MTG Salvation

Thanks all. Thought that was the case, but needed to be sure.

I have a Bruna, Light of Alabaster EDH deck, and I play Ordeal of Thassa in that deck. If the Ordeal is on Bruna and she has three +1/+1 counters, can I stack the attack triggers so that I sac the Ordeal first and bring it back from the yard with Bruna's ability? Or is there some rule I'm forgetting that prevents this?

I play commander as my main format, and I'm in a situation where budget commander is the only real option to me. It's a format where turns can take a long time, which allows for great socialisation around a game, but can and frequently does devolve into watching one guy play solitaire for 10-30 minutes. Anything that encourages this kind of solitaire play, I find personally annoying. This has become a far too common story for me: After suffering through agonising mana-screw or colour-screw, waiting to finally hit that critical land drop and actually get into the game, only to have that key land destroyed. The first few times it happened, I suffered through several more turns of draw-discard-go before someone put me out of my misery and we got to shuffle up another game. The next few times, I scooped after the LD, chatted with the guys as they played, and watched from the sidelines. Lately, it's one of the reasons why I only make it a point go meet up with my playgroup when they're drafting the cube (which, incidentally, does not feature LD). Let it be noted, that I am the king of negative variance; my decks might be made of 95% commons and uncommons, my rares are usually jank, and almost none of my cards are worth much on the secondary market, but I make absolutely sure to keep my balance of spells, creatures and lands as statistically perfect as possible. All my games aren't ruined by LD, but I've never been on the receiving end of it where I didn't end up a bored spectator. The problem with efficient LD is not that it's just "feel bad." Countermagic is "feel bad" too, but they continue to print Cancel variants. Efficient LD has a magnitude of "feel bad" that few other mechanics have in Magic. While resource attack should be a viable tactic, lands, more than any other resource, are already at the mercy of variance. You don't need LD to get "feel bad" about lands, and when LD combines with unfortunate variance, it goes from "feel bad" to rubbing salt in a wound. If variance wasn't so powerful force in Magic, then traditional LD wouldn't be as hated. But variance can't viably be changed in the game. The Stensia Innkeeper effect feels weird in red, and I don't think that's where mana denial will ultimately end up, but I think it's a step in the right direction. I'd like to see an experiment with a Path to Exile effect for lands. It could be effective at removing powerful lands without completely breaking a mana- or colour-screwed player's capability to recover.

Quote from Quannage »

I like this one. it sets the stage for Fiora's power struggle nicely, and introduces - or in Selvana's case, reintroduces - the major players to follow.
I'm assuming Ariana will get her ow card.
And now that Kaya's business is done and she's gotten her payment, is that the last we'll see of her in this story?

I'm assuming the art beneath the card reveal is Adriana; she's in heavy armour and I'm pretty sure that's Brago's sword. I'd say an Adriana card is likely based on that art.

Nevermind, I had a RTFC moment....

I only came to the game during the last time we were on Innistrad. At that time, Liliana seemed like an archetypical Faustian revolt character, but the motivation behind it seemed like nothing more than generic moustache twirling. I had no problem with that, sometimes a good moustache twirler is all a story really needs. Her more recent stories, however, have added some depth and reasoning to her. Her origin shows a character who grows in knowledge, power and ambition, but not in wisdom or maturity. A mysterious, shadowy figure teaches her dark magic to save her brother, so with her ambition and naivete she goes along with it. Things go predictably wrong, and she's broken by what she did. Does she grow? Yes and no. She learns all the wrong lessons from her experience. She doesn't think, "Maybe taking deals from creepy, dark figures who promise power and riches isn't a good thing to do." Instead, she learns another lesson: Take the deal, but stab them in the back first. She gets smarter and more ruthless, not wiser and more sensible. Her interactions with Jace have been pushing that wise sensibility on her, but she resists it. That tension between who she believes she is and who Jace thinks she could be is an interesting dynamic. She'll convince herself she's playing him and everyone else to get what she wants, but maybe we'll see her grow and develop as a character in spite of herself. Or maybe she'll stab the Gatewatch in the back as soon as it's convenient. It takes a character with a decently developed internal structure to maintain that dubious future. If she were a shallow character, we'd readily see one of those two options as being entirely out of place. I don't think she's shallow any more, still very tropey, but reasonably well developed tropes.

