I think there's weirdly some Pathos in the Gatewatch in that... it didn't have to suck in the extreme abstract. The idea that in the post-mending era of lower powerlevels a number of Planeswalkers would have to band together in order to face major threats, and that they'd try to keep each other in the loop... it's not a bad idea. But the execution was so painfully transparently a superhero team like the Avengers, down to having their goofy-ass oath.

We've all heard, I'm pretty sure, how the original Weatherlight cast was patterned after Star Trek TNG. But I think if you weren't told that, you might not notice, and their context and adventures are different enough that even being aware that Wizards was using a model, it doesn't feel cheap. It also feels more natural, since the characters were written from the ground up for those roles rather than pre-existing PWs getting shoehorned into the Jacetice League.

In a way, I'm weirdly hopeful for the canon going forward from the Great Desparking in that we might actually get a new freeking cast that's not weighed down by the baggage of the post mending era. I'm prepared to be disappointed, but still.

I would argue that it is, in fact, the most reasonable expectation to see the progression of the characters. I say this, specifically because IT HAPPENED before the Gatewatch.
The Infinite Consortium is everything of how to do this right, not only from the experience of walkers nominally allying with each other for a common purpose, but ALSO in utilizing the natives of the worlds that would inherently share a common interest in the proceedings without literally having extraplanar beings drop out of the sky and interfere with local politics. Saheeli and Rashida make sense to interact with the plot of Kaladesh. Chandra, despite being "native" does not because she is not present, and that's providing the thinnest of excuses for her inclusion, much less the rest of them.

The biggest flaw and stupidest choice, beyond literally horning in one of every color, is making them literally live together as a team in a headquarters on a world instead of operating in loose cells composed of walkers and their planar allies.
Beyond the fact that it makes them fodder to jam together, it also wildly messes with the ideas of power scaling threats, because if you deploy your entire team for every single threat, it creates a baseline of what every threat requires to stop it. Throw all five of them at every problem, and it means the Consuls on Kaladesh are literally the same level of devastating as the Eldrazi Titans eating Zendikar.
The two are not comparable.

And it also makes it incomprehensible when you have the nominal villain of the piece be the motivating factor in pushing them into the conflicts, not because they choose their own agency, but because they are included in the plan all along, as was the case in like.... FOUR of the plots, and especially Kaladesh.


I find myself kind of open to the idea of the omenpaths, but I think the Desparking was even executed even WORSE than the Mending was.
Beyond the idea that they've spent more than a decade pushing Planeswalkers as the FACE of the game for Brand purposes, it leaves their work in a really dumb place by reducing the characters even further into purely legendary creatures, demonstrating that the vast majority of their cast have been useless filler this entire time instead of compelling planar bound beings.
Outside of that, the upcoming worlds leave me with very very little interest in their fare.
I don't care about Eldraine, I.... might look at Caverns of Ixalan, and honestly, the scifi world and death race may be so different that I'll pop in even if I don't feel they are in any way Magic.
However, Duskbourne or whatever the hell it's called is a step too far since it's explicitly 80's fashion and themes being played with. It looks INCREDIBLY dumb.

*knocks politely*

Hey guys, may I come in?

I've never been a part of the M:EM, but it's been a year since my official departure from the fandom, and I missed talking to you guys, so I figured this discussion might be a good place to drop by. I only check in on what Magic is doing every three months or so, and a lot of what's been talked about here sounds like the conversation I already had in my own head when I saw the line-up for the next couple of years. Looking at current Magic doesn't even make me feel anything anymore, except for a deep satisfaction that I've forever walked away from it. Someone should put this poor old game out of its misery...

I've retreated exclusively into building and playing my own Cubes, although we almost never get around to playing them anymore these days (I don't even have my cards or anything related to Magic in my current apartment, it's all been left to rot in my parents' basement more than an hour's drive from here). But regardless of everything that has happened to Magic, I've come to realise that, one way or another, it will forever be a part of me. I even catch myself browsing through old threads in AF&S on a semi-regular basis, and it honestly makes me sad to look at how healthy and active that board was a couple of years ago. There used to be so many people that were fans of the oldschool stuff, folks who had hopes and dreams about Magic's future, and it all seems so hopelessly naive and optimistic and sad and painful and plain wrong now...

