@@Bluecho4to be fair, a lot of MtG's history can be summarized with: Urza did a bad, phyrexia is always bad, Bolas did a bad, and the Gatewatch aren't allowed consistent characterization
"...and the Mirrari was given to Glissa for safekeeping. She must have hid it very well because even the writers of Magic's story have forgot it existed for the past 20 years" I'm dead
Glissa got all Phyrexian during MoM. Stands to reason Elesh Norn may have got ahold of it and sent it somewhere so Gin-Jitaxis wouldn't get ahold of it. Its safe to assume Phyrexia will return--writers gotta reboot--so it could return whenever that next happens.
This makes me more okay with that plot point. It was an author ass-pull, _in-universe,_ by Guff. Guff, reading way ahead: "Well, I seem to have written myself into a corner with the Phyrexian Sequel. Uh...New Phyrexia gets cut off from the Multiverse, rendering the Oil inert! Yes, that will settle things nice and tidy."
@@Bluecho4 Also the Guff thing let's Phyrexia win first. It's basically "They were obviously going to win, but we have a game to make and a story to continue, so they have to lose sorry!" The new one pretends as if Phyrexia was always going to lose, which is bullshit
I like how it seems like early Magic lore is basically "Wow, this Mishra guy is a big piece of garbage, look at all the bad things he caused!" and then it cuts to Urza casually blowing up planes and killing billions.
Antiquities: "This Mishra guy was bad, because he exploited old technology and the environment for his own ends." Urza's Sage or whatever: "Urza is turning his own allies into bombs and manipulating his friends(?) dating lives for Eugenics purposes."
@@ryanbarham8464 ah yes, le history books. Obviously unbiased and factual, definitely not written from the PoV of the winning sides. From this video alone Urza had like 5 minutes of good guy syndrome, then went chaotic neutral/evil, only to end up in a suspended state as a head in a glass jar filled with (presumably) Phyrexian oil. Which begs the question, what happened to that head? If any lore writers at WotC actually pick up that storyline, we might have another Urza centric epoch sometime in the future.
The fact that there’s full manually made captions for this WHOLE VIDEO- goddamn that’s dedication. Really appreciate when people manually make the captions so that made me happy bc sometimes I’m not too good at processing words I hear lol. Rly cool video must’ve taken hella long
Honestly I'm half-convinced it's, like, he's actually just figuring these out without really realising it and to everybody involved, including himself, it just looks like "Oh what the fuck how even". The Innistrad revisit did establish he does set up weird mind magic contingencies even he isn't aware of.
I was making a Sorin deck and I read up on the story where Sorin kills Avacyn and for some reason Jace and the Moonfolk Planeswalker appear out of nowhere?
@@noahpearson2190 He's pretty present throughout the entirety of that set's story. Both him and Tamiyo basically try to find Avacyn to stop her doing all the murdering she's been doing but Sorin gets there first.
Jace is the biggest Mary Sue since Urza, so of course he always knows what exactly to do at any given time, because WotC needs him to keep what they believe is their target audience around.
@@maikocat I don't see what you mean with that. Clearly, if an ugly Pokemon-shaped baby creature is trapped in some vault in some unnamed plane that is completely unheard of is capable of specifically tracing portals all around the multiverse called the omenpaths and is the key to closing them happens to get mentioned somewhere at some point in the past, Jace would keep it in mind for the time some portals that so happen to be called omenpaths form around the multiverse open up. Nothing wrong there!
Something that just dawned on me, Tetsuo killed a pre-mending Bolas, where as the combined effort of every planeswalker and the entire plain of Ravnica could barely take down Post-mending Bolas
This feels like when two friends tell you a story about an event you weren't a part of and constantly make inside jokes about it and look at you weird when you don't laugh along
I seen to remember that he forgets how to everything and live the last seconds of his life in a timeless swirl of thing his half obliterated consciensness is as capable of understanding as it is frighten by the eldritch horror of it all.
If nothing else I do like how much they hammer home how utterly terrifying Jace COULD be. Which kind of makes them doing relatively little with him being compleated a bit of a bummer.
@@jamescampbell2353 We'll see. The story's basically not been all that good since Ixalan apart from a few tidbits anyway, but they seem to at least TRY to avoid fucking up the Jace/Vraska dynamic, which is neat because that at least still could be something.
"Urza then decides that he alone can fix the problem he first caused and has only made worse to this point" Dudeeeee what a killer line xD I laughed hard!
I love how for who ever wants an actual detailed story of magic, this 80 minute vid is actually a pretty close "long story, short..." without just going _"magical people/creatures summon other things, (sometimes magical, sometimes not,) using the energy of the land, in order to fight other magical summoning things._ _Oh, and there's a multiverse of several worlds with various planes, some deadly, others even more deadly."_
My eyes bugged out of my head during the Commodore Guff bit, literally had no idea about any of that, and I thought I knew the lore like the back of my hand. Incredible stuff.
To be fair it is less than a paragraph in the Apocalypse novel, it's basically a throwaway gag. "And then the Phyrexians won, and everyone died... JUST KIDDING!" Afaik, not going to go back and check, but I believe it is also implied that Guff died while he was erasing/rewriting the story, leading to the ambiguity that allowed the good guys to win. As far as jokey borderline non-canonical canon goes, it's pretty fun.
I’m still angry we didn’t get more Uncle Garruk with Will and Rowan. Especially now with the Wilds of Eldraine set leading to the 3 of them embodying all 5 colors. GIVE US MORE GARRUK, COWARDS!!!
Important note on the whole "tezzeret wanted a new pair of rims" thing, the planar bridge in his body was actually killing him because the etherium metal wasnt strong enough to contain it, so he actually needed the darksteel body to stay alive.
@@U1TR4F0RCE That was because he didn't mention a little aside that Nicol Bolas had assigned him to do that in order to keep an eye on them. Once Bolas was captured, he realized he was dying, and so planeswalked back to Phyrexia and offered a deal to Elesh Norn to get a darksteel body in exchange for helping to capture Karn and generally just kinda helping around until they got a good chance to do that. In the mean time, he tries to quietly sabotage where he can, helping out Urabrask and saving various planeswalkers during the Invasion of Dominaria, as well as generally undermining it. She strings him along for a little longer than their original deal, but eventually relents (she is strongly White mana aligned, after all, she is a creature of duty) and has Jin-Gitaxias give him the darksteel body. But uh oh! Jin-Gitaxias has apparently known of Tezzeret's betrayal and intends to compleat him by turning all of that fresh darksteel into blightsteel! Tezzeret escapes with the help of a red Phyrexian Jin-Gitaxias had captured, and planeswalks away to Alara in the best single story in the entire New Phyrexia arc.
I like how you portrayed Nahiri in this. She used to be one of my favourite planeswalker and every one of her apparitions just keeps making her worse and worse...
Nahiri has legitimate reason to hate Nissa after the stunt she pulled, releasing the Eldrazi onto Zendikar. It just so happened that the first opportunity she had to clash with her was over how to heal Zendikar, and Nissa had the best reason. Nahiri could not allow herself to agree with the elf.
@@liamwhite3522To make matters worse for Nahiri, by the time that she confronted Nissa about it, there were at least two other factors also undermining Nahiri's righteous rage: 1. The Nissa that she talks to technically *isn't* the same Nissa who released the Eldrazi fully due to Sarkin's later screwing with time back on Tarkir and saving Ugin's life. Original Nissa a.k.a. Nissa 1.0 was an elf supremacist every bit as racist as the Lorwyn elves are. Post-Magic Origins Nissa a.k.a. Nissa 2.0 is a soft granola girl who actively rejected that type of racism and was only starting to turn dark due to the bitterness caused by all the failing The -Avengers- Gatewatch had just done. 2. Nahiri had *willingly* unleashed the Eldrazi via summoning Emrakul on Innistrad by that point out of *spite* towards a single person, willing to doom an entire world just for revenge. At least Nissa 1.0 was genuinely trying to save Zendikar when she fully released the Eldrazi even if it was short-sighted since, as an elf supremacist, her bigotry meant she didn't trust Sorin as a non-elf IIRC--on top of him being legitimately shady and a dick. When the literal racist still has the higher moral ground than you in an argument, you know you've screwed up, at least if you have any self-awareness...which Nahiri doesn't. I feel like the only planeswalkers that WotC have screwed up more story-wise are like Lukka and maybe Vivien since they clearly had no idea what to do ever with either of those characters period.
@@MusicoftheDamnedpretty sure for innistrad the idea was that since the eldrazi are basically unbeatable and her home seemed to be doomed to destruction then the person who helped cause it and tortured her for a thousand years should have his home the only thing he cares about get an express pass to the destruction
@@Spice8RackI'd say so. At time of writing this comment (5 days after release of the video, for future reference) this is your 6th most watched video.
Nahiri always at least had some potential, even now, with WotC screwing up her state of mind worse than Bloober could. Lukka, even if he were executed well, would be still be a very bland concept as is.
