I really dig how the Maestros faces are nuanced. They're not good people, but quite sympathetic given their color alignment.

But Ob Nixilis looks like an absolute dork going pew pew on Xander with his fingers. Jesus, are you twelve Obie?

He's a nihilistic edgelord.
Of course he's twelve.

Good one.

Anyways we arrive at the final two stories:

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2022-04-05

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2022-04-05

Urabrask, still waiting for Vivien and Elspeth in that rock to this very day.

Well....i quite liked the stories up to yesterday. They even made me like UBR characters, which is great.

Today just totally kills it....so many unfinshed plotpoints, where to begin?
- Is Jetmir dead?
- What happens with Urabrask like...at all?
- Is Giada an angel or not?

That's just a few.

Don't get me started on the plotholes. ('If it takes Elspeth all but 5 minutes to take a gander at Xander's museum and figure everything out, why didn't Xander figure it out years ago?')

But what's even worse than the bad, bad story ending with it's rediculous exposition ending: they are just getting worse at worldbuilding as a whole.

There are five families, of which one gets the full Spotlight (Meastro's), two dance at the edges of the limelight (Cabaretti and Obscura), one gets a bit of a shadowy outline (Brokers) and one is in the deep, deep shadows (Riveteers).

I'm actually very annoyed about their complete and total lack of any substantial Riveteer exposition beyond the 'BURRR WE SMASH!' bits that we've got: they represent the workers and they represent an entire LEVEL of new capenna, the Caldaia. Here was a perfect opportunity to do something a little more subtle with Jund/Gruul factions....and they just decided not to do...anything....whatsoever....instead?

It's actually shocking to me how quickly the world building and storytelling is going downhill. While i wasn't a fan of Neon Dynasty from a design perspective, the story was pretty ok. That also was the only passable storyarc in recent memory.

I had high hopes going into day 5 of stories, but the lack of a riveteers Backstory (which they needed) and the complete botch job that was episode 5 just kills the story once again.

What is story 5 really? I'm between being deeply disappointed in story 5 and being deeply impressed with how this last episode made the entire story utter rubbish.

Nothing happened at all besides Xandwr dying; the families are magically all mates again; Vivien and Elspeth just go to Dominaria without resolving anything on Capenna....even though Elseth swore to defend Capenna and Vivien agreed to help Urabrask. Ob did absolutely nothing in the story besides butchering his bad-ass reputation...

(Urabrask new Sorin? Stuck in a rock? )

I felt this way strongly with the Zendikar Rising story. They start strong and then fall really flat because they need to quickly cover the remaining plot points. I think five episodes are simply not enough, at least for some of these arcs, and they need to be more flexible with the authors to possibly add one or two episodes. I know they don't want to pay for a full novel/la, and I'm not one who says they need to do that or they need to have three sets' full of stories, but I think these fifth episodes are so rushed.

The cynical part of me thinks they went out of the way to portray the Riveteers as dumb and violent union workers with no sympathetic traits while going all out with the glamorous RICH Cabaretti and Maestros because WOTC hates poor people.

I also had this problem with the NEO story, where the focus is so much on the highest-status characters and we lose sight of the ground. There were fewer side stories in NEO too, and the side stories this time are seconds-in-command. And we don't even have one for the Riveteers!

At least NEO had the twins stories where the Asari Uprisers are sympathetic. But yes, New Capenna and Neon Dynasty to some extent have this weird pro-nobility/aristocracy/oppression message.

They could've just shelved that last side story for one more Main story entry and/or a much much longer episode 5 story... this felt the MOST MESSIEST of last episodes in a while.

It's not just messy....Mindnight Hunt and Crimson Vow were messy...this is just horrible.
I know that Magic Story is often described as glorified fan fiction, and I'm ok with that, but this just feels like mediocre fan fic at best and I'm definitely not ok with thát.


Also, making the disclaimer that I'm a Gruul/Jund at heart and TOTALLY biased, but those colors pretty much always get religated to the dumb brute force in the story, often appearing out of nowhere when the story needs an obstacle. It would be nice for that part of the color pie to get some attention. The riveteers feel like they could have been that. More fool me for thinking they could be.

I quite enjoyed this setting overall, and I like the broad strokes of the plot, but I agree that the last main story was super rushed. Xander and Jetmir were great. Anhelo was cool, too. And the Urabrask subplot was intriguing, even if it didn't get enough screen time.

Vivien's presence felt very... functional here. She had no personality and just served as a generic Gatewatch affiliate to network with Urabrask and help Elspeth. By contrast, I know not everyone here likes Elspeth, but I liked her characterization here. Her connection to the forgotten history of New Capenna was interesting, and there were nice moments between her and Giada.

My biggest sticking point for this setting, though, is what are the laws and who enforces them? We repeatedly hear about "crime families" and "illegal stashes of Halo", but how can anything be illegal in a city that seemingly has no government? I'd be fine with the setting as is if they just didn't use the word "crime" so much, or if they did at least mention some kind of corrupt and ineffective government that deems certain things to be illegal while completely failing to enforce them, but what we got just doesn't really make sense.

The flavor video explains there's a puppet government that the Cabaretti set up for the benefit of plausible denialibity. Everyone is just kind of resigned that the families can do whatever they want.

Huh, okay. I missed that. I'm glad they at least mentioned it somewhere, although having it be in the stories themselves would've been ideal.

Not to "Um actually" but the government is not technically the Cabaretti's. The government (including elected officials and police) is theoretically independent of any of the families; I assume it descended from something put in place by the angels.

But because the Cabaretti is the one that is most open to everyone, everyone goes to their parties regardless of if you're in the family, most politicians are in their pocket.

I didn't get Vivien referring to the Gatewatch here because I didn't think she was a member. Does she check in with them anyway? My impression of her was she was there for the War of the Spark then dipped. I never got the sense she stayed connected to them.

Vivien only brings up helping the gatewatch after learning Elspeth is helping them and did work with the gatewatrch enough during War of the Spark she'd be aware who they are and that they help deal with threats like phyrexia (if she hadn't heard that they where already planning an attack).

I believe we were promised a planeswalker's guide, nowhere to be seen.

Damn, WOTC really dropped the ball these past three days.

I don't think they promised the guide this week. Where did you see that?

The planeswalker's guides have not come out at the same time as the web fiction. Neon Dynasty's planeswalker's guide came out a week after the last mainline story.

I've heard somewhere that the final story (I think?) supposedly sets up New Phyrexia invading Dominaria??? Is that true?

Just asking because I want nothing to do with this garbage, but if someone can point me in the direction of the story that sets up stuff for Dominaria United, I might want to take a look at that one to see where this is going...