If it helps, I actually had to quit my job recently. The company is struggling and had to undergo some serious restructuring, and I ended up with new, pointless tasks that had me bored to death and were eating my soul and affecting my overall health. Currently looking for something new, though if I end up being unemployed for a while, at least I'm going to be unemployed sitting on my balcony overlooking the Black Forest where folks from around the world come to spend their holidays, so that's something. Still, it kinda feels like everything I touch is being burned down and leaves me having to rebuild every one and a half years or so, and that's starting to suck.


I think I could by and large get behind that, yeah.


Again, I could get behind that, those are some pretty good vibes. If I had to pick a word that sums up a lot of what Magic's "core look" used to be about, it would be organic, especially regarding the magitech/magepunk stuff. The Weatherlight looked like a flying fish, for crying out loud. And a lot of what Rath, Mercadia, Serra's Realm and Old Phyrexia were doing visually came down to lots of organic shapes and an integration of actual organic life with machinery (or one imitating the other). Having said that, cards that come to mind when I think of Magic's aesthetic would be (and this is really just an arbitrary selection): OG Yotian Soldier, Living Airship, OG Flametongue Kavu (and kavu in general, really), Arctic Merfolk, Serra's Sanctum, Phyrexian Reaper, Nomadic Elf, Thrull Wizard, Exoskeletal Armor, OG Jayemdae Tome and Heedless One.

One thing I distinctly remember from when I got into Magic around 2001 at about ten years old is that I was most fascinated by all the stuff that I had never seen or even imagined before, so it was precisely the things that were original to Magic that drew me into the game (special shout out to the OG Phyrexians here). And it wasn't just the weird alien cyborg zombie monsters or the made up beasts with made up names and completely originl looks (kavu), or even just the blue men with strange tattoos and elongated heads (metathran), or the dozens of fantastic costume designs (lots of buckles and shoulder armour...), it was also the way in which familiar concepts from fantasy and mythology were reimagined through Magic's own lens. To a kid who was a big fan of Disney's The Little Mermaid cartoon series, seeing card art of merfolk that basically looked like blue aliens rather than just regular people models with fishtails was a mind-blowing revelation. Same with blue-skinned elves with goggles, tattoos and mohawks (Yeah, I have a thing for blue-skinned humanoids in my fantasy properties, why do you ask? I blame Magic for that, though. Heck, Invasion block even had blue-skinned dwarves).

Granted, going through older sets that were set on Dominaria (and Homelands as well), there was also a lot of generic medievalism, especially in the look of the buildings and costumes, which looks kinda liberating in hindsight precisely because everything is smothered by a styleguide these days. Magic wasn't all alien and original, but it certainly had precisely the right mix of the completely original, the familliar but re-imagined, and the familiar and mundane to draw me in. Needless to say, that would never happen today.


The thing about locales for each colour is interesting. I guess for me, that might be...

White: Probably the 7th Edition version of Oneah. It helps that the art was all over 8th and 9th Edition, too

Blue: OG Tolaria

Black: OG Phyrexia and - dare I say it - Otaria

Red: I'll go with Keld for this one, though Otaria has my Platonic ideal of Magic's goblins

Green: This is the hardest one... Nope, can't settle on one from the top of my head. My mind automatically drifts to wurms as Green's iconic creature type, though, which should tell you exactly how much hydras have been doing for me over the years


I might weigh in on the "Which set started the trend?" debate a bit more one of these days, but I'm fairly certain I'd blame Theros as well. Introducing the God type in particular has always felt antithetical to Magic's IP to me somehow, not to mention everything else there is to say about Theros' approach to worldbuilding. Then again, I don't think it really matters where exactly it started, this sort of thing only really becomes a problem as soon as it is done too regularly and when too much of it starts piling up over the years - that is to say, when it establishes a noticeable trend.

Any time, friend. It's good to see you again, Pavor.


