The Shallow Nostalgia of Modern Horizons 3
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ย. 2024
- Modern Horizons 3 has come all the way over its namesake and arrived! Jam packed with cards designed to get you buying new cards!
MH3 brings us a smorgasbord of the multiverse, with tasty samplings of its many planes. Lore from far and wide and long ago, barely dampened by the dull sadness that undercuts it.
With the help of an outside editor for the first time, I'm going to ramble off some unscripted opinions, grumble briefly about the state of the game and point at the lore on display and say: "I recognise that".
Join me for a deep into a shallow set.
#magicthegathering #mtg #mh3 #lore #modernhorizons3
/ silvermyr
/ asilvermyr
/ silvermyrjame
![[FULL] RETROSPECTIVE : Final Fantasy Tactics](/img/n.gif)
What's the most exciting thing about MH3? Or the most annoying?
Razorfield!
Galvanic Discharge isn’t actually referring to Thunder Junction; the Great Desert is a part of Terisare on Dominaria, where the Brother’s War was fought. The stone being crushed is probably a Powerstone, making the flavor text tie together much better
Ooh good correcting, cheers!
Oh thank god. Let's hope nary a future set ever brings up thunder junction.
(Also thank you for the information)
I disagree on the medallions, I kinda like how they really beat in that they're the essence of their color given gem form.
21:41 I am fairly certain this is in reference to Azathoth in the lovecraft mythos, where he is asleep and the entire world is just a dream he is having
I think the name plhlage is from phlegethon the fire river
Oh wow so the name IS A.I. generated 😂😂
Very true, the flavor of the set is like a tablecloth. Only intended as an accessory for consumption, not to be scrutinized or appreciated
Thunder Junction could've been good if the worldbuilding focused on why separate groups from across the planes were drawn to the idea of frontier life instead of just being an excuse to put cowboy hats on all the characters.
Imagine guildless from Ravnica viewing this new plane as a chance to start a new life where they aren't second class citizens. An influx of humans from Innistraad searching for safety, and the predators hiding among them. And imagine the rich conflict between these settlers looking for a new life and the indigenous people of the plane who want nothing to do with them.
But no, lets show wacky hijinks in a setting whose aesthetics are all based on imperialism without actually having the balls to tackle that topic at all.
Honestly, Murders at Karlov Manor and Thunder Junction were two sets back to back with awful flavor, and if it wasn't for the former taking place on Ravnica, they'd both be tied as having some of the worst settings in the game.
Honestly, I don't think that narrative changes alone would've fixed Thunder Junction. It needed a rework from the ground up: visual identity, worldbuilding, naming, everything needs to go.
But personally the thing that I will alway love to hate Thunder Junction for is how WotC cowardly tried to weasel their way out of the obvious pitfall of using the aesthetics of colonialist westward expansion and Native genocide, by promising that there wouldn't be native inhabitants of Thunder Junction for the extraplanar invaders to oppress. And they just fucking lied about that and put the cactusfolk in there anyway, but don't acknowledge how fucked up that makes the entire situation. Like how do you fuck it up so bad?
@@PhileasLiebmannWhat's even weirder are the non-cactus folk characters that are obviously Native American coded like Annie Flash, but her coding doesn't make any sense because she's obviously not native to the plane and is actually a colonialist donning Indigenous clothing shamelessly parading a lifestyle and culture she has no real connection to.
@@SirGrimLockSmithVIII Yeah, the Atiin as a concept don't make any sense. The clearly just wanted to have Native American coded humans on the plane for aesthetic reasons, but then tried to relativise it by making it so that those humans are also colonisers.
Except then they all undid that by having the Atiin still be an oppressed minority, whose customs and names aren't accepted by the other colonisers?
It's just bad from every possible angle. I legitimately don't understand how this could've happened. Like WotC was never good at representing these topics in the first place, but this is like a cruel parody of what they did before, while they are loudly proclaiming that they are trying to be mindful of the implications.
