Here where I'd say Koth was pushed out by Tibalt and not Kaya. From everything said on this set Tibalt was the first pw (than Tyvar to tie into the tribal feel, Kaya then Niko (who was added later from play design I believe) since they really latched on the idea of having a MDFC that was god on the front and pw on the back. Flavor-wise they loved the idea of a pw pretending to be not-Loki in a twist of the myths and said Tibalt felt the best. Also he gotten seeded by Vorinclex so that might fact in later. Honesty most likely reason Kaya was picked was for color pie balance, she's a gatewatch member (so gotta have that marketing character) and Sorin is likely already in Innistrad 3.

Storyline wise I think they wanted someone who didn't know the wider danger of seeing Vorinclex. We the audience knows who Vorinclex/Phyrexia is and why its bad and this makes a strange tension since we know the wider dangers but to Kaya (and the reason of Kaldheim) so far she thinks its a strange monster and seems to have given up on the hunt since she got sucked into Kaldheims conflict. Vorinclex also barley factors in the story and the set as a whole and I'd bet they wanna use Koth when phyrexia takes more of a featuring role.

Now I'm just confused. I didn't think to read "literally" as applying to "renowned", but... I just,

That's a good point. Maybe Koth hasn't been forgotten after all. We've still got a few sets to go before PHyrexia is on the horizon.

I figure there's an 80% chance Jin-Gitaxias shows up in Strixhaven. I don't see them dropping the Phyrexia teasers and Jin seems like the obvious choice.
If they palnned it far enough ahead we might see each Phyrexian praetor once across each set(ting) before we go back to Phyrexia. They might save 1 for the Phyrexia set itself though. Perhaps we can guess just how many sets away Phyrexia is based on that.
I also suspect that the lore WOTC put out about Sheoldred's demise will be brushed aside. Was Urabrask killed off too?

The Quiet Furnace was the first thing to fall, getting stomped out practically before we were even off the plane the first time. I'd be shocked if Urabrask was still alive considering Sheoldred was dismantled.

Honestly, I was surprised Vorinclex was still alive. My understanding was the two factions still actually in contest was Jin vs Elesh.

There might have been some lore attached to Atraxa to shed light on it all though.

According to Kaldheim Legends Vorinclex is being manipulated by Norn. Norn meanwhile apparently gets along with Jin according to the NP planeswalker's guide.

My guess is that Phyrexia is basically Bant now with Elesh Norn keeping Jin-Gitaxias and Vorinclex from killing each other.

Sure, that makes sense. But if they wanted someone who was unaware of the Phyrexian threat, it's a shame they didn't just use local characters and let them fight their own battles. I realise that's more a problem of Magic's planeswalker-centric "storytelling" in general than Kaldheim in particular, but I think this set is one of the most glaring examples of planeswalkers being a detriment to the story. I'd argue all of the planeswalkers felt out of place in this story to various degrees. Maybe not Tyvar, and I liked Tyvar a lot more than I thought I would after reading the preview article about him. But then again, I'd argue Tyvar really didn't need to be a planeswalker, and I'm really sick of every plane we visit having at least one native 'walker because of marketing concerns. It's artificial as hell. Doesn't help that Tyvar's planeswalker card does nothing to reflect his abilities in the story. Still, they could have used Tyvar to check the boxes of both native planeswalker and someone unaware of Phyrexia and have him hunt down Vorinclex.

Another issue with using Kaya is that - for whatever reason - she's in the Gatewatch now, and I think this creates a bit of an 'Avengers problem' in this story, i.e. it raises the question why she didn't get help from those other Gatewatchers that she was travelling with after War of the Spark (what the heck became of that in the first place?). Not even against Vorinclex, mind you, but against Tibalt. So imagine you're a Gatewatcher who comes across a known planeswalker villain's nefarious scheme to cause, to quote Tibalt, "UNIMAGINABLE CHAOS" among the realms, and you decide to... just wait for the local clan leaders to gather or something? And not that I'm unhappy to see as little of the Gatewatch as possible, but wouldn't Liliana have been really helpful against all those Draugr? Why were the gods so useless anyway? I swear, that set's story had so many problems. It was the first new Magic story I read after Dominaria and Children of the Nameless, and it reminded me again of why that is...

