Aftermath is Terrible.
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- Опубліковано 23 січ 2025
- Magic's latest set, and Wizards of the Coast's latest cash grab brings a lot of questionable choices with it. I unpack them. Spoiler alert: I am not happy.
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The "no block story" killed the Story, MoM needed 2 or 3 editions to tell a good narrative
And kaldheim. And capenna. And kamigawa. And ikoria. And Eldraine.
@@maxpepelotas2059 Kaldheim
and Kamigawa I can give a pass to because the story was focused on Vorinclex and Jin doing their things there so when they left it made sense to leave those planes the others have no excuse.
@@D-Skotes I never saw their appearance as a focus of the set. I just thought they were put there as a "maybe in a couple of years we will revisit their story" cameo.
They were trying to tell 50 storys at the same time and end up telling nothing consistent
@@TalesNT Vorinclex and Jin were what caused all the story beats to connect (in those two specific sets) they were in the background because they caused situations that let them do the things they needed to do with as little resistance as possible.
If new phyrexia phased out when zhalfir phased in that means that all of magic lore is about 4 total turns
nice pfp
poeple on this channel are not clever at all
Honestly, it's really fucking impressive how little Nissa changed from her experience.
Like, she had 4 bloody arms, was full bald, didn't seem to have legs, big pipes and blades sticking out of her torso, yet when she get's 'healed' she just looks like normal planeswalker Nissa... Like, a full fucking head of hair and no extra limbs or blades or anything, not even an errant wire or pipe, that's some SERIOUS dedication to keeping the planeswalkers looking like they did as if MoM never happened.
It's like the artists and design team were explicitly told to make it so that MoM would have 0 lasting effects on anything beyond killing off a couple planeswalkers and maybe some named fodder.
tbf the gatewatch kinda never changed no matter what other important story moments happened to them anyway. "I don't have my memories and am not jace anymore" Ixalan amnesia jace's greatest change was he wasn't wearing his hood and he was standing on a boat.
Seriously. They went on and on about how "the multiverse will never be the same", but then went back to business as normal immediately. They could have at least shown her with her hair still growing in our something.
The Law of Conservation of Absolutely Fucking Everything strikes again!
You know, it would have been cool if the process of cleansing compleation didn't really remove so much of the metal from their bodies as it purified it, so that when the process was finished they would look more like native Mirrans before Phyrexia took hold, being largely typical people, but with some metal adaptations like the Vulshok or Auriok tribes of Mirrodin.
@@Thoughtmage100 literally Phyrexia is supposed to compleatly (heh) change your internals and replace them with metal. But this is another example of “A wizard did it… with magic” is not how you solve the answers to your problems.
I love how the 50-card set that was supposed to be story focused has such memorable plot moments forever enshrined in cards such as "human dude" and "vampire guy" and also, "shapeshifter gal".
It's the timeless story of "jumpstart". TBF at least human dude says in its flavor text "everyone went out to fight phyrexians and forgot to fight ikorian monsters and now they gotta clean up the city"
Mostly it reminds me that they said the "least spoilery card is the Funeral" and what did we get? Random cards that are like... No spoilers in any sense?!
We got a artifact dinosaur, the enchantment bounce wrath, random removals and stuff...
Made me soooo mad! -.-"
I do love Nahiri being cured of compleation by a Halo explosion even after they said Halo couldn't cure her.
Everything is false information. Nothing is true, so nothing is real, so the facts don't matter. They're not even real facts, this is fiction but out in the real world this is still how certain people think. It is ignorant and idiotic, people who believe their mental illness makes them special and be able to deflect reality just because someone else who looks like the bad wrong type of person it telling them something they don't want to hear. Like go out and get a fucking job.
I give them that because it was a LOT of halo.
They it was a cure at all is still stupid, but a blast of halo is far more than a bottle of it
@@bignickenergy3525 that just sounds like theyre stupid and or bad writers to me that wrote themselves into a corner and forgot the plot of last set which isnt surprising considering how ass MoM turned out.
Couldn't agree more. Instead of letting the villain be villainous and resilient, the "good guys" just rout them, most of the memorable corrupted characters are reverted, and the finale is an afterthought.
Someone is too hasty to move on and doesnt understand how tension operates, and that someone probably isnt the poor writers. Stories are not engaging if it is just "good guys win immediately, nothing that happened actually mattered".
Elesh Norn's entire plan was to convert the multiverse so that 'all will be one' and there will be no more fighting. In the end, she killed three of the four other Praetors. She was never going to win. It wasn't the good guys who defeated her; she defeated herself.
I don't think it was the writers themselves, if anything I think it was the direction given. At the end of the day, these sets are bunches of products. The purpose of the story is sheerly to move the product. They have no incentive to invest more money in the writing, and they need to explain why they are leaving the content behind and going to another plane with completely separate themes and mechanics, so that work is offloaded onto writers who now have to wrap up a huge end-game style arc in the span of like, 7 sub 6k word short stories.
@@BrotherAlpha Right. It still doesnt feel like it was executed in a very compelling fashion. The bad guys keel over: which is fine! That is how stories mostly go.
But the villain feels half baked and unthreatening. "Enemy with hubris" has many instances of being well done. LotR is built around Sauron being defeated by the least of the Middle earth peoples, the Hobbits. But there is considerable tension, not an almost comical "well I killed the other Praetors and now we lose on the spot".
If we want to stay in universe, Shadows over Innistraad was also compelling. Emrakul could not be beat, unlike Kozilek and Ulamog. She twisted and polluted the minds of those she chose to, and although on paper the climax may seem really dissapointing--She seals herself into the moon using Tamiyos forbidden scroll-- the outcome still is sinister. Emrakul willingly "lost", for an indiscernable reason, when she clearly could have wiped the Gatewatch, and remains waiting for...something.
This is all, obviously, personal opinion, and I do not blame the writers. They are just doing their job. Im sure some people enjoyed the MOM story arc! But for myself, and others, when the villain turns out to be the Stay Puffed Marshmellow Man, the story feels frail and contrived.
No time, gotta move onto the next product!
There's a reason why the old mtg stories were better. Kamahl's story is the last best story mtg ever told
I'm convinced that WotC removed the spark from all of those planeswalkers so they can have them be legendary creatures for edh
Gavin verhey basically said this lol
Except there are Planeswalkers you can use as commanders....
@@ThorsShadow yeah but barely anybody cares about them though.
5/9 of them already had legendary creatures
They could also have done that by letting them be Planeswalker with only negative loyalty abilities and a creature on the back side. That would have been far more flavourful I think. And also a cool way to close the loop on some of those early Planeswalkers that have a legend that can turn into a Planeswalker.
I really feel like MoM came out too soon. The Phyrexian storyline only started coming into its own in Neon Dynasty and that was like a year ago. We needed this to last a lot longer, not Nicol Bolas longer but still.