Love having a new Silver Myr video. This one got me to go watch a few older ones I enjoyed. Welcome back
I don't have to worry about the silence thanks to the voices
And when the world needed him most, he returned
Yep, Shrieking Drake is back.
Not sure if this has been mentioned, but the fact that Drowner of Truths is a colored eldrazi, and appears to have a body shape similar to that of Kozilek's brood, but flavor text referencing Ulamog's brood, might mean the card is referring to Ulalek which was also printed in MH3. Given Ulalek being a fusion of Kozilek and Ulamog, and being a five colored eldrazi that enables the play of all devoided colored eldrazi. The fact that Drowner also has an ability that would be copyable by Ulalek also lends credence, although notably this card wasnt included in the Eldrazi precon for MH3.
hehehe glad you liked the lands, it was fun painting the forest one, really relaxing~
and the dog umbras was fun to paint too :D
I’m sad that there’s not any more worlds that I will miss. Like, I miss Mirrodin, and I miss Alara. But there’s just not a future where I miss planes like thunder junction or Capena. I hope they don’t mess up as bad when we get to Duskmorn. I’ve been really looking forward to that set
Any update on this?
@@RustyShackleford-s4s silver already posted another video that pretty succinctly discusses the same grievances I have with duskmorn
@@lanibentz9976 sad shit man, mothafucka (WOTC) said he didn't want to live no more (released a other cringe set). Sad times
I do kinda wish that we would get a break from phyrexia and eldrazi for a good bit. Cuz like I really liked them and really would love to see them again, but when every supplemental product reminds and adds to them, it feels like I am never fully fulfilled yet also never left wanting.
Which is super dissapointing as I want to be hyped for them again, I want to be anticipating in 5 or something years when we might get a glance of them in the lore again.
I wish the Medallions had either just the last sentence, like just saying "It is faith" is better than the over the top pretentious feeling paragraph.
Or just the paragraph without the last sentence, as I feel like the last sentence kinda ruins it for me.
Magic gathering
The
Arena
Deckmaster
The Azlask thing could be fine i think if it had a stipulation for the indestructible and anni. Like if exp counters are greater than 5 five give it one then over 10 to give the other,
13:28 considering the return of energy in this set, plus the swirly aesthetic of that plains art, I’m willing to bet good money that it’s supposed to be depicting Kaladesh :3c
TECHNICALLY, between Strix Serenade and Swan Song, battles still can't be countered! Yeah, battles! They're an equally respectable card type to any other! I expect most people share that opinion!
With respect to Disa and Lhurgoyfs, the issue is, that not only is there so few Lhurgoyfs in her colours (and in general), but also a lot of them count different things! The new ones are all taking after Tarmogoyf and counting different card types, but some of the older ones count lands, creatures, and sorceries in graveyards. Which each sound like they'd be best suited to their own decks, to be honest.
Well, aside from battles, Kindred/Tribal is also still left in the open.
Honestly I think Ulalek is mechanically more of a headache than Azlask. I dislike the design trend of copying and doubling things, and the way his textbox is worded isnt very intuitive. Azlask is at least easy to track despite being disappointing in its own way.
In regards to the MDFC Eldrazi, remember that this set has Ulalek. This Eldrazi could be connected to both titans
I loved your analysis of Sage of the Unknowable. I really wished the Horizon sets were just more subtle in their references, instead of having "punny" on the nose cards like Nulldrifter.
More eldrazi..... MORE... MORE... oh hey, a Myr card. It's even got afinity! I love it!
Absolutely feel you on the current state of everything aesthetically. The gun design thing you mention at the end is especially baffling - you’re telling me a full-on space opera set is okay, but guns aren’t? Seriously, what does WotC have against guns?
It's not WotC it's age rating rules.
@@Gibbons3457 Except we got guns in the 40k, Fallout, and Doctor Who Universes Beyond sets, so it's clearly not some sort of outside restriction...
@@soarel325 huh weird, maybe because they are universes beyond. I wonder if they have a higher age rating?
Another good video S.
I agree with the thunder junction take.
