We've all probably had a block or two where we saw untapped potential. For me, it was the Lorwyn-Morningtide block. It brought a fresh look to Magic after the backstabbings and political machinations of Ravnica and the post-apocalyptic stylings of Time Spiral. I loved the flavor of the elves, kithkin, merrow, flamekin and treefolk. The giants as arbiters was also pretty intriguing. The boggarts were the weak link in this one for me - they were fine fodder for elvish prejudice, I suppose. Weaker was the overarching plot.

In this thread we can share our ideas for the diamonds in the rough. Blocks where we envision better stories than what we were given by Wizards. My idea for Lortide:

Vessifrus vs the elves is brought to the forefront. We see the ripple effects of it in the kithkin and the merrow. Giants attempt to remain neutral while the kithkin call for them to intervene. The merrow seek to bring peace by sneaking fae into the elemental and elven camps. A powerful glammor to put an end to hostilities. Moving in the background of it all is Colfenor. The old yew treefolk seeks to hasten the Great Aurora to bring about a true unification of the elves with the rest of Lorwyn's races. He knows that the effects of the Aurora will make it necessary for survival - but he is unaware of the effect it will have on the kithkin, boggarts, flamekin and merrow.

At the heart of the conflict between Vessifrus and the elves are the elementals of Lorwyn. While they've always been abstractions made manifest, they have grown more feral, more hideous and more destructive. For they are in tune with the biorhythms of Lorwyn and are attempting to warn the plane's inhabitants of Colfenor's unnatural attempts at bringing about the Great Aurora. The flamekin are deaf to the message's meaning; they believe that the hideousness of the elementals is a manifestation of the elves' prejudice toward the other races. In order to restore the elementals to their former glory, the flamekin lead by Vessifrus march with the intent of exterminating the elvish race.

I'm not sure how I'd done it differently, but if I was in charge of Return to Ravnica, the Gateless would have made sure there would be no new Guildpact.

Maybe there are more changes that should be made, but if I could rewrite Dragon's Maze, my change would be a simple one. Instead of becoming the living guildpact, Jace would have just used his telepathy to allow the guild leaders to read each others' minds so they would all know nobody was planning to screw everybody else over (just like in the book) so the new guildpact would be written, on paper, and not Jace. Heck, he could even get special pact-enforcing powers if WOTC really wanted. Just don't make him the pact itself. Bam. Simple change, but the plot just got 30% better.

Another thread led me to think about the Mending. It's probably too ambitious for this thread, and it certainly is for me but I think the Mending could have been salvaged by actually showing its impact in the Block right after Time Spiral. That would no Lorwyn, of course, but a story that actually introduces the new planeswalkers. I don't know enough about the pre-Mending story to go in-depth, but I would have taken at least one established planeswalker, then keep Liliana and see how she experienced the Mending (demons and all) and have three newer planeswalkers who's Spark ignited after the Mending. Set the story in a new, interesting plane and keep the planar conflict low-key and focus on telling the stories of the planeswalkers. Also throw a lot of money at getting a decent novel out of this. Or at least as much as you can spare. The Mending was predictably a controversial event and a lot of effort should have been spent on easing the transition and actually delivering on the promise of better stories and characters.

It would have been so easy to have made Jaya a part of the Lorwyn 5. Why'd we get Jaya 2 instead of Jaya? They're at least 80% similar.

Because Jaya is about 3000 and doesn't have things like demons to extend her life.

But she was an old walker until recently, so it wouldn't have been a problem for her.

It seems like the lorwyn block takes place a good amount of time after the mending. Lilliana has her tattoos so we know she already made her pacts, and I remember her origins article stating that she was heckie old by the time she made the pacts. It would make sense if Jaya was dead by know.

That doesn't explain venser tho. Or Elspeth

Venser had access to slow time water.

Elspeth's timeline is a certified mess though. I'm kind of just resigned at this point to the idea that the timeline is never going to make sense post-Mending

Actually, I wonder if Lorwyn could've still been the plane to introduce the post-Mending 'walkers. I mean... that seems like a LOT of balls to juggle but it's not like the Lorwyn story was anything worth writing home about anyway, so...

There's even some interesting stuff going on there with transformations from one state to another that play well with Garruk's story after his interaction with Liliana (make that towards the end of the Lormor books), and with Liliana herself, and Old!Jaya could possibly be an interesting pov for that as well. Actually the more I think about it the more I like it honestly. Hinge the story around these neowalkers interacting with some of the races of the plane and you have a narrative about players building tribal decks, essentially.

I mean I don't like... really think this would work? But it's a step closer to working than what we actually got, at least.

I could see old Jaya hiding out with the Knollspine witches. They could say that the magic of the Aurora protected her from the spark's mutation.

In this hypothetical new!Mending scenario, we could write it so that age catches up with the Oldwalkers slightly slower. This ultimately doesn't change too much down the line (Alara onwards, it wouldn't change anything I think) and could make for a decent "passing the torch" story. You could even keep Chandra, have her actually meet Jaya and focus a little more on the part of her story where she just isn't as good as Jaya.



