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Thread: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

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    Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    I'm positive there are others like me who cannot stand reading the storyline behind the MtG sets but have an interest in knowing what occurred. On the flip side, I'm sure some of you absolutely enjoy reading the current plot week to week.

    So could those of you that enjoy reading along summarize the events in an abridged form?
    I've looked around (except for reddit) and have not found a source that provides a satisfying summary. I'm hoping this will be a good resource for those like me, or even for people who skipped a few blocks but want to catch up.

    Thanks to those that contribute!



    Here's what I understand of Amonkhet:

    The Gatewatch learned from Tezzeret that Bolas hangs out on Amonkhet. They travel there to confront him and see an Egyptian themed world complete with animal-head gods. The culture of the plane is to work towards becoming a powerful warrior. Those that succeed are sacrificed to become part of God-Pharoah Bolas' undead army.

    What have I missed about Amonkhet?
    What the hell is going on with Hour of Devastation?

  2. #2

    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    Liliana also went there to kill Rakazath Demon (3rd of the 4 who have her soul contract). She ate him with a tornado of zombies and then regretted/felt violated afterwards, so she annihilated his corpse. Much to the disgust of the other gatefriends.

    The blood of Raka got into the water and made all the rivers run red, which for some reason unveiled a tomb/Crumbling Necropolis and some sarcophagi according to prophecy. Probably with the sun aligning between the Bolas horns if you looked at it at a certain angle too. The sarcophagi opened up and out came the Scorpion God and the Locust God. The Snake god rushed Scorpion, and Scorpion killed him. Locust started unleashing his bugs and opened up the desert/devastation to the city, and apparently just fucked off for the rest of the day.

    The white god and blue god fought the Scorpion along with Gideon, but they were both killed. The Scorpion ended up getting killed by being impaled on a obelisk by the red god. The red god and black god were left and led to Nicol Bolas, who made them fight each other. Black god wanted to appease Bolas so he was aggressive and won. He defeated the red god and brought her to Bolas, so Bolas killed the Black god. The red god fucked off for the rest of the story. Samut the human warrior saved the Red god at some point and that ignited her spark. Presumably because she sacrificed herself to save the god. She then fucked off to some other plane.

    The super gate friends attacked Bolas. It is revealed that Bolas orchestrated the release of the Eldrazi in order to test the Planeswalkers.

    Jace was baited into Bolas's head, but Bolas mind wiped him, so Jace planeswalked away. Liliana had to use the chain veil but was defeated anyway, so she walked away. Nissa tried to use the Leylines against Bolas, but Death here was stronger than the leylines so she got defeated and walked away. Chandra did her fire thing and was almost crushed in hand, so she walked away. Gideon tried to be invincible but Bolas crushed him anyway, so Gideon walked away.

    The rest of the god worshiping plane denizens revolt since their god was killed and I imagine they were completely obliterated by Bolas. The plane has to go through regrowth before we can get to Return to Almonket.

    So for Hour of Devastation, Bolas decides he's done with building his army and decided to blow up the whole plane. No clue why he had to destroy the plane. No clue why he made the army anyway, but it is speculated that it is immune to Eldrazi corruption (being undead) and the blue coating makes them immune to Phyrexian compleation (being plot armor).

    Now we get a few different single-set blocks that focus on one super gate friend going through their rebounds, which conveniently aligns with the Wizards mantra of "sorry you've seen so many super friends, we'll reduce how many". The next set sees a lobotimized Jace thinking he's a pirate fighting dinosaurs, so maybe it's just a catatonic dream set.
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    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    Thanks Claymore! Exactly what I was hoping for.

    So after Hour of Devastation... the plane is in tatters but enough life remains that we can expect some form of recovery?
    Hazoret and the Locust God are the only deities that survived?

    Has Bolas and his undead army left the plane or are they still hanging out? (It sounds like they're gone and we'll hear about them later)
    I'm intrigued by Bolas' army being immune to Eldrazi and Phyrexian corruption. It allows for them to be anti-heroes of some future battle for the title of biggest and baddest.

