Mark Rosewater had perfected a spoiler season, but he had no control over the mortal content creators who had to agree to implement it.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Magic: the Gathering |OT| War of the Spark - Enter the Bo-Las (36 Planeswalkers)
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
- Start date
- Status
Mark Rosewater had perfected a spoiler season, but he had no control over the mortal content creators who had to agree to implement it.
Orzhov is already used.
Boros and Gruul will be weird.
Listening to Drive to Work (War of the Spark):
Drive to Work: War of the Spark Novel
Notes: (Spoiler bits from the novel)
-----
Teyo sparks early on and goes to Ravnica, we get a preview of Gobakhan (his home plane) here.
Kaya steps up, really becomes one of the main characters of the novel and mentors Teyo. Hates what Bolas has put her up to.
Jace grows as a person and continues being better since Ixalan. In love with Vraska obviously.
Liliana's toughest trials come in this book. Not a very good book for Liliana. Growing self-awareness of how she got into her position and the cost of it. It's starting to matter to her the collateral damage she's causing. It's a dark book for her.
Chandra is a lot of fun here. She gets to Ravnica and Dovin Baan is there which makes her very mad. She realizes she has to fight smarter. Jaya is there mentoring her still. Other Gatewatch members step up to keep her feeling good.
Gideon is eager to take a direct approach here, strategy just seems to always fail because he has three counters to it. Gideon has the Blackblade and it's time to get up and close with Bolas. Gideon inspires the Boros and others there from his last visit.
Ral has been playing catchup all the time, and every step he's taken has backfired, and plans with Niv-Mizzet have backfired often. Ral activates his beacon. He's worried this will backfire too. He's struggling to keep up with being guildmaster.
-----
LEADS: Bolas, Teyo, Kaya, Chandra, Jace, Gideon, Liliana, Ral Zarek, Vraska, Ugin, Dack
(Dack couldn't be in the set because they had no room for him, sadly.)
SUPPORTING ROLES: Ajani, Karn, Teferi, Ob Nixilis
-----
Guilds were hard for Greg to interpret at first, once he understood the two-color philosophy for each guild it became really easy to write each one as represented in the book. All ten guilds are featured. Orzhov is big here, Izzet is big here. Golgari is big here.
Loved the setting of Ravnica, created Rat as a gateway to the story as a Gateless citizen. Teyo is the POV character: Stranger in a strange land thing.
There's guilds on Gobakhan: Carpenter and Mason's guilds. Nothing big, just professions.
Rat is considering joining a guild: she's attracted to Selesnya and Rakdos, her parents are Gruul.
Character juggling was difficult, but Greg feels he did enough of them justice.
Tibalt does not have a moment in the book. He was told to be off-limits at first.
-----
Interpreting how magic works (mana, pulling from the land, spells) was the most difficult part of the book. Figuring out what each character could do and keep it straight was difficult.
Teyo sparks early on and goes to Ravnica, we get a preview of Gobakhan (his home plane) here.
Kaya steps up, really becomes one of the main characters of the novel and mentors Teyo. Hates what Bolas has put her up to.
Jace grows as a person and continues being better since Ixalan. In love with Vraska obviously.
Liliana's toughest trials come in this book. Not a very good book for Liliana. Growing self-awareness of how she got into her position and the cost of it. It's starting to matter to her the collateral damage she's causing. It's a dark book for her.
Chandra is a lot of fun here. She gets to Ravnica and Dovin Baan is there which makes her very mad. She realizes she has to fight smarter. Jaya is there mentoring her still. Other Gatewatch members step up to keep her feeling good.
Gideon is eager to take a direct approach here, strategy just seems to always fail because he has three counters to it. Gideon has the Blackblade and it's time to get up and close with Bolas. Gideon inspires the Boros and others there from his last visit.
Ral has been playing catchup all the time, and every step he's taken has backfired, and plans with Niv-Mizzet have backfired often. Ral activates his beacon. He's worried this will backfire too. He's struggling to keep up with being guildmaster.
-----
LEADS: Bolas, Teyo, Kaya, Chandra, Jace, Gideon, Liliana, Ral Zarek, Vraska, Ugin, Dack
(Dack couldn't be in the set because they had no room for him, sadly.)
SUPPORTING ROLES: Ajani, Karn, Teferi, Ob Nixilis
-----
Guilds were hard for Greg to interpret at first, once he understood the two-color philosophy for each guild it became really easy to write each one as represented in the book. All ten guilds are featured. Orzhov is big here, Izzet is big here. Golgari is big here.
Loved the setting of Ravnica, created Rat as a gateway to the story as a Gateless citizen. Teyo is the POV character: Stranger in a strange land thing.
There's guilds on Gobakhan: Carpenter and Mason's guilds. Nothing big, just professions.
Rat is considering joining a guild: she's attracted to Selesnya and Rakdos, her parents are Gruul.
Character juggling was difficult, but Greg feels he did enough of them justice.
Tibalt does not have a moment in the book. He was told to be off-limits at first.
-----
Interpreting how magic works (mana, pulling from the land, spells) was the most difficult part of the book. Figuring out what each character could do and keep it straight was difficult.
