MTG Salvation

Quote from mapccu »

This trigger off teferi's protection? Dunno how phasing works really.

Phasing doesn't technically leave the battlefield. It shouldn't trigger this.

I want to know more about that flavor text.

I figured this would be red, but I really expected coin flipping or something random. This seems such a waste of a good card name.

Quote from CatParty »

One reason I would think this is a fake is simply due to the name "Hall of Heliod's Generosity" which is a mouth full - not very graceful as far as card names go - and the fact that the majority of cards in this set reference old border expansions. Theros is quite a recent set, and though it is the enchantment themed modern set, I feel like to go with Volrath's Stronghold and Academy Ruins, they'd be printing a land that referred to a place in Dominaria (yes, I know Volrath is on Rath, but the story lines are connected). It would make much more sense to print a land in this cycle that references Serra and her sanctum. Something like "Serra's Mausoleum".

If it wasn't for Kaya's Guile popping up or the Talisman flavor texts, I'd agree with you about the setting issue.

Quote from headminerve »

Wow. Tutorable hate is always quite strong. Same goes with Vialable and Zigguratable.

Not entirely sure why you'd run this in a Vial deck, but then I don't play Modern.

Quote from Wraithe »

But with absolute certainty, many planeswalkers are DEAD in the aftermath of these events. Them being background characters doesn't diminish their deaths,

It absolutely does. They're background characters because WotC chose them to be. And considering how rare Planeswalkers are supposed to be, that's dozens or hundreds of characters we'll never know anything about, or will even get mentioned again. Ever. Because WotC seems absolutely uninterested in showcasing ANYTHING that isn't Gatewatch-related in a set, which includes visits to the past - something all those dead planeswalkers are now a part of.

It'd be just as simple to kill a named character as to kill a background character. So what if they still have dangling plotlines? It's hard to care when a bunch of faceless people are killed off in a story, there's no emotional attachment. Other than disappointment that we never got to know anything about them because of crappy story direction choices, I guess.

Quote from user-11102155 »

wasnt he trapped in that realm before too ?
doesnt it mean he will find a way to break out ?

i mean wizards is obviously keeping that option open. its like in 5 years after some lame and boring stories they will go: "look who is back"

Not only that, but when he does return, it will be because he planned for the eventuality that he would be trapped like that.

Quote from SkyknightGamma »

Just keep in mind that so long as superhero films are A Thing, the Gatewatch isn't likely to get shelved. Maybe it would get better reception if it were more like the Harpers network in Forgotten Realms? (Although you'd need a lot more members to reflect that.)

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if part of the problem is how WotC typically typecasts Jace, Chandra, etc. In turn, I think that's because they're possibly trying too hard to make everyone's psyche hew to their component colors. Which is...troublesome...for character development, especially when we're talking monocolor. Although given that Jace, Chandra, and Liliana are the most popular planeswalkers franchise-wide (I don't think Rosewater would have set them at 1 on the Venser Scale otherwise), WotC must be doing something right as far as popular appeal goes.

When your entire ongoing storyline focuses almost solely on those three, of course they're the most "popular". Nissa quit, and even before that she barely got any screentime, and it's almost like they almost forgot Gideon aside from a brief sideplot in Amonkhet and taking up the Blackblade in Dominaria. We've seen here that there's clearly other Planeswalkers they could focus on, but they don't. Gotta be all the Gatewatch all the time, who cares what Angrath is doing on his home plane? Or what Ashiok is up to?

As a result, the problem is that every plane WotC visits in a set, the focus will be how the Gatewatch impacts that plane. They'll never just visit a plane to show us a neat plane. And there will never be a plane that the Gatewatch just explores with no conflict. Viking World, as the next set is speculated? Nope - it'll be the Scooby Doo version of Viking World, where there's some sort of evil plot afoot and some mustache-twirler would've gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling Planeswalkers.

Quote from 13055 »

Ultimate power is self-defeating? Excuse me, what? How exactly?

Well, if you knew the answer to that, the card would be called 13055's Triumph instead of Jace's Triumph. Only Jace really understands why. Well, and the WotC story writers.