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    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    Quote Originally Posted by Claymore View Post
    Liliana also went there to kill Rakazath Demon (3rd of the 4 who have her soul contract). She ate him with a tornado of zombies and then regretted/felt violated afterwards, so she annihilated his corpse. Much to the disgust of the other gatefriends.
    Was this written for the same idiots who screamed "Garruk raped Liliana!" because of the artwork of Triumph of Ferocity? Which is, by they way, the reason why Garruk was phased out and replaced with Nissa as the main green walker - well, after they retconned the whole Elf Hitler thing.

    Quote Originally Posted by Claymore View Post
    So for Hour of Devastation, Bolas decides he's done with building his army and decided to blow up the whole plane. No clue why he had to destroy the plane. No clue why he made the army anyway, but it is speculated that it is immune to Eldrazi corruption (being undead) and the blue coating makes them immune to Phyrexian compleation (being plot armor).
    Since the ore to make Smurf Necrons is unique to Amonkhet, it makes sense to blow everything up before anybody else gets the same idea while Bolas goes around the multiverse with his new toy army. He can transport them now since Tezzeret stole the Planar Gate tech from Kaladesh.

    Edit:
    I also hate it how they don't have the balls to 100% kill off a plane anymore. All we get nowadays is "shit sucks now, but it's going to be okay eventually". I get that they want to keep the option open to return to it eventually if the plane is popular, but it sucks from a story perspective.

    Remember Urza? Serra's Plane is corrupted and about to collaps? He says "Fuck it!" and makes an energy source out of it to power his future superweapon. That's how you end a plane, not some garbage refugee camps in the desert. I sure can't wait for the return to "Desert Sand 2 - Elektric Boogaloo" in 5 years.

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    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    As a longtime player that never followed the story line is it worth going back and reading it? As in, with a background and understanding of the cards is it a good story? Or am I better off reading some solid sci-fi books ?

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    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    Quote Originally Posted by Moosedog View Post
    As a longtime player that never followed the story line is it worth going back and reading it?
    No.
    It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
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    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    Quote Originally Posted by Dice_Box View Post
    No.
    Ha - Ok, thanks. What percentage of Magic players you think follow the stories? 25% ?

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    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    I believe it correlates to which format the individual primarily plays.

    I'd be shocked if Vintage players give a damn.
    There's probably a handful of Legacy players interested.

    I think Standard players and Vorthos types are going to be the primary audience for the storyline.

    -------------

    Here's my take on the reaction of format-players to The Gatewatch:

    Vintage: The Gatewhat?
    Legacy: I'm so sick of hearing about them...
    Modern: It's neat Magic has it's own super-team!
    Standard: OMG! Can you believe Bolas defeated the Gatewatch?!?!?

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    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    Quote Originally Posted by Ace/Homebrew View Post
    Modern: It's neat Magic has it's own super-team!
    Standard: OMG! Can you believe Bolas defeated the Gatewatch?!?!?
    At GP Vegas, the crowd cheered for Bolas and boo'd at the Gatewatch at the little card preview roleplay. People are really sick of the Jacetice League.

  10. #10
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    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    Random tangent:

    Haven't read any of the books or whatever but there was some site that I remember reading the Barrin story. Basically realizing that Urza had been screwing with his life all along, the whole bloodlines plan, and the academy. Not sure if the books are better or not, but this story was pretty cool and way different from what they seem to be doing with the planeswalker bullshit now, with the use of obliterate just a crazy ending too.

    Basically I wanted to randomly encourage everyone to read it if they didn't know the story.

    edit found it: http://www.phyrexia.com/continuity/Barrin.shtml


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  11. #11

    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    Quote Originally Posted by Moosedog View Post
    As a longtime player that never followed the story line is it worth going back and reading it? As in, with a background and understanding of the cards is it a good story? Or am I better off reading some solid sci-fi books ?
    Some of the earlier stuff was decent. The Weatherlight Saga was honestly pretty good, though skip over Prophecy (much like the set, the story was blatant filler because they needed a third set before they could get to Invasion).

