Joining a guild and adhering to some ancient guildmaster's creed is not something that splinter movements—such as the so-called Gateless—are willing to accept.
Guess we know where Gatecrash comes from. No idea why the "gate" though.
Now THIS is the article I have been waiting for since the announcement that RtR would have guilds. Thanks for giving attention to that.
Also, I'm jump on the bandwagon of the whole merfolk thing feeling clunky and forced. But since you said the explanation will come, I shall wait for it. (By the way, I think it's really nice that you, Brady, reply to posts here. It feels nice to know we are being listened to.)
For linking a card to Gatherer without writting the name of said card for readers, use the autocard brackets together with and equal sign and right the name of the real card. Then put the message you want inside the tags, like you would do with autocarding. Like this:
I like storm crow because I really like crows in real life, as an animal, and the card isn't terribly stupid, but packs a good deal of nostalgia and also a chunck of the game's history. So it's perhaps one of the cards I have most affection to, but not because "lol storm crow is bad hurr hurr durr".
Although I do assume you deliberately refer to them (DCI) as The Grand Imperial Convocation of Evil just for the purposes of making them sound like an ancient and terrible conspiracy.
Now, now. 1994 doesn't quite qualify as "ancient".
Oh, it's a brilliant plan. You see, Bolas was travelling through shadowmoor, causing trouble, when he saw a Wickerbough Elder with its stylin' dead scarecrow hat. Now, Bolas being Bolas took the awesome hat and he put it on his head, but even with all his titanic powers of magic he couldn't make it fit. He grabbed some more scarecrows, but then a little kithkin girl asked if he was trying to build a toupee. "BY ALL THE POWERS IN THE MULTIVERSE!" he roared, "I WILL HAVE A HAT WORTHY OF MY GLORY." and so he went through his Dark Lore of Doom (tm) looking for something he could make into a hat that would look as stylish on him as a scarecrow does on a treefolk. He thought about the Phyrexians, but they were covered in goopy oil that would make his nonexistant hair greasy. He Tried out angels for a while but they didn't sit quite right. Then, he looked under "e" (because in the Elder Draconic alphabet, "e" for Eldrazi is right next to "h" for Hat) in his Dark Lore of Doom and saw depictions of the Eldrazi, and all their forms. "THIS SHALL BE MY HAT!" he declared, poking a picture of Emrakul, "AND WITH IT I WILL USHER IN A NEW AGE OF DARKNESS -- ER, I MEAN A NEW AGE OF FASHION!"
And so Nicol Bolas masterminded the release of the Eldrazi.
The last couple days have been roughly every perverse fetish imaginable, but it only got "creepy" when speculation on Mother of Runes's mob affiliation came up?
I like to think up what I consider clever names for my decks, only later to be laughed at by my wife. It kills me a little on the inside, but thats what marriage is about.
Of course, the best use [of tolaria west ] is transmuting for the real Tolaria.
Absolutely. I used to loose to my buddy's Banding deck for ages, it was then that I found out about Tolaria , and I was finally able win my first game.
Browbeat is a card that is an appropriate deck choice when there's no better idea available. "No better idea available" was pretty much the running theme of Odyssey era.
Modern is like playing a new tournament every time : you build a deck, you win with it, don't bother keeping it. Just build another, its key pieces will get banned.
I always find it helpful when im angry to dress up in an owl costume and rub pennies all over my body in front of a full body mirror next to the window.
Dymecoar:
Playing Magic without Blue is like sleeping without any sheets or blankets. You can do it...but why?
Omega137:
Me: "I love the moment when a control deck stabilizes. It feels so... right." Omega137: "I like the life drop part until you get there, it's the MtG variant of bungee jumping"
Zigeif777:
Just do it like Yu-Gi-Oh or monkeys: throw all the crap you got at them and hope it works or else the by-standers (or opponents) just get dirty and pissed.