The flavor text does seem to indicate that Jace's Vraska plan doesn't actually work.

Quote from SpeedGrapher »

So if anyone wants an update seems like the suggested retail price might be close to $163. That's $4.53 a pack. Potentially. The price is starting to come out but nothing is for sale yet. I was told by my magic shop that price can change. He can't even place an order for it yet. Indication is that this should be priced closer to a regular booster box than a masters set. Since a regular booster box is supposed to retail at $144 or $4 a pack. Seems like they removed MSRP to specifically make more money for themselves. Forcing card shops to either raise prices or work on a slimmer margin.

That's not the SRP, that's the price retailers are paying to get a box. Unless the set is loaded with value, this whole thing is going to bomb big time. Like...Homelands or Fallen Empires-style bombing.

Have to wait and see where this hype train goes. I think the $200 price range might crash after release. As long as this information was accurate. It's hard to judge a list price when you can't actually buy it and a dealer can raise the price if they feel like it.

Retailers could ALWAYS raise the price of anything if they felt like it. MSRP was never a cap on prices. If the $200 per box price turns out to be too high (which is quite frankly ridiculous - if anything it's too low) then I hope you like buying singles instead of sealed product because no store that likes paying their bills will carry something like this on such a stupidly low margin. Expectations and products like this are why game stores go out of business.

Quote from headminerve »

This thing can have... reach ??? I have in mind a picture of a ceratops chewing a dragon's leg in midair.

I assume it climbs trees bear style

Must really hate birds

Freed from the Real and Pemmin's Aura, get off the bench! We're puttin' you back on the roster!

Now it's just a T2 infinite. T0 this, T1 Breeding Pool and Birds of Paradise, T2 Breeding Pool, one of those auras, and you have one spare floating mana to activate the Aura and go infinite.



And lol, it already has its own wincon too, as you use that mana to put a million counters on the birds, and swing.

Quote from Igzex »

I really hope it has the planeswalkers and all but it's actually them playing the game itself just so people can make youtube poops where everyone is a horrible cheater.

Jace: "I play Divination. It allows me to draw two more cards! *Footage loops to make him draw 4 cards*. Now I summon my Guard Gomazoa-Guard Gomazoa attack his lifepoints directly! It allows me to draw two more cards!"

Nicol Bolas: "My move. I play a-

Jace: "My move! I draw two-THOUSAND more cards!"

Screw the rules, I have mana!

That feel when the most recent standard set has more modern impact then a set called "Modern" Horizons. The reason they gave is complete horse crap too. "We didn't want the reprints to outshine the new cards." Here's a thought, PRINT BETTER NEW CARDS. To think the card counterspell would even have any kind of sizable impact on modern is out and out laughable. If COUNTERSPELL is outshining the new cards in a set designed for eternal formats (Commander, modern, and legacy), then there is something fundamentally flawed with the sets design. We're 90+ cards into spoiler season and the cards you have good lands, two to three cards that might, MIGHT warrant testing, a bunch of sideboard cards, and chaff. It's not even interesting chaff. I wasn't expecting modern welcoming legacy staples and power-creep up the yin-yang like some people seemed to want, but I was expecting more innovation then dime-store bootlegs of legacy staples, random reprints of cards past there prime, Joke cards that feel more at home in an un-set, and snow (Who the heck wanted snow as a returning mechanic?)

I'm an older player. I've played this game close to twelve years, have legacy, modern and commander decks, and enjoy fun complicated draft formats. I was honestly excited to play with modern horizons cards because it felt like a set designed for someone like me. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and them to reveal more interesting cards for draft, more powerful cards for modern and legacy, and commander cards that are actually fun in a multiplayer setting and not oh that's a cool commander, but if you can say "We didn't want the reprints to outshine the new cards." with a straight face when talking about counterspell, freaking counterspell, then I'm beginning to realize it's never going to. I do sincerely hope I'm wrong, but currently this set feels like a joke with us as the punchline and the canopy lands as the cash grab. Not. A. Fan.