That is a feel I know extremely well. We've lost more than our fair share of good people around the M:EM, as well, and I also frequently look back over old threads to relive some of those better days. Incidentally, if you are ever interested in looking through some of our old stuff, I'd be more than happy to give suggestions of how to dig into the M:EM. If not, that's cool. But if it's an interest for you, I know diving in can be a bit daunting.


I'm sorry to hear about your work situation, and hopefully you find something more fulfilling soon! In the meantime, take some time for yourself and enjoy the view!


Definitely some good choices here. When I think of Magic's visual aesthetic, some of the cards that jump to my mind are the original Sengir Vampire and Baron Sengir, the original Shivan Dragon (which also screams early D&D art to me, incidentally), Mahamoti Djinn (all three versions of the art, oddly), the original Rag Man, and, oddly, Mortal Wound (although that one is likely more due to it being one of the cards I was originally taught the game with). I also have a fondness for those weird pieces of art that early magic used that people bring up from time to time, like Stasis and Ebon Praetor, and even for art that is maybe not supposed to look "real," like Phelddagrif.


"You're you, I'm me,
Together we,
Can live in Harmony!"

I used to watch The Little Mermaid show with my sister growing up. But yeah, this is a very good point. And let's not forget how utterly cool the Cephalids were ~ducks to avoid whatever it is that Barinellos just threw at me~


Maybe this is an over-simplification, but I feel like they don't "take risks" anymore, whereas in the early days, it was more like, "Let's try this really weird thing and if it doesn't work, oh well." That is proabably not objectively true, but that's my take on it, I guess.


If we're just talking Green locations, there's always the original Pendelhaven, which gives me the same kind of feel as a lot of those really old Magic lands, and a lot of the cards from Legends, now that I think about it. In general, though, when I think Green locations, the two names that always jump to my head are Llanowar and Yavimaya.



I really wanted to like Theros. Growing up, I was a huge fan of Greek Mythology, and the whole feel of it and the things inspired by it. But Theros just...well, I won't rehash. I'll just say that I really wanted to like Theros, and I just can't.

Sorry to hear about your travails my guy.
As an update to my own situation, I'm actively perusing the help wanted sections now, but I'm still holding off on pulling the trigger on any of it.
Part of that is that my peer is currently on vacation, and once she returns, she's been weighing a transfer at the very least and if she does that, then I'm probably hitting the eject button myself.



For me, to sum it in a single word, I would have said "Swashbuckling" which is difficult to distinguish from "Piratey" but for as much of the Pirate aesthetic as there was woven into things like ships and such, there was an equal representation of the likes of what I would characterize as reminiscent of the Three Musketeers.
But now it's collectively all essentially just super powers. Everyone has a niche for their character and it's dull as dirt. Yet another reason the elimination of Jaya bothered me (yet weirdly less than the fact she was Mother Luti all along, that actually pissed me off.)



In terms of potential technology, Portal Second Age had a huge impact on what I could expect.
Between the printings from that set of Raise Dead, Vengeance, Alaborn Musketeer, Nightstalker Engine, Deep Wood and a few others, it gave me something distinct in the fantasy landscape that wasn't a mashed up reprocess of Tolkien for the dozenth time.



So, I find that kind of amusing.
While I had purchased a few packs and was COMPLETELY unaware of what any of it was, a guy that knew my mother got married and had to get rid of his collection, and lo, I inherited a fair few cards.
One of the first things I did was comb through and find specific creature types that enthralled me, and among them were Wurms.
Argothian Wurm, Ice Age Scaled Wurm, Spined Wurm, Barbtooth Wurm and a host of others captured my imagination.
The other creature types that I took an instant interest in were Griffins, Drakes, Kavu, Apes, and Slivers.



That would be a copy of Darting Merfolk


Of course they don't. They have a Brand and bottom lines that they need to fall back into safety with.
It's the same garbage that is afflicting movies and games as a whole, in that innovation is a risk, and considering the volume of cash actually being thrown around, they have to mitigate risks, even if it means a diminished return on investment. They just make up that return by releasing more and more instead of creating one REALLY good thing that has passion and risk in it.
Then again, I say that, and they've just massively nuked their setting for the second substantial time. That's risky, but it feels like it's being done for safety reasons since Commander is such a beast and planeswalkers aren't the safe face of the game anymore, be it through format exposure or just overexposure in their general brand that they've worn the absolute hell out of the concept.