Quote from BlackTempleGaurdian »

Quote from northprophet »

Quote from SnowBunny »

For those who are having a hard time understanding Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror, it is about insignificance and Nihilism. The monsters of Lovecraft are not even comprehensible. For instance, Cthulhu and the city of R'lhey are so powerful they actively warp space into a non-euclidean geometry, The very sight of Cthulhu was said to drive people mad. Furthermore, they cannot be stopped. Creatures as lowly as humans are too insignificant to stop them. It is like an ant attempting to stop an elephant front stepping on its hive. No amount of resistance can stop them as we are just too small. Too insignificant.

The Eldrazi on the other hand are not so. BFZ shows they can be defeated. That with enough effort they can be halted like any other threat. This removes the main central focus of true Cosmic Horror. I saw this as well when Paizo made stats for Cthulhu. Many people complained because that means if he has stats, he can be comprehended, and thus defeated, which goes against canon.

This. The Eldrazi are inspired by Lovecraftian monsters and cosmic horror, but don't really fit into either category cleanly. The reason they don't has more to do with the fact that our POV characters are planeswalkers, who traverse the non-euclidean void between planes as a matter of course. One of the main reasons that inspire the feelings of insignificance in cosmic horror is that the monsters come from far beyond anything that even vaguely resembles our frame of reference. In Magic, our main characters regularly travel through the Blind Eternities, and though the void between worlds is impossible to understand fully, they have some concept of what it is and how the Eldrazi interact with planes. If our POV was a plane-bound being with no concept of planeswalkers, other planes, the Blind Eternities, or any of the things from off-plane that don't follow the rules of the only plane our POV character knows; then the Eldrazi would actually be Lovecraftian cosmic horrors.

It's exactly that which is what I'm liking about EMN, that's what Emrakul's being portrayed as. Admittedly akin to one of the weaker Old Ones, maybe Jenkins-killable, but still and Old One.

Just wait, Odric comes out of nowhere and goes full "Old Man Henderson."

Quote from SnowBunny »

For those who are having a hard time understanding Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror, it is about insignificance and Nihilism. The monsters of Lovecraft are not even comprehensible. For instance, Cthulhu and the city of R'lhey are so powerful they actively warp space into a non-euclidean geometry, The very sight of Cthulhu was said to drive people mad. Furthermore, they cannot be stopped. Creatures as lowly as humans are too insignificant to stop them. It is like an ant attempting to stop an elephant front stepping on its hive. No amount of resistance can stop them as we are just too small. Too insignificant.

The Eldrazi on the other hand are not so. BFZ shows they can be defeated. That with enough effort they can be halted like any other threat. This removes the main central focus of true Cosmic Horror. I saw this as well when Paizo made stats for Cthulhu. Many people complained because that means if he has stats, he can be comprehended, and thus defeated, which goes against canon.

This. The Eldrazi are inspired by Lovecraftian monsters and cosmic horror, but don't really fit into either category cleanly. The reason they don't has more to do with the fact that our POV characters are planeswalkers, who traverse the non-euclidean void between planes as a matter of course. One of the main reasons that inspire the feelings of insignificance in cosmic horror is that the monsters come from far beyond anything that even vaguely resembles our frame of reference. In Magic, our main characters regularly travel through the Blind Eternities, and though the void between worlds is impossible to understand fully, they have some concept of what it is and how the Eldrazi interact with planes. If our POV was a plane-bound being with no concept of planeswalkers, other planes, the Blind Eternities, or any of the things from off-plane that don't follow the rules of the only plane our POV character knows; then the Eldrazi would actually be Lovecraftian cosmic horrors.

With this discussion on who is the more sympathetic/heroic/villainous of the pair, I thought I'd weigh in. The point that I took from this is that Oldwalkers, for all their immortality, are arrogant, selfish, shortsighted and petty (a shock to no one). I think this is why I enjoy these stories; I can see how they reflect things I see in society today. Oldwalkers are a group of people who, though they faced great challenges, had massive resources available to them, and were basically untouchable for most of their existence. They grew accustomed to their invulnerability, power and influence in such a way that it turned to arrogance and irresponsibility. These people now face their own mortality, but mostly live in denial of it, grasping for the power they once had. A new generation comes along, without the massive advantages the Oldwalkers had, but with many of the same challenges. Despite their lack of god-like influence, they have a success rate roughly comparable to the Oldwalkers; triumphing through ingenuity, grit and determination instead of overwhelming force bestowed upon them by the circumstances of their birth. When Newwalkers encounter Oldwalkers, they try to convince them that their arrogance leads to irresponsibility and puts innocents in peril; but the Oldwalkers are dismissive and stubborn and continue to try and maintain or restore a long defunct status quo.

