MtG Flavor, Lore and Fiction

Yes, Kaladesh is a beach episode block. I knew that from the first story onward. It was to be expected, we just finish a rather long storyline. This is a setup, I'm willing to weather in hopes of it developing into a better storyline.
That may be so but I don't want to focus on that. Also, it really differs from writer to writer. I think there was some good writing in there, like to story that introduced Ajani, I liked that.

Why is MtG so frustrating? I downloaded the Magic duels game and I keep gettin my ass kicked, and no its no because I suck, its for one simple reason the fucking mana management in this card game is annoying. Most game I have set a bunch of lands to get anything started meanwhile the A.I somehow manages to summon 3 ATTACK creatures while Im stuck with a dead hand most of the time because most of the beginning decks suck ass due to mana trolling when it comes to them.

Someone help me plz.

Fix your mana base.

State what colors you usually use and then tell us what lands you use.

>written by Kimberly J. Kreines

>mfw

Tezzeret is not a smart man. Even when he worked directly under Bolas he pretty much did the exact same thing, constantly killing Bolas's imps and ignoring orders.

Rashmi isn't autistic, she just works for a terrible boss but stays anyway because she's doing what she wants, that is building a fuckhuge teleporter.
She's pretty much any employee of a video game company that doesn't immediately bail out when EA shows up to buy them.

And Garruk shouldn't have started shit with Liliana if he didn't want to be cursed. His fault.

I think a large part of it is that he needs to keep his own ego up from his days on Esper when he wasn't worth shit.

But the writing IS shit m8, besides the obvious plot direction there isn't much to talk about here; ok, Tezzeret is going to send a gearhulk army to X for Y reason. X and Y will be revealed in the next 5-7 weeks.

The main problem (and I mean in general in this post Origins storytelling style) is that the writers don't know or can't pinpoint their audience; Do they write for kids or adults? Do they writer about real or fictional problems? Do they write about new or old stuff? For new or old players? Don't forget the fear of writing something politically incorrect, they don't want a Garruk-Lilly situation again, that's bad press.

So the final result is a mess of one dimensional characters as your protagonist, saturday morning cartoon villains and a plot so simple it would be rejected in a kid's tv channel. On the other hand they have an amazing worldbuilding team that have created awesome planes but are wasted as settings with this kinds of tales (I'm looking at you Zendikar).

Granted, they need to keep the story simple for new players and have one color/personality protagonist for the kids to represent them (good luck with black), but fuck.

You know what user, you have a point, it isn't worth complaining about something that won't change. We're stuck with this characters. Fine.

Who is picking this up next month?

Yup. Got the Zendikar one too. Kaladesh looks good.

Are these literally just the stories you would find online or more lore/setting focused?

It's got a lot of the best art in print quality and some full pages.

It doesn't have much on the story except for a summary, but it has ALL the worldbuilding for the world, down to specifics that they couldn't fit into a regular planeswalkers guide. The zendikar one for instance, talked about the three different types of elves, confirmed that zendikar vampires count as "cursed living beings" and that goblins eat rocks to gain immunity to shit, including the eldrazi among other things.

So lorewise it's great.

The artbooks at least are more lore/setting focused.

I didn't end up buying the Innistrad artbook because I was infuriated it too left the entire situation the plane was in after the storyline just stopped completely up in the air, but at this point I feel like Innistrad is fucked until they need another set and then suddenly we'll pretend the plane didn't have the delicate balance that allowed life to continue on it murdered with an axe last time.

There were some neat tidbits, though, such as there being a lodge for hunters located right near the opening of the local hellmouth, for guys that worry even Cathars to stay near their targets. Rem Karolus apparently was from there, and was mentored by a woman who walked into the hellmouth armed to the teeth when her children's souls were stolen and started killing demons left and right. She was apparently eldrazified, and I got the implication Rem had to take down his Emrakul-Scion mentor before meeting up with Thalia's host in Flight of Nightmares.

It did at least MENTION Ormendahl after Eldritch Moon dropped, even if it never confirmed if he lived or died. He apparently just turned into an eldrazi demon and started trying to eat the plane.

Me, looks super dope! Looking forward for the New Phyrexia and Dominaria one.

Yes, I'm a nostalgiafag.

>I don't want to talk about this aspect of the lore so no one else should!
Autism speaks.

Is it time for another flake thread?

...

Wait, did they confirm they are doing old sets? I thought it was just for new blocks.

Seems what scares them the most is a regular boss from a shitty job.

My answer to your question is Vronak.

...

That's why we could turn this into Tamiyo posting. The side characters are one of the best things to come from the new lore.

Even Shameli, Shareli, Sha-whatever is doing more than Arlinn.

What else has she authored? The gems of autistic stories in mtg?

For all we know, Vronak is dead.