Another issue I might add is that: Because Ravnica is part of this large wheel that gets spun to see where we land on next, we don't sit on a plane longer than we have to. That instead of us getting to learn about many minor planeswalker characters in the lore and then those characters dying to the elderspell, we instead just see a wispy spark with what might as well have a number attached to it like 'Planeswalker Spark #1333', which doesn't matter to the average person. Its also a hurdle in writing stories that the greater the devastation the harder it is for the average person to wrap their mind around the very concept. Sure a planet could be blown up with millions on it, that it might elicit some emotional response, but its not going to be as hard felt as something that hits closer to home.

To give a perfect example the set has provided: 1000 Nameless Planeswalkers Vs 1 Dack Fayden.

As consider that while there are deaths in the thousands, you and me are not really attached to another nobody dying that makes up a statistic. But what clearly struck a cord with people was Dack Fayden dying. A character that only people who read the comics, played legacy, played vintage would even known.

Quote from Gutterstorm »

I’m just going to say that most works of fiction that are considered great do not just kill large numbers of characters. They use death sparingly and impactfully. I don’t know how others feel about it but it didn’t take long before death became a joke in Game of Thrones. Killing well liked characters too often can be a great way to lose a ton of your fans. They killed Gideon and if their Facebook poll is to be considered it had a great impact on people because he rolled over arguably better characters in all of his rounds so far. Just because you don’t like the gatewatch doesn’t mean they need to die. And not to mention the only reason you know any of this is because of leaks. Had it not been for that you would go into reading the novel still thinking that almost anyone could die and it would be way more satisfying. You’re only complaining because you recurved an incomplete version before having the opportunity to consume it as it was meant to be.

And people wonder why WotC gets so upset about leaks.

WOTC’s teaser trailer showed candles (sparks) getting snuffed out leaving only one. They tied those flames to the planeswalkers with the stained glass images - they guided us to the conclusion/assumption/expectation that many walkers were going to die. It was pretty on the nose and to think that the trailer would create any other expectation is just silly.

Seeing just two walkers gone after that kind of build up is ridiculous. As far as the audience is concerned, this story has had very little impact. One planeswalker that mattered on the hero side is gone and one villain is trapped (again).

We have what is presumably a new living guildpact in Niv but so what? In reality, what has that ever actually meant and who ever actually cared that Jace was the guildpact after we left Ravnica post dragon’s maze?

Fact is, this was hyped as a massive war with huge impact. It’s been anything but that.

Death should be used sparingly, I agree with you. But, when was the last time death was used in the MTG story? Elspeth on Theros? So, 5 years ago? I’d say it was time again. Despite this event being, supposedly, a much larger impact, the result is very close to equal to that of the Theros story.

Btw, the idea that many planeswalkers died to create the Elder Spell carries little weight. We didn’t know them before so we have no concept of what we lost there.

So, I believe the frustration lies not just in the fact that only one hero died (or two if you count Dak), one low priority walker died, and another bad guy got trapped. It’s the fact that those are unsatisfying results for something that was touted to be sooooo important. The most ancient evil alive, the most intelligent villain, and a full scale war. WOTC’s own hype was misleading and that’s the issue.

I’ll leave it with this: In reality, what will have changed when we planeswalk off Ravnica? It looks like it’ll be the same cast and another rebuilt world like all the rest.

Quote from Wraithe »

Quote from Xeruh »

Quote from Manite »

Well, there's your ****ing Gatewatch death, folks. And of course it was my favorite member of the team, continuing Magic's long-standing tradition of killing off its coolest heroes. Happy now!?

Quote from Simto »

Damn Gideon didn't deserve to go down.

The heroes most willing to sacrifice themselves for others are usually the ones who least deserve to.

I'm guessing this takes place right after Bolas "LOLNopes" Gideon. At least Gideon still has a hand in Bolas' downfall.

Nah, people are still griping about the story. Nothing would be a good story except a complete rout of the Gatewatch it seems.

Yep. It seems like it has to be some sort of Game of Thrones level of deaths, or the story just sucks. Including the death of the villain.

