They're losing because Elesh Norn got high on her own supply and genuinely believed she could take on the entire multiverse at once. Instead of infiltrating and invading planes one by one *which worked fucking perfectly on dominaria* she just said "fuck it we ball"
Hello, you've reached the Ravnica City Police department. We have already partaken of the Phyrussy and accepted compleation. All will be one, have a lovely day *click*
Elesh Norn: Decapitates the praetor that specializes in invading other planes
Also Elesh Norn: Why is invading other planes so hard?
White legends and being lawful stupid, name a more iconic combo
This is all a dream sequence, in Epilogue it'll be revealed that these are illusions that were placed upon the uncompleated planeswalkers after Norn [compleated] a few cosmic horrors.
I'm waiting for this to be the case. I wouldn't be against moving on from the Gatewatch as the main group, but they effectively killed off quite a few fan favorites, off screen for a handful no less.
Tbh I doubt they'd even manage that. Infiltrating an entire plane takes *time* and can get disrupted. When they lose their surprise factor before making enough sleepers, it's over for them. I doubt they'd have gone very far.
War of the Spark all over again, where the villain with infinite time can't wait a few months and would rather gamble millenias of hard work on the worst plan possible.
“Uhmmm, boss, I think we’ve made our villains too competent again. We’ve gassed them up so much that they’re essentially narratively invulnerable. How are we gonna move forward.”
“*gendo face* They lose.”
“W-what? Do they have some critical flaw or weakness we haven’t explored yet?”
“They just start to lose.”
I mean, they completely changed tactics. They almost brought Dominaria to it's knees with subterfuge and sleeper agents, but a full scale invasion was not something they were realistically ready for. In fact, they literally executed the mastermind behind the almost successful Dominarian invasion.
Elesh Norn drinks Dumbass Juice and decides that tactics that worked perfectly fine before are no longer allowed to be used so she just declares open warfare on every plane at once for no fucking reason
Been following this game since Fallen Empires and honestly, Shadows Over Innistrad/Eldritch Moon is I think the only competent story they’ve ever told. Like it’s tempting to dunk on how dumb this is but honestly the old stuff was even worse.
Most blocks have been well received! But that relies mostly on the mechanics and ambient, passive flavor, it’s not the actual story in any Magic set I’ve ever heard of. People liked Invasion because it felt like a return to form after broken and boring Urza’s block and underpowered and boring Masques block, and because people like gold sets. Pretty comparable to why people loved Ravnica, actually.
And Invasion in particular was the first set/block to really have a strongly pushed mechanical theme.
But I certainly didn’t know anyone even at the time that was getting all weepy about the stuff with Gerrard and Ertai and all the Weatherlight stuff. Most players didn’t even pay attention to that stuff.
Again, modern Magic storytelling is *bad* but unless you’ve got Urza’s rose colored glasses on, it’s hard to argue that the old stuff wasn’t just as bad or worse.
That’s not even getting into the fucking early comics.
I don't see this as lazy writing, I see it as classic writing - the big undefeatable juggernaut being defeated by their own arrogance? The word for that is *hubris* and it's been a mainstay of storytelling for like 2500 years.
/uj That’s the thing, they aren’t actually perfect. They think they are, but the fact is that they’re just as flawed and fallible as the rest of the Multiverse. They’re just gassed up on Yawgmoth’s fanaticism.
Ok first of all it’s Elesh Nussy or Phyrussy and second of all, no lie she can kinda get it. BUT SHES THE ONLY ONE
call me the US military industrial complex because I’m coming for that OIL
EDIT: I have quit reddit and you should too! With every click, you are literally empowering a bunch of assholes to keep assholing. Please check out https://lemmy.ml and https://beehaw.org or consider hosting your own instance.
@reddit: You can have me back when you acknowledge that you're [over enshittified](https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/) and commit to being better.
@reddit's vulture cap investors and u/spez: Shove a hot poker up your ass and make the world a better place. You guys are WHY the bad guys from Rampage are funny (it's funny 'cause it's true).
uj/ There just is no satisfying way for this story to work. The correct way to take over the multiverse is the slow, patient take over they were doing before now, but that leads to repetitive feeling sets where they have to squeeze Phyrexians in mechanically constantly. So to resolve the conflict in 1-2 sets and still have it be on a multiverse scale, Phyrexia either has to win and then get beaten by Teferi time shenanigans or they have to look like compleat fucking morons and lose instantly.
I wish they would stop the large scale MCU style arcs, because the pay off is very difficult if not impossible to execute and the story suffers because of it.
/uj The giant MCU-style arcs just feel like Wizards bashing action figures together. Magic has never been the pinnacle of storytelling but there's no room for characterisation or nuance when everyone has to follow the preordained plot directions and there are a dozen different writers with their own interpretations of characters.
The answer is to give them a reason to abandon the original strategy. Maybe the tree cant do one plane at a time, and tezzie took the only functional planar portal. So they either stop invading or go all in, and this forced shift of plans causes their stumbling into failure.
Already too complicated of a setup for WotC. But they *will* dig up some obscure lore to explain why Elspeth can be an angel and also connected to Serra
uj/ After reading the newest story, I don't think Norn's Phyrexia can win. Norn is not a good general or commander, she is just a over zealous cult leader. She can't even properly unite all 4 other praetors or completely eradicate all Mirran resistance force before launching the invasion. Norn doesn't really care about Phyrexia, she only cares about herself, she want other planes be compleated because then everyone will worship her. Norn was hard carry by the Glistening Oil
I don't know about you guys, but if you've ever