MTG STORY THREAD - Non-Canon Endings Edition

magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-story/rivals-ixalan-magic-story-alternate-endings-2018-02-21

TL;DR
>merfolk sit on their asses like the boring shits they are
>vampires still peace out, but vona gets nom'd
>pirates forget they want to reclaim torrezon and just party

And you all said that the Sun Empire winning was the worst timeline...

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I dont even know why I bother anymore.

reading this, i am happy with dinosaurs winning. The others had no real plot points for the future, except the Merfolk one

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Wells
>Lead author: Dominaria
just fuck my shit up

>the remaining (now non-canon) stories are too great not to share
>pirates act like retards and best girl gets eaten by a dinosaur
why are they always lying

Anyone read one of her books and can give an honest assessment of her abilities? Is she more competent than the fuckwits that produced these "endings"?

Yes but that's not a high bar

Because Mirrodin Pure.

The issue with Mirrodin Pure/New Phyrexia is one that you can actually see in a lot of different products: consumers will always romanticize what never was and ascribe any number of possibilities to it. Content cut from video games always has a cult following endlessly talking about how great it would be if it had been finished. Because there's potential there, it can be anything one imagines it to be.

By showing us the endings, and having them all be relatively dull, they prevented people from spending the next month complaining about how much cooler it would have been if X faction had won. Because we know what would happen if they did, so there's no speculation to be done.

That's a bit of a two-birds-one-stone situation. I seriously doubt those steaming shitpiles would have been ever canon, but they were probably cranked out in an hour to fill the purpose you just described while not taking quadruple the writing time of four full fledged stories

No one told me there was a story today, though it was a super fast read.

Man they really hate "muh oppressive white conquistadors" don't they? Their win is worse than their loss

I really don't understand why they even did this. I mean, how has fanfic ever really hurt a franchise? It's just fanfic, nobody really cares. You had a vote so presumably the majority is fine with the path you've chosen for the story. And people who want to bitch are gonna bitrch anyway so, why bother.

They should use these story downtime to post some of the stories from the old lore, from when they still did books. I'd love to read those.

WE WERE HERE FIRST

I'm actually happy the vamps lost now. If we got this ending after the campaigning I did by bringing up the rigged geocaching, I would have lost it.

I like that even in "victory" the vampires get dunked on. That's consistency.

So since gatewatch have proven to be weak ass niggas is Dominaria gonna be the "training" arc?

I mean, there wasn't actually a sensible way to end the vampire storyline with them winning.

Vona got her ass handed to her repeatedly the entire way there, Elenda has no interest in staying in the city when she's got some skulls to crack back home, the true believers like Fein will go where she goes...

Which means since Vona found the city with no backup due to her forces getting their shit pushed in earlier she'd either have to abandon the city to try and pry forces away from the upcoming turmoil in Torreazon and hope nobody else moved in while she was gone...or try to hold a city she can't possibly defend all by herself.

Vona's characterization has pretty consistently painted her as a bloodthirsty dumbass, so she tries to hold the city by herself anyway and dies.

There was no way the Legion was ever going to take the city in a way that made sense with the rest of the narrative, even if they weren't the most incompetent villains in recent magic history.

Which they are.

Yes. Ixalan was clearly Jace's training montage and Dominaria is likely going to be Gideon and Lili's.

Although since Jace was on Ixalan for a pretty long time in-universe iirc, I wonder if there's going to be "flashback" arcs to what the others were doing during that time at some point.

Kinda disappointed Gideon didn't go back to Theros to face the past after getting Bolas'd, but that day will come.

Maybe Gideon will learn some Serra type of spells. Summon some angels and shit.

Eventually he can go back to Theros, kill all the gods and become a monotheistic God.

So, in other words, a faction comprised entirely of blood-drinking religious fanatics who every other in-universe faction hates and who're surrounded on all sides by enemies, one whose own sainted leader is disappointed with them and wants to smack them for being naughty, failed to take the prize that everybody was fighting for?

Wow, that's really a huge surprise. I mean, who would have thought being the one faction about which every other faction is willing to say "okay, plan is we kill them first, then we deal with each other" would be a disadvantage?

because they are not "villains". The villain was Azor and his evil attempt to civilize worlds (aka colonialism)

I took it more that Azor screwed things up, but the Legion was closest to being the Bad Guy Faction. I mean, literally turning people into livestock is pretty high up there on on the Villainy Meter.

I was agreeing with you. People being salty that the Legion's ending was the crunch of Vona's bones and not much else weren't paying attention to the story.

The Legion was never going to actually take the city, and frankly putting them on the list to vote for was probably a mistake. As pointed out in the story itself, they're not even all that INTERESTED in taking the city aside from Vona, they want to take the Sun and go home, which was never going to happen.

It doesn't help that despite being a common enemy for the other factions they're complete pushovers compared to any other plane's vampires we've seen so far.

The Legion is only that way because Azor meddled in worlds beyond his own by wanting to impose one of his "perfect" systems of order on it. Without him, the Legion would have never had formed

I thought Ixalan vampires only feed on criminals and heretics. That's not treating people as livestock, that's merely a draconic form of punishment

What Planechase planes do you wish to see in future sets and how do you think they could be developed?

They can also feed somewhat freely during warfare, no?
I think it's implied that without their constant "conquering" most vampires would starve.

I also seem to recall the vampire-focused stories indicating they have a pretty loose definition of "criminal" and "heretic" when they're hungry.

>I wonder if there's going to be "flashback" arcs to what the others were doing during that time at some point.
Yes. The Dominaria story starts right after the events of Hour of Devastation. Jace will not show up until the end.

