Community Set: Story / Universe: Recent Activity
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Recent updates to Community Set: Story / Universe: (Generated at 2026-03-22 18:59:58)
It sounds bad to say, but I like the ideas, too.
I think we need to establish a few things about the story in order to make me more comfortable. I'm a bit confused as to what everyone thinks the Aerans role is in the conflict, and I'd like to propose some ideas as to what I'd like to see from them.
I propose a bit of a shift in the way we've been thinking about the set, which won't really affect the cards already designed, but merely the way we think about them. What if the first set introduces Aer and the Gloaming in their pristine, pre-conflict states? The monoclor races already have ire against each other, so something like Doomseek can help hose multicolor without it being readily apparent. Things that help deal with flying can be pretty subtle, like tapping creatures, ignoring abilities, or reach, rather than specifically calling out flying. We can't pretend that people won't be mixing multicolor and monocolor, either. With every multicolor card having flying, every player will have at least a few flying creatures.
This means that the second set actually begins the conflict, not the first.
Sounds like Vitenka wants the Planechase format rather than planeswalkers as allies with their own spells, which is what the mythic planeswalker cards are meant to represent...
I see two main problems with walkers.
First, they're mythic rare. Which means that to all intents and purposes, they don't actually exist for me - just as things my opponents sometimes wave around, and are then an overpowered obstacle. This does not make me make friends with them. (If it's a meant to be a theme, put some at common damn it.)
And secondly, the linear thing. Actual planeswalkers, moving from environment to environment - that's just not represented in the mechanics. They're more like a deck box than a card that is played in one game. But avatar cards got dropped, so presumably didn't sell well. Something like that would represent them mechanically better.
Hmm... I almost want a 'solution' to be hidden somewhere in the Gorgon revisioning of the plane of Aer. Like they were working on a solution, then buried it because it turned out to be not exploitable, so what's the point? The Gorgon demi-plane seems like an obvious place to send a story off the old "We need to sneak in and grab this thing, oh no when I switched the idol with the sandbag it didn't work" plot. Don't know if we really need that, though.
The unfortunate thing is, some magic cards are absolutely dripping with flavour. I want to like Planeswalkers. I think it's a shame that wizards are trying to graft a linear story onto a card game, when just "thinking of cool stuff about planeswalkers" would probably work a lot better.
Lower levels of Aer sinking into the gloaming sounds very good to me. Any more suggestions?
Mostly, I like this. The only things I would add are tidbits of detail that don't really conflict with the main story. Like, for example, I like how the dark clouds are below Aer... As Aer sinks, those clouds would start to envelop the ground level, causing citizens to leave for higher ground, and forcing an overpopulation problem further up the spires.
My initial reaction would be "Nah. They're cool. They just rage against everything, and we don't need to think further than that."
Besides causing a problem when writing out the flavor text for 40 or so cards, though, I think the plan is that all the planes are starting to push back on the aerans. If that's the case, they've got to be cognizant of their 'rulers', even on a vague conceptual basis. And, knowing red, they would do everything within their power to escape the cage they find themselves in.
Other question: Who do you think are more intelligent? The Snow devils, or the yetis?
Yeah, I jumped to Tezzeret as soon as you said "Building things". I could see this as being "A good idea, in concept, that went terribly wrong. And it's creator, Tezzeret, instead of cleaning up his design, just went on to new things, while the plane was forced to find a way to survive on it's own.
Which is... um... a bit ironic...
Oh, yes, and @Vitenka: That's the closest I've ever seen anyone come to answering "What's a planeswalker." You would think decades of explaining what makes a monster cool in the Monster Manuals (Make the complication obvious, and drop it down to one or two sentences.) would have rubbed off on Planeswalkers... but I guess not.
I don't know much about Domri, but I love him for some reason. He does seem a reasonable choice for "passionate" and "smashy" like the monocoloured aggressors. Maybe he could be a fairly cheap card that supports a mono deck in some way as opposed to a gideon-esque large splashy top-end effect.
I could see Domri Rade affiliating himself with the monocolour defenders, perhaps with a mono-red card.
Tezzeret builds things, as an artificer.
Interesting.
Are there any planeswalkers who like building new things?
