Magic: The Gathering (Unreleased Sets)

Ah, Nahiri. Never change.

No, wait, please please change.

I see her gift for This-Is-Everyone's-Fault-But-Mine remains intact, yeah

It's almost comical how quickly she convinces herself that Ajani is planning to kill her and that he has already killed the other once compleated Planeswalkers.

Also hilarious is who she goes from "I've got to have my Planeswalker Spark back" to "Planeswalkers are bad and must never be allowed on Zendikar again". Sour grapes, much?

Also, she's not nearly as over Phyrexia as she thinks she is.

It's kind of funny that out of the three Planeswalkers who originally sealed the Eldrazi, it's Nahiri who ended up the most screwed up. Even Sorin's in a better place mentally now.

Edit:

Speaking of asshole Planeswalkers well, ex-Planeswalkers, looking at some early card spoilers, it's rather karmic that Ob Nixilis lost his spark while he was still on New Capenna. He's stuck on a plane where he's made enemies of pretty much everyone. His card title is even "Captive Kingpin".

Edited by M84 on May 4th 2023 at 3:00:00 AM

"Oh no, not again" - Ob Nixilis, presumably

Ob Nixilis, casually sipping a martini: "First time losing your spark huh?"

I hope that Angrath was with his family, at least. Can you imagine how pissed that guy would be?

Alternatively, if he's one of the planeswalkers to keep his spark, that'd be kind of ironic.

Teferi's also lost his spark twice now. At least he lost it while on Zhalfir, though he's cut off from Dominaria.

Edit:

He still has family in Dominaria too. Unless an Omenpath opens up between Zhalfir and Dominaria, he's not seeing his daughter Niambi again any time soon.

Edited by M84 on May 3rd 2023 at 9:53:41 PM

On another note, it's funny that the Wiki page describing the desparking event is calling it "The Great Pruning" due to Nissa's metaphor for it in the first story.

Edit:

After re-reading the second story, I just realized that Nahiri wasn't actually a victim of this event. She was one of the lucky few who kept her spark — it was just outside of her body and trapped in the hedron due to her Phyrexian shenanigans. Her own paranoia and lashing out is what caused the spark to be lost later. Nahiri desparked herself.

Which just makes it even more hilarious.

Edited by M84 on May 3rd 2023 at 10:39:20 PM

Calling it now. The writers are going to have Ajani and/or Chandra sacrifice their lives and/or sparks to restore everyone else's. Probably Ajani. I'm actually a little surprised he got this far without getting Leomon-ed.

Ajani seems almost cursed to live through tragedy.

Ah I bet he's got several dozen more tragedies to live through before someone goes and Leomons him.

"To lose one spark could be accident; to lose two smacks of carelessness." - Oscar Wildspeaker

He's pretty much doomed to survive horrible shit that gets people near and dear to him killed with the Survivor's Guilt getting worse and worse.

Karn's also lost a spark twice. He lost Urza's / Glacian's original spark due to New Phyrexia's attempt to make him the new Father of Machines, and he lost Venser's spark de-compleating Nissa and Ajani.

At least that second one was on purpose — Karn knew what would happen to Venser's spark and did it anyway.

Edited by M84 on May 4th 2023 at 10:54:20 PM

I was considering mentioning that and decided to go with the The Importance of Being Earnest joke instead.

A look at what's coming later in the year, from MagicCon Minneapolis:

• The Doctor Who set will have a new Partner variant ("Doctor's Companion" — this card can be your commander, if your other commander is The Doctor), new Planechase cards based on locations from the series (such as The Library), and four premade commander decks.
• Some Lord of the Rings cards, with a proper explanation of how the Ring mechanic works.
• Universes Within versions of The Walking Dead are coming alongside the next premier set.
• A look at the four face cards for the Commander Masters decks, and a few extra reprints from the set.
• A first look at Wilds of Eldraine, including some of the principal characters ("Will, Scion of Peace", "Rowan, Scion of War", "Eriette of the Charmed Apple", "Ashiok, Wicked Manipulator"), a couple of the story beats (the sleeping curse that was used to stop the Phyrexians is starting to spread among the native populace, the Kendrith twins were desparked), and one very amusing Brick Joke ("Syr Ginger, the Meal Ender")

Edited by Blueeyedrat on May 5th 2023 at 3:13:11 AM

I had seen the art and was wondering what would get Ashiok involved, but that first story beat sure does explain it. This is gonna be sweet!

Wilds of Eldraine | Episode 1: Pure of Heart

The Magic Youtube channel is also posting readings of the Wilds of Eldraine stories. The videos are also in the story pages.

And here's Episode 2: Wandering Knight, Budding Hero

At the 30th Anniversary panel, we got a look at the roadmap for next year (and a bit of what's coming after):

2024:

• Murders at Karlov Manor (a Murder Mystery set in Ravnica)
• Universes Beyond: Fallout
• Outlaws of Thunder Junction (new Wild West plane)
• Modern Horizons III
• Universes Beyond: Assassin's Creed
• Bloomburrow (new Mouse World plane)
• Duskmourn: House of Horror (new plane, an Eldritch Location based on more modern horror like the works of Stephen King and HR Giger)

2025:

• Universes Beyond: Final Fantasy (a full-sized set like Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth)
• new set on Lorwyn
• new set on Tarkir
• new set on three planes (two revisits, one that hasn't been featured in a premier set), described as an interplanar "death race"
• new set in outer space

2026:

• new set on Arcavios
• climax set for the upcoming Myth Arc

At some point I'll be adding the newly-announced stuff to the recap page, and I'm wondering: should the stories from Wilds of Eldraine onward be split into a new folder? Is there specific criteria for denoting an "age", and if so, are we now in the seventh?

Episode 3: Two Great Banquets

I thought about suggesting that the Planeswalker character pages be changed given how many of them lost their Sparks.

Then I thought about just how many of them lost their Sparks and how much work it would take to organize them under other pages, and I thought "...nah".

Episode 4: Ruby and the Frozen Heart

Episode 5: Broken Oaths