What are you guy's thoughts on the Gatewatch?

She would be more interesting if they kept the Elvish superiority/racism angle but can't have that in the current year.

I think my big issue with the Gatewatch isn't so much the team themselves but the block structure their stories must follow. Every block they need to blow out some big bad guy, it happens with a few setbacks that don't really matter, and then they move on.

Even the super heroes they thematically mimic don't follow this structure. Super heroes for the most part stay within pretty confined locations, and their victories are rarely as absolute as the Gatewatch. They also tend to have day jobs and act like regular people instead of being super powerful wizards 24/7.

I think my biggest issue is that not only are they heroes without stakes due to being powerful planar travelers, but they actively overshadow the people who do have a stake in their conflicts. Innistrad, Zendikar, and now Kaladesh were full of interesting characters who put their lives on the line, with two of the three fighting against unwinnable cosmic horrors. Then you just throw all of that shit out the window when the Gatewatch dream team show up, do some silly magic bullshit, and then the problem is solved.

I actually liked her back when she was a racist elf. The retcon was so godawful, and goes against everything you should do in terms of storytelling. Seriously, she's so bad.

I actually quite liked the Weatherlight. At least they have some moral ambiguity.

Liliana is the only interesting member of the gatewatch. The rest should die.

Wasn't she an evil seductress before that got deemed sexist?
Now she's just a morally ambiguous zombie fangirl.

yep just like the all ready mentioned nissa being a interesting character once as well

God i hated that scene
>oh no look the unkilliable titans are here run!
>lol their dead by the power of friendship

I always thought "the gathering" was about how nerds gathered to play a card game.

It's terrible.

is gideon earth-bending?

She was originally an anti-hero.

Then the evil seductress angle was played up.

I'm glad she's a sort of anti-hero now.

All the gatewatch haters ignoring this

I couldn't believe that this was how they decided to kill one of the greatest creatures in the multiverse.

Emrakul was even worse. It literally helps them trap it in the moon.

Nothing gets sacrificed.

Nothing gets changed.

No one gets tested.

In the actual story, he's literally bait for the titans. It's pathetic.

>Jace literally just waving

things that happened in that story:
>Bruna, Gisela, Avacyn dead
>Sigarda new head angel
>Church of Avacyn corrupted and questioned by the populace
>Sorin trapped in stone
>Castle Markov destroyed and the bloodline's numbers diminished considerably

What story are you reading dude?

I don't mean for the plane. I mean for the "main characters" themselves.

The Gatewatch defeat one of the greatest threats in the multiverse, then immedietly after, they take a vacation on Kaladesh.

Remember, Sorin, Olivia, Avacyn, and the rest are all just side characters now.

Well Lili joined the gatewatch which is an interesting wrinkle to her character.

Serious question because I'm not sure I follow: What kinda change do you want?

Remember New Phyrexia, and how there was a bit of a "Gatewatch" there with Koth, Elspeth, and Venser? This is what needed to happen here.

Magic Lore is at its best not when heroes go around "saving" everyone. Even in Weatherlight Saga, the heroes get fucked up. They get lost. Even when they do try to help the people of other planes, they fuck up and sometimes make things worse.

At its core, Magic is about the conflicts between the colors and the resulting conflicts in the real world, between the factions. Even when the planeswalkers banded together to try to save Mirrodin, they still hated each other. Koth forces Venser and Elspeth to join him. And what happens once they lose? The Phyrexians start to fight among themselves, again, aligned with color.

In theory, Jace hates Chandra and vice versa because of what happened on Zendikar before. Nissa hates everyone who's not an elf (But remember, she got retconned straight into the garbage bin). But lets forget that.

1/?

I think they defeat the purpose of MtG, in two ways.
1:They take the spotlight away from the natives of the planes, turning them into side characters in their own setting
2:They force every block to have a big villain that needs to be stopped, instead of just letting Wizards go "oh hey here's this cool place that has shit going on in it"

They're surfing the wave of capeshit instead of going in depths into their multiverse. I liked it more when the planeswalkers were having their stories "on the side", like the set is about an event happening on the plane and sometimes I would go "Hey, planeswalker X is there too, neat."

And I feel like WotC went out of their way to choose the most boring walkers for their Gatewatch. At least Ajani is here now.

