Here's my argument against making nagas snakes and viashino lizards: Wolves and werewolves. You have cards that work with wolves, cards that work with werewolves, and cards that work with both. This allows for different flavor and unique mechanics.
The fact that the first new world since March of the Machines is also the first one in recent memories to *not* get a Planeswalkers Guide to help flesh out the world is incredibly infuriating to me. This is the sort of set where we very much needed that sort of world building article but nope. Little blurbs about a bunch of characters we already new and two new characters that have barely anything interesting to add to the world in their bios. As a Vorthos and also a fan of Weird Western as a genre, I want to love this set and this world but it's just so *devoid of substance*...
A weird thing about Thunder Junction is that it's the 100th expansion and it just feels like any other. For a big milestone like that I would've expected a big splashy return to the OG Dominaria, but instead we got a set with some of the clumsiest worldbuilding ever due to the usual soulless corpo incompetence.
To add flame to the fire, they made VARMINT a creature type. Naga had to die so varmints could be in the game. Because of course, varmints are more important than Viashino
@@RedBobcatGames Oh gods, I hope not... I love Nashi and actually look forward to more content involving them, but if they take away Nezumi from his cards, it takes away a big detail of their heritage and who they are as originating from Kamigawa.
They are actually making them lizards to increase their importance by adding typal synergies, still. They could have done it better from an optics standpoint. Varmint, on the other hand, it's probably just a single use type that will rarely be ever used again. Just a gimmick.
The creature races original to mtg are one of the more interesting parts of the worldbuilding and pillar of its originality and distinction from other fantasy settings, retconning them into disappearing from the cards is just a terrible omen.
It feels a symptom of Commander becoming the dominant format. There was no problem with having Viashino when you only had to care about their synergies in Standard. Now, when looking across every set ever, there's more pressure to make Leonin into Cats because Cats are an archetype and Leonin aren't. Pressure to make the cards fit a broader archetype flattens their unique identity but makes them bigger value pieces for more players. It's lame.
This whole set is just the "League-ification" of Magic's lore and setting. It feels like a skin pack in a video game. No rhyme, no reason, this beloved goth character is now dressed like a 1930s mobster. This fearsome cyborg is now in a clown suit. Does it make any sense? No, but we need to sell micro-transactions, so shut up! The characters and setting aren't apart of a real, living universe, they are puppets and dolls to be paraded around, like keys jangled in front of an infant, so that WOTC can extract more and evermore money from your wallet.
When I first heard about the “nagas to snakes” and then the “viashino to lizards” announcements, I agreed with it for mechanical reasons. My stance was “flavor-wise they are leonin but they aren’t always leonin.” Like on Ixilan, they’re known as the malamet. It wasn’t until you brought up Mark’s previous posts on the subject, as well as the examples of minotaurs and centaurs, that I started to think about it more and I really appreciate that. Keep up the content!
Well thank you very much. I hope it's clear that I'm no expert, and am really happy to be proven wrong. These are just my thoughts and... for lack of a better term "hot takes" haha
I think it's for the same reason that GW employees aren't allowed to say "roll a d6". Some corporate, very smart person decided that it might confuse new players. "They don't know what a Naga/Viashino/d6 is. This will make them hate our game!!!"
I honestly think it's not even that. I think it's the logic of "People love commander, and that's easier to design around if we have fewer creature types". Short sighted I suspect
@@RedBobcatGames The beauty of commander to me was the sacrifices needed to make niche themes/tribes work, for a "long" time Depala was the best Dwarf commander and her actual theme is very different
I personally think that the issue could be addressed by having special types that separate the animals from their humanoid versions while still making them share a type mechanically. Like, for example "cat-folk", or things along that template, would count as a cat but also as a "humanoid" (or however wizards wants to call it). Using Leonin and Viashino is almost like using "Chinese" to refer to Asian people, it's a gross oversimplification at best. But using Cat-folk or something less specific doesn't run into those issues while also adding a new axis to distinguish those creatures (humanoid/non-humanoid) that doesn't take up too much text for the creature's subtypes
I remember feeling a lot of dread when Hasbro bought WotC. A lot of us worried that the company that relied on selling reskins of Clue and Monoploy would have trouble with a game as complex and culturally varied as Magic. As time goes on, I feel more and more justified in those fears, as the game has slowly lost a lot of the features and quirks that made it successful.
What I find to be the weirdest part of this is that Wizard's argument essentially comes down to consolidating creature types for the sake of tribal, however they also add in the same set an opossum with the creature type possum. Which not only is scientific misinformation, they justify it as "its in a US inspired set so we will use the incorrect term some people in the US sometimes use"(not the actual quote), if they really were consolidating creature types they would have just given the opossum the creature type marsupial as giving every marsupial it's own creature type doesn't make any sense. It may seem silly but it does showcase just how blatant the hypocrisy is, this was literally in the same set. Having viashino and lizards at the same time is not a problem, one is sapient and the other is not that is enough of a distinction, but you can't have marsupials and opposums without it feeling really weird, it would be like having bird and pigeon. Mtg has 1 silver border kangaroo, 1 black border wombat and 1 silver border wombat, consolidate now not after you printed a bunch of cards that need an errata.
Personally, Thunder Junction seems like it was once again made to cader to the commander crowd. And as a commander only player, even I can see how much it's hurting Magic as a whole. A bunch of legendary creatures for the sake of legendary creatures isn't fun or engaging. The COOLEST legendary in the entire set, the main "antagonist" guy Akul, does not get his time to shine. In story or in card design. His card effect is fun, but it doesn't really fit his role as a leader of a gang of bandits. I feel like Gordan Ramsay asking "WHERE IS THE FLAVOR?!" Anyways, something something, feeding the TH-cam algorithm.
The biggest sin of thunder junction is that it's designed to cater to the commander crowd, but as a commander only player I don't actually feel catered to because this isn't the side of commander I'm interested in. I like thematically interesting characters and unique, intriguing, wacky and memorable mechanics. TJ is neither of those things, TJ is card draw in cowboy hats. There isn't a single commander in it that I care about.
@@RedBobcatGames As a commander player myself, I was only interested in a couple cards of TJ. I bought those cards, then I put them in my Omnath, Locus of Mana commander deck. WotC made no money off my purchase because I'm more interested in a card they introduced 15 years ago (holy shit its been 15 years!) because that card's design is interesting and flavorful and TJ is not.
I'm with you on the creature type issue. If they wanted to errata creatures so that Nagas and Snakes could work together mechanically, they already have precedent for how to do it. When they changed Goblin King and Lord of Atlantis from Lords to their respective tribes, they also changed the rules text to say "Other Goblins" and "Other Merfolk" so they wouldn't suddenly include themselves. They could just as easily errata the Kamigawa Snakes into Nagas and have their rules text refer to Snakes and/or Nagas collectively instead of turning all Nagas into Snakes for the sake of mechanic synergy. BTW, they did Phyrexian wrong. Phyrexian should have become a supertype applied to all kinds of permanents and spells, not a creature type. I don't expect MtG/WotC/Hasbro to suddenly start getting this kind of thing right when they've been getting it wrong for over a decade now.
@@RedBobcatGames More like Legendary. Elesh Norn should be a Legendary Phyrexian Creature - Praetor. Phyrexian Altar should be a Phyrexian Artifact (And Thran Dynamo should be a Thran Artifact). Praetor's Grasp should be a Phyrexian Sorcery.
Yeah, that's what Tribal is. Check out "All Is Dust" and "Not of This World" as example. I do love those cards and always thought it was a great concept they should have done more with
@@RedBobcatGames I don't want to pick a fight, but Tribal is/was a type, not a supertype. Supertypes include things like World Enchantments, Legendary everything, Basic lands, and Snow permanents. All is Dust has two types, Tribal and Sorcery, and one subtype, Eldrazi. So on the one hand, they could have errataed Phyrexian Altar as you're saying to be a Tribal Artifact - Phyrexian, but I'd have preferred if they made it a supertype instead, Phyrexian Artifact. Under that system, Phyrexian would be a supertype, not a second primary type.
Oh I see where you're coming from. I'm not sure I see the benefit of the difference though. Why make it a supertype instead of just using the established Tribal? Oh, and hey. Don't ever sweat starting a fight on here. This is just a card game and I love sharing my opinions on it, most of which I accept will be wrong haha. I'm fully prepared to be corrected basically at all times. Hope you don't mind me questioning your preference for it being a supertype, I'm just not sure I'd see why one over the other
It's been bad omens from MTG for years, the end can't be all that far off now. The lore implications of Thunder Junction are insignificant in comparison to the mechanical implication though. 47 legendary creatures in ~375 cards, and 24 of them spend significant portions of their power budgets either drawing cards or making mana in some way, with many just saying "when you use X mechanic, draw a card". I don't normally have a problem with commanderfication of sets, but this is absurd, and it has warped the set around it. There is no theme here, the way you're supposed to build a deck is by choosing a commander and then putting in all the colour-matching cards of that commander's assigned mechanic so that the commander can give you more resources. The major omen for me here is WOTC increasingly leaning into designing commanders that fix the big shortcoming of the commander format, that being that the normal play experience for commander involves having a lot of draw and ramp and a lot of casual players don't really enjoy putting those cards in their decks. This means more commanders that are just value snowballers in the hands of more experienced players instead of offering a unique twist on a theme, and therefore commander decks ending up more similar to each other because when your commander is only Generating Value, you need to make sure you have worthwhile cards to draw into and spend the mana on, and the worthwhile cards themselves have little reason to be related to whatever theme the commander is using as an excuse to generate value. I want splashy commanders that change something about how I play the game, not commanders that just speed up the deck I'm playing by writing "then draw a card" or "then make a treasure" onto some of my deck. Oh and I *really* enjoy the irony of "Nagas are now snakes because they're basically the same thing" being in the same post as "we're getting rid of the words totem and tribal because they're culturally insensitive", although I do actually prefer the creature type unification of animals with the animal-human hybrid races. I think it's just more mechanically interesting. I don't extend that to the mythical creatures though, because they're not just races - and if Naga is "snake" now, then Gorgon should be too, and Merfolk should be Fish and Kor should be Human or Elf or something.
I didn't even think about Gorgon. OR the break down of what cards are actually in the set. You've made some VERY good points I wish I'd have included. God, this set is all over the place
@@RedBobcatGames Yep, all over the place is one way to describe it. And what really sucks is that it wouldn't have been that hard for it not to be. If they had leaned into the idea that this was a "Commander Legends: Villain Edition" set, it could have been great. They could have had more aesthetic diversity and explored the commander design better knowing that it was going to be primarily played limited, and then they'd have had to put more thought into how the set was built around those commanders. As it stands though, it looks like every deck is going to use a mishmash of outlaws, plots, mounts, mercenaries, and crimes, because all mechanics are in all colours and there's nothing stopping you doing that anyway - a lot of things target, most creatures are outlaws and anything can ride a mount (including other mounts). And while doing these things, sometimes you'll draw a card.
My biggest question is: are these individual characters really more interesting than exploring and entire plane? I remember when I was reading the stories for Innistrad (the set when Nahiri was doing eldrazi stuff; I don't know), and in between the various short stories Jace was investigating with Tamiyo. Quite frankly, the Jace chapters were the least interesting parts of the anthology. I loved the short form horror of Avacyn going insane, werewolves, and that anthology cemented my love for the Gitrog Monster. But Jace was just...doing stuff? No atmosphere, no suspense, nothing. I feel like that's only gotten worse..
No, I totally get what you were saying. And I agree. I LOVED those stories (I'm a massive Innistrad fan) but the Jace stuff was always the least interesting. They just had to include him because every narrative needs to be about known characters apparently. And I think you're right, it is getting worse. Which is such a shame because the Omenpaths gave us a chance to get away from that type of story device
@@RedBobcatGamesExactly. I loved in your video how you mentioned that something that coukd be happening is literally gods from different planes trying to spread their religions. That could be AWESOME. On a different note, something I noticed with the most recent Ixalan storyline was how nothing had much time to develop. There I'm comparing to back when Magic had actual full length novels, which I found a few months ago and read. It was fascinating to read, for example, the entire series of events of Yawgmoth taking over the main government on Dominaria and founding Phyrexia, and also to read about Urza and Mishra's conflict the entire way through. The "episodes" just don't have enough meat on their bones for me. Sorry if this was long-again, I normally don't comment.
@@RedBobcatGames 2 set blocks is the happy medium where we could see a world long enough to care about it. But not evem that would save us from the "1 PRODUCT LAUNCH EVERY MONTH" schedule they have. Because imagine we had followed the trails of clues thru this years release schedule to uncover in The horror set the lair of the murderer that's been attacking thru the omenpaths. But every other month there's an interruption to our attention via Universes Beyond, MH3, and whatever Wotc throws at the printers. We lose track of the storyline more than my PW decks when the table gets bumped. The problem here ain't the block model but the cadence of release stressing the currently undermanned staff. Maro is involved in all 10 releases, artists are in a about half each, if notnmore via concept arts, designers are planning next 3 years in advance all of the designs, and with every year getting more saturated, either Wotc absorbs other hasbro departments to supply man power, or we crash like the titanic under it's own weight.
The reason Mark Rosewater is inconsistent with what he says is because he's a marketing mouthpiece; his job is to say whatever his employers think will sell more product, and that can change on a dime.
The "multiverse is flat" is so nonsensical, not only is surprising that he shouldn't know what is a multiverse, even if he knew, what is the sense in it being flat, round, or looking like a donut?
@@mymarshlands Yes, but there's no reason for them to exist in the multiverse of MTG. We don't come to the game for its biting political commentary, or its jokes about real-world issues.
@@doylerudolph7965 Also, some worlds in the multiverse are LITERALLY flat, so not only does this joke fail, but it's also actively insulting to fans of the story. I LIKE that some planes have different physical laws. I wanted to see a flat world and all its problems and wonders... and we are never going to see that now, because WotC doesn't take its own stories seriously anymore.
The story is dead, the game is dead, only the product remains. Paraphrasing Bolvar, Ugin's line to Jace at War of the Spark could have been: "Tell them that Nicol Bolas is dead, and Magic died with him"...
@@RedBobcatGames I made a prediction a few years ago, that Magic had until 2030 before it is discontinued. I believe that they are just trying to milk the cow for as much money as possible before it has nothing more to give and they scrap it.
i see alot of people saying it was made to service EDH, but it really doesnt feel like it. Like getting an oliva card with the 3 best colors for vampire tribal, and building her around treasures.
I'm still annoyed Olivia didn't get these colours in Crimson Vow. She couldn't even have her own wedding ring or bridal gown in a deck she was heading. Madness
Last time I watched a video of yours I was in the hospital, but this time I'm at home! (Still recovering, but at least I'm not stuck in a hospital room connected to a machine!)