Having read the Ikoria novel, lukka is actually amazing. You expect him to be the typical male white guy hero, and he genuinely also thinks of himself as such at every point in the story, and yet in the middle of the book you realise this guy is the villain actually Also general kudro you expect to be a fully dimensional character and yet, when the inevitable clash of wills with him and lukka comes up, and lukka basically says "well what if i defend the city with monsters which I control", Kudro doesn’t respond with some trite "we shall never cooperate with monsters". No, he goes for a "who watches the watchman" bit about how that would basically make lukka a defacto dictator and also he rightfully points out LUKKA IS LITERALLY ATTACKING THEM RIGHT AT THAT MOMMENT
I was so incredibly saddened when Slobad didn't make an appearance in Scars of Mirrodin block, just being allowed to die offscreen. But March of the Machine makes me wish he'd stayed down. He shows up in a bonus story with no mention whatsoever of his old life and the potential of his amazing story arc just gets tossed away into obscurity. You could replace Compleated Slobad with literally any nameless Phyrexian and the story wouldn't change a bit, and that's absolutely a crime.
Doing that with him was the definition of unnecesaurus... But for me an even greater crime was what they did with the Weatherlight itself. Why they did that? Why they didn't catch up later? Look at the wasted potential now with the paths between planes...
As someone who has played Magic almost since the beginning this has been 80 minutes of hilarious laughter and flashback memories to players, gameplay and pack openings over the last thirty years. Thanks for the awesome content Spice!
I was always under the impression that Urabrask's whole deal was "Compleation is awesome, but as an embodiment of RED Phyrexia, I'm partially defined by freedom, so I don't want to force people to accept it... Even if I think they're totally missing out by not having bitchin' robot arms.". (Like Atraxa, who doesn't have red 'cause he was all "She didn't consent, I don't want any part in this.") Which I think is awesome, and is why I hope he survived MoM somehow. Sure, he was bleeding out, limbless, and left on the floor to die, but we all know that if we didn't see the actual moment of death, Wizards probably aren't willing to stop producing products with him. Also, him being the only surviving praetor would re-contextualize "All will be one", changing it from "All planes will be part of Phyrexia" to "All of Phyrexia will serve a single leader instead of 5 fractured ones." And I wanna see some heroic Phyrexians, some horrible looking monstrosities that are actually good guys, going around going "Hey, we noticed you're getting old/have an incurable illness/got maimed in a battle, we can cure that! With compleation! Come got bitchin' robot arms!" It could make Slobad a hero again...
I can totally see people throughout the Multiverse having been partially modified, though not Compleated, by Phyrexia and thinking the transhumanism is awesome. Thereafter creating a reformist Phyrexian faith, using a modified or completely new set of Scriptures.
That's an interesting idea, but I imagine any plane that got hit by Norn's invasion (which is all of the named ones, and implicitly many many hypothetical ones) now has a deep distrust of strange oil that's probably nothing, and a kill-on-sight policy for our favorite machine friends, should they ever pop up again.
Hmm...an ancient red horror seemingly lying dead after conveniently offering multiple similarly ancient sides of a conflict support that renders all sides dead-dead themselves...before _compleation,_ was Urabrask's name Mantorok?
I also interpreted Urabrask this way, and was really disappointed it didn't come to anything. I really wanted him to turn on Norn and replace her, and then lead a Phyrexia that was willing to coexist relatively peacefully with the rest of the multiverse. I love the idea of an evangelical Phyrexia, sending missionaries around to try to recruit people of their own free will. I also think it would have lead to some interesting conflict as everyone looks at them side-eye with all of the suspicion and kind of has to decide if they're willing to trust and absolve Urabrask after everything Phyrexia has done for all of history. If I ever write MTG fanfic it will be that AU.
My personal head fanon about the whole “forgetting how to oil” was a result of Elesh Norn having to brilliant idea of adding chronic amnesiac Jace Belern into the psychic group chat. Although in all seriousness despite how overall underwhelming it was I did very much enjoy the short of Innistrahd getting invaded and my too favorite characters in all of magic Gisa and Geralf competing to see who can best reanimate eldrazi corpses to fight them off
" So let me get this straight. You wanted to fight everyone, everywhere, at once, on an infinite map, forever... and you expected to *_win???_* " Elesh Norn: " yeah pretty much "
“An unknown planeswalker siphoned the plane for mana and split Alara into the shards.” Me, smacking Urza upside the head: “what did you do this time!?!”
Clearly if WotC actually paid any mind to consistency the next arc would be Emrakul using the power of the moon to astral project into Garruk's body to look for the Mirari so she can wish her former secret lover Slobad back to life.
Thank goodness the story ended after phyrexia won an ultimately phyrric victory. Oh boy am i sure glad that nasty urza guy got what was coming to him and nothing else bad ever happened because of his actions. It sure would be a shame is phyrexias influence were to expand beyond attacking dominaria, but thank goodness the story ended there! Thanks for the concise video spice!
The unimportant planes where actually mentioned previously: Mirrankkar is from the Duelist, Aranzhur & Ilcae had consortium cells, Obsidias is both of those things, & Cabralin is from a 1994 Pocket Player's Guide
Big respect for the 80 minutes of non-stop rapid fire facts and jokes that just don't stop being entertaining! I cannot imagine how long the writing, recording and editing must have taken for this.
@pokegard of course, Sarkhan could always get bothered for that Bolas dragussy again, and go find a way. I wouldn't put it past WotC writing when the conflict well runs dry enough.
Im braziliam and i just would like to say that hear you quoting Paulo Freire was incredible, especially because a lot of people here hates him and try to erase his work and legacy
1:09:45 You do really good research Spice, but I do not blame you for missing the story where... Nahiri wasn't de-sparked like how the Invasion Tree fucked up the rest of the walkers. She lost it herself after she put her spark into an artifact and then because of her mental trauma and a surprise, she lost control and destroyed the artifact. She just straight up singlehandedly deleted her most powerful characteristic
Nah, cat dad was trying to force her to go to therapy when she just beginning to understand her trauma and together they caused it to break. But considering Cat Dad was continuingly pressing her instead of respect her boundaries, I blame him.
It's like she poured a glass of milk and then before taking a sip dropped it on the fuckin' ground? Milk being her spark, the glass being the artifact of course. That's lame. Boo.
I'm not sure the part about Ugin getting retconned to be from Dominaria was right either. I don't remember him being said to be from Tarkir, and if I recall correctly, the world building implied he wasn't---dragons on Tarkir were stated to come from storms and Ugin is the source of the storms, so there would be a bit of a logistical issue with him being from there.
Which also means she basically did the bootleg version of what melira and karn did; her spark was removed from her body and she was blasted with anti-phyrexian juice
There is actually a reason given for why Emrakul sealed herself in the moon, though it is a bit complicated and dives into the nature of the Eldrazi and their existence. There are a few inferences made here for things that aren't explicitly stated, but based on things we know. This is essentially the Vorthos community consensus. Basically the Eldrazi are giant living world recycling machines and while they do have some sort of alien consciousness, they can't really help doing what they do. Also each of the trio fulfils a specific purpose: Ulamog processes a planes matter into raw material to be used in the reconstruction of the world, Kozilek essentially reformats the plane's time-space continuum into a blank state and Emrakul comes in at the end and uses the resources created by the other two to create new life on the plane before they depart. Since Ulamog and Kozilek weren't there anymore, Emrakul couldn't do her job and was just kind of drifting around purposelessly, mutating preexisting lifeforms rather than creating genuine new ones. She understood that she wasn't acting according to her purpose, so as to stop doing that (and because whatever made the Eldrazi/caused them to exist probably either gave them a survival instinct or just made it impossible for them to off themselves for security reasons) she sealed herself in Innistrad's moon.
Oh gee, where can I read up more on such consensus? I was building a block of custom magic sets in which an unlikely appearance of a new Eldrazi lineage emerges; so it would come in handy to get their portrayal right.
She comes out and eats Innistrad now and she also eats the oil. We get Phyrexian Eldrazi and the heroes have to team up with Nicol Bolas to beat them. Nicol Bolas escapes into the omen paths or absorbs Emrakul and becomes a planeswalker again.
Ixalan Story best story, The Flood is still the best writing this franchise has ever seen and the loss of Allison Luhrs from the writing team is a tragedy
Agreed. Her writing was always a true delight. I hope she's happy doing whatever she's doing now, she deserves it, and I wouldn't want to take that from her.... but the writing clearly took a hit at least in part to her promotion out of the writing team.
@@utuberaptor Notably one of the best bits of writing from March of the Machine was BY Allison, and it was basically a weird dream sequence of sorts that post-compleation Vraska was having after Ral neutralised her. A maybe real, maybe dream, maybe weird mind magic leftover Jace talks to her and it's basically an inverse of The Flood where she's broken down after having been compleated and even betraying Jace in the process and he's there to help bring her back up.