As far as Koth is concerned, I don't look at it as "Koth would have been in Kaldheim but was pushed out by Kaya", I'm not even upset because they didn't include Koth specifially, and I absolutely agree that he's virtually guaranteed to show up again in the foreseeable future. It's just that he's one of the 'walkers I would have loved to see on Kaldheim for thematic/aesthetic reasons AND he just so happens to have ties to New Phyrexia AND check a diversity box for being black (so no-one can argue you'd lose anything on that front by replacing Kaya). I mean, when most if not all of your 'walkers in a set feel out of place, people will start thinking about fitting replacements that would have made more sense.

In an ideal version of this story, there would have been zero planeswalkers involved (again, maybe Tyvar if he really has to be one) and the native characters would have been allowed to tell their own story. That origin story for Arni Brokenbrow was my favourite, and I would have loved to see more of Inga Rune-Eyes as well as the gods. Inga in particular would have allowed them to include some diversity that's actually meaningful and well-executed. I hated the Commander tie-in story about Lathril, Blade of the Elves, because it came across like being a freaking GOD does absolutely nothing for you except ruin your eyesight, and the whole thing felt like an excuse to write about a visually impaired character from their own point of view. Wizards even hired a deaf-blind author to write it, but I think she was the wrong pick for that story. I just don't understand how you can create a prominent and interesting legendary character who is actually supposed to be blind (Inga), but then you largely ignore her and take another random character from a Commander deck (Lathril) who isn't even supposed to be around anymore (I think?) and hire a blind author to make the story all about that character having trouble seeing, while also completely missing the point of what was supposed to be interesting or relevant about Lathril. Like, I'm in no way arguing they should aim to have less diversity and representation, but maybe they should think about how to best implement it for two minutes? They can't just separate this stuff from creative integrity and then point fingers at people who refuse to applaud them (not that Wizards is doing the pointing, mind you, they have their pets on Twitter for that).

Other planeswalkers I really would have loved to see mostly for thematic/aesthetic reasons (if we needed to have any at all) include

- Garruk. Especially since it looks like he dropped the Lannister twins off at Strixhaven and is rid of them. Plus, hunting the biggest game in the multiverse is exactly his thing, and between Vorinclex and the Cosmos Monsters, there would have been prey aplenty. He could even have teamed up with Alrund.

- Ob Nixilis. Going around causing misery and conquering planes is what he does, and I could easily see him take control of Immersturm and rally the demons against other realms. Heck, he would have worked as a better stand-in for Tibalt.

- Ramaz. Mostly because the only things we used to know about Kaldheim for years were that 1.) it's cold there, and 2.) it's where Ramaz likes to hang out. I'm almost always in favour of exploring old places and characters we haven't seen on the cards over creating new stuff.

- Angrath. Metal as hell and even has experience as a pirate. I can't really come up with any reason for him to be there beyond that, admittedly.

Looking back, nothing I found says Urabrask or Sheoldred is out right dead. The info on their domains being taken over by Norn didn't says if the praetors where killed or not and it was framed as Elspeth hearing maybe spotty info. This lets have Schrödinger's praetor so whatever direction they wanted to take in the future was open since it was going on the back burner for a few years.

True, and I think Creative will probably still have them live, but realistically speaking both should be dead, Urabrask for being a traitor and Sheoldred for making open acts of defiance against Norn. We did get in Kaldheim legends that Norn is in fact the current leader of New Phyrexia, and for all her flaws she's not stupid.

If Urabrask lives, though, he's probably brainwashed or something, which would be sad.

Sheoldred died on-page in one of the NPH stories, I thought? I know Roxith did but I thought Sheoldred went down too. As far as I know, though, Urabrask had sealed the forge layer and may be permitted to live as long as he delivers what his faction is supposed to deliver (If you'll permit a real grim historical acknowledgement, he could be in a position similar to that of Chaim Rumkowski and the Lodz ghetto)

I don't think that's properly taking into account the kind of being Norn is.
Simply producing results would probably fly under Jin, but Elesh would almost certainly seize the means of production.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2013-09-11

Unless we got something else, this was the last update on New Phyrexia and we got this part;