Magic: The Gathering (Unreleased Sets)

@M84: Pretty sure the design team has been absolutely adamant about 2 things since around Mirrodin block: Urza is very dead and staying that way, and Yawgmoth is very dead and staying that way. Honestly, given how badly their leftovers and remnants have damaged the Multiverse, bringing back either of them would be a hard sell as anything less than the end of the franchise.

edited 27th May '18 7:51:12 PM by ViperMagnum357

Damaged Dominaria, sure, but Urza and Yawgmoth's names are almost never even mentioned outside of it. Mirrodin got f*cked over by New Phyrexia, but that was an offshoot of Dominaria anyway.

I think you're overstating their impact on the greater Multiverse. Ravnica, Theros, Alara, Llorwyn, Zendikar, Tarkir, Innistrad, etc. have never even heard of Urza or Yawgmoth, let alone been devastated by their leftovers. Nicol Bolas has done more harm to the Multiverse as a whole in sixty years or so than Yawgmoth and Urza ever did in the millennia they were active, thanks to the fact that they really only cared about the one plane.

edited 27th May '18 9:31:10 PM by TobiasDrake

Their impact on the multiverse as a whole was more indirect. What they did to Dominaria weakened its stability, leading to the Time Spiral stuff. And that had an impact on the rest of the multiverse.

Heck, even Nicol Bolas' current rampage is indirectly their fault since their actions helped start the chain of events that led to the Mending.

edited 27th May '18 9:31:22 PM by M84

Sure, but while it's true that Bolas has had a devastating effect on several planes, it's still a stretch to call Nicol Bolas a leftover remnant of Urza's influence.

He's more of an unintended consequence. Neither Urza nor Yawgmoth deserves direct credit for Bolas, whose malevolence is actually significantly older than both of them.

edited 27th May '18 9:34:22 PM by TobiasDrake

"Unintended consequences" sums up just about everything that Urza left behind. Aside from the entirely intended consequences.

Do not forget Yawgmoth's legacy-the Phyrexian oil has infected numerous planes, and between when the Shard fell and the Apocalypse Yawgmoth was running smash-and-grabs on numerous planes. His forces tainted and eventually destroyed Serra's realm, and between these drops of corruption and Karn leaking oil all over the place we know there are other planes currently under threat-Elspeth was not a native of Mirrodin. We really have no idea how far the Oil has actually spread-just because we have not seen it on any of the 9 or 10 worlds focused on right now does not mean it is a non-issue.

And again, Karn was a golem created by Urza, and the Phyrexian heartstone leaking the oil was something Urza put in him in the first place.

Urza and Yawgmoth really borked up the multiverse.

edited 27th May '18 10:04:51 PM by M84

Karn doesn't seem to think it's that big an issue. Like. The only plane he knows of where it's a problem is New Phyrexia.

The Phyrexians are a scarce enough problem that outside of Dominaria and Mirrodin - the latter of which is an artificial plane created by a resident of Dominaria and so it really just counts as more Dominaria - only one planeswalker that we've ever met had ever even encountered them. Only one.

Which isn't so much "massive damage wreaked across the entire Multiverse" as it is "maybe two or three worlds got f*cked, plus Dominaria?"

If you're a planeswalker right now, you've got better odds of running into Emrakul's handiwork than Yawgmoth's. Phyrexia is practically nonexistent in the story since Yawgmoth's defeat, and what little involvement it does have is thoroughly divorced from Yawgmoth himself. He has no legacy.

He was Magic's first Big Bad, but now that he's dead and gone, the story doesn't really care about him anymore. Urza and Yawgmoth played out their battle across Dominaria, but then the story expanded to the greater Multiverse and now they're just one plane's struggle in a cacophany of violence and tragedy.

edited 27th May '18 10:30:39 PM by TobiasDrake

Some people apparently guess Raven Man will be the next Big Bad, and will be anyone from Lim~Dul to Mishra himself.

What about Ob Nixilis? Nahiri, Sorin and Ugin? There are loads of potential antagonists floating around. Returning really ancient ones is... too soon, imo. Just when the story picked up pace; give it time to breath.

Bolas is going to be really hard to top, though. Ob Nixilis is cool and all, and he could totally be the villain for, like, a plane's arc. But Magic's new Big Bad needs to be dangerous and intimidating on a multiplanar level. Yawgmoth and Bolas are a hard act to follow, and I don't think Nixilis really quite measures up to the scope of threat they presented.