    I can't speak of the quality of a lot of what came after, but they were mostly not very good. I remember the Odyssey block trilogy was okay, but the Onslaught one wasn't. Mirrodin was bad and I didn't even finish it. I've heard Ravnica was good but I can't comment personally. The Scars of Mirrodin book is sorta worth reading only for how amusingly bad it is.

    The first two planeswalker novels (Agents of Artifice and The Purifying Fire) were actually surprisingly good.

  12. #12

    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    Quote Originally Posted by Claymore View Post
    Liliana also went there to kill Rakazath Demon (3rd of the 4 who have her soul contract). She ate him with a tornado of zombies and then regretted/felt violated afterwards, so she annihilated his corpse. Much to the disgust of the other gatefriends.

    The blood of Raka got into the water and made all the rivers run red, which for some reason unveiled a tomb/Crumbling Necropolis and some sarcophagi according to prophecy. Probably with the sun aligning between the Bolas horns if you looked at it at a certain angle too. The sarcophagi opened up and out came the Scorpion God and the Locust God. The Snake god rushed Scorpion, and Scorpion killed him. Locust started unleashing his bugs and opened up the desert/devastation to the city, and apparently just fucked off for the rest of the day.

    The white god and blue god fought the Scorpion along with Gideon, but they were both killed. The Scorpion ended up getting killed by being impaled on a obelisk by the red god. The red god and black god were left and led to Nicol Bolas, who made them fight each other. Black god wanted to appease Bolas so he was aggressive and won. He defeated the red god and brought her to Bolas, so Bolas killed the Black god. The red god fucked off for the rest of the story. Samut the human warrior saved the Red god at some point and that ignited her spark. Presumably because she sacrificed herself to save the god. She then fucked off to some other plane.

    The super gate friends attacked Bolas. It is revealed that Bolas orchestrated the release of the Eldrazi in order to test the Planeswalkers.

    Jace was baited into Bolas's head, but Bolas mind wiped him, so Jace planeswalked away. Liliana had to use the chain veil but was defeated anyway, so she walked away. Nissa tried to use the Leylines against Bolas, but Death here was stronger than the leylines so she got defeated and walked away. Chandra did her fire thing and was almost crushed in hand, so she walked away. Gideon tried to be invincible but Bolas crushed him anyway, so Gideon walked away.

    The rest of the god worshiping plane denizens revolt since their god was killed and I imagine they were completely obliterated by Bolas. The plane has to go through regrowth before we can get to Return to Almonket.

    So for Hour of Devastation, Bolas decides he's done with building his army and decided to blow up the whole plane. No clue why he had to destroy the plane. No clue why he made the army anyway, but it is speculated that it is immune to Eldrazi corruption (being undead) and the blue coating makes them immune to Phyrexian compleation (being plot armor).

    Now we get a few different single-set blocks that focus on one super gate friend going through their rebounds, which conveniently aligns with the Wizards mantra of "sorry you've seen so many super friends, we'll reduce how many". The next set sees a lobotimized Jace thinking he's a pirate fighting dinosaurs, so maybe it's just a catatonic dream set.
    I sincerely hope you are joking and that isn't the real story.

  13. #13

    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    Quote Originally Posted by Barook View Post
    Was this written for the same idiots who screamed "Garruk raped Liliana!" because of the artwork of Triumph of Ferocity?
    To interpret this part of the story in that way (the way that 'Claymore' describes it) requires a massive leap of logic.
    You can read that part of the story yourself here: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles...ast-2017-06-14
    Nowhere does Liliana express regret/remorse: She arrives on the plane with the objective of killing the demon and she shreds him into pieces (beyond what is necessary, sure) because she enjoys exercising her power.

