Awww... I'm touched at this name drop! (Blasted MOBAs and work that pretty much onslaughted me on the later parts of 2020.)

But male angels are tertiary to summon me (knowing WOTC all these years)... I only needed Tyvar and his glorious pechos to be lured back here.

The other possibility that I only just considered is that the Valkyrie appears outwardly female but identifies as male. Have we seen any art of male Valkyries yet?

Edit: I specifically meant the one in the story not all the Valkyrie

It would be surprised if there's gonna be one, I am having a feeling that this is gonna be a Kenidiern type of thing again after Amonkhet

Most trans men take testosterone and even get surgery to alter their bodies because the idea of "appearing outwardly female" makes them suicidally miserable. Making a trans male character and then portraying them that way would be horribly disrespectful and would make trans male people really dysphoric, and I like to think that WotC knows how much PR suicide that would be.

I wasn't trying to be disrespectful so I apologize if I was. The author's bio suggests that they are nonbinary so I thought they might be trying to add more representation in an unorthodox way (and I'm not satisfied with the way I phrased that but I hope the intent gets across). The point is moot anyway, as Jay Annelli (Creative Consultant for Wizards but doesn't work directly for them) has confirmed that male and female angels exist on Kaldheim so we're back to square one.

That first story was great. I wonder when/if Vorinclex will actually speak, though. Not that his lack of dialogue hurt that story, but we know he can speak from the many flavor text quotes he has.

The second story I had trouble following. Maybe I was too tired/distracted, but I kept mixing up who was who. Also, the xer pronouns kept taking me out of the immersion, partly because it feels like a super modern invention, and partly because I personally just never hear them used, so I'm not used to them. From a representation and normalization perspective, though, it's probably a good thing.

Also, that bit with the cat was cute. I particularly liked the detail of the cat nuzzling Niko's finger with its fang, since my cat does that all the time.

Another reason to dislike Kaya being on Kaldheim dawned on me as I thought over the fact Vorinclex was here.
It has been nearly ten gods damned years since we saw Koth.

Kaya can go to hell.

Why do you dislike Kaya so much?

I mean, yeah, sucks that Koth is basically gone, but let's be honest: if Kaya wasn't replacing him here, it'd be one of the other Gatewatchers, and they're more boring than she is imo.

I think it's mostly because I liked her initially and they've just really screwed up where they were going with her, pairing it with her specialty being stupidly narrow and requiring them to invent ways in how she's useful. What's colloquially referred to as "the Aquaman syndrome".

After she killed the Obzedat, every choice they've made to progress her has been forced and strange. Making her the Lord of the Orzhov doesn't make sense and look at how quickly they found an out to ignore that (without actually fixing it) the fact she can use her trick to piggy back others through the eternities also feels like giving her other reasons to be special so they can keep her in the limelight. And that exposure doesn't feel genuine either given some past rhetoric, but I'm likely reading too much into that.

And I'm just frustrated they tossed a chance to bring Koth back. This would have made sense, it's an opportunity woefully squandered.

Re: Gatewatch boring v. Kaya: Teferi says hi. Also, extremely weird for me to say, but Nissa would be really fitting in Kaldheim. (The world is a TREE. That's like her thing!) That said, I'm waaaaaay on board with our new elf.

Yeah, making her Orzhov guildmaster felt kinda like a smaller-scale version of Jace's living guildpact twist, which I also hated. It just felt unbelievably forced that they took the title away from the character they'd been setting up for 3 blocks that it would make sense to become guildmaster of the Orzhov after executing the plan she deliberately created to do so. And the Orzhov would probably be the absolute stone last guild whose leaders would write a law like that. The gruul, rakdos, or golgari might do it on purpose, and I could see the Azorius doing it by accident, but these are the guild whose leaders rig all the rules to benefit them personally and are the most paranoid about political scheming from ambitious underlings.


What are you referring to here?


Honestly we need a Gatewatch tier list, where we rank every GW character into tiers of "cool", "alright", "boring", and "annoying".