Actually, Apes, come to think about it, are the perfect example of what they won't risk anymore. Instead, we get the three hundredth elf to go into your elf deck.


Is it weird that I feel like the worldbuilding they did in Theros was really both thorough and sparse?
Like, yes, we have multiple city-states, but they're just "color goes here" like Otaria.
I can't name one actual location in any of the cities, they weren't real places with a real population, they were sketches of places to grok the colors to.

And now I'm sick! Blagh!

Sorry to hear that, buddy! I hope it's a brief illness, and not too unpleasant.

Feel better!

I'm about 95% back to normal, though I still have some cough

Now I'm more concerned and confused that my ebay account has been banned for "the pattern of activities we have witnessed present a risk to our eBay community." And I am... Seriously confused about that.
I only made the account like two weeks ago and I've bought all of 2 Warhammer models in that time and otherwise haven't interacted with anything else.
On the one hand, I should find that concerning more, but I honestly don't really give a crap either.

Yeah, that's deeply troubling. I'd reach out to customer service. I assume nothing went wrong with any (either?) of the sellers? I understand not really caring what might happen to the ebay account but I'd be worried about identity theft.

I am, apparently, just nebulously a risk to eBay after asking after customer service.
Nothing seems to have gone wrong with either transaction, but after confiming the account information is secure, I really don't actually care if eBay has decided not to let me use their marketplace.

Thank you for the warm welcome!

Hmmm... I've never been into the concept of fanfic all that much, but I guess it'd be fun to see what you guys have come up with. So while I can't promise I'll get around to reading it anytime soon, I really wouldn't say no to suggestions. I'd probably be most into stories that are set pre-Mending and feature honest to god Oldwalkers like we used to get from WotC back in the day (if the M:EM has any of those), but I'm open to whatever you think would be a good place to start.

Thanks! I sure will, got to take in that good German forest mana!

Ha! How could I? I've always loved those suckers (pun intended). I was absolutely livid when Capenna turned them into... I dunno, Mindflayers? Like, why even call them Cephalids at that point? I think that was pretty much exactly the set that made me decide I don't even want to sit down to play the cardgame anymore (outside of Cube), coming right after Neon Travesty and in the middle of more and more non-Magic IPs. God, I hate (most of) the last few years of Magic so **** much. And current Magic. And the next three years of Magic. Retreating into my own little Cube bubble and cutting out the newer stuff was my only option, I don't want to let WotC taint all those happy memories I have from two decades of playing Magic. Sorry for the little rant.

Those two were certainly the first to pop into my mind as well, especially Yavimaya, but the thing is, neither of those feels as visually tight and unified to me as my examples for the other colours. I guess it's just a lot harder to make a Green location as a whole look distinct, even when the people and creatures living there do. Seeing the forest for the trees and all that Heck, looking through Urza's Saga, I'm almost tempted to be a hipster and pick Argoth as my Green representation for Magic's aesthetics (inluding the Basic Forests from that set, which I'm pretty sure also depict Argoth), but I guess it doesn't have quite the same exposure and cohesion that Yamvimaya does. Both forests certainly fit the "organic" magepunk aesthetic I've been talking about. Llanowar has super distict looking elves that 100% capture Magic's iconic look, but the forest itself isn't quite as memorable to me, if that makes sense. Norwood might have the coolest structures in it actually, I've always been in love with those Basic Forests from Portal: Second Age. So yeah, I'm basically just cherry-picking stuff from all over Dominaria for this one. I'll even have to give major props to Skyshroud for being a floating aquatic forest with cannibalistic monster merfolk living between its roots. That's exactly the kind of out there alien conept that you'd expect from a "Magic original". I really like how they leaned into the semi-aquatic side of Yavimaya in Dominaria, too, especially since Skyshroud doesn't exist anymore.