And if you aren't one of their citizens, you are a criminal and/or heretic. And the citizens have to wear armored collars to keep those undergoing the Blood Fast from breaking it via their necks (one can only assume any Torrezon werewolves greatly dislike this policy, for as we all know, a werewolf hates a collar...)
While yeah, it's not using their people as livestock, they essentially use everyone else as food, and ran out of 'everyone else' back home.
And they probably have very strict laws.
Still the best faction.

I... never posted before that post, and I was agreeing with you.

Oh, that's certainly true. Heck, Saint Elena only invented vampirism to serve the religion that Azor made so her people would guard the Immortal Sun in the first place, and then he took it off of them because he'd decided they were doing a bad job of it.

Here's the thing; when you are the Priest-Nobles of the entire empire, what you say is "law" goes. They need blood, ergo, they are naturally inclined towards repressive laws that will ensure they have a large and ready supply of blood to feed themselves with.

Remember; Torrezon was originally the name of their home province. The vampires conquered the entire continent to ensure a steady supply of blood, and they came to Ixalan as much for more blood as for their sacred relic.

Exactly. That's the entire source of the Brazen Coalition's beef with the Legion; not their faith, but because their home provinces were invaded as an excuse to feed the parasitic theocrats that lead the Legion. It's obvious that if the Legion doesn't keep warring, they're going to run out of food, because they've multipled well beyond what Torrezon itself can support.

Personally, I really, really want to see a Plane Shift: Kamigawa myself. Oh, sorry, that's not what you were asking.

Alara has a lot of potential post-mending.

>evil cultists in Bant
>people not obsessed with artifacts in Esper
>Vithia being reborn as a real kingdom in Grixis
>dragonslaying expeditions in Jund
>finally get some cloud nacatl cards from Naya

And despite all that i'd still rather get Lorwyn first.

Any of the really weird ones, honestly.
To be fair, a planeshift article would probably be the closest we get to ever revisiting the plane, or finding out what's happened in the past thousand-plus years since the Kami War.
I mean, place could have a dozen modern-day cities now, and as long as one of those is in a swamp with ratpeople and one is in the sky with moon rabbits it would work perfectly fine with what we know.

>cyberpunk Kamigawa with techno-kami and street samurai
cliche, but would be cool

arkhos and equilor have potential for lots of weird stuff. muraganda for the dinos.

Pyrulea sounds like a cool place

So Kumena fell out the window and fucking died then?

>set up guy as big bad
>lol no it’s just Azor I guess
>both get shitcanned immediately when they enter the spotlight.

He was saved by granny fish

Don't be silly.
Clearly the next Kamigawa will be centered on all the strange events happening at New Minamo High School

What are the chances my waifu Lily comes back with a stone cold Daddy of a planeswalker card?

Yo, is there any place on the interwebs I can just look at MtG art?
It looks so freaking cool, and since the game is older than time itself I could find literally anything there

Does anyone know how Mizzium is actually made or is it just hand waved?

What about Chandra getting some hot tips from Granny Jaya?

this

I was hoping Chandra would learn to do something different, at least to throw lightning at things instead of fire sometimes.
With Jaya it's unlikely though.

nice

After working in a book store for four years, I can safely say I've never heard of her.

This was terrible. Why did they even expend the effort?

Theros was Arkhos in the same way Tarkir was Mongseng.

She could learn how to throw fire smartly with Jaya. Fire is an incredibly versatile thing but chandra more or less uses it like a hammer.

Ir.

>Lili's
Literally the only member of the Gatewatch who doesn't need training. Followed by Gideon.
Lili vs Emrakrul was proof that she's great.

they don't need training to be higher than Nicol or Eldrazi solo, that's not how it should work and it'd make the characters even more boring

>I really don't understand why they even did this. I mean, how has fanfic ever really hurt a franchise?

By becoming more successful. See 50 shades.

Jaya didn't use fire smartly, she just had better bantz.

Lilliana does indeed need to learn some things.
Mostly the whole 'how to work as part of a team' thing they all do.

It'd be much easier to work as a team if they were all lifeless husks for the best Planeswalker to guide.

Tamiyo doesn't guide lifeless husks, though.

Sorry I didn't know Emrakruls cocksleeve still had fans?

They were all Emrakul's cocksleeves. All of them. Even the old hag you are enamored with.

From the interview with Martha Wells, the writer who'll write the Dominaria story arc, we know that the story will revolve around Gideon and Liliana as they try to stop her last demon, Belenzok (or something like that), who has taken control of Otaria's Cabal and they are now taking over Dominaria. The story will start right after the events from Hour of Devastation. So the last part of the Rivals story, where jace meets up again with Gideon, is presumably at the story's end/climax. From this we also know that granny Jaya is there. There has been no word spoken about either Nissa or Chandra thought. It may well be that they too get their own training montage. From the art released so far we can assume that Teferi, Jhoira and Karn are at the very least involved in the story. Finally, Martha Wells confirms that the ship they are travelling on when Jace meets up with Gideon is in fact the Weatherlight.

>Teferi and Karn, Gideon and Lili
Oh baby
Two of my favourite lore characters and two Planeswalkers my Jacefag friend hates
Gonna be so good.

>Jacefag hates Gideon
Not chill

He's the perfect "blue is the best, Jace is all powerful" Magic player.

I love playing a Gideon and punching his Jace with it.
I'm planning a Gideon themed EDH deck so I can touch him in his safespace, it's going to be glorious.

>bringing back the weatherlight
man, I dunno what to think about that

there's a lot going on in this post, mostly having to do with you wanting to fuck your m8

I just like fucking with blue players. My favourite card is Pyroblast.

You sound like some Selnesya player. Seeing gaylove everywhere.

I haven't touched MtG in like a decade and what's this? We're back in Dominaria? Fuck yeah.

you'll take it and you'll like it

*bump*