I wouldn't actually set Lorwyn on that timeline. Hell, I'd probably wouldn't have used Lorwyn for this. (If we still want Lorwyn, it could be set after the first post-Mending block and just bump up everything by a year.) I'd set the story just a couple of years after the Mending. Ten at most. Long enough for characters to come to terms with the new status quo, but not so long that the you couldn't feasibly introduce a depowered Oldwalker in the future.

I'd actually introduce Liliana when she's getting her last demonic pact in order.



I wouldn't use Lorwyn, personally. The plane has a lot going on, even if the story isn't all that interesting. Using the plane to show planeswalkers coping with the Mending would make it even busier.

Have you seen the What if Episode III Were Awesome? thing on youtube? I kinda want to write that for the post-Mending era.

pre-eldrazi zendikar probably would have worked the best to show off how they're dealing. It has a LOT of tremulous mana and danger that is all that more dangerous to the now de-powered planeswalkers. It's also generic enough to not distract from them.

I could see that, yeah. Shandalar could've worked, too, for pretty much the same reasons. And it's already steeped in ancient Magic history, so it might have provided a smoother transition and given people the feeling that this is still the same old Magic universe. The lack of this feeling is what bothers me most about the Mending in this post-Mending era. I've made my peace with the in-world changes and all that, but I miss the interconnectedness of old and new stuff. I miss Dominaria, and when they revealed that Liliana was from there in Origins, they did absolutely nothing with it. Some planeshopping is fine, and we've seen awesome new things since the Mending, but why can't we have the best of both the old and new material? They don't even necessarily have to revisit Dominaria for that, they could just give us a resolution to Baron Sengir's invasion plans or have Dack Fayden chase the Timmerian Fiends for a stolen artefact. Sure, they preserved Karn and Bolas, but we haven't seen them for ages, Bolas's scheming doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and the parts about Karn in the Scars of Mirrodin storyline were crap, so...

Most things about Scars of Mirrodin were crap. Thank the Ineffable the plane is taken over.

If I were to write this all out, I wouldn't pick Zendikar, because I'd like to see the rest of the story play out roughly the same, taking into account the ripple effect of the changes I'd make. Shandalar might work, for various reasons but I'm not sure if a plane with special mana is the best place for the transition. Ideally, you want to show the new baseline, so already adding special things to the powers your character has available might not be the best idea. Despite that, sticking to Shandalar might be best. We want to smooth the transition as much as possible and fleshing out an established plane would help with that.

The thing about special mana vs. showing the new baseline is a good point. Though as you say, it might still work quite well given the advantages of fleshing out an established plane. Shandalar's mana somehow never came up in the Core Sets and the stories related to them, though, IIRC. I really hope they'll get this straight along with other established facts about Shandalar when (and I think it's when rather than if) they do a Shandalar block. I think Shandalar could be a great opportunity to merge the new locations, characters and conflicts they introduced in the Core Sets (minus the pseudo-slivers everyone hates) with traces of the old lore from the comics, computer games etc.

@ What I said earlier about the lack of connections to old material: In fairness, I just realised that bringing back the Phyrexians should kinda count as a major element of pre-Mending lore making a return. The Phyrexian side of the conflict had pretty cool mechanics that were fun to play with and felt very 'Phyrexian'. Though there's just something about the original Phyrexians that was way more compelling than the new ones, even though I can't point out exactly what it was. It's probably a combination of factors like the Mirrans being boring strawmen for the most part, Phyrexia suddenly being in all colours, New Phyrexia not yet having the build up old Phyrexia did, possibly something about the art direction, the lack of characteristic things like planar portals and airships, the odd "the oil corrupts everything in no time" approach (plus the unclear and retconned nature of said oil), or the general mess the storyline was plus the absence of a novel that actually fleshed out the conflict. With the origin story of New Phyrexia out of the way, things might get more interesting the next time Phyrexians show up.

Although I cut my Vorthosi teeth on the original Phyrexian Invasion, the newer ones are an improvement over what's come before. The Praetors, in particular, are stronger characters than post-The Thran Yawgmoth. In that novel, Yawgmoth was a fantastic character that became a bit one-note in the Invasion when he became a death cloud. Each faction of Phyrexians are chasing their own goals, which would make it a bit more difficult to deal with them in theory. You knock down one faction, another faction moves in to take control or someone from the faction you thought you destroyed rises to take leadership. And so it goes.

No arguments on the Mirrans - they really should have cut this element and just focused on the Phyrexians, giving us protagonists from each of the factions.

Pseudoslivers - get rid of the sliver type, make them Shandalar-specific creatures like the slith from the first Mirrodin block.

Onakke - make the chain veil one of many such veils, intended to combat the pseudosliver menace.

Tezzeret - the one planeswalker that I could relate to while reading his origin novel, in so far as the kinda of place he came from and his aspirations. Take that book, throw out the ending where . Make it his set-in-stone origin story like what we got for the Gatewatch in M15

Grixis - make it more sustainable; some demons provide for their human patrons in a Faustian sort of relationship while others are there as tools for wise humans to take advantage of - a food source or tools of war. Magical kathari transplants that let humans derive nutrition from a scavenger's diet.