Then, there's my point about sacrifice.

Imagine how the story would be if when Jace and Emrakul made contact, he got infected by the crazy, even just a little bit, like you might think he would from a plane eating monster.

What if controlling all those zombies drained Liliana, and she turns to the power of the Chain Veil, causing her to spiral further?

What if Emrakul didn't just fucking help the Gatewatch trap itself? Nissa had to sacrifice themselves to trap Emrakul because of her expertise on leylines.

Hell, lets get a little crazy. What if Garruk was on Innistrad, looking for Liliana, and find them as they're trying to fight the Eldrazi, screwing up their plans? Hell, what if they had to kill him, just to put him out of his current unexistance?

Any one of these ideas, and more, could have made the story at least seem like it has a higher stake than what we ended up with. Don't get me wrong, I loved SOI. That was what I was looking for. But then ending of EMN was so bad, and such a disappointment that it ruined any buildup we might have had.

There were so many opportunities to make a good story, and Wizards somehow managed to ignore all of them. It hurts me. It hurts me how their stories are so bad.

That happened before the gatewatch mobilized. It's not a hard fought victory when all the loses are before the fight and the fight itself costs nothing.

It's my theory that they specifically pushed planeswalkers out of their original colors in order to have five and only five mono-colored walkers. And of course, they are the most non-offensive, generic walkers of their colors.

Exaclty, they don't want to commit to their storylines.

Gatewatch cool/interesting character rank

Ajani>Liliana>POWER GAP>Jace>POWER GAP>Gideon>Nissa>Chandra

Switch Liliana with Ajani, and Chandra with Gideon, and it's perfect.

While I think your list is close user, Jace gets a decent amount of characterization in some of the novels (which I think a majority carried over to origins) so I think It would look more like.

Ajani>Jace≥Liliana>POWER GAP>Gideon>POWER GAP>Chandra>Nissa

They're dumbed down to benefit the non vorthos player in a story more digest, and sacrificing any originality deemed too complex I guess.

Also, what would you want the mono-colored walkers to behave like? Here's my take:

>White: Focus on the Order, make him/her a control freak, the others trying to teach him/her that sometimes there are grey areas. Play with the tax side of White.

>Blue: A curious character, always trying to acquire more knowledge, maybe a thief, a spy or something? Play with the control side of Blue.

>Black: Someone that went throught a lot of tough shits in his/her life, and try to become more powerful as a result of this, because he's/she's sick of people stomping on him/her. Play with the most "high risk, high reward" side of Black .

>Red: Focus on the emotional side, maybe a family man/woman, a genuinely kind-hearted person. I don't really know about the gameplay here tho.

>Green: I would say someone like Garruk. Nothing to add there.

It's taken a narrative which was specifically about powerful individuals and their interactions with each other, temporary alliances and fueds across the planes, and turned it into a saturday morning serial.

It's garbage. If there was any justice in the world Garruk would come back and murder the fuck out of all of them with a big fucking axe.

And lets not even talk about the absolute garbage that was Kaladesh.

Yay, we beat the Eldrazi... Why do we still exist? The Gatewatch was formed to fight the Eldrazi right? Why do they still exist? Are they actually going to "save" the multiverse now?

Not to mention that the entire set took place IN ONE CITY. This isn't Ravnica, remember. The whole plane is not one city. The entire thing is zoomed into the Gatewatch IN ONE CITY. It's the antithesis, the anathema of what Magic story should be.

On Theros, which was more focused on Elspeth, you got a glimpse of the other cities, each aligned to a different color. You don't even get that. It's literally factions within ONE CITY.

Story wise, this is the worst set I've seen. Even worse than BFZ and OGW, which introduced us to this garbage in the first place. It's shameful.

I'd say that Nissa is the worst here just because of lost potential. Imagine the story with her still as a racist elf. She has to fight with those she hates most to save her world. What if, by the end of the set, she ACTUALLY LEARNS SOMETHING? Then, maybe they can have her as the hippie she is. As she is right now, I hate her. I hate her more than Tibalt. At least Tibalt was interesting in how bad he was. Nissa got retconned straight into the garbage. It's like Wizards just put her into the juicer and squeezed anything interesting out. Jesus.