I think the Naga->Snake and Viashino->Lizard are consequences of "commanderification," in that Tribal is popular in the format and is one of the easier (lazier) ways to design cards. You necessarily want to avoid redundancy so that the various synergy cards affect a greater suite of creatures, even if this ultimately diminishes flavor. I quite agree - Leonin should be their own type, as should the Aven. Of course, one could argue that Avens and Leonin are early precedent in the opposite direction. So far as the story goes, it smacks of "design by committee," which is an odd thing in an era whereby we're likely to see more hasbro-wizards layoffs because the interest rate isn't returning anytime soon to that historic 0%, and stones still do not bleed. So much of Magic's issues with consistency and being a vapid downstream bog of uninspired tropes could genuinely be solved by handing one or two people (with actual writing chops) creative control. Why, they wouldn't even need to run the risk of outsourcing story writing leading to contradictions and scenarios like the War of the Spark thing!
@bartoffer After this was written and recorded Maro released a statment that said something akin to the set's theme was meant to be "villains" but marketing push "look at all these cowboys" instead, leading to a slightly confused release. Very strange times
@JuniperHatesTwitterlikeHandles And yeah, you're right. I'm not sure why they've made that change, but I suspect it's for sensitivity reasons. I wish it had occured to me before writing this and I would have changed it I suspect. I realise habbit isn't an excuse, just something we need to get used too.
@@RedBobcatGames Yeah, I feel like he's lately been playing quite a lot of nonsensical damage control. I think a lot of people got annoyed about "it's X, but in a cowboy hat!" and suddenly there was a scramble to excuse it as something other than lazy pandering memberberries. The mechanics themselves don't feel particularly "villainous," even if they actually are fun in draft. I suppose it hearkens back to an earlier point we agree on - if this was a three-set block, these ideas could've properly germinated into something coherent.
That's a really cogent and well put together statement on the creature type changes and I applaud you for standing so strong and firm in your beliefs on it and you are absolutely correct.
Well thank you very much. I was, and still somewhat am genuinely worried that I've come across as offensive in some way. It can be a delicate subject and I'm concerned I didn't handle it with enough care OR that i would be accused for insincerity for clout or click baiting or something. Thank you for your comment, it means a lot to know that people seemingly understand my intention. Thank you
@@RedBobcatGames Just finished watching the whole video, just as an addendum, i don't think WotC is trying to label everyone whos "different" as animals (akin to the label of people of color as monkeys, apes and other racist slurs etc, which is what i think you're refering to). I do think however, if anything, WotC is going too far off in the other direction. Almost as if they are ashamed of their 90s high fantasy roots and what it entails. Having original, distinct creature types tied to your setting isn't something you have to apologize for and try to errata it away just to be more palatable. People in the western hemisphere are allowed to have a culture too. Now everything has to blend together because they fear they aren't inclusive enough otherwise
Oh yeah, I suspect you're right. My point was more about how it looks from a certain perspective. Not so much how it actually is. If I'm being honest I believe the choice was purely for gameplay and no other reason. Still not a great look though and makes me uncomfortable
Note I'd asking the following not because they reflect my own views or that they are right, but to intentionally make Wizards uncomfortable and have to answer for their actions: I almost want to ask Mark Rosewater when they are planning on errating centaurs to horses, minotaurs to ox, humans to ape, and orc to mongolians.
So like Hearthstone is a funny World of Warcraft interpretation with comedic or creative changes, MTG is now a funny interpretation with comedic or creative changes of... something. Also i would like humans to be erratad to apes, it would be funny, call them monkeys even.
Weirdly, if that's the way every other race is going then yeah. I think they should do that. Why do humans get to be special while every other sentient race is just an animal? Weird. On the otherhand, I REALLY hope they don't do this because people would use it as an opportunity to be awful to each other. And that's no fun
Rakdos joining the crew made me mad, "eyyy we got all these humanoid reasonable people... And an 8ft tall amalgamation of rage and death... But he has a new hat!"
I cannot remembe for the life of me what video I was making, but I cut this whole section comparing the size of Rakdos in his different card depictions. Sometimes he's 8ft tall, sometimes he's a big as a building. It's mad
I had a weird feeling while watching the previews and seeing where the story was headed and you managed to express that feeling into words, I totally agree with you even though after playing the set I have to admit it is pretty fun to play limited but I don't know how much that reflects on the quality after it being extremely clear that all the random characters that make an appearance are from the scrapped aftermath boosters
I'm yet to play the set. Hoping to get to it soon. Out of curiosity, were you referring to any particular point I made that you said expressed that weird feeling you had? I also had a weird feeling when I first saw previews, and my gut instinct was over the art direction for the set. Everything else came later with research and reading the story
The Naga thing *really* annoys me. Rosewater's very quick to tear that guy apart (Around 12:40), basically saying that WotC is being respectful & inclusive to the SEA community and how dare the asker be so Eurocentric (Which is the word you're looking for Mark, not "Western Hemisphere") but like, WotC has never been respectful with their use of Naga. Hell, WotC has consistently struggled to be respectful with the use of any non-European mythology even when dealing with a plane centered around that mythology, typically sticking to inaccurate versions that would be familiar to Western audiences rather than the cultures they claim they're respecting. Like Amonkhet's sphinxes being blue-aligned Greek sphinxes associated with riddles, prophecy, and knowledge rather than proper Egyptian sphinxes which are metaphysical spiritual guardians (Which should have, imo, been white-aligned not blue and functioned as the plane's angel-equivalent). I can't help but laugh when Rosewater says "Naga is a very resonant and popular mythological creature", because what he's really referring to is the Western *idea* of what a Naga is not what Nagas actually are in their originating mythologies. Mythological Nagas are divine/semi-divine entities and their appearance varies a lot depending on the culture, from half-human half-snake to many headed serpents. If MTG was actually trying to be respectful, Nagas would be presented on a similar level as angels, demons, archons, and other entities given a similar level of prestige and respect--instead they're treated as random joes with 9-5 jobs. Nagas in MTG are literally just a renamed version DND's Yuan-Ti (Which are already problematic in and of themselves, WotC has historically loved to exploit SEA cultures especially to make something seem exotic or mystical--see the implementation of Rakshasas in MTG/DND or the use of names like Chandra and Jaya). He says Nagas shouldn't be reduced to the level of base animals, but instead they were stripped of any sacredness and respect they should have had and reduced to the level of a mundane humanoid race like humans/elves/dwarves/etc. You're not using "tropes from around the world" Mark, you're using a pop culture interpretation of foreign cultures that will appeal to a Western audience and trying to pass it off as accurate and respectful to its origin. Like trying to pass off Taco Bell as authentic Mexican. Nagas in MTG should've always had the snake creature type because all they ever were was anthropomorphic snakes, calling them Nagas was only ever a shallow attempt to pretend WotC was being more respectful in their worldbuilding.
what really concerned me was they had lorwyn, something that seemed to respect Irish/British fairy mythologies, then they made Eldraine. If I remember right, Rosewater even mentioned that nobody cared about the accurate stuff, they wanted the pop culture version, so we'll probably never go back to Lorwyn because... it was too much work? i dunno
@gatesofnocturne3700 I actually do think we're going back to Lorwyn soon, and I am really worried about it. But that aside, I loved reading every word of what you wrote @davidmaxwell4696 . I know I'm not as informed on subjects such as these as I'd like to be. It's why I always try to make a point of saying that "Hey, I'm no expert. I fully accept I may be wrong and am willing to be corrected." You taught me a lot just now, and it's a lot to think about. But it's nice to know I wasn't a million miles off in my initial understanding, and that other people think about these things like I do. WotC say they hire cultural experts for these sorts of things. Maybe that's why they've changed Naga to snake then? Because they're already so far off the mark? I'm unsure, but thank you for your excellent comment
The thing is, say with the whole thing is I agree. Disrespecting cultures like that is a shame. But I have a personal reason why nagas honestly should have been a snake. And it's not a tribal reason. It bloat. If the game gets a lot of these one block/set creature tipes. There is going to be so much bloat. For example, do I think something like orochi and nagas should share the same acreature type? No. But making an orochi a creature type is not the answer either. I think there should be a balance. Meybie has something like a dual creature type. Like snake naga. One type would describe what it is, while the other would describe like a sub creature type. Like phirexian wizard. I do apologise if it was not clear.
Honestly as a someone who is Indian and has grown up with the stories of naga and rakshasa's and the like I don't find these interpretations all that disrespectful. At least to me these just seem to be different interpretations of the mythological creatures in the same way how elves and angels aren't all that accurate to there own respective mythology. This who thing smells more like a bs corpo answer to a mechanical change being disguised as something else.
I mean, maybe. But even that's wild considering how many people must be passing through the plane. It would be like knowing the brother of some random person you bump into in an international airport. It's possible, but this story doesn't present it as a coincidence or rare occurence
Disclaimer: Numbers pulled out of my ass with a minimal amount of research but they seemed reasonable. If OTJ is sold to local stores at a price point of $70 and then retails for $90, enough OTJ to run 4 drafts of 8 people with 3 packs each is 96 packs. That's a minimum of 3 boxes of OTJ solely for drafting: ~$210 out of pocket for the stores with slim profit margins because the set is probably going to flop. Then they will have to pay for 4 MH3 commander decks I'll guess are going to be priced at about $60 for stores, upped to $70-80 for customers due to high demand. This totals to effectively paying $550 for 4 commander decks for LGS. In short, this is just increasing the price of MH3 with extra steps.
Oh yeah, for sure. And because it's the special collector commander decks I bet they'll be A LOT more money that that too. I mean, look at a Collector Box for like £200 - £400. A collector Commander deck I bet will be about the same price
Related to the later half of the video, Im really rubbed the wrong way by the removal of viashino (same with naga this is the recent iteration) seeing the creature type Viashino made me want to explore the story of them. I like getting little snippets THROUGH THE CARDS that pull me into the games lore. Mechanics are fun and we all love a good gimmick but Lizard Folk Rogue isnt gonna hit the same as Viashino Warrior ever
I personally I think the messages from mark before about not changing naga to the one now show a world of difference as if he doesn’t agree with the decision himself or he would rather not say more about it
I'm ok with Naga being redacted because it literally means snake in sanskrit. Naga was named Naga in riki-tiki-tavi because of that. I'm also kinda ok with ajani being a cat and Viashino being lizzards for mechanical reasons. It was one of the dnd sets that released a viashino trible comander that you can't actually use because their arnt a whole lot of viashino cards. And for cards like Ajani if you have him as lionen but cards that affect the cat archetype but it can't affect my big sleeper agint cat boy? They could do something like the outlaw mess, but thats a mess, you have to remember all the sub types that are outlaw while deckbuilding. I think fewer sub types the better mechanically speaking
Oh yeah, I 100% get why they've done it from a mechanic stand point. I just hope they've stopped to think about the weird narrative implications that go along with it. WotC do that sometimes, but you know what they say about roads that are paved with good intentions...
I'm not a cultural expert, or educated enough on the topic to be certain. This is more just my hot take I suppose so am happy to be corrected if I'm wrong. This is just my gut reaction when I look at choices like that, and... I dunno man. Those kind of changes have implications that make me uncomfortable
@13:30: This is my first time seeing Freestrider Commando and I have to ask, why is a horse person wearing spurs? Spurs are a tool used by a rider to direct a horses movement. What sort of mount is the _horse person_ riding that could possibly motivate them to wear _spurs_ on their _hooves_ ??
I understand the Rakshasa change the naga one seems like trying to do that with something that as far as I can tell no one was upset with. Honestly though if we had gotten a planeswalker guide that would of helped with a lot of the vorthos issues
Yeah, good point actually. Though, that would mean they'd have to have put more thought into it and I'm not sure they did. This all feels a bit slapped together
The creature type reversion is evidence that they have moved away from standard as their primary audience. Having tribals under more generic names means they are usuable longer or have more interest in eternal formats, while making them unique creature types was an intentional design choice in the past so people explicitly couldn't use them in those archetypes in eternals so they could be more bold with their design without fear of breaking something. More evidence that commander is killing the game.
Tribals have to have something unique to them in order to exist and continue to represent that trait in some permutation. Otherwise, I don't think they should.
I say go the other way with it and get really granular with the types. It will make deck building all the more interesting when you find things that work together at the very least
The commander WotC thinks people play, or the commander the players want to play? Because I hate this as a commander player. The niche subtypes were super fun to build around, give me more of those and actual support for them.
One other problem with the notion that the plain was uninhabited before the omen paths are the cactus people. They are already kind of coded as Native American, and are implied to have lived in Thunderjunktion for a while. But I guess because they don’t look human enough they aren’t people, so they don’t count.
Lmao as soon as I heard "uninhabited" I was like "ooooof that's super problematic" I thought it was an attempt to sidestep the historical baggage and they just fell on their face and "oops all colonial propoganda"'d but if they actually present a species native to the plane in cards.... that's... pushing the "do not attribute to malice what could be explained with stupidity" to it's absolute limit.
@@RedBobcatGamesaccording to the MTG wiki (not the best but the only place I could find anything) they are from Thunderjunktion but are a “young culture” what ever that means.
@@Tornakin-98 "yeah these guys _are_ native to this plane, but don't worry, they haven't even invented irrigation!" WotC is _this_ close to their next announcement just being "Surprise! We colonized this small nation and converted it to a magic the gathering theme park while enslaving it's native inhabitants!"
That's not what happened at all@JuniperHatesTwitterlikeHandles What happened? Is that their were plants But no sentient life yet And then the energy from the omen paths Did a bunch of magic stuff Do to thunder Junction being a crossroads of many omen Paths Making them gain sentience then. So yes, the cactuses were on that plane as normal cactuses before the omen Paths dumped a bunch of magic into this plane.
I think the viashino and naga changes are mainly for mechanical purposes. There aren't enough naga or viashino to support an entire tribe, thus they put them together with the snake and lizard respectively. I do think this could have been fixed in a different way especially because it takes away from the creative work so many people have put into both the creatures and the game in the past
Yeah, I can see all of that. I just think it's weird because they went out of their way to tell players they couldn't change Nagas to snakes for cultural sensativity reasons... and then did it anyway. Very odd
Holy shit i love your content. Ive had my own thoughts on the viashino lizard thing for a while now and it's just so nice to find a channel with a similar outlook. Keep up the good work!
There are so many sources linked in that description. I did actually do my homework on this one. Next week I talk about a Star Trek universes beyond as a little treat to myself haha
If human got changed to ape my only concern would be with how it would greatly affect all of the human tribal decks. I admit that this may put me in a minority, but I really genuinely don't care. Myr tribal was the first deck I ever built. If myr got errata'd to just construct or even phyrexian, it would just mean I would have more good options for deck building
Considering they moved the canonical center of the multiverse from Dominaria to Ravnica, so they don't have to try when it comes to story writing, none of the narrative shortcomings are remotely shocking. They don't want to write story, they want to play cardboard dress-up with characters from the multiverse without having to waste energy on plots and story arcs.
