Magic: The Gathering (Unreleased Sets)

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My Rivals of Ixalan Prerelease Deck

My rares were;

• Seafloor Oracle (Promo)
• Mastermind's Acquisition
• Revel in Riches
• Form of the Dinosaur
• Tendershoot Dryad
• Awakened Amalgam
• Sunpetal Grove

My promo was Seafloor Oracle, but I didn't have many other merfolk to use with it, so I made a Naya Dinosaurs deck instead. The store I went to had their tournament run for 7 rounds of Swiss, followed by a cut to top 8 for single elimination. I won my first match, then lost my next four before turning things around and winning my next two, for an overall record of 3 wins and 4 losses. Tendershoot Dryad put in some serious work for me, as did Form of the Dinosaur.

Magic Story: Glimpse the Far Side of the Sun

One bit in the flashback to Huatli's childhood reminded me of my own. "She got special lessons with the priests and shamans because she was good at telling stories, but it annoyed her that she couldn't spend that time with the other warriors-to-be." But in my case, it was first-grade level math while my fellow kindergarteners were doing show-and-tell.

We also meet Elenda in this story. And she is not amused. "I left the Church with the knowledge of the ritual to take on my burden, and they used that to become invaders?"

Also, we find out why Jace ended up on Ixalan specifically. That could have some interesting implications.

And finally, Jace shows some badassery toward the end. I like it.

Tis is going to be fun! I like competent Jace already.

Yeah, Jace had already started to grow on me since the Gatewatch stuff began and this pretty much clinched it. I'm ready to declare him Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.

Also, I'm not sure this fight was strictly necessary. Like. Azor might not have been so hostile if Vraska hadn't f*cking opened with "Give us the Immortal Sun or we kill your ass!" That is a terrible place to begin negotiations with a stranger.

Like. She openly and unambiguously proclaimed this to be a robbery. Azor's basically exercising his castle doctrine rights at this point.

edited 18th Jan '18 7:25:03 PM by TobiasDrake

Blasphemy! All fights are necessary!

Also, while "gimme thing or die" is certainly not the most diplomatic approach, Azor can't be "exercising his castle doctrine rights", because castle doctrine laws are made in countries on Earth, where Ixalan rather definitively isn't.

Although the image of Conan the Barbarian demanding a gun because of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution is certainly funny.

edited 18th Jan '18 7:40:55 PM by CountDorku

It's the principle of the thing. They came uninvited into his home and started demanding he surrender his valuables or die. He's totally justified in retaliating with force.

I mean, Vraska's acting as an Agent of Bolas so this kind of behavior isn't necessarily unexpected, but it's moments like this that really help to remind one that our protagonists are acting as Agents of Bolas. They're totally the bad guys right now.

EDIT: Regarding Nicol Bolas's endgame, we know that his plan involves an army of undead soldiers, the ability to transport them across planes, and an artifact that can prevent anyone from planeswalking away to safety.

Is...is he planning an assassination?

edited 18th Jan '18 7:54:23 PM by TobiasDrake

"He's acting understandably because he's being robbed and threatened by pirates" is a different thing from "he is executing rights he may not even have because they're created by laws made in real countries that don't have authority over fictional worlds".

'Endgame'? As if Bolas runs only one multiverse shattering scheme at a time.

More specifically, this artifact could also be used to lock away an entire plane that would otherwise be too problematic to deal with-like, say, New Phyrexia.

edited 18th Jan '18 7:57:52 PM by ViperMagnum357

Bolas either has all the plans...or no plan and he's just gathering as much power as possible so that when he does come up with a plan he'll already have everything he could possibly need to pull it off with no fuss.

It's really not. Unless the character is actively sitting in a courtroom, speaking to a police officer, or otherwise directly engaging legalities, the exact nature of the specific laws governing the region he is in are irrelevant to the conversation.

It was a semantic choice. Stop flipping out over it.

I'm inclined to assume "all of the plans". Bolas doesn't strike me as a person who does things because they might be useful some day maybe. He's a planner. He does things because he has a clear impression of how they will ultimately benefit his master goal.

I can't remember where this was, but didn't one of our characters - I think Nissa, though it may have been Jace - have a vision of tendrils of darkness winding through the Blind Eternities and connecting planes?

If you think that any criticism of sloppy phrasing is "flipping out" then oh boy do I have some bad news for you about The Entire Internet.

Nissa had a vision on Amonkhet of a serpent winding around worlds and strangling the life from them. The serpent was strongly implied to be Nicol Bolas.

That was in the same vision-quest where Emrakul alarmingly showed up to shield her, enraging Kefnet in the process by desecrating his trial.

Magic Story: The Arbiter of Law Left Chaos in His Wake

I assume the next one will be called "Story Name That Unfolds Like Lotus Blossom".

Stating the obvious here but Azor's partner was totally Ugin, the Spirit Dragon. Azor made the trap and Ugin was supposed to lure Bolas into it, but unfortunately Ugin had come down with a sudden case of being brutally murdered by Bolas centuries before.

Bolas knows about the Sun which means Bolas knew about the Sun then, because if no Planeswalkers have ever left Ixalan, no knowledge has left it either. There would be no way for him to recently find it out, and the only other person who knew was dead. So Bolas had to know it was a thing when he murdered Ugin. This might be why he murdered Ugin.

But then Bolas was content to leave the Immortal Sun alone for centuries until now, when he has an idea that would make use of it.

edited 24th Jan '18 7:56:03 PM by TobiasDrake

My guess is that he plans to trap the recently revived Ugin in it, along with any other planeswalkers who might one day be a hassle.

It would be in character for him to have an old foe Hoist by His Own Petard.

Mmmh...my first thought was locking New Phyrexia out of the Multiverse until Bolas was ready to deal with it, but that could work too.

My bet is that it relates to what he's doing with the Planar Gate and the Eternal army. I don't think Bolas is collecting these things for individual purposes. He's building a deck, so to speak. Assembling the pieces of his master plan.

If he gets his claws on the Immortal Sun, he will have the ability to lock down a plane and prevent planeswalkers from escaping it, portals for moving between planes without planeswalking, and an incredibly powerful army that might be able to survive transit through the Blind Eternities. These things synergize with each other.

An army to fight a war on his behalf, a sun to bind planeswalkers in the place where he goes to war, and portals to get in and out without regard for the sun's binding. I asked this before, but I still wonder: is he planning to assassinate a planeswalker?

I don't think it's about Ugin because we know from Amonkhet that he set all this in motion decades ago. I'm not sure if he even knows Ugin is alive yet.

edited 24th Jan '18 8:14:10 PM by TobiasDrake

It occurs that the Eternals are probably a pretty good force to use if you wanted to invade New Phyrexia for whatever reason. I don't think it's his plan, it just crossed my mind. Though if he did try that, I'd expect it to go about as well as it did for a certain other race of blue supersoldiers.

edited 24th Jan '18 8:29:06 PM by Durazno

TBF, the Metathrans did their job. While they ultimately didn't survive the war against the Phyrexians, they were never really intended to survive. Their only purpose was to be bodies Urza could throw at the Phyrexians to keep them occupied until Gerrard and the Legacy could do their thing.

That is a good point. Also, since I was just aimlessly speculating, I suppose I didn't need to spoiler it.

The Metathrans were basically blue skinned gangly Jem'Hadar.

My strongest memory of them is a chapter of the Invasion novel where they advance on the Phyrexian army and like three quarters of them get slaughtered before they even make contact.