Modern Masters II previews are upon us, and with it comes callbacks, cameos, and faces new and old. I wanted to start a thread highlighting the cards that made you go

-Break Ties features Barrin and Rayne (with whom I only have passing familiarity)

-On the planeswalker side of things, Dakkon has gotten a planeswalker card, alongside new character Grist. Still waiting for an explanation for how Grist works (is Grist the swarm or the singular bug)


-Garth One-Eye gets a card, as well as Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar (and her cookbook). I'm going to link their preview articles to highlight how much love went into their designs.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-preview/garth-one-eye-2021-05-25
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-preview/challenge-accepted-2021-05-26

-Samurai frog because Chub Toad exists gave me a chuckle (after it was pointed out to me).

Carth the Lion was just spoiled too. And seeing that Geyadrone Dihada seems to be one of the arts from the booster... I guess Dakkon's whole line of lore is gonna be almost complete (e.g. we already have a new Dakkon card, a recent card for Jared Carthalion and then Geyadrone...)

I'm appreciating Modern Horizons as the defacto throwback release with the seeming(?) absence of Commander's standalone release.

I wonder who they're gonna be filling in next....

We got Piru and she's in Mardu. Thoughts?

I like the bias the elder dragons had.

Posting this really hurts and is going to feel very, very wrong because I've felt nothing but overwhelming joy and excitement looking at the MH2 spoilers so far, and now that I finally have the time to comment on them, I wanted to share that joy and excitement. But someone just showed me this:



WHAT IS THIS??? WHY? HOW?

There are no gods on Dominaria. Sure, all sorts of people have all sorts of religions with all sorts of gods, but that doesn't make those gods REAL. There is no Svyelun, just like there is no Ergerborg, no Offkirch and no Avohir. If there was, she'd have to be an oldwalker posing as a god. Besides, you'd think Svyelun would have bloody shown up to DO something about Yawgmoth killing all those Vodalians, or even about the Homarids in Sarpadia if she was the real character that card makes her out to be. Which is ironic since the only person who DID give a **** and sacrificed himself for them actually WAS an oldwalker.


So it begins. Magic isn't allowed to be its own multiverse with its own rules anymore. It's D&D now, and the conversion is starting with Dominaria. I can't even tell you how much this disgusts me.

I felt that way about the Raze-Boar.

Well, if it helps, the flavor of playing the game has, for a while, been flavored as playing projections of creatures, not the real deals themselves. Maybe Svyelun isn't a reflection of a real being, but rather a collective imagining of what such a being would be if she were real.

It's about the only way I can safely square it away, to think of how Feldon learned to summon, or how Lim Dul and Jodah discussed the concept.
It is the aether creation interpretation.

Normally, there would be no recourse to take that interpretation either, since the set is set in the now, but as this is unhinged from any time...

Next you're going to tell me the Lord of Atlantis or the Lady of the Mountain aren't real. You can't fool me!

Yeah, I can't see where the problem is. Whatever in universe justifications the merfolk have for their moon deity's lack of involvement fully apply whereas it exists or not. Maybe Svyelun is lazy or a maltheistic sadist.

Based on the fact that her card is only indestructible if you have multiple of her tribe, perhaps the Svyelun we summon is more similar to an incarnation or avatar than a Theran god that has independent existence.

Faith has power in Dominia in general and even on Dominaria. Serra is a dead planeswalker, but her cleric worshippers are still able to have 'her' answer their prayers with real magic. This Svyelun doesn't feel like the totality of what the Merfolk believed her to be, a true creator deity. It feels more like what the fervent prayers of a bunch of merfolk could conjure as just one more miracle.

Or, on the other side, maybe she's exactly as real as The Lady of the Mountain, a being god-like enough to probably get the type (or at least the nascent "Demigod" type next to Fiers) not that Wizards has shown a willingness to use it for the general resonance, especially were the character to receive a new version.

I know I'm a little late to this particular party, but I just assumed that Svyelun was from whatever plane that Mu Yanling was as she was from some plane of "sky and sea" or some such. I didn't even think for a second that Svyelun was from Dominaria, unless it was posted on the WotC site at some point ansd I just missed it.

Kaldra Compleat amuses me because the individual component equipment is still pristine.

I'm actually glad that I already talked about not giving in to the D&D influence in worldbuilding and about being 100% against ever using the God type on Dominaria in the thread about creature types in Legends. At least nobody can act like I'm not consistent in my opinions and just looking for reasons to complain (not saying anyone did, mind you, but this is the internet...).

The problem with that is that, according to those rules, it shouldn't be possible to summon someone who's completely imaginary. Here's what Lim-Dûl tells Jodah about summoning legendary creatures (The Eternal Ice, p. 39):
"'Some individuals are so powerful in life that they continue afer death. Not as ghosts, mind you, but as stories. Legends of the past. And if enough of those stories are true enough and potent enough, a spellcaster can bring into being the ultimate form of that individual. Whereas the scholars were merely shadows of 'scholarliness', these individuals are shadows of their original models. Individuals like you.'"

So there you have it. The stories have to be 'true' and there has to be 'an original model', which means you could only create an aether copy of Svyelun if she already existed to begin with.