First video I ever see of you, but really impressed! You perfectly describe the weird vibe I have been getting in the last years, which might not solely based on me growing older
Well, welcome. Thank you, and I'm glad you enjoyed. But I hate to tell you this, I'm not exactly young anymore so maybe it's that we're both growing older haha.
i was really curious when you said in another video that you don't like the change from hound to dog as someone who 1. started playing with tarkir where there were some (humanoid) hounds 2. knows about the test card(?) about hounds changing name 3. made a custom card which is a dog lord (+1/+1) and seeing a lack a dog creatures on scryfall and now i know why, i agree with everything you said
They couldn't just make a cowboy set with no aftermath set heck i remember over a year before when we had little info I remember a wizard executive saying this set was a race across the multiverse so yeah very confusing
@@RedBobcatGames I believed it was but I could be wrong which just goes to show how poorly executed this set was and I liked some parts of the story (some like in your video the implications just boggle my mind)
I agree with all of your points. Perhaps making the Magic worlds into a Magic world will allow them to (unnecessarily) forcefully add other IPs into the Magic "world" via story telling instead of just cards. Gross. The Magic story really has not mattered since Eldritch Moon when all of the effort into telling an amazing story was just YEETed by the players when they smashed Emrakul and Liliana into the same deck instead of having a scenario where they both fought each other. It's a shame. ...at least we still have D&D...for now.
@@RedBobcatGames I stayed with it but the breaking point for me was Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything (That No One Asked For). The character creation rules in the 2014 PHB are just fine, and my current group has not once asked to play any race beyond that book. Unlike Magic we can still play with (big quotes here) “outdated” material. Fuckin’ Ha$bro.
I came into this with immense skepticism but then you nailed it with Viashino, my ABSOLUTE favorite creature type. Last legendary viashino was Kylox, who, in the story, was kidnapped and immediately stabbed to death for no reason. Seems pretty reflective of the card type.
Also I do love Viashino too and have a for awhile. Probably the biggest issues with Naga are the 4-armed snake folk from Kamigawa. I think they are kind of the deciding factor because IMO, if Naga is a race then those creatures should probably be more Naga than snake. Though I do think it... odd? how werewolves when they were first released had a lot of cards which specified "and wolf" on them. There is some logic that werewolves should probably be the types "human wolf" but regardless, I'm with you on wanting more consistency.
@@RedBobcatGames it's one of those things I think comes down to gameplay vs flavor. Like there werewolves, you understand why they don't want to write out "viashino and lizards" on a bunch of cards. On the other hand, you do also understand wanting to expand deck options for tribal themes. Then when you get into these different planes and such, there's more confusion. Like should dragonkin folk be dragon type or viashino type? Should kobold be their own thing or folded into lizard or viashino? Or like you bring up, catfolk vs cat beasts. Heck I think you make a fair point, what if we just made humans, apes and monkeys "primate" types and let them all then work together? (let me give kird ape a butcher cleaver!) A lot of magic creature types seem to be geared towards messing with OCD types. Like why are demon, nightmare, and horror all different types? Undead and skeletons? OoTJ however may provide a possible solution. What do you think if they did more "batching"? Like "outlaw" references a bunch of types. What if instead of making viashinos into lizards, they started referencing "scalefolk"? Or nightmares, horrors and eldrazi became the "eldrich" batch? Stuff to think about.
Yeah, I think for me the line is between the intelligence of the creature. I don't think Lizards and Viashino should ever be grouped because they're just not the same. Unless it's a supergroup of every single type of Reptile
There are a lot of relevant problems you bring up, and I'm not sure how to tackle them. Thunder Junction has a high power level and what looks to be a fun limited format, so it's probably going to be popular, which only makes the other problems worse because WotC won't face punishment for it. I share your concerns, because if we can't hold them accountable and they take the wrong lessons away from a successful set, the problems could snowball.
As I understand it, I think the general vibe is that peopel aren't keen on the set? And after the flop of Karlov Manor they may learn a lesson? Fingers crossed
All I can think to make the worldbuilding make sense is that there was a miscommunication about how long it's been since the last set's story. Either that, or there was miscommunication about what Thunder Junction was like before the story. There's a lot off more that irks me from what you're presenting though, so I'm thrown off as this is the set I'm coming back to.
I think 90% of my issues from the narrative could literally be traced back to "The plane was uninhabited". Just don't do that, and I'd have mostly been okay with it I think. I wouldn't have liked it, but been okay
I haven't had anyone else to talk about this with, but Thunder Junction feels like an Unset to me. All the cowboy hats getting slapped onto pre-existing characters, all the references to outside material... It feels like it was meant to be a silver border set, but because WotC decided they wouldn't do silver border sets anymore, the team had to scramble to make it an actual legal set. It feels like a mishandling of the magic IP, and I seriously hope that a lot of this gets undone later on, but I'm not optimistic.
I agree. A "Space Beleren" style card wouldn't feel out of place here if it were cowboy themed. If they'd have just said "Hey, this is the 100th set and we're getting *wild* with it. Pun intended" I'd have been on board
@@RedBobcatGames yet again proving that doing away with silver border cards was a mistake. Heck, even if **part** of the set was silver border, case in point being the "Named characters but with cowboy hats", with the rest of the set being standard and eternal legal, I'd still be more interested in it than I am now! Now there's an idea; Use the guest slot for silver border cards rather than reprints... And just print the needed reprints into standard, or into sets like modern horizons!
@@RedBobcatGames which is a tragedy at the end of the day. Who knows, maybe one day Hasbro will go bankrupt and someone who actually cares about art and fun stuff will end up in charge. Not likely I know, but a man can dream.
I think smugglers share makes sense on a flavor standpoint. The idea of interplanar travel being a reality for plenty of people is a new concept. And a trojan horse is a theros thing in cannon, so I feel like someone from there suggesting the idea in another plane makes sense. Personally I think it's a cool piece of world building that expands beyond putting a bunch of named characters in a plane.
Sure, I can see that. For me, it's a bit camp and I worry it further cements the idea that the distinct flavour of each plane is disappearing. As far as I understand the Akroan Horse was a one time thing for instance. I'm not sure people from Theros tend to solve their issues with a big wooden horse. So I guess my concern is that this might be evidence that because when you think Theros, you think Greek myth, then that's all those people are now in this current era of Magic. Just like Thunder Junction is the plane of Cowboy hats, Theros has become the plane of big wooden horses. In an interconnected multiverse then the only identity a plane has left is it's gimmick, boiled down to a caricature of it's former selves. Maybe next time we go to Lorwyn everyone can just put on a red hat like a garden gnome and be done, because paying shallow lip service to a plane's identity is WotC's new way of "world building". Theros is nothing more than Greek Myth, Amonket is nothing more than Mummies, Innistrad is nothing more than Vampires and Zendikarr is nothing more than the Eldrazi. Or maybe I'm just being grumpy. It's probably that last one to be fair haha
For me the creature type change is probably related to the release of bloomburrow where there will be tribal synergies. From a gameplay standpoint, I think it’s kinda cool that I can mix new and old cards that wouldn’t fit before together. I understand the goal isn’t to belittle these races/species of fantasy people, but a gameplay decision. That being said, just give nagas and viashinos interesting tribal synergies instead or give them the snake/lizard creature type in addition to the naga/viashino type. Might start to get wordy, but I prefer that second solution a lot more than deleting a subtype.
I agree. And I feel any decks would be themeatically more interesting in that situation too. Snakes and Viashino should't play the same, and decks around them shouldn't have the same mechanics. ONE OF THEM DOESN'T EVEN HAVE ARMS!
Thunder Junction does feel like a set with WOTC smashing all there action figures together. The main thing it reminds me of is the opening of Toy Story 3. I've enjoyed it for what it is but I think we have the potential for magic to become something lesser. Also on a following note, the choice to do a cowboy/western set and not do anything to examine the racist, classist routs of the genre and time period is very short sighted, oh how convenient that this entire plane was empty. Viashino being reduced to Lizard is one thing and then making there iconography very linked to that of Mexican bandits from early westerns is another
@@RedBobcatGames I'm a fan of westerns, done right they can be amazing films but Magic is taking the tropes and iconography without properly examining it. I like the set, gameplay wise its super good! I'm just disappointed that the level of cultural scrutiny was not put in like they did with the revisit to Kamigawa
... yeah, you make some convincing arguments, Mr. Bobcat. the Viashino thing does indeed make my skin crawl and your feelings on art are super valid. It also speaks volumes to the failures in world building that things I do think the writers have explanations for are something you perceive as plot holes rather than mysteries... Like, Gisa's befuddlement at Thunder Junction's dirth of dead on a supposedly vacant plane is meant to make the readers question, and I have a feeling that the presence of the coin empire's vault is meant to instill implications. WotC have to keep the line going up. we're just getting to the point where it's starting to come off the rails because we're laying track as fast as we can. I can only hope that Bloomburrow isn't as horribly muddled by... everything to do with Thunder Junction's muddled world, and that when we do finally go flying off the track into a ravine, that they haven't irreparably damaged the game to the point that passionate people can't pick up the pieces.
I really hope those old rumours of WotC breaking away from Hasbro to stand on their own come to pass. It would be great if they could just slow down a bit and put a bit more care into each release
I think the thing you might be missing here is that in order to be able to do Unanswered Questions, you absolutely need your audience to trust you. No one trusts WOTC's writing, so they don't think "ooh what's going on here?" they think "wow that's dumb"; and then when it's suggested to them that it may be setup for a future twist, they aren't willing to believe WOTC will adequately pay it off - and even if they do pay it off, it'll feel like dumb payoff, possibly even retcon, because the initial emotional reaction was still thinking it dumb.
I have a head cannon about why Thunder Junction, and to an extent Karlov manor and the upcoming bloomburrow seem to have narrative oddities. Karlov manor was "every one you know with a detective hat' followed by "every one you know with a cowboy hat' then "every one you know as an animal.' and I think the reason is that this is all a fever dream of Jace. Caused by an interaction with Ashiok Jace is simply hallucinating this all and thats why is all seems like an 80s TV show dream sequence or the ending of the Wizard of OZ movie
Oh man! Can you imagine? The fan base would riot if this were true! "Oh hey, the last few years of sets were all a dream, so forget about it because Jace is awake now" would anger SO MANY people! I'm actually sort of into the idea
Turning naga into snakes is a functional buff and the fact that they have a 'class' denotes that they are intelligent species but if you have a snake deck your Naga now work with them. You arent a snake shaman like Steve without the years spent leading your tribe, that's what separates Ajani from a simple savanna lion
So if a Leonin doesn't train enough to get a class then those ones are just basically lions? Is a Naga doesn't become a shaman it's no better than a snake? I'm not sure I agree if so
This was an interesting watch. I don’t plan to get anything from thunder junction except maybe some of those special basic lands. Changing viashino to lizards but not Minotaur’s to cows is just so out of the left field and weird. I personally don’t care as much but it’s going into the wrong direction. The direction being a grey slop of brand marketing. I’ll stick with the cards I have. I hope they change for the better in the future but if these last two sets are anything to go by it’s going to be powercrept, sloppy developed and tested and anything special being erased until there’s nothing of the original vision left.
I think all the feedback they need to not makes the same mistakes again has been received. Now it's just a matter of time to see if WotC right's the ship, and that will take years to get through sets that have already been developed. We do have some case examples of them making the desired changes. The cancellation of Thunder Junction's epilogue set being one of them.
@gunararayhanramadhan2304 If it's 100%, surely it's not the minority then? I'm messing of course, I understand what you're saying. And sure, there will be people that like the change. There were people asking for Naga to be snaked all the way back when as I showed in the video, so that's not new. I'm just not one of those people
I didn't even know about them consolidating creature types in this set until I watched this. And just today I was talking to a friend about how I liked the new creature types they added and how I wished they made more varmints so I could build a varmint tribal deck. It is awfully strange how they are making new types but deleting others
A western themed set where the plane is "uninhabited" is just....like I get that this megacorp wrote "Cowboy" on whiteboard and then put the rest of its effort into internal brand recognition and avoiding pissing anyone off, but if you're going to engage with the western genre you cannot avoid the cigar store indian at the front of the general store. America was from the Atlantic to the Pacific brimming with hundreds of cultures built over thousands of years made of people who could be just as noble and ignoble as anyone from the old world. In critical moments they aided the Europeans and in return they were villianized, infantilized, died from disease, exiled from their homes, and killed in textbook definition genocides through conquest and starvations. Its like an exorcism of ancestor spirits, "the land was free to take, there was never anyone here to mourn".
Yeah for real. These woke idiots have completely surface level understanding of the cultures they claim to love so much and so you get all ancient Amerindian culture jumbled into ixalan or in this planes case, only a few scant references.
Not that it's a good excuse, but any representation of Native Americans in this set would probably come off as cultural appropriation to at least a handful of individuals, and that type of controversy could hurt some stupid bottom line potentially. Therefore, seems like there's little reason to poke the lion's den.
@elsanto2401 It makes me wonder if the "The land was uninhabited" angle was a last minute addition. They said they hired cultural sensitivity experts. Maybe that's why the change was made? It might explains why we haven't gotten a planeswalker guide for Thunder Junction
@Max-nt5zs I hear the word "Woke" used so much, and maybe it's meaning is clear in the states, but I've never heard a consistent definition for it. From context by your useage, are you saying people who like other cultures are woke? Or are you saying that offensivly conflating two cultures into one without bothering to understand either is woke? I took a break after MoM for a bit because that set sort of broke my brain, so didn't really look to closely at Ixalan. Was that set full of harmful stereotypes?
5:00 so it's been more than a year since the omenpaths opened. there may be other problems with the story... I didn't bother reading it, but the story from Lost Caverns of Ixalan let us know that they've time skipped ahead a couple years. but I do take issue with no lasting consequences for people who were compleated, and Vraska has been one that has me particularly salty. Her enitre lower half was replaced with the form of a mechanical snake, but here on Thunder Junction, we see that she somehow has organic legs again. And it wasn't just her, but we saw that with Nahiri too who had her entire arms replaced by swords only to have organic hands again in Aftermath The viashino and naga thing is upsetting to me too but for a different reason. You bring up all the "cats" and every feline in magic from common housecats to lions to panthers to leopards are all "cats" making cat tribal have a large wealth of creatures to pull from. But every variety of canid (wolves, jackyls, etc) are all distinct. If they're going to make all felines into "cats" they should do the same to all canids.
Very good points. I'm still upset about the Hounds into Dogs thing, but I hadn't even considered Wolves. I suppose that's because in my mind it's right that they're seperate. Should be the same with cats, you're very correct
I don't think it is a bad thing to include creatures or creature types from other recent sets into a new set because it allows for expansions of those tribal decks in the meta. I know wit might suck for the story and the blending of the world building but I have always cared more about the evolving game play then the lore.
I have no issue with that at all. I just wish if they were going to print Lizards then they should actually be Lizards. Removal of card types just sucks imo for many reasons. I find it a feel bad
Man, there's so much going wrong with this set that I had to read your comment twice before I remembered the video opened on a section about holding back Modern Horizons 3. Damn
Great video! The set was well received from a game perspective, but I think people have just given up on good story telling. "Who cares anymore, I got my crazed adorable Loot to play with!" It's just WotC selling thinly veiled cardboard crack at this point
Yeah, but I think that's such a shame if true. And short sighted from WotC's in my opinion. I suspect I'll be steadfast, trying to hold the line in remembering the old ways
@@RedBobcatGames Oops, should've said thinly veiled, but swipe typing has been dumbed down. Either way, WotC is very short sighted right now, focused on profit margins seemingly more now than ever before. The game is so fun that many of us will hold the line for as long as we can, but I fear if they don't learn soon, things will continue to decline and get worse
Shame to see the Viashino go. Always thought they were cool, and poor scaly lads and forgive me if I'm wrong, got no cards other than draft chaff. Also, why did they print like at least 3 viashino in Karlov Manor if they were planning on ditching the type. Surely do it then.