They're obviously a lazy, uninspired Avengers rip-off. I mean holy shit. It's just such a disgusting and cynical attempt to exploit the popularity of super heroes.

Racist elf is such a boring stereotype though
Though i guess it would work as a starting point for some character development.

Its better than a literal self insert by one of the writers

Most green characters are boring anyway.
It has been ages since the last good one.

and even he used to be red

Remember, though, that we had different characters to represent the different aspects of each color.

Chandra was the fire and lightning aspect. Tibalt was the chaotic aspect. Koth was the earth bending/geomancer aspect. Sarkhan had dragons.

Elspeth was the commander, while Gideon was the soldier, and Ajani was the soul/life magic guy.

Jace was focused on the mind magic aspect, while Tamiyo was the curious researcher, and Tezzeret was the tinkerer.

Liliana had her zombies, Sorin had his blood, and Ob had his demons.

Garruk had nature and beasts, and Nissa had elves.

Now, outside of the Gatewatch, all of the characters on this list have either been shifted or have been missing for years. I'll grant that some of these shifts make sense. Sorin was always black and white. Garruk's story about the curse is pretty cool. Ajani's evolution over the years is kind of cool to see.

Why is Sarkhan Temur? Why is Tamiyo Bant? To me, these are obviously made to make sure that there's one planeswalker per color that they can sell us.

In my mind, one planeswalker cannot and should not be able to represent every aspect of a color. The fact that they're trying to do something like this makes me angry.

You're right, but it's leagues better than the Nissa we have now.

I actually didn't play back when he was around. I've heard good things though.

I started playing when he was around

I bought a tournament deck because i didn't know what i was doing, and it had a Kamahl, and he was fucking amazing i always won against my friends when i played him.
Then a nigger stole the card and i stopped playing magic for 10 years

Dang dude. Sorry that happened.

This.

Ultimately, the core of the problem is that some Hasbro higher-up looked at Magic's story from like Otaria to Tarkir, and said "Exploring fantasy worlds is dumb. make it superheroes. Superheroes are popular these days." And then Creative had to retrofit five planeswalkers to be the most focus-group likeable inoffensive cutouts they can.

"People like the colors. Let's make characters who are literally just a color, that way people will like them!"

"But we don't have a generic looking green planes walker who's relatable. One is a racist elf and the other's turning evil."

"Fuck it, Make the elf not racist. Gary is too big and muscular to be on the team, people won't like him."

"But one of our color's philosophies is individualism and explicitly ignoring the greater good!"

"Fuck it, put her in anyway. No one cares."

The long and short of it, The Gatewatch is 100% money driven. It takes the bare bones understanding of the Avengers formula and shoehorns it into Magic the Gathering's completely different setting.

That's why the casual fan who looks at card names and art loves it while those of us who read books, go on the story website, and follow Magic's history fucking hate it.

At it's core the Gatewatch setup is a heartless, cynical cash grab, and that's why, even when they hire good writers to do good pieces for Magic Story, the actual story itself is rotten.

The most hilarious part is they ignored Garry for being evil when Lil is the exact reason he's turning evil.

One last thing, because I'm autistic.

Sorin and Nahiri's story actually had no consequence to the larger story (at least with respect to the Gatewatch). In fact, the Gatewatch actually have no idea that she even caused this. Think about how good the story might be if they ended up chasing her to a new plane (not Kaladesh), where they now have to explore the world to find her. Literally she doesn't matter now that she's got her revenge on Sorin (who the Gatewatch don't know about either).

The Gatewatch is like a fucking black hole. They're actually just sucking everything good that might have taken place out of the story. Seriously, it'd be funny if it were so sad and infuriating.

I donno, i consider myself a super casual fan who doesn't even know much about the lore and even i think the gatewatch is lame as fuck. Not to mention, I'm so fucking sick of jace

I personally think Garruk being a big muscular guy with a mask and an axe was what ultimately made them jump for Nissa. The Gatewatch all has to look like vaguely relate-able late teen to mid twenty year olds in order to maximize profitability. If they wanted Garruk on the Gatewatch they would've waved their arms and cured his curse. Honestly it'd be a better story than just straight-up retconning Nissa.

