Hey, glad to see Archive Trap focusing on one of my favorite planes!
One quick question - where does all of the Cymede-Kruphix stuff come from? The Planeswalker's Guide only talks about her ties to Keranos. It also mentions her being his "greatest servant," and growing the influence of his worshippers, none of which is easy to square with what you've written. What am I missing?
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- Planescrawler
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I do have one odd note: I'm not convinced that ANY of Magic's vampires are undead. The Zendikar lore says those ones aren't, and Ravi got vamped by Baron Sengir without losing her Spark. I think that may just be how vampirism is in the multiverse.
Otherwise, good stuff, and I appreciate the soft touch around the ambiguities of the Cursemute.
Ob was resparked when he tore through the Gatewatch, and that did increase his power - before that, he had just lost to Nissa alone. He is probably near the lower "end" of Ancient tier.
Serves me right for ignoring Duels.
Good to know that so many people love the new piece!
I certainly agree that Magic's settings are almost always stronger than its plots. And I also agree that it's easy to fall back on the “existential threat” button in fiction. But I'm not sure we've reached that point so far – Theros wasn't an example of that, nor Return to Ravnica. Meanwhile, Innistrad was totally based around an existential threat (if not an out-of-context one) from the word go, so I feel that returning to it would feel odd without some terrible doom looming. And with such early sets as Fallen Empires and Antiquities dealing with calamities which ruined the continents they took place, it's hard for me not to see it as a Magic tradition.
Like a lot of things, it wears thin with undue repetition, and certainly can be executed either well or poorly. But a blanket statement against it as even an element of Magic lore doesn't quite ring right with me.
Previously, the story was that "The angels of Zendikar bear a harsh, bizarre reminder of their early opposition to the Eldrazi. Each angel's halo is worn down over her eyes, symbolizing her mystical blindness to the Eldrazi's atrocities and her powerlessness to aid her world. The halo stings when worn this way, letting the angel see only stark, glaring whiteness and barring her from coming to the aid of the Eldrazi's hapless victims. Ultimately the halo serves as a shameful kind of leash, shackling her to acquiescence, preventing her from interfering with the destructive progress of the Eldrazi." Those stories have some overlap - in both cases, the odd halos serve as a painful reminder of the second struggle with the Eldrazi - but have ultimately opposite views on what it means.
In one case, the halos exhort the angels to help, in the other, they prevent them from doing so. The new version is still cool, though it does leave me confused about what it means that the most proactive angels don't wear their halos that way. I suppose the new implication is that instead of brooding about their failures, those angels gave their halos to deserving mortals?
To be fair, I am betting on a Return Even More To Ravnica in 2017.
The Turg we knew totally did have that link to Laquatus, though - right up until he died, anyway. The Annurid is probably a good model for Laquatus-less Turg, but I want the full deal, lightning and all.
Then again, re-reading Odyssey, I think the Blue characters' color identities are kinda questionable anyway, so maybe there's a way to mechanically represent that lightning in mono-Blue.
The Raven Man... well, if he IS a Planeswalker, they couldn't very well put him into a cycle of (non-Mythic) Rares, and if he's something else, they surely don't want to reveal what. That said, I am surprised they didn't use one of the other pieces in the Taigam's Scheming style, to make people who don't read the stories aware of this guy. I assume there was such a card, which got killed late in Development. But I could be wrong!
This seems to happen a lot. URs around Origins showed off a few pieces of The Raven Man, for example, but nothing to do with him ever made it into the cards (which I see as a mistake, but hey). I'm never sure whether they're all pieces for unused cards, or if sometimes they commission a few extras for supplementary materials.
A real Urza Planeswalker would be fun - being myself, I'd like to see those for a ton of Pre-Mending types - but Urza (or at least, a mono-Blue version of him) is actually MORE legal as a Commander than any Planeswalkers outside of the Origins 5 and the 2014 crew. Food for thought.
Who knew - immortal personifications of duty don't let things go.
More seriously, I have some appreciation for your point. I never cared much for Mirrodin, but as someone who came into Magic during the Weatherlight Saga, I was enraged to see that massive plot undone. And I do prefer Eldraziless Zendikar as a setting over the chalk-and-bismuth version.
However, I don't believe that thinking along those lines would play to Magic's strengths. One of the great things about its plane-hopping nature is how they can make really massive changes to any given world or character, yet still keep the core of the franchise intact. More world-bound serials would hesitate to shake things up in their grand finales the Magic does most years. And that's great! One could even argue that it's crucial to keeping things fresh and exciting - look at the lukewarm response to Return to Ravnica's story. Ravnica was one of the most popular Planes of all time, but a plot aimed solely at reiterating the old status quo didn't hold peoples' interest. In lacking an existential threat, Ravnica became a victim of its own success.
So I say, bring on the Eldrazi and the dragons and, yes, even the Phyrexians. Nobody is taking the old cards and Guides away, and so long as things keep moving and keep changing, they're bound to give rise to new worlds which I'll love just as much.