Im actually not too miffed about geralf knowing about the multiverse. Theres been two or three multiplanar catastrophies on innistrad alone. What does get me is just the loss of potential by having every single legendary character interacting at once. Think about the recent Ixalan set, its very much a story helped along by the interactions of a handful of non-ixalan characters interacting with an existing conflict on the plane. You can feel the uniqueness of the plane while also getting unique problems only characters with a different perspective, like quintotius, would be able to solve.
Fair point about Geralf, but I'm still not convinced. Our world has gone through a lot of strife recently, but I wouldn't expect my dentist to be an expert on global warming for instance
@RedBobcatGames true. I think the "legendary" and named status of characters does a lot of heavy lifting in my assertion. However I work in customer service and talk to a lot of people and tend to find their interests wide ranging and strangely deep. Also not helped by the fact that "I" am a diner cook that knows a lot about global warming. Something that skews my outlook on this. But this also brings up another good point you made in the video about how much "implication" is doing work for the story rather than being explicit. It's part of what pains me about the writing of some magic stories. Some sentences can suck me in with interesting implications, but im also kept away because ive been burned waiting for resolution before.
I think that's WotC's MO though. A bit like the writers for "Mystery Box" stories like Lost. Ask a bunch of questions, state a bunch of weird stuff, maybe pick it up and answer it later if anyone cares, don't worry if it doesn't make sense. I'm really not a fan of that type of narrative and I don't mind doing SOME of the heavy lifting in terms of understanding the plot, but there's a line and we crossed it back during March of the Machine for me
Good points! I like imagining Tamiyo (before she died) traveling to each major character in the multiverse, jotting down their story, then providing them with a massive lore-dump-scroll of everything she knows about the multiverse before jetting off to the next place. Who knew that kindly loremaster was so busy? 🤦♂️ Maybe it will make sense later 😂
I think part of what helps distinguish sentient animal races from nonsentient ones is that the sentient races have a class or occupation creature type in addition to their species type. Laughing Jasper Flint isn't just a lizard, he's a lizard rogue; Sidisi isn't just a naga (or a snake now, I suppose) she's a naga/snake shaman. While the homogenization of sentient races into their animal counterparts is a very sensitive subject, I think it's partly assuaged by the fact that the sentient ones are clearly separated by virtue of having a class. Brimaz, King of Oreskos and Charmed Stray are both cats, but Brimaz has the capacity to be a soldier, to be a king. It's not the most tasteful solution, but with typal/kindred synergies being a popular play style, it's not all bad.
I think it's weird that they already solved this issue on Innistrad. So many cards say things like "Other Wolves and Werewolves get X" that I don't know why they don't just do that again. Outside of wanting to cram more and more text on a card of course, but that's another thing I'm not a fan of
Hey, lets petition to errata human subtype to primate and errata Monkey and Ape to Primate as well. and consider all spells targeting human, ape, monkey - shall be referred to primate. Now that's gonna be funny
I mean weirdly, if that's how they're going to treat all of the cards then I'd be on board. But, on the otherhand it would be an excuse for people to be terrible to one another and that sucks. I don't want that, so I still feel the best solution is to make a point of keeping the fantasy species as they are, and IF we're going to errata anything, go back and make all the Leonin actually have that type (for instance)
@@RedBobcatGames You also forgot that Hounds got errata'd to dogs. Wonder if Jackals are still Jackals. And Tarkir has Ainok that were named as Hound subtype.
Oh why thank you very much! I do a wide mix of things on the channel, the algorithm doesn't seem to know what to do with me at times haha, but I hope you enjoy
OTJ didnt really get a chance from corporate from what it looks like. I honestly think the MAIN set if fine from a mechanical perspective and could have been a really good draft format if it weren't for 3 bonus sheets of cards too powerful for this limited format and play booster dumping bombs on people that determine your draft archetypes for you. there's even good snippets of lore like the jace epilogue in this set that COULD have been built into something better than the sum of its parts, but was left to rot because this set is in the spin cycle of corporate misuse
while I must admit I had fun in pre-release and the Commander deck, yeah, there's some serious red flags on this set. I hope bloomburrow gets better. P.S I do feel the missed potantil of Thunder Jucntion. I hope this messy set sell good enough to warrant another trip to the plane... Please bring block sets back!
I really like some of the flavor of this set, the Eversaloon is goofy and I love it. A wandering Temporal rest stop for cowboys? Amazing I know Akul isn't "native" to the plane but I love scorpion dragon guy that's really cool. The cactus folk are super cute too I wish to see more of them
@@RedBobcatGames At this point, 3 set blocks would be suicide for WOTC because 3 set blocks depend upon solid worldbuilding and mechanical design. Imagine if Thunder Junction was just set 1 and we knew we were getting two more sets of this. How dreadful would that be? The saving grace recently has been that when WOTC releases a stupid set, you at least know we'll soon be moving on.
There is a degree of arbitrarity in creature types. Even staying within the realm of (non-talking) animals, it always felt strange to me that Wolves, Hounds/Dogs, Foxes, and now even Coyotes get their own separate tribe, whereas lions, tigers, lynxes, and regular house cats are all just "Cats".
Something that's been standing out to me in recent years thanks to hindsight, which Thunder Junction is kind of the epitome of, is the decline of the originality of planes for... a really long time. The magic (hah) of discovering worlds completely alien to us such as Mirrodin, Ravnica or Lorwin has long since disappeared. I'd say the biggest starting point of it all is Scars of Mirrodin. And yes, Scars of Mirrodin was an awesome block, but... when you boil it down, it's just Mirrodin meets Phyrexia, two parts of Magic we've seen before. Then came Innistrad, which is just gothic horror Magic. Then another return to an old plane with Ravnica. And then Theros, aka Magic but add Greek myths. And I really liked all of those, even if it annoyed me that Jace became the new guildpact in the Ravnica story. But well... the problem is that this trend continued ever since. What new planes has there been that's not just "Take this culture or genre and run with it" since then? Kaladesh. And there's Ikoria and Arcavios which... they at least do go beyond the classic trappings of their genres a bit. Tarkir, too, is a bit more than just "mish-mash of middle-eastern cultures". So, if we're generous, 4 out of over 20 plane hops were new, original planes... And honestly, I don't think any of those work as well as the original planes shown between the two Mirrodin blocks in terms of ambiance. I love Tarkir, and Kaladesh and Arcavios I did find fun, but it doesn't hold a candle to the sense of wonder and bewilderment I felt when learning about Zendikar when it was first shown.
And yet, when it was first pitched Zendikar was considered a risk. I think you're right, which is a shame for Wizards really. With any luck, Bloomburrow will knock it out of the park and be a return to form... fingers crossed
I find it very very funny that it released right after Hearthstone had their own, very well received, wild west expansion. And not JUST that, a Hearthstone expansion where multiple well liked characters were brought back with a wild west twist too.
Also, a nitpick: Rakkish Crew's art is referencing the same scene from The Usual Suspects that New Capenna's Rogue's Gallery do. Are we really this short on references?
I'm holding out some slight hope for Bloomburrough. It at least seems to have a more clearly defined identity, if nothing else. We'll see. Love the Shakespeare bit.
I had to read this twice to remember what the Shakespeare bit was haha. I was like, "Did I say Shakespeare was on a card or something? Is he coming in the Assassin's Creed set?"
man i knew i hated this set for some reasons, some you listed, but its honestly so cathartic to have you lay out on the table what exactly is up as SOON as i saw Rakdos be a cowboy i was pissed. HE is a giant demon lord that lives for the party so hard he held Ravnica hostage and took a 10th of the power with it, he was MASSIVE enough to have Gideon ride atop his skull to strike Nicoal Bolas when Gideons Pegasus got shot down, he recognized the fact that he couldn't kill bolas on his own but the flavor text of that card being "and this is the only time a human will ride me" just sells Rakdos as a character. fuck even his card designs were janky but fun half board wipe half gamble corner...but now hes giving up all the perks of being not only a guild master but an OG one at that, being the only devil in his plane of existence and reaping all the benefits...to being a cowboy working with some twink, a tiny skeleton and a snake woman he was rivals with at one points, ON TOP of him being shrunk down and nerfed! Rakdos should be turning half of this new plane into a demonic carnival, not stomping trains for 30 gold peices and everything was clicking as you were going down the list of all the bullshit going on here and just...man, it fucking sucks and i hate how there's nothing feasible i can do to stop it. Theyre too big to boycott, whales will always shell out for the next set or the next competive edge...it feels hapless
Yup. And the set seems to be doing well as well. I don't enjoy it when the company fails, because that might result in more layoffs. But the stink around Epilogue Boosters killed them, and I'm glad. I had hope that two dumb theme sets in a row flopping would do the same but, maybe Thunder Junction will prove WotC right and next year we'll all be looking at well known characters dressed as construction workers or something
@@RedBobcatGames its just crazy that some of these set themes are something youre supposed to find on niche tumblr blogs or moderately famous Ao3 accounts but no, the fucking Slice of Life AU where Chandra opens up a cat cafe of every single legendary cat across the street from Compleated Tibalts Dog Hotel featuring every single legendary Dog is more likely to be canon than actual relevant plot no emrakrul, vivan being left out in the cold, not even proper foreshadowing for new vile forces
Here's my argument against making nagas snakes and viashino lizards: Wolves and werewolves. You have cards that work with wolves, cards that work with werewolves, and cards that work with both. This allows for different flavor and unique mechanics.
100%
The fact that the first new world since March of the Machines is also the first one in recent memories to *not* get a Planeswalkers Guide to help flesh out the world is incredibly infuriating to me. This is the sort of set where we very much needed that sort of world building article but nope. Little blurbs about a bunch of characters we already new and two new characters that have barely anything interesting to add to the world in their bios. As a Vorthos and also a fan of Weird Western as a genre, I want to love this set and this world but it's just so *devoid of substance*...
I think we didn't get a guide because they just didn't put that much thought into it outside of "hey cool hats"
A weird thing about Thunder Junction is that it's the 100th expansion and it just feels like any other. For a big milestone like that I would've expected a big splashy return to the OG Dominaria, but instead we got a set with some of the clumsiest worldbuilding ever due to the usual soulless corpo incompetence.
Oh man, I didn't even consider that. Yeah, this should have been a celebration. Instead...
Nah, we've seen what they've done with Magic 30th... please don't let them celebrate ANYTHING else.
@Goldy01 I laughed hard enough at this to choke haha
they've never done anything for the big milestone set numbers, so it not being a celebration didn't bother me
To add flame to the fire, they made VARMINT a creature type. Naga had to die so varmints could be in the game.
Because of course, varmints are more important than Viashino
Oh yeah, of course! Can't wait for Nashi to be given the "Varmint" creature type
@@RedBobcatGames Oh gods, I hope not... I love Nashi and actually look forward to more content involving them, but if they take away Nezumi from his cards, it takes away a big detail of their heritage and who they are as originating from Kamigawa.
They are actually making them lizards to increase their importance by adding typal synergies, still. They could have done it better from an optics standpoint.
Varmint, on the other hand, it's probably just a single use type that will rarely be ever used again. Just a gimmick.
@@_Ve_98 the funniest thing is we also have pests as a type
They are even in the same colors
The creature races original to mtg are one of the more interesting parts of the worldbuilding and pillar of its originality and distinction from other fantasy settings, retconning them into disappearing from the cards is just a terrible omen.
Preach! I mean, what are Eldrazi and Phyrexians if not just Horrors?
I find it really strange how *the* most popular TCG in the world is actively trying to lose its own identity.
Fortnite-ification
It feels a symptom of Commander becoming the dominant format.
There was no problem with having Viashino when you only had to care about their synergies in Standard.
Now, when looking across every set ever, there's more pressure to make Leonin into Cats because Cats are an archetype and Leonin aren't.
Pressure to make the cards fit a broader archetype flattens their unique identity but makes them bigger value pieces for more players.
It's lame.
@@RedBobcatGames come on, the phyrexians are artifact creature horrors :)
This whole set is just the "League-ification" of Magic's lore and setting. It feels like a skin pack in a video game. No rhyme, no reason, this beloved goth character is now dressed like a 1930s mobster. This fearsome cyborg is now in a clown suit. Does it make any sense? No, but we need to sell micro-transactions, so shut up!
The characters and setting aren't apart of a real, living universe, they are puppets and dolls to be paraded around, like keys jangled in front of an infant, so that WOTC can extract more and evermore money from your wallet.
And in this world the only people happy are the shareholders. Everything else is in ruin
When I first heard about the “nagas to snakes” and then the “viashino to lizards” announcements, I agreed with it for mechanical reasons. My stance was “flavor-wise they are leonin but they aren’t always leonin.” Like on Ixilan, they’re known as the malamet.
It wasn’t until you brought up Mark’s previous posts on the subject, as well as the examples of minotaurs and centaurs, that I started to think about it more and I really appreciate that.
Keep up the content!
Well thank you very much. I hope it's clear that I'm no expert, and am really happy to be proven wrong. These are just my thoughts and... for lack of a better term "hot takes" haha
I think it's for the same reason that GW employees aren't allowed to say "roll a d6". Some corporate, very smart person decided that it might confuse new players. "They don't know what a Naga/Viashino/d6 is. This will make them hate our game!!!"
I honestly think it's not even that. I think it's the logic of "People love commander, and that's easier to design around if we have fewer creature types". Short sighted I suspect
@@RedBobcatGames The beauty of commander to me was the sacrifices needed to make niche themes/tribes work, for a "long" time Depala was the best Dwarf commander and her actual theme is very different
I personally think that the issue could be addressed by having special types that separate the animals from their humanoid versions while still making them share a type mechanically.
Like, for example "cat-folk", or things along that template, would count as a cat but also as a "humanoid" (or however wizards wants to call it).
Using Leonin and Viashino is almost like using "Chinese" to refer to Asian people, it's a gross oversimplification at best. But using Cat-folk or something less specific doesn't run into those issues while also adding a new axis to distinguish those creatures (humanoid/non-humanoid) that doesn't take up too much text for the creature's subtypes
I remember feeling a lot of dread when Hasbro bought WotC. A lot of us worried that the company that relied on selling reskins of Clue and Monoploy would have trouble with a game as complex and culturally varied as Magic. As time goes on, I feel more and more justified in those fears, as the game has slowly lost a lot of the features and quirks that made it successful.
Yeah. Hasbro don't know what they have. WotC is the only branch of that company that makes money, and they're killing it
What I find to be the weirdest part of this is that Wizard's argument essentially comes down to consolidating creature types for the sake of tribal, however they also add in the same set an opossum with the creature type possum. Which not only is scientific misinformation, they justify it as "its in a US inspired set so we will use the incorrect term some people in the US sometimes use"(not the actual quote), if they really were consolidating creature types they would have just given the opossum the creature type marsupial as giving every marsupial it's own creature type doesn't make any sense. It may seem silly but it does showcase just how blatant the hypocrisy is, this was literally in the same set.
