"We're helping!" Shouted the twisted metal abomination of the former twins, unable to understand the damage they did.

Will's not that bad... Maybe if they white whistle Rowan Made in the Abyss style she might get bearable.

That said, I definitely wasn't expecting the lovable prime directive soccer mom to get turned into the borg. Though, I could see Tamiyo being relatively hard to use narratively otherwise. I wasn't particularly pleased with the prospect of her being more open to directly intervene during War of the Spark. She's gotten to be pretty decently popular for being a voice of reason, and, uh, there's a clear lack of basic thinking things through for most of the MtG characters. And that ill-logic conveniently tends to move the plot forward a lot of the time.

I can relate. It still gut punches me to now... and the fact that unlike Karn, Tamiyo was flesh... so she's pretty much gone (unless The Brown LIne handwaves a way to reverse compleation as easy as that...)

Personally, I’m sort of expecting a full Belbe scenario. Only this time it is a character that we actually care about.

The most logical scenario is some kind of redemption that lets her keep her cool machine abomination powers.

Yeah tbh that's what im predicting, an eventual fix. Possibly nonsense with jace using his mind powers, some healing from whoever and idk. I feel like tezz is going to sacrifice himself during a phyrexian conflict as well. Just random early morning thoughts

Finally side stories: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2022-02-07

Sniff sneff, the romance between a mercenary snake and a murderous spirit.

It harkens back to old Kamigawa pretty well. How nostalgic.

Second storyo: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2022-02-08

I'm liking these stories, but it's more and more feeling that Kamigawa's not the "Modernity vs Tradition" plane, but rather a "Triangle of the Modern, the Traditional and the Arcane" plane and I'm all the more for it.

Quite enjoy the prose in this one: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2022-02-09

kinda sucks that 4 side stories appears to be the norm for the last 2 sets (although with the saga stuff there was obviously lots of content for htis one)

Yeah. Hope they also deliver a legends featurette for all the characters they won't write about.

We also got what seems to be a 2 part story into one with Kaito's origin story. So 1 side story for 1 or 2? extra main line story.

I've now read everything and it's just not my cup of tea.

Kamigawa was the block where my small hiatus began and to be honest they have only worsened the things i didn't like about Kamigawa by putting in some neon cyberpunk for good measure.

I think it's really cool that they made the effort to write articles about the past 1200 years on Kamigawa, but what makes Dominaria feel like such a deep-lore world is.....it had many years, many sets and many cards to develop...it IS THE deep-lore plane.
These articles, while nice, only put extra focus on the artificial history of kamigawa. They still do nothing to not make this set feel like a complete reboot.

The story wasn't badly written; i just couldn't care. And for five such long stories, it felt like very little actually happened. Except at the end...that whole thing with Tamiyo was very cool. I also loved Jin.

I'll just space out until Dominaria and The Brothers War

Well since it looks like the flavor is wrapped up I gotta say I really enjoyed Neo-Kamigawa. Glad to see they where able to fit in traditional Kamigawa with the traditional vs modern conflict so it wasn't a total flavor reboot. I also lets the world have a lot of diversity with its themes, you got the shinto mythology and other Japanese folklore stuff, you can draw from anime/manga tropes and then finally you have the cyberpunk and sci-fi stuff. This also lets them have more of a chance for a 3rd visit as if one aspect of the plane isn't popular they can always have the next set focused more on of the other aspects more.

I don't mind the sci-fi aspects, in fact I want (in general) more high magic Science/Space fantasy settings since I feel like the genre hasn't been explored as much.

Also awesome to see they really tried to make sure this set was more authentic to Japanese culture and I hope they take similar notes and steps when making new worlds or revising worlds with non-western fantasy.

Pretty much my thoughts overall. I do have think there are may be a bit too much mechas and anime (particularly in , allegedly the second most traditional color), but I dig the balance between high technology and feudal Japan aesthetics and the original block has been properly honoured with all the references.

Also, it might sound like really trivial but I'm glad they added enchantment creatures. Besides ensuring Kamigawa will always be a spiritual place, they also allow for non-kami youkai like the cat and turtle. Also, what's up with the saga creatures? Are they made by the Living Historians to suffer?

I know it's been years since I posted but I needed to get this out.

I don't look forward to a phyrexian story. I don't have a nostalgia factor for them and I find they suck the fun out of settings for me. I am partly biased because my very first set I started with in terms of lore was the original Mirrodin block. I still have the books on my shelf so Scars was a bad time for me. It was just me watching everything I thought was cool get dragged into a body horror mess that I just didn't enjoy. I do not find despair heavy storylines engaging because I can't get attached to anything or anyone. I figure we're going to have an interplanar phyrexian war coming up that'll span blocks like the Bolas arc did and the whole time I'm going to be detached from the characters and settings because they're all at risk of getting compleated.

I think I'd be be more engaged if I saw the phyrexians attack a plane and lose. For example, perhaps the enchantment creatures of Theros can't be compleated and after a tough fight (with a god of Phyrexia coalescing as people get compleated and believe in it) the invasion ultimately fails. For me, I just don't want to return to a cool plane I liked to watch it turn jagged and horrifying. Seeing Tamiyo get compleated was a gut punch which I suppose makes it a narrative success but it just feels bad. I'll likely keep a cursory eye on the story to see how this plays out but blech.

Who wants to bet that Tezzeret gets compleated after getting betrayed by the phyrexians and becomes their new Father of Machines and is ultimately destroyed?