It felt cheap
Im excited for Bloomburrow. I am... not excited for much else in magics future.
Exactly how I feel
Noting Azlask, it doesn't specify noncreature colourless creatures, so the massive amounts of Eldrazi Scion and Spawn tokens that Eldrazi decks love to pump out to help pay for big spells will just fuel Azlask, making him one of the strongest commanders in the set, because now you need repetitive exiling for those spawns and scions (like a rest in peace or leyline of the void) otherwise every spawn or scion they sacrifice for mana makes their board even harder to break
Nontoken, but yes. The experience counters are not the absurd part of the ability, but they are comically easy to get
I hoped eldrazi would be more indifferent from good and evil concept, i really thought when March of the Machine events started it would get out of the moon and fucked world breaker cuz it mess with the multiverse balance and stuff
27:00 Nah thx.
I'll stick with Tribal than you very much.
Tribal refers to two different concepts. Even if you disagree with the change being unnecessary from a cultural sensitivity standpoint (which is valid, given how many Native Magic players said the term was fine and made sense), splitting the term gives "a strategy of creature type synergy" and "the card type that allows noncreature spells to have creature types" distinction that is worth the change overall
@the_r4ts except, yaknow, the part where they are trying to force that new word on both meaning you've just listed, pretending we are now supposed to talk about "kindred decks".
I'm gonna make an Azlask commander deck that's just gonna be 5 color experience with absolutely no scions or spawns bc that's just a disgusting ability
you might as well just not play azlask then buddy
@@princeofpoverty4063 nah, I've been wanting to play a 5 color experience deck for a while bc my Otharri deck is a lot of fun, but I don't like building decks that are just (do this boring thing and win) I'd rather get a bunch of experience and do weird shit
The ability does nothing without Scions or Spawns, only Scions and Spawns get the annihilator
@@soarel325 yeah, and I don't want the annihilator, I want the experience counters
@@soarel325 The ability pumps your creatures for the amount of experience counters you have, which is not nothing, but the reason to run Azlask as the commander is how easy it makes gaining experience counters. Jam a bunch of artifact creatures and sac outlets and you are off to the races
shoulda made an eldrazi goyf cuz why not at this point. smash all the toys together
I think that thinking of the non-premier sets like the Modern Horizons sets as "canon" is the wrong approach. I think it's more like a "what if" sorta thing, with re-imaginings of stuff, hence the jeskai dude and ulalek, etc.
Wrenn and Six were a hugely pivotal canon character who debuted in a horizons set. They're very clearly canon.
@@tinfoilslacks3750 I never implied they weren't. I'm just saying you shouldn't think of the set as a whole as some canon story bit.
I guess that Phlage might be pronounced 'Phlah-geh', that is a more acceptable 'Ancient Greek' pronounciation. Ancient Greek did not have a proper soft g.
As someone who got into magic with an inherited set of the zendikar/eldrazi duel decks from BFZ block, their tokenization as something to flash in for marketing frustrates me. The eldrazi in MH3 and the few we got in Commander Masters had several flavorful designs, but the best flavor of the eldrazi is the environment they create and the damage they do. Cosmic horror of incomprehensible scale isn't frightening without the comprehensible damage they do. I hope the next product they stuff eldrazi into takes more care in showing their capabilities rather than just references to the creatures themselves.
The name Phlage kind of invokes conflagration. I honestly dont think it's that bad.
40:52 Oof. Guild wars 4 lol. I didn’t know you played Guild wars. Thoughts on land spears?
I'm pretty sure he said "Guildless 4" - the 4th installment of the series he's doing about the Guildless citizens of Ravnica
@@wickedmagician529 that makes a lot more sense
Saying everyone hates thunder junction is mad confirmation bias. It's been one of the most popular releases in years.
I loved it's flavor, the whole "it's nothing but crime" is a little annoying though
it was a lot better than mkm, but "most popular in years" is a bit much, especially considering the releases we've had in those years. mh2, lotr, and neo all came out in the last 2 years.
Theme is kitch but it is incredibly solid from a mechanical perspective.