Normally it's difficult to pick up on your jokes/sarcasm. But this one's pretty much out there. Good progress. You have moved up to Humanoid. You'll be Human in no time.
I, for one, don't find the merfolk's introduction out of place or awkward at all. A world needs to have oceans (lots of water) to sustain life. Yet Ravnica's entire surface is covered in city... Therefore, the bodies of water had to have all been buried under city layers.
Now all that's left to learn is why the merfolk suddenly decided to surface. But I'm sure there's a reason.
3rd set is going to end with Niv making an inter-planar travel network, that will open up the multiverse to the phyrexians and eldrazi. Then as a final twist the entire metropolis will be destroyed restoring Ravnica to it original natural state. Yup, an I'm sticking to it!
3rd set is going to end with Niv making an inter-planar travel network, that will open up the multiverse to the phyrexians and eldrazi. Then as a final twist the entire metropolis will be destroyed restoring Ravnica to it original natural state. Yup, an I'm sticking to it!
I agree, the article was really interesting and quite a good read until the words Jace Beleren showed up. Stories about the planes themselves were interesting, now every story is going to struggle to be different because the centre point is the same handful of characters...
Still, I only care so much about fluff... I'm just hoping that the Jace they print at some point in this sets run doesn't dominate the entire format and ruin the game for people like the last screw up did.
I think because there isn't much tension. They're supposed to be Magic's constant, so they keep on living and doing relatively nothing. They change too little.
Venser & Karn were interesting. The first died, the second got a spark for a second time, now there's change, that's interesting.
Sarkan revered dragons and then made the mistake of revering Nicol Bolas and is now insane or something. That's interesting.
Jace? I see NO difference between the very fist Jace and this one. What has he done in all the stories up until now? I don't know, and it seems I don't have to care because he hasn't changed at all. He's a bit tired... really?? Is that supposed to hook me?
Sorin is another example. He returned to his homeplane in dramatic fashion, to set things right once and for all, to do... nothing? What has he done? I have no idea. He just didn't matter in AVR's storyline or something?
Reading about these guildmasters, who keeps scheming against each other, failing, succeeding, dying, that is interesting. But it made me realize that Planeswalkers have this storytelling flaw. Because they are a constant, because they're not subject to world-changing events, they are, ultimately, quite boring.
So while you have 100% succeeded in making Planeswalkers the faces of the game, to give it, and the colors, personality, protagonists, people to be drawn to, the problem is that they lack depth. Severely. They are the faces of the game, but they only have face value.
Love the flavor of this set. Makes me sad I missed the first Ravnica block.
This is a good help to get a feel for the setting, and since the books are out of print and kindle wont sell them in my region (please fix so the old books are available world wide on kindle, they are available on nook) its a great way for the rest of us to catch up. Just trying to get a feel for the different guilds so I can pick "the right one" at the pre-release.
Just a small question/comment. I thought Ravnica was an ecumenopolis (a city spanning an entire planet) rather than an megalopolis? (chain of roughly adjacent metropolitan areas)
Really? My thought upon reading that was actually "Szadek".
Same here: 'Little is known about Agyrem now; its whereabouts in the Multiverse are a mystery.' 'Rumors abound that Lazav is insane, claiming to receive insights from an unseen force.'
Hmmmm. Definitely going to go with Szadek there too.
Could the Gatecrash be the unwelcome appearance of a lot of dead spirits? Although I suppose that would make more sense as a third set twist. The term 'gateless' for a bunch of the guildless definitely feels like a set-up piece of info.
I wholeheartedly back the calls for Jace's involvement in the story of RtR to be minimal. A peripheral thread perhaps, but not a central part, please? Ravnica has enough great characters and depth of intrigue of its own - it doesn't need the PWs to stomp all over it.
This was an awesome article till it started talking about Jace....
The story of ravnica was amazing. I still re-read the books every few months, its just that good of a story to me. I cared way more about Kos, Feather,Crix, Jarad, Teysa, Pivlic, and even Borca and Obez way more than I care about Jace and Co....