Nahiri ran out of Villain Motivation, so she's definitely not looking likely for the next main villain. She got what she wanted when she wrecked Innistrad and petrified Sorin. She won. The end, good game, nothing more to see here. It'd be completely out of character for her to, like, start traveling the Multiverse trying to spread chaos for shits and giggles.

At this point, Nahiri's more of a wild card than an epic-scale threat to the Multiverse as a whole. There's no way of telling where she'll pop up next or whose side she'll be on, but it's extremely unlikely that she intends to mass-produce her work on Innistrad, nor could she even if she wanted to. She's run out of both Emrakuls and reasons to use Emrakuls.

Speaking of wild cards, Ugin. Also unlikely that he would suddenly turn around and start murdering planes for shits and/or giggles.

Right now, I can think of two candidates to take the mantle from Yawgmoth and Bolas. One is, of course, the Raven Man but I don't think he's Lim-Dul. Specifically because I don't think he's from Dominaria. The Raven Man is too thoroughly integrated into the Chain Veil plot. If the Raven Man takes the reins, it's almost certainly going to involve the Onakke spirits extensively, and that suggests that the Raven Man is either from Shandalar or a planeswalker.

Personally, I've always liked the theory that the Raven Man is Leshrac. But I'm not sure Leshrac necessarily has Myth Arc chops either. Like Ob Nixilis, he feels like there's potential to have an arc where they have to go and fight him, and then they beat him, and then...well, that's it. A tough adversary to focus on for a set or two, but not an overarching threat to the Blind Eternities requiring several years of storytelling to build up and ultimately overcome.

A true confrontation with the Raven Man is undoubtedly coming, but it'll probably just be, like, a Shandalar set. Not the core focus of the ongoing plot.

The other candidate, who I am absolutely sure has it in her to fuel a Myth Arc, is Emrakul. She cocooned herself in Innistrad's moon for a reason. The story of the Eldrazi Titans isn't over yet. She has the capacity to threaten multiple planes, and the potential to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Yawgmoth and Bolas in terms of power and sheer scale of threat.

edited 28th May '18 9:50:23 AM by TobiasDrake

It's interesting how much lesser Ulamog and Kozilek turned out to be than her. U&K were stupendously powerful and dangerous, the death of planes, but it was still possible to Star Trek up a way to kill them. It seemed like Emrakul was just, "No."

Popular theory is that Emrakul is to Kozilek and Ulamog what those two are to their spawn-the greater part of a whole. If Emrakul is really the only actual 'Titan' then it could be reforming those two 'extensions' of itself while cocooned, and will emerge when it is 'whole' once again. Then it eats New Phyrexia, after Karn and the Gatewatch fail in their initial attempt.

edited 28th May '18 4:41:47 PM by ViperMagnum357

IIRC, Emrakul is explicitly stated to be the most powerful of the three.

That being said, I don't think it's necessarily fair to Ulamog and Kozilek to hold that against them. That had more to do with the plane than the Titans. Zendikar wanted to fight them. It had been trying to throw off their yoke for millennia. It had called out to Nissa for this exact purpose.

Innistrad was significantly less cooperative and outright attacked Nissa for communing with it. The one method for Titanslaying that had worked against Ulamog and Kozilek was not available against Emrakul, so it's impossible to say whether or not it would have been equally as effective.

The circumstances were completely different, so it's unfair to attribute it all to "Emrakul's just that much tougher than them."

edited 28th May '18 4:41:52 PM by TobiasDrake

Not for shits and giggles, but Ugin has made it absolutely clear that while he cares about the multiverse as a whole, he has zero attachments whatsoever to any particular plane. If he got it in his head that destroying planes was necessary to protect the stability and longevity of the multiverse at large, he'd do so without hesitation.

Considering the hints in Eldritch Moon that the eldrazi are some sort of natural force to keep the multiverse's entropy in check, he may well decide it'd be best to take up the role in their stead.

Lim-Dul has had just as extensive an involvement in Shandalar as Leshrac did (arguably even more so, given that he had an entire war named after him), and he'd managed to circumvent his lack of a planeswalker spark by essentially hitching a ride with Leshrac.