The change in how the oil works really reflects all of my problems with the execution of the whole storyline.
It technically started in Kaldheim with Vorinclex, bit then they kinda ignored it for one whole year.
Maybe they could have put Jin-Gotaxias, Urabrask or Sheoldred in Innistrad or Strixhaven, instead of releasing them back to back in Kamigawa/Capenna/Dominaria.
Same with the compleated walkers: we got 1 in Neon Dynasty, 1 in Dominaria United, ...and then 5 in ONE? And ZERO in MoM?? Compleated Tibalt pops out of nowhere and is immediately killed. why not put some hints of him (and Lukka) being infected in Kaldheim (Strixhaven in case of Lukka).
A more drawn out war would’ve been awesome. The Machine devastating plane after plane, the gatewatch trying to slow them down while struggling against the effects of the Glistening Oil, culminating in a botched assault on New Phyrexia resulting in the *permanent* deaths of important non-legendary figures as well as a couple planeswalkers. Karn makes sense as a tactical commander and he could’ve been the brain for the defenders, abducted by Ajani at a critical moment, rebuilt by Norn in hubris. Only to reclaim his personality during the last battle after Elspeth floods him with Halo. Giving him strength enough to tear Elesh’s spine from her already tortured frame. The other praetors begin infighting and the invasions fall to pieces. Leaving the remainder more or less intact, just more effectively spread out. They could’ve released Aftermath as a complete set of singles that could’ve been added into a sealed or regular draft environment for additional awesome.
What if phyrexian oil was the source of Ikoria's mutations instead of the Ozolith?
@@enricomassignani cause they wanted to clean house on some of the planeswalkers who get used less or nobody likes (Lukka or Tibalt)
@@AnimeProfilePicture i'm not against reducing number of PWs, I think there were too many.
They could've handled ot better.
Picture me, a new mtg player getting in and buying first with ONE. In love with the phyrexians. Picture me, 2 months later and my favorite faction is gone.
If it makes you feel better, they’ll probably be back. WoTC always does this, conveniently putting the big villains in stasis for later use. Emrakul, Bolas, and now Phyrexia.
@@baconsir1159 Gonna be honest, I can't help but think about how cool it would have been if with Jace's last message to Elspeth, he told her to blow up Innistrad's moon and ask Emrakul for help. She is probably one of the few beings in existence that could actually damage Realmbreaker in a meaningful way, since she can attack it in the Blind Eternities. It also would have been a hell of a Godzilla Threshold moment.
If you are new to MTG, why would Phrtrixians be your favourite faction?
@@BrotherAlpha Because the first set they bought into was the set all about showing off the Phyrexians?
you have a whole back catalog of novels to explore, Weatherlight Saga blows this shit out of the water
The biggest complaint I have about March of the machines aftermath, is that it doesn't even do what it purports to do. It's horrible at describing the effects of the aftermath of the phyrexian invasion. So few cards have flavor text describing what's going on, even fewer card seem to actually reference important story beats. If you're going to have an epilogue set to describe what happens after your big conflict, it better fucking tell you what happened after that big conflict.
Like why is Niv-Mizzet now Supreme? Or why did Tyvar suddenly decide he needed to throw hands with the Gods?
@@D-Skotes Niv-Mizzet makes sense. It's short for Niv-Mizzet crunch wrap supreme, part of their new marketing strategy with Taco Bell after the success of their hot pocket promotion
@@PieBandit Shit that makes a lot more sense then my theroy I assumed Niv-Mizzet was gonna try and make all of Ravnica worship him by getting them hooked on a shitty clothing and skateboarding brand.
@@D-Skotes ¿Porque no los dos?
Especially since they literally just cut these 50 from mom set for the sole purpose of selling another product.
I'm honestly disappointed more of these characters didn't stay dead. I love a lot of them, I was genuinely a little sad to see Vraska die because she's one of my favorites, I was curious where Chandra was going to go after Nissa died, but all of that was apparently not interesting enough for them. Makes the whole "invasion" seem kinda moot if a bunch of those main characters killed can just come back, I was under the impression being compleated was like you're beyond dead but apparently not.
Being compleated wasn't death. Gix had his own personality, as did most of the named Yawgmoth era phyrexians. The pre original invasion had leadership with their own unique attributes. Belbe causes some of the confusion, but she wasn't compleated. She was killed and her body made into something closer to an automaton under the control of Abcal-dro.
Vraska and jace aren’t confirmed dead yet.
@@joseph1150 It's iffy but being compleated (the final stage of Phyrexianization) essentially kills the person hence it being described as a sort of un-death. This is a big part of why compleating planeswalkers was so impossible to do because the second they'd be 'compleated' the soul would depart from the body (taking the spark with it).
It's pretty impressive really that Jin-Gitaxias was able to pull it off since it somehow meant compleating someone without actually killing them.
@@boanoah6362 Actually they aren't undead. Only individuals that compleation fails are repurposed into zombies.
@@joseph1150 Not zombies, no, but they are undead in specific Phyrexian terms, they have no soul and thus are 'dead' as far as philosophy goes.
What really bugs me about the story of Aftermath is how the phyrexianised planeswalkers are fine. They just remove their metal parts and their perfectly normal body is underneath completely unchanged? Nissa's compleated form was apparently just an exoskeleton over her untouched flesh body? Nahiri *literally had swords for arms* and we're supposed to believe they somehow changed back into normal meat arms? And what does Ajani look like now? He may have been purged of the oil but last time we saw an image of him his muscles were on the outside and the skin on his hands had been replaced with porcelain.
You're putting more thoughts into this than the whole lore team of WOTC combined
They showed it on the art for negate . But should have had actual consequences
Nissa having all her hair in Aftermath implies that the phyrexians gave her a copper bald cap.
I think the prof's guess about the 'purpose' of the set is very likely. A new product line that doesn't need to take draft into account, sells for more relative to the cost of production and adds in yet another '''main''' release to pad out their calendar. It's a more profitable pack design and MOM sort-of made sense to have this tacked on. Feels like a test run for a new product mostly, not something tailored for this particular story occasion.
I agree. It feels very much like they're trying to find a way to make Alchemy "mini sets" work in paper as a way to add even more releases to the calendar. I don't really think that's sustainable long term seeing as product oversaturatuon and burnout is already a problem, but I don't think Papa Hasbro cares.
It could also add a further 4 mini standard shake ups between sets which is good for arena when the format gets "solved".
I mean, Pokemon and Yugioh have been doing 80ish-cards sets and 9-cards packs since the very beginning.
(Of course, those games never supported draft.)