Mechanically fine, but the lack of story is a problem.
Story was pretty dumb and having so many villains there felt incredibly forced but I gotta admit I love how campy of a set it is, turns out putting cowboy hats on everyone is more effective than putting detective hats on everyone for me at least.
I fucking hated the fact we have legendary eldrazi that aren't titans. Like they shouldn't be unique they're just spawn.
Like.. why do we have a kozilek ulamog combo either? Theyre supposed to be like fingers of the real eldrazi in the blind of eternaties. So what theyre now combining their hands as seperate enterties?
It makes some sense for the emrakulled warped legendaries but nothing else, they shouldn't have been done
Tablecloth my friend, Tablecloth.
I love your unscripted options and tidbits! 🎉❤
Have self referential magic cards actually gotten cringier or am i the problem? Has this company's skydiving public image made it feel like when a person you don't like references your favorite movie? Or is it more that the power creep is now so strong that it feels more like planned obsolescence, characterized no more strongly than "This card references that time tarmogoyf was 30 dollars by being a better version of tarmogoyf"? Maybe it was just a double whammy with thunder junction, and I couldn't humor two sets of "man isn't this game fun, look at all the fun we've had" in a row. Is it that the first modern horizons was a space for designers to go crazy and they came up with some genuinely cool and fun game pieces and that doesn't seem to be the focus anymore? Alara is how i was introduced to magic story, Ajani is my first favorite planeswalker, and I look at his sparker representing the story where I fell in love with him and I... cringe???
As someone who played back when Time Spiral came out, it was just as cringy back then.
The main difference now is that WotC is awful and has been dragging the game into a Fortnite future.
Why does Ajani make you cringe? Maybe some of the reference cards like eldrazi Siege gang commander are a little silly, but the flip walkers are entirely serious, thoughtfully designed cards that care about previous world building. Ajani's is probably the best in that regard. Did you find the previous cycle of flipwalkers "cringeworthy" as well?
Phlage to me sounds like the combined flay and flame
26:57 Kindred and typal solve two problems in one fell swoop - Wizards's perception that continued use of "tribal" as a Magic term is culturally insensitive as well as that the term referred to two distinct concepts within Magic. It was both a deck archetype of creature type synergies, which typal now means, and a card type allowing noncreature spells to have creature types, which is now kindred. I do not understand why so many bemoan the change, wanting it to just be typal or kindred, not grasping that even if the cultural sensitivity adjustment may not have been necessary, it clarifies the terminology.
The flavor text of this set is God-awful!
You can really feel power creep in this set. The best comparison is fell the profane and hagra mualing.
I find it interesting that people rant and rave about hating UB and wanting magic to invest in its own IP and yet when Wizards makes a set all about its history and storyline its "Shallow Nostalgia".
nice nice
I'm not convinced you like Magic: the Gathering
Always enjoy your videos 💜! Brings me joy when you share your own thoughts and opinions.
Tablecloth...
...what do I get now?
also kozilamog is so way much better!
lmao, you know, i think Azlask woulda been less offensive if it just had wubrg: scions and spawns get annihilator 1 and indestructible until eot
Coram the undertaker has the rule of cool going for him
Never been happier by a notification
nostalgia poisoning is one hell of a drug
I think the thing with guns in the game is that it's technically a "children's card game" even though the people playing at tournaments are the weirdest looking "children" ever >.> That, or they don't want to be seen as promoting guns in a country where they have issues with gun control IRL.
I hoped Wotzy could give us some more lore like they did for MH2 - there were some articles with lore on the old and new legends in MH2 - but so far there's nothing. :( they don't igive a shit anymore about the lore it seems. it's also TOTAL FLAVOR FAIL that Omo doesn't do anything with her own helm :3
I ended up quitting magic a year ago but I still watch videos from magic creators both because a lot of them are good, and I wanna stay caught up with the game. Its funny though, watching anything new relating to the game. It feels like I left a house when I saw a small fire to only turn around to see the house burning to the ground. Magic is too big to die in a couple years, but honestly if nothing does change I feel like the game will have no dedicated players to the game in the next 5 years.
