I love me some angels, but Brisela really isn't my thing and this is a pretty stock "gain life, stay on top" white deck beyond that and its value doesn't add up to the price tag, which is just sad. Given angels have branched out into so many colors these days, sticking to "straight white angels" is rather dull. Lotta interesting (though not necessarily valuable) choices get ignored under that consideration.
The art is cool, probably could have just been a few-card-cool-art Secret Lair rather than a whole Commander deck though.
I bet you'll be able to see the slump in product sales after this from the moon.
Yep, happens all the time with MegaMillions and Powerball. They sell the tar out of them as the jackpot reaches stratospheric levels then someone wins it and sales plunge off the cliff again until that critical mass is reached again over time. Same will happen here, maybe not to the extent of said Lottos above but it will happen. There are still some dopes out there probably thinking they can still pull the One Ring and buying packs.
There's a sucker born every minute.
P.T. Barnum
I have fairly low hopes that this will not be adopted as a recurring sales strategy going forward.
"Remember the legendary creatures leading the guilds? Half of them get killed of to get replaced by planeswalkers." wasn't that popular a move that I want them to repeat it in every power structure we have, to be honest.
My point is just "Do something interesting and meaningful with this." The specific examples were just off-the-cuff thoughts on where it could go.
Shock value alone doesn't count for much.
Except Venser's corpse doesn't have his spark (Karn has it) and isn't even on New Phyrexia anymore.
Okay so...lets say clone secret agent (Phyrexians have done this before), with someone else's spark(some unnamed walker we don't care about). Everyone is all OMG Venser is back like whaaaa???? and then ya know, turns out to be a secret sleeper phyrexian.
I'm not saying these are the greatest ideas, only that now that MTG has opened up the gates to "phyrexians with souls" and therefore "phyrexian walkers" there's a lot of room to play with this beyond "oh they killed someone we kinda care about but noone who will really change the product sales."
The further more irritating element to me is that it they really wanted IMPACT, they could have hit Jace, or Liliana, or Chandra or Ajani, but that would mean MASSIVE changes for what is basically less of a character and more of a product. Tamiyo was picked because she's important enough to matter, but not important enough to make a real impact on the story. Which again, goes back to my point about bad writing. This is a product decision and nothing more.
Which is, again, why I'm not terribly irritated over the choice. Its not bad for story reasons, current MTG story is the pits. It's just kinda lame for marketing reasons. Like when Gideon sacrified himself for Lilly. The MTG marketing guys know Lilly has more marketing sway, so she lived. Ultimately Tamiyo getting compleated isn't really going to make a difference one way or the other.
Pretty much my thoughts right here. If they really wanted a big twist with a lot of impact, they should have chosen Jace or any other of the "main cast" PWs and maybe build it up over a longer period of time. But that would've meant losing one of their marketing poster characters - so they went with the niche character beloved by a small minority of players to make it feel like they just did something big. It's a cop-out, really.
Pretty much the only meaning Tamiyo's compleation has is that other, more important characters are now at risk of becoming phyrexianized as well - but they won't. This story development lacks impact beyond the initial shock value, bascially just functioning as an in-universe "Phyrexia is coming back, yo" teaser.
Yep, and thats really the worst of it. Compleated b-list characters could make for an interesting turn since we've got this more "free thought but evil" Neo-Phyrexia, how do they affect Phyrexia, how does that alter its approaches and goals, how do the power-plays pan out? Maybe Tezzy finally gets his butt kicked out of the Phyrexia circle by Evil Tamiyo who actually ya know, moves Phyrexia in an interesting direction. Maybe she subverts Jin as the Blue Praetor.
But....most likely not. By compleating a b-lister all it really does is raise the stakes for the main crew and now they need to "get serious" about Phyrexia (which, ya know, everyone who knew two licks about Phyrexia told them). Lets not even get into the bad writing tropes of how it's often a female character and how so very often female characters are thrown into the meat grinder to motivate male leads.
And so help me if this gets turned into a Tezzy redemption arc I swear I might just burn my decks.
I'm not terribly pissed it was Tamiyo, I just hope they don't resolve it in a boring way.
AKA: OH Gideon comes back for 5 minutes to save her! Praise Jesus!
Or: Turns out Lilliana's powers now work on phyrexians! For reasons!
Or: And then Kaya offed her offscreen because we had no idea where our writing was going!
I'm mostly irritated by the Compleation mechanic not applying to all of her colored mana costs. Yes, it would potentially put her at -1 loyalty. I'm sure there's some shenanigans in game already to handle that. Paying 2 life for 2 less counters and her being 1 mana cheaper really isn't much of a discount.
