even what the article says. Its special only because of it's size. They simply doesn't use the appropriate term at all here.

>>55156938
>no actual proof
>mentions the proof we have

>>55158131
Well it says that research suggests they had display feathers which means you could make a decent argument they would be gaudy colored like peacocks.

>>55157481
he'll likely be the the one to make Jace recollect his memories and start the gather the crew adventure with a new cast of members that ajani grabbed in Dominaria.

>>55158073
>>55158084
>>55158102
It's pretty clear I was talking about cities in a historical/anthropological sense, specifically in feasibility to form them.

Or does Sydney having a population of over four million mean that there isn't anything against creating cities in Australia, meaning that the Aboriginals are just retarded savages?

The entire point of the argument is that the people of the Americas were screwed from the start by no fault of their own while the Europeans had many things in their favor when the goal was developing technology and civilization. To disagree with that is essentially calling nonwhite people inherently stupid and lazy, which I disagree with.

>>55158210
learn the difference between feathers and proto-feathers. The discussion is about whether yutyranus's proto feathers are even related to lesser theropod's actual feathers or developed independently.

>>55158185


Friggin' how?

We don't have intact dinosaurs, and that's the only way I can be sure of an given animals color scheme.

Otherwise we end up thinking lobsters are red when alive and flamingos are white when in the wild.

>>55158185
http://www.xinglida.net/pdf/Xu_et_al_2012_Yutyrannus.pdf

It repeatedly calls them feathers anon.

>>55158211

Exactly.

And you can't tell if feathers are display or not in a given species besides seeing them alive.

Hell, how would you even guess male ducks are more colorful or female ducks are brown without seeing them?

>>55158212
but lili is coming back right?

>>55157566
That's simply wrong.
They had cities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Maya_sites) and developed their availabe technology, wich was for a long time ahead of most post-Roman Europe. There were many plagues, simply not the european types.
What determined their lack of successive technological advancement was the relative stability of their country wich was isolated until they were invaded, and thus lacked foreign stimulation (no silk trade, no lost tomes rediscovered by the Arabs, nothing to loot from nearby crumbling empires).
You probably do not know but they were imperialist as fuck, see the other meaning of the name Quetzalcoatl.

>>55157566
But they had cities. Tenochtitlan was greater than the European cities of the time. And they had extensive technology, and aside from metallurgy, weaponry, and ship-building, could be called equivalent or more advanced compared to the Europeans. In the area of medicine, they were far more advanced (as was common in the Americas) despite the fact that disease is what ultimately fucked them; that was simply a matter of unfamiliar diseases and behavioral adaptations were as unprepared as the physiological ones.

>>55158257
fuck, haven't read the article in a while. However that doesn't change what they are.
https://www.google.lt/search?source=hp&q=Yutyrannus_huali+proto+feathers
see how often the "proto-feathers" term is being used. Even in that article you linked proto-feathers are mentioned in "sources". The point is that often people just say feathers for simplicity's sake.

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>>55158206

>>55158206
The team of paleontologists call it feathered numerous times, point out the signfigamce of it being feathered AND note the implications of it being big amd feathered.

They literally named the paper A gigantic feathered dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of China

Saying big feathered dinos didnt exist and then trying to no true scotsman what a feather is against actual scientists doesnt hold up.

>>55155484
>Jace stars in an isekai featuring amnesia

>>55155628
>the vampires are literally the bad guys from Kuro no Maou

Are the M:tG authors reading Japanese light novels to get their inspiration?

>>55155549
>Inca are just "influences" on the Nahua group

>>55155751
>>55155768
>dinos are "like science" but not actually accurate

>>55155804
>not-mayans are fish muuch but no reference to zotz

This is still the best in a long while, which is kind of sad if you think about it.

>>55158383
see >>55158358
they say feathers, but they aren't talking about regular modern feathers.

Or you know, just read any of the articles on "trex not being feathered afterall"
https://www.google.lt/search?q=t+rex+not+feathered

>>55158415
>They literally named the paper
nopw a lesson on how science world functions. You are a suscessful scientist if your findings cause discussion/controversy/breakthrough. So scientists often try as hard as possible to display their findings and conclusions in a bloated way. saying that "big theropods mostlikely were feathered" guaranteess you much more attebtion than merely saying that "this specimen has proto feathers, there's a possibility other related dinos had the too".

>>55158339
The Aztec Empire had an expansive trade route though. Mesoamerican economies were developed enough we've dug up their shit in New Mexico.

Honestly Cortez was on the cusp of losing but lucksacked when the plauge hit them hard.

>>55156041
That card has shit art but I like the grandma pirate.

>>55158351
Historically speaking, they were fucked by their ancient and unrefinied war tactics (or, to be more specific, by the fact that europe had decided that being dicks was the reasonable stance to take during wars).
They won their early battles with the invaders with sheer numbers, almost winning the war, until the Conquistadores figured out that the entire army would retire once their commander was killed.
Thus they started throwing everything to them Ender's Game-style and that was the end of the mesoamerican civilization.
And that proves that Americans always sucked when facing guerrilla warfare.