You know, as much as Lorwyn weirded me out at the time for a number of reasons, I have to agree on Goldmeadow Stalwart. I can't even quite put my finger on what it is, but the art has always stood out to me as pretty iconic. Ironically, it might not even be iconic to *Magic* per se for me, but it certainly captures the essence of *Lorwyn* really well. Then again, Lorwyn's look might have been more essentially Magic than I was willing to give it credit for at the time. When it comes down to it, Lorwyn probably just did the wrong things at the wrong time for me back in the day. It just felt like the least satisfying thing possible to follow up Future Sight with. Combined with my dissatisfaction with the Mending, this led to a hiatus that I'd stay in until Scars of Mirrodin (at least in terms of buying sets and caring about the storyline).

Fair, although I really wasn't on board with what Esper was doing visually, at least not back in the day.

Absolutely agree. It's hard to get immersed in a setting that for all intents and purposes feels like "Rocks Fall, Everybody Dies: The Plane". At least they tried to create the illusion of scope by stretching their paper thin locations out over various continents... I'm pretty sure that makes it the only plane other than Dominaria that has all of its continents known by name.

I think you are on to something here. Scars was also the first time they took one of their "modern" settings that had been designed with a particular "identity" in mind and returned to it. Theros, IMO, was where they were starting to go overboard with the whole "identity" thing as such, but Scars established a separate trend in that it took a known Magic setting and made it look inconsistent as hell with the previous incarnation. Still, as mentioned above, it was also what drew me out of my post-Mending hiatus. That was partly because I had started to adjust to the new status quo and was simply happy to dive into a new Magic set again after all that time, but also because I loved Infect and was happy to see the Phyrexians come back. And since it was Mirrodin and had both Karn and some other ties to previous stories in it, Magic just returning to established stuff felt good.

I was kinda worried precisely for aesthetic reasons when they announced Innistrad. I just wasn't sure they'd be able to bring the look of a traditional Gothic Horror setting to Magic and do both of them justice. I was quite happy with the result, though, even though the setting did feel like a departure from a lot of the vibes I was used to from Magic. It was certainly a good choice to keep it closer to the 18th century than the 19th, then sprinkle in some mad science and steampunk weirdness with the stitchers and geistmages. Innistrad has always felt like the most "realistic" one of the modern Magic settings to me in terms of aesthetics, something that reminds me of so many real places where I've lived or that I've visited (mostly in Germany and the UK). Innistrad being so grounded and comparatively low-magic probably made it easier to integrate into Magic's IP despite the overall aesthetic shift. And I'd argue it helped that Innistrad had to introduce absolutely nothing that didn't already exist in Magic at that point, as far as creatures or fantasy concepts are concerned. There were no whacky mythologial conepts to adapt and no literal gods to drag into it, heck, they didn't even include any non-human races (only various humanoid monsters that used to be humans, or weren't unified " fantasy races" in the usual sense). There was far less room for people to feel that anything in the setting didn't belong in Magic or that Magic was adapting a certain concept from the source material wrong. In restrospect, Innistrad also feels like the first major step in the "Early Modern Europe" direction that certain later settings would take (especially Fiora and Ixalan).

I swear, the look and feel of the guilds just got worse every time we went back there, even apart from what you said about general homogenisation... Granted, I would argue that pretty much all of the modern "returns" to established settings looked worse than the previous incarnations (and were probably worse overall, including story and gameplay). The visual thing is pretty easy to make out on Ravnica, though, precisely because we always had the previous incarnations of the guilds to compare them to. it's not just that they reined in the artists' creative freedom and the room there was for out of the box weirdness, it's also that they took many of the elements that had previously been established and made them look different - and worse - just for the sake of it. Which is also what happened to Mirrodin.


I can certainly see where you are coming from with that, especially if you put the Weatherlight Saga in general and Mercadia in partcular next to Portal: Second Age. And I think that classic era of Magic comes down to lots of lightly armoured people having swordfights with some variety of vaguely curved blade, soldiers in uniforms (especially in Mercadian Masques and 7th Edition), plus lots of tropical and nautical themes (including pirates, merfolk and sea monsters), mercenaries, wisecracking characters, dramatic escapes, some political intrigue...



