MTG Salvation

Lol, an "actual" UB card named "The Great Mistake." At this point I'm kind of hoping the name turns out to be prophetic for Wizards.

I'm still so salty that UB worked out for them. They print a ******* Coca-Cola vending machine and people go "oh wow I love this." They literally transformed Magic into some Weiss Schwarz ass crossover fest and are getting rewarded for it. Thanks I hate it

The flavor text of Verdant Outrider is interesting, but it does make it sound like basically all the courts are in shambles while, on the cards, most of them seem to be fine except for maybe Ardenvale.

Overall, Eldraine 2.0 goes a bit too much into the silly direction (whereas the first Eldraine set pretty much hit the sweet spot for me in terms of tone) and the cards don't to a very good job of telling you what's happening. Even filtering out only the story spotlights, it seems all over the place.

As usual, the aspects that are like the most are relegated to the side (I'd really like to know the story of the Redtooth elves and their curse which apparently gets broken by the Archon of the Wild Rose), but poor small company WotC didn't have enough money for side stories this time around, so the best I'll get is a low-effort blurb in the "The Legends of Wild of Eldraine" article.

Maybe I'm just looking at old Eldraine with rose-colored glasses, but looking at all the cards that are being spoiled and their art, Eldraine seems a bit more un-set-esque this time around. The courts not being in the focus as much, and "lore space" on cards instead mostly being given to the same handful of very recognizable faerie tales, makes the world feel even more like one big reference/in-joke than its own thing. For some of the faerie tales, it's weird when you think about how there already were references to them in the original set (Curious Pair, Trail of Crumbs, Queen of Ice, etc) and now there are new references, just much more "pushed" and over the top. It almost seems like the two Eldraines aren't connected, or that the new Eldraine is a "soft reboot."

Also, the faerie tales they chose don't really seem to serve any purpose other than being a recognizable thing that people can latch onto (and a base for the ten draft archetypes). Lore-wise, they seem to all just exist parallel to each other instead of painting a picture of the Wilds of Eldraine or Eldraine after the Phyrexian invasion.

Ultimately I think this kind of worldbuilding is kind of unsustainable. Sure, there are a lot of faerie tales, but only a few of them are popular enough that you can build a set on them. I'm honestly not sure if we're ever going to see another return to Eldraine, simply because the material they're drawing from seems to be running thin already.

I have never watched Doctor Who, but when they first announced this product a few months back I watched a few clips on YT and read a few wiki pages. And you know what? It looked kind of fun! I could see why there's such a big fandom for it, and I even felt like I could've become a fan myself in a parallel universe where I grew up with it.

So it's not like I hate Doctor Who (or Warhammer, or LoTR, or any other franchises that have gotten UB cards) ... but I just can't bring myself to like the MtG crossover stuff. Yes, I know, Magic is very heterogenous. But searching on Scryfall and seeing that an interesting commander in the color combo I'm looking for is only available in the form of cross-promotion material for an outside IP, idk ... it just instantly kills all my interest in playing the game.

Quote from Gizlivadi »

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The reason (as far as I'm aware) is that systematic racism against non-white people existed in the past and still exists today, so all media with a predominantly white cast has to be cleaned of that blemish through incorporating people of more ethnicities to make everyone feel included. The other way round it's fair game because those ethnicities have traditionally been pushed to the sides and deserve more attention. It's not about the internal consistency of the setting, but reflecting real-world ideals and issues.

I do get the line of reasoning, but man ... often it's just so tacked on. Especially for something like LotR, where the author clearly built off of real-world cultures and history. Maybe in an ideal society, skin color is literally just a color and nothing changes if you were to swap it around. But in the past (and even today) it is deeply tied to culture. That's where the dissonance strikes for me: This is simultaneously supposed to be medieval Europe and an idealized modern-day America, but the underlying world-building (which is mostly untouched) just ... doesn't really support it.

I would actually really like to see a completely re-imagined LoTR that goes beyond just changing some character's skin color. After all, we do already have the original novel and the movies, and another version being made doesn't erase them. But that would require too much effort for the money they'd be able to make off of it, so we're stuck with the superficial approach that works within the constraints of capitalism.