>>55158351
For gods sake they basically TERRAFORMED the world bigggest city at the time out of fucking CORN because they had nowhere else to go.

As an engineer I've sperged out hard on the techniques they used, its honestly Wonder of the World tier.

>>55158222
>To disagree with that is essentially calling nonwhite people inherently stupid and lazy, which I disagree with.

First, "non-white" as a political construct has no bearing on the discussion of pre-contact development outside of racial determinism.

Also, your assumption posits that they were too inherently stupid and lazy to develop socially and economically in their locales. There were hundreds of sites between the Toltec, Olmec, Maya and Aztec, not to mention the numerous smaller groups such as Tlaxcala, Tepanec or even Zapotec (whose civilization was at least 2,000 years old).

The only thing Europeans had in their favor compared to Precolumbians/Mesoamericans is that thousands of years of constant warfare drove them to expand and grow as rapidly as possible to combat the expansion of everyone else. The governmental structures in place were fucking efficient as shit, with provincial rulers overseeing the government of smaller cities while larger cities served as administrative centers. The Aztecs fell because they were so damn good at government they didn't have a large enough standing solo-force to combat the massive numbers of smaller groups Cortes allied himself with. They weren't screwed from the start, and the only reason the Spanish were able to fight in Central America was after Cortes got his ass beat he came back when they were all dying of plague (inb4 muh guns and steel. Guns and steel can not supplement a difference of forces of 99%).

Fuck, if we look into the Inca Francisco Pizarro only succeeded because the disease brought by Spanish had made its way south by the time he got there and the empire had already fallen apart.

>>55158313
What they're probably going to do is re-introduce one of the Gatewatch every block, but get bored halfway through and throw the rest in at the end of the cycle.

So Jace gets Ixalan.
Liliana will likely get Return to Dominaria since she's from there.
Chandra is a wildcard as she always is.
Both Gideon and Nissa will get the Norse plane because of gods and leylines and shit like that.

>>55158502
What makes it shit, the artstyle itself or the nigger face for you? I love the artist, but the artpiece got ruined for me because of the ugly nigger face.

>>55158492
They take inspiration from their sources but they're not direct copies.

I'll be honest, it would be pretty fucking boring if MtG was just real-life legendary, mythological and historical figure being renamed and put on cards. I'd have them try to make their own worlds than rigidly follow the example left by their latest source of inspiration.

>>55158534
As an addendum, why the fuck did Wizards call Aztec inspired people the Sun People? It's like they just fucking threw in a splash of Inca for representation.

>>55158534
Yeah a lot of folks forget a major reason why the Aztec's fell was because they had pissed off a lot of their neighbors with their bullshit. (Which is why I LOVE how the natives arent just one big group here, and that the Sun Empire is shown as a newer expansionist polity encroaching on other tribes)

The Triple Allaince was pretty young even when Cortez came, so the sociopolitics were pretty ripe for what happened.

>>55158499
Yeah, they did trade extensively, but within the borders of their own civilization, thus avoiding ecounter with different technologies that would have forced them to develop their military tactics or their weaponry. Most European monarchs got cannons to end sieges, not to trade efficiently, and if you have no one to tell you what gunpowder is, or if you can't afford sieges because you literally can't sustain your armies for long times (no horses, no carts, no supply lines) you will not get any form of guns, since they are useless at that stage.
It's a fundamental difference with the rest of the world, similar to certain Japanese periods.

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>>55157745
In comparison to the other ships in that art, the rope on the battleship must be at least 6 feet in diameter.

>>55158583
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Suns

They even directly reference these with three suns, one for each color of dino.

Its also a good play off conflationism, a Vampiric Empire from the west wanting a "Sun" to give them Everlasting Life.

I love shit like that. Like what wws done with TF vs Gi Joe.

>>55158554
>The nice thing about fantasy is that we get to look at the real world and decide what stays and what goes.

Exactly. I'm getting avatar the last airbender flashbacks.

>>55158642
I always loved the brilliance of the Mexica in becoming the Aztec. They literally came in pretending to be the people they were conquering, then merged their own beliefs and morphed the beliefs of those in the area to match theirs while still being recognizable enough to still garner recognition.

>>55158583
Because everyone knows there was only one Meso-American civilization, the Mayincaztec! Toltec? who are they?

>>55158535
And judging from the shortlist (and assuming there's not another return set) Chandra will likely either appear in a Wild West/Australia plane, an Underground plane, or a traditional Arthurian plane. A lot of the other possibilities were taken by the three most recent planes.

Kaladesh is steampunk + India (though there's room to reuse those themes separately, not for a while)
Amonkhet is Egyptian through and through
Ixalan is Dinosaurs + Pirates + Meso-American + possibly Water world?

Besides those there are themes like Prison, Noir, Sky, and Disease that could easily be mixed in to one of the three sets after Dominiaria.

>>55158711
Pan Mesoamericanism in general is as cool as fuck.

It recalls shit like the Greek-Roman or Semeitic-Aramaic-Babylonian religous clusters but its relative isolation anf low corpus makes it fucking tantzalizing.