The Nighstalker tech in particular and the magical laser rifles some of the creatures in the set are carrying in general (in contrast to the more realistic muskets) would actually fit my idea of the "organic" style perfectly. They could have given the Nightstalkers some boring magitech vehicles with wheels to ride, but nope, they went for... robot steeds with scavenged parts from... a junkyard AND a graveyard? Like a motorcycle combined with a lawn mower but in the shape of a rabid, mutated dog or something. Wow. But yeah, Portal: Second Age certainly pushed the envelope for what we could expect to see in Magic. Well, until the backlash about the guns made them reconsider, I guess, but I can certainly appreciate the risk they took with that set. I think I only got the full picture of what was going on in that set until a few years later, since it came out shortly before I started playing and there weren't many cards from the set in circulation among the other Magic folks I was playing with at the time. And while it took a real life technology that many considered to be too advanced or too close to real life aesthetically (fire arms), the set overall ist very clearly still doing its own, very original thing with the look of the setting. Unlike, say, Capenna or Neon Travesty that just take very modern genres - mafia and cyberpunk - and copy-paste them into Magic whole cloth.


Hell yes, I can relate. One of the first three cards I owned (about three years before I was old enough to get into Magic for real) was Jungle Wurm from Mirage. Wurms, to me, were just another one of those unique not-completely-alien-but-not-completely-familiar concepts in Magic that fascinated me at the time. They were very draconic but not quite dragons, and they just looked badass. Kinda like Drakes and Kavu, which also fascinated me, and I certainly agree to various extents to the other types you listed. I remember getting both Razorfoot Griffin and Gorilla Chieftain from 7th Edition with a handful of other cards as an insert in some gaming magazine at the time. Boy, did that gorilla have my attention. A raging ape with a skull for a crown and a scary bone axe? Again, the perfect mix of a familiar real-life animal with an edgy fantasy twist.

There are a few really notable ones that immediately spring to mind.
There's the Cabal storyline, a lot of the stuff with my character Zhiran, Ellia the Endbringer from Tevish, and some of the stuff from Raven dealing with the Dual Walkers (though that's a whole kettle of fish right there in itself.)



This is valid, though it was also the intention for that all along.
Of course, having said that, while I'll... shockingly defend Lorwyn in the larger shape of things, I am much less likely to go to bat for Shadowmoor.
It does have some of the visual identity similar to Ulgrotha, but the problems Shadowmoor has are very very similar to the issues with Zendikar, in that it doesn't feel like a world that's actually lived in.


Preferences will be what they are, though I adored the filigree. However, out of them, Esper and Grixis were the outliers to the core aesthetics, while I think Bant, Jund, and Naya all exemplified the best of the visual breadth that made up Magic.


It's a possibility, but there is both Ikoria and Ixalan. I have... thoughts on both of those though.




The singular point where I would argue is with the Rakdos, as I do generally feel their circus look was an improvement over the generalized gimp designs.
Some of them were maybe only a slight shift to the side as opposed to up or down, but I feel like the ones that came out the absolute worst were the Simic and Gruul, for I think obvious reasons.



I think that's also one of the big reasons I tend to think of Magic's visual identity as so defining, as normally you see heavily armored figures or very traditional medieval fare in any comparable Swords and Sorcery media.
Or you go the exact opposite side and do Swords and Sandals with 200% Barbarian.




Well, it certainly didn't help that the set was overall scaled down in power specifically to appeal to players just picking up the game, so they were quickly left in the dust.
Though I will argue night and day about how much I love the Sword and Shield P/T markers.



I'm really tempted to just start tossing up a bunch of just my favorite cards from back in the day.
Despite understanding how bad they were, I was IN LOVE with the Circle of Protection cycles. Very specifically the Harold McNeill and Gerry Grace versions.
For my money, the Gorilla Cheiftain that did it for me was from Ice Age, with the dignified cape and all.

Well, certainly don't feel obligated, but I know I love talking about the stuff on here, and I love when people comment on my stuff, so it would be pretty cool if you had the time and the desire.