Last edited:
Oh, that was Orzhov? Thought it was Boros for whatever reason.
Can't finale just go into the miracle red deck to get back skewer and lightning for 5 mana, as well as get 3 cast triggers for steam kins or guttersnipes or whatever?
yes. card's ceiling is incredible
also the steam-kin triggers happen one at a time so you can always get 3 mana with no downsides
OP
OP
Drive to Work podcast where Mark Rosewater interviews Greg Weisman
People testing out the London Mulligan seem to universally be praising it.
General impressions are that it doesn't boost dredge and such as much as you'd think, and it actually helps out Tier 2 decks much more. And like Autumn said, if anything breaks, that's more reason to ban those cards than to go back to the old mulligan rule.
People testing out the London Mulligan seem to universally be praising it.
General impressions are that it doesn't boost dredge and such as much as you'd think, and it actually helps out Tier 2 decks much more. And like Autumn said, if anything breaks, that's more reason to ban those cards than to go back to the old mulligan rule.
The Legion would never work with the people who are willing pawns of Bolas. Domri Rade is the only one who doesn't resent what Bolas helped him do. Neither Aurelia nor Pierakor/Feather would accept joining with the destroyers.
If anything, Serum Powder will get banned. That Goryo-Griselbrand deck is absurd with it.
magic aids basically said similar things, it's super skill intensive but overall better for the game.
but serum powder will probably get banned :v
Well, they did. The first color combinations are shards. For color balance, that means the other three are shards also. The card will be a red Boros/Gruul combination.
OP
OP
Note that even if the guild leader is allied with Bolas, not everyone is; the two different flavor texts on the guildgates were meant to show that every guild has two factions.
While it would make sense from a mechanical perspective, it makes no sense from a lore one.
The entire theme of the set is everyone putting aside their differences to come together. You think the Boros are incapable of that in the face of impending doom? I think it makes sense within the lore.
Do I understand Standard rotation correctly? This summer another core set will come, and it and M19 will be Standard-legal at the same time. Then another set will come out in the fall. At that point the two Ixalan sets, Dominaria, and M19 all rotate out.
This seems a little crazy, that will dramatically reduce the number of playable cards and seems like it would really limit the diversity of competitive decks.
Why do they rotate so many sets out all at once? Replacing four sets with a single new one and then slowly building the number of playable cards back up seems so unnecessary, why not just rotate the oldest set out every time a new comes out? Or do it by blocks, like when Allegiance came out Ixalan and Rivals could have both rotated out (I think technically it would have been Amonkhet block by this method, but you get what I mean).
This seems a little crazy, that will dramatically reduce the number of playable cards and seems like it would really limit the diversity of competitive decks.
Why do they rotate so many sets out all at once? Replacing four sets with a single new one and then slowly building the number of playable cards back up seems so unnecessary, why not just rotate the oldest set out every time a new comes out? Or do it by blocks, like when Allegiance came out Ixalan and Rivals could have both rotated out (I think technically it would have been Amonkhet block by this method, but you get what I mean).
You can do Shards and Wedges simultaneously.
Senate Diplomat
WU
Creature - Angel
B: Orzhov ends by Azorius means
R: Boros ends by Azorius means
2/2
House Diplomat
UB
R: Rakdos ends by Dimir means
G: Golgari ends by Dimir means
2/2
Etc
OP
OP
People dislike having to remove cards from their decks four times a year much more than they dislike having to remove a bunch of cards once a year. They experimented with bumping it up to twice a year a few years ago, and it led to a sharp drop in Standard play after the first mid-year rotation happened, so they quickly backtracked.
Most decks will be gutted, but you will be surprised at how a bunch of new archetypes jump up To fill the vacuum. There will also be a lot of cards that have no chance of seeing play in the current meta all of a sudden become very playable and important to new decks.
If anything, I would argue that we are currently at the point where we now have too many cards legal in Standard and it really limits deck building potential because of so many oppressive archetypes now.
"We agree there are times when force is the only answer, just not on when."
They tried having two rotations per year and it was very unpopular.
One of the things that seems really weird about the current method of rotation is that no everything has the same longevity. Cards from Ixalan are legal in Standard for seven months longer than cards from Dominaria, which seems significant. Only decks that are reliant on cards from the first set in a given rotation have more longevity.
Any maybe I haven't been playing long enough to get what you mean but cutting the game's playable cards by almost a half in one fell swoop does not seem very clean.
Ah, I see. Are there any good resources that talk about why the community reacted that way? Maybe I'll see if there's any YT videos that talk about it, or a Channel Fireball article or whatever. I'm interested in this now, not having played for long and just having thought about it for a little while the twice-per-year seems better in a lot of ways. Every card is Standard legal for more or less the same amount of time, there's always roughly the same number of cards to brew with, etc.
Only having to worry about rotation once per year instead of every 3 months is a lot cleaner from the players' perspective. If I build a deck, then can't play for 4 weeks for whatever reason, not having to worry about my deck being legal when I can play again is important.
There's also the issue of pre-constructed decks. The more often you rotate the shorter their shelf life.