    I mean it literally spells it out for you:
    "Liliana rolled her eyes. She felt no shame for how she took down the demon."
    If you want to describe the events of the story in an extremely cynical connect-the-dots way then fine, it's not exactly Shakespeare, but maybe you should at least read it before allowing your biases to invent narrative strawmen.

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    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    Bump


    Anyone that follows care to fill in the plot of Ixalan up to this point?

  15. #15

    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    Quote Originally Posted by Ace/Homebrew View Post
    Bump


    Anyone that follows care to fill in the plot of Ixalan up to this point?
    +1

  16. #16

    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    Quote Originally Posted by Ace/Homebrew View Post
    Bump


    Anyone that follows care to fill in the plot of Ixalan up to this point?
    The Immortal Sun is an artifact the ancient Sphinx planeswalker Azor made using his spark as a power source. It's basically a way to prevent planeswalkers from leaving whatever plane it's on. Bolas, in his role as Nefarious Genius Mastermind (tm), has decided he wants this device and contacts Vraska on Ravnica to go on a fetch quest to get it for him, giving her the Thaumatic Compass, a device which detects and tracks planeswalker sparks, as an aid to finding it.

    Meanwhile, Jace bails out of the fight on Amonkhet at the last possible moment and randomly planeswalks to Ixalan, where he wakes up with a severe case of amnesia but a reasonable suite of survival skills. Vraska lands on Ixalan and stumbles across Jace because the compass detected him trying to subconsciously planeswalk off of Ixalan. The two of them form a close friendship (with plenty of sexual tension) as they battle their way to the Golden City of Orazca, the current resting place of the Immortal Sun.

    When they get there, they are ambushed by local merfolk tribes, who are sworn to protect Orazca from outsider access. In the ensuing scuffle, Jace falls overboard, bonks his head, and recovers all of his memories. The story of Ixalan ends there, but spoilers from the block's art book indicate that Jace and Vraska battle their way to the Immortal Sun and confront Azor, besting him somehow to win it. Jace realizes who Vraska is working for and wipes himself from her memories in order to keep Bolas from finding him. Vraska then activates a beacon which signals Tezzeret to use the Planar Bridge he picked up from Kaladesh to transport the Immortal Sun to wherever Bolas wants it, and Vraska leaves Ixalan to return to Ravnica and await her reward from Bolas.

    Some notes on the other bits of the plot:

    - The vampires want the Immortal Sun because they worship it and think it will somehow make them immortal without the need to feed on blood.

    - Angrath is a planeswalker who randomly got caught in the no-planeswalking trap of Ixalan and is now hellbent on finding the Immortal Sun so he can go home. He's now leading his particular pirate coalition in an attack on Orazca.

    - The merfolk are a tribal society. Kumena is a leader of one of the tribes who wants to use the Immortal Sun to make himself powerful because he's a prick.

    - Huatli wants to find the Immortal Sun in order to Make The Human Empire Great Again. Her spark is lit but she doesn't realize she's a planeswalker because the IM has prevented her from ever planeswalking.

  17. #17

    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    Quote Originally Posted by Kap'n Cook View Post
    Random tangent:

    Haven't read any of the books or whatever but there was some site that I remember reading the Barrin story. Basically realizing that Urza had been screwing with his life all along, the whole bloodlines plan, and the academy. Not sure if the books are better or not, but this story was pretty cool and way different from what they seem to be doing with the planeswalker bullshit now, with the use of obliterate just a crazy ending too.

    Basically I wanted to randomly encourage everyone to read it if they didn't know the story.

    edit found it: http://www.phyrexia.com/continuity/Barrin.shtml


    To comment on the not-at-all-current storyline: I've read all the Weatherlight saga, and two of the time spiral novels, and they're not terribly bad. If you go in expecting the typical sword/sorcery stuff you'd find for a dollar or two in a used book store (which is how I encountered all the novels), you'll find them to be decent books. The world building for Dominaria and, even places like Rath/Phyrexia was something I enjoyed a lot, Dominaria felt like an actual place with country/continental analogues you could appreciate, and it was only places like Mercadia that felt like the sort of "Plane of X" that you might expect in current sets.