The project as a whole hasn't written a ton of stuff set solely Pre-Mending, although a lot of our stuff tends to deal with oldwalkers' legacies and machinations. If you are interested in browsing, there is always the M:EM Archive Index, which has our stuff linked up to about 2018, which is around when participation really started to drop off around here. We also have this thread, Arcs and Triumphs, created in mid-2017 (so it is a little out of date, but not too bad) of connected story arcs and some personal recommendations.

If you are specifically looking for some Oldwalker stories, here are a few of my recommendations:

"Loss" By Barinellos and Beast Engine. Although I believe this is set post-Mending (Barinellos would remember better than I would) this piece very much features an Oldwalker.

"Two Bullets and a Pocketful of Hate" By RuwinReborn. This story jumps back and forth between pre- and post-Mending, but it is also the first story to feature Jakkard, which has been our most popular plane.

"The Cruel Finale" By RavenoftheBlack. This story is set Pre-Mending, and features a large array of Oldwalkers, most pertinent of which are my characters of the Dual-Walkers, twin planeswalkers who were first introduced in my first story for the Archive, "Planes of the Dual-Walkers," and were featured in my novel The War of the Wheel.

"The Ring" By Tevish Szat. The framing device is set Post-Mending, but the bulk of the story features Oldwalker, as well as some pieces of jewelry you will likely recognize.

"Tales of the Dominia Cabal: Lucien" By RavenoftheBlack. The Dominia Cabal was a group project spearheaded by Tevish Szat, which is a frighteningly powerful organization of Oldwalkers from a very long time ago, and this story explores them a bit.

So, if any of that is interesting to you, cool! If not, I can probably give you other general recommendations of some of my favorite stories and Arcs from around here.

Yeah one really cool but unfortunate aspect of my writing is that a lot of it tends to connect with other stuff I wrote. As an example, The Dual-Walkers stuff Barinellos is mentioning basically goes like this, in publication order: "Planes of the Dual-Walkers" --> "Dead Man 'Walking" --> "Deals and Devils" --> "How to Trade a Planeswalker" by RuwinReborn --> "The Cruel Finale" --> The War of the Wheel. And, to be honest, The War of the Wheel has three or four other stories that set it up beyond those listed here. So yeah, it's a thing...

Having said that, Pavor, you might really enjoy some of my stand-alone stories based off Magic cards, like "Pariah" or "Cromat Comes." Also, as you have expressed appreciation of my poetry before, any of the Raiker Venn (the Multiverse's preeminent poet) might appeal to you, as well.

Oof, I have not had a good week.
But that's depressingly normal as late.

I'm really sorry to hear that, man. I hope things turn around soon for you!

I'm not dead, I promise! I've just been kinda busy and pretty drained of energy lately... Played a cool session of online D&D via Roll20 today, though, that was more or less the only fun thing happening this week. I'll certainly get back to some of the things you guys have posted since my last visit, but not right now...

Sorry to hear that, I hope the next one will be better!

I haven't been around here much lately, mostly because I started a new teaching job, where I am for the first time working full time and mentoring a class. It's been good but stressful. Now, tonight is supposed to my first ever parent teacher conference, and I woke up with a fever today. I had had a low level tickle in the back of my throat for a few days, and I have been assigning every ounce of spare energy I had to willing it to go away, but it choose to break out properly on the worst possible day.

I wanted to get back to this point from a while ago:
Absolutely this. What's more, the Weatherlight crew was firmly rooted in Magic's own IP - and thus felt like a natural outgrowth of it rather than a shallow imitation of someone else's work - because many if not most of them were effectively legendary versions of (semi-)iconic Magic cards. Or at least that has always been my way of looking at their character concepts.

Gerrard: Benalish Hero
Hanna: Argivian Archaeologist
Tahngarth: Talruum Champion (I guess they were stuck with him being a Talruum from Jamuraa, might have been a Hurloon Minotaur otherwise)
Orim: Samite Healer
Mirri: Cat Warriors
Rofellos: Llanowar Elves
Multani: Maro

Sisay: Probably not modelled after an existing card but rather an original character introduced as captain of the Weatherlight in Mirage block
Ertai: Classic blue wizard archetype, Daring Apprentice might be the closest thing to an actual card here
Karn: Another more original character, basically a riff on Magic's idea of a generic golem, the twist being that he's made of silver and actually sapient
Crovax: Presumably started with the idea that they wanted a character who would turn into a vampire
Squee: Based on Magic's generic goblins (I would have sworn there's an old card representing a goblin chef/cook cast from the "goblins that are bad at their job" mold, but I can't find it, so maybe it's some kind of Mandela effect...)