I find it funny how they desparked a bunch of planeswalkers not even 2 months after making Oathbreaker an “official” format (even though they still haven’t added it to MTGO or even added it to the comprehensive rules, let alone make any actual product for it)
Ahahahahahahahahah true
13:30 to be fair Nihiri is scarred. Half of her body is still covered in red lines she had in her pryrexian form. Speaking of Nihiri I hate how her story progressed. I know that it's somehow in character for her but I wish they would stop making her the most self destructive being in the universe. Also only some walkers loosing their spark is weird for me. It feels just arbitrary and inconsistant who lost their spark they should have despark all old walkers to leave the space for new generation of planeswalkers.
Nahiri just accidentally dropped hers lmfao
I mean yeah she got some cool scars but SHE HAD FRIGGING SWORDS FOR HANDS?!? Does she just have a cream for that?
@@THEMithrandir09like, scared into falling hundreds of feet while carrying it, "accidentally drop it," and I'm still not entirely convinced Ajani didn't come by and try to steal it while she was unconscious
@@origaminosferatu3357 the way its described in the story I kinda got the impression the swords were graftd onto her hands not replaced, so if she removed the metal I would make sense for her to still have hands. I do think however her hands should also show scaring for that
yeah I too wish WotC would stop making this woman suffer, I keep waiting for Nahiri to get a redemption arc or at least get thrown a bone but they keep pushing this self destructive "villainNahari more often than not" angle. I just can't help but feel sorry for Nahiri more often than not especially when her intentions are usually well intentioned even if they are misguided. Idk I'll still hold onto hope for her I guess and wait for Wizards to crush it once again I guess
A series of "March of the Machines Aftermath - Planar Story" mini sets along the lines of the signature Spellbooks could have gone over well. They could have even included (gasp) a physical book detailing what happened among what's depicted on the cards.
An important part of these types of big stories working is that it needs to feel like the good guys are losing at some point. ONE tries to set that up but they set the stakes SO SO high so fast that it became obvious the phyrexians could never win. It sucked the stakes out, we know from the first story in MOM that the stakes are so high that the phyrexians must lose and it makes the consequences contained entirely to the individuals and for some, like Elspeth and Wrenn, that works well but for almost every other character we don't get to see nearly enough for each of the characters to understand the losses that we've seen. The story is intentionally incomplete at this point but that feels like shit because magic's release schedule means we won't see a damn thing for the next 4 months.
I loved all the cards in MOM that were just like "here's a bunch of tendrils fucking up a plane" because just seeing them made me think "so are we just not ever going back to any of the planes in the multiverse or is all of this fake lol"
MoM is what happens when you want to tell the beginning of a story, but don't want to wait to tell the end.
Seriously. Where the hell is Jayce? Posterboy for Magic wasn't uncompleated, but then all other compleated beings were just dusted when Phyrexia phased out. Not to mention the fact that we see Elesh Norn being truly terrifying to a god damn baby.
Elesh Norn was always a goddamn baby. That's what made her so scary. She was so convinced her plan was perfect that she didn't even realize most of the other Praetors were against her.
@@BrotherAlpha No, she wasn't?
She was a cold and fanatically blind ruler with a god-complex. MoM made her into a baby. 'Is... that ELSPETH?! WHAT?! NO FAIR! NONONONO!'
@@TheAngelRaven "She was a cold and fanatically blind ruler with a god-complex."
In other words, a big baby.
She was convinced she would be able to unite every living being across the multiverse. In reality, she wasn't even able to unite the five praetors.
Her plan had gone to shit before Elspeth had even shown up.
@@BrotherAlpha 'I said she's a baby, so she is a baby. There is no proof against it.' Alright, king. Go back to thinking up your poor arguments elsewhere.
They could have had the two small set release, instead they went with one big set that will sell normally, and a mini set that will mostly be bought and opened by vendors and marks who fell for the "Lol, no Commons Less Chaff" line.
Spoiler : The rarity that shows up most is the Common rarity, even if they call them Uncommon.
99.9% of this whole set is chaff.
"We are now removing the 'Common' Rarity from the game. The three rarities are now 'Uncommon, Rare, and Mythic'. Unrelated, we are now introducing an 'Epic Rare' rarity, these 'Epic Rares' aren't going to be any more Mechanically powerful than 'Mythic Rares', they just represent characters more important to the Story. We Promise."
It does matter for Pauper though.
Another way it's different from a normal small set is that it's useless for draft. Guess it's not for me!
You know a product isn't doing well when it hasn't been released and its already being tagged as on sale whilst its still on pre-order
Since the actual fiction is poop, I would try to glean story from just what's depicted on cards and it's really funny to me that the move away from blocks means you can now see the beginning and end of a story in the same pack.
Oh no! Nicol Bolas is doing the thing oh nevermind they got him.
What's this about a blood god in the magical prep school oh nevermind they got him.
Literally every plane that's ever been depicted on a card is facing an apocalyptic event so severe it took three sets to resolve the last time just one plane went through it oh nevermind it's over.
The stories from MOM were actually not bad. And the gay Nissa/Chandra one was also nice to get.
It's just that by turning MOM into the start, middle and end of the invasion, there was no room for surprises and not enough to really properly do the gravity of the situation justice at all.
I feel like card mechanics are the same way, there isn't the same kind of care put into designing things that evolve and building synergies out in a way that isn't just "these are the three most broken cards use them" because we lost block structure. Look at all those poor stranded mutate creatures.
Hasbro is making choices to worsen wotc so their investors don't make wotc split from them as wotc was more profitable then their parent company.
Conspiracy theory.
Naw, they're just incompetent.
They're nowhere near that smart. Expect incompetence not malice.
@@piercearora7681 Generally, I think this theory is giving them too much credit, but at this point I expect both from Hasbro and WotC
WotC can't just split from Hasbro. They didn't merge, they were bought. In 1999. WotC has been a Hasbro Subsidiary since 1999 and the big "merge" wasn't them buying Wizards, it was them folding Wizards Inc. (which still existed but as a Hasbro subsidiary since 1999) into directly being a part of Hasbro's "Wizards and Digital Devision".
When I read the morhership article about MoM Aftermath I actually laughed out loud, cause there's a section labeled "Lots of Characters Died" and then it just shows 7 versions of the Kenrith's Funeral lmao
Felt the same with SparkWar, where they teased that a bunch of walkers were going to be killed because of Bolas, and then like 3 permadied with Gideon being the only ‘main’ character.
Also didn’t get into Eldraine so I was like, “Who are the Kenriths and why do I care?”
I still do not understand how Garruk gets corrupted by the Chain Veil and he shows up in multiple sets, randomly doing almost nothing and then once he gets freed from it, we do not see him again. He never showed up in War of the Spark and never showed up here in this entire arc.
Try being an Ajani fan.
Backstory inextricably linked with Bolas? Contributes absolutely nothing to the Bolas arc. Sidelined in literally the very next set after joining the main Team Good.
