ITT: Plebs who don't Vegas Shuffle.

My unpopular opinion (at least around here): Creative has overall done a good job with the uncharted realms work since Origins.

In the vein of J-Man, I liked the Alara Unbroken novel and the Tezzeret novel, Test of Metal.

I very much enjoyed Test of Metal, more than Purifying Fire for sure.

You never had to deal with Matt Stover.

Alara Unbroken was better than a lot of people give it credit for. I will say, it's a much better read if you choose one plotline and stick with it though.

I don't really care about the storyline, I also tend to shun tournaments and other high stress events. I also look down on those who play Magic: The investment instead of Magic: The Gathering.

Does that include people who play Magic: the Pucatrading?

I swear over the course of one month it went from one guy at my LGS talking about using Pucatrade to everybody except me using Pucatrade. (I'm assuming it's spelt that way, I haven't looked into it and the only other Pucas I know are Cemetery Puca and Crag Puca.)

Never heard of it.

I figure if some one is using pucatrade,they plan to actually play the game

Oh, I thought your statement was about players who build 2000 dollar decks.

I deeply resent the fact that some of the most expensive cards are just black holes of mechanics with virtually no flavor to speak of.

I fundamentally believe that any player should be able to play whatever deck they want in any format only because solving formats is more important than worldly concerns.

I didn't know you were such an idealist.

Well he certainly isn't a humanist.

I have to agree with Jman about Uncharted Realms. The individual stories tend to be quite good. It's the overarching plot that has me shaking my head.

They have multiple authors writing what's basically a single story. There are always going to be plot holes.

It's not just the minor plot holes coming from different people writing different instalments. The general outline that the individual story writers probably had nothing to do with has plot holes built right in. For example, why did Jace just ignore Ugin's advice about the Eldrazi, or what the heck was up with the dragon storms, or why did marketing think people wanted Nissa to be boring?

Yeah, I was confused about the dragon storms too. If Ugin is from Tarkir to begin with, and his presence there is what causes the dragon storms, then how did he come into existence there? I decided it was better for my sanity to not dwell on such matters.

As old as he is supposed to be, there are countless answers that could exist, including but not limited to:
A) he was the last dragon born on Tarkir before the original dragons were wiped out, and after his spark ignited he decided to set up dragon tempests to repopulate the plane with dragons, but realizing this could and would cause problems for the non-dragons on the plane he gave them all magic to help keep balance between dragons and non-dragons.
2) He was born from a naturally occurring dragon tempest eons ago and somehow caused more to happen by being alive.
iii) He's actually an Eldrazi disguised as a dragon and doesn't agree with the others of his kind to mindlessly eat worlds, and adopted Tarkir as his home.
D) Old 'Walkers could change their form at will according to older (more well-written) books, so Ugin started out as not-a-dragon and chose to be a dragon after his spark ignited, and sought to populate Tarkir with even more dragons. He's been a dragon for so long that he now believes he actually is a dragon and the Mending did not erase his current form.

D would explane why he looks so freeking much like Bolas. Perhaps he had a model for his dragon form.

In the spirit of this thread, I confess I never read a magic story. I have a feeling it would taint my enjoyment of gameplay with what, based on some articles on the mothership, seems to be quite bad writing.

Some are for sure better than others. Ravnica, Kamigawa, Odyssey/Onslaught are all in my opinion good enough to read.