Having viashino and lizards at the same time is not a problem, one is sapient and the other is not that is enough of a distinction, but you can't have marsupials and opposums without it feeling really weird, it would be like having bird and pigeon.
Mtg has 1 silver border kangaroo, 1 black border wombat and 1 silver border wombat, consolidate now not after you printed a bunch of cards that need an errata.
Preach! And don't forget the set has two "Varmints" too!
@@RedBobcatGames The hell is a varmint? (I'm from Eastern Europe)
@@casmiry Now, I am very much the wrong person to ask. But I believe it's just a way of saying "Vermin". So, like rats basically
@@casmiry A varmint is a little critter that happens to also be a nuisance. Squirrels, rats, gophers, and more.
Personally, Thunder Junction seems like it was once again made to cader to the commander crowd. And as a commander only player, even I can see how much it's hurting Magic as a whole.
A bunch of legendary creatures for the sake of legendary creatures isn't fun or engaging. The COOLEST legendary in the entire set, the main "antagonist" guy Akul, does not get his time to shine. In story or in card design.
His card effect is fun, but it doesn't really fit his role as a leader of a gang of bandits. I feel like Gordan Ramsay asking "WHERE IS THE FLAVOR?!"
Anyways, something something, feeding the TH-cam algorithm.
Haha thank you. And yeah, with you and Gordon Ramsay both
The biggest sin of thunder junction is that it's designed to cater to the commander crowd, but as a commander only player I don't actually feel catered to because this isn't the side of commander I'm interested in. I like thematically interesting characters and unique, intriguing, wacky and memorable mechanics. TJ is neither of those things, TJ is card draw in cowboy hats. There isn't a single commander in it that I care about.
"Card draw in cowboy hats" is such a good phrase. That was very fun to say out loud!
@@RedBobcatGames As a commander player myself, I was only interested in a couple cards of TJ. I bought those cards, then I put them in my Omnath, Locus of Mana commander deck. WotC made no money off my purchase because I'm more interested in a card they introduced 15 years ago (holy shit its been 15 years!) because that card's design is interesting and flavorful and TJ is not.
I'm with you on the creature type issue. If they wanted to errata creatures so that Nagas and Snakes could work together mechanically, they already have precedent for how to do it. When they changed Goblin King and Lord of Atlantis from Lords to their respective tribes, they also changed the rules text to say "Other Goblins" and "Other Merfolk" so they wouldn't suddenly include themselves. They could just as easily errata the Kamigawa Snakes into Nagas and have their rules text refer to Snakes and/or Nagas collectively instead of turning all Nagas into Snakes for the sake of mechanic synergy.
BTW, they did Phyrexian wrong. Phyrexian should have become a supertype applied to all kinds of permanents and spells, not a creature type.
I don't expect MtG/WotC/Hasbro to suddenly start getting this kind of thing right when they've been getting it wrong for over a decade now.
Oh, like Tribal cards? How some Spells are actually Eldrazi themselves for instance. Yeah, that's a great idea! They should have totally done that!
@@RedBobcatGames More like Legendary. Elesh Norn should be a Legendary Phyrexian Creature - Praetor. Phyrexian Altar should be a Phyrexian Artifact (And Thran Dynamo should be a Thran Artifact). Praetor's Grasp should be a Phyrexian Sorcery.
Yeah, that's what Tribal is. Check out "All Is Dust" and "Not of This World" as example. I do love those cards and always thought it was a great concept they should have done more with
@@RedBobcatGames I don't want to pick a fight, but Tribal is/was a type, not a supertype. Supertypes include things like World Enchantments, Legendary everything, Basic lands, and Snow permanents. All is Dust has two types, Tribal and Sorcery, and one subtype, Eldrazi. So on the one hand, they could have errataed Phyrexian Altar as you're saying to be a Tribal Artifact - Phyrexian, but I'd have preferred if they made it a supertype instead, Phyrexian Artifact. Under that system, Phyrexian would be a supertype, not a second primary type.
Oh I see where you're coming from. I'm not sure I see the benefit of the difference though. Why make it a supertype instead of just using the established Tribal? Oh, and hey. Don't ever sweat starting a fight on here. This is just a card game and I love sharing my opinions on it, most of which I accept will be wrong haha. I'm fully prepared to be corrected basically at all times. Hope you don't mind me questioning your preference for it being a supertype, I'm just not sure I'd see why one over the other
It is quite telling that they took the idea "High-magic weird west setting" and made it incredibly lame.
Yeah, and also had to bring in a bunch of outside characters just to sell it? Like it wasn't enough on its own?
It's been bad omens from MTG for years, the end can't be all that far off now. The lore implications of Thunder Junction are insignificant in comparison to the mechanical implication though. 47 legendary creatures in ~375 cards, and 24 of them spend significant portions of their power budgets either drawing cards or making mana in some way, with many just saying "when you use X mechanic, draw a card". I don't normally have a problem with commanderfication of sets, but this is absurd, and it has warped the set around it. There is no theme here, the way you're supposed to build a deck is by choosing a commander and then putting in all the colour-matching cards of that commander's assigned mechanic so that the commander can give you more resources.
The major omen for me here is WOTC increasingly leaning into designing commanders that fix the big shortcoming of the commander format, that being that the normal play experience for commander involves having a lot of draw and ramp and a lot of casual players don't really enjoy putting those cards in their decks. This means more commanders that are just value snowballers in the hands of more experienced players instead of offering a unique twist on a theme, and therefore commander decks ending up more similar to each other because when your commander is only Generating Value, you need to make sure you have worthwhile cards to draw into and spend the mana on, and the worthwhile cards themselves have little reason to be related to whatever theme the commander is using as an excuse to generate value. I want splashy commanders that change something about how I play the game, not commanders that just speed up the deck I'm playing by writing "then draw a card" or "then make a treasure" onto some of my deck.
Oh and I *really* enjoy the irony of "Nagas are now snakes because they're basically the same thing" being in the same post as "we're getting rid of the words totem and tribal because they're culturally insensitive", although I do actually prefer the creature type unification of animals with the animal-human hybrid races. I think it's just more mechanically interesting. I don't extend that to the mythical creatures though, because they're not just races - and if Naga is "snake" now, then Gorgon should be too, and Merfolk should be Fish and Kor should be Human or Elf or something.
I didn't even think about Gorgon. OR the break down of what cards are actually in the set. You've made some VERY good points I wish I'd have included. God, this set is all over the place
@@RedBobcatGames Yep, all over the place is one way to describe it. And what really sucks is that it wouldn't have been that hard for it not to be. If they had leaned into the idea that this was a "Commander Legends: Villain Edition" set, it could have been great. They could have had more aesthetic diversity and explored the commander design better knowing that it was going to be primarily played limited, and then they'd have had to put more thought into how the set was built around those commanders.
As it stands though, it looks like every deck is going to use a mishmash of outlaws, plots, mounts, mercenaries, and crimes, because all mechanics are in all colours and there's nothing stopping you doing that anyway - a lot of things target, most creatures are outlaws and anything can ride a mount (including other mounts). And while doing these things, sometimes you'll draw a card.
Every set is a commander set now apparently
My biggest question is: are these individual characters really more interesting than exploring and entire plane? I remember when I was reading the stories for Innistrad (the set when Nahiri was doing eldrazi stuff; I don't know), and in between the various short stories Jace was investigating with Tamiyo.
Quite frankly, the Jace chapters were the least interesting parts of the anthology. I loved the short form horror of Avacyn going insane, werewolves, and that anthology cemented my love for the Gitrog Monster.
But Jace was just...doing stuff? No atmosphere, no suspense, nothing. I feel like that's only gotten worse..
I dif a terrible job explaining myself. 😅 Sorry, I don't normally comment.
No, I totally get what you were saying. And I agree. I LOVED those stories (I'm a massive Innistrad fan) but the Jace stuff was always the least interesting. They just had to include him because every narrative needs to be about known characters apparently. And I think you're right, it is getting worse. Which is such a shame because the Omenpaths gave us a chance to get away from that type of story device
@@RedBobcatGamesExactly. I loved in your video how you mentioned that something that coukd be happening is literally gods from different planes trying to spread their religions. That could be AWESOME.
On a different note, something I noticed with the most recent Ixalan storyline was how nothing had much time to develop. There I'm comparing to back when Magic had actual full length novels, which I found a few months ago and read. It was fascinating to read, for example, the entire series of events of Yawgmoth taking over the main government on Dominaria and founding Phyrexia, and also to read about Urza and Mishra's conflict the entire way through.
The "episodes" just don't have enough meat on their bones for me.
Sorry if this was long-again, I normally don't comment.
It's okay, I don't mind. And yeah, I miss the full actual books we used to get. Just makes me wish we'd go back to 3 set blocks
@@RedBobcatGames 2 set blocks is the happy medium where we could see a world long enough to care about it. But not evem that would save us from the "1 PRODUCT LAUNCH EVERY MONTH" schedule they have. Because imagine we had followed the trails of clues thru this years release schedule to uncover in The horror set the lair of the murderer that's been attacking thru the omenpaths. But every other month there's an interruption to our attention via Universes Beyond, MH3, and whatever Wotc throws at the printers. We lose track of the storyline more than my PW decks when the table gets bumped. The problem here ain't the block model but the cadence of release stressing the currently undermanned staff. Maro is involved in all 10 releases, artists are in a about half each, if notnmore via concept arts, designers are planning next 3 years in advance all of the designs, and with every year getting more saturated, either Wotc absorbs other hasbro departments to supply man power, or we crash like the titanic under it's own weight.
Maybe Gisa is a really common Name in this dimension.
Also now i want all humans to get the ape creature type.
Oh yeah, now you mention it when I was at school there was about 14 Gisa Cecani's. Very common name
The reason Mark Rosewater is inconsistent with what he says is because he's a marketing mouthpiece; his job is to say whatever his employers think will sell more product, and that can change on a dime.
Apparently so. Which is a real shame
Coming 2025: War of the Spark 2 - Indistinct Homogenous Soup Boogaloo
Every creature is legendary, IN STANDARD!
It’s a long-play move to vomit out their own GameStop Fortnite Funko Pop culture clearance shelf.
Hillarious!!!
The "multiverse is flat" is so nonsensical, not only is surprising that he shouldn't know what is a multiverse, even if he knew, what is the sense in it being flat, round, or looking like a donut?
And again, HE'S A STITCHER! It's like going to your dentist and asking them about quantum mechanics
I can think of several good reasons why the multiverse should be a donut! 😋
it's just a joke abt flat-earthers
@@mymarshlands Yes, but there's no reason for them to exist in the multiverse of MTG. We don't come to the game for its biting political commentary, or its jokes about real-world issues.
@@doylerudolph7965 Also, some worlds in the multiverse are LITERALLY flat, so not only does this joke fail, but it's also actively insulting to fans of the story. I LIKE that some planes have different physical laws. I wanted to see a flat world and all its problems and wonders... and we are never going to see that now, because WotC doesn't take its own stories seriously anymore.
The story is dead, the game is dead, only the product remains. Paraphrasing Bolvar, Ugin's line to Jace at War of the Spark could have been: "Tell them that Nicol Bolas is dead, and Magic died with him"...
Awwwwwww. This is heart breaking
@@RedBobcatGames I made a prediction a few years ago, that Magic had until 2030 before it is discontinued. I believe that they are just trying to milk the cow for as much money as possible before it has nothing more to give and they scrap it.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were more layoffs this christmas
@@RedBobcatGames It's quite possible. Hasbro isn't doing well outside of Magic.
Oh cool! What great news! I bet the shareholders will be thrilled. I know who I'll be swearing at in a video again this holiday season then!
i see alot of people saying it was made to service EDH, but it really doesnt feel like it. Like getting an oliva card with the 3 best colors for vampire tribal, and building her around treasures.
I'm still annoyed Olivia didn't get these colours in Crimson Vow. She couldn't even have her own wedding ring or bridal gown in a deck she was heading. Madness
Last time I watched a video of yours I was in the hospital, but this time I'm at home! (Still recovering, but at least I'm not stuck in a hospital room connected to a machine!)
feel for ya, whatever happened its just life...stay strong
I agree with @Otacon2099 I hope you're doing better, and thank you for watching. I also hope it's entertained at the very least
@@RedBobcatGames yippie i got noticed twice
Slush art with cowboy hats
Somehow worse than slush art with detetive hats
I think the Naga->Snake and Viashino->Lizard are consequences of "commanderification," in that Tribal is popular in the format and is one of the easier (lazier) ways to design cards. You necessarily want to avoid redundancy so that the various synergy cards affect a greater suite of creatures, even if this ultimately diminishes flavor. I quite agree - Leonin should be their own type, as should the Aven. Of course, one could argue that Avens and Leonin are early precedent in the opposite direction.
So far as the story goes, it smacks of "design by committee," which is an odd thing in an era whereby we're likely to see more hasbro-wizards layoffs because the interest rate isn't returning anytime soon to that historic 0%, and stones still do not bleed. So much of Magic's issues with consistency and being a vapid downstream bog of uninspired tropes could genuinely be solved by handing one or two people (with actual writing chops) creative control. Why, they wouldn't even need to run the risk of outsourcing story writing leading to contradictions and scenarios like the War of the Spark thing!
_* k i n d r e d_
@bartoffer After this was written and recorded Maro released a statment that said something akin to the set's theme was meant to be "villains" but marketing push "look at all these cowboys" instead, leading to a slightly confused release. Very strange times
@JuniperHatesTwitterlikeHandles And yeah, you're right. I'm not sure why they've made that change, but I suspect it's for sensitivity reasons. I wish it had occured to me before writing this and I would have changed it I suspect. I realise habbit isn't an excuse, just something we need to get used too.
@@JuniperHatesTwitterlikeHandles Are you being legitimate there? I can't really tell.
@@RedBobcatGames Yeah, I feel like he's lately been playing quite a lot of nonsensical damage control. I think a lot of people got annoyed about "it's X, but in a cowboy hat!" and suddenly there was a scramble to excuse it as something other than lazy pandering memberberries. The mechanics themselves don't feel particularly "villainous," even if they actually are fun in draft.
I suppose it hearkens back to an earlier point we agree on - if this was a three-set block, these ideas could've properly germinated into something coherent.
That's a really cogent and well put together statement on the creature type changes and I applaud you for standing so strong and firm in your beliefs on it and you are absolutely correct.
Well thank you very much. I was, and still somewhat am genuinely worried that I've come across as offensive in some way. It can be a delicate subject and I'm concerned I didn't handle it with enough care OR that i would be accused for insincerity for clout or click baiting or something. Thank you for your comment, it means a lot to know that people seemingly understand my intention. Thank you
8:29 perfectly describes my main issue with this set and also Karlov manor. Well done
Thank you. I just hope I'm not still complaining about this in future sets
@@RedBobcatGames Just finished watching the whole video, just as an addendum, i don't think WotC is trying to label everyone whos "different" as animals (akin to the label of people of color as monkeys, apes and other racist slurs etc, which is what i think you're refering to).