Did big things on Theros when we last visited? Not even mentioned on the return to Theros. Elspeth starts doing literally exactly the same thing and gets all the glory for it.
Power suite revolving around bringing out the potential in others? Literally has the title "Mentor of Heroes"? Not even considered for the school setting.
And then they expected us to care when he got Borged for shock value. I like Ajani, but it's really hard to care about a character going evil when you haven't done anything with him while he was good.
Garruk has really baffled me in general. Like, he's the og green planeswalker, and they barely even bother to acknowledge his existence. Not only that, but they introduced Nissa and Vivien, which have both kind of been pushed as the "default" green walkers even though Garruk has been right there the whole time.
To be fair this was actually a response to Garruk's entire character culminating in him choking Liliana on a card and everyone pointing out the artist made it simultaneously misogynistic and sexy so he looked like a rapist. People like arguing WOTC does things for PR reasons way too often but in this particular case there was a lot of buzz about it and garruk was very unceremoniously phased out as a result. You can still go back and read articles and things about it.
Honestly this quarter has mortally wounded my love for Magic.
10:56 for me at least, all the different variants are making it increasingly difficult to just play the game. I can no longer rely on recognizing card art/border to figure out what cards are sitting accross from me at the table. I have to constantly ask my opponents what card's they have in play and what does what, which slows gameplay down a lot. I like alternate arts, but this is getting ridiculous.
Another advantage of a non-randomized set is they can control what order you see the cards in. So they could tell a story with time passing.
Well, after what happened with War of the Spark and Nicol Bolas being relegated to a fanfic saturday morning cartoon villain, I guess it is only to be expected that the same thing would happen again with what arguably was a pretty cool culture being burned to the ground because they couldn't give it enough sets to play out.
At least WotS had an epic trailer and somewhat felt like a conclusion to the Bolas arc. They gave Phyrexia even less sets.
Speaking as someone who only passively engages with the story: the whole ONE/MOM storyline looks absolutely fantastic as depicted on the cards themselves. I imagine someone could take the gamepieces and turn the whole thing into a really exciting story-driven cube.
But, yeah, the execution does seem to fall flat. Especially for this product, which I can't imagine buying except MAYBE in singles.
I’ve heard the storyline described as “it looks amazing in bullet-point format, ugly in actuality”. And same, I’d only buy this product if it was like 50% off minimum. Usually I get a couple packs and do the pre-release and/or a draft, but with this you can’t draft, no pre, and I’m not buying 5 random cards for the same $ as 15. Singles baybeee!
"Pocket Erotic."
Playmat art is pretty darn slick, PK. Good job.
It sucks that this Aftermath barely touches on the actual consequences of anything that happened. Its neat that some sparks got ruptured, but other than Karn and maybe Nissa and Nahiri, that doesnt really have much to do with what MoM. Meanwhile a huge chunk of Theros's pantheon is dead, the Golgari guild is presumably nearly wiped out, the entire plane of Zhalfir came back into the multiverse, and we touch on none of it. Most check up we get with the multiverse is "yeah, Strixhaven and Capena are being rebuilt just fine, Kenrith's had a funeral, kbye" It really makes the whole invasion thing feel like it was just a shitty weekend that left a bunch of junk on the ground.
zhalfir used to just be part of jamuraa one of the continents of dominaria, phasing it out could've made it a plane but I'd be suprised if it was.
The ending of Zendikar Rising block, which was universally I-guess-it's-not-the-worse'd, was a whole lot better than the end of March of the Machines
the Phyrexians weren't deactivated because of Elesh being killed. The Phyrexians were deactivated because when New Phyrexia phased out the home of the oil was disconnected from the rest of the universe.
So still complete and utter bolloxe? Haha.
@@PleasantKenobi Oh make NO mistake it's still bullshit I was just saying the proper bullshit
Pretty sure the oil's home was Old Phyrexia, which while empty is still out there.
@@PleasantKenobi I don’t know, I think it makes at least some sense. Significantly more than Phyrexia shutting off because Elesh Norn died anyway. New Phyrexia was the only place where the Glistening Oil was still going strong. Everywhere else it had done almost nothing since Yawgmoth’s death. I can see why you’d be annoyed by that narrative decision though. If the oil needs a focal point to work properly but can still function somewhat without one, there should obviously be stragglers still fighting.
@@jacobd1984 That's how it worked, Elesh Norn was the focal point much like Yawgmoth was before her, the oil in turn relayed some kind of thing from Elesh to every other Phyrexian. When she died the focal point was lost (presumably the oil would pick a new one when it got around to it) but with New Phyrexia phased out of existance the connection to the greater oil relay was absolutely cut off.
No new focal point means no new signal, no new signal means the Phyrexians will never regain function, hence they all died.
The only thing I've enjoyed from this set was that Nissa & Chandra story. Sure it fixed something that didn't need to be broken in the first place and this happened like way too late, but I guess it's at least a positive.
TBH I would have been fine if they broke up because both are fucking atrocious at getting their feelings across to one another. But with how needlessly aggressive it was in Forsaken is what bothered me.
@@D-Skotes if they broke up that'd be fine, but the reality is they didn't actually break up, they were retconned as all pretty clear romance being a flight of fancy to make the IP more palettable to an international (read: Chinese) audience. They wanted to hastily edit representation out for profit and nothing else.
It was a forced lame relationship merely to appease weirdos on the internet.
@@gunn25 who forced them?
@@PileOfStones weirdos on the internet.
Fun fact: Bees do not die if the queen dies. They quickly select successors from her larvae - and there’s sometikes a battle to the death between the ones that develop first. When you play the game of thrones…
Aftermath was for Wizards. Testing the waters for selling less product for more, and seeing if they can release even more products without having to design additional standalone sets by breaking them up into multiple subsets.
I'm always down for a PleasantKenobi rant! Let's go!
I help out working at a friend's card shop. A while back when all these different versions of card same card started, and especially this set, we've been instructed only to ever buy in the cheapest or most expensive version of a card, nothing in between, ever.
This was a super interesting video. I love your perspective as I really didn't think too much into it. I'm glad you shared that SCG tweet too!
12:00 The set name art for MoM proper also had this problem of being nothing consistent with the set. It looks like a back to the future name art.
MoM was basically season 8 of Game of Thrones where the Arya Tirel shows up out of nowhere and just one shots the big baddie and everything just goes away like it was a side quest
I feel like the Phyrexian saga had a 5 set block, with a few hints toward it in the sets prior (specifically the Praetors in Kaldheim, Kamigawa and Cappena). DMU started it. Brothers War was just thrown it without having much to do with the story directly, but I still think it was a great inclusion to the arc even if it's just for nostalgias sake. ONE had a WONDERFUL low point. The heroes had been beaten and Phyrexia had started their invasion. And then... poof. The Invasion basically amounted to a lil bit of graffiti. Oh well. No. That ain't right. The amount of Deus Ex Machina in the story was absolute bullshit. Elspeth saving the day right on time. Zhalfir appearing at the eleventh hour. It wasn't earned.