I do agree there would have been better characters to do this to though, or at least a little build up with a "Previously Unknown Walker" who is compleated.
The only problem with your suggestion of a previously unknown waller being Compleated would be that noone would care beyond the "oh, that happened." The fact that it's happening to a character that we've had around, that has helped the Gatewatch with Plane-shattering problems now succumb to one of the most ancient evils the Blind Eternities has had matters more. And if you take their current cast of Walkers on Kamigawa, Tamiyo is the one that makes the most sense.
Yeah but now we're going back to the shock value. Here's an idea: Use it to bring back Venser. We get the return of a loved character, brought back to life by good old undead phyrexian shenanigans, and the shock of "oh no phyrexians have walkers!" still sticks.
Or, lets power up a phyrexian! When Glissa planeswalks into the room, we all know stuff just got real.
(please pass on any "that character is dead!" arguments, these are Phyrexians we're talking about here)
The fact that Tamiyo is tied to Kamigawa is about as relevant as the fact that Nicol Bolas is tied to Kamigawa. "Tied to Kamigawa" and "caring" is a matter of good writing something MTG as a whole has been lacking for nearly a decade.
The further more irritating element to me is that it they really wanted IMPACT, they could have hit Jace, or Liliana, or Chandra or Ajani, but that would mean MASSIVE changes for what is basically less of a character and more of a product. Tamiyo was picked because she's important enough to matter, but not important enough to make a real impact on the story. Which again, goes back to my point about bad writing. This is a product decision and nothing more.
Which is, again, why I'm not terribly irritated over the choice. Its not bad for story reasons, current MTG story is the pits. It's just kinda lame for marketing reasons. Like when Gideon sacrified himself for Lilly. The MTG marketing guys know Lilly has more marketing sway, so she lived. Ultimately Tamiyo getting compleated isn't really going to make a difference one way or the other.
I'm not terribly pissed it was Tamiyo, I just hope they don't resolve it in a boring way.
AKA: OH Gideon comes back for 5 minutes to save her! Praise Jesus!
Or: Turns out Lilliana's powers now work on phyrexians! For reasons!
Or: And then Kaya offed her offscreen because we had no idea where our writing was going!
I'm mostly irritated by the Compleation mechanic not applying to all of her colored mana costs. Yes, it would potentially put her at -1 loyalty. I'm sure there's some shenanigans in game already to handle that. Paying 2 life for 2 less counters and her being 1 mana cheaper really isn't much of a discount.
I do agree there would have been better characters to do this to though, or at least a little build up with a "Previously Unknown Walker" who is compleated.
Really? The titular black planeswalker lady is "incognito" as professor "Onyx"? I mean, her code name is literally Professor Black. Like, be more obvious why don't you?
Good guy shows up: "Hey I'm looking for someone, can anyone help?"
Random schoolkids: "Sure mister, who you looking for?"
"Well she's this sort of gothic-victorian lady who wears too much black and dresses like she's going to a fancy party while galavanting around the multiverse."
"Well gee mister, I don't know about no multiverse, but we've got a Professor Onyx that very much fits the rest of your description!"
I mean, she could at least wear something less obvious, like, I dunno, blue, or puce.
But hey how will the kiddies know which planeswalkers are the black ones if their entire look doesn't 24/7 constantly nail it into your skull. Mana costs? Typical black-type abilities? What don't look at those!
Aside from this card being *meh* at best, it absolutely pisses me off from a creative standpoint. It's like if Lex Luthor went undercover in China as Lecks Luttor, a quirky, bald, rich industrialist. Supes would never find him then!
Still way better than the previous two versions. But the question is, why does such a boring legend warrent three iterations?
In all fairness, I thought she was pretty critically important to the Time Spiral storyline, right? A would-be planeswalker who had her spark taken in order to close one of the time rifts, and now leading Keld in existing Dominaria?
Jeska/Phage used her to seal the Zalfiran rift in particular, so, yeah.
To bring this back to talking about the actual game (and I hope this point wasn't addressed already, I only had time to skim through the pages):
When a player plays a card that depicts horrible actions or concepts, does that make you think that player condones such actions or concepts in real life?
I believe that's the question it comes down to in this game, as well as in the entertainment industry as a whole.
Can we view the depiction of horrible actions or concepts within the framework of *escapist* mediums as a benign, or at least harmless, form of artistic expression? Or is every depiction of horrible actions or concepts automatically an endorsement of those things?
The Lorwyn Elves were essentially an entirely racist society, yet we are still fine with playing cards like Eyeblight Massacre, right?
Murder is a thing in the real world, sad as that is, and still we can acknowledge that a player playing that card isn't automatically okay with actual murder, right?
