I'm once again amused at them doing this sort of thing considering MaRo famously denounced the Weatherlight saga for being unable to properly tell a story on the cards.

I know I don't follow MTG as much lately, but man that new War of the Spark trailer with Bolas and Lili looks like she isn't having a good day...

https://youtu.be/b5W9t62t10I

Ouch.

Dat song choice though

Looks like some folks are having a bad day

Ravnica's holding out for a hammer. Its gotta be red and its gotta be Bogardan.

**** hits the fan, ladies and gentlemen!


So.
Can anyone recap what (and how, and why) exactly happened in RNA? Because I am a bit confused where are we at the moment.

So a lot of the rares and mythics got leaked today. Including a 5 color niv mizzet that draws you a card from every guild pretty much.

So Niv becomes the guildpact?

That trailer made me laugh, it's like a bad marvel trailer.

I do not believe this is made totally clear yet, but I believe the gist is that Ral Zarek realizes he doesn't want to help Nicol Bolas and he and Niv Mizzet work together to make Niv Mizzet the Guildpact. At the last second, Dovin Baan sabotages the project and prevents the transfer of powers, so Jace remains Guildpact. Ral Zarek realizes he really **** up and turns Project Lighting Bug into a distress beacon, calling planeswalkers to Ravnica.

I'm honestly surprisingly sad to see Dack die. I kinda feel like he didn't really deserve that.

And there's a sadistic , spiteful part of me that's a little ticked off Aminatou isn't on the table to be brutally murdered and her soul fed to the dragon.

I find myself kind of in agreement. I didn't feel much for Dack, but it was more than nothing, and the multiverse is a little colder without a charming rogue/thief to get up to antics of the sort.

At least Nissa and Kaya are present, so I can hope they turn into Bolas Snacks. If ol' Nicol can crush Ravnica into a Powerstone, that'd be cool too, but I don't need it if at least one of those two dies.

In any case, it's nice to see a return to pre-mending style body counts, and really cathartic to have some of these characters on the chopping block. I should change my avatar to something with an appropriate level of evil gloating.

There will be staggering amounts of hell to pay if Teferi or Karn fall to this.

There's a sort of weird sweet spot for who feels okay to die to me.
Too little development and it feels both hollow and shameful that well never get more to their stories.
Too much development and your screw with legacy characters.

Then you have the core gatewatch who are right in that sweet spot, along with Sarkhan and maybe a few others that have already burnt their stories like Nahiri or Kiora.

The trailer was just amazing. Hopefulyl they'll make an MTG animated series one of these days.

The Wanderer, no subtype.

Is that an eternalized demon they just killed? o.o

No subtype is an interesting choice. I guess we'll have to wait for the novel to learn more.

Isn't Aminatou's narrative power off the charts? I mean, I assume that's why you want her dead, but that's also why she wouldn't die.

It's part of the reason, but not the entirety.

Then why else?

1) she's a child prodigy character. I dislike these sorts of characters, but particularly in a setting like Magic where the primary means of story telling is through fairly high stakes conflict. A character like this isn't one that you can use in basically any situation. They'll avoid giving her an actual challenge that meets her skills (very likely given her power suite) or they'll give her things to effortlessly overcome... (STILL very likely given her power suite)

and what some will very likely damn me for

2) She's a blatant virtue signal. They talked very pleasantly about how proud they were that they could make her. That in itself isn't necessarily bad either (I like Kaya for the most part,* and I'll absolutely lose my **** if they kill Saheeli in this arc) but considering there are extremely limited narrative options in which you CAN use Aminatou, this reduces her from being a character to being a characteristic with powers.

*I liked her more before they ran an article praising how they consulted an african-american lady to make sure she was super authentic. Mostly because what was contributed was painfully shallow and superficial. Still, I DO like Kaya because she's an actual character.

Keep your grubby claws off our awesome artificer ladies, Nicol I'd also be disappointed if they decided to kill off Vraska. Not fond of the apparent choice of snuffing Liliana either, but I can see how they may make it awesome.