Considering there were three sets to build up I feel like there should have been three sets to wind down. And hell, maybe Aftermath could have been one of them. But the fact that all the build up basically threw itself off a cliff is so fucking stupid.
The BIGGEST slap in the face is Elspeth, Zhalfir, and the Phyrexian planeswalkers. I can deal with Vorinclex's horrible death. I can deal with the Invasion being shit. But those three things just ruined the story for me. Elspeth took the Sylex blast to save the multiverse. Instead of being a noble sacrifice it turned into "oh btw new powers lol." Zhalfir was a symbol of Teferi's mistakes and it coming back cheapens his character development. And the PLANESWALKERS! When I saw Tamiyo compleated I had CHILLS because it was so unexpected. It really emphasized how much of a threat Phyrexia had become. When Ajani and the ONE planeswalkers got compleated it made Phyrexia seem unstoppable. For them to simply be cured. It made all of those POWERFUL story moments. Nahiri's sacrifice. Jace and Vraska's love. All of it meant NOTHING when the phyresis was reversed.
Ultimately I feel like Aftermath actively goes against what the Phyrexia saga was setting up. It was about the multiverse coming together to show that individuality beats unison. It was about individuals coming together to defeat a hivemind. When Wizards announced that MOM would change MTG forever I expected that, with the invasion tree in every plane, it would allow for Mirridon to become a hub world for the multiverse. Of course the Phyrexians would have to be defeated first, and Mirridon restored, but it would have allowed for so many interesting ideas. Non-planeswalkers traveling to other planes via Realmbreaker. We could have seen legendaries from different planes working together. The multiversal pairing creatures, when I heard about them, I thought they'd be actually multiversal. Idk. Imagine the Elder Dragons of Tarkir working with the Elder Dragons of Strixhaven. Or Eldraine elves working with Lorwyn elves. Kaldheim gods beside Amonkhet gods. And yet Aftermath actively seperates the multiverse more by limiting who can travel between planes MORE.
As a side tangent, Jin Gitaxias SHOULD have escaped. As the most intelligent Praetor he should have noticed that he was fighting a losing battle and fled. Say... Idk. To Theros. Where he could, idk, learn about Yawgmoth somehow and use the Theros faith to ressurect Yawgmoth via faith. That's a theory many other have had on Reddit that I'd love to see come to fruition. But I don't think it ever will now.
Overall March of the Machine had an amazing build up, one of the best of any story I've ever seen. And it dropped the ball harder than Avengers Endgame did. Aftermath being a cash grab just makes it SOOOO much worse. Salt in the wound.
I'd also have enjoyed Urabrask having more of a presence as an ally of the multiverse at large, being able to hold both the belief that compleation was superior and that individuals would be allowed to exist. Maybe even survive as I don't remember Elesh actually killing him, but basically drawing and quartering him as an example and making him observe his failure.
@@Zevox144 that would've been cool. Although tbh I doubt it would have happened since the Gatewatch planning on Urabrask dying regardless, either by Norn or by the Gatewatch themselves. But it would be cool to see
I think it's cool after the last dominaria set being teferi focusing so much on zhalfir to have it finally serve a purpose in story. It's also symbolically powerful to both reverse your greatest most painful mistake and also set it upon your most bitter enemy. It was also kind of a nice solution in place since it's one of the few ways other than just "win war/blow up plane with sylex" that we have in story to defeat the compleated mirrodin.
That said if this was going to be the solution it would've been good to see more of teferi leading up to it, get some moments of him stepping into the spotlight to fill the hole made by all the other heroes being compleated. As it was all the solutions to the many problems the villains were posing were too quick and too perfect, they don't feel like story as much as mechanism.
@@mopanda81 exactly
They do have a visual element on the ex-planeswalker cards that shows they're no longer planeswalkers - the planeswalker logo with the lightning through it (also on the sick collector booster packaging)
Totally agree with you - I said the same thing about Alchemy sets. What I forgot for my short - and I’m glad you didn’t mention:
These 5 card boosters are essentially the Arena packs. The “non draftable”. Arena is their testing ground.
Fuck yeah - let’s get more gladiator!
As someone who only joined Magic four yeard ago, I've spent a lot of time reading the various wiki pages on characters and events in MtG's past. This entire phyrexian arc has been SUPER disappointing; the phyrexians (and praetors) are built up to be so powerful. And then it's all wiped clean like a dirty stain. The way Elesh just got destroyed in 2 seconds was......not good. -_-
I might be wrong because the actual writing of the story was terrible but I think it was New Phyrexia being cut off from the Multiverse that turned off the Phyrexians. Also with the same caveat I think it was Elspeth that killed Vorinclex and the no mame character was just the person who helped Tefari up.
At least that was how I understood it when I read it.
The thing was that Elish Norn had Jin Gitaxias alter the Glistening Oil in a way that caused them all to shut down when she died. I think the intention was that she wanted all of New Phyrexia to become a hive mind lead by her but the result was that killing her rendered the oil inert
@@UniGya Sort of, the oil was altered (without Jin) to essentially relay a signal that originated from Elesh Norn as the supreme ruler of New Phyrexia. When she died the signal stopped and everyone kind of froze up because they didn't know what to do without a central leader to provide a signal. When New Phyrexia was phased out of the multiverse the oil relay was shut down for good so all the temporarily halted Phyrexians were just essentially forever dead.
In theory had it not been phased out a new leader would've been chosen by the oil (I guess) and then their signal would then be sent out reawakening the Phyrexians.
The story doesn’t explicitly state Elspeth killed Vorinclex. Even if it was Elspeth, it’s still dumb that Vorinclex, the apex predator, was killed almost instantly. In his weakened state on Kaldheim he was able to take on Kaya and Alrund with no issues. Vorinclex had them shitting in their pants. He didn’t even get much screen time in ONE. After Kaldheim he was basically a throwaway character. Fucking Lukka did more than Vorinclex post Kaldheim. It’s pathetic story writing
@@Smaul002 Imagine if Garuuk and Vorinclex duked it out - apex hunter vs. apex hunter. That alone would’ve sold the set to the fans.
@@orangegalen Right?! Could've been a battle card all on its own
MBT Jumpscare! That no joke sounds like it would be a really entertaining collab, kinda like The Professor and Team APS with more chaotic gremlin energy
Your advert had me rolling. Reminded me of "The IT Crowd" and the spacestar ordering system Douglas was shilling for. Rest of the video was great, too, but I had to mention the advert.