    Also, the development of both major and minor characters is impressive. The stories of characters like Barrin, Volrath, Thaddeus/Agnate etc. are intriguing to follow, especially when you compare and contrast to Urza's thousands of years crusading against Phyrexia in the dubiously moral/sane way that he does. There's also a general sense of intrigue/tension as well, since very few characters are really cut-and-dry "good" as the story plays out, and you can actually see characters like Karn/Gerard go through a lot of development that you might not see in the Jace gang.

  18. #18

    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    Quote Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies View Post
    The Immortal Sun is an artifact the ancient Sphinx planeswalker Azor made using his spark as a power source. It's basically a way to prevent planeswalkers from leaving whatever plane it's on. Bolas, in his role as Nefarious Genius Mastermind (tm), has decided he wants this device and contacts Vraska on Ravnica to go on a fetch quest to get it for him, giving her the Thaumatic Compass, a device which detects and tracks planeswalker sparks, as an aid to finding it.

    Meanwhile, Jace bails out of the fight on Amonkhet at the last possible moment and randomly planeswalks to Ixalan, where he wakes up with a severe case of amnesia but a reasonable suite of survival skills. Vraska lands on Ixalan and stumbles across Jace because the compass detected him trying to subconsciously planeswalk off of Ixalan. The two of them form a close friendship (with plenty of sexual tension) as they battle their way to the Golden City of Orazca, the current resting place of the Immortal Sun.

    When they get there, they are ambushed by local merfolk tribes, who are sworn to protect Orazca from outsider access. In the ensuing scuffle, Jace falls overboard, bonks his head, and recovers all of his memories. The story of Ixalan ends there, but spoilers from the block's art book indicate that Jace and Vraska battle their way to the Immortal Sun and confront Azor, besting him somehow to win it. Jace realizes who Vraska is working for and wipes himself from her memories in order to keep Bolas from finding him. Vraska then activates a beacon which signals Tezzeret to use the Planar Bridge he picked up from Kaladesh to transport the Immortal Sun to wherever Bolas wants it, and Vraska leaves Ixalan to return to Ravnica and await her reward from Bolas.

    Some notes on the other bits of the plot:

    - The vampires want the Immortal Sun because they worship it and think it will somehow make them immortal without the need to feed on blood.

    - Angrath is a planeswalker who randomly got caught in the no-planeswalking trap of Ixalan and is now hellbent on finding the Immortal Sun so he can go home. He's now leading his particular pirate coalition in an attack on Orazca.

    - The merfolk are a tribal society. Kumena is a leader of one of the tribes who wants to use the Immortal Sun to make himself powerful because he's a prick.

    - Huatli wants to find the Immortal Sun in order to Make The Human Empire Great Again. Her spark is lit but she doesn't realize she's a planeswalker because the IM has prevented her from ever planeswalking.
    Thank you, appreciate it. That's the exact amount of WOTC storyline silliness I can handle anyway.

  19. #19

    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    Some guy recently posted a summary of the 25 years of MtG story (about 1-5 lines per set). Only thing is... it's in french. If you're interested in the original version, it's here. A Google-translated version in English (seems not that bad, actually) would be available here.
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  20. #20
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    Re: Current MtG Storyline - Cliff's Notes

    I do wonder what Bolas' endgame is, aside from getting his old powers back, now that he has his army of magical Terminator zombies. Hopefully, the pay-off is going to be worth it instead of being something incredible lame like the Eldrazi storylines they've done since BoZ.

    Quote Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies View Post
    The two of them form a close friendship (with plenty of sexual tension)
    Immediately had to think about this comic (NSFW).

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