You are right.. except I feel people will continue to buy this burning house's embers for years. Wizards themselves doesn't seem to be causing enough damage to the brand, consumers don't seem to mind too much.. and the market has been incapable of creating something big and interesting enough to compare.
I feel like we didn't know enough to recognize the shoddy rewiring that was F.I.R.E. design, and then all willfully ignored the pile of grease rags that was Modern Horizons 1, and I feel like the fire started... yeah, around a year ago doesn't sound totally wrong to me.
I think that's Emrakul prior to going into the moon. The world anew part refers to her role as reseeding a world with life once it's been cleansed by ulamog and and kozilek
Furnace Hellkite wakes up to eat the sun.
Oh, you liked Disa, the Restless? Interesting...I liked her abilities, I just didn't like the color choices for a goyf themed commander, which was forced to be jund to reference the famous jund midrange modern deck, the thing is, if you focus on goyfs, you are going to make a self mill creature type themed aggro deck, not jund midrange, it will have a very different essence, and only reference one of its cards, which due to being midrange, means that it is not exactly a central card for the deck, just one that happens to be good, so for that purpose it fails. And due to goyf before MH3 being a creature type pretty much evenly distributed between all colors and being focused on rewarding filling your graveyard, I think it should've been sultai, not jund, because blue is much better at self mill than jund, so it failed in being color fitting for goyfs as well.
About eldrazi, I love their concepts as interplanar entities that feel like void and eerie, I would definitely use them as final villains for TTRPG campaigns one thousand times, but oh boy, I hate prob most of them as card design due to how much over the top they are as creatures that you can't beat/outvalue (that is about the more powerful ones), which I suppose is flavorful because they are supposed to be powerful, but just make unfun to play against.
Also, table cloth
Spice8Racks video on the Death of the Future kinda explains the nihilism about the future within Magic (and modern art in general I suppose), where Magic isn't interested anymore in doing things interesting or new, but making money on what's already worked and referencing things you've already liked. Something that was telling of this was most of the new Eldrazi were basically mechanical redesigns of older cards with nothing new added seemingly as references.
The original concept for Thunder Junction sounded amazing - but instead all I have to gleam from what we got are the pretty cactus people and another concept for a plane squandered.
At the end there, Thunder Junction's guns got me heavily annoyed. You have the wild west aesthetics but adapt the most recognizable part of that period, being guns, into these unwieldy-looking magitech monstrosities. They look awkward to use when you'd want the most streamlined guns possible to make gunslinging easy, partly due to how damn large even the small pistol equivalents look. Add onto that the weird dual blades on the ends of every single one of them, and it's baffling they came away with that as a design choice. Why does the magic pistol that presumably doesn't run out of ammo need two bayonets? If you want to do a close-up fight you're probably better off using a knife because of how long the rest of the pistol is, and it's probably just worsening the performance of the weapon because it's longer and weightier than it needs to be given it clearly doesn't need a barrel with rifling to put rounds on target. Who the fuck designed these? Why do Portal 2's muskets look more in-place for the Western set than the guns in the Western set?
Disagree on your thoughts about thunder junction flavor
Agree on there should have just been guns, the aesthetic of those weapons are just atrocious
Phlage and 4th titan Skotha are known since 2020 when D&D "Odysseys of Theros" was published
The fact that they didn't have any "legends of" article was a massive dissapointment for me. I wanted to know Nadu and Imskir and Necrobloom and all of the other character's deals
I think the kami of jealous thirst was probably a limited play pattern decision so you couldn't just throw it in any black deck to punish your opponents who where on the UB draw three deck
Great video
The eldrazi in this set really disappointed me. I was hoping to see something more interesting for Eldrazi commanders, but I guess I'll just stick to Yarok being my commander for Eldrazi
Wait, isn't yarok a terrible eldrazi commander, though? The Eldrazi are entirely built around cast triggers, not etbs.