Granted, I have only the most basic of basic grasps of anything Star Trek, so if any of them are in fact obvious carbon copies of Trek characters, I wouldn't have picked up on it... But the whole "The Weatherlight Saga was inspired by pop-culture tropes, too!" argument is just one of many strawmen that are usually used to defend Magic's modern approach, even though it completely misses the point. Other such strawmen include magitech such as Power Armor/the Titan Engines or the firearms from Caliman to justify the "modern" look and feel of certain new settings, when the issue is actually not with their level of (magi-)tech but with their pervasive modern aesthetics and their obvious pop-cultural inspirations. It's like people are deliberately comparing apples and oranges kidneys in order to defend whatever new BS WotC will come up with.

I'd say feel free, maybe I'll come up with my personal best of as well.
For what it's worth, I've experimented with the CoPs in janky decks to mitigate drawbacks from my own cards that would deal massive damage to me. Other than that, they were probably intended as sideboard cards that you could add between games once you knew what colour your opponent was playing. They certainly come with some pretty captivating artwork, yeah.


Thank you guys for the M:EM recommendations! I'm certainly curious and going to have a look once I have some time to breathe again.

I won't claim to be a TNG expert, but here's the rundown

Gerrard is basically Riker to begin with. Gerrard gets more and different focus as the main protagonist rather than the foil, but his role on the Weatherlight, his overall vibe and persona, and even his visual style are strongly similar to Riker.

Tahngarth starts out basically as a Worf clone: the big rather alien guy from the proud warrior race who skews hot-headed and hot-blooded and acts as the muscle... and gets demolished to prove how real a real threat is (See "The Worf Effect"). Tahngarth diverges after having to face up to what Volrath did to him and how that shatters his pride, but he still stays in a similar storytelling band.

Aaaaand, that's about it for really direct parallels. Sure, most of the cast has counterparts of some description, but usually they're taking bits and bobs from various places and injecting more of their own. Like maybe Ertai was supposed to be a Take That at Wesley because prodigal genius people found insufferable, but even in doing that and making him deliberately insufferable there's a huge change in the optics. Karn, I suppose, is kind of Data-ish, but there's a massive gulf where Karn is always portrayed as wise while Data was frequently quirky or lacking in common sense, and much of the book smarts were passed off to Hanna.

I mean, think about this: the equivalent to Sisay is Jean Luc Picard: they're the captains. But Sisay and Picard have nothing in common outside of that and being genuinely decent people. If Sisay had been Compleated by Phyrexian forces when taken only to be freed from that status later in a mirror of Picard's run as Locutus, there might be an argument made, but that didn't happen.

Which brings me to the Borg/Phyrexian parallel which, in the old material... they have somewhat similar optics, what with the old Phyrexians being kind of robot zombies, but very different vibes. Phyrexians tended to be individuals even when placed into a greater framework of Phyrexia, and you kind of got that despite the supposed absolute faith in Yawgmoth the upper echelons like Gix were a pack of Starscream types who would seize power and control as much as they could. And while the Phyrexians COULD compleat others, this was very underplayed in the old days: Ertai and Crovax pretty much went willingly, and when dealing with the armies and peoples of Dominaria, the Phyrexians mostly just killed. For the Borg, Assimilation was always the name of the game. That was their horror, their method of action, and with a lack of individuals their entire identity (hearkening back to Doctor Who's Cybermen, which the Borg were very much based on). I'd honestly argue that New Phyrexia was MUCH more Borg given Norn's focus on compleation and the introduction of the insta-corruption oil, reducing a faction that was zombie robot demon cultists with all sorts of insane stuff going on to a homogenous faction of hive mind cyborgs.