Two stories today: one of despair as Braids appears and another of hope.

It's cool that Braids wasn't brought back by Phyrexia and is her own thing. But she really came out of nowhere in the story. This chapter felt very perfunctory and is the weakest of the five so far, imo.

Overal i really like the feel of the stories; the kind of horror feel to them is great and i love the use of sleepers.

However, as has already been brought up, it feel like a very light redux of the original invasion. We only just had a cool new post time-cataclism, post phyrexian war Dominaria to Explore, but NOPE: Phyrexians again.
It also really hurts that Phyrexia has a whole lot of deus ex machina happening here with all the sleepers installed in such a short amount of Time.

The sidestories have been great though. I loved Squee's heroism, i loved Jared and Dihada (I REALLY want to know how that continues, it felt MUCH more interesting than the main story to be honest) and Braids is just a great character, because she is evil, but not a villainess. She can be evil but can also realistically be helpful to the former crew of the Weatherlight.

A thing thst has been irking me though: why bring back Ertai? He has been nothing but a sniveling underling, both during his Time on the Weatherlight and as a phyrexian. Why not bring back a powerhouse like Crovax for example? This feels weird to me. It just feels like he is back.....because of things.

The sleeper agents at least can be explained given that New Phyrexia is just that infectious.

Final episode: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2022-08-18

Ajani: Compleated
Jaya: Dead
Teferi: going back in time

Not a fan of Brother's War being a time travel story but hope Teferi is just sticking around to leaning how to use the Sylex.

Also guessing Ajani is gonna get a phyrexia arm after Jaya burned off one of his, wonder if they will make like his axe. Also seems like he got some cable braid hair and now has a new eye.

His entire fur was burned apparently. I think he will reappear as a Machine Orthodoxy phyrexian, though maybe still with Sheoldred's black cables.

Guessing we will get a cycle at least;

W- Ajani
U-Tamiyo
B- Tibalt?
R- ?
G ?

Urabrask isn't into unwilling completing so I'm gonna guess a pw is gonna willing get oiled.

I don't think Tibalt ever got that 'poison seed' removed.

It seems to happen every time that the set's stories start strong (for me) and then end really flat. They either truly need more word count than five chapters or the authors are not good at pacing things. I think it's sad that Karn got got by a paralysis spell in the first chapter and then again in the last. It makes him feel so useless.

I think a story focused on actually building the Coalition would have been more interesting than this. It's disappointing for me to get to the last chapter and you suddenly have a full-on Coalition and war. I think the set's cards themselves seem really focused on this teaming up idea and it isn't as present in the story. The worldbuilding video talks a lot about designing New Argive, and you only see the inside of one tower in one chapter and then the city falls at the end of that chapter.

Jaya really got Gwen Stacy-d....

Also, I just read a random reddit theory that Koth is the very first Neowalker Compleation experiment... I hope that don't come to truth...

Also.... all that new announce stuff... I would love to see it all tide through. Universe plz~

I mean, Koth was immunised, so probably not him unless he strikes a deal with Urabrask or something. But Tibalt is my bet for a phyrexian walker since A) he's more strongly associated with than , B) he likely would see this as a plus since he's a sadist.

Still, I'm willing to bet all compleated walkers are multicoloured. Ajani remains as such

There was a secret lair that has been eerily in line with the victims so far.
Ashiok is specifically looking for phyrexia, and the other two were Angrath and Sorin.

I'll keep it short:

I won't get back into playing Magic, and I'm not a part of this fandom anymore.

Bye.

To be honest, for me, new card fatigue is finally setting in. I should love this set.
I really loved Dominaria. It felt like a loveletter to old-timey magic.
Somehow, for me, this set so far feels a bit over the top or something. I can't really get into it as much as i did with Dominaria. Which is a shame. I think it's the shear amount of new cards we've had bombarded at us in the last half year.

Also, most of the invidual card designs for the legends feel way less like flavor homeruns mechanically compared to Domnaria.

Me sad.

Release notes with cards was accidentally released early, so you can look at more cards if you want.

Mechanically, I've been wondering what feels off as well. I do like a lot of the deeper cuts with the more obscure place references I'm seeing. The cards mechanically feel nostalgic, but the more and more I look at them, it's not hitting a mechanical nostalgia for Dominaria. The Efreet/Djinn more remind me of Tarkir Djinn/Efreet than Dominaria. I'm getting card references like Gifts Ungiven, Blightning, Trinket Mage or Vent Sentinel. Even domain doesn't feel quite right, as it's being used more as a cost reducer than a scaling effect (not that mechanical innovation should be avoided, but in this case, it's not helping as strongly to tie the set to the plane). I'm not sure if it work with other people, but I was kinda at the point where, instead of triggered abilities all over the place, I wanted to see more symbols to fuel the Dominaria feel.

Thanks! I saw it the other day and laughed because it is the exact same sort of leak that happened with Dominaria.

I agree with you completely. Somehow they didn't capture the feel of Dominaria as well with this set as they did with Dominaria, which makes me sad, as I absolutely abhored both Neon Dynasty and Street of New Capenna from a flavor standpoint. (Streets was atrociously flimsy, one note and bland, Neon Dynasty did do Kamigawa justic and made many fans happy, but i hate cyberpunk and I feel that it has no place in a fantasy game like MtG).

Some individual examples from Dominaria United that show what i mean:

- Jodah, Archmage Eternal is one of my favorite cards in Dominaria. Not only was the art fantastic, but his ability was very fitting. I loved the card. This set's Jodah feels....like a generic Legends matter guy.

- The Raven Man feels very lackluster for such a powerful entity, which in itself is a bit weird for such a long awaited legendary creature, but the card being a human wizard is beyond strange. I was sure he would be a spirit.

-Jared Carthalion Why a kavu?? Why the 5 color matters ultimate?? This card has NOTHING to do with Jared, which is ironic because Jared Carthalion, True Heir was a flavor bombshell.

- Sheoldred, the Apocalypse...'The Apocalypse' with a bloody dragon engine for a body....is a 4/5 deathtouch that has something do with card draw....ok, moving on...

- Squee, Dubious Monarch frankly feels nothing like squee. Ok, the escape part is ok-ish, but Squee is quite thoughtful, especially for a goblin. Him having haste and an attack trigger somehow feels off.

Those are just a few from the top of my head.

Love the Greensleeves that makes giant badgers though! That's awesome. I just wish we had more cards like it.

(Oh and what the hell did they do to my boy Rohgahh? His original art by Edward Beard is one of the cards that really drew me into the lore back in 1994...the art for the redone Rohgahh is HORRIBLE! What's with those EARS???)

Transform would have fit amazingly into this collection. I'm sorry they didn't put this ability on the side of the Phyrexians in this set. Raven-Man would have an amazing thing if one side was this art of his we've known for years, and the other would be a Planeswalker. Another thing that frustrated me was Tetsuo Umezawa not getting a planeswalker card.

But neither of them are Planeswalkers.

Like this? Even the wiki recently said they were both planeswalkers (apparently it was changed recently). Umezawa traveled from Dominaria to "Meditation's Realm" and Lim-Dúl went to Shandalar.

That doesn't make them Planeswalkers, that just means they were transported to other places.
The meditation realm was a demi-plane attached to Dominaria that could be accessed mentally through meditation. Hence...
Lim-dul, on the other hand was dragged to Shandalar by Leshrac.
Planeswalkers, on the other hand, physically move from one world to another under their own power thanks to an inherent spark in their soul.