@danielsniff6405 The deck is built around Eldrazi Scions, which most cards that make them are ETB's the big guys are cast triggers though
Spurs on a centaur? Does the centaur ride a cowboy-themed elephant?
I'm glad I'm not the only one bothered by the way they write flavour text these days. It's marvel dialogue/quips. Compare something like Wandering Ones from Champions of Kamigawa to anything written as of late 😔 it's soulless
She's an apprentice? It's in the name? Gotta learn basics at some point. :V
36:20 Probalyjust an what if scenario, they have said that modern horizons sets don't necessrily depict canon events.
wait wait wait. energy was gonna be in mirrodin? no no, thats fine, im sure it could use another mechanic...
This set is really leaning on the “remember this? or “it’s x but mixed with y” style of designs. It’s exhausting and a waste of potential.
Wow
I think there isn't MH3 lore...I mean at most it seems like a bunch of alternative timelines so I don't care about flavour in this set. What's important is for the cards to be busted and for things to be printed into modern.
Also do you pronounce Kozilek like that on purpose?...
I think Phlage's name should be pronounced more like Fla-yay or something, I believe its a slightly altered version of the greek word for flames
I stopped giving a shit about the lore when Phyrexia lost like a red headed step child even though they did everything right and in the end the were written as stupid emotional/emotionless, not hive/hivemind, With souls/soulless, cureless/curable robots.
Dumbest shit I ever read.
The new phyrexians have allways had emotions and struggles between each other, noxious revival being an example of it. However the mess of the invasion was still terrible
@winter945 U right.
They just couldn't decide what they wanted so they did both and made it so nothing fkn matters in the end...
They "cured" Phyrexianism....
Ah yes the cure for being gutted, lobotmized and grafted.
Who made this shit...
Breya is here... wearing a jacket...
Honestly I find the most egregious part of the Eldrazi commanders just the fact that they are five coloured. Yes wizards, please give us more five-coloured tribal commanders that require minimal thought around the deck building and removes any form of deckbuilding restriction that said tribe used to have!
You say that, but this was a response to a desire that was out there in the playerbase. I remember seeing people complaining about how the color pipped Eldrazi had no Eldrazi decks they could go into (not counting Morophon) and the fastest way for Wizards to correct that is to just... make a 5 color commander. Not saying those players nessicarily wanted exactly these designs - but I understand why they happened.
@@MissingNovice I mean I know why they did it. Just saying that it is not necessarily good for the format. People complained about once-per-turn triggers and that is how we got Nadu
@@Skylos ...I wouldn't say thats how we got Nadu. They could have given Nadu unlimited triggers and still have it be less busted if only they decided not to turn all the other dials on that bird up to 11.
@@Skylos Like I wouldn't call Ulalek and Azalask broken in the same way Nadu is. They're generic, but not busted. Them existing isn't really a bad thing they just coulda made something more interesting.
Nadu is one of those cards like OG Urza where there are zero ways you can build it that aren't broken and unfun.
Always happy for a new video!
didnt wizards say the lore in MH3 was non-cannon or at least a "what if" kinda thing?
A cool way to rewrite Aslask would be to have it give an activated ability to spawns and scions that allow them to sacrifice themselves to exile a permanent and give one of your permanents indestructible - then to make that cost ◇ less for every experience counter you have.
Start it at something like (7)◇◇◇ and actually reward people for building up experience
love the art on Wastescape Battlemage, Paolo Parente is such an iconic artist from magic's past and it was cool to see his take on eldrazi
LET'S FUCKING GOOO
He is BACK
🐱
Lovely video. For drowner of truth, I think Mangeni refers to Ulalek, which themself appears to be a fusion of the remnants of Kozilek and Ulamog, or a replacement. The lore's not clear on what they are exactly, but they might be a new titan with a new brood.
In what reality would Ulalek, (portmanteau of Kozilek and Ulamog), Fused (meaning the joining of two things) Atrocity that has physical traits of Ulamog and Kozilek('s brood) be a new titan with its own brood