For a second I was learning maya just becasue its writing system reminded me so much of Japans

(Also I like how the more Naval Maya got to be merfolk, despite being based on am island aztec trade was mostly land routes)

>>55158711
>According to the pictographic codices in which the Aztecs recorded their history, the place of origin was called Aztlán. Early migrants settled the Basin of Mexico and surrounding lands by establishing a series of independent city-states. These early Nahua cities were ruled by petty kings called tlahtohqueh (singular, tlatoāni). Most of the existing settlements, which had been established by other indigenous peoples before the Nahua migration, were assimilated into Nahua culture.[7]

>These early city-states fought various small-scale wars with each other, but due to shifting alliances, no individual city gained dominance.[8] The Mexica were the last of Aztlan migrants to arrive in Central Mexico. They entered the Basin of Mexico around the year 1250 AD, and by then most of the good agricultural land had already been claimed.[9] The Mexica persuaded the king of Culhuacan to allow them to settle in a relatively infertile patch of land called Chapultepec (Chapoltepēc, "in the hill of grasshoppers"). The Mexica served as hired mercenaries for Culhuacan.[10]

>After they served Culhuacan in battle, the king appointed one of his daughters to rule over the Mexica. According to mythological native accounts, the Mexica instead sacrificed her by flaying her skin, on the command of their god Huitzilopochtli.[11] When the king of Culhuacan learned of this, he attacked and used his army to drive the Mexica from Tizaapan by force. The Mexica moved to an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco, where an eagle nested on a nopal cactus. The Mexica interpreted this as a sign from their god and founded their new city, Tenochtitlan, on this island in the year ōme calli, or "Two House" (1325 AD).

That is hilarious

>Be crazy dicks no one wants to fuck with
>Get stuck with shitland
>Terraform a supercity and play everyone else off eachother until you rule.

>>55155560
>Their stories do not involve sacrifice, getting duped by invaders, or any other tired trope like that.
>Their stories do not involve sacrifice
So, let me get this straight. We want to be forward-thinking and throw out the colonialist ideas of the conquistadors...and the way that we do that is to agree with them that the natives' sacrificial rites were proof of their apostasy?

Bloodletting and sacrifice were a huge part of a number of Mesoamerican religions, and probably originally came from the Olmecs, but it wasn't like you had to sacrifice a dude just to get up in the morning. It wouldn't be hard at all to have an emphasis on self-sacrifice in a partially white faction. Just play it up as demonstrably for a good purpose--say, ritual cutting and then feeding the blood to your dinosaur mount in order to establish a bond. Or the thing that the Mayans did where they'd all pierce holes in their arms and then run a cord through the holes to show how they were bonded.

>childish card game
>lore
kek

>>55158972
I think their goal was to avoid the issue altogether.

>>55158972
Well I think the idea is that instead of

Genocidal Rapists vs Sacrificial Bloodflaying dicks

They wanted FUN DINORIDER PIRATE ADVENTURE

So they took the cool parts and left the rest out.

hell, the vamps arent even here to conquer, its more of a grailquest/ fountain of youth

>>55158998
>>55159044
Thing is, the bloodletting and sacrifice in Mesoamerican religions wasn't really violent or dickish. Sometimes it was just a nick, and sometimes it was actually the priest cutting themselves and using the blood in a ritual.

It would work so well with Enrage as a mechanic that I'm a little offended that they took the "bawww sacrifice is always bad" angle, especially since it kind of tacitly implies an agreement with the conquistadors when they're trying to avoid that very thing.

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>>55158583
>>55158754
Maya had sun worship too.

Its a giant ball of light in the sky that controls the weather. Most cultures worshipped it in some way.

>>55157224
There's a Rakdos planeswalker pirate hellbent on razing the plane until he finds whatever's trapping him on Ixalan. You'll get your Blackbeard, don't worry.

>>55158890
>After they served Culhuacan in battle, the king appointed one of his daughters to rule over the Mexica. According to mythological native accounts, the Mexica instead sacrificed her by flaying her skin, on the command of their god Huitzilopochtli


ahahhaha

>>55159179
Aztec I meant derp

My point is they both worshipped the sun

>>55159196
Uchiha fucking shits.

>>55159147
I think it's more a case of 'we literally want to ignore everything about that period of history that people might have an issue with.'

They want the fun stuff to work with, the rest would just cause potential headaches for them when they get shouted at for depicting Mesoamericans as evil or for trying to justify the Conquistada, when they were doing no such thing.

>>55159237
In what world is blood magic not fun as hell?

>>55159254
When it's blood magic that you're connecting to a very real culture that was obliterated.

Instead, the vampire conquistadors are the blood magic ones, because there's nothing wrong with depicting the conquistadors as negative, as they committed atrocities instead of being victims to them.

>>55157039
but that's historically accurate!

>>55159291
>because there's nothing wrong with depicting the conquistadors as negative
But the vampire aren't depicted as negative in the block.

>>55159291
The vampire arent really being portrayed any more negatively then the others.

In fact they are trying to reclaim the "sun" because it once belonged to them. Neither pirates or the sun-tribe can claim that.

>>55159254
Ours.

Which is the point.

Similar how they almost has a suicide bomber mechanic for the rebellion in Aer and it was pulled for obvious reasons.