Rotation every three months would be awful for folks like me. You've seen me in and out of this thread and the other one with a new brew and a refined iteration on a previous one every weak or so since Allegiance came out. My Mardu Tokens deck has, over the course of time, warped into an Abzan tokens deck. I wouldn't have the time to test and retest and refine then also be able to just sit back and finally enjoy just playing with it.
OP
OP
That reminds me, back when Wizards moved to two rotations a year, there were a ton of hot takes about how Wizards was exploiting players by forcing them to spend more to keep their decks up to date.
I mean it's weird for the Selesnya to go along with the Simic, since the latter is into bio engineering. And the Azorius with the Orzhov, since the former is law creation and enforcement and the latter is literally a syndicate.
I'm still curious how they're going to spin Boros to be BFFs with Gruul though lol
Last edited:
Bolas
I mean... we're currently living in a socio-political climate that's requiring a lot of different groups with similar goals (not getting killed by dictatorial leaders) having to set aside philosophical differences to ensure mutual survival.
I mean... we're currently living in a socio-political climate that's requiring a lot of different groups with similar goals (not getting killed by dictatorial leaders) having to set aside philosophical differences to ensure mutual survival.
What? The socio-political climate today is splintered and go more and more extreme on either side.
As someone who has been out of magic for years.
3 questions.
1. Are barbarian types back yet?
2. What happened to kamahl
3. Is Garrick still around?
3 questions.
1. Are barbarian types back yet?
2. What happened to kamahl
3. Is Garrick still around?
OP
OP
Barbarians haven't been around in a while. Last one was back in Coldsnap, I think, and even she was errata'd to just be a Human in reprints.
Kamahl is long dead.
Garruk is still around; he isn't in this set, but we're told there are plans for him soon.
It's a widening gulf between two sides, but people on each side of that gulf are allying with people on the same side that they would otherwise despise.
1. Nope, but maybe very soon. We might be going to a Viking plane.
2. He died to save the world.
3. Garruk turned into a cursed Planeswalker hunter and now he kills for sport. He's not around but he should reappear by the end of the year.
First 2 make me sad.Barbarians haven't been around in a while. Last one was back in Coldsnap, I think, and even she was errata'd to just be a Human in reprints.
Kamahl is long dead.
Garruk is still around; he isn't in this set, but we're told there are plans for him soon.
Wonder if Garrick will be the end path of the krosa druids
He's a black green badguy now. I wouldn't count on it.
Bond of Insight
OP
OP
* Greg liked working with the characters, though I can't imagine he'd say otherwise when in the car with MaRo.
* Teyo is from a plane called Gobakhan, which has two massive unending storms on either side of civilization. He's a shield mage that helps protect people from the storms, but he's the worst around and sparks when he gets caught in a storm, arriving in Ravnica.
* Kaya is one of the main leads, and becomes Teyo's mentor.
* The color pie was a huge help not particularly for character motivations, but for keeping track of what each guild's deal is.
* Every character that's featured gets at least one big moment.
* Tibalt is not in the book. Greg was told he was off limit, but then by the time Wizards changed their mind, it was too late to include him. I suspect that like Garruk, there were future plans with him.
* The hardest part was keeping track of how characters use magic, what's easy and what's difficult for them.
* The Guilds of Ravnica / Ravnica Allegiance web stories have no impact on this first WAR book, but they do on the epilogue book coming later. It's unclear if this means characters from those will show up, or if the influence is just in how Ravnica is depicted.
Next bond
They are making a few options to try an deal with tucked Gods at least. Not sure if this is constructed playable, but maybe a SB card in certain situations.
My point is there are guild combinations that seem they would fit more logically given their ideologies to form shards in case they want to do Alara Redux.
Jund: Gruul + Golgari
Bant: Azorius + Simic
Esper: Dimir + Orzhov
Naya: Selesnya + Boros
Grixis: Rakdos + Izzet
Okay maybe some of these don't allign either lol. I kind of like the idea of the Izzet using Rakdos as cannon fodder for their experiments though.
Nah most of those make sense in my mind.
Azorious and Simic are like "biological order". Dimir and Orzhov are "political subterfuge". Selesnya and Boros are akin to invigoration and life. Rakdos and Izzet are madness and mania? Gruul and Golgari are The weakest link but even those would be like the perfect form of biology/life (be it undead or beastly).
Azorious and Simic are like "biological order". Dimir and Orzhov are "political subterfuge". Selesnya and Boros are akin to invigoration and life. Rakdos and Izzet are madness and mania? Gruul and Golgari are The weakest link but even those would be like the perfect form of biology/life (be it undead or beastly).
Azorius + Orzhov are the lawmakers and the lawyers
Selesnya + Simic are the life preservationists and the life creators
Boros + Gruul are the martial forces, ordered and regimented + wild and passionate
Izzet + Dimir are the knowledge seekers
Golgari + Rakdos are the death worshippers
Selesnya + Simic are the life preservationists and the life creators
Boros + Gruul are the martial forces, ordered and regimented + wild and passionate
Izzet + Dimir are the knowledge seekers
Golgari + Rakdos are the death worshippers
- Status