I mean, ffs. In Lord of the Rings, exactly one major face hero dies in the second act (Boromir), and one in the third act (Theoden). And the BBEG doesn't even die in the end. Sauron does NOT die in the LotR. He simply has all his power stripped from him, and is doomed to wander Middle Earth as a shattered fraction of his former self. Clearly, half of more of the Fellowship needed to die, and Sauron needed to die, or the story is garbage, right?

Same with a great many pieces of fiction, including some of the very best out there. Where there are major wars or the like, and virtually none of the heroes die. But many background characters die all around them, and it is the deaths of the many background characters that show the high stakes, not the deaths of the heroes.

And now and then, someone sacrifices themselves for the good of the others, becoming one of the only major deaths in the whole overarching story.

Because we're following the story of the survivors, in the end. The stakes didn't just disappear because most of the heroes lived to the end of so many top-notch fictional stories. We could have followed the story of one of the many background characters, watching them die tragically, but that does not, in fact, a better story make.

But yeah. The nonstop griping because *gasp* most of the heroes lived through to the end, except for those who heroically sacrificed themselves at a key moment, as the "only way the story could have been redeemed/good" doesn't remotely mesh with the vast majority of top-notch fictional narratives. Note: this is not a statement by me about the quality of this story either positively or negatively. Simply a statement that the assertion many seem to be making that a lot of planeswalkers printed in the set "needed" to die for the story to be good or the stakes to be high, while the dozen or more definitely dead planeswalkers whose sparks we see floating around indicating they definitely DIED (along with countless citizens of Ravnica) don't count as high-stakes-enough, comes across as absurd on its face. A massive number of fantastic narratives do not, in fact, have all that many heroes die. Not even during a great war/battle in the final act. Yet somehow manage to remain both high-stakes and great stories with most of the heroes themselves surviving.

It's quite astonishing, really.

There are two big reasons for this. Firstly, the Gatewatch from its inception has never felt like an organically put together team for many people. As evidenced by characters like Nissa recieving retcons explicitly so that they can fit into a market-friendly team of face characters. Along with the slapdash way that the team was assembled. Secondly, the Gatewatch's plot armor is noticably thick. Things happen to the team seemingly because the plot requires it, they have over thrice now come into contact with beings noted by the writers to be far beyond their league and have either prevailed or come out otherwise largely unharmed in ways that many see as unearned and contrived. Destroying two of the most powerful known beings in canon when their god-like predecessors stated that they would have great difficulty in doing so seemingly because they are the main characters. Also the plane those beings were destroying is going to be mostly fine. Also one (arguably three) member(s) of the team was to blame for those beings being unimprisoned in the first place and saw little in the way of consequences. Then the third being just decides to be defeated my our MCs for reasons that are just left for some kind of "future mystery" that likely won't be touched on for another half decade. Not to mention that if anyone else comes close to these beings, they are met with any combination of: A. Being disintegrated immediately, B. Losing their minds, or C. Being horribly transmogrified. The Gatewatch is immune, though. Because main characters. They also defy the most powerful existing planeswalker sans maybe Karn or Ugin and all get off pretty okay (Jace literally becomes a better person because of this). Because main characters, again.

The thing about LoTR is that it's loved because not only is it a story about someone who is largely a nobody rising to the occasion and making sacrifices to then become a hero, it is also densely rich in well constructed lore. The Gatewatch's story on the other hand features a collection of characters who were already The Special(tm) set in a multiverse that is presented as noticably shallower than it used to be even just 8 years ago. Look at the presentation of Zendikar vs BFZ block.

TL:DR: People don't belive that stories are only good if people die, they're dying for the Gatewatch to really find soke hard consequences after avoiding them for years now. And a lot of people probably do also want these characters to either die or be pushed out of the limelight because of how they've found the Gatewatch to be unlikeable and uncompelling on top of the team being shoved down the throats of the playerbase as a pretty transparent marketing scheme to the detriment of other characters and sometimes even Gatewatch members themselves.

Imo, War of the Spark should be a soft reboot of how the story is handledz but that isn't going to be the case, most likely.

Quote from Guardman »

I teared up a little when I saw Jaya's Greeting. It reminded me of my grandmothers. Bless their souls.

Your grannies threw explosions of fire into your face when you went to visit them when you were little?