>>55159553

Right. Heck the people the Vampires have most wronged are the European/African themed Pirates, and it's not clear that the Pirates were clearly the good guys, particularly given that the vampires try not to hurt innocent people, despite violence being a requirement for them to thrive.

>>55159298
what exactly is accurate about any of those things?

Politics should be banned from this board entirely. Cant even enjoy anything anymore without some /pol/tard on a domestic terrorist watchlist showing up and reeing that in some art theres an unattractive woman that he cant fap to. Newsflash most women (and men) are ugly

they said the vampires eat heretics and rebels of a state and that they're led by an iron fisted monarch, not just 'bad people'

>>55157864
>>55157878
Runeclaw bear tho

>>55160520
That's one bear, but it's clearly got magical stuff going on with it, presumably enhancing its threat level. Not really comparable.

>>55160568
>>55160568
Ashcoat bear tho
Bear Cub tho
Forest Bear tho

>>55160594
One could argue Ashcoat Bear's fuckin' time hax could make it both deadlier and harder to kill than an ordinary bear. I'll grant you the others. Bear Cub is just silly, though.

>>55157758
>I'm literally 8 years old and/or retarded

>>55159772
"Innocent" is a relevent term to them.

to them, any non-believer or enemy in war is guilty.

Accept Christ or expect bites.

>>55160237
>everyone who disagrees with me is from /pol/

I've been to /pol/ twice in my seven years here and even I agree that there's definitely a thinly veiled agenda in the works. I don't particularly care that it's there so long as the game is still enjoyable and the writing isn't total garbage, but it's there nonetheless.

>>55155628
Based vampire conquistadors

>>55161083

Right, it's an issue of implementation, and the fact that this makes them really need wars to not run the risk of killing too many of their underlings.

War economy of blood.

>>55156779
>tfw no cutthroat rapist

>>55157386
>jurassic park themed
Nigga it's clearly Dinotopia themed.

>>55157745
How the fuck do you hoist a sail that big?

>>55157795
He has five power. He can do it all by himself since he's really fucking good at killing shit.

>>55157851
The Thran and the Brothers War are good.

>>55162023
Magic, maybe? I mean, it's a magical artifact, maybe it can hoist its own sails.

>>55158541
Neither of the faces look good, nor do the outfits, and everything else is so simple and unconnected that it's relegated to the position of background props. There's literally nothing in the art that's good, it's fucking Pathfinder-tier.

>>55156803
Wait this one actually isn't a girl?
I thought they were an old lady.

>>55158080
Don't forget how being given magical strength bonuses makes you more able to drive things.
Baby Jace can't drive anything at all, but if there's a nice Anthem to listen to around suddenly he has a driver's license.

>>55162125
It's Pathfinder-tier because it's the main Pathfinder artist.

>>55162734
Well no fucking wonder it's shit.

>>55157856
No, AEtherborn were written gendered and changed pretty late. That's why Yahenni is so feminine.

>>55163079
I still think that as much as WotC wants to pander, the decision to do that did make them accidentally create something interesting in the Aetherborn.

>>55162814
>reynolds is shit
shit taste confirmed. Reynolds is among the best and most experienced artists magic ever had.

>>55155560
lol these fags. Mexicans aren't triggered about Spain as native-americans and niggers are about Ypipo, because we are the conquistadors.

Mexico is a mestizo country, our civil war was between criollos and spaniards, not about skin color but about not paying taxes to a faggot king that cared more about sucking Napoleon's cock than managing the colonies.

It's also hard for people who actually know the history of mexico to think about the aztec empire like americans think of natives. We didn't have a trail of tears, we didin't have a mass genocide of the natives' main source of food and resources, we didn't have a gold rush displacing whole nations at gunpoint. We had a war and Cortez only won by playing a losing hand like a mad genius.

Mexicans who aren't mad don't believe in WE WUZ bullshit, we admire both ends of our ancestry because at the time they met they were both the apex of their culture and their struggle was one of the most impressive conflicts in human history.

>>55162656
he becomes inspired enough to learn a stick

>>55160074
the drugs

>>55163292
Try telling that to the people at wizards

>>55163185
>>>/global/rules/3

>>55156026
Maybe that continent was evil.

>>55163079

Source?

>>55158972
>pierce holes in their arms and then run a cord through the holes to show how they were bonded
That... that is actually pretty cool thing.
This should have definitely been brought over into the Sun Empire.. Not sure how they'd elevate it to something more than just a cultural quirk (as some sort of magic maybe?)...

But it would be awesome.

remember when we had cool sets like mirage

now we get hearthstone expansions that are already out

>>55163545

.... The original African block?

>>55156041
It's really shitty. If you google "female pirate art" you get two women in armor, two women in military clothes, two girls in renaissance faire clothes, three wenches and an erotic art pic in the first 10 results. But WotC won't let us have a single sexy woman in the character archetype that's known for bodice rippers.

I wouldn't have any problem with ugly people showing up if it didn't mean we can't have beautiful enticing people anymore.