So far, Nicol Bolas is the only three-colour planeswalker. A three-colour planseswalker cheaper than 8 would be already quite splashy, I'd vote for exploring that first. If we can think of a planswalker that really justifies 5-colours it would definitely be a very good splashy headliner for the set, but I'm worried if it can be special enough.
Random thoughts on planeswalkers that might visit:
All that said, we need at least one new planeswalker. I believe we spoke at some point of having a 5-color Planeswalker from Aer.
I like the red flavour so far.
Brainstorming: I wonder how they react to the Aer. Do they have enough civilisation to understand the mana being stolen, or are they just defending their mountains? Are they tricksters or berserkers (the all-in mechanic hints towards berserkers). Are they equally hostile to any of the other mono-coloured races that appear? Are they passionate about things other than defending their territory?
FWIW, I like pretty much all of links ideas here. Ceremonial guard, law enforcement, Tarum, senate building, finance, gardens, large and small islands, bridges. Any of those would be good inspiration for cards.
That sounds great to me!
I like everything you've got there, Jack V, except for your proposed set arc. To me, your proposition for Set 3 sounds like Block 2. I feel like the block should end with the destruction of Aer, if only because Magic blocks tend to have a world-shifting third set.
Yeah; planeswalkers are annoyingly opaque. My summary is: There's a golem who was on a flying boat with a cat and a goblin and some others. Then there was a big dragon. And then they printed Jace who was just incredibly broken, so they reprinted him again - even more broken. Oh, and there's an incredibly stereotypical red-witch who likes to burn stuff.
...wow - even the short descriptions link launches right into Cataclysmic Comic-book Crossover territory, doesn't it? I guess planes-walkers kinda invite it.
There's http://community.wizards.com/content/forum-topic/3448396 which is pretty good, but only covers some of the planeswalkers. And http://www.wizards.com/magic/multiverse/planeswalkers.aspx but seems to get bogged down in a lot of detail.
I kind of get the impression some planeswalkers are more defined by their cards and others by their novels, but I don't really know which.
Does the Wizards website still have little blurbs about each planeswalker?
Reading this story over again, I like it a lot more, I'm not sure I agree with my earlier comments. My current summary would go something like this (all up for being changed):
Monocoloured tribe: Oh yay, our gods came back! Have you come to help our shortage of magic!
Aer: Yes. By which we mean "we've come to steal the rest of it, to shore up our endangered civilisation as long as possible."
Monocoloured tribe: ATTACK!
I've concentrated on the setting which will be seen on most cards (multi vs mono, ruin, rebuild) rather than events and characters, as I think that helps most for a set. But there can certainly be Aer heroes and villains and monocolour heroes and villains featured on legendary cards.
I like Gideon in this role, but I find it hard to "get" what defines each planeswalker. I can sum up batman or superman in a sentence, but when I read a wiki about planeswalkers, it always seems to be a big list of "they did this, then they went there, then they had an argument with them," without a clear idea of what drives them. Is there a better introduction anywhere?
What if the planeswalker helped set up the Aer civilisation.
And when the Aerans mana started failing and they started being invaded, they prayed to him/her to come back, not sure if they would?
And maybe he/she came back after the war started to see that the civilisation had become more beautiful and more decadent, and had to find a compromise between defending the civilisation from the uncivilised monocoloured invaders, and upholding the rights of the invaders to not be mana-starved, which the Aerans were ignoring?
If the mana stones are common it would suggest the aerans scattered multiple stones of each type across the relevant areas, but that works as well in the story as having five large ones. I like it, it makes sense to tie together the things we've already thought of.
(There could be five large ones as well, if we want rare colour-aligned artifacts later, either mana fixing or something more splashy).
Cephalids would seem to fit the sentient part rather well. I like it.
Huh. That does sound pretty ridiculous. What about cephalids?
Mmm, sea-mages that manipulate tides are a good concept.
I'd like to establish what race (/races?) we're thinking these sea-mages would be. At the moment I think Aer is conceived to include vedalken and merfolk, but we don't have to. "Creature - Squid Wizard" sounds a bit too ridiculous to take seriously.
I like this, as far as it's gone so far.
@JackV: Ok. I think this diverges from Link's vision slightly, but I do like it.
I think we can reconcile this with the cloud cover by simply saying that the Aerans created the cloud cover so that the Mono planes couldn't see them, because they're so aloof.