MTG Salvation

Boseiju, seeing the skyscraper getting taller than it: And I took that personally.

I'm pretty sure the records are also on fire/are fire and thats also why the DJ needs the exoskeleton in order to touch them without burn themselves.

Quote from Ryperior74 »

Quote from Lectrys »

"The Kami War" has been virtually confirmed to be a real card name in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty according to https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/kami-war-2022-01-11, complete with long art that would fit in a Saga, but yet again, the art doesn't match the leak.

yep here’s the photo



and here’s the leak one

100% match

They had different art then before, seemed up dated it with the correct art. The other one looked more like a saga for Yosei.

Quote from Ryperior74 »

Also yep that’s right despite the negativity we’re still getting the wacky/pokemon looking spirits for this set for this case it typing really fits “elemental elk”

The kami issue first time around was that the kami where made to look as unnatural and weird as possible with little to no resemblance to anything in actual shinto mythology. While weird-ish looking the "elk elemental" def looks like a nature spirit vs the eldrazi looking stuff from last time.

It seems so far like a good balance with the art, 5 of those art piece look like they could take place on old Kamigawa and shows there are still more traditional spaces.

Quote from soramaro »

Seeing how they've been breaking self-imposed rules left and right in the last few years, they might as well introduce guns to Magic now. You're telling me the technology is advanced enough for Akira-style motorcycles, but a simple mechanism that shoots pieces of metal at people is too much? At some point it does become ridiculous to see everyone using sticks and swords.

They had "guns" on Ixalan for the pirates. From the art book for Ixalan After playing around with magical tech Kaladesh they noted they are more willing to do more modern technology as long as it feels "magical" with most of the the guns on Ixalan shooting magic blasts, but they also added harpoon and grappling hook guns since they felt in theme, let the pirates swing around and do swashbuckler actions and give some of the more violent pirate more menacing look.

Also why I'm waiting, all we know the bike is a Tengu who shape shift (willing or not) into the bike for rider due to the tengu mask being the front and steering handles of the bike.

Quote from Spaz350 »

Maybe I'm off base here, but I always was under the impression that people loved Kamigawa's flavor, but it suffered because the actual set itself was a letdown, being mostly weak and sandwiched between two massively powerful/popular blocks in Mirrodin and Ravnica. Like, the lore was and setting was fantastic, but the actual cards and mechanics were not well-liked at all.

What was popular was the story of the block but most people didn't care for the world building or flavor of the set. From what Maro has said, people had a hard time pronouncing the names of the card, they made the spirits very weird for western fan while Japanese fans have noted a lot of the yokai/kami felt in name only (such as the baku cycle, a baku is a dream spirit that eats nightmares looks like a tapir none of which I get from the cards) and used a lot of references that a lot of the general player base didn't know or pick up on (like do you get that the Moonfolk are based on the legends of the moon rabbit?). Maro said it ranked very very low in their market research in flavor and mechanics at the time, though he has noted that it seems the player base has seemed to be warmed up to the plane a lot more. I personally think Kamigawa was just a mix of them experimenting on a top down set for the first time and and it being a bit ahead of its time in terms of how much people would like the Japanese culture flavor with anime/managa making it more popular and know in the west and commander making legendary less of a draw back then what it was during Kamigawa.

Thats also why I think we are seeing reflavored Kamigawa now, most people (including me) where staying they would rather see Wotc try and re-flavored Kamigawa rather than "retiring" the plane to cameos.

Remember when Urza built a robot, a space ship and used mechas to fight the borg? Totally fantasy with no Sci-fi elements.

Quote from Melkor »

that is some of the fugliest art I have seen. I just don't get Wizards


'Oh, you liked Kamigawa block, set in feudal Japan, with all of the ancient feeling and traditional stuff? Did you like the old school samurai and a world where science had no power because of nature spirits? Well you are going to LOVE this new Kamigawa, looking more stylized and over the top advanced than when Tokyo laid it on really thick for the Olympics!'

Thats the point, Kamigawa flavor wasn't well liked by most players. For years on Maro's tumblr there was a debate about if they should re-flavor Kamigawa or have a brand new Japanese inspired world and now we are seeing the results.

EDIT: Anyways I'm gonna wait and see how it looks when we see the full set, speaking of which happy anniversary to last year when people where having melt downs thinking snow wasn't in Kaldheim due to see barley any of set.

Journey's end, final crimson vow and final Innistrad 3 story;
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-story/episode-5-till-death-do-us-part-2021-11-24

Quote from Ryperior74 »

Edgar got sorin to drink some blood

Thats part of the flashback to when Sorin was turned into a vampire.

Quote from Grapefruit21 »

A different type of Ghostbusting. I hope Arlinn lives because she's been used well this story but it wouldn't shock me if she didn't survive the human victory. I could easily see r&d not wanting to have to continuously design flip walkers.

She can't transform off Innistrad, they added that in so she could appear on other planes and not need to have to be a transform card.

Indeed, I enjoy we are seeing both protagonists of this story (Sorin and Arian) dealing with the big bad bride and groom and it does look bleak for both. We know they win but this was pretty powerful to leave them both almost dying.

theres more...