Ultimately, UB still sucks. I'm just looking at all the resources invested into this, and I'd rather have Wizards pour those into building and fleshing out their own LoTR-inspired world (or creative/storytelling for other planes). It started with one-off Un-Cards, now the game has full Non-Magic-IP sets. This set will obviously be successful, so I can only imagine it snowballing further from here. The Magic Super Smash Bros-Verse isn't far off.

Eh, it's very subjective I guess. I think if you're that bent on playing Sultai Faeries with those four ancient janky faerie cards + Maraleaf Pixie, you could just choose a generic goodstuff commander like Muldrotha, Damia, Yarok or Zimone and Dina and be done with it.

Quote from Evil Never Dies »

Faerie Noble is literally a Lord for Fairies in monogreen.
Willow Priestess even cheat out fairies from hand to play for FREE and even gain additional protection abilities on green creatures.
Those cards are MADE for being a fairy tribal, and currently not a single sultai legendary creature is remotely appropriate in both flavor or mechanics for a Sultai fairy tribal.

OK, I guess there were two more green Faerie tribal cards, one an Elvish Piper sidegrade and the other a mediocre lord (which they made a better version of in Time Spiral). The rest of your list is basically just "if tribe X could play an additional color it would be an easy power boost," which is true for all tribes.

Personally I just don't see the reason for why this handful of faerie cards (some of which are very old and underpowered) absolutely warrants a Sultai faerie tribal commander. The playstyles of tribal decks already tend to blend together, I don't think it's a good thing to randomly add colors for "value."

Quote from Evil Never Dies »

EDIT: Oh, and also we got only 3 monowhite fairies in all the entire game (plus other crappy 3 white/blue) but apparently this was enough of a good reason to make an Esper Fairy tribal the first time we went to eldraine. How hypocritical, really.

It's not really faerie tribal though ... Alela is a faerie, boosts (most) faeries and makes faerie tokens, but she's really an "artifacts and enchantments matter" commander (because that's what it wants you to build around).

I'd be fine with a similar commander that is Sultai, happens to be a faerie and does something that allows for a faerie tribal subtheme. But a faerie commander in the strict sense that is connected to the creature type directly (searching for cards of that type, scaling off of tribe members on the battlefield, generating CA whenever a tribe member does something...) should be UB imo. In that sense, a Dimir faerie tribal commander doesn't really exist yet, since Nymris, Wydwen and even Oona herself only care about the tribe indirectly.

Quote from Evil Never Dies »

Quote from soramaro »

Oh, there's a UB "Fae Dominion" commander precon. I still think of Eldraine as a discount Lorwyn of sorts, but more Dimir faeries are always a good thing

Still no Sultai Faerie tribal in a set that literally have also UG faeries with stuff like Maraleaf Pixie? Boo

Aside from Maraleaf Pixie and Ivy, Gleeful Spellthief, there's maybe one other green Faerie you'd want to include in a commander deck (Scryb Ranger). Why are people so bent on expanding a tribe's colors, especially when there's so little material to work with? Faerie tribal is fine as Dimir.

Oh, there's a UB "Fae Dominion" commander precon. I still think of Eldraine as a discount Lorwyn of sorts, but more Dimir faeries are always a good thing

No thanks.

Not so sure this is a game I value any more.

Quote from Marek14 »

Could still be Belenon.
From https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/choosing-your-battles-part-1:
"We chose to make Belenon an animal humanoid plane where all the creatures are some kind of "animal person," except for the plane's humans."

Damn, how they massacred my techno-organical plane...

I cringed a little at "Plane-Earth"

Quote from Ryperior74 »

i was right on it not being ulamog nor kozilek

Wow, good job, Ryperior.

Quote from Evil Never Dies »

i want

Key thing to remember here.

Quote from Evil Never Dies »

It is indeed an injustice if you consider that Warriors got the super-competitive Najeela that not only is warrior tribal but covers all colors even if blue has exactly zero relevance with warrior themes in magic history.

See, I'd just rather they didn't make more Najeelas. "Hi, we made this commander that does the thing and includes all the colors you could want so now you will never have to think about using a different commander." It makes things less interesting.

Quote from Caranthir »

It ended basically with Lorwyn books.

I take it you haven't read Odyssey, Onslaught and the original Mirrodin books. Or rather, excised them from memory, couldn't blame you.