>>55163568
yeah but it was before all this sjw shit so they were just black people is some weird ass jungle and shit

>>55163409
i don't understand this post

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>>55163642
he's saying you're trolling because you like Wayne Reynolds. I don't get the hate honestly, the man does some pretty fantastic work and people tend to forget art directors dictate what goes on in these pieces most of the time.

>>55163138
Well like I said, even if the Aetherborn were designed to pander, at least that pandering isn't core to their very flavor.

Aetherborn aren't oppressed or discriminated against in Kaladesh. They don't have any inner turmoil about their existence that they blame others for. They're essentially like the flamekin of Lorwyn- human sized/shaped people elementals.

And most importantly, Wizards didn't try to invent/use bullshit grammar to describe them, and stuck with the traditional singular they.

>>55155904
Monkey pirate and bird pirate confirmed?
Also is Orc captain getting a card.

>>55163597

Uh huh.

Just because you didn't see it doesn't meant it wasn't already there.

>>55163292
I am assuming thats why they called their Latin American office for advice.

Seriously though, the Spanish and Aztec empires were psychopathic dicks.

>>55157128
Eye-patches, she is a pirate after all
Cap'n Vraksa the stone-eyed.

>>55158519
The aztec war tactics and weapons were designed to capture, not to kill. The one time they truly fought to the death after Alvarado's massacre, 3k aztec soldiers decimated 870 spanish soldiers and 4k tlaxcalteca warriros.

>>55159180
Not him, but you better not be lying anon, I really want a rakdos Tibalt pirate with peg leg and hook hand because of Sorin....
But you know, I guess a normal rakdos planeswalker is cool too.

>>55164090
His name is Angrath and he's not in the first set unless he's a DFC.

>>55163712
That looks cool as fuck!

>>55164523
Fiend Hunter is one of his best pieces and personally one of my favorite magic pieces in general. I actually like the art of hostage taker though so.

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>>55163712
>>55164564
Wayne Reynolds has moments of brilliance where he just does a real knockout piece. Pic related. Ultimately though, I really dislike his style, though I understand that its a matter of taste most of the time.

Hostage Taker is an abomination, though.

Fuck Magic and fuck Wizards. Just fuck them.

>>55157459
>we need planeswalkers with autism, characters who are transexuals in a mongol horde setting, black greeks, black people in the european horror plane, black pirates

It's interesting when you view different planes because they're supposed to be different. When you make them all the same what is the fucking point anymore?

>>55157459
>I only want Strong White Male characters on my cards.
I mean, we haven't had a decent one in a little while. It'd be nice to have a vampire templar or something in Ixilan.

>If there are going to be women characters, they must be young, busty, beautiful white women
Name the last time one of these was printed. Liliana doesn't count, because she is neither all that busty, not a young woman.

Nice strawman btw senpai.

>>55164922
Does Gideon count as a Strong White Male, or no? I guess being a Space Greek might make him not count? I've never had to pay super close attention to the distinctions there.

>>55164922
IMO, the last abnormally beautiful woman in Magic art was Necropolis Regent, with the last notoriously sexually attractive woman in Magic art being Meren.
As for the last heroic white male character, we have to go all the way back to original Innistrad for Odric, and they made him a coward and an asshole in SOI block.

>>55165197
Even if he does he was introduced in 2009, it's been nearly a decade since we got a new white male heroic planeswalker. Pretty much every good new walkers have been women of color and every evil new walkers have been men.

>>55165197
>Does Gideon count
Not really. Leaving out the fact that they've really been darkening him lately, which is barely even my point, he's also not a very good character. Nor is he new blood, because SOI Jace was at least thought-out in about half the stories.

>>55165198
>Necropolis Regent
>Meren
I'm gonna judge you a little bit for that, but everyone has different tastes, anon. Plus I'd hardly call either of them busty.

I would like to think that Rem Karolus is white, but knowing them, and seeing as he's yet to have a printing, I don't have high hopes.

>>55156041

The most powerful pirate of all time was a Chinese woman.

>>55165228
Also he was an antagonist at the time of his introduction. And yeah, there hasn't been a single new male good guy walker since... Uhh... RtR. Maybe. They're probably gonna turn Domiri into a bad guy too for no reason.
>>55165247
I really hope they fuck up their writing somehow and accidentally make the vampires the most sympathetic faction in this set. I'll bet MaRo will make an angry blogpost about it if it happens.

>>55165292
>I really hope they fuck up their writing somehow and accidentally make the vampires the most sympathetic faction in this set.
Dear God do I want this. The Legion of Dusk looks downright fascinating, and I desperately want them to be incredibly sympathetic.

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>>55165247
Meren is jungle girl hot and as buxom or scantily clad as we'll get so long as Dawn Murin has art direction faculties.
Necropolis Regent is the kind of immaculate perfect pretty that gives tumblr PTSD, and I'm gonna be very pissed if we don't get at least one vampire similar to her in Ixalan because conquistador vampires can't not have a bloody Virgin Mary expy.

>>55165330
Yeah, they seem like a really interesting take on vampires. Also my they stroke the same colonialsim boner I get from playing EUIV

>>55165330
>>55165292
If I was a betting man I'd say the legion will probably be particularly important by the end. I thought it was notable they had a very specific reason for wanting and idea of what the Immortal Sun is. Coalition want it because money, Empire wants it because power, Heralds dont want anybody to have it, and the Legion want it because it was stolen from them, but it has the name the Immortal Sun and the Legion is the only one that has a specific purpose for it in mind, since they believe it grants eternal life.