Based on what The Art of Dominaria tells us about Svyelun and the Vodalians' beliefs in her, they picked the worst possible deity for that kind of explanation (p. 84): "One of the key tenets of Svyelunism is that mortals cannot approach the divine: the moon is above the sea, above the lethal desert of the land, above even the sky, and no mere merfolk can hope to reach it. Svyelun has not communicated to her followers except when she first formed merfolk from silt and saltwater, and her words from that time are recorded in ancient writings that are the focus of Svyelunite theology."

And as to faith having inherent power in Magic's multiverse... The lore is vast and many strange things have happened, but I don't think that claim is true. I'm pretty sure all instances of faith having power only occurred when that faith was placed in something that actually existed (or maybe when the believers used their own inherent magic powers without realising it, like Primata Delphine for example). Serra created angels and infused the land of Sursi with her spark, so her influence lingers. The gods on Theros were spawned by the beliefs of mortals, but that's an inherent property of Nyx that's particular to Theros. Some planes obviously have gods, but Dominaria has never been portrayed as being among them.

No, I'm not going to tell you they aren't real, I'm telling you they aren't GODS. Look, I'm sure you'd be the first person to agree with me that Modern Horizons II as a whole is mind-blowingly amazing and that it's pretty sad that I get so caught up in a single card. I just think this one card undermines one of the basic premises of Dominaria, namely that there are no true gods, only beings who get called gods, or gods whose existence can't be felt or proven. If all sorts of random gods that people on Dominaria believe in can suddenly show up in person and exert their influence directly, this calls into questions pretty much all major storylines that have happened there (Why did the gods not intervene? Or maybe they did and the reasons why those stories happened the way they did aren't what we were led to believe?), and it's going to be very hard to tell compelling stories there going forward. The idea that Svyelun is a real entitiy on Dominaria is pretty uncomfortable when you think about some of Vodalia's different factions and its history. It basically means the Eliterates and other moderate intellectuals - factions that have always been portrayed as the most reasonable, peaceful and progressive-minded people in Vodalia - were objectively and demonstrably wrong and the Svyelunite militarisitc traditionalists in the mold of Galina were right. Gosh, if only those impious fools and everyone else in Vodalia had prayed and believed instead of reading books and talking about philosophy, why, Svyelun might just have saved them from Yawgmoth! And if Svyelun was real this entire time, how can you justify Karona not having the God type and even being called a 'False God'? The manifestation of all mana on Dominaria that becomes virtually omnipotent through the belief of her followers isn't a God, but some fishlady who has never done a single thing to make anyone even notice her existence IS considered a God? Riiiight.

Besides, just taking established religions from the canon and printing creature cards for their gods - gods that have never been present in almost 28 years of Magic - isn't just completely inconsistent with established worlbuilding, it's also a really hamfisted and shallow 'fast food' approach to religion. On the one hand, it doesn't reflect the lived reality of the parts of the audience that practice a religion in real life (which doesn't include me). Christians praying to God in times of trouble don't hear a booming voice telling them it's going to be fine. Blue-skinned figures with too many arms don't descend from the heavens at a Hindu festival. A Shinto priest lighting a candle doesn't cause any wondrous phenomena to happen. And I don't think that's the point of religion for those people. On the other hand, though, it pushes non-religious characters out of the setting, because what's the point of being an atheist in a world like that? Some fantasy religions being centered around tangible beings is fine, but if too many of them are like that, it gets extremely silly.

Just to show you how much Dominaria having actual gods goes against the spirit of the setting, I tracked down a quote by Brady Dommermuth from the Ask Brady Archive: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=13330&view=print

Q: [D]o you have a personal opinion on whether or not Gaia [sic] is a real entity or just an invented entity?

A: I would never "word of God" the existence or nonexistence of Gaia; the published material stands on its own with regard to that issue.

If that was his answer concerning Gaea (which by now can be safely assumed to exist, considering worldsouls have become an established part of the worldbuilding), what do you think his stance on even more abstract figures like Svyelun would have been?


Sorry Ethan, but I think you guys have lost the script on Dominaria pretty badly with this one. It kinda makes me want to step back from all this until we return to Dominaria again and I know exactly how it's going to be handled going forward.

I have to say: i absolutely adore modern horizons 2.
So many flavor homeruns. I mean: Garth One-Eye on a card, who would have thunk it!

From a flavor standpoint it might just be my favorite set next to Time Spiral and Dominaria. I mean, i saw some things that made my jaw drop, but when i saw Yavimaya (a mirror of Urborg) and Piru (a perfect new-old Elder Dragon) i was floored.

From names to flavortexts to legendary creatures; it's just a fantastically good set. Thanks, Ethan and the team!

EDIT: there are rumours going around of Ashnod being in this set (finally!), but there are still two characters that bug me for not having a card yet: Leshrac and (especially) Gix. Oh well, that will have to be stuff for a different set!

I'm going to be petty and say I hate the mono- archon.

I don't like it either....Archons should always be at least white!

I dó like the Nicol Bolas reference in the art and the ability refering to Torment of Hailfire.

But i still strongly dislike the mono black.

Yeah, it seems to be from Amonkhet judging by the horn monument... but that only raises more questions, since Amonkhet doesn't have archons (which in an of itself is arguably a bit of a wasted opportunity since Gnosticism flourished in Egypt)

That doesn't look like Amonkhet
That looks like the meditation realm

Great, so its foreshadowing for Bolas' escape