Point is Magic story has always been a bit of a mixed bag and everyone who says the good old days were objectively great storytelling is just wearing three sets of nostalgia goggles.

Magic storytelling was always a little bit "mmh, whatever", but at least they managed to get the basics right. The stories were serviceable. ONE and MoM doesn't even manage that. BOTH arcs fell apart on the first or second chapter already, into non-salvageable pieces. It's not the ending that is broken, it is the whole thing, the process and the intent behind each writing decision. Magic story is currently fundamentally broken because not a single thought is spared to those aspects that make a story a story.

Quote from Dontrike »

Quote from sleeper agent 2.0 »

I'm disappointed by this card - not the power level, which I think is fine.

Personally, I'm fine with PWs like these that are just....plain okay/good. Not every single one needs to be back breaking to go up against, or in some cases format warping. The call back is nice of dude, evasion, and big ult and that's likely all she really needs to be. Just flashy enough, but not too much. I think it strikes a good balance.

He specifically said the power level is not the issue. He explicitly said he doesn't need it to warp formats. This is Elspeth reborn, blessed by Serra, inheriting that legacy, the last hope against Phyrexia, meant to smite the wicked....and I just looked at the card again and can't remember any of the abilities. It's where I'm at, same as with the new Wrenn, I don't want it to be the next Mindsculptor or whatever, I don't care if a single 60 card or cEDH deck ever wants it, just with the story and the hype building up to it, I was hoping it would be something on the scale of OG Avacyn or the Eldrazi. This and Wrenn are just two of the most boring walkers in a while. Fine and functional, but they leave no impression despite what they are supposed to be in the story.

Wish they would have explained why none of the professors/deans went to activate the incantation. Why send a group of students? Also where are the dragons? There can be answers to this but it would have been nice to at least provide half a sentence to it to let us know the author didn't just forget about character motivation and internal consistency.

Ikoria story was okay, but too dependent on luck. What if Vadrok had appeared before Lukka, or not in time to stop Lukka? The margin of error was very narrow and it just worked out because writer fiat. Meh. Also not a big fan of just tossing Lukka away like that.

Eh, so far it's still better than the drivel we got in ONE. Expectation management doing the bulk here, lmao.

Quote from cyberium_neo »

Ikoria characters are boring as usual

Because Ikoria is not a functional setting. That's why worldbuilding is so important, because it can fill us in on so much through implication and context without wasting word count on explicitly stating it. But Ikoria has no worldbuilding so none of the characters make any sense. It's not a lived in world, it's a bunch of individually cool but collectively incoherent and at times even contradictory ideas.

Quote from 5colors »

I'd really hope wotc didn't fully kill him off and he comes back for a second round, would be a shame if all we saw of him compleated was the one spell card vs him getting a full card.

Same. At the absolute very least give us a card of compleat Tibalt, goddamnit.

Also why are the phyrexian planeswalkers falling like flies? I guess in-story you can argue that their (incompleat) souls are actively fighting and sabotaging the phyrexian plans but it makes the phyrexians look a bit silly in that aspect. Elesh would've been better off sending her elite agents to the various worlds, like she did with Atraxa and held the planeswalkers in the back as advisors and "intelligence staff" instead of wasting them at the front lines like cannon fodder.

Quote from soramaro »

I actually liked the ending for Tamiyo though. I hope she's not just some kind of recording, but an actual living, non-corporeal consciousness. Maybe she can't planeswalk anymore, but since she doesn't have a biological body anymore, she could technically be taken through the Blind Eternities, right? That would be a neat concept for her character going forward. (Can regular spirits/kami cross between planes, by the way? It feels like they should, but I don't think we've seen it happen)

From the legends of Kamigawa article;

He (Nashi) also finds great comfort in the stories his mother has collected around the Multiverse and would like nothing more than to see it for himself one day.

When I saw this I thought maybe Nashi would inherit Tamiyo spark or something if she died, but if the planes end up connected for non-walkers to travel I could see Nashi taking on Tamiyos role as a story mage and traveler with the saga creature of Tamiyo coming along.

Quote from KickinChicken »

Ok, ok, 1 more. And what a doozy of a last screenshot it is!!!

And that literally one of a kind one ring is printed in traditional foil? As in, it's gonna pringle?

Wow.