Almost everyone is. He's been around and insufferable for so long now, that it's a fucking meme.

The missed the chance for the hulk to get... Fuck, what's a vague related marvel superhero that's a girl

Oldfag here, Kamahl wasn't actually that great of a character, but he was fucking cool.

I honestly feel bad for Jace. He could just be an edgelord trapped doing paperwork in Ravnica, but these assholes keep rocking up to his house to bug him and knocking over his things.

>elemetal heroes get together to periodically save the universe against giant monsters

I've never been too deep into magic's lore but I thought a less meta pov worked well for establishing stories and characters inside the various planes.

>my feet hurt
>the sand keeps getting in my eyes
>Nicol Bolas could destroy our minds at any moment
>i wish i was in Ravnica signing some papers

Honestly I like the jace we see in the stories. Just a tired-ass dude who should probably be doing his job back home and also has mind powers. I wish we'd see more "I have not had enough coffee for this" Jace in flavor text.

yeah, that was stupid. "Hey, let's make our elf walker with a unique and multifaceted personality into a boring land-whore". Best decision ever.

Sarkhan is a bad example, since he switched through r/b and r/g before

The Gatewatch is essentially a less interesting rehash of the Weatherlight crew. After WotC somehow fucks their storyline sideways, they'll pull a five block hiatus and introduce some new donuts.

every Gatewatch member is quickly degenerating into one, so that they can have romances and other shit the LGBTAQUIAZTVWXY crowd loves

How is Nissa a self insert?
Not disagreeing with you, I just haven't caught that if it's true.

Yeah, jace is surprisingly not insufferable as he appears in the game. But seriously enough is enough. There hasn't been a standard cycle that didn't have some form of jace for years now.

this.
Give me back stories where Sarkhan fucks over Tarkir to turn it into a dragon-dominated dystopia to reanimate one specific dragon, or where Liliana unleashes hordes of demons upon a plane so she can kill one specific demon. It shows the power and grandeur of being a planeswalker more than being a part of the Jacetice League and bumbling from plane to plane to play white saviour

I think kaladesh would of been fun if it didn't tie in to the the overarching jace story. I just want to see planeswalkers defending their home planes or exploring exotic ones.

> LGBTAQUIAZTVWXY

Wait, hold, I can do this.

Lesbian, gay, bi, trans, ally, queer, undecided, incel, asexual, zoophiliac, transylvanian, vorthos, woke, klinefelter/turner, and the last man.

I won't be happy until each one has a representative on the Gatewatch, personally.

Trick would make a terrible planeswalker. Ampersand, on the other hand, would do great things.

The Gate watch are being miss used,
Even marvel knows better not to put every avenger in every movie....
Have them split up investigate different planes and reconvene with what they learned...
How it should go
>Jace: OK I'm taking Chandra and Nissa and exploring Autokhemet, see what we can learn
>Gideon: while Ajani, Liliana and me go to Dominara and dig up some stuff on Bolas, reconvene with you at Autpkehemt
>Jace: sounds like a plan
Imo

It's really funny to me how dumb I thought the Weatherlight was at the time and have since had to look back on it and go "Wow... I guess it wasn't that terrible after all."

Remember, things can always get worse.

Jinkies! this mysterious plane sure is mysterious.

Are you implying they aren't Mystery Inc. At this point?

It's a lazy decision to have a set of consistent characters across all of the sets, rather than introducing new and interesting protagonists.

It doesn't help that the Gatewatch's individual characters from this have gone from moderately interesting at best to painfully generic.

Yes. Yes they can.

Someone make this please

Originally the metaphor was that you and your opponent(s) were dueling archwizards. Your library represented an actual library, each spell the fruit of a tome on your many shelves. You sap the lands within your domain for their characteristic energies and use it to fuel your magic and pull creatures from other times and places or drive your domain's inhabitants to fight on your behalf, mystically driven to serve you and fight to their death.
The Gathering was the crazy-ass wizards fighting for pride and knowledge (because this is also when the rules had you lose a random card after losing a three-set game)

Back then, the idea was that ever set would be something like Magic: the gathering, Magic: the quickening, Magic: the storm
with different subtitles on every set's card back.