This was excellent. If I can make some notes: The book was pretty explicit that Commodore Guff can’t rewrite the story only edit it. So he doesn’t rewrite the end of the Invasion saga as he wants it to go, only erasing everything written down. Freeing the characters from their respective ends and letting them make their choices rather than being bound to fate. But I guess "Guff Fervently Drafts History" doesn't make as good a card name. I’m a wee little bit sad my boy Chainer didn’t get a mention, since I kinda think Torment was the best book WotC released. But I understand things got to be compressed for time. Here is a take that most probably won’t agree with at all. But when I read WotS: Forsaken and got to the infamous Chandra part my initial response was: Yeah, comfortably straight people don’t have intense inner turmoil about how they’re totally straight for the opposite gender all the time. Totally. This girl is failing to come to terms that she’s gay, or bi. I was actually somewhat surprised by the response from people who took her at face value. And even more surprised when I heard the author said he added that part because higher ups told him to make her straight. So I was reading subtext that truly was not meant to be there. I legitimately thought it was going to be the start of a Chandra comes to terms with her sexuality arc. And it kinda was. Well. Not so much an arc as just announcing she’s in love with Nissa now. But we’ll take it, I guess. I also 100% agree with your take on the disappointment with MotM. Though I thought it was established the watchers were Elspeth and Serra’s spirit. Anyway, excellent video. Can’t wait to see what you do next.
Yea you were totally inserting your own ideas into that forsaken bit, its explicitly a LETS ESTABLISH CHANDRA IS STRAIGHT NOW bit and the reaction from people was totally warranted The thing is that you mistread it because you had in mind every other nod towards her not being straight, but thats why its written like that, to be definitive, its just understandably clunky by its very nature
Tezzeret _did_ need that darksteel body because the Planar Bridge was slowly killing him, but he still definitely overdid the whole "helping the cyborg monstrosities" thing. In any case, brilliant work throughout. Seeing how the various "thousands of years ago" events line up is especially fascinating.
I actually disagree very much with this portaryal of him as practically a villain. The man is definitely in the gray zone, but omitting a lot of details and his intentions makes it easy to push him into the evil side of the scale. The character was made to be the definition of moral conflict, taking a side against him only detracts from the overall history in a very cynical level.
This whole video, it’s like- Jesus, Urza JEEZUS URZA JESUS CHRIST, URZA - STOP IT And then you get to the end of the Weatherlight Saga and you’re screaming WTF for five minutes CHRIST AND THEN you realize that Lukka’s full name was never mentioned: Lukka, The Living L
This was an awesome video. It was filled with epiphany moments of me going "ohhh I never realized that's what was happening in this card" or "I never recognized that this object shows up in this card also" and things like that. I am also grateful that I didn't have to do all this research myself lmao
Wait wait wait wait.... They specifically set up Vivien having the Arkbow, a spirit summoning bow made to kill Bolas, that Tashiro Unezawa once killed Bolas with a bow, Satoru Umezawa i assume being some sort of tattooed spirit summoner on Kamigawa, Viviens home being blown up by bolas AND DIDNT PAY THIS OFF???? Like you could at least pay that off as failing... Like connect Satoru and Vivien... Give Satoru Viviens Arkbow by like.... Idk desparking Vivien, then Satoru tries to use it and demons to kill Bolas and it literally just fails cuz of bullshit. At least it acknowledges part of MtGs history
Minor correction: Grist isn't a bug hive mind with a spark, they are a single planeswalking bug that attracts swarm of local insects from whichever plane they travel to.
This seems like the best place to put this. I firmly believe that in the original script for War of the Spark Elesh Norn was intended to be Radiant and Elspeth was Serra or Serra's daughter. It makes the whole story fit together so much better, ties it in to the old stories they were pulling from, and gives the whole thing actual emotional weight. Think about it. Radiant, who was Serra's number 2 and was put in charge of her Domain while she was working with Urza mainly struggled with fear. She was so scared of threats she entombed herself in a nest of cameras and ultimately destroyed the plane because she was so scared of Urza and Phyrexia and everyone outside. This dovetails really nicely with what we see happening with Elesh Norn in the story. She's built a world where everything is stable and nothing can surprise her again. That's why she wants to make everything Phyrexian. We even know that her driving motivation is fear because Ashiok says it in one of the first stories. It covers everything that doesn't quite make sense in the story. It covers the whole Phyrexian oil being centralized thing because Elesh Norn is paranoid. She needs to be the one in control, even to her downside. It even covers why Radiant got a random full art card in Modern Horizons 2 which would have been around when they were writing this story which would remind players she existed. This would also explain why it's Elspeth who can kill her. If her mother really is Serra which makes sense with the whole doesn't know her mother angel refugee thing then its Serra's power that can unmake her. That's why Elspeth goes full avenging angel in the end of the story. She was supposed to be fully taking Serra's powers and becoming not only a pre-mending planeswalker, but the strongest white planeswalker in lore of all time. It just makes so much sense. I'm not sure why they would have changed it. Maybe it was too involved with old lore? Anyway it's my head cannon and I recommend you make it yours. It makes the ending of MoM a looooooot better.
Really cool theory that would make the story way better. There's only one missing link i don't know how to fill in: after Radiant died in the explosion of Serra's realm how did her mind reach the indipendent phyrexia on mirrodin? I'm honestly curious, i'd really like this to be real instead of ''wi-fi not working because reasons''
@@riccardoriolo3193 It's a valid question. I was thinking it would have to do with the original drop of Phyrexian oil that formed New Phyrexia. Something like "the memories of everything the oil has touched are in the oil. So when she died she sent her anger and paranoia into the oil where it reformed as Elesh Norn". Workshopped of course but that general idea. I'd be open to other ideas though.
I'm so glad you mentioned Gideon's weakness: three inches of muddy water. My read was that the Watchers during March of the Machine were Elspeth and Serra.
You have no idea how hard it is to find Magics' lore in one place for a newcomer. I really appreciate you making this video (even if you dislike Starmer) so thanks. Would be real interested in you making some "shorter" videos on the stories you weren't able to include, if you would be up to it.
“The most comprehensive history of magic” and “mad man screams goofy names at 4am while walking down my street high on drugs” are both equally accurate titles for this video
As someone who never really got into MTG lore, you did a great job of giving a glimpse into the inner pain WOTC and Hasbro are inflicting to you. To me MTG is a hobby that is simply getting to expensive to invest into regularly. But to someone invested to the lore it is much more of a inner conflict. It's a story you want to see continue/conclude with a satisfying end. It's a whole alternate world you have grown to love. Seeing something so carefully crafted being carelessly discarded...
Like I keep saying, between DMU/BRO/ONE/MOM, they were trying to recycle the plot structure of the first Phyrexian arc, but in literally a third of the space with twenty times the scope at play. Foolhardy on every level.
As someone who last played Magic in the late 90s, I'm just clapping like a baby whenever he says Urza or Mishra because hey I recognize those names! One had a saga and the other had a factory!
I remember the first time I saw one of Spice's videos. It was the Story in 10 minutes and I thought it slapped so God damn hard that I had to subscribe, even if it was likely just a one hit wonder from a really small TH-camr. And now we're here. One of the largest MTG creators on the platform. I'm honored to have been lucky enough to experience the entire journey, and I'm so excited for the next half a decade. Thank you for all you do, Spice 8 Rack.
According to rosewater garruk wasn't invited and effort was implemented to ban him from war of the spark because bolas foresaw garruk killing everyone and loosing precious sparks.
@@Aerix I mean after Eldraine. Where was he when Phyrexia was everywhere. . .we saw I think, literally every other planeswalker in some respect or another.
The "shadowy watchers" in the March of the Machine story were Angels. They hadn't all materialised at that point, they were waiting for their moment or something. Realmbreaker allowed them to leave New Capenna to join the fight across the Multiverse, turning the tide, even though no one could see them. Also, the spirit of Serra resurrected Elspeth as an angel while in the blind eternities. Oh and Kaya slew Heliod.
No doubt the angels haloed the multiverse in the process, but I still theorize that the gazing may be the gazing of Equilor into other planes made perceptible
I have got to wonder if Norn actually managed to corrupt/twist the original glistening oil from the original Phyrexia as it predates Karn, Mirrodin, and frankly Uraza. Yagmoth was effectively a god during the original invasion of Dominaria and Karn's original Phyrexian sleeper-agent heartstone left a trail of the original and unaltered Phyrexian oil all over the multiverse.
I have to admit, I had given up on magic all together, but this is so nice to have people that keep me connected to what I used to love. I hope the lore will be getting better, and I hope the best for you.
Excellent vídeo, with excellent references! Wasn't expecting see 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed' quoted in a Magic: The Gathering vídeo! Subscribed, and starting to watch all videos from the channel! Cheers from Brazil!