That may have been one of my favorite ads you've done, PK. 😂 Thanks for the goofy interlude between justified rant!
I have a theory that at one point we had an extra full set. Perhaps it would have released during last summer, perhaps they planned to extend the story into this summer...no idea. But the mechanics in both DMU and MOM proper feel a bit...squeezed together. Almost as if there was one more set worth of cards for mechanics to flesh out in (or be supported in, or something). And aftermath is likely the designs that they didnt want to cut when they cut the extra set, but also couldn't fit into the sets they kept.
This also could possibly explain some of the story truncation. Imagine if there was something like a "Dominaria: Fallen" or "Dominaria: Divided" to start things off, and we get to see the factions of Dominaria as phyrexians slowly invade, but no one believes it, culminating in a big showdown that leaves characters dead, others injured. They go back to BRO to figure out how to work the sylex (no back and forth about the maguffin), while in the present its revealed that Ajani got infected! Oh no!
Then we get Dominaria: United, a set about the plane banding together again to fight their ancient foe. Meanwhile Teferi is convinced he saw Zhalfir for a moment when he was dislocated in timespace and becomes obsessed with reaching it. Cue suspicion that maybe he got infected with oil and is going mad bc of it (though not true). Set culminates in a "defeat" of the phyrexians, but Karn has been beheaded and several other walkers have become infected and can feel themselves turning, wrapping up arc 1 in a pseudo 3-set block.
ONE then is taking the fight to Phyrexia/trying to see if Melira can cure those infected from Dominaria. Story is about should they/shouldn't they blow up the plane, and the end result is them ultimately detonating rhe sylex (with Elsepth and Teferi at the center of rhe blast zone). Unfortunately, it turns out that was what Norn wanted all along, and it's the Sylex energy that opens up the portals into the multiverse. Elsepth and Teferi are gone, Jace, Vraska, and Nissa are phyrexians, Nahiri is about to succumb to phyresis and decides to try to blow up the world herself as one last act, shattering the spheres of New Phyrexia and buying the survivors just enough time to escape.
I realize I've just written very involved fanfiction here, but my point is that these beats feel a lot more natural when you give them the space of one more block to take root.
I like all these ideas!
They also focus on a progression that isn't "woops the phyrexians just won all of a sudden pack it up guys". All will be One's most confusing element to me just from the cards was seeing almost every notable character as a phyrexian or every plane I could remember getting the same wurmcoil engine treatment and going "well gee who's even gonna stop all this nonsense."
Taking the previous heroes out of the story either required that they do it one by one so we get an idea of who's stepping in to replace them or it requires the introduction of new characters we can pin our hopes to imo.
Considering the how did it get to this, I feel like for game studios of this size the answer will almost always be that aftermath was someone's passionate and great udea, but to get through committee it had to be watered down until it was .. this.
I too was SUPER confused about the random graffiti packaging on the collector box
That reminded me of the Days of Future past X-Men comic cover
Which is funny because the vibe is much more house of m
yeah, where are those cards? it would've been cool to see that kind of art treatment!
I hope other people will vote with their wallets and refrain from buying packs
I agree with the art on the cards. When we look at "Negate" from the MoM set. We can clearly see these planeswalkers look a little different now.
I can tell they tried to do a throwback to the old art with Nissa. But how are all her clothes and everything perfectly in tact. It makes no sense.
This was a great opportunity to see a wardrobe change for some of the main cast. Representative of this new chapter in their lives. Bringing in the new era of MTG
The thing that pisses me off is the point of this set was to be about the story, and teasing the Kenriths funeral got me hyped for that.
But if you read the cards there's fucking nothing. Tyvar trying to ascend the elves and the biggest city on Ikorea falling are the only actual story moments. The planeswalkers are just shown going about business as usual, nothing about how their lives have changed from being desparked/deconverted. Every plane has some generic "let's get rebuilding" quote but like, no shit they're gonna rebuild that's how people work. How are the people of the plane traumatized? How has this massive loss in population changed them?
The idea that this was about the story is a fucking joke.
The whole Phyrexian arc could have been a few *years* long.
Imagine this:
3 fully-fleshed sets on 3 different planes leading up to the invasion-FOCUSING on it, ending with the compleation of Dominaria like we saw (more or less).
All is looking grim as the Phyrexians prepare for their multiverse invasion. The Great Work will surely spread its glorious song across planes.
Then they breach the multiverse. We get 3 sets focusing again on 3 different planes being invaded.
Now for a breathing set. The invasion of Dominaria sort of was a breather, but this is *the* breather. We see a view of the rest of the multiverse being compleated in a similar style to MOM. Refuges of biology are far and few. All Is Lost(tm)
Then we get a set about the final hurrah-across planes. The true final hurrah is the invasion of New Phyrexia *which should have been an invasion from the denizens of countless planes* instead of just Zhalfir.
The invasion of New Phyrexia was a success, but not without casualties.
Then finally, we get two aftermath sets to explore some of the long-lasting damage done to the multiverse. And yes, some major characters really should have died. Wrenn was not a major character. She was barely developed and they just offed her.
This also would have given them time to explore things like the goldwardens...you know, the people who should have been vital to defeating the Phyrexians.
Thank you. I will step off my soapbox now.
MtG story is a mess when you look at the grand scheme of things.
After War of the Spark, they spent 1-and-a-half years printing OP shit when they should have focused on the consequences of Bolas's plan.
They started the new storyline in Kaldheim with Vorinclex and Tibalt stealing the world tree seed.
But then they remembered about Liliana's subplot and they put the main story "on hold" to show her on Strixhaven.
Then we got the obligatory "return to return to [famous plane]", which was also mostly disconnected from the New Phyrexia storyline.
...and then booom, we got JinGiyaxoa, Sheoldred and Urabarask in less than one year. Compleated planeswalkers, phyrexians everywhere, then Elspeth comes back, the end.
One problem I have with this style of "phyrexia wins" is that when everything and everyone is compleated who even cares about the aftermath. Like one of the least satisfying things with the current story is everyone just kinda gets better and it's like it never happened. The tipping point in invasion wasn't the dominarian resistance losing, it was the climax of the final epic battle. It was seeing the tides turn for better or worse and the anxiety that came with the idea that the heroes might lose.
Because of this all of our hopes being pinned on flawed humans like Urza and Gerrard and Yawgmoth being the tremendous corrupting influence he was when they jump into the belly of the beast and enter Phyrexia, a mechanical model of Dante's Inferno with its levels and layers, he turns them on one another for a moment and we actually feel that sense of loss *even if its only psychological*. In spite of this they pull through/other people step in where they falter and the Invasion is stopped. The story changed because Urza and Gerrard are no longer our perfect heroes (or even heroes at all) but we don't have to answer a lot of dumb questions like "WELL IF EVERYONES A ROBOT NOW WHATS GONNA HAPPEN IN THE NEXT MAGIC STORY?"