What they did with Teysa leaves me with that substantial chip in my shoulder. Add in the idea that there's literally a spiritual strain on the guild master and just everything to do with that plot feels like a total rewrite to... Hell, I don't even know, but every element fell out of what they were doing.

Re: Rhetoric: they virtue signaled really hard on Kaya's debut, going out of their way to talk about things on a third party site that I don't think even had anything to do with their market usually. I can believe that they're sincere about wanting her out there for diversity reasons, but I also feel like they want her to be the face of their efforts and are spending a lot of effort marketing her as such, which just makes her feel as much a gimmick and that bothers me. Then again, I also believe a work should speak for itself so...

Re: gate watch cool list: if someone wants to start the thread, I'm down for the discussion

Well that makes sense. Isn't the whole point of promotion to reach people who don't already buy your product and get them to start?

The Nissa loving trees sort of feels like the same with Kaya getting convenient things lorewise really. Girl just had Zendikar 3. (But then, there was the case of Chandra... who I think they would not wanna like to put Nissa on that same level of what they just did)

-----

Which makes me wonder:
-who do you guys think would've been another fit to accompany Jace in Zendikar 3 to confront Nahiri?
-who would've been another placement in Kaldheim instead of Kaya?

I like Kaya here. She's out of her element, which is potential for character development.



As in, Zendikar Rising or a potential future set?

Don't really know how to rewrite ZR other than to make Nahiri's crimes called out, but Sorin is basically fated to either killed Nahiri or die by her hands.



Dunno. I do like the Koth idea, but he's wrapped up in New Phyrexia. Maybe Nissa just for her to be killed by the re-powered Einir.

Sure, if it's a potential market with overlap, but that didn't feel like what the article was aiming to do. It was a pretty transparent virtue signal, not an advocation for the character on merit as a character. The entire article debacle irked me.

I'm still infuriated that Nissa trusted her instincts and everything just worked out considering how great things worked last time. She had NO reason to think they would.

Would have been fun to see Sorin accompany Jace.

I'm still maintaining Koth has a vested interest in trackibg phyrexians. Particularly if it means following up on a portal that he can have the Mirrans escape with. From a larger thematic perspective... Someone to oppose Tibalt is a tough choice? Sorin, Chandra, and Ajani are the only ones with a history with him, so Ajani maybe. Could even maybe tie it into a distrust of Gods and a quest to rescue elspeth.

Zendikar 3 was basically them writing off Nissa from the main storyline. I think Jace was the more replaceable story element with the only long term thing he add was trying to break into Nissa mind setting in stone she not liking the gatewatch anymore. Just kinda looking at the marketing and such they been pushing Ajani and Elspeth and Garruk and Vivien more in White and Green since War over Gideon and Nissa.

On Koth vs Kaya: I think there is a decent chance Kaya is gonna leave the plane (maybe tracking oil) thinking the "monster" is done and the threat over. You can't really have that role with Koth. But honesty with Vorinclex and New Phyrexia being a thing again its likely he's gonna show up sooner than later.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2021-01-13

Tyvar is cute.

I'll give more of my thoughts after I do a decently full reading, but at a skim, one thing popped out at me:

Both Kaya and Tyvar have been to zendikar.
You know... Zendikar, that semi mythical plane that was such an urban legend that finding a scroll suggesting it was real was a major plot point?
Remember that!?

I DO, I was just thinking the same thing today! Although maybe Kaya's only heard of Zendikar and the hedrons through the grape vine (like how Tibalt's reputation precedes him) but still.

But you know, Zendikar's popular now so we have to feature it wherever we can. Kind of like how Chandra visited Ixalan in the comics for a panel or two because we just had a block on Ixalan.

I honestly can believe that Jace might have blabbed about zendikar to Kaya, but it just feels disgustingly contrived.
It's also really damaging to the brand to beat to death the same handful of planes and I'm not sure anyone at wizards had figured that out.

If we only ever see or hear about the same six planes that everyone has been to, it really screws up the idea of an infinite multiverse. At best it becomes a provincial multiverse.