Its been 4 years since I watched the 10 minute version of this. Thank you for this new upgraded version spicy enby of the internet. You mean a lot to many of us
Ive loved this channel from the moment i stumbled upon the unhinged goblin video. Incredibly happy to have been there from the start and super happy to see you doing so much good things in the community
@@DimT670 easier said than done, if i want to know if im interested in a product i have to follow every product for long enough to make that decision, i know im excited about the next Ixalan set but theres too much being released for me to feel hype about it all
By the Amonkhet gods: AMAZING! Now my brain is leaking out of my ears after hearing so many details of the story I somehow missed over the past 15 years! 🤯 (Or sadly stopped caring about in 2019.) Thank you! ❤
God I wish Urabrask had survived, and even won. Having Phyrexia be a neutral entity in the multiverse under his rule, even for a short time, would've been so cool to see. Since he didn't want to force anyone to accept phyresis. That said I'm now super excited for a potential modern Zhalfir set.
He was left dismantled... That's not killed! (check the flavor text) If you read New Capenna story you can see how he was able to re-form from the travel with Tezzeret there. The greatest challenge to seeing him again is because the New Phyrexia plane got lost into where Zhalfir was in the Blind Eternities, but we can guess that alive he more probably is than not \o/
This is insane. How'd you even make this. I haven't played MTG since high school, so when you said "Ice Age" I cheered like you were a rock band saying the name of my city
The Ice Age Cycle are among peak MtG stories, The Gathering Dark in particular. Jeff Grubb deserves all of the kudos for his contributions; the Brothers' War set would be nothing without his writing that book.
Spice, love the summary but you missed the entire Simarillion and the Lord of the Rings. That set had really good worldbuilding, although not as good as the Warhammer commander decks!
There's a bunch of magic space hitlers doing magic space Hitler shit and magic Hitler spaghetti monsters and magic hitler robots and people travel through space on magic space ships and magic portals and fight the aforementioned magic hitlers and lots of people die and sometimes they don't and there may or may not be ice cream parties idk about that one
I am just so glad to see how far you have come from the early days. The humor, the research, the rich conversations and philosophy, and the constant love of Slobad. Thank you for what you do and making my week whenever a new video posts.
The Guff lore makes me want to buy the IPA books & the superfriends precon, that's so wild. Credits roll, music swells, then a record scratch and Guff just directly talks to the viewer/reader
I hope Slivers are a huge part of the story going forward. seeing them invade multiple realms and really put that adaptive ability of theirs to work would be amazing. Heck, we can give them a planeswalker that communed with the Hivemind in an attempt to stop them and got overtaken by them as a result! LET THE NOODLES BE PLOT RELAVANT WOTC!
Yes. Ixalan, as a plane, just whips ass. It's got pirates, Aztec-proxies riding dinosaurs, a hunt for a lost city, AND vampire-conquistadors. 10/10, no notes.
One of the better standalone ones anyway. You don't even really need to know the history of Jace and Vraska, all you really need is "last time they met they tried to kill each other".
I cannot iterate how amazed I routinely am with the depth, humour, and insight you are able to pour into each of these videos. Masterful! (also, fuck Urza)
Spice, this might be your magnum opus until now. Your hard work and slightly unhinged presentation is much apreciated. Great stuff! I hope we are off to greener lore pastures in the future
Urza is not the worst only by virtue of Yawgmoth being present and his works living so much longer, even influencing Urza's own works. Even Bolas isn't as reprehensible as Urza. Tho not by much.
Listening to your points about the story and WOTC's direction starting at the 1:08:17 point, made me feel closer to a fellow MTG fan than I've ever felt before. Your words spoke so much truth in that part. Painful and undeniable.
I’m glad to see you’re taking it easy with smaller, less comprehensive topics my guy
listen
Weird guy deleted his comment :)
It was less than 2 hours, okay. And they were summerizing 30 years of Magic storylines. Give them a break.
@@Bluecho4to be fair, a lot of MtG's history can be summarized with: Urza did a bad, phyrexia is always bad, Bolas did a bad, and the Gatewatch aren't allowed consistent characterization
he should take on warhammer 40k next something small
"...and the Mirrari was given to Glissa for safekeeping. She must have hid it very well because even the writers of Magic's story have forgot it existed for the past 20 years"
I'm dead
Ditto. Great line
I have the Mirrari card and I feel sad
Glissa got all Phyrexian during MoM. Stands to reason Elesh Norn may have got ahold of it and sent it somewhere so Gin-Jitaxis wouldn't get ahold of it. Its safe to assume Phyrexia will return--writers gotta reboot--so it could return whenever that next happens.
@@JulioConnory The Mirrari became Memnarch.
And I really think the last Venser looks like he fused with it
@@clementb6963 Can't wait for the Mirarian Oil
Most of Magic's story can be summed up with "Urza and Mishra were born, everyone suffered because of it."
Include Nicol bolas and Yawgmoth and then we're there
@@BlackQuest575tbh, if Mishra and Urza weren't born, Phyrexia would most likely still be sealed
The "Phyrexian oil is suddenly useless if New Phyrexia gets phased out" thing feels like a real Commodore Guff move.
This makes me more okay with that plot point. It was an author ass-pull, _in-universe,_ by Guff.
Guff, reading way ahead: "Well, I seem to have written myself into a corner with the Phyrexian Sequel. Uh...New Phyrexia gets cut off from the Multiverse, rendering the Oil inert! Yes, that will settle things nice and tidy."
@@Bluecho4 Maybe that's why they brought him back in the new precon. Dude's been writing the story ever since.
In universe or not still a narrative ass pull. Kills all stakes and basically nothing matters cuz LoL Guff can undo it.
Guff really needs an editor to sit down and outline with.
@@Bluecho4 Also the Guff thing let's Phyrexia win first. It's basically "They were obviously going to win, but we have a game to make and a story to continue, so they have to lose sorry!"
The new one pretends as if Phyrexia was always going to lose, which is bullshit
I like how it seems like early Magic lore is basically "Wow, this Mishra guy is a big piece of garbage, look at all the bad things he caused!" and then it cuts to Urza casually blowing up planes and killing billions.
Antiquities: "This Mishra guy was bad, because he exploited old technology and the environment for his own ends."
Urza's Sage or whatever: "Urza is turning his own allies into bombs and manipulating his friends(?) dating lives for Eugenics purposes."
Urza is remembered as the hero only because he got to write the history books that they taught in the college he founded.
Churdza: Tolaria has fallen. Billions must die.
@@ryanbarham8464also, because Urza just always happened to be aiming his machinations at someone who was somehow worse than him.
@@ryanbarham8464 ah yes, le history books. Obviously unbiased and factual, definitely not written from the PoV of the winning sides.
From this video alone Urza had like 5 minutes of good guy syndrome, then went chaotic neutral/evil, only to end up in a suspended state as a head in a glass jar filled with (presumably) Phyrexian oil. Which begs the question, what happened to that head? If any lore writers at WotC actually pick up that storyline, we might have another Urza centric epoch sometime in the future.
The fact that there’s full manually made captions for this WHOLE VIDEO- goddamn that’s dedication. Really appreciate when people manually make the captions so that made me happy bc sometimes I’m not too good at processing words I hear lol. Rly cool video must’ve taken hella long
I love how Jace keeps stumbling into extremely specific requirements for puzzles and prophecy
Honestly I'm half-convinced it's, like, he's actually just figuring these out without really realising it and to everybody involved, including himself, it just looks like "Oh what the fuck how even". The Innistrad revisit did establish he does set up weird mind magic contingencies even he isn't aware of.
I was making a Sorin deck and I read up on the story where Sorin kills Avacyn and for some reason Jace and the Moonfolk Planeswalker appear out of nowhere?
@@noahpearson2190 He's pretty present throughout the entirety of that set's story. Both him and Tamiyo basically try to find Avacyn to stop her doing all the murdering she's been doing but Sorin gets there first.
Jace is the biggest Mary Sue since Urza, so of course he always knows what exactly to do at any given time, because WotC needs him to keep what they believe is their target audience around.
@@maikocat I don't see what you mean with that. Clearly, if an ugly Pokemon-shaped baby creature is trapped in some vault in some unnamed plane that is completely unheard of is capable of specifically tracing portals all around the multiverse called the omenpaths and is the key to closing them happens to get mentioned somewhere at some point in the past, Jace would keep it in mind for the time some portals that so happen to be called omenpaths form around the multiverse open up. Nothing wrong there!
I feel like most of mtg lore can be summed up as "This has made a lot of people very angry, and been widely regarded as a bad move"
Urza when he does literally anything lmao
Or the ever returning Nicol Bolas.@@as95ms98
god
But how many of us actually got the HHGttG reference?
Love that book
Something that just dawned on me, Tetsuo killed a pre-mending Bolas, where as the combined effort of every planeswalker and the entire plain of Ravnica could barely take down Post-mending Bolas
He had the power of anime on his side obviously
The lore is weird, but basically he lured his soul/consciousness into the mediation realm and got his body killed while he was distracted.