I do think however, if anything, WotC is going too far off in the other direction. Almost as if they are ashamed of their 90s high fantasy roots and what it entails. Having original, distinct creature types tied to your setting isn't something you have to apologize for and try to errata it away just to be more palatable. People in the western hemisphere are allowed to have a culture too. Now everything has to blend together because they fear they aren't inclusive enough otherwise
Oh yeah, I suspect you're right. My point was more about how it looks from a certain perspective. Not so much how it actually is. If I'm being honest I believe the choice was purely for gameplay and no other reason. Still not a great look though and makes me uncomfortable
Note I'd asking the following not because they reflect my own views or that they are right, but to intentionally make Wizards uncomfortable and have to answer for their actions:
I almost want to ask Mark Rosewater when they are planning on errating centaurs to horses, minotaurs to ox, humans to ape, and orc to mongolians.
It's weird. Even Mark Rosewater himself said on his blog it's weird if Naga are snakes are the same. Yet they do it anyway? Baffling
So like Hearthstone is a funny World of Warcraft interpretation with comedic or creative changes, MTG is now a funny interpretation with comedic or creative changes of... something.
Also i would like humans to be erratad to apes, it would be funny, call them monkeys even.
Weirdly, if that's the way every other race is going then yeah. I think they should do that. Why do humans get to be special while every other sentient race is just an animal? Weird. On the otherhand, I REALLY hope they don't do this because people would use it as an opportunity to be awful to each other. And that's no fun
Rakdos joining the crew made me mad, "eyyy we got all these humanoid reasonable people... And an 8ft tall amalgamation of rage and death... But he has a new hat!"
I cannot remembe for the life of me what video I was making, but I cut this whole section comparing the size of Rakdos in his different card depictions. Sometimes he's 8ft tall, sometimes he's a big as a building. It's mad
I had a weird feeling while watching the previews and seeing where the story was headed and you managed to express that feeling into words, I totally agree with you even though after playing the set I have to admit it is pretty fun to play limited but I don't know how much that reflects on the quality after it being extremely clear that all the random characters that make an appearance are from the scrapped aftermath boosters
I'm yet to play the set. Hoping to get to it soon. Out of curiosity, were you referring to any particular point I made that you said expressed that weird feeling you had? I also had a weird feeling when I first saw previews, and my gut instinct was over the art direction for the set. Everything else came later with research and reading the story
The Naga thing *really* annoys me. Rosewater's very quick to tear that guy apart (Around 12:40), basically saying that WotC is being respectful & inclusive to the SEA community and how dare the asker be so Eurocentric (Which is the word you're looking for Mark, not "Western Hemisphere") but like, WotC has never been respectful with their use of Naga. Hell, WotC has consistently struggled to be respectful with the use of any non-European mythology even when dealing with a plane centered around that mythology, typically sticking to inaccurate versions that would be familiar to Western audiences rather than the cultures they claim they're respecting. Like Amonkhet's sphinxes being blue-aligned Greek sphinxes associated with riddles, prophecy, and knowledge rather than proper Egyptian sphinxes which are metaphysical spiritual guardians (Which should have, imo, been white-aligned not blue and functioned as the plane's angel-equivalent).
I can't help but laugh when Rosewater says "Naga is a very resonant and popular mythological creature", because what he's really referring to is the Western *idea* of what a Naga is not what Nagas actually are in their originating mythologies. Mythological Nagas are divine/semi-divine entities and their appearance varies a lot depending on the culture, from half-human half-snake to many headed serpents. If MTG was actually trying to be respectful, Nagas would be presented on a similar level as angels, demons, archons, and other entities given a similar level of prestige and respect--instead they're treated as random joes with 9-5 jobs. Nagas in MTG are literally just a renamed version DND's Yuan-Ti (Which are already problematic in and of themselves, WotC has historically loved to exploit SEA cultures especially to make something seem exotic or mystical--see the implementation of Rakshasas in MTG/DND or the use of names like Chandra and Jaya).
He says Nagas shouldn't be reduced to the level of base animals, but instead they were stripped of any sacredness and respect they should have had and reduced to the level of a mundane humanoid race like humans/elves/dwarves/etc. You're not using "tropes from around the world" Mark, you're using a pop culture interpretation of foreign cultures that will appeal to a Western audience and trying to pass it off as accurate and respectful to its origin. Like trying to pass off Taco Bell as authentic Mexican. Nagas in MTG should've always had the snake creature type because all they ever were was anthropomorphic snakes, calling them Nagas was only ever a shallow attempt to pretend WotC was being more respectful in their worldbuilding.
what really concerned me was they had lorwyn, something that seemed to respect Irish/British fairy mythologies, then they made Eldraine. If I remember right, Rosewater even mentioned that nobody cared about the accurate stuff, they wanted the pop culture version, so we'll probably never go back to Lorwyn because... it was too much work? i dunno
@gatesofnocturne3700 I actually do think we're going back to Lorwyn soon, and I am really worried about it. But that aside, I loved reading every word of what you wrote @davidmaxwell4696 . I know I'm not as informed on subjects such as these as I'd like to be. It's why I always try to make a point of saying that "Hey, I'm no expert. I fully accept I may be wrong and am willing to be corrected." You taught me a lot just now, and it's a lot to think about. But it's nice to know I wasn't a million miles off in my initial understanding, and that other people think about these things like I do. WotC say they hire cultural experts for these sorts of things. Maybe that's why they've changed Naga to snake then? Because they're already so far off the mark? I'm unsure, but thank you for your excellent comment
The thing is, say with the whole thing is I agree. Disrespecting cultures like that is a shame. But I have a personal reason why nagas honestly should have been a snake. And it's not a tribal reason. It bloat. If the game gets a lot of these one block/set creature tipes. There is going to be so much bloat. For example, do I think something like orochi and nagas should share the same acreature type? No. But making an orochi a creature type is not the answer either. I think there should be a balance. Meybie has something like a dual creature type. Like snake naga. One type would describe what it is, while the other would describe like a sub creature type. Like phirexian wizard. I do apologise if it was not clear.
Honestly as a someone who is Indian and has grown up with the stories of naga and rakshasa's and the like I don't find these interpretations all that disrespectful.
At least to me these just seem to be different interpretations of the mythological creatures in the same way how elves and angels aren't all that accurate to there own respective mythology.
This who thing smells more like a bs corpo answer to a mechanical change being disguised as something else.
6:55 - I think they were talking about the last name Cecani, as in they might have come across Geralf before her?
I mean, maybe. But even that's wild considering how many people must be passing through the plane. It would be like knowing the brother of some random person you bump into in an international airport. It's possible, but this story doesn't present it as a coincidence or rare occurence
Disclaimer: Numbers pulled out of my ass with a minimal amount of research but they seemed reasonable.
If OTJ is sold to local stores at a price point of $70 and then retails for $90, enough OTJ to run 4 drafts of 8 people with 3 packs each is 96 packs. That's a minimum of 3 boxes of OTJ solely for drafting: ~$210 out of pocket for the stores with slim profit margins because the set is probably going to flop. Then they will have to pay for 4 MH3 commander decks I'll guess are going to be priced at about $60 for stores, upped to $70-80 for customers due to high demand. This totals to effectively paying $550 for 4 commander decks for LGS.
In short, this is just increasing the price of MH3 with extra steps.
Oh yeah, for sure. And because it's the special collector commander decks I bet they'll be A LOT more money that that too. I mean, look at a Collector Box for like £200 - £400. A collector Commander deck I bet will be about the same price
sadly OTJ play booster boxes are sold to stores closer to $110
Related to the later half of the video, Im really rubbed the wrong way by the removal of viashino (same with naga this is the recent iteration) seeing the creature type Viashino made me want to explore the story of them. I like getting little snippets THROUGH THE CARDS that pull me into the games lore. Mechanics are fun and we all love a good gimmick but Lizard Folk Rogue isnt gonna hit the same as Viashino Warrior ever
No. Another reason I'm not a fan of the change
I personally I think the messages from mark before about not changing naga to the one now show a world of difference as if he doesn’t agree with the decision himself or he would rather not say more about it
Yeah. I think he knows he's on the hook for defending the choices before but now being the one to announce the change. It's very strange
I'm ok with Naga being redacted because it literally means snake in sanskrit. Naga was named Naga in riki-tiki-tavi because of that. I'm also kinda ok with ajani being a cat and Viashino being lizzards for mechanical reasons. It was one of the dnd sets that released a viashino trible comander that you can't actually use because their arnt a whole lot of viashino cards. And for cards like Ajani if you have him as lionen but cards that affect the cat archetype but it can't affect my big sleeper agint cat boy? They could do something like the outlaw mess, but thats a mess, you have to remember all the sub types that are outlaw while deckbuilding. I think fewer sub types the better mechanically speaking
Oh yeah, I 100% get why they've done it from a mechanic stand point. I just hope they've stopped to think about the weird narrative implications that go along with it. WotC do that sometimes, but you know what they say about roads that are paved with good intentions...
The Naga / Snake argument was very interesting, I would have never considered it.
I'm not a cultural expert, or educated enough on the topic to be certain. This is more just my hot take I suppose so am happy to be corrected if I'm wrong. This is just my gut reaction when I look at choices like that, and... I dunno man. Those kind of changes have implications that make me uncomfortable
@13:30: This is my first time seeing Freestrider Commando and I have to ask, why is a horse person wearing spurs? Spurs are a tool used by a rider to direct a horses movement. What sort of mount is the _horse person_ riding that could possibly motivate them to wear _spurs_ on their _hooves_ ??
Hey HEY! That's not a Horse Person. That's a Centaur! And for some reason, it's important to keep the creature types seperate. For those ones at least
I understand the Rakshasa change the naga one seems like trying to do that with something that as far as I can tell no one was upset with.
Honestly though if we had gotten a planeswalker guide that would of helped with a lot of the vorthos issues
Yeah, good point actually. Though, that would mean they'd have to have put more thought into it and I'm not sure they did. This all feels a bit slapped together
The creature type reversion is evidence that they have moved away from standard as their primary audience. Having tribals under more generic names means they are usuable longer or have more interest in eternal formats, while making them unique creature types was an intentional design choice in the past so people explicitly couldn't use them in those archetypes in eternals so they could be more bold with their design without fear of breaking something.
More evidence that commander is killing the game.
This set was 100% Commander bait and that gut feeling was true.
Tribals have to have something unique to them in order to exist and continue to represent that trait in some permutation. Otherwise, I don't think they should.
I say go the other way with it and get really granular with the types. It will make deck building all the more interesting when you find things that work together at the very least
The commander WotC thinks people play, or the commander the players want to play? Because I hate this as a commander player. The niche subtypes were super fun to build around, give me more of those and actual support for them.
Yeah, I'm the same. I love the weird old cards no one expects
One other problem with the notion that the plain was uninhabited before the omen paths are the cactus people.
They are already kind of coded as Native American, and are implied to have lived in Thunderjunktion for a while.
But I guess because they don’t look human enough they aren’t people, so they don’t count.
Lmao as soon as I heard "uninhabited" I was like "ooooof that's super problematic" I thought it was an attempt to sidestep the historical baggage and they just fell on their face and "oops all colonial propoganda"'d but if they actually present a species native to the plane in cards.... that's... pushing the "do not attribute to malice what could be explained with stupidity" to it's absolute limit.
You know what, this is a very good point. I can't remember, do they confirm in the story that the Cactus-kin are native? Because if so... oof
@@RedBobcatGamesaccording to the MTG wiki (not the best but the only place I could find anything) they are from Thunderjunktion but are a “young culture” what ever that means.
@@Tornakin-98 "yeah these guys _are_ native to this plane, but don't worry, they haven't even invented irrigation!" WotC is _this_ close to their next announcement just being "Surprise! We colonized this small nation and converted it to a magic the gathering theme park while enslaving it's native inhabitants!"
That's not what happened at all@JuniperHatesTwitterlikeHandles What happened? Is that their were plants But no sentient life yet And then the energy from the omen paths Did a bunch of magic stuff Do to thunder Junction being a crossroads of many omen Paths Making them gain sentience then. So yes, the cactuses were on that plane as normal cactuses before the omen Paths dumped a bunch of magic into this plane.
I think the viashino and naga changes are mainly for mechanical purposes. There aren't enough naga or viashino to support an entire tribe, thus they put them together with the snake and lizard respectively. I do think this could have been fixed in a different way especially because it takes away from the creative work so many people have put into both the creatures and the game in the past
Yeah, I can see all of that. I just think it's weird because they went out of their way to tell players they couldn't change Nagas to snakes for cultural sensativity reasons... and then did it anyway. Very odd
Holy shit i love your content. Ive had my own thoughts on the viashino lizard thing for a while now and it's just so nice to find a channel with a similar outlook. Keep up the good work!
Why thank you very much!
This is so incredibly in depth and well researched. Massive respect. Also very good points… very interesting!
There are so many sources linked in that description. I did actually do my homework on this one. Next week I talk about a Star Trek universes beyond as a little treat to myself haha
I cannot look at the lore of this set without getting a massive headache.
For me it's my heart that hurts. I look at all these characters in dusters and cowboy hats and wonder what are they even doing?
@@RedBobcatGames I think Maldhound inadvertently explained the set with Kevin.
th-cam.com/users/shortsadc8EYMuf60
Awesome
If human got changed to ape my only concern would be with how it would greatly affect all of the human tribal decks. I admit that this may put me in a minority, but I really genuinely don't care. Myr tribal was the first deck I ever built. If myr got errata'd to just construct or even phyrexian, it would just mean I would have more good options for deck building
Yeah, that's fair. Like I said in the video, even back when Naga were first introduced a large portion of the player base wanted them to be snakes
Considering they moved the canonical center of the multiverse from Dominaria to Ravnica, so they don't have to try when it comes to story writing, none of the narrative shortcomings are remotely shocking. They don't want to write story, they want to play cardboard dress-up with characters from the multiverse without having to waste energy on plots and story arcs.
I think you're right. I just hate it
@RedBobcatGames friend, you are not the only one. I've been in this on and off since The Dark.
First video I ever see of you, but really impressed! You perfectly describe the weird vibe I have been getting in the last years, which might not solely based on me growing older
Well, welcome. Thank you, and I'm glad you enjoyed. But I hate to tell you this, I'm not exactly young anymore so maybe it's that we're both growing older haha.
One of my friends joked that with all the creature type errata going on, Vampires may as well be renamed to Human Bats.
i was really curious when you said in another video that you don't like the change from hound to dog as someone who 1. started playing with tarkir where there were some (humanoid) hounds 2. knows about the test card(?) about hounds changing name 3. made a custom card which is a dog lord (+1/+1) and seeing a lack a dog creatures on scryfall
and now i know why, i agree with everything you said
Haha, thank you. Glad to be of service
Dang, I think this is the first video of yours that I've agreed with literally every point.