If I could like this video twice, I would. I feel like you managed to encapsulate all of our frustrations with the ending of what should have been an awesome story beat. And Aftermath could have been a cool product, but they chose to cut it off at the knees.
This whole March of the Machine story line should've been done as a multi-set thing so we could focus more on the different planes
I really do think they should have extended things one more set, and had a large chunk of that set be several characters searching for how to stop New Phyrexia all at once, since Compleation became more viral, making it more dangerous than it had been with Old Phyrexia.
Then, in the midst of someone being compleated, they could have that person declare that Elesh Norn is key. Which would require a new strike force to dive in and Invade Phyrexia.
Also, I would have left the compleated Planeswalkers (even those de-Sparked) as cyborgs. No longer Phyrexian, but still part machine.
MOM needed to be a two card set thing tbh. But it makes sense to me a lot of the cards aren't in main set but in Aftermath. I feel what they attempted to do was a Hearthstone like "mini set" which adds more cards to collect, the problem is that on Hearthstone those cards get added to regular packs as well and they sell you the entire "mini set" for a fixed price as well so you can get all those cards.
The problem here is that on magic, being a physical product you can't release a first batch of MOM cards without Aftermath and a second batch with possible or a slot with "aftermath" cards. Would feel kind of weird, maybe I'd go and do like MOM set and MOM+aftermath with maybe 2-3 cards per pack with aftermath guaranteed cards?
I'm honestly most confused as to why they kept planeswalkers around entirely with Chandra, Quintorius, etc. Like, if we both have planar portals back and most walkers lost their sparks, why not just go all the way and ax the idea of planeswalkers as a distinct category?
As a Yu-Gi-Oh player, the 5 card packs are:
- Cheaper
- All of higher rarity (Ultra and secret rares, usually)
- Often designed around anime archetypes that need some love but are a bit weak, and add reprints and cards from the OCG (the Japanese Yu-Gi-Oh! format) that aren't released in sets: OCG Promo cards and cards that you can only find in magazines in japan are very often put in those sets, and it's ABSURDLY RARE for them to put them in a regular set unless not doing so severely hurts a deck: the only example I can think of is Green Ninja, which is necessary for modern Ninja decks to function properly. It was released in the set Photon Hypernova alongside the rest of the Ninja support in February, because if they didn't, the deck would be dead up until the set Monstrous revenge, which releases in late june.
Aftermath could've been the "Jumpstart" set for March of the Machine and have the packs represent different planes, but that would have needed them to be monocolored. Another option could've been Theme booster-like product showing cards only for that plane.
Love that idea.
3:23 wait- how did Ob Nixis lose his spark?!?! Bro was never compleated ever!!!!
Big fan of the Knights of the old republic alarm at the start... sad knowing what to follow was deserving of such a warning...
16:20 One of the issues in telling these stories in commander decks would be their intended Standard legality. However, they've sold precon Brawl decks before… (Korvold was Standard legal, right?) Could be an out, at least for these stories, that are frustratingly the only two we'll get.
In between this and War of the Spark's second novel, Forsaken, Wizards should consider giving up on the concept of "aftermath" entirely. They claim they wanted to tell a particular part of the story and then… don't tell a story at all?
They've even have had successful sets in multiple planes before, like Core Sets and Origins, and although tough to design, one of these could show in more lenght and detail the battles and consequences in each major plane without feeling SO out of place and hollow.
A disappointing product in almost every angle, except there are indeed nice cards in there.
I think it'd be a really good idea to make super small sets like this in the form of, maybe not just commander decks, but some Game Night type preconstructed products that are story relevant and even standard legal but not designed for the whole booster pack model.
Sure I guess they can make collector boosters for singles proliferating, and maybe make it more exciting with some special bonus sheet. But if a set isn't even designed for drafting, why not just release the cards as-is instead of the whole gambling thing? Small sets are a cool idea but they don't work well with it.
i dont know but the new Karn will become one of my favorite creatures!
artifact lands + forsaken monument + planar bridge = GG
I think the Eldrazi arc was the last time they had such a good build up. Even when you thought it was over, Emrakul slowly came back up.
The only thing for Nissa is she should probably be bald. Phyrexia took away all her hair. Ajani should also probably be bald
Bald Ajani would be nightmare fuel
I started playing MTG right about when the 3rd set of the Odyssey block, Judgement, was released. Soon after the Onslaught block was announced with the release of I think one of the biggest sets they ever printed. Then Legions consisted of ONLY creatures. Then Scourge brought the Dragons and the return of Storm. Just the best. I miss it.
Scourge introduced Storm, but yeah that's when I started following Magic.
And the story back then wasn't great at all, but it at least felt like a story was happening as opposed to a sequence of jump cuts.
@@Omnicrom The story was pretty sauce IMO until Odyssey. Apocalypse was kind of like the first MTG "endgame" and it was cool AF (at least my teenage self thought so). Odyssey kinda reset the story to more reasonable stakes and came with some REALLY cool mechanics (threshold, madness, flashback). Onslaught block was pretty great too and Mirrodin was broken AF.
aftermath actually makes me mald, it's such blatant edh bait, 90% of cards have themes that aren't even remotely supported in standard. Which I'd be fine with if they were powerful enough to power up niche strats in formats like historic, but nope, they just suck donkey dick
GIT GUD BRO COMMANDER IS THE TRUTH BROOOOO
I hadn't thought about it before but the idea about commander decks would be really cool. They could have one for each plane, say capenna, zendikar, the strixhaven plane and dominaria and use those to show it better than this mess, and then show the rest in the next few sets
I actually didnt notice this till you were talking about the lack of indication that this new Nissa is post spark removal but take a look at the emblem/watermark in the body of text on the card!
The point was the art decorating the card, not the like whole design of it. I'm assuming moving forward every nissa card's still gonna have this general design of nissa but the "not a planeswalker" watermark might be a one time thing
OMFG @pleasantkenobi that is an amazing idea. I would buy the hell out of 'The aftermath in *insert plane here*' and '*insert planswalker here*'s personal reaction to the war'. literally buy all of them! great Idea
Pleasant Kenobi for R&D!
THIS STORY COULD HAVE, AND SHOULD HAVE, BEEN SO MUCH MORE. THEY REALLY FUCKED THIS ONE UP ON THE ENDING
PleasantKenobi pulls the mask off of this set with all their alt arts
FALLEN EMPIRES?!
Talking about the CB art…. I was so pissed about the art they used for Braids on the CB box that was unused in a card….Braids is a fan gave of mine and I LOVED that art, shame.