He was simply built different
This feels like when two friends tell you a story about an event you weren't a part of and constantly make inside jokes about it and look at you weird when you don't laugh along
How I felt the last few years with my lore thirsty friends whenever they went out on a tangent about MtG at a restaurant (happens monthly)
Okay but Alhammarret forgetting how to breathe is just so metal holy crap
RIGHT???
I seen to remember that he forgets how to everything and live the last seconds of his life in a timeless swirl of thing his half obliterated consciensness is as capable of understanding as it is frighten by the eldritch horror of it all.
If nothing else I do like how much they hammer home how utterly terrifying Jace COULD be. Which kind of makes them doing relatively little with him being compleated a bit of a bummer.
@@charcharmunri have hope for thunder junction
@@jamescampbell2353 We'll see. The story's basically not been all that good since Ixalan apart from a few tidbits anyway, but they seem to at least TRY to avoid fucking up the Jace/Vraska dynamic, which is neat because that at least still could be something.
"Urza then decides that he alone can fix the problem he first caused and has only made worse to this point" Dudeeeee what a killer line xD I laughed hard!
spice you have saved me from explaining mtg lore to my friends. you are a hero of our time
I am forever happy to be an unhinged wiki
I love how for who ever wants an actual detailed story of magic, this 80 minute vid is actually a pretty close "long story, short..." without just going _"magical people/creatures summon other things, (sometimes magical, sometimes not,) using the energy of the land, in order to fight other magical summoning things._ _Oh, and there's a multiverse of several worlds with various planes, some deadly, others even more deadly."_
Somehow I doubt they'll understand a thing. As a person who actually possess a passing interest in MtG, I hardly understood any of it.
I dont think ny friend of mine would be willing to watch 1 hour long of mtg lore bein told :/ but I sure learned a thing or two here
Hi ypkokô
My eyes bugged out of my head during the Commodore Guff bit, literally had no idea about any of that, and I thought I knew the lore like the back of my hand. Incredible stuff.
Exactly this. 23 years keeping up with MTG and that escaped me. Not gonna lie i'm kinda flabbergasted.
To be fair it is less than a paragraph in the Apocalypse novel, it's basically a throwaway gag. "And then the Phyrexians won, and everyone died... JUST KIDDING!"
Afaik, not going to go back and check, but I believe it is also implied that Guff died while he was erasing/rewriting the story, leading to the ambiguity that allowed the good guys to win. As far as jokey borderline non-canonical canon goes, it's pretty fun.
I’m still angry we didn’t get more Uncle Garruk with Will and Rowan. Especially now with the Wilds of Eldraine set leading to the 3 of them embodying all 5 colors.
GIVE US MORE GARRUK, COWARDS!!!
So good to see I wasn't alone in being annoyed at that
Important note on the whole "tezzeret wanted a new pair of rims" thing, the planar bridge in his body was actually killing him because the etherium metal wasnt strong enough to contain it, so he actually needed the darksteel body to stay alive.
Though he did start working with new phyrexia before he got the planar bridge it seems.
@@U1TR4F0RCE That was because he didn't mention a little aside that Nicol Bolas had assigned him to do that in order to keep an eye on them. Once Bolas was captured, he realized he was dying, and so planeswalked back to Phyrexia and offered a deal to Elesh Norn to get a darksteel body in exchange for helping to capture Karn and generally just kinda helping around until they got a good chance to do that. In the mean time, he tries to quietly sabotage where he can, helping out Urabrask and saving various planeswalkers during the Invasion of Dominaria, as well as generally undermining it.
She strings him along for a little longer than their original deal, but eventually relents (she is strongly White mana aligned, after all, she is a creature of duty) and has Jin-Gitaxias give him the darksteel body. But uh oh! Jin-Gitaxias has apparently known of Tezzeret's betrayal and intends to compleat him by turning all of that fresh darksteel into blightsteel! Tezzeret escapes with the help of a red Phyrexian Jin-Gitaxias had captured, and planeswalks away to Alara in the best single story in the entire New Phyrexia arc.
So basically tezzeret has a blown head gasket and new rims. 🤷🏼♀️ priorities
I like how you portrayed Nahiri in this. She used to be one of my favourite planeswalker and every one of her apparitions just keeps making her worse and worse...
*appearances
Nahiri has legitimate reason to hate Nissa after the stunt she pulled, releasing the Eldrazi onto Zendikar. It just so happened that the first opportunity she had to clash with her was over how to heal Zendikar, and Nissa had the best reason. Nahiri could not allow herself to agree with the elf.
Oh you'll love her now. She's sooooo mad about stuff. And edgy. Wow....
@@liamwhite3522To make matters worse for Nahiri, by the time that she confronted Nissa about it, there were at least two other factors also undermining Nahiri's righteous rage:
1. The Nissa that she talks to technically *isn't* the same Nissa who released the Eldrazi fully due to Sarkin's later screwing with time back on Tarkir and saving Ugin's life. Original Nissa a.k.a. Nissa 1.0 was an elf supremacist every bit as racist as the Lorwyn elves are. Post-Magic Origins Nissa a.k.a. Nissa 2.0 is a soft granola girl who actively rejected that type of racism and was only starting to turn dark due to the bitterness caused by all the failing The -Avengers- Gatewatch had just done.
2. Nahiri had *willingly* unleashed the Eldrazi via summoning Emrakul on Innistrad by that point out of *spite* towards a single person, willing to doom an entire world just for revenge. At least Nissa 1.0 was genuinely trying to save Zendikar when she fully released the Eldrazi even if it was short-sighted since, as an elf supremacist, her bigotry meant she didn't trust Sorin as a non-elf IIRC--on top of him being legitimately shady and a dick.
When the literal racist still has the higher moral ground than you in an argument, you know you've screwed up, at least if you have any self-awareness...which Nahiri doesn't. I feel like the only planeswalkers that WotC have screwed up more story-wise are like Lukka and maybe Vivien since they clearly had no idea what to do ever with either of those characters period.
@@MusicoftheDamnedpretty sure for innistrad the idea was that since the eldrazi are basically unbeatable and her home seemed to be doomed to destruction then the person who helped cause it and tortured her for a thousand years should have his home the only thing he cares about get an express pass to the destruction
Love how you used the actual cards. Seeing the art helped me visualize the story immensely, well done good sir!
You can really see just how much Spice's skills have grown since the first video. The writing, the editing, the humor all amazing.
Aww thanks! I really do hope folks come away from this with that perspective
@@Spice8RackI'd say so. At time of writing this comment (5 days after release of the video, for future reference) this is your 6th most watched video.
The side narratives of "wow Nahiri does kinda suck" and "Lukka is competely useless and loses immediately" are great 🤣
Nahiri always at least had some potential, even now, with WotC screwing up her state of mind worse than Bloober could. Lukka, even if he were executed well, would be still be a very bland concept as is.
It's more a testament to the bad writing than Nahiri herself
No, they are low hanging fruits for smooth brains.
Not just useless but negative useful, he dooms any cause or mission he joins in on.
Having read the Ikoria novel, lukka is actually amazing. You expect him to be the typical male white guy hero, and he genuinely also thinks of himself as such at every point in the story, and yet in the middle of the book you realise this guy is the villain actually
Also general kudro you expect to be a fully dimensional character and yet, when the inevitable clash of wills with him and lukka comes up, and lukka basically says "well what if i defend the city with monsters which I control", Kudro doesn’t respond with some trite "we shall never cooperate with monsters". No, he goes for a "who watches the watchman" bit about how that would basically make lukka a defacto dictator and also he rightfully points out LUKKA IS LITERALLY ATTACKING THEM RIGHT AT THAT MOMMENT
I was so incredibly saddened when Slobad didn't make an appearance in Scars of Mirrodin block, just being allowed to die offscreen. But March of the Machine makes me wish he'd stayed down. He shows up in a bonus story with no mention whatsoever of his old life and the potential of his amazing story arc just gets tossed away into obscurity. You could replace Compleated Slobad with literally any nameless Phyrexian and the story wouldn't change a bit, and that's absolutely a crime.
Doing that with him was the definition of unnecesaurus... But for me an even greater crime was what they did with the Weatherlight itself. Why they did that? Why they didn't catch up later? Look at the wasted potential now with the paths between planes...
As someone who has played Magic almost since the beginning this has been 80 minutes of hilarious laughter and flashback memories to players, gameplay and pack openings over the last thirty years.
Thanks for the awesome content Spice!
8:40 To be fair, Sorin just wanted to be a good dad to his Angel daughter. He just didn't expect her goth phase to be so hardcore later on.
He was also super hangover at this exact time and didn't want to deal with the blue eyed rookie 😂
He forgot he put her in times out
Imagine how goth you'd have to be to freak out a VAMPIRE
@@joelheinitz2139bout as goth as "I'm going to literally cull all humans I'm meant to protect cause I got some bloodborne headache messing with me"
I had no idea that Magic’s story was so simple and concise!