Middle management is hella scary

As an autist myself I hate it when people portray it in fiction. It's invariably romanticized or heavily stereotyped, both of which feed grossly exaggerated expectations of autistic people's capabilities and behavior.

But that bitch ain't autistic. Just a shit character.

I don't believe any claim was ever made outside Veeky Forums that she was. She's just supposed to be an elf inventor who has some green mysticism mixed in on a heavily artifice-based world.

They need to hurry up and just tell us what the fuck Bolas is planing to get us all hyped only for there to be a lame ass ending to the story because the Jacetice league is shit.

MAKE MTG LORE GREAR AGAIN

If I didn't know better I'd say the people from this image look like they come from Atlazan. But that simply isn't possible... Is it?

Any user willing to clarify?

Been following the storyline since OGW now. Her stories are the worst by a long shot.

Honestly, the only reason she hasn't been replaced by someone actually competent is because she's there to fill WotC's gender quota.

If WotC actually gave a damn about narrative quality they'd just have Ken Troop write the whole damn thing.

They're nondescript planeswalker avatars from Magic Duels, the casual online way of playing MtG ala Hearthstone.

Some of these avatars occasionally make it into canon appearances, although usually as side characters and quickly slain mooks.

The best character to come out of all this is Old Man Gideon some user keeps greentexting about

Non planeswalkers confirmed to planeswalk!

>Breakthrough, which is about Rashmi.
>A Time for Innovation, which is about Rashmi.
>Emrakul Rises, which is about Emrakul's reveal, with a large section devoted to werewolf hunters that are lesbians.
>The Archmage of Goldnight, which is about Arlinn.
>Under the Silver Moon, which introduces both the werewolf hunters that are lesbians and Arlinn.
>One half of Retaliation of Ob Nixilis, likely the Nissa half, with the other half being written by Nik Davidson (who writes a damn god Ob Nixilis)
>Hedron Alignment, which is the story of the Gatewatch facing off against Ulamog. Has a large Nissa section.
>Nissa's Quest, which is about Nissa.
>The Survivors of Sky Rock, which is about Gideon. Gideon's articles seem to be divided up between a lot of writers.
>The Silent Cry, which is about Nissa.
>For Zendikar, which is about Nissa.
>Nissa's Origin: Home, which is about Nissa.

They divide writing between authors based on the certain characters. Kimberly seems to be in charge of writing anything that focuses on Nissa, Rashmi, Hal and Alena and Arlinn.

Noticeably, she hasn't written any of the articles that involve Nissa since Kaladesh began. It's up to you if Nissa has gotten worse, since she's transformed from 'MUH ZENDIKAR' to a bit of a moeblob.

...

As a fan of Nissa I am so mad about her.

If they were going to retcon her, fine retcon her, but at least keep her balls. All she does is cry or act like a baby deer now.

Oh.

No user. Chandra is the designated strong one, Lilliana is the designated mean one. Thus Nissa had to be a waifish husk who exists to make sure you know when to feel things.

A character must never have any kind of development that makes them more complicated or realistic, even if they logically would have a significant personality change. That's just not fun.

Now that Ajani will join, there is hope. As in I hope they don't fuck Ajani up.

It's like Nissa dropped her balls before she planeswalked awy from Zendikar. I think Ajani may outgreen her soon.

Ajani will be a kaiwaii catboi.

True that. Gideon is a total bro. Do you have the one with Pronouns?

Don't get my fucking hopes up.

>
We’ve talked about whether Karn is supposed to care, and it’s possible one day Karn will. If that day comes, we’d revisit how we and characters refer to Karn.
Hahahahahahahahaha

Not that user but I'd love to have that one to. I'll trade ya.

...

So what was with Rashmi seeing the other planes? Was she connected to them through the Aether, letting her connect to them, or does she have a latent Spark that was about to ignite?

From what I gather, her invention jaunts things from point A on Kaladesh through other planes to reach point B on Kaladesh, although how exactly I don't think was explained that well. But basically it's a planar portal that seems to skip exposure to the Blind Eternities, unless I'm completely misreading how it works.

I didn't get how she could set the landing of the object, technobabble is all I read.

Maybe? Somehow when she was trying to set the coordinates of where she was sending something she managed to view a bunch of different planes, after passing through somewhere "cold", which seems like the Blind Eternities. And everybody without a spark is suppose to die when they even come in contact with it. Maybe Rashmi is able to even make the transporter because she's actually a Planeswalker?

Don't you mean Magi-Technobabble?

Anyways, somehow she was sensing the flow of Aether in the world and uses that to mark coordinates for the transporter.

I liked the snowflake threads.

For a while they encourages content creation. It was a fun way to get people to collaborate on content, and for them ro answer the question "Could I do better than WoTC writing?" Which isn't difficult to do.