It's tough because I really want to like magic but just can't do it when they make every type of story somehow uninteresting. Their big, planes shaking events feel so anticlimactic, and at the same time, the smaller tighter stories like Kami Neon or Crimson Vow lack the personality that makes small stories fun. They had a set that was just a vampire wedding...that's an amazing premise...that should have been the best thing they've done in years, but they are absolutely stuck in the mud thinking that it's better to do a hundred stories than to do one really well.
I've mostly switched over to YGO in the past year, and sure there are problems there too, but one thing that YGO does great is the storylines of archetypes. It could be a multiset branching story of adventurers like World Chalice, or just the long journey of few delightful birds and the friends they meet along the way in Floow. Not every one is a banger, and not every archetype has a story, but when they do them, they do them with a spark of something fun. Magic really lost that, and I don't think it's the authors of their writing, it's in the overarching approach they take to each story. The "put things out and your audience will find something in it that they like" mentality just doesn't cut it.
The disappointment of the story can be summed up in Vorinclexs death. A world destroyer with multiple cards spanning years and in the short story his death was literally "look behind you." and cut his head off.
Everything around MOM just feels so mismanaged. We probably won't ever know what went down behind the scenes but it feels like *something* went wrong with the story. I honestly kinda think they hadn't had any actual plans for story or something, and had to quickly figure out something after the decision to bring the web story back
Well, Coldsnap was a late addition to Ice-Age block. Apparently, Aftermath is a late addition to Unhinged - set 2 of 1 in the half-a$$ed block.
PS: Yes, Unhinged is officially part of a block with that name. I’m not making this up.
You hit all the points man...glad there is a person who isnt afraid to ve real and talk about it
I can't imagine a set this small. I remember the old 140-150 card sets you'd get (first set prob 350 cards, then 2 more at 140-150, long time ago) and even those didn't really stand by themselves.
My biggest issue is that you had this big war and lots of shiznit happening to prominent characters then they just "oop press undo" on almost all of it. You killed some gods and dinos and teachers but nothing that was a serious change stayed so all the impact got removed. With the planeswalkers getting nerfed but you have portals to everywhere just randomly open makes that lessen too.
Its like if someone blew up a building and the particles that should be people dying and stuff turned into confetti, and the building was still there somehow with almost everyone in it except like the janitor or something.
Kasteupse~
I guess this video has been out long enough for other people to say this but I have to disagree with the complaint that they "suddenly and randomly dropped a building on Atraxa to kill her" when there was a whole side story about New Capenna working together to set up a trap to drop a whole FLOOR OF THE CITY, not just a building, on Atraxa's head. They probably should've kept the mini version of this out of the main story since it blindsided so many people who didn't read the side story and made it feel like her death was inconsequential, but if you did read the side stories then a lot of people put in a lot of risk and effort to find a viable way to kill her.
Hezine "Toolbox" Torre really be slaying out here with him showing Atraxa how big his steel beam is and that thing penetrated her.
I think MoM: Aftermath was like extra cards that they could find a place for. There weren't enough cards to make a new set by adding reprints and there was still some story to tell, but by the time they got to the end, they were tired of the set and wanted to work on something else.
Thanks for mentioning the absurdity of the art. I was really thinking the leak was a fake, because that box art seems so off brand. As you said, it's very retro comic book art. All in all, this product is just ridiculous and story is thrown out the window at this point.
What I really want to see is a crippled and broken Jace... like he got "Compleated" and I think it would be cool to see him kind of deformed, or maybe just like... the image would be a guy sitting in a chair with this blue cloth covering him like Rufus Shinra in the Advent Children movie.
I feel like they should have made these transform cards with front face being a planeswalker and the ability: when this planeswalker is destroyed (or has no more loyalty counters), transform it under its owners control, and the flip side are all legendary creatures, but p/t is 1/1.
The creature walkers having a wanted poster showcase art like the ones on the collector boosters would've been really cool. Not that I would have bought it anyway
In Yugioh, in theory any given card can be reprinted in every rarity. But it certainly doesn't happen in the same set. In Pokemon and Yugioh, certain chase cards in every set will have the super chase version. But it's usually 2 versions of like 10 cards per set.
Aftermath: would've been a great series of card sets to sell! That's actually genius.
The story of this new Phyrexian war absolutely needed to be 4 sets with All Will Be One being first, March of the Machine being second, another set being third, and Aftermath being 4th and ultimately being the "core set" of the year, instead they smashed the middle and end into the 2nd set and gave us a mid credits scene as its own tiny product for no reason.
I mean they spoiled the end of March in the trailer like this is Batman v Superman
I had the idea where epilogue boosters could’ve had an interesting thing where they had the five cards then mystery booster style filling of ten more cards in the pack where the selection is from sets we’ve seen in the invasions. Honestly not surprised it wasn’t this because why would they do something cool but hey.
14:30 I think it's incomprehensible this wasn't a 3 block set; the Phyrexia Set, the Invasion Set, and the Conclusion set.
I think a bigger question is how they could have done the "5 card booster" better. I'm inclined to think a 5 card booster is inexcusable, but I think you need to make it a playable game piece. You obviously can't draft with them, but it strikes me you could use this as an ad hoc way to turn a normal set into something draftable for commander. Five cards, $2, 1 (R)/(M), 3 (U), and a guaranteed List card (Ugh, I hate the list). 100% legendary; with (R)/(M)s being 2-3 colors, and (U)s being monocolored Partners. Each person opens a "5 card" booster and keeps 100% of the cards, then they draft 4 normal draft boosters. Their "5 card" booster gives them 4 different commander options (5 if the list is changed to all legendaries for this abomination), and then they just draft what they can from the packs in those colors. This wouldn't be as engaging as doing a Commander Legends draft, but it would let you draft MOM or another set for commander. Does this satisfy the story they're telling? It could, but given they don't really have a "story", it doesn't matter. The real probably is that this isn't so much a "set" as it is a rejects from a cancelled set. And rejects from a canceled set suck.
Such a good talking head video. I have several things: First and foremost I love your shirt and would love to know what the the full art looks like the skeletons look amazing!
Short but sweet aftermath bad I want some cards but definitely buying singles but fuck buying packs.
The story has been such a down turn since arguably Pre War of the Spark or even Dominaria 2017 since I think that was the end of 2 block if memory serves. It was between end of 2 block structure up to War a constant 2 steps forward 1 step back, followed by "leonien grin"s. I stopped caring till return of phyrexia but they screwed the pootch outside of card are and card story telling, which I do think is still pretty good.
TLDR; Great shirt great mat & Wotc please be better
Its a t-shirt/merch for a miniature painting UA-camr! Give "Miniac Merch" a Google, and you will see it! Thanks for the comment. :)
It wasnt Elesh Norn death that made Phyrexians die as a hive mind, it was when New Phyrexia was locked out of the Multiverse