>>55165292
My hope is the conflict is one where all the factions involved are basically equally sympathetic and basically equally in the wrong, because that would be a refreshing change from the rebels vs. oppressor rut we've been in storywise and also I kinda like all the factions.

>>55165415
Wait, the Magic whatsit was STOLEN from them? Gonna be hard to keep them from being the sympathetic faction.

>>55165376
Agrus Kos was a 10/10 character and if he was made to fill some sort of black guy tokenism quota, I certainly couldn't tell.

The problem is that we know what the intentions are. If this was 2006, they could make the EXACT same set with the same art and the same ratios, and it wouldn't be all that big a deal. It's just that they've specifically made a point of getting political, so people are paranoid now.

It's a real shame, because we're all worried about what they're gonna do with Teferi in April. Last time I checked, we liked him.

Man, there's a hell of a lot of discussion over the science of dino feathers when it's literally just artists drawing what they think looks cool.

>>55165376
My indian friends are pissed that a lot of kaladesh creatures look like african americans instead of indians. I would assume egyptians feel the same disgust.
At least I get to see my own race represented by cute bronze girls and dinos since the token black representation this set was absorbed by pirates.

Don't make the mistake of thinking only white people are upset by the over-representation of african americans.

>>55165455

Yes, very political to acknowledge that the racial makeup of humans in different universes might not just be 90% white dudes.

>>55165415
>since they KNOW it grants eternal life.
They lived off of it until it was stolen because MUH REBELS

>>55165469
I actually think that multiethnic pirates works just fine. They're pirates, what allegiances to their home nations do they really have? Diversity would be a natural consequence.

I just hate the art.

>>55165479
Instead of talking about how you are going out of your way to make things that are not white dudes, why not just do it and show a plane that isn't just a bunch of white dudes without almost literally parading around about it?

They've even done this before, in the second expansion for the game, no less!

>>55165457
Because AL, whoever that is, invoked science as the reason behind it.
If they hadn't brought it up, the eternal autist might not feel to vindicated.
I'm just a tiny bit peeved, because sauropods didn't have feathers, they had quills, so ankylosaur and triceratops with feathers is completely innacurate.

>>55165469

No one ever said having stupid opinions was limited to white dudes.

White dudes are definitely the loudest about it, though.

>>55165508

Yes, because it's the layman's understanding of dinosaur science at present. She's completely correct to say it. Now, you can fucking quibble all day with how the artists decide to depict them, but that'd be really fucking retarded.

So, yeah, that's what I expect /tg/ to do.

>>55165498
First expansion to the game actually. Arabian nights

>>55165435
>>55165435
We don't know how or why yet but yea. I assume narratively hey made thst concept because they didnt want the story to be about evil conquerors, so they gave them a motivation to be there that people would get. You arent supposed to think the Legion of Dusk are the bad guys inherently so on some level you are expected to sympathize with them. All the factions have something about them to make them not all bad. Pirates are pillagers and rapists but their ancestors were exiled from their own home by the legion, the merfolk are salty about being weaker than the empire, but want to prevent people from fucking shit up by taking the macguffin, the empire are a powerful force of of savages but they mostly judt want vampires to leave them the fuck alone, and the legion ARE a bunch of religious cult of undead conquerors but are only bothering the people of Ixalan because someone took their shit.

>>55165498

The thing is, they're really not parading it. Your average Timmy who cracks packs is not going to give a flying fuck if the guy riding the dinosaur is white, black, Asian, or a fucking Merfolk.

The only people who notice or get pissy about it are the people who spend their time looking for it.

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>>55165537
I meant second set.

>>55165558
You mean the nerds who care too much about their nerd hobby? Yeah, fuck those people.

Ixalan art is awful and unappealing.

>>55165508

Well it's a good thing we don't have Ankylosaurs or Triceratops in the set, then. Ixilan Dinos are clearly INSPIRED by real dinos, but obviously are separate species.

>>55165552
So give them their goddamn shit back and they'll fuck off for a while. If they manage to batter your empire to the point of stealing your MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER than they'll probably realize that there's no one to stop them from squatting in the ruins of your former civilization

>>55165532
If you don't torment people for their lack of knowledge they'll never have any reason to fix it.

>>55165580
I also like to complain about the starter/planeswalker/intro/whatever deck chandra from kaladesh where she was at literal peak whiteness. I've made a joke before that she's less "Chandra Nalaar" in that card and more "Chandra O'connor"

>>55165483
Do we have a source? I got the impression it was a myth or legend based on
>And they have brought their ships and their conquistadors to find this item that they think will allow them to live an eternal existence without needing blood to survive

>>55165558
As a random Timmy, I care if it's a merfolk. That would be pretty cool, particularly if its one of those aquatic dinosaurs (or prehistoric non-dinosaur lizards, whatever.)