I was always under the impression that Urabrask's whole deal was "Compleation is awesome, but as an embodiment of RED Phyrexia, I'm partially defined by freedom, so I don't want to force people to accept it... Even if I think they're totally missing out by not having bitchin' robot arms.". (Like Atraxa, who doesn't have red 'cause he was all "She didn't consent, I don't want any part in this.")
Which I think is awesome, and is why I hope he survived MoM somehow. Sure, he was bleeding out, limbless, and left on the floor to die, but we all know that if we didn't see the actual moment of death, Wizards probably aren't willing to stop producing products with him.
Also, him being the only surviving praetor would re-contextualize "All will be one", changing it from "All planes will be part of Phyrexia" to "All of Phyrexia will serve a single leader instead of 5 fractured ones."
And I wanna see some heroic Phyrexians, some horrible looking monstrosities that are actually good guys, going around going "Hey, we noticed you're getting old/have an incurable illness/got maimed in a battle, we can cure that! With compleation! Come got bitchin' robot arms!"
It could make Slobad a hero again...
I can totally see people throughout the Multiverse having been partially modified, though not Compleated, by Phyrexia and thinking the transhumanism is awesome. Thereafter creating a reformist Phyrexian faith, using a modified or completely new set of Scriptures.
@@Bluecho4 Yup. And maybe more "Traditionalist" Phyrexians who oppose Urabrask's more peaceful ways, causing schisms, battles, civil war, perhaps.
That's an interesting idea, but I imagine any plane that got hit by Norn's invasion (which is all of the named ones, and implicitly many many hypothetical ones) now has a deep distrust of strange oil that's probably nothing, and a kill-on-sight policy for our favorite machine friends, should they ever pop up again.
Hmm...an ancient red horror seemingly lying dead after conveniently offering multiple similarly ancient sides of a conflict support that renders all sides dead-dead themselves...before _compleation,_ was Urabrask's name Mantorok?
I also interpreted Urabrask this way, and was really disappointed it didn't come to anything. I really wanted him to turn on Norn and replace her, and then lead a Phyrexia that was willing to coexist relatively peacefully with the rest of the multiverse. I love the idea of an evangelical Phyrexia, sending missionaries around to try to recruit people of their own free will. I also think it would have lead to some interesting conflict as everyone looks at them side-eye with all of the suspicion and kind of has to decide if they're willing to trust and absolve Urabrask after everything Phyrexia has done for all of history.
If I ever write MTG fanfic it will be that AU.
My personal head fanon about the whole “forgetting how to oil” was a result of Elesh Norn having to brilliant idea of adding chronic amnesiac Jace Belern into the psychic group chat. Although in all seriousness despite how overall underwhelming it was I did very much enjoy the short of Innistrahd getting invaded and my too favorite characters in all of magic Gisa and Geralf competing to see who can best reanimate eldrazi corpses to fight them off
Glad my fav planeswalker Tamiyo got the same amount of screentime here as she did in the unabridged magic story.
My condolences
" So let me get this straight. You wanted to fight everyone, everywhere, at once, on an infinite map, forever... and you expected to *_win???_* "
Elesh Norn: " yeah pretty much "
TBF she didn’t expect literally everyone to be so stupid as to reject perfection and attempt to fight back.
"Nah, I'd win" - Elesh Norn
@@maxspecsfr you'd think atleast some plains would be down
If they hadn't changed how Phyrexian oil works, it would have worked wonders tbh
"Creatures your opponents control get -2/-2"
"Creatures your opponents control can't activate their ETB"
Those 2 effects stomp many decks
“An unknown planeswalker siphoned the plane for mana and split Alara into the shards.”
Me, smacking Urza upside the head: “what did you do this time!?!”
Clearly if WotC actually paid any mind to consistency the next arc would be Emrakul using the power of the moon to astral project into Garruk's body to look for the Mirari so she can wish her former secret lover Slobad back to life.
JUSTICE FOR SLOBAD
Yes 🙌
Slobad the GOAT
Ok y does that sound so good
@Helloimaperson12345 I'm a writer lol
Thank goodness the story ended after phyrexia won an ultimately phyrric victory. Oh boy am i sure glad that nasty urza guy got what was coming to him and nothing else bad ever happened because of his actions. It sure would be a shame is phyrexias influence were to expand beyond attacking dominaria, but thank goodness the story ended there! Thanks for the concise video spice!
The unimportant planes where actually mentioned previously: Mirrankkar is from the Duelist, Aranzhur & Ilcae had consortium cells, Obsidias is both of those things, & Cabralin is from a 1994 Pocket Player's Guide
So it was them tying up loose ends.
Can't wait for this to become one of those videos I listen to six times a year while walking to Aldi
Class taste in videos AND supermarket!
Big respect for the 80 minutes of non-stop rapid fire facts and jokes that just don't stop being entertaining!
I cannot imagine how long the writing, recording and editing must have taken for this.
i really hope MoM's story is further expanded on somehow; such a huge moment to just hand-wave so the good guys win
I didn't expect to see Paulo Freire citation on a magic video made by a british creator.
I love you Spice, please come to Brazil.
Well NOW I just have to
Yep, that was not expected but really glad to see!
Come to Brazil!
It just occurred to me that the Omen Paths are how Nicol Bolas escapes as someone will stumble upon him accidentally and set him free.
"How many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man"
somehow, nicol bolas returned..
@@trveheimer6360omen paths are paths to many planes, some might considered to be off limits
@pokegard of course, Sarkhan could always get bothered for that Bolas dragussy again, and go find a way.
I wouldn't put it past WotC writing when the conflict well runs dry enough.
@@OrigamiShinigami
A: I think Nicol would prefer if you called it god-pharussy
B: true/fair
Im braziliam and i just would like to say that hear you quoting Paulo Freire was incredible, especially because a lot of people here hates him and try to erase his work and legacy
Sad but true. Always warms my heart too when I see gringos quoting him ^^
1:09:45 You do really good research Spice, but I do not blame you for missing the story where... Nahiri wasn't de-sparked like how the Invasion Tree fucked up the rest of the walkers. She lost it herself after she put her spark into an artifact and then because of her mental trauma and a surprise, she lost control and destroyed the artifact. She just straight up singlehandedly deleted her most powerful characteristic
Nah, cat dad was trying to force her to go to therapy when she just beginning to understand her trauma and together they caused it to break. But considering Cat Dad was continuingly pressing her instead of respect her boundaries, I blame him.
It's like she poured a glass of milk and then before taking a sip dropped it on the fuckin' ground? Milk being her spark, the glass being the artifact of course.
That's lame. Boo.
I'm not sure the part about Ugin getting retconned to be from Dominaria was right either. I don't remember him being said to be from Tarkir, and if I recall correctly, the world building implied he wasn't---dragons on Tarkir were stated to come from storms and Ugin is the source of the storms, so there would be a bit of a logistical issue with him being from there.
💀
Which also means she basically did the bootleg version of what melira and karn did; her spark was removed from her body and she was blasted with anti-phyrexian juice
You know for all the rage the Teferi planes walker cards have given me, he’s actually a really cool dude.
phases out of existence and doesn't afraid of anything
I dunno, he was kinda mean to Karn :(.
New to your content, but you had me at "Everybody's dead, Dave." Clearly you're a man of refinement and class with an appreciation for the classics
There is actually a reason given for why Emrakul sealed herself in the moon, though it is a bit complicated and dives into the nature of the Eldrazi and their existence. There are a few inferences made here for things that aren't explicitly stated, but based on things we know. This is essentially the Vorthos community consensus.
Basically the Eldrazi are giant living world recycling machines and while they do have some sort of alien consciousness, they can't really help doing what they do. Also each of the trio fulfils a specific purpose: Ulamog processes a planes matter into raw material to be used in the reconstruction of the world, Kozilek essentially reformats the plane's time-space continuum into a blank state and Emrakul comes in at the end and uses the resources created by the other two to create new life on the plane before they depart.
Since Ulamog and Kozilek weren't there anymore, Emrakul couldn't do her job and was just kind of drifting around purposelessly, mutating preexisting lifeforms rather than creating genuine new ones.
She understood that she wasn't acting according to her purpose, so as to stop doing that (and because whatever made the Eldrazi/caused them to exist probably either gave them a survival instinct or just made it impossible for them to off themselves for security reasons) she sealed herself in Innistrad's moon.
I saw this theory in a Reddit thread a year or so ago and it really does fit what we know exceptionally well
Oh gee, where can I read up more on such consensus? I was building a block of custom magic sets in which an unlikely appearance of a new Eldrazi lineage emerges; so it would come in handy to get their portrayal right.
She comes out and eats Innistrad now and she also eats the oil. We get Phyrexian Eldrazi and the heroes have to team up with Nicol Bolas to beat them. Nicol Bolas escapes into the omen paths or absorbs Emrakul and becomes a planeswalker again.
And it still is a theory, although convincing.
@@kyleellis1825 That makes less than no sense.