We also know that Lim-Dul's soul was stated in the Microprose game to have been imprisoned in an artifact, to prevent Arzakon from invading the plane. We've notably yet to see what that artifact was... and so far the only realistic candidate for such a powerful artifact on Shandalar is the Chain Veil.

edited 28th May '18 7:34:50 PM by Zennistrad

Also keep in mind that Mairsil bound his essence to Lim-Dul; and while his original Phylactery was destroyed, it is possible some portion of him survived entangled with Lim-Dul's remnants. The Raven Man could literally be more than 1 person at the same time, which could explain some of the paradoxical actions undertaken.

New Story.

Kind of a paint by the numbers-everything worked out more or less the way most of the fanbase called by Dominaria Episode 4. Only real difference was Liliana disappearing after the rest, rather than Bolas making a dramatic entrance to rip her away in front of the Gatewatch.

Still really the opposite of thrilled that Pre-Ixalan Jace is here to stay-if it were not for Vraska, I would almost want him to be the first on the chopping block.

edited 30th May '18 12:59:21 PM by ViperMagnum357

I wonder if there's any lag in the writing, because they work so far ahead. Like did our author have to write this with only a cliff's note of how Ixalan shook out?

I thought that as well, but I guess at least this writer was given a heads up about Liliana having some character development, so I do not think they are that far ahead. Really hoping we get either a snap back or explanation for Jace in the next set of stories.

edited 30th May '18 4:35:04 PM by ViperMagnum357

They went into detail with some of the writing process in a recent interview with Gathering Magic.

I have to say though, I'm not exactly liking some of the things they said in this interview. More specifically, I take some issue with this bit right here:

While I get that they're aiming to go for a Broad Strokes approach to continuity here, this answer more-or-less encapsulates the problem I've had with Jace's portrayal in Return to Dominaria. Martha Wells is a good enough writer, but by not having her stick to the portrayal of Jace at the end of the Rivals of Ixalan story, they've essentially allowed her to completely disregard his character development and evolution of personality. It's a seriously bad storytelling to disregard consistent characterization as easily as you'd disregard whether or not Jace lost his toe in an old novel.

edited 30th May '18 4:51:42 PM by Zennistrad

That...is worrying. One of the setting's strengths has been sticking to continuity Post-Revision-they have stumbled plenty of times, but they always recovered because they had a strong, consistent continuity to fall back on-and, ya know, magic to explain things. If they are going to start clear cutting continuity so everyone can take a crack at 'their version' of characters and events...well, just look at all the messes that has created for the major comic book lines. And they have top shelf writers and half a century behind some of their titles, yet still see them dropped because of the overriding continuity problems.

TL:DR Just about the worst thing Magic can do is look to the Comics world as a model, where the print is hanging by a thread while possessing decades more nostalgia, far better writers and routine billion-dollar movies to keep them afloat.

It's actually a bit neat that it's made unclear whether Belzenlok actually believes his own lies. Probably not, but still. Shame he goes down so quickly after all that buildup.

Eh, they telegraphed it from the start-the only plan they came up with was to get their hands on a One-Hit Kill weapon and use it. Given how powerful Belzenlok was made out to be, that falling through and them killing him on the fly-while fighting off most of the Cabal-would have been difficult not to write as a straight Ass Pull.

I wouldn't have minded if they wound up killing Belzenlok with violence. I think that would have made for a more climactic battle. At this point in the Gatewatch's history, it is more than believable for Gideon, Chandra, and Liliana to be able to bring the guy down by just being awesome.

Especially when you add in Teferi, Karn, Jaya Ballard, and the Weatherlight crew. That's a lot of people who've been through a lot of shit that makes Belzenlok look like a rank amateur by comparison. He wants to take credit for Dominarian history? These people are Dominarian history.

Like. They went to the trouble of building up this huge crew over the course of the story. The crew, not the Blackblade, was the story. But it doesn't really pay off like this, since most of the crew wind up just being useless bystanders who contribute nothing. The entire Weatherlight ship is a pointless plot point that goes nowhere and winds up adding nothing to the fight, and that's an issue.

Having the battle steadily devolve into a Belzenlok v. Everyone dogpile as more and more of the Cabal's forces were lost would have been a more satisfying conclusion after so much time was spent building up this army of capable combatants.

edited 1st Jun '18 7:21:08 PM by TobiasDrake