Then they realized you couldn't mix and match the sets that way and managed to get the backs changed just in time to avoid the issue.

The first set was called "the gathering" because it was the first set: the initial gathering of the players.

>What if controlling all those zombies drained Liliana, and she turns to the power of the Chain Veil, causing her to spiral further?

But that happened! Every story battle she has now mentions her tapping into the chain veil, bleeding out of all her tattoos, and talking to the weird demons inside the thing.

And what have been the consequences?

This was also a central theme within a lot of the plot in the early storylines. The Brothers' War sapped the land. Same with the Weatherlight and its combined storyline.

They're fine. Who gives a shit. The Magic storyline has always been dumb as hell. The Gatewatch characters aren't actively worse than fucking Gerrard Capashen. The story during BFZ/OGW was dumb as shit but it's been better since then, and it clearly hasn't stopped them from making other characters or exploring other worlds.

Really, the only actual problem with the Guildwatch is that Jace is both completely terrible and stupid, and completely overemphasized.

As a completely new player here is how it goes down for me:

>Install Magic Duels
>Play the Origin stories
>Oh look each color has their own guy
>Oh hey I have a basic idea of what the color is about and what a planeswalker means in this setting
>Check out the Kaladesh stories, it feels like YA Fantasy, which is actually completely fine by me because I'm a sucker for YA Fantasy shlock
>End up liking Chandra quite a lot because she's stupid but tries her best
>End up liking Ajani the most once we actually get introduced to him
>End up using Ajani as a segway to learning about the rest of the lore

Basically the Gatewatch helped make this big Magic multiverse deal really accessible to me. I know everything is supposed to be about the planes and the environments but I need a human connection of some sort even if it's caricaturization, at least as a starting point.

If I started off straight in the middle of the whole Ajani / Bolas / Uzemaki / etc stuff I'd probably be totally overwhelmed. Call me retarded but there's a lot to take for granted in this setting that's really intimidating to the uninitiated. But that's what the Gatewatch are supposed to be in the end, right? A starting point for new players?

I hope Liliana gets focus in the next story, she seemed cool.

>Gary

Kek, I can imagine a corporate guy giving directions, like J. Jonah Jameson:

>Put more of that blue guy!
>Who, sir?
>That James guy, use it more, my kid loves him!
>O-Ok... And what about-
>Oh and do a block about that redhead, Cassandra! And make her funnier!
>I-It's Chandra, sir...
>Ahhh whatever!!!

What is Jace doing in that image. Just standing around with flowing hands?

I'm curious, when did you start playing?

I've heard that before and I'm glad more people are getting into it, but as someone who has watched these flaming faggots stagnate for like nine years or some shit, give me someone else for fuck's sake.

Nothing... yet, specifically. She mentions that the more she uses it, the harder it gets to stop using it, so I think it will be one of those slow burn things.

It's only been what, six months since she got it? A year, tops, in-universe? We're on the outside seeing years pass, but inside it's weeks.

He caught a fish thiiiis big.

>Start the same way
>Pick Garruk
>Love his Beastmaster vibe
>Go mean Green
>Start reading fluff
>Garruk is now an edgemaster

Welp, I pretty much never bought new cards again because Wild barbarians are my jam and Magic seems to hate them.

>Please immortal killer outer beings
>Kill me

Holding open a telepathic channel between all the walkers so they don't have to waste time and energy yelling over the cacophony of battle.

Well, something better start happening pretty fucking quick.

If you're right, then I'll hold out hope. I hope you're right user, I really do.

If she doesn't start getting some actual god damn consequences I'm gonna be pissed.

Same with the Demon Pacts. We have seen zero reason to care about it. Why do the pacts matter at all? What is the nature of them? Its not like there's a "Don't kill me" clause in any of them, she killed two of them already.

Hell, Griselbrand was trapped in the Helvault, and she released him just so she could kill him! Why? What effect is Griselbrand being alive trapped in the Helvault having on her? We see literally no difference in Lili pre-AVR and post-AVR, so what was the point?

Liliana needs some god damn consequences.

Not only are they boring, but as others have stated, they shift the focus of the fluff in the wrong direction, so I depose them, honestly. Thanks to them existing we know just how big an autist maro is, though, so that is cool I guess

They're still dumb.