So this is how I see this playing out:

Sorin and Nahiri keep trying to kill each other and Liliana keeps poking the Chain Veil, putting Innistrad in greater and greater peril. Tamiyo continues to observe and record, but will probably refuse to get involved. Jace and Arlinn try to stop the chaos, trying to talk sense into the others (Sorin and Nahiri in particular). They will probably fail, Oldwalkers being as unreasonably stubborn as they are, and will be forced to drive off and/or kill at least one of the Oldwalkers, and deal with whatever this looming threat is (be it Emrakul or something else). As for the Oldwalkers, I don't expect them to get directly involved in stopping the "looming threat," as one or more of them is probably causing it, and the others are so fixated on their own particular agenda as to not care. The only Oldwalker that I could see possibly helping is Sorin, but that depends on if he's more concerned with protecting Innistrad or getting revenge at the moment; that could go either way. Whatever other planeswalkers show up in Eldritch Moon will probably fit into these storylines somehow.

TL;DR: Both Sorin and Nahiri are a**hats and are likely to continue being so, leaving it up to Jace and/or Arlinn to actually fix things.

Quote from ryuplaneswalker »

Demons and Devils are separate Races in DND, Demons are always Chaotic Evil, Devils are always lawful evil.

They're separate races in Magic too, though the alignment of the races is different. Demons are usually either lawful evil or neutral evil, but can be chaotic evil. Devils seem to only show up in certain settings, and are pretty much universally chaotic evil. I'm not very familiar with D&D, but I believe that Magic's representation of demons as powerful infernal lords and devils as impish minions is reversed in D&D too.

This is really interesting to me. I've never been inclined towards the lore of D&D, so I'm not interested in seeing the two multiverses blended, but using RPG mechanics in a MtG setting has been an idea I've been toying with for a while. Magic's lore is deep enough that you could apply a multitude of game types to it. Hopefully this can open the way to even more games (still hoping for that AAA action-rpg videogame I've been dreaming about, ).

As a consumer of entertainment media, I give a slight edge to Marvel. As a writer, however, DC's sandbox is more fun to play in. While Marvel generally has stronger plots and character development, DC's characters and setting seems to be more open to reinterpretation. Marvel's characters tend to be harder to separate from their established plots, so less versatile as characters, but deeper and more established. So, long story short, it depends.

Quote from Talas_Engineer »

Yeah, I thought the odds of a planeswalker's spark igniting were supposed to be extremely low. Has this been affected by the Mending? Or is Innistrad a world so full of traumatic experiences that ignition is frequent?

I think you might be on to something. The plane is creatively inspired by horror tropes, so the kind of trauma that would cause a spark to ignite would likely be more frequent than on a plane like Theros. There, most seem to go their entire lives farming, or fishing, or whatever, and never have a latent spark ignite. Seems much less likely on a plane where gheist/zombie/vampire/werewolf/cultist/devil/demon/yada-yada-yada attacks are so common. Innistrad has to be the worst place in the multiverse to live. I mean, the place does have an actual hell; and one that spills over into the mortal world, no less.

Wait a minute... did Zendikar just use Nissa and Chandra to Channel-Fireball the titans? In the original game flavour, that spell combo could do enough damage to an immortal oldwalker to force them out of a battle. If we're talking about an entire plane pumping mana and life into a Channel (with Zendikar being one of the most mana- and life-abundant planes in the multiverse), then pumping all of that into a Fireball, then I'm guessing we're talking about Death Star level destruction.

It is kind of contrived that the only four planeswalkers we have trying to save Zendikar are the exact four with the exact skills needed to pull off this insanity (Jace to unravel the solution, Gideon to organise the bait, Nissa to channel the power of the leylines, and Chandra to be the "big gun"), but no more-so than is common in team-up fiction.

Dance of the Skywise basically changes the numbers in the bottom right corner of the card to 4/4. It would still have a +1/+1 counter on it, and it would still get the +1/+1 from the Ascendancy. Once all effects resolve, your creature would be 6/6 Dragon Illusion with flying and no other abilities. The only change that would be overridden by Dance would be another effect that changes base power and/or toughness like Turn to Frog.