>>55165558
>The only people who notice or get pissy about it are the people who spend their time looking for it.
>assasinscreedtrailer.webm
People are aware, it's just nobody says shit IRL because as much as they claim to be the underdog, the far left has the capability to ruin lives through harassment.

>>55165643
God damn that shit was hilarious. Remind me, did they shut down the chat for that or no?

>>55165619
It cannot have been stolen from them if they don't know they had it and what it did.

>>55165591
No one knows where the Immortal Sun is to just give it back. And even so I doubt the Sun Empire would. They are an empire after all. I dont think they'd give up a super powerful artifact. We still dont know who or what took it from the Legion to begin with which is probably its own plot point, otherwise I think they wouldnt have specified specifcally that it was once theirs and could have coasted by on the legion wanting it as a way to help their religious leaders not need to kill people to live.

>>55165677
Whatever, Immortal Legion represent.
Also, if we're going for a colonial allegory, and the pirates are the people the Legion kicked out, then wouldn't they be fucking Moors?

>>55165676
Well thats not true at all. Could be revisionist history, could be religious propaganda. Its really not a weird thing that a culture could believe or feel something was taken from them without knowing if its actually true.

>>55165714
If they go for that angle that'll open an entirely different can of worms

>>55165734
I'm almost certain it is what they're going for. In fact Im pretty sure it will not give eternal life at all, at least not in the wonderful sense its implied they believe it does.

>>55165777
Part of me doubts that they'd be smart enough to think about that. I mean, these ARE the same people who thought that Kozilek showing up in OGW and emrakul in EMN would be a surprise. to the point they fucking hid the EMN set symbol even though everyone already fucking knew

>>55155628
Best tribe

>>55165228
All the white male planeswalkers are the ones playing the game.

>>55165817
Alison's language involving the vampires and the otherwise extreme vagueness of what the other factions believe it does just heavily have an undertone of "the macguffin is not what it seems". Its not like itd be a particularly mindblowing twist or anything. Its not an unusual plot device at all.

>>55165910
In that case, it's what made them vampires in the first place. It's the most obvious plot twist

>>55165330
Hard to be sympathetic when you are a theocratic empire that took over an entire continent and eats anyone who doesnt follow their religion.

>>55165935
I mean, yeah, combined islam took over about the area of a continent, but not the entireity of one single continent

>>55165935
Ishgard managed it.

>>55165875
I really love thd idea of vampires that choose not to feed as a simile to religious fasting, but then they go crazy from not drinking blood and explode into fits of extreme rapturous violence. The Legion of Dusk is cool as shit.

>>55165618
They even made jokes about it in the story.

They just made a fiery redbead and gave her a name to sound exotic, but then when they got to her home plane and realized it made sense for it to be South Asian, you have your indian MC being the whitest white girl on the planet.

>>55165709
Its explcitly not a colonial allegory

Its why the Legion is there for a Fountain of Youth and not to conquer.

>>55166024
The literal whitest girl. I remember the beefslab incident.

>>55165817
She very specifically said they BELIEVE it grants eternal life.

If it was just a straitforward immortality stone there would be no reason cor any subterfuge , there is obviusly a twist of some sort.

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>>55165935
4U, person with terrible taste.
I bet you think crusades were unjustified.

>>55166058
Someone already pointed that out here >>55165910
I posted my retort here >>55165931

>>55165950
Landmass wise wouldnt Christianity have taken over the most continents?

The Spanish and British Empires were both fuckhuge and had Christian state religions.(Rome too by the end)

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>>55157459
I see nothing wrong in that post

>>55166039
Its comical they didnt get more shit for that.

Its a literal SNL tier joke.

>>55166087
Yes, but that was post colonial times.
And I know that they've said this ain't supposed to be a colonial allegory, but it's fucking impossible to not make comparisons since that's clearly what they're drawing from

>>55166085
Eh, too centralized to the Vamp faction, needs to be more broader.

My guess its why Ixalan is a walker trap/cant be found with Izzet tech

Bolas wants it, and the lore seems to imy the merfolk want no one to have it becasuse something bad would happen.

Maybe its a dragon egg, and it hatches to a baby Ugin that spawn quetzalcoatls everywhere?

We know the meteor is coming, so maybe it has something to do with that?

I actually am enjoying pondering what it could be a lot. Good job of stoking story investment.

>>55166112
Are you replying to the wrong post?

That post is literally about colonial times.

>>55166143
I GOT IT
IT'S WHERE THEY PUT THE GOOD DESIGN.

>>55166165
People have been complaining about it and it's hard to tell who's who when everyone is everyone

>>55165709
Pilgrims.

Ran out of the old world and onto the new world to avoid religous domination.

>>55165280
A Chinese whore, if you want to be specific.

>>55166282
I think she was Ex-whore at the time of her height.
Probably. I wouldn't say it's a definitive no.

>tfw the Immortal Sun is friendship

>>55166183
>being this new to not being able to follow a reply chain

>>55166369

... Why would you be whoring when you are literally the boss of pirates?

... Did she have a sex life? Friggin' probably.

>>55166745
She was a whore who took over after her "husband" died. Put her children in charge of various fleets, eventually China had to pay her off to get her to stop, so she retired and opened a huge casino.