Oh that's dangerous. That way leads to madness
They couldn't just make a cowboy set with no aftermath set heck i remember over a year before when we had little info I remember a wizard executive saying this set was a race across the multiverse so yeah very confusing
Oh, I thought that set was still coming. I assumed it would be about cars or something. Is Thunder Junction the set he talked about?
@@RedBobcatGames I believed it was but I could be wrong which just goes to show how poorly executed this set was and I liked some parts of the story (some like in your video the implications just boggle my mind)
Hmmm a 1/2 for R as a legendary creature? Have you considered you might need ward 2?
I'd like to imagine I came in like Armageddon and destroyed all lands. That's sort of my vibe haha
@@RedBobcatGames we might need a few more mana for that haha, but fair nonetheless
The red bobcat card needs like gain +1 power if you are cynical or something. It's way worse then yoshimaru a 10 year old card.
"The Red Bobcat gains indestructible for as long as you can maintain a nonsensical rant"
@@RedBobcatGames And maybe it gains bobcat creature type untill rosewater decides its cat agian.
I’m waiting for the crowdfunding for limited edition Red Bobcat cards
@@RedBobcatGamesgoes infinite with Droning Bureaucrats
@@RedBobcatGames I will make this a real card if I can give it to you via Po Box
To paraphrase Monty Python: "I warned you! I warned you! But did you listen? No, it's just a wee little omen path."
"A deck can have any number of cards named Spam"
I agree with all of your points. Perhaps making the Magic worlds into a Magic world will allow them to (unnecessarily) forcefully add other IPs into the Magic "world" via story telling instead of just cards. Gross.
The Magic story really has not mattered since Eldritch Moon when all of the effort into telling an amazing story was just YEETed by the players when they smashed Emrakul and Liliana into the same deck instead of having a scenario where they both fought each other. It's a shame.
...at least we still have D&D...for now.
Yeah, I've bailed on D&D sadly after the OGL scandal. WotC are really going downhill lately
@@RedBobcatGames I stayed with it but the breaking point for me was Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything (That No One Asked For). The character creation rules in the 2014 PHB are just fine, and my current group has not once asked to play any race beyond that book.
Unlike Magic we can still play with (big quotes here) “outdated” material.
Fuckin’ Ha$bro.
I moved over to Pathfinder, which is amazing because they post all the rules for free online. Love it!
I came into this with immense skepticism but then you nailed it with Viashino, my ABSOLUTE favorite creature type. Last legendary viashino was Kylox, who, in the story, was kidnapped and immediately stabbed to death for no reason. Seems pretty reflective of the card type.
Haha, I mean. Yeah when you say it like that I have to agree! Ouch
Also I do love Viashino too and have a for awhile. Probably the biggest issues with Naga are the 4-armed snake folk from Kamigawa. I think they are kind of the deciding factor because IMO, if Naga is a race then those creatures should probably be more Naga than snake.
Though I do think it... odd? how werewolves when they were first released had a lot of cards which specified "and wolf" on them. There is some logic that werewolves should probably be the types "human wolf" but regardless, I'm with you on wanting more consistency.
Yeah, one way or the other. This middle ground has some... implications that make me uncomfortable
@@RedBobcatGames it's one of those things I think comes down to gameplay vs flavor.
Like there werewolves, you understand why they don't want to write out "viashino and lizards" on a bunch of cards. On the other hand, you do also understand wanting to expand deck options for tribal themes.
Then when you get into these different planes and such, there's more confusion. Like should dragonkin folk be dragon type or viashino type? Should kobold be their own thing or folded into lizard or viashino? Or like you bring up, catfolk vs cat beasts. Heck I think you make a fair point, what if we just made humans, apes and monkeys "primate" types and let them all then work together? (let me give kird ape a butcher cleaver!)
A lot of magic creature types seem to be geared towards messing with OCD types. Like why are demon, nightmare, and horror all different types? Undead and skeletons?
OoTJ however may provide a possible solution. What do you think if they did more "batching"? Like "outlaw" references a bunch of types. What if instead of making viashinos into lizards, they started referencing "scalefolk"? Or nightmares, horrors and eldrazi became the "eldrich" batch? Stuff to think about.
Yeah, I think for me the line is between the intelligence of the creature. I don't think Lizards and Viashino should ever be grouped because they're just not the same. Unless it's a supergroup of every single type of Reptile
@@RedBobcatGames oh here's a quandry: horse, unicorn, pegasus. Should they remain separated or be unified?
If we're following the logic WotC seem to be following, then they'll all be grouped as a type of dog
There are a lot of relevant problems you bring up, and I'm not sure how to tackle them. Thunder Junction has a high power level and what looks to be a fun limited format, so it's probably going to be popular, which only makes the other problems worse because WotC won't face punishment for it. I share your concerns, because if we can't hold them accountable and they take the wrong lessons away from a successful set, the problems could snowball.
As I understand it, I think the general vibe is that peopel aren't keen on the set? And after the flop of Karlov Manor they may learn a lesson? Fingers crossed
All I can think to make the worldbuilding make sense is that there was a miscommunication about how long it's been since the last set's story. Either that, or there was miscommunication about what Thunder Junction was like before the story. There's a lot off more that irks me from what you're presenting though, so I'm thrown off as this is the set I'm coming back to.
I think 90% of my issues from the narrative could literally be traced back to "The plane was uninhabited". Just don't do that, and I'd have mostly been okay with it I think. I wouldn't have liked it, but been okay
I haven't had anyone else to talk about this with, but Thunder Junction feels like an Unset to me. All the cowboy hats getting slapped onto pre-existing characters, all the references to outside material... It feels like it was meant to be a silver border set, but because WotC decided they wouldn't do silver border sets anymore, the team had to scramble to make it an actual legal set.
It feels like a mishandling of the magic IP, and I seriously hope that a lot of this gets undone later on, but I'm not optimistic.
I agree. A "Space Beleren" style card wouldn't feel out of place here if it were cowboy themed. If they'd have just said "Hey, this is the 100th set and we're getting *wild* with it. Pun intended" I'd have been on board
@@RedBobcatGames yet again proving that doing away with silver border cards was a mistake. Heck, even if **part** of the set was silver border, case in point being the "Named characters but with cowboy hats", with the rest of the set being standard and eternal legal, I'd still be more interested in it than I am now!
Now there's an idea; Use the guest slot for silver border cards rather than reprints... And just print the needed reprints into standard, or into sets like modern horizons!
People don't buy silver bordered cards though, and that's what it's all about now. The money
@@RedBobcatGames which is a tragedy at the end of the day. Who knows, maybe one day Hasbro will go bankrupt and someone who actually cares about art and fun stuff will end up in charge.
Not likely I know, but a man can dream.
I suspect if / when Hasbro goes under, WotC will be LONG gone before then
I think smugglers share makes sense on a flavor standpoint. The idea of interplanar travel being a reality for plenty of people is a new concept. And a trojan horse is a theros thing in cannon, so I feel like someone from there suggesting the idea in another plane makes sense. Personally I think it's a cool piece of world building that expands beyond putting a bunch of named characters in a plane.
Sure, I can see that. For me, it's a bit camp and I worry it further cements the idea that the distinct flavour of each plane is disappearing. As far as I understand the Akroan Horse was a one time thing for instance. I'm not sure people from Theros tend to solve their issues with a big wooden horse. So I guess my concern is that this might be evidence that because when you think Theros, you think Greek myth, then that's all those people are now in this current era of Magic. Just like Thunder Junction is the plane of Cowboy hats, Theros has become the plane of big wooden horses. In an interconnected multiverse then the only identity a plane has left is it's gimmick, boiled down to a caricature of it's former selves. Maybe next time we go to Lorwyn everyone can just put on a red hat like a garden gnome and be done, because paying shallow lip service to a plane's identity is WotC's new way of "world building". Theros is nothing more than Greek Myth, Amonket is nothing more than Mummies, Innistrad is nothing more than Vampires and Zendikarr is nothing more than the Eldrazi.
Or maybe I'm just being grumpy.
It's probably that last one to be fair haha
For me the creature type change is probably related to the release of bloomburrow where there will be tribal synergies. From a gameplay standpoint, I think it’s kinda cool that I can mix new and old cards that wouldn’t fit before together. I understand the goal isn’t to belittle these races/species of fantasy people, but a gameplay decision.
That being said, just give nagas and viashinos interesting tribal synergies instead or give them the snake/lizard creature type in addition to the naga/viashino type. Might start to get wordy, but I prefer that second solution a lot more than deleting a subtype.
I agree. And I feel any decks would be themeatically more interesting in that situation too. Snakes and Viashino should't play the same, and decks around them shouldn't have the same mechanics. ONE OF THEM DOESN'T EVEN HAVE ARMS!
Thunder Junction does feel like a set with WOTC smashing all there action figures together. The main thing it reminds me of is the opening of Toy Story 3. I've enjoyed it for what it is but I think we have the potential for magic to become something lesser.
Also on a following note, the choice to do a cowboy/western set and not do anything to examine the racist, classist routs of the genre and time period is very short sighted, oh how convenient that this entire plane was empty. Viashino being reduced to Lizard is one thing and then making there iconography very linked to that of Mexican bandits from early westerns is another
OH. MY. GOD. I didn't even pick up on that. I'm going to look at every "Viashino" right now!
@@RedBobcatGames I'm a fan of westerns, done right they can be amazing films but Magic is taking the tropes and iconography without properly examining it. I like the set, gameplay wise its super good! I'm just disappointed that the level of cultural scrutiny was not put in like they did with the revisit to Kamigawa
And yet they apparently hired consultants for it
@@RedBobcatGames Hmm, i'm certan they did but...yea some stuff in this set is not great
... yeah, you make some convincing arguments, Mr. Bobcat. the Viashino thing does indeed make my skin crawl and your feelings on art are super valid. It also speaks volumes to the failures in world building that things I do think the writers have explanations for are something you perceive as plot holes rather than mysteries... Like, Gisa's befuddlement at Thunder Junction's dirth of dead on a supposedly vacant plane is meant to make the readers question, and I have a feeling that the presence of the coin empire's vault is meant to instill implications.
WotC have to keep the line going up. we're just getting to the point where it's starting to come off the rails because we're laying track as fast as we can.
I can only hope that Bloomburrow isn't as horribly muddled by... everything to do with Thunder Junction's muddled world, and that when we do finally go flying off the track into a ravine, that they haven't irreparably damaged the game to the point that passionate people can't pick up the pieces.
I really hope those old rumours of WotC breaking away from Hasbro to stand on their own come to pass. It would be great if they could just slow down a bit and put a bit more care into each release
I think the thing you might be missing here is that in order to be able to do Unanswered Questions, you absolutely need your audience to trust you. No one trusts WOTC's writing, so they don't think "ooh what's going on here?" they think "wow that's dumb"; and then when it's suggested to them that it may be setup for a future twist, they aren't willing to believe WOTC will adequately pay it off - and even if they do pay it off, it'll feel like dumb payoff, possibly even retcon, because the initial emotional reaction was still thinking it dumb.
Return to Return to Return to Ravnica into "we're just cowboys now"
You think the hats just appear on people when they arrive? It would explain why everyone's dressed that way
I have a head cannon about why Thunder Junction, and to an extent Karlov manor and the upcoming bloomburrow seem to have narrative oddities. Karlov manor was "every one you know with a detective hat' followed by "every one you know with a cowboy hat' then "every one you know as an animal.' and I think the reason is that this is all a fever dream of Jace. Caused by an interaction with Ashiok Jace is simply hallucinating this all and thats why is all seems like an 80s TV show dream sequence or the ending of the Wizard of OZ movie
Oh man! Can you imagine? The fan base would riot if this were true! "Oh hey, the last few years of sets were all a dream, so forget about it because Jace is awake now" would anger SO MANY people! I'm actually sort of into the idea
I was entertained. Spent seventeen minutes nodding appreciatevely and smiling knowingly.
Ayyyy, that's basically all I'm after. Thank you!
Turning naga into snakes is a functional buff and the fact that they have a 'class' denotes that they are intelligent species but if you have a snake deck your Naga now work with them. You arent a snake shaman like Steve without the years spent leading your tribe, that's what separates Ajani from a simple savanna lion
So if a Leonin doesn't train enough to get a class then those ones are just basically lions? Is a Naga doesn't become a shaman it's no better than a snake? I'm not sure I agree if so
awesome thought provoking content, keep it going!
Thank you very much. I was a bit concerned about this video, but it's been nice to see such support in the comments. Thank you
This was an interesting watch. I don’t plan to get anything from thunder junction except maybe some of those special basic lands. Changing viashino to lizards but not Minotaur’s to cows is just so out of the left field and weird. I personally don’t care as much but it’s going into the wrong direction. The direction being a grey slop of brand marketing. I’ll stick with the cards I have. I hope they change for the better in the future but if these last two sets are anything to go by it’s going to be powercrept, sloppy developed and tested and anything special being erased until there’s nothing of the original vision left.
If the changes were uniform, I still wouldn't be a fan. But the fact that, as you say Minotaur's aren't getting it. Weird. Just a weird thing to do
I think all the feedback they need to not makes the same mistakes again has been received. Now it's just a matter of time to see if WotC right's the ship, and that will take years to get through sets that have already been developed. We do have some case examples of them making the desired changes. The cancellation of Thunder Junction's epilogue set being one of them.
Totally. I just feel I'm in the minority when it comes to the opinion of "Hey, stop doing erratas to old cards. Leave the types as they are!"
@@RedBobcatGames a 100% a minority, I think making Viashino into Lizards is a great change.
@gunararayhanramadhan2304 If it's 100%, surely it's not the minority then? I'm messing of course, I understand what you're saying. And sure, there will be people that like the change. There were people asking for Naga to be snaked all the way back when as I showed in the video, so that's not new. I'm just not one of those people
I didn't even know about them consolidating creature types in this set until I watched this. And just today I was talking to a friend about how I liked the new creature types they added and how I wished they made more varmints so I could build a varmint tribal deck. It is awfully strange how they are making new types but deleting others
Give it a year or two and I'm sure "varmints" will just be "rats"... and then eventually just "beasts"
This set is insane. I pulled 14+ mythics per play and x16 per collector boxes. LOLOLOLOLOLOL
See, that to me is also a concern haha
A western themed set where the plane is "uninhabited" is just....like I get that this megacorp wrote "Cowboy" on whiteboard and then put the rest of its effort into internal brand recognition and avoiding pissing anyone off, but if you're going to engage with the western genre you cannot avoid the cigar store indian at the front of the general store. America was from the Atlantic to the Pacific brimming with hundreds of cultures built over thousands of years made of people who could be just as noble and ignoble as anyone from the old world. In critical moments they aided the Europeans and in return they were villianized, infantilized, died from disease, exiled from their homes, and killed in textbook definition genocides through conquest and starvations. Its like an exorcism of ancestor spirits, "the land was free to take, there was never anyone here to mourn".
Yeah for real. These woke idiots have completely surface level understanding of the cultures they claim to love so much and so you get all ancient Amerindian culture jumbled into ixalan or in this planes case, only a few scant references.