As a long time D&Der, I have to say that people who do horrible things in "escapist" fantasy are often morally questionable IRL. "Escape" for some people doesn't mean escape from just the 9-5 grind or from the burdens of being an adult (assuming they are one), or from the tedium of dealing with the real world. For some people, and this is entirely IME, "escapism" also means escaping from rules, morals and laws. Doing the things that, assuming there were not laws against them, they'd do them IRL. Of course this is not every player who does a terrible thing in a game, and arguably RPGs are much more "direct" fantasy escapism than TCGs.
But it is one of those which may cause one to raise an eyebrow. Why did they choose that card? What was their emotional reaction to its effect? We're not trained psychologists, but we are humans, and humans are designed to examine those around them in search for commonality, community and safety. We are social animals after all. To that end, we're equally designed to look for danger within our social groups as without. There's a reason psychopaths set off little alarm bells in the back of our mind precisely because they don't react to certain stimuli like those little herd-finding parts of our brains expect, and that part of our brain is designed to warn us of danger.
So no, not every person who plays a card with terrible implications is a terrible person. But it can certainly be used as a way to see if they are.
In the end, I believe most of us agree that addressing what WotC wanted to address as well as trying to make a real difference in that regard is good and necessary.
Magic was heading in a good direction there, ramping up the diversity in characters depicted in their product. They also have a long history of doing so in regards to black people with great characters like Teferi, Sisay, Crovax, Agrus Cos, Alexi or Jolrael and I believe many of us liked the expansion of that inclusive direction in general.
In short, is it possible for us to acknowledge the good in WotC's proclaimed goal while still criticizing their chosen method do achieve that goal? Or will we always automatically claim that whoever has a problem with the action is automatically also against the intended outcome of those actions?
As good as it is to critique WOTCs actions and their intentions, such critique should equally be applied to the critique-er. If we are to question why WOTC says a thing or does a thing, then that critique can just as readily be leveled on us by others, or even by WOTC. Knee-jerk reactions are problematic in any direction, but "Are the actually against this action?" is a fair question to ask when someone starts critiquing someone else's actions.
I have no attachment to these cards. I don't think I've ever actually seen anyone play them. There are better cards, with better effects, cheaper costs, better art, more creative flavor text to be used. Noone's going to come into your house and burn your cards, and you might be able to make a quick buck off some collectors who want to get their hands on them. IMO it's good that WOTC is addressing some of these older issues, and I think they've done a good job being forward-facing about including more diversity.
The art is cool, probably could have just been a few-card-cool-art Secret Lair rather than a whole Commander deck though.
I have fairly low hopes that this will not be adopted as a recurring sales strategy going forward.
My point is just "Do something interesting and meaningful with this." The specific examples were just off-the-cuff thoughts on where it could go.
Shock value alone doesn't count for much.
Okay so...lets say clone secret agent (Phyrexians have done this before), with someone else's spark(some unnamed walker we don't care about). Everyone is all OMG Venser is back like whaaaa???? and then ya know, turns out to be a secret sleeper phyrexian.
I'm not saying these are the greatest ideas, only that now that MTG has opened up the gates to "phyrexians with souls" and therefore "phyrexian walkers" there's a lot of room to play with this beyond "oh they killed someone we kinda care about but noone who will really change the product sales."
Yep, and thats really the worst of it. Compleated b-list characters could make for an interesting turn since we've got this more "free thought but evil" Neo-Phyrexia, how do they affect Phyrexia, how does that alter its approaches and goals, how do the power-plays pan out? Maybe Tezzy finally gets his butt kicked out of the Phyrexia circle by Evil Tamiyo who actually ya know, moves Phyrexia in an interesting direction. Maybe she subverts Jin as the Blue Praetor.
But....most likely not. By compleating a b-lister all it really does is raise the stakes for the main crew and now they need to "get serious" about Phyrexia (which, ya know, everyone who knew two licks about Phyrexia told them). Lets not even get into the bad writing tropes of how it's often a female character and how so very often female characters are thrown into the meat grinder to motivate male leads.
And so help me if this gets turned into a Tezzy redemption arc I swear I might just burn my decks.
Yeah but now we're going back to the shock value. Here's an idea: Use it to bring back Venser. We get the return of a loved character, brought back to life by good old undead phyrexian shenanigans, and the shock of "oh no phyrexians have walkers!" still sticks.
Or, lets power up a phyrexian! When Glissa planeswalks into the room, we all know stuff just got real.
