Are any of the MTG books worth reading? Novels too

Sounds interesting, but not waste my time reading a 400 page tie-in book interesting. How does it compare to Warhammer schlock? I can dig that.

I read the Kamigawa and Mirrodin trilogies. Kamigawa was fun and Mirrodin was alright.

Kamigawa and OG Ravnica are definitely the two big stand outs. The former is a genuinely fun fantasy adventure with a lot of interesting characters, cool scenes, and the best B protagonist in the entirety of magic bar none.
The latter on the other hand is basically half cyberpunk-by-way-of-fantasy half noir detective novel and has a really detailed and interesting setting. There's a reason that Ravnica is one of the most popular planes. They put an absolute ton of work into it, and it shows.

Other recommendations on my end would be the first three Lorwyn/Shadowmoor books (the last one drops the ball in terms of plot resolution, but the first three are pretty fun. The third is a cool collection of short stories about Shadowmoor that I really like.) and Alara Reborn is pretty fun if rudimentary. It establishes Ajani pretty well.

Also Godsend/Journey Into Nyx is good in a weird way, where its a lot more complicated than the set around it suggests. Xenagos is a fantastically hateable villain, and Elspeth is a walking pile of PTSD and survivors guilt. She really needs a hug.

Mirrodin's not bad, but it's kind of clumsy with its writing sometimes. The introduction of the wolf guy was always a good example of that, or how weirdly they'd swap between places. Still though, it's not terrible and Slobad and Glissa were great.

Odyssey was pretty good too, and it got me really hyped up about gladiatorial combat in campaigns for a while.

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This shit right here was so tight. Technically its not a stand alone book, but its the first book i started with. It follows Chainer a black mana character that works for the Big bad evil guy. There is a bunch of gladiator arena fighting which is where the bad guys make a lot of money. Chainer himself is an aspiring dementist which means he can capture monsters in the real world to then use to create nightmare versions in his head to summon in battle. I remember skipping chapters about the blue mana characters since I had no context. I then went on to read the books before and after as well as the cycle in hopes of some more fuck awesome stories. I was disappointed.

Scott Mcgough also wrote a black mana character for kamigawa and i loved that whole series as well.

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I think Scott McGough just writes the best MtG books, and he does black (mana) characters so well.

Who is the B protagonist? At first I thought you were talking about the best B antagonist aka the ogre.

The Ogre's actually monored. Best B protag is Toshiro Motherfuckin' Umezawa, a man so badass that he established his own bloodline and dynasty on a separate plane while blind. He's such a wonderful example of a character who by all rights should be a villain getting into a heroic role for entirely selfish reasons and owning them wholeheartedly.

Hidetsugu is the fucking best though. Besides being a hilarious combo card, he's the best ogre in the whole damn game and every scene with him is an absolute joy. The part where he manfights a dragon in the middle of Minamo academy has stuck with me for years, just due to the visual. Keiga got fuuuuuuucked.

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Honestly Toshiro and Hidetsugu are just a good combination in general. The way they interact was something that completely caught me by surprise when I was reading the books. Not only that, both characters knew had to get shit done.

Out of the few MtG books I read I have to say that Kamigawa set had the best characters I have read.

It may sound cliche, but I really like the Brother's War. You really get a feel for the characters, even though Mishra's basically Gollem with a bigger brain. It also shows that Urza never really cared about others even when he was still a human.

Sort of tangential to this thread; but does anyone have files for the Art of Innistrad book? Poorfag but really want it.

He's only the second good aligned Black character right? Xantcha was a thing but never had a card.

I mean for monoblack it's mostly just Toshi, Chainer, and Xantcha. Arguably Maralen, but she's less good aligned and more just going along with the party. Same with Colfenor really.

Once we get into multicolor though we get a good few more who you can make the argument for. Teysa might be psycho but she's relatively good as far as Ravnica goes, Toshi's great-great-great-continued grandson Tetsuo is pretty good all things considered, and you could definitely make the argument for more multicolored cards like Anafenza. You also get a lot of "not good, but still helping" people like Drana and Yahenni, or Hapatra.

Black might get the smallest amount of proper heroes, but you get a decent amount of characters who are still relatively affable, especially when you move out of monoblack.

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What's not good about Hapatra? She's not remotely black character wise.

bjump

For those that have read the books, what is one piece of "deep lore" that you'd love to see as an easter egg in a Magic: The Gathering movie?

The Ravnica trilogy is fucking amazing, and pretty much the last set of MTG books worth reading that doesnt involve any planeswalkers.