Yeah, you get spergs and people who can't take any criticism. You get shit writing and you get shit characters.

That's fine. That's how people get better.

So you sorta "feel" where do you want it to land?

>get better
That's cool but do we need to water down a lore thread so people can work on their snowflake craft?

I liked the first one when it was a first stage cancer. Then it went full "Sonic OC" and I couldn't handle it.

Rate OGW and EMN endings.

>OGW
3/10

>EMN
4/10

Meanwhile, Maro tackles on important design issues. I wonder if they're gonna start requesting catfolk pronouns for Ajani soon.

EMN should be at least a 6/10. Tamiyo's reaction to Emrakul mindraping her may as well be her reaction to how the plot was handled. She seemed disgusted and vulnerated.

...

Go away, hitler.

>OGW
4/10, an attempt was made.

>EMN
YOU CAN'T RATE WHAT DIDN'T HAPPEN AND UNTIL SOME MOTHERFUCKER ANSWERS A SINGLE GODDAMN THING ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED AFTER MEMERAKUL GOT SEALED INNISTRAD DIDN'T HAVE AN ENDING

You'll never be rid of me.

I had forgotten about Davidson writing Ob.
What a good goddamn villain.
It's fun to think of drowning in terms of -1/-1 counters

>Invulnerability proved no match for three inches of dirty water.

I hope my boy comes back. Demons don't get enough love.

Here's Pronouns

That user didnt write a tl dr of the last story right? I would love to read it

So, I'm kind of new to this, so I have a question. How does magic actually, you know, work? Like when someone casts a spell, what's the procedure in-world?

Does everyone use the five types and draw from the land, or is that just something that Planeswalkers do? Would a non-Planeswalker mage just use magic like it was D&D or something? Is it different for every plane? Would a regular mage only have access to the mana he was standing around?

Everyone draws from their mana type. Some planes only have two or three kinds of mana so that radically effects the way magic there is used.

I belive that Planeswalkers can draw mana from anywhere they have ever been so they aren't effected by the limits of a plane. That might come straight from my ass though.

So what happens if a Vedalken ends up halfway across the plane? Does he still have access to his mana type? Or would he only really be effective around Islands?

What happened to 3?

His power would be strongest near blue sources but as long as the plane has blue mana he should still be able to use it.

Late with today's tl;dr

I might keep doing these regularly but I'm afraid I'll just characterise all POV characters as people really tired of their life

>Be Tezz
>Get a bunch of inventors from Naanland to work on inventions
>Actually it's all for this elf who will bring us back to the era of planar gates before Fuckboy Slim and Queen Bitch ruined my Consortium
>These guys are fucking retards compared to what we had on Esper but whatever
>They seem to think this is some sort of hippie safespace startup so I forbid them from discussing celebrity gossip
>Check up on these people
>One of them spent an entire fucking week upgrading his wrench instead of working on what I'm paying them to do
>Tells me I can't just throw inventors out of a helicopter
>That's where you're wrong kiddo
>Make a speech I've been preparing for a while to uplift these people to work better
>Speech comes of as some megalomaniac cartoon bullshit
>Man whoever wrote this can't write for shit
>Oh wait, I wrote this
>Nevermind
>The elf is the only one left, just as planned
>Technobabble with her back and forth for a while, briefly wonder why I'm doing this
>Increase her Aether allocation because I'm a nice guy
>Shut some of the illegal DIY warehouses from Aether, they're violating Consulate safety anyway
>She complains for some fucking reason
>Vaguely threaten to kill her
>Wonder why I'm threatening her as opposed to making this thing myself since I'm smarter than her
>Visit her after a while
>Oh fuck she planeswalked around
>Oh fuck I'm about to get the "SO MANY REALITIES" I've heard so many times
>Shut her up
>"Aether fuse blew"
>Take safety very seriously, allow her to fix it
>Threaten to kill her fuckboy
>Why am I doing all these things that will obviously antagonise me I'm trying to get results for fuck's sake
>She gets uppity
>Blows up her machine while I'm busy considering which therapist to visit
>Unzips her aether fuse
>Planeswalks away

I think it's

Awesome, thx.

No, Obby specifically says that when his spark comes back, so do a bunch of his old mana bonds on other planes, and he can freely draw on them.

Planeswalkers start out no different to a plane bound Mage, but they have no ceiling (theoretically) to how many bonds they can acquire.

The lack of an epilogue story for Eldritch Moon really fucking bugs me. Especially since the next "main" story had the Jacetice League on Ravnica no worse for wear with no real hint of how things turned out.

But I guess having a story about a Black Female Ghost Buster Planeswalker was so fucking important we couldn't have a wrap up on one of the most popular planes of all time to see how broken it was after being tentacle raped.