>>55157957
Well... its not so good if you're a criminal or heretic.

>>55156800
4 Colors actually.
RGW+GU
UBR+BW

But still I kind of like the color identities in this set. I was sort of used to things coming in factors of 5.

>vampire conquistadors
is this really necessary

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>>55159214
Just gonna pointlessly lore speculate here.
But I wonder if the sun in ixalan is sort of like the moon in innistrad. Like a weird physical object made of some kind of powerful material. The Immortal Sun could be a fragment of the sun of Ixalan... and the star of extinction could be some sun detritus that falls to earth and wipes stuff out.

Fuck it, what if the sun is made of Gold.

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>>55165351
>Sexualizing the Virgin

There is a special place in Hell for people like you

>>55157662

Domesticates are important to the rise of civilizations for several reasons. They give you ready sources of protein, milk, fur and leather. You can ride them for use in warfare and move larger cargos with them across land. Most importantly for food production, you can hitch them to plows and use them to aid in agriculture, where their manure is also extremely beneficial.

The other side is that most of our major infectious diseases started out in our domesticated animals and then made the jump to humans. That's the reason why when Europeans showed up in Mexico they were breathing out a cocktail of diseases that wiped out most native americans, whilst in response the sole diease the natives handed back was syphilus.

Furthermore sub-saharan africans didn't have access to lots of domesticates. Yes, they tamed some animals, but there's a big difference between taming and domestication.

>>55158351

North-south orientation on the continents fucked them over too, since it made crops much harder to spread as opposed to east-west orientation of Eurasia. Same latitudes tend to have similar climates, so a crop adapted for growing on one latitude tends to grow well in similar latitudes. Eurasia runs mainly east-west, meaning crops spread easily, thus larger populations, trade routes etc spreading out from initial food domestication centres. America goes North-South, which means food production spread very slowly from its centres of origin.

>>55167121
Nigger one of the two words used to describe Necropolis Regend is "immaculate".
Can't you see a gorgeous creature without wanting to put your dick in it?

>>55159147
>Thing is, the bloodletting and sacrifice in Mesoamerican religions wasn't really violent or dickish.

>Sacrifice by decapitation is depicted in Classic period Maya art, and sometimes took place after the victim was tortured, being variously beaten, scalped, burnt or disembowelled

>The sacrificial victim was stripped and painted blue and made to wear a peaked cap, in a similar manner to the preparation for heart sacrifice. The victim was bound to a stake during a ritual dance, and blood was drawn from the genitals and smeared onto the image of the presiding deity. A white symbol was painted over the victim's heart, which served as a target for the archers. The dancers then passed in front of the sacrificial victim, shooting arrows in turn at the target until the whole chest was filled with arrows.

>In the Classic period city of Palenque, a woman in her twenties was entombed alive to accompany a deceased nobleman as a funerary offering

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Maya_culture

We can sugar-coat this all we want but this was violent and I dare say, dickish.

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>>55167207
Vampires are sin incarnate anon.

>>55167169
Aztecs pretty much invented aquaponics. They didn't need beasts of burden, there were a bronze age self-sustaining Venice.

>>55167270
Doesn't mean they can't have religious icons of their own.
If Alexander Gregory/Jeremy Jarvis were still the art directors instead of Dawn and the shitshow PR committee, you can bet your life the vampires in Ixalan would be full Requiem: Chevalier Vampire and the set would sell gangbusters off heavy metal nostalgia alone.

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>>55167307
>Requiem: Chevalier Vampire

What is this 40k looking bullshit and why did no one tell me sooner?

>>55166558
We One piece now?
Vampire cathedral ship is thriller bark?

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>>55158689

>>55155499
>He recorded the assassin Vraska leaving Ravnica, but was unable to tell where she ended up
Did they ever explain where Niv-mizzet went after Dissension where nobody could find him on the plane?

The reason forced diversity makes Magic feel like such shit is the reason forced diversity makes the world feel like shit. Making every singe plane a melting pot mix of every social justice checklist makes them all look the same. That's not diversity. It also doesn't make any sense that every plane would have an equal mix of every race.

Magic has always had minorities (in our sense of that word) in the cards. Always. It's just that nobody cared about it because it felt natural and they weren't looking to get offended. Another difference is they always fit the setting of the particular card and set so it felt very natural.

Kamigawa doesn't need an african woman to be a main character in it.

>>55169284

Amen. The last set I played was Mirage, and I loved it, because it felt so different and unique. It had an African theme and worked well within it; it didn't feel the need to cram in other stuff. Same with Ice Age or Alliances just before it; they had contained narratives that didn't require diversity to work. I didn't expect to see a dark skinned Balduvian nor was the set lacking for them not being there.

So if Karn built Mirrodin, why isn't it falling apart? The whole point of Serra's realm was that Planeswalkers can only make unstable planes that are doomed to implode sooner or later.

>>55169808
Karn specifically found an empty, abandoned plane that existed naturally. What he did was terraform it into a wonderful world of metal that eventually got corrupted by the glistening oil he carried with him, tampering with it on every single level.

>>55157481
When was the last time Jace was actually useful instead of pacifying some mooks or getting intel?