Teeth of Akoum is also a nice read if you want to know how the eldrazi were freed (pro tip: never trust a fucking knife ear). The alara book where Ajani fights bolas isnt bad (but not great).

Otherwise stick to books that involve Dominaria and thats about it. Pretty much after mirrodin thats when they stopped putting out decent plane based stories.

>if you want to know how the eldrazi were freed
This literally cannot be canon anymore, as they've retconned the Nissa that was the cause of this out of existence.
The Eldrazi straight up shouldn't be free anymore.

I don't read them, I just collect them. Of course I browse through the pages a bit and look at the artwork but mainly I just collect them for sake of having them. I think the Zendikar one is still in its plastic wrap because I had it twice for a while.

I you care about the lore and more importantly about the world building then I do recommend them. Very detailed.

I'm talking about the art books btw.

Will that book have old art? I forget if Zendikar or Innistrad did.

Ice Age cycle, hands down. Jodah is a fun character, and the end of the cycle caught me off guard when I first read it.

Avoid Arena OP, it's absolute garbage.

I've read it three times ;_;

Aww...this was my very first MtG book. I still loved the old-style premise of being able to capture mana in little crystals, and having a satchel of talismans that were tied to your summons and spells. It's obviously completely unrelated from the whole planeswalker idea of the game, but it is pretty fun seeing stuff being thrown around by a handful of wizards. Plus when shit gets real nasty, you can just pull a knife on the other guy and try to stab him to death!

It's been quite a while since I last read them, but OG Ravnica was always my favourite. At the time of reading it, I never had read anything like it, it was like buddy-cop noir in the best plane WotC has ever made.

I also enjoyed Time Spiral trilogy a lot despite it killing of a lot of beloved characters. You might need to be into the whole lore to fully enjoy it, but characters like Lord Windgrace, Freyalise, Jodah, Teferi and especially the planeswalker battle between Nicol Bolas and Leshrac were amazing.

The Thran is a wonderful comedy.

My local library has the Lowryn books (not shadowmoor-eventide though). Should I? What can I expect from them?

I liked some of the stories from Distant Planes. The Old Way to Vacar Slab in particular.

This guy gets it.

So, where do I get this books in digital?

I already have the Kamigawa collection but can't find some of the older ones.

Just to elaborate, since I doubt most of you guys have read something from 1996, it's a collection of 15 short stories, each by different authors. None of them really deal with the moving and shaking of stuff in the setting. About the closest you'll get are references to things like the Brothers War, but they're mostly small scale actors in the MtG settings. Personal evaluations as I remember them (since I haven't re-read them in some time in the next few posts

1) Insufficient evidence: As the title lets on, this one's a mystery, with a rather stereotypical amnesic protagonist hero, who has to prove his innocence in a trial by combat and through the ways that magic works, catches the real bad guy. Nothing brilliant, but nothing bad about it either. 6/10

2) Festival of Sorrow. : An Ogre is trying to collect the last pieces of magical components so he can pay a wizard to revive an elvish girl. The deadline for when she'll be too far gone to raise drops down as he finds the wizard in a town where magic is temporarily forbidden. It turns out he wants to raise the one elven warrioress who ever defeated him in battle, but the Animate Dead spell the necromancer uses leaves her too weak to be a challenge. Didn't like it much. 3/10

3) Chef's surprise: A silly story built out of the flavor text of the old Granite Gargoyle. Asmoranomardicadaistinacuacar fouls up a bargain with a Lord of the Pit and winds up as his kitchen slave for 7 years. Entertaining despite the ridiculous premise and lack of any real progression. 6/10

1/4?

4) Foulmere: A boring, incoherent story about how a scholar tries to trick a planeswalker into accepting a Big Bog Frog as a creature for her summoning collection, leading to them getting caught up in the swamp as a planeswalker duel commences. It's really about 6 scenes that don't connect well. About the only thing even remotely interesting with it is that it was as far as I'm aware, the first attempt at a description as to how summoning sickness actually works, which of course gets retconned out of existence. 2/10

5) God Sins. Story of a supremely powerful planeswalker coming home for a "retirement" after thousands of years and having beaten everything the multiverse has to challenge him with. He discovers that back when he left, eons ago, he deified himself, and has he wants nothing more than to be left alone, which of course his enormous magical power makes difficult. Mostly a story about actually trying to give up power. 7/10

6) A Monstrous Duty: Story of what happens when a young, foolish king tries to live up to a legend that he can't fulfill. Provokes a war with the Goblins of the Flarg and gets his country wrecked. Most of the narration centers around one particular conscript of his army who gets tricked into cursing the king over her misfortunes, but eventually lifts it when she discovers he's not evil, just in over his head. 8.5/10

7) What Leaf Learned of Goblins: Goblin chieftess sends emissaries to try to discover why her "magic goblet" (Ivory cup) stopped working after they destroyed a nearby human city. Leaf, an elven leader, tries to explain to her the value of letting nature take its course, even if she herself will grow old and die. Goblin, predictably, reacts badly. 6/10

2/4?