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/a-breakthrough-in-phyrexian-language-and-communications

after all these years they a officall raising the curtains

We got another leak

Quote from 5colors »

Quote from Ryperior74 »

We thanks to 5colors

We might need to take these tip bits into factor for are arc

Visual guide info about new phyrexia (besides the realm breaker)

-Jin Gitaxias is fine with Elesh Norn as leader as long as she lets him do his experiments.

-Some of the steel thanes have joined Urabrasks revolt.

-Sheoldred is the main rival for the ruler of phyrexia so Elesh Norn sent her to dominaria to get rid of the sylex, bring back karn and get rid of any artifacts that had hurt phyrexia in the past as a means to distract her.

-Vornclex is intelligent just prefers to follow bestial instincts and has Glissa take most of the responsibility.

-Melira seems to still be around but her immunity and cleansing abilities have weakened as Jin has refined the oil more and more (So we will get a 2.0 card of melira)

-The mirrian resistance has been leading guerilla strikes against phyrexia.

Guessing we will see the black members of the revolt in the BR color pair. From talks on Urbabrask they keep saying its a a "enemy of my enemy" deal so far so I'm gonna guess its the same for some of the phyrexians, joining Urabrask over not liking Norn.

I'm also guessing most if not all the legends from the first two blocks (except Raksha and Memnarch) will get a card, there was only 18 legendary creatures between the two blocks (which includes the two Glissa) and we already got the praetors, Slobad and Jor.

thats cyberdramon and its a digimon

Quote from soramaro »

Quote from 5colors »

Quote from Flisch »

It had a rocky start though. In the first side story (why are those the side stories and the fill-in-the-blanks of the war the main stories???) they talked about mobilizing the planes? Mobilizing for what? As far as anyone knows there is no possibility to move the fight to New Phyrexia except through planeswalkers. What exactly are they mobilizing? Warning of a coming threat, sure. Building up defenses, maybe. But mobilizing? It makes no sense.

I think they mean both raise defense and mobilize for war. Each planes is likely both getting ready in case they get invaded as well as forming their own version of the Coalition if there is already enough phyrexian discovered.

Sure ... this makes sense if you think of the MtG story as "just" a side thing to a card game that people shouldn't have too high expectations towards (I'd agree with that). It's necessary to move the story along to keep up with the breakneck set release schedule. Still, ignoring that context for a bit and judging the story purely as a stand-alone thing, it does seem a bit absurd that whole planes have been mobilized to fight in a war against some opponent that most people living there have never even seen.

I'm not sure it is THAT absurd, seeing as we don't really know whether they literally meant "the whole plane" was mobilized. Seems much more likely that they meant "all the people we could reach on a certain plane believed us and are trying to rally as many forces as possible". And many of the named planes could actually conceivably be mobilized for the most part: Ravnica makes sense (seeing that it has dealt with an interplanar invader before and has a central government that could ready the whole plane in Niv-Mizzet and the guilds), Kaldheim is a plane defined by its dealings with inter-realm conflicts (and consists of a bunch of realms with fighting-capable populations) so they probably believe stories about invaders from other, previously unknown realms, Kaladesh's new government includes the mother of a planeswalker and has scientists and engineers who have personally worked on interplanar technology... the list goes on. Only Ixalan is very questionable, since it doesn't have any experience with planeswalkers and doesn't have a unified government. Maybe this was shorthand for Huatli and Vraska being able to convince the River Heralds, the Sun Empire and the Brazen Coalition respectively of the danger? I agree that this leaves out some crucial details, which is still the case because of the relative brevity of MtGs story articles, but I don't find all of that too unbelievable (unless taken very literally).

I hope its something manageable like simply connecting the planes via Realmbreaker. To completely reboot would negate all the vorthos-goodwill they're trying to raise.

Well,

with all the old-time references being thrown to us by armfuls, do anyone else has the feeling that Wizards want to kind of satisfy every last Vorthos who liked to see the old stories again, reimagined in modern coat?

Yes, there are still some leftovers, but with the Weatherlight crew almost redone, with Legends II in the boxtoppers, and now with Brothers' War, with Urza Friggin' Planeswalker in his full power in a flavor perfect solution (Not to mention Mishra), even with the Thran era adressed with Rebbec, Glacian and Yawgmoth, there is not much. It is a nice gift for the 30th anniversary, but at the same time, I have a feeling of something like a big reboot coming with the "Infinity War/Endgame" climax of the Phyrexia arc... a definite farewell to the old history and its restrictions that the silly old geezers comment on.

Is it just me?

Wish Ajani had Jaya's burnt marks to prove it though

These stories were great, loved the length and quality of both the Past and Current chapters. It was a little harder for me to connect with the Past chapters not showing main characters, but I did enjoy seeing the Bro War retold and refreshed. The Current chapters def made the walkers feel real, and loved all the little callbacks and Vorthos easter eggs.

Today's main Teferi story was fantastic, def handling time travel well and providing us with a great Teferi and Urza scene.
As for the Epilogue

For Nissa's story, I liked her more than usual, she's far from tree-huggy in this one. She's downright dark at points and loved the "be the hand that moves" reference to keep her motivated. I def think we'll see her make hard decisions about compleated walkers; I don't think she'll show mercy thanks to Gaea's memories, but we shall see.

Over all, def excited to see more of the Phyrexian arc, and just how many of the assembled walkers will make it out alive.