Ixalan Story best story, The Flood is still the best writing this franchise has ever seen and the loss of Allison Luhrs from the writing team is a tragedy
Agreed. Her writing was always a true delight. I hope she's happy doing whatever she's doing now, she deserves it, and I wouldn't want to take that from her.... but the writing clearly took a hit at least in part to her promotion out of the writing team.
@@utuberaptor Notably one of the best bits of writing from March of the Machine was BY Allison, and it was basically a weird dream sequence of sorts that post-compleation Vraska was having after Ral neutralised her. A maybe real, maybe dream, maybe weird mind magic leftover Jace talks to her and it's basically an inverse of The Flood where she's broken down after having been compleated and even betraying Jace in the process and he's there to help bring her back up.
I... did not know that existed, and need to find it immediately, thank you! @@charcharmunr
I just got into Magic and I have watched this so many times. Thanks for helping newbies like me understand what’s happening up until now!
This was excellent. If I can make some notes:
The book was pretty explicit that Commodore Guff can’t rewrite the story only edit it. So he doesn’t rewrite the end of the Invasion saga as he wants it to go, only erasing everything written down. Freeing the characters from their respective ends and letting them make their choices rather than being bound to fate. But I guess "Guff Fervently Drafts History" doesn't make as good a card name.
I’m a wee little bit sad my boy Chainer didn’t get a mention, since I kinda think Torment was the best book WotC released. But I understand things got to be compressed for time.
Here is a take that most probably won’t agree with at all. But when I read WotS: Forsaken and got to the infamous Chandra part my initial response was: Yeah, comfortably straight people don’t have intense inner turmoil about how they’re totally straight for the opposite gender all the time. Totally. This girl is failing to come to terms that she’s gay, or bi.
I was actually somewhat surprised by the response from people who took her at face value. And even more surprised when I heard the author said he added that part because higher ups told him to make her straight. So I was reading subtext that truly was not meant to be there.
I legitimately thought it was going to be the start of a Chandra comes to terms with her sexuality arc. And it kinda was.
Well. Not so much an arc as just announcing she’s in love with Nissa now. But we’ll take it, I guess.
I also 100% agree with your take on the disappointment with MotM. Though I thought it was established the watchers were Elspeth and Serra’s spirit.
Anyway, excellent video. Can’t wait to see what you do next.
Yeah, the watchers are pretty clearly Elspeth and Serra.
Yea you were totally inserting your own ideas into that forsaken bit, its explicitly a LETS ESTABLISH CHANDRA IS STRAIGHT NOW bit and the reaction from people was totally warranted
The thing is that you mistread it because you had in mind every other nod towards her not being straight, but thats why its written like that, to be definitive, its just understandably clunky by its very nature
The Otaria cycle has its ups and downs but there's a lot of great stuff in there for sure. Always liked Ixidor's whole deal.
THANK YOU for someone having recognized the awesome story on Ixalan. The stuff with Jace and Vraska is superb
This is super well made and hilarious. As someone who doesn't know or care too much about the story of Magic, this sells it really well. Thanks!
Tezzeret _did_ need that darksteel body because the Planar Bridge was slowly killing him, but he still definitely overdid the whole "helping the cyborg monstrosities" thing.
In any case, brilliant work throughout. Seeing how the various "thousands of years ago" events line up is especially fascinating.
There are probably less evil people who could have helped him.
I knew Urza was a mad man, but this video has really put into perspective just how much impact he actually had on the story.
What a wild guy.
I actually disagree very much with this portaryal of him as practically a villain. The man is definitely in the gray zone, but omitting a lot of details and his intentions makes it easy to push him into the evil side of the scale. The character was made to be the definition of moral conflict, taking a side against him only detracts from the overall history in a very cynical level.
@@RafaelAAMerloyes exactly. Without him, yawgmoth probably takes over the multiverse.
This whole video, it’s like-
Jesus, Urza
JEEZUS URZA
JESUS CHRIST, URZA - STOP IT
And then you get to the end of the Weatherlight Saga and you’re screaming WTF for five minutes
CHRIST
AND THEN you realize that Lukka’s full name was never mentioned: Lukka, The Living L
This was an awesome video. It was filled with epiphany moments of me going "ohhh I never realized that's what was happening in this card" or "I never recognized that this object shows up in this card also" and things like that. I am also grateful that I didn't have to do all this research myself lmao
the ENTIRE STORY?? Spice on a roll with these long vids 💪
My next one will be longer... or maybe shorter.
might even be the same length@@Spice8Rack
... what the fuck do you take me for?
I like to think of it as world's from kingdom hearts but only plane walkers and exceptions can travel between them
@@Spice8Rack Oh Spice darling you wonderful enigma 😘
Wait wait wait wait.... They specifically set up Vivien having the Arkbow, a spirit summoning bow made to kill Bolas, that Tashiro Unezawa once killed Bolas with a bow, Satoru Umezawa i assume being some sort of tattooed spirit summoner on Kamigawa, Viviens home being blown up by bolas AND DIDNT PAY THIS OFF???? Like you could at least pay that off as failing... Like connect Satoru and Vivien... Give Satoru Viviens Arkbow by like.... Idk desparking Vivien, then Satoru tries to use it and demons to kill Bolas and it literally just fails cuz of bullshit. At least it acknowledges part of MtGs history
56:09 ok but Grist is legit cool and I really hope we see them more because "bug swarm planeswalker" is EXACTLY my vibe
Minor correction: Grist isn't a bug hive mind with a spark, they are a single planeswalking bug that attracts swarm of local insects from whichever plane they travel to.
@@marekvincibr5884Major correction: Grist is a friend.
This seems like the best place to put this. I firmly believe that in the original script for War of the Spark Elesh Norn was intended to be Radiant and Elspeth was Serra or Serra's daughter. It makes the whole story fit together so much better, ties it in to the old stories they were pulling from, and gives the whole thing actual emotional weight.
Think about it. Radiant, who was Serra's number 2 and was put in charge of her Domain while she was working with Urza mainly struggled with fear. She was so scared of threats she entombed herself in a nest of cameras and ultimately destroyed the plane because she was so scared of Urza and Phyrexia and everyone outside. This dovetails really nicely with what we see happening with Elesh Norn in the story. She's built a world where everything is stable and nothing can surprise her again. That's why she wants to make everything Phyrexian. We even know that her driving motivation is fear because Ashiok says it in one of the first stories. It covers everything that doesn't quite make sense in the story. It covers the whole Phyrexian oil being centralized thing because Elesh Norn is paranoid. She needs to be the one in control, even to her downside. It even covers why Radiant got a random full art card in Modern Horizons 2 which would have been around when they were writing this story which would remind players she existed.
This would also explain why it's Elspeth who can kill her. If her mother really is Serra which makes sense with the whole doesn't know her mother angel refugee thing then its Serra's power that can unmake her. That's why Elspeth goes full avenging angel in the end of the story. She was supposed to be fully taking Serra's powers and becoming not only a pre-mending planeswalker, but the strongest white planeswalker in lore of all time.
It just makes so much sense. I'm not sure why they would have changed it. Maybe it was too involved with old lore? Anyway it's my head cannon and I recommend you make it yours. It makes the ending of MoM a looooooot better.
So much potential in MTG story. All wasted in the pursuit of infinite growth. Hasbro and WotC higher ups are the real Phyrexians.
Also, it makes "MoM" a more fitting acronym. It involves Elspheth's mother (Serra) and her mom's best friend/roommate (Radiant/Elesh Norn).
This wasn't made the official lore because it makes too much sense and would actually make for a satisfying ending
Really cool theory that would make the story way better. There's only one missing link i don't know how to fill in: after Radiant died in the explosion of Serra's realm how did her mind reach the indipendent phyrexia on mirrodin? I'm honestly curious, i'd really like this to be real instead of ''wi-fi not working because reasons''
@@riccardoriolo3193 It's a valid question. I was thinking it would have to do with the original drop of Phyrexian oil that formed New Phyrexia. Something like "the memories of everything the oil has touched are in the oil. So when she died she sent her anger and paranoia into the oil where it reformed as Elesh Norn". Workshopped of course but that general idea. I'd be open to other ideas though.
love that "jund em out" became a meme in the magic community when it originally came from a relatively small Canadian comedy show "loading ready run"
This literally is the first video of yours I've ever seen. What an amazing introduction, your story telling is incredible and I'm glad to have watched
Watch mill vs discard…
same here :)
I'm so glad you mentioned Gideon's weakness: three inches of muddy water.
My read was that the Watchers during March of the Machine were Elspeth and Serra.
The wording here did seem to imply there were more than two, but yeah, seems to me that's who they were.
My read of that would be the Equilorians
Hey, could you repeat that?
Hey sorry, you lost me at "planeswalker". Could you start again from there?
@@sr.365wait this isn’t an apex legends video?
You have no idea how hard it is to find Magics' lore in one place for a newcomer. I really appreciate you making this video (even if you dislike Starmer) so thanks. Would be real interested in you making some "shorter" videos on the stories you weren't able to include, if you would be up to it.