8) Dual Loyalties: One of the longer tales, an adventure story about how a young woman comes to grow into her infernal powers despite being overall a good person and being raised in the church of a (good) Sun-God. In some ways, functions more as an introduction tale to the heroine, which as far as I can tell, is never followed up on. 6/10

9) Distant Armies: A small hillside community of orcs, dwarves, and minotaurs (friendly to each other) have children suddenly disappearing wtih nightmares. Nobody seems to be able to stop the phenomenon, and when they do figure out what happens They realize a powerful planeswalker reached into the future to pluck their children to fight in a war that happened thousands of years ago. Tragic ending, the kids mostly die.

10: Better mousetrap: Fun little tale about a mage-thief trying to steal some of the artifacts of Teeka Tiwari. Purports to be the origin story of Teeka's Dragon, somethign she builds to track down and chastise the would-be thief. 7/10

11) The Face of the Enemy: A great story for instructing novice writers how NOT to proceed. Boring, bland single character spending most of the book pointlessly musing as he contemplates a war that he just won without any actual action being described, just narrated about how epic it was. You then get a twist ending about how he was himself a creation of the wizard he was fighting to prepare him to fight THE BIG BAD, at which point it stops. 0/10

12) Horn Dancer: A significant improvement over the last, although anything would be. An aging Hurloon Minotaur is contemplating suicide as he can no longer win in the tournaments his people use to demonstrate that he is the prize stud of the mountains and so he can sleep with the minotauress he is actually in love with. A human woman trapped in the mountains and pregnant helps him come to terms with his growing older. 7/10

3/4?

Could you repost the Kamigawa ones?

13) Shen Mage-Slayer. A story within a story, presented as an older catfolk is trying to correct the misapprehensions of a younger one concerning their tribe's history when a human planeswalker lived among them for a few seasons. Contains a nice duel with another planeswalker in the shelled narration. 7/10

14) Defender. Absolutely boring. A gargoyle after about a million years sitting on a building realizes that nobody has lived in the city for ages, and flies around, despairing of finding civilization to guard. Eventually sets up shop in a dragon's lair and promises to guard it, while the dragon tries and fails to kill him. 1/10

15) The Old Way to Vacar Slab: My personal favorite of the lot, concerning a story of an expedition through the desert to bury a man alive for a crime that is unclear what it even is, let alone if he's guilty or not, beyond offending the will of a set of shamans. Most of the story is about the conflict between two siblings over the brother's newfound adherence to this traditional, albeit brutal religion, and his sister's more agnostic ways owing to how many weird magical phenomena are around. 10/10.

Throughout them all, they're stories that are mostly about individual figures, monsters, characters, or items of the early MTG cards, as opposed to setting shaking characters like Urza and Mishra, or even the weatherlight crew. Honestly, I think Magic works better for this sort of stuff, having lots of little local narratives instead of grand epic ones. You, the anonymous player-planeswalker, are supposed to sift through all this stuff like a god to winnow out what you want to use and acquire to help in your arcane duels with your peers, but there are trillions of people whose lives you're callously interrupting. It's neat to see some of those figures.

>Teeth of Akoum is also a nice read if you want to know how the eldrazi were freed (pro tip: never trust a fucking knife ear).
You forgot about the best part of Teeth of Akoum

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They're perfectly acceptable pulp fantasy
I would say Oddyssey-Torment-Judgement is my favorite since we pretty much never get red-aligned heroes, even if Kamahl is just broody Conan

Got them here: ligamagic.com/?view=forum/mensagem&id=133346

Some Books are in Portuguese but most offer english as well

Belbe was at the very least "neutral" and Crovax was notVegeta until he landed in Rath.

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Yeah, was my first MtG book too, and the only one for a long time. It includes someone dying to their own Lord of the Pit, which already makes it better than a lot of MtG novels while still being the worst.