"She tears off pieces for each, leaving herself without—a sacrifice no one will remember in light of what's about to happen." Godamn, chill Norn chill.

But Norn actually brings a good point. Phyrexianized angels may be protected from Halo...

On the one hand, I can appreciate the scale of all of this, and abstractly, I do think the idea of compleating a bunch of planes is cool if I were a bigger fan of New Phyrexia. Like, it does really cool things for that.
But at the end of the day, they're just obliterating their settings and every sense of investment they've spent on them for the past fifteen or so years. I mean, why should I give a crap? They're literally destroying characters and even more impressively entire worlds. The scale is too big for me to feel that investment and just the concept of the aftermath means... why should I? Phyrexia will lose, unless Urabrask comes out of left field and decides "Phyrexian" is going to get added to the regular stable of creature types and some kind of coexistence will happen.
Meanwhile, anything I actually liked about the characters or setting itself is getting leveled.
I think this might be worse than the Mending for decoupling long time fans.

The stories themselves are decently written, no real issues there, but man, I just don't care. I was vehemently against the Universes Beyond, but at least I know that they can only do a little damage to other brands. They've gotten really good at wrecking their own.

And so they finally get around to finishing the job they did with Tamiyo last year.
I'll say that at no point whatsoever in any story did I ever manage to care about her little rat son.

Magic's story was raw today. Poor Nashi

Judging by the last story, the phyrexians are pulling an Emrakul and spamming their symbol everywhere

RIP Tamiyo, glad she died (somewhat) as herself and shows the compleated pw still have their real self deep in still.

I think the stories today were interesting. First, they shattered the trope that "if we just talk to them, they can wrest control back." Tamiyo was not able to actively resist but was able to passively resist by just being less effective in combat. I'm glad we won't be getting a heartfelt speech to "awaken" the compleated walkers moment and I agree this story does reveal that they're still in there.

I'm annoyed by how the oil just compleats everything and anything, like Pia's thopter and the defence bots. How is it converting things so rapidly just by a short period contact? It seems almost absurd with how effective it is. I also find the notion of stone buildings like the museum being phyrexianized rapidly very odd. It warps lifeless stone now too? Can you phyrexianize dirt now? What does that even mean?

I also am a bit confused as to where the spark is "located" as I thought it was attached to their souls. Nahiri died in the cave in she caused, how does she still have a spark after being resurrected? She died and phyrexianization kills someone as shown in the Squee story, so as a dead body being revived I don't understand how she has any 'walking ability. I understand her having magical power but I thought she'd just be a very powerful mage, not a walker. On a personal note, Norn mentioning that Nissa is a great asset for her ability to steer the tree and her combat abilities made me snort. Nissa's never struck me as a strong individual combatant since her relaunch since all she does is summon elementals and animate trees. She herself, with her staff-blade thingy, never seemed overly effective in any story I can recall but I could be wrong. Plus she seemed totally useless in her last story with Lukka.

My prediction? Karn's going to get timetravelled backwards to stop this invasion in some way as there's no way they can wreck this many planes beyond repair and go forward with it as status quo. The oil is too virulent that it'll pollute these worlds in a way that'll leave them contaminated, unless they find a way to "deactivate" the oil all at once. I'm also surprised that Ravnica isn't being attacked at all.

What a succint way to highlight everything I'm hating about this arc. I'm in Barinellos's boat on this one.



If I recall correctly, Nissa was the only one that showed any competence on Amonkhet when the Gatewatch's magic was turned off and they had to fight initiates in the final trial. Everyone else flailed around without their magic and Gideon bluescreened when he actually started to bleed.

I also agree with Barinellos.

Like he has said: the stories themselves are not badly written. K. Arsenaut Rivera is a competent and smart writer.

Its just....non of the things that happen really add up to form a plausible whole. The entire things feels, to me at least, somehow bereft of excitement. I don't feel the stakes. The whole arc also feels incredibly rushed to me.

I actually like Phyrexia as an enemy...but somehow i can't get into this 'invade every plane all at once' thing.

Nahir/soul- Since we never saw her body I just assumed Nahiri had been hurt, not fully killed, by cave in.

Nissa/combat- I always headcanon that Nissas combat skills came from being a zendikari elf (so just naturally stronger and faster than most humans) and being 60+ years old. And even in the last story they note she was doing alright enough 1 v 1 Vorinclex.

Damn, Lukka learned Vorinclex's assimilation tricks.

You know, for all the fighting and destruction, I can't help but notice the distinct lack of casualty for any of the main characters...

As to today's stories, I can't say I really cared for them. They were well written, but the players involved were characteristically dull. Impressively, I managed to find Huatli even worse than normal.

Those casualties were the compleated planesalkers. No way for them to get back, with two already dead.

That clean a separation is not all that satisfying, if not outright amateur.

When it comes to the compleated walkers, in still not writing off Eldraine because of that stupid cauldron.