Not that it's a good excuse, but any representation of Native Americans in this set would probably come off as cultural appropriation to at least a handful of individuals, and that type of controversy could hurt some stupid bottom line potentially. Therefore, seems like there's little reason to poke the lion's den.
@elsanto2401 It makes me wonder if the "The land was uninhabited" angle was a last minute addition. They said they hired cultural sensitivity experts. Maybe that's why the change was made? It might explains why we haven't gotten a planeswalker guide for Thunder Junction
@johndoe9343 I think the absense of any natives is a weird choice in and of itself though. Like, First Nation's peoples aren't worth remembering. Odd
@Max-nt5zs I hear the word "Woke" used so much, and maybe it's meaning is clear in the states, but I've never heard a consistent definition for it. From context by your useage, are you saying people who like other cultures are woke? Or are you saying that offensivly conflating two cultures into one without bothering to understand either is woke?
I took a break after MoM for a bit because that set sort of broke my brain, so didn't really look to closely at Ixalan. Was that set full of harmful stereotypes?
I think you are very correct and I’m thrilled someone put my feelings into words so articulately. Thank you.
Oh well thank you very much
I looked at the time code
Big mistake
5:00 so it's been more than a year since the omenpaths opened. there may be other problems with the story... I didn't bother reading it, but the story from Lost Caverns of Ixalan let us know that they've time skipped ahead a couple years.
but I do take issue with no lasting consequences for people who were compleated, and Vraska has been one that has me particularly salty. Her enitre lower half was replaced with the form of a mechanical snake, but here on Thunder Junction, we see that she somehow has organic legs again. And it wasn't just her, but we saw that with Nahiri too who had her entire arms replaced by swords only to have organic hands again in Aftermath
The viashino and naga thing is upsetting to me too but for a different reason. You bring up all the "cats" and every feline in magic from common housecats to lions to panthers to leopards are all "cats" making cat tribal have a large wealth of creatures to pull from. But every variety of canid (wolves, jackyls, etc) are all distinct. If they're going to make all felines into "cats" they should do the same to all canids.
Very good points. I'm still upset about the Hounds into Dogs thing, but I hadn't even considered Wolves. I suppose that's because in my mind it's right that they're seperate. Should be the same with cats, you're very correct
Foxes are also canids, don't forget those fellas.
I don't think it is a bad thing to include creatures or creature types from other recent sets into a new set because it allows for expansions of those tribal decks in the meta. I know wit might suck for the story and the blending of the world building but I have always cared more about the evolving game play then the lore.
I have no issue with that at all. I just wish if they were going to print Lizards then they should actually be Lizards. Removal of card types just sucks imo for many reasons. I find it a feel bad
Love your videos, im nowhere near as deep in the lore are you are, but its super interesting and I thank you for your time making them :)
Well you're more than welcome. This whole channel is basically an avenue for me to vent so I'm glad people are enjoying it haha
Imagine thinking that you will open an LGS so you can be your own boss. Lol
Man, there's so much going wrong with this set that I had to read your comment twice before I remembered the video opened on a section about holding back Modern Horizons 3. Damn
Really good video. Keep up the good work with these great analysis vids!
Thank you! And I will do. Right between videos of me complaining about nonsense and giving out pancake recipes!
Great video! The set was well received from a game perspective, but I think people have just given up on good story telling. "Who cares anymore, I got my crazed adorable Loot to play with!" It's just WotC selling thinly veiled cardboard crack at this point
Yeah, but I think that's such a shame if true. And short sighted from WotC's in my opinion. I suspect I'll be steadfast, trying to hold the line in remembering the old ways
@@RedBobcatGames Oops, should've said thinly veiled, but swipe typing has been dumbed down. Either way, WotC is very short sighted right now, focused on profit margins seemingly more now than ever before. The game is so fun that many of us will hold the line for as long as we can, but I fear if they don't learn soon, things will continue to decline and get worse
Yeah. And while they're with Hasbro I don't see it getting better any time soon
Shame to see the
Viashino go. Always thought they were cool, and poor scaly lads and forgive me if I'm wrong, got no cards other than draft chaff. Also, why did they print like at least 3 viashino in Karlov Manor if they were planning on ditching the type. Surely do it then.
Who even knows what's going on with that company tbh
Im actually not too miffed about geralf knowing about the multiverse. Theres been two or three multiplanar catastrophies on innistrad alone. What does get me is just the loss of potential by having every single legendary character interacting at once.
Think about the recent Ixalan set, its very much a story helped along by the interactions of a handful of non-ixalan characters interacting with an existing conflict on the plane.
You can feel the uniqueness of the plane while also getting unique problems only characters with a different perspective, like quintotius, would be able to solve.
Fair point about Geralf, but I'm still not convinced. Our world has gone through a lot of strife recently, but I wouldn't expect my dentist to be an expert on global warming for instance
@RedBobcatGames true. I think the "legendary" and named status of characters does a lot of heavy lifting in my assertion. However I work in customer service and talk to a lot of people and tend to find their interests wide ranging and strangely deep.
Also not helped by the fact that "I" am a diner cook that knows a lot about global warming. Something that skews my outlook on this.
But this also brings up another good point you made in the video about how much "implication" is doing work for the story rather than being explicit.
It's part of what pains me about the writing of some magic stories. Some sentences can suck me in with interesting implications, but im also kept away because ive been burned waiting for resolution before.
I think that's WotC's MO though. A bit like the writers for "Mystery Box" stories like Lost. Ask a bunch of questions, state a bunch of weird stuff, maybe pick it up and answer it later if anyone cares, don't worry if it doesn't make sense. I'm really not a fan of that type of narrative and I don't mind doing SOME of the heavy lifting in terms of understanding the plot, but there's a line and we crossed it back during March of the Machine for me
Good points!
I like imagining Tamiyo (before she died) traveling to each major character in the multiverse, jotting down their story, then providing them with a massive lore-dump-scroll of everything she knows about the multiverse before jetting off to the next place.
Who knew that kindly loremaster was so busy?
🤦♂️
Maybe it will make sense later 😂
That's some headcannon I can get behind to be honest. I do / did love Tamiyo
I think part of what helps distinguish sentient animal races from nonsentient ones is that the sentient races have a class or occupation creature type in addition to their species type. Laughing Jasper Flint isn't just a lizard, he's a lizard rogue; Sidisi isn't just a naga (or a snake now, I suppose) she's a naga/snake shaman. While the homogenization of sentient races into their animal counterparts is a very sensitive subject, I think it's partly assuaged by the fact that the sentient ones are clearly separated by virtue of having a class. Brimaz, King of Oreskos and Charmed Stray are both cats, but Brimaz has the capacity to be a soldier, to be a king. It's not the most tasteful solution, but with typal/kindred synergies being a popular play style, it's not all bad.
I think it's weird that they already solved this issue on Innistrad. So many cards say things like "Other Wolves and Werewolves get X" that I don't know why they don't just do that again. Outside of wanting to cram more and more text on a card of course, but that's another thing I'm not a fan of
Hey, lets petition to errata human subtype to primate and errata Monkey and Ape to Primate as well. and consider all spells targeting human, ape, monkey - shall be referred to primate. Now that's gonna be funny
I mean weirdly, if that's how they're going to treat all of the cards then I'd be on board. But, on the otherhand it would be an excuse for people to be terrible to one another and that sucks. I don't want that, so I still feel the best solution is to make a point of keeping the fantasy species as they are, and IF we're going to errata anything, go back and make all the Leonin actually have that type (for instance)
That's not synergistic enough. Errata all spined animals to the Vertebrate type.
@@yurisei6732 That's a call to put Spore into magic
@@RedBobcatGames You also forgot that Hounds got errata'd to dogs.
Wonder if Jackals are still Jackals.
And Tarkir has Ainok that were named as Hound subtype.
@Aredein Oh trust me, I will never forget that Hounds got errata's into dogs
What a great video. This is the second of your videos that i watch. You got a suscriber
Oh why thank you very much! I do a wide mix of things on the channel, the algorithm doesn't seem to know what to do with me at times haha, but I hope you enjoy
OTJ didnt really get a chance from corporate from what it looks like. I honestly think the MAIN set if fine from a mechanical perspective and could have been a really good draft format if it weren't for 3 bonus sheets of cards too powerful for this limited format and play booster dumping bombs on people that determine your draft archetypes for you. there's even good snippets of lore like the jace epilogue in this set that COULD have been built into something better than the sum of its parts, but was left to rot because this set is in the spin cycle of corporate misuse
Reaping the effects of pushing out more and more and more. Constant new product releases mean less time to fine tune each one. A real shame
while I must admit I had fun in pre-release and the Commander deck, yeah, there's some serious red flags on this set. I hope bloomburrow gets better.
P.S I do feel the missed potantil of Thunder Jucntion. I hope this messy set sell good enough to warrant another trip to the plane... Please bring block sets back!
I really like some of the flavor of this set, the Eversaloon is goofy and I love it. A wandering Temporal rest stop for cowboys? Amazing
I know Akul isn't "native" to the plane but I love scorpion dragon guy that's really cool. The cactus folk are super cute too I wish to see more of them
@Shark_Byte_ This plane would've benefited greatly with a second set. It would give more room to explore plane, their locations, and characters
@XmortoxX1990 I feel like I'm typing "They should bring back 3 set blocks" a lot lately haha
@@RedBobcatGames At this point, 3 set blocks would be suicide for WOTC because 3 set blocks depend upon solid worldbuilding and mechanical design. Imagine if Thunder Junction was just set 1 and we knew we were getting two more sets of this. How dreadful would that be? The saving grace recently has been that when WOTC releases a stupid set, you at least know we'll soon be moving on.
@yurisei6732 I mean, with any luck it would FORCE THEM to put more effort into world building. But you're not wrong
You sound like a World Noble from One Piece now. They say Merfolk are just Fish.
RIGHT?!
There is a degree of arbitrarity in creature types.
Even staying within the realm of (non-talking) animals, it always felt strange to me that Wolves, Hounds/Dogs, Foxes, and now even Coyotes get their own separate tribe, whereas lions, tigers, lynxes, and regular house cats are all just "Cats".
Yeah, I agree. Though I'd draw the line if they can talk for instance. Like, I'm okay with Werewolves not being Dogs
Something that's been standing out to me in recent years thanks to hindsight, which Thunder Junction is kind of the epitome of, is the decline of the originality of planes for... a really long time. The magic (hah) of discovering worlds completely alien to us such as Mirrodin, Ravnica or Lorwin has long since disappeared. I'd say the biggest starting point of it all is Scars of Mirrodin. And yes, Scars of Mirrodin was an awesome block, but... when you boil it down, it's just Mirrodin meets Phyrexia, two parts of Magic we've seen before. Then came Innistrad, which is just gothic horror Magic. Then another return to an old plane with Ravnica. And then Theros, aka Magic but add Greek myths. And I really liked all of those, even if it annoyed me that Jace became the new guildpact in the Ravnica story. But well... the problem is that this trend continued ever since. What new planes has there been that's not just "Take this culture or genre and run with it" since then? Kaladesh. And there's Ikoria and Arcavios which... they at least do go beyond the classic trappings of their genres a bit. Tarkir, too, is a bit more than just "mish-mash of middle-eastern cultures". So, if we're generous, 4 out of over 20 plane hops were new, original planes... And honestly, I don't think any of those work as well as the original planes shown between the two Mirrodin blocks in terms of ambiance. I love Tarkir, and Kaladesh and Arcavios I did find fun, but it doesn't hold a candle to the sense of wonder and bewilderment I felt when learning about Zendikar when it was first shown.
And yet, when it was first pitched Zendikar was considered a risk. I think you're right, which is a shame for Wizards really. With any luck, Bloomburrow will knock it out of the park and be a return to form... fingers crossed
Am reading about the hadozee thing now.... I am struggling to understand how that change got published? Who thought it was needed?
Yeah that whole thing was also a mess
I find it very very funny that it released right after Hearthstone had their own, very well received, wild west expansion. And not JUST that, a Hearthstone expansion where multiple well liked characters were brought back with a wild west twist too.
Oh now that IS interesting. I did not know that. Hmmmmmmmm
i think it's the perfect reflection of our society: a blob of undistingued things and without any specific connotation
Excellent! In those regards I suppose it's a success! Haha
Also, a nitpick: Rakkish Crew's art is referencing the same scene from The Usual Suspects that New Capenna's Rogue's Gallery do. Are we really this short on references?
When it's all references all the time, you're bound to start running out sooner or later
I'm holding out some slight hope for Bloomburrough. It at least seems to have a more clearly defined identity, if nothing else. We'll see.
Love the Shakespeare bit.
I had to read this twice to remember what the Shakespeare bit was haha. I was like, "Did I say Shakespeare was on a card or something? Is he coming in the Assassin's Creed set?"
man i knew i hated this set for some reasons, some you listed, but its honestly so cathartic to have you lay out on the table what exactly is up
as SOON as i saw Rakdos be a cowboy i was pissed. HE is a giant demon lord that lives for the party so hard he held Ravnica hostage and took a 10th of the power with it, he was MASSIVE enough to have Gideon ride atop his skull to strike Nicoal Bolas when Gideons Pegasus got shot down, he recognized the fact that he couldn't kill bolas on his own but the flavor text of that card being "and this is the only time a human will ride me" just sells Rakdos as a character. fuck even his card designs were janky but fun half board wipe half gamble corner...but now hes giving up all the perks of being not only a guild master but an OG one at that, being the only devil in his plane of existence and reaping all the benefits...to being a cowboy working with some twink, a tiny skeleton and a snake woman he was rivals with at one points, ON TOP of him being shrunk down and nerfed! Rakdos should be turning half of this new plane into a demonic carnival, not stomping trains for 30 gold peices
and everything was clicking as you were going down the list of all the bullshit going on here and just...man, it fucking sucks and i hate how there's nothing feasible i can do to stop it. Theyre too big to boycott, whales will always shell out for the next set or the next competive edge...it feels hapless
Yup. And the set seems to be doing well as well. I don't enjoy it when the company fails, because that might result in more layoffs. But the stink around Epilogue Boosters killed them, and I'm glad. I had hope that two dumb theme sets in a row flopping would do the same but, maybe Thunder Junction will prove WotC right and next year we'll all be looking at well known characters dressed as construction workers or something
@@RedBobcatGames its just crazy that some of these set themes are something youre supposed to find on niche tumblr blogs or moderately famous Ao3 accounts
but no, the fucking Slice of Life AU where Chandra opens up a cat cafe of every single legendary cat across the street from Compleated Tibalts Dog Hotel featuring every single legendary Dog is more likely to be canon than actual relevant plot
no emrakrul, vivan being left out in the cold, not even proper foreshadowing for new vile forces
ARE YOU MAD?! Why would you breath a Chandra Cat Cafe into existance?! If WotC are reading this they'll make that for sure!
Haha you weren't kidding. Word for word on some bits. Cheers you earned the sub.
Thank you, and welcome!
Loot, a beast noble? Looks like slush art from Dr Who. It's an alien.
But put a hat on 'em, and they belong here.
I wonder how many other types of hats we're going to be seeing painted onto characters? I can't wait for the set where everyone's a pilot