(please pass on any "that character is dead!" arguments, these are Phyrexians we're talking about here)
The fact that Tamiyo is tied to Kamigawa is about as relevant as the fact that Nicol Bolas is tied to Kamigawa. "Tied to Kamigawa" and "caring" is a matter of good writing something MTG as a whole has been lacking for nearly a decade.
The further more irritating element to me is that it they really wanted IMPACT, they could have hit Jace, or Liliana, or Chandra or Ajani, but that would mean MASSIVE changes for what is basically less of a character and more of a product. Tamiyo was picked because she's important enough to matter, but not important enough to make a real impact on the story. Which again, goes back to my point about bad writing. This is a product decision and nothing more.
Which is, again, why I'm not terribly irritated over the choice. Its not bad for story reasons, current MTG story is the pits. It's just kinda lame for marketing reasons. Like when Gideon sacrified himself for Lilly. The MTG marketing guys know Lilly has more marketing sway, so she lived. Ultimately Tamiyo getting compleated isn't really going to make a difference one way or the other.
AKA: OH Gideon comes back for 5 minutes to save her! Praise Jesus!
Or: Turns out Lilliana's powers now work on phyrexians! For reasons!
Or: And then Kaya offed her offscreen because we had no idea where our writing was going!
I'm mostly irritated by the Compleation mechanic not applying to all of her colored mana costs. Yes, it would potentially put her at -1 loyalty. I'm sure there's some shenanigans in game already to handle that. Paying 2 life for 2 less counters and her being 1 mana cheaper really isn't much of a discount.
I do agree there would have been better characters to do this to though, or at least a little build up with a "Previously Unknown Walker" who is compleated.
It's still pretty meh on those grounds.
Basically, plus there's Madness vampires from the last set and plenty of graveyard abuse in this one.
But yeah, one job, does one job well. Sometimes that's a lot of ask in this game.
I have no problem with the art, it's good, if a bit strange. That Generous Gift art is giving me all kinds of Dumbo "pink elephants" nostalgia/horror.
Good guy shows up: "Hey I'm looking for someone, can anyone help?"
Random schoolkids: "Sure mister, who you looking for?"
"Well she's this sort of gothic-victorian lady who wears too much black and dresses like she's going to a fancy party while galavanting around the multiverse."
"Well gee mister, I don't know about no multiverse, but we've got a Professor Onyx that very much fits the rest of your description!"
I mean, she could at least wear something less obvious, like, I dunno, blue, or puce.
But hey how will the kiddies know which planeswalkers are the black ones if their entire look doesn't 24/7 constantly nail it into your skull. Mana costs? Typical black-type abilities? What don't look at those!
Aside from this card being *meh* at best, it absolutely pisses me off from a creative standpoint. It's like if Lex Luthor went undercover in China as Lecks Luttor, a quirky, bald, rich industrialist. Supes would never find him then!
Jeska/Phage used her to seal the Zalfiran rift in particular, so, yeah.
As a long time D&Der, I have to say that people who do horrible things in "escapist" fantasy are often morally questionable IRL. "Escape" for some people doesn't mean escape from just the 9-5 grind or from the burdens of being an adult (assuming they are one), or from the tedium of dealing with the real world. For some people, and this is entirely IME, "escapism" also means escaping from rules, morals and laws. Doing the things that, assuming there were not laws against them, they'd do them IRL. Of course this is not every player who does a terrible thing in a game, and arguably RPGs are much more "direct" fantasy escapism than TCGs.
But it is one of those which may cause one to raise an eyebrow. Why did they choose that card? What was their emotional reaction to its effect? We're not trained psychologists, but we are humans, and humans are designed to examine those around them in search for commonality, community and safety. We are social animals after all. To that end, we're equally designed to look for danger within our social groups as without. There's a reason psychopaths set off little alarm bells in the back of our mind precisely because they don't react to certain stimuli like those little herd-finding parts of our brains expect, and that part of our brain is designed to warn us of danger.
So no, not every person who plays a card with terrible implications is a terrible person. But it can certainly be used as a way to see if they are.
As good as it is to critique WOTCs actions and their intentions, such critique should equally be applied to the critique-er. If we are to question why WOTC says a thing or does a thing, then that critique can just as readily be leveled on us by others, or even by WOTC. Knee-jerk reactions are problematic in any direction, but "Are the actually against this action?" is a fair question to ask when someone starts critiquing someone else's actions.
I have no attachment to these cards. I don't think I've ever actually seen anyone play them. There are better cards, with better effects, cheaper costs, better art, more creative flavor text to be used. Noone's going to come into your house and burn your cards, and you might be able to make a quick buck off some collectors who want to get their hands on them. IMO it's good that WOTC is addressing some of these older issues, and I think they've done a good job being forward-facing about including more diversity.