I wanted Wizads to re-create that.
Without Jace.... or other PLs....
But since every set now needs to be about what Pls are doing on a Plane instead of being about characters from that Plane.... I just hope that they tone him (Jace) down in the story line....
I agree with this (and other) posts that the useage of the same planeswalkers everywhere damages how engaging the plot of each set is by their relative immutability. And really, wasn't that part of the reason The Mending happened in the first place? Yes, it was partly that the planeswalkers were so g-d-mnd powerful that every crisis had to be a universe-ending apocalypse whooaaaaa but also that the characters just didn't change at all? And that's why so many stories tended to focus on the PW's companions, like Xantcha, Jhoira, and the Weatherlight crew.
Now, that's not to say that each world or setting has enough meat on its bones to necessarily support a story without planeswalkers. Kamigawa (as I understand its plot; never read the novels) and Ravnica were examples of stories that did. Quite frankly, the Ravnica block novels (Guildpact particularly) stand as my favorite magic novels but also stand fairly strong among novels I've read, period. They're wonderful fun, with plenty of humor, engaging characters (Kos! Pivlic! Zomaj Hauc!), gorgeous setpieces (the entire caravan fight sequence, Teysa's visit to her uncle prior to his death, Niv-Mizzet v Nephilim), and a story that's much more interesting to follow than Here Is The Big Bad Guy Dear Reader, Now Let's Watch The Protagonist Figure It Out And Stop Him. On the other hand though, you have stories like Lorwyn and Mirrodin which just ... didn't.
So, I don't know that there's an all-encompassing solution. But there's definitely - for me at least, and for others here it seems - a problem.
Lest this all sound like pure whining, I want to personally thank each and every member of the (as I understand it to be) quite small creative team. You guys do a tremendous amount of work every year without pause, and while us story nerds always find bones to pick, that's more a reflection on our insatiability rather than some inadequacy on y'all's parts. So thanks for making sets and worlds every year that, even with our complaining, we all love to explore.
You'll forget you ever read this the minute you look away.
there is nothing "epic" about a turn one victory. ever.
or really any magic game, for that matter.
So this one time, I wanted to play a game of Magic with my friend, but he was in another country and neither of us had Magic Online. I hitchhiked my way to the coast, barely fending off hungry wildlife when I couldn't get a ride, nearly dying of thirst crossing deserts, and posoning myself half to death foraging for food. At one point, I was taken hostage by a group of kidnappers, only managing to escape after a week of careful planning thanks to careful application of a rusty spoon.
Once I reached the coast, I had no money to buy a ticket across the ocean, so I built a boat using my own two hands, and spent months sailing across the waves, nearly losing my deck as I swam to the shore of a desert island in a storm after being capsized by an enormous wave. Nearly delusional after so long with no human contact (the notches I cut in the single tree to tell time had long since felled the thing) I was eventually rescued by a passing ship, where I was taken aboard as a crew member.
We sailed around the world, seeing many exotic places and having great adventures, before we finally arrived at my friend's country. Once more I stumbled across a desolate landscape, riding on train or car when I could, and going on foot when I could not. Eventually, weary to the bone, seven years after I started my journey, I arrived at my friend's house, clutching my well-worn and weathered deck to my chest. We shuffled up our decks, I won the roll. Gleefully, I laid down my cards.
Black Lotus . My friend looked quizzically at me, wondering what I was about to do. After so long, he no longer knew what deck I had brought with me to this game.
Flash . A knowing smile appears on my friend's face as the knowledge slowly returns to him.
So no one else is upset with the stunt Wizards just pulled to drive sales?
Drive sales of what? Non-Jace, non-Mystic cards? I'm pretty sure people already own more than eight Magic cards. If you don't, I feel for you. Maybe you can trade those Stoneforge Mystics, which are still quite valuable, for some.
