NEW SET GOT SOME FLAVA

New characters confirmed via the updated Aether Revolt page
http://magic.wizards.com/en/products/aether-revolt

Ajani and Tezz will both be walkers


Intro deck versions



Yahenni does bad things to bad people


Mom Nalaar been busy

I was really excited about Advika's mechanical arm, but then I noticed it wasn't a prosthetic but rather a backpack.Still really cool (artwork of this block has been generally amazing), but it might have made a nice counterpoint to Tezzeret.

That tezzeret is actually pretty decent.
Those Ajani are a bit underwhelming.

I'm still irritated by Yahenni. Darling.

So we have some semblance of Story Spotlight order from some cards recently spoiled....

Spotlight cards
1.) ???????

2.) Pia's Revolution (Flavor text: Pia's passion was directed to the big picture - at making real, lasting change.) (Art of someone [maybe Pia?] swinging a hammer at something)

3.) Disallow (Flavor text: "How easily your flames are quenched" - Baral, Chief of Compliance) (Art of Baral swiping away flames with a blade and magic.)

4.) Battle at the Bridge (Flavor text: "This is bigger than you. All of you." -Tezzeret) (Art of Tezz attacking the viewer in his most Espery of ways.)

5.) Dark Intimations (Flavor text: None) (Art of a lone figure [Maybe Tezzeret?] between two collapsed ariships or other structures to imitate the look of Nicol Bolas' horns and gem.)

Also have some art:



EDIT: Also some new characters!

Hmmm that's most of a cycle's worth of legends there.

Well, there's four there and we know that we're getting an Aetherborn Vampire legend that will be a black card....

I'm a bit miffed that of them all, we have one member of the consulate and four rebels.

Barinellos, you may not like it, but Wizards very much intends for the rebels to be the good guys.

They have done a terrible job making me care.
While certain individuals in the consulate are clearly monsters, MOST of the rebels aren't much more than anarchists.

I'm gonna have to commend WOTC for taking that route. Kaladesh isn't my plane, but worse vs worser is always fun for me.

I don't think that's what Wizards intends to do. As far as I can tell, they very much intend for the renegades to be the unequivocal good guys.

I'm with Barinellos on this -- it's hugely dissonant. I think I mentioned this when Kaladesh released but among the string of "Abuses" Pia lists in the UR that had her really starting to seed a rebel movement was shutting down the Maulfist factory. The Maulfists are upstanding types, right? There's no way shutting them down would be an entirely legitimate police action liable to reduce incidents of sabotage and blackmail, eh?

The Consulate, as a governing body, has done nothing wrong. Except maybe employing Baral as their Inspector Javert for the evening. Dude's messed up and should have failed his psych evaluation hard. By the end of the Kaladesh plot, Tezz is certainly plotting evil things and starting to set that into motion, but his Confiscation Coup isn't the kickoff for the revolution. The kickoff is "We're pissed that regulation is a thing".

This plot might have worked with the rebels as total 'good guys' in the '90s, when real villainy was still regarded as a thing of evil empires. Americans in particular have a lot of sympathy for rebels against an oppressive government because that's how we see our founding, so in a broad sense the renegades should have an easy job. And back when we had no good counterexamples dominating public consciousness, they might have. But now, when we're facing insurgency and terrorism as the things that keep real people up at night? The rebels have more work to do than they would have 20 years ago to garner sympathy, despite still probably being at an advantage. And they've done none of it.

I kind of feel sorry for Pia because the revolution is very personal for her -- she lost her husband and daughter and can lat that at the feet of the governing body (though despite Baral's continued employment, Dovin insists there's been a regime change in the intervening years, and we have zero reasons to believe he's unreliable or a liar). The problem is that this has become a rallying cry for the whiny and entitled.

And I feel REALLY sad that we're getting the revolution plot NOW, with THESE GOONS, rather than with the Gateless on Ravnica, who have a lot more to complain about. But nope, Ravnica is an awesome place and we want to keep the guilds around.

Contrast that mess with Authority of the Consuls. "Citizens are free to do as they wish, within the confines of the Consulate's laws." is supposed to sound sinister, but without any indication that these laws are abusive or unjust, that's how government works. "Law" is not an inherent evil. I like laws, they keep people from stealing and murdering as much as they might otherwise do, even if that happens to step on someone's freedom to steal and/or murder.

(Side note: Despite being one of the biggest 'heel' factions in the Guildwars forum games and having a fairly creepy aesthetic, it was actually HARD to find any incidents of Golgari abuse of the common populace. Mostly, they seem content to reanimate things that die of natural causes. Between them and the also borderline Dimir, dark is not evil)

This will be a fun showdown I think....

That other, existing, governments also haven't done wrong. If you want people to accept the rebels as legitimate, you need to make the oppression worse than the status quo that already exists in the real world.

I hadn't even considered Ravnica in this discussion, but yea, the Gateless need to get a proper story.

Vote Tezzeret!

Jace for prison!

MKGA!

Wizards isnt cool enough to do this but what if the shtick was that card players were supposed to sympathize with the rebels because they see only part of the story, but real story people know the truth that the rebels are just silly anarchists and the true villians.

Or, to go even deeper into their scheme, maybe they are underhandedly trying to turn players against the Vorthos community. By getting us to sympathize more with the Consulate, it could get the non-story players to think What? You like them more than the rebels? Fascist!, thus creating an even stronger rift between Vorthos and non-Vorthos, allowing Wizards to marginalize the storyline community even further so that when we point out the myriad flaws in their story and storytelling, they can drum up support against us through inflammatory rhetoric.

Either that, or it's just bad storytelling.

I feel like there's supposedly something unjust about how the Consulate distributes aether, but instead of being like "here's a slum that's run-down and awful because the Consulate ignores them", all they've mentioned is "the Consulate shut down aether for the renegades, how dare they?" Even that would be sympathetic if they at least tried to describe the impact of that on the law-abiding residents of those neighborhoods, but they really haven't done a great job of that.

I think now they're trying to compensate by showing the consulate's totalitarian reaction to increasing renegade activity, but that doesn't help explain why the renegades have existed all this time.

Anyway, I'm just gonna do what I did with Atlas Shrugged and delude myself into rooting for the unsympathetic protagonists, because it's more fun that way.

@AzureShade: That image is from Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012.