“The most comprehensive history of magic” and “mad man screams goofy names at 4am while walking down my street high on drugs” are both equally accurate titles for this video
Love how you subtly worked in the names of a bunch of the expansions into the script. Really a nice touch.
As someone who never really got into MTG lore, you did a great job of giving a glimpse into the inner pain WOTC and Hasbro are inflicting to you. To me MTG is a hobby that is simply getting to expensive to invest into regularly. But to someone invested to the lore it is much more of a inner conflict. It's a story you want to see continue/conclude with a satisfying end. It's a whole alternate world you have grown to love. Seeing something so carefully crafted being carelessly discarded...
@randomusername1735 The last time I played MTG, Mishra and Urza were still a thing.
proxy lmao
"we have spent more cardstock on exploring DND's forgotten realms than the phyrexian invasion of everything" just kill me now
Like I keep saying, between DMU/BRO/ONE/MOM, they were trying to recycle the plot structure of the first Phyrexian arc, but in literally a third of the space with twenty times the scope at play. Foolhardy on every level.
As someone who last played Magic in the late 90s, I'm just clapping like a baby whenever he says Urza or Mishra because hey I recognize those names! One had a saga and the other had a factory!
I remember the first time I saw one of Spice's videos. It was the Story in 10 minutes and I thought it slapped so God damn hard that I had to subscribe, even if it was likely just a one hit wonder from a really small TH-camr.
And now we're here. One of the largest MTG creators on the platform. I'm honored to have been lucky enough to experience the entire journey, and I'm so excited for the next half a decade.
Thank you for all you do, Spice 8 Rack.
I love the nod to Emerakul still hanging out in the moon for. . .reasons. . .and Garruk literally just vanishing from the plot.
According to rosewater garruk wasn't invited and effort was implemented to ban him from war of the spark because bolas foresaw garruk killing everyone and loosing precious sparks.
@@Aerix I mean after Eldraine. Where was he when Phyrexia was everywhere. . .we saw I think, literally every other planeswalker in some respect or another.
I can't wait for Spice to make an even more comprehensive video in 3 years after the next major story event.
The "shadowy watchers" in the March of the Machine story were Angels. They hadn't all materialised at that point, they were waiting for their moment or something. Realmbreaker allowed them to leave New Capenna to join the fight across the Multiverse, turning the tide, even though no one could see them. Also, the spirit of Serra resurrected Elspeth as an angel while in the blind eternities.
Oh and Kaya slew Heliod.
No doubt the angels haloed the multiverse in the process, but I still theorize that the gazing may be the gazing of Equilor into other planes made perceptible
This was an absolutely wonderful use of time probably slightly more wisely spent sleeping ❤ thank you :)
Bless you folks! Hope you're all doing swell x
I have got to wonder if Norn actually managed to corrupt/twist the original glistening oil from the original Phyrexia as it predates Karn, Mirrodin, and frankly Uraza. Yagmoth was effectively a god during the original invasion of Dominaria and Karn's original Phyrexian sleeper-agent heartstone left a trail of the original and unaltered Phyrexian oil all over the multiverse.
Spice posted a new video? Welp, time to watch all of the older videos again, because one video is not enough Spice for my day
All part of the plan ;)
I have to admit, I had given up on magic all together, but this is so nice to have people that keep me connected to what I used to love. I hope the lore will be getting better, and I hope the best for you.
Excellent vídeo, with excellent references! Wasn't expecting see 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed' quoted in a Magic: The Gathering vídeo!
Subscribed, and starting to watch all videos from the channel!
Cheers from Brazil!
Its been 4 years since I watched the 10 minute version of this. Thank you for this new upgraded version spicy enby of the internet. You mean a lot to many of us
Ive loved this channel from the moment i stumbled upon the unhinged goblin video. Incredibly happy to have been there from the start and super happy to see you doing so much good things in the community
Lol the Matt Berry/Laszlo Cravensworth voice is amazing
Getting a new product every month has really given me fatigue so seeing a video like this, appreciating the rich lore of this game, is really nice.
The secret is to just not follow products you arent interested in, just don't even dedicate mental bandwidth to them
@@DimT670 easier said than done, if i want to know if im interested in a product i have to follow every product for long enough to make that decision, i know im excited about the next Ixalan set but theres too much being released for me to feel hype about it all
I cannot articulate how radically phenomenal this is. I am going to rewatch this... SO many times...
Alesha and Dragonlord Kolaghan saying HRT for ALL in the speech bubbles got me. HRT for ALL!!! YA
By the Amonkhet gods: AMAZING!
Now my brain is leaking out of my ears after hearing so many details of the story I somehow missed over the past 15 years! 🤯 (Or sadly stopped caring about in 2019.)
Thank you! ❤
God I wish Urabrask had survived, and even won. Having Phyrexia be a neutral entity in the multiverse under his rule, even for a short time, would've been so cool to see. Since he didn't want to force anyone to accept phyresis.
That said I'm now super excited for a potential modern Zhalfir set.
He was left dismantled... That's not killed! (check the flavor text) If you read New Capenna story you can see how he was able to re-form from the travel with Tezzeret there. The greatest challenge to seeing him again is because the New Phyrexia plane got lost into where Zhalfir was in the Blind Eternities, but we can guess that alive he more probably is than not \o/
I come back to this video every couple of months just to remember why i love Magic Lore so much....
And to cry at it current downfall
This is insane. How'd you even make this.
I haven't played MTG since high school, so when you said "Ice Age" I cheered like you were a rock band saying the name of my city
The Ice Age Cycle are among peak MtG stories, The Gathering Dark in particular. Jeff Grubb deserves all of the kudos for his contributions; the Brothers' War set would be nothing without his writing that book.
Spice, love the summary but you missed the entire Simarillion and the Lord of the Rings. That set had really good worldbuilding, although not as good as the Warhammer commander decks!
It completely overlooked Baldur's Gate too. And forgetting the _rich_ and _complicated_ lore of the likes of Cecily, Aisha and Malik...for shame.
I need this guy to tell me stories on a daily basis. This has been phenomenal.
I would absolutely watch a longer video series covering this in more depth
I still don't get it
... well fuck
It's okay babe, it's me, not you.
There's a bunch of magic space hitlers doing magic space Hitler shit and magic Hitler spaghetti monsters and magic hitler robots and people travel through space on magic space ships and magic portals and fight the aforementioned magic hitlers and lots of people die and sometimes they don't and there may or may not be ice cream parties idk about that one
0:30 Didn't expect a new parental figure, but I'm also not complaining... Yes SpiceDaddy, shove that lore down my throat!
Hey mate wtf
@@nyanwizard2735 What?
I am just so glad to see how far you have come from the early days. The humor, the research, the rich conversations and philosophy, and the constant love of Slobad. Thank you for what you do and making my week whenever a new video posts.
The Guff lore makes me want to buy the IPA books & the superfriends precon, that's so wild. Credits roll, music swells, then a record scratch and Guff just directly talks to the viewer/reader
I hope Slivers are a huge part of the story going forward.
seeing them invade multiple realms and really put that adaptive ability of theirs to work would be amazing.
Heck, we can give them a planeswalker that communed with the Hivemind in an attempt to stop them and got overtaken by them as a result!
LET THE NOODLES BE PLOT RELAVANT WOTC!
Seeing it all laid out like this: did Ixilan have like the best Magic plot line ever?
yes!
Yes. Ixalan, as a plane, just whips ass. It's got pirates, Aztec-proxies riding dinosaurs, a hunt for a lost city, AND vampire-conquistadors. 10/10, no notes.
One of the better standalone ones anyway. You don't even really need to know the history of Jace and Vraska, all you really need is "last time they met they tried to kill each other".
I cannot iterate how amazed I routinely am with the depth, humour, and insight you are able to pour into each of these videos. Masterful! (also, fuck Urza)
Bless you for such a lovely compliment
Just want to shout out the glory of the editing of this piece. Excellently done mate.
Spice, this might be your magnum opus until now.
Your hard work and slightly unhinged presentation is much apreciated. Great stuff!
I hope we are off to greener lore pastures in the future
WOW I DIDN'T KNOW MY HATRED OF URZA COULD GET WORSE
AND YET HERE WE ARE
Edit: I wrote this at 7 minutes in Urza what the fuck
If there is one Urza hater, it's me. If there are none, I am dead.
I will never forgive Urza for what he did to Taysir
urza is a knob end
@@darkdrgon2136 GODS do I wish the latter would be properly remembered.
Urza is not the worst only by virtue of Yawgmoth being present and his works living so much longer, even influencing Urza's own works. Even Bolas isn't as reprehensible as Urza. Tho not by much.
I just recently started getting into magic and was very lost, thanks for making this.
I've been watching your videos for almost 2 years. Your stuffs really good!
Glad you like them! Thank you :D
Listening to your points about the story and WOTC's direction starting at the 1:08:17 point, made me feel closer to a fellow MTG fan than I've ever felt before. Your words spoke so much truth in that part. Painful and undeniable.