MTG Salvation

YEAH NIC EFF HIM UP!

On the one hand, Gainsay saw plenty of play the last time it was in Standard. On the other hand, it was in the era of mono-blue devotion. Still, this card is a strict upgrade, so it should see some solid sideboard play.

Please Jace die. In fact I hope they all die so we can get all new walkers in the sets going forward.

Gideon's Defeat, Liliana's Defeat, Chandra's Defeat, Nissa's Defeat. I pretty much agree, though I would be a little disappointed if Liliana were to die.

The Ixalan leaks seem to have a Jace Planeswalker so that may be out.

Oddly specific for a small bonus.

URZA Himself wont make an Appearance in Return to Dominaria. KARN will, along with (Hopefully) a 4th Nicol. maybe one of the old Elder Dragons also. Sarkhan will be there, as will Ugin and Narset. Unless of course Bolas loses here on Amonkhet. Return to Dominaria Block will be about the Non-Gatewatch PW's defeating bolas. Karn, Ugin, Sarkhan, Narset, and probably Kiora, Tezzeret or Garruk. Tezzeret because he wants to be rid of Bolas.

Xenagos isnt evil. He is just insane, Tibalt just wants to torture things( nothing Else). Nahiri Trapped Sorin in a Wall. Ugin is the weird Stoic Planeswalker that wants to study stuff, which is why Narset sought him out. Lili Will NOT turn white. Probably Green. The PW Decks hint at their next colors. Chandra and gideon are both going to be RW next and Lili will be B/G. Sarkhan is also with Ugin hanging out on Tarkir. Narset and Sarkhan are the new Nahiri and Sorin (Look at the first letters.) Ugin will be around forever.

Or they could ignore your thought out plan and do the unthinkable...Urza, Reborn. Because, really...would it actually surprise anyone if he popped up out of nowhere to get the Gatewatch killed in his quest to annihilate New Phyrexia?

CHANDRA CANT DIE!!!
I hope Jace dies and becomes
Jace, Thrall of Liliana ( Cus Lili resurects him)
Besides we need to know if chandra is in love with Gideon, Liliana or both.

They're not backing out of the Gatewatch. They might be temporarily defeated, but it's too good of a marketing decision to get rid of it. So you don't need to antagonize the creative team.

Most likely, these leaks are planned. One or two of the Gatewatch will die- hopefully Jace and Chandra. But I'm sure they'll find some freakish way to resurrect them later, maybe making them black/red and black/blue planeswalkers, or else Jace will have put his mind in somebody else again, and we just won't know until much, much later.

Nicol will almost certainly win this encounter, and the group will be humbled, but they won't be totally defeated. They might just wander around awhile- backpack around Europe- take a year to find themselves. Nissa will take up calligraphy. Gideon will **** lots of *****es. Liliana will dabble in necrophilia,

But rest assured, they'll return, and with a vengeance.

I don't think the set is large enough for them to have 9 Planeswalker cards (counting the PW decks).



They could have flavored flashback cards in a later Core Set though, representing the Defeated Gatewatch. The Gatewatch has to endure as a group to defeat or at least fight two more inevitable built up stories:


New Phyrexia need to be re-taken, Ba Sing Se style (Avatar the Last Airbender reference)

and Emrakul is so going to break out of the moon and the other two Eldrazi Titans are so not dead and Sorin and Nahiri and Ugin, all being proud Oldwalker from the Crazy Days of Yore, are all going to be problematic Anti-Heroes at least as evil as Liliana Vess (but nowhere near as Evil as Nicol Bolas, Xenagos, or possibly Tibalt) (the amount of sadism really shows how villainous someone is) Tezzeret may be creeping towards that levels of Evil, but maybe not. Can't quite tell how much his character development from Test of Metal they've kept around in his Kaladesh showing.



The Gatewatch is not defeating Nicol Bolas though. They're getting crushed here, at least to the degree that Dawn of Justice killed Superman and maybe worse. I predict one of them actually dying, Gideon, and the rest of them are going 'walk the hell out of this godawful stupid plan. I saw this coming a mile away. They had no plan. They thought they were going to whack Nicol Bolas if they hated him enough. Morons. Great Story telling by the Creative Team!

But Nicol Bolas was always going to win this, more obviously than Alara Reborn (which really he lost, because Ajani cheated.)

Ajani is going to replace Gideon on the Gatewatch which they've already set up.

Nissa is set up as a Green-Blue Walker, Ajani as a Green-White-(Red?) one, Chandra is still pure Red, Liliana is Black....and it's been lowkey rumored for basically ever/ or just fan-shipped/ that Liliana might actually turn White after her 4th Demon contract is broken. Jace has been begging for a Blue-Black card since his very second card appeared.

Garruk has mostly been killed off, Elspeth is killed off, Gideon is killed off.


Between the first 10 'Walker cards ever debuted, Lorwyn 5 and Alara 5, Jace, Liliana, and Chandra have had more shenanigans with Bolas than anyone, and White Planeswalkers in particular seem to mysteriously die off or leave the company and come back often.

The Green Spot is where they do medium-sized (time in-universe-wise) interesting stuff, like Garruk's curse, or Nissa's Zendikar story arcs or the Ob Nixilis Duel Deck thing. I don't know if switching out Green-Blue Nissa for Black-Green-Blue Sarkhan would be cool or not (a Redless Sarkhan is an unusual concept, but he would NOT have to lose his Dragon flavor-- he could just be Scary Dark/Swampy Dragons and super cool that way, and it would be a brilliant way to keep him fresh to stretch his powerset to the Graveyard some and slowly build him up as the Superhero to Bolas' Supervillain, using all the same themes except more for Good than Evil, because he Loves Dragons for the Joy of it!)

Vraska is also actually a Pirate now, and from Green-Black, could go Green Blue, Black Blue, or Green Black Blue and pick up more watery abilities like Kiora.



I dunno exactly which of the darker Planeswalkers of the Multiverse are going to befriend the Gatewatch, but Bolas is curbstomping Amonkhet, and leaving, and is a huge threat. like a very huge threat. So they need even more friends than they did when Ajani told them to ask for help now. It seems very likely that Sarkhan and Vraska have to join the Gatewatch for anyone to have a chance against Bolas. Liliana helped a lot on Innistrad, Sorin at least helpfully/smartly didn't ruin anything on Tarkir like silly Jace would have, and the more Black Planeswalkers they can actually make friends with, the better.


I can't wait for Tibalt 2.0. His personality seems Xenagos-y and should be an opportunity for lots of fun. I also want Ashiok to be given an Oldwalker backstory.

YAY KILL JACE HE NEEDS TO DIE!!!.

Jace's Defeat could have been a 1-drop, IMO.



But maybe they are trying to balance it against itself-- could this POSSIBLY herald/portent the chance that Mind Sculptor will be unbanned in Modern?!

When Jace and Stoneforge got banned, I thought that bans were so infrequent that they could be used to gauge how serious a card was on all the scales.

Since then, so many cards have been ''Banned in Standard'' that it just loses lots of the meaning and weight it used to hold (if it ever did for more savvy people not under the spell of thinking about bans romantically- like From the Vault Exiled).

It may be, therefore, that Bitterblossom was broken enough that by today's hammer-happy DCI, it would have got the ban. but Idkn.


I used to associate the ban list with almost strictly combo cards and some aggro cards that are ultra fast, with Jace being something I knew was surprisingly slow for being banned like that, but still pretty almighty for its own right.....not quite a Goyf, but just such a champ at what he does.....still sitting in the big leagues. he's bad in Commander, which is funny. but it's no laughing matter to have him in any format. he is competitive in Vintage and Legacy and would tear up Modern at least in a guaranteed-to-be-Tier-1 deck, although maybe if they unbanned him they'd never ban him again because of what else they've printed.

I don't take the ban lists as seriously as I used to because Saheeli Rai should be banned, not that stupid cat, and she's not.

i'm going to be honest broheem--- I don't know anything about Bitterblossom one way or another except that I was skeptical about it's art and it's pricetag made me hate the art more and I just never learned anything about Faeries in general. Never played with or against them, I just liked the Millfolk more. I have this brainspace that knows they're powerful but I never was attracted to them as thinking they were fun or pretty. Basically, looking back on the card now, I'd love to have Bitterblossom in Vampire typing.

"Nay sayer?" do you mean I would think Bitterblossom would be OP? I never say never because Maro says it, and even though I WANT cards to be broken, no card is broken enough to satisfy me. Manaless Dredge is weaker than I want it to be and that makes me sad, but it seems to make the game more durable and enjoyable for more people so I get more cards.

dude, my Jace statement vs. the Counterspell in Amonkhet is just hoping that in one case out of 5 of these defeats, the Tribal interaction with a Planeswalker type would have any relevancy whatsoever. On the whole, these Defeat cards are wastes of cardboard except for being cool flavor. They'll exist in Standard briefly and never be Modern playable, except maybe the Jace one ACTUALLY stops Flip Jace come to think of it.


But does Legacy play anything Gatewatch typed? no I don't think so, not that would want these cards.

You might analyze Modern formats pretty well, but you miss the trees for the forest like most people who comment about Standard. You didn't see the easy obvious thing staring at you:

Why the heck do the Defeats even exist?! I was commenting about why their mechanics are Planeswalker type based and you go off about basically everything in the game except ''when do I actually want to cast a Defeat?"

Modern isn't going to be getting UU Counterspell reprint. Wizards has made themselves stubbornly clear on that (for whatever reasons. lots of people think it's bad, and point out they have the power to change their minds, but they're not likely to). So if Jace 2 were unbanned, what would you want to kill it?

Besides Jund of course. Jund works fine. Modern is as you say fast. Tarmogoyf is probably better than Lightning Bolt at Jace-killing. But I'm thinking from the point of view of what would Wizards actually try to pass off as the reason for printing Jace's Defeat---


and it looks like there's no Format-relevancy reason in Modern, Legacy, or Vintage for these cards at all, and the only Standard relevancy reason is to print cards to emphasize flavor. They build up Bolas as a Big Bad more than the Eldrazi have been built up (and the Eldrazi have had 3 blocks of them tearing up stuff, so props, including the perversion of Brisela as a standout moment...so that's a big deal that Bolas is clearly even worse.)


But Jace's Defeat, in the end, means nothing for playability. Not really. I'd just play Mana Leak instead.

Stoneforge isn't getting unbanned because they want people to get to play their Swords of X and Y in Modern. Stoneforge was either seen as an Aggro card that Turned Control, and there's too much power in Modern that even without Counterspell or Jace, she'd run amok. She'd have Fire and Ice, and it would be a nightmare. And Jitte. Seriously? Stoneforge in Modern? biggest joke ever.


Stoneforge is not coming to Modern, although Jace could.

Jace the Mind Sculptor is waaaay too slow for modern. You were probably a nay sayer about Bitterblossom as well, which arguably dominated its meta even more so then Jace did. Modern wants to win the game turn 4. Tapping out to play a Jace seems aweful, especially without Force of Will, Moxens... Bitterblossom got unbanned and virtually NOTHING changed in the format.

Never say never. When it comes to a format like modern, you may very likely be eating your own words soon. They have slowly began unbanning cards that have not really even been tested in the format. (Bitterblossom was a start, a huge rumour Stoneforge could be next.) You are also trying to compare a relatively slow standard to the fast format of modern, that in itself is a fallacy.

Um No. That is never going to happen. He broke the format so badly we barely recovered. The only way to stop him back then was to play Original Jace. Now that wont happen. Sure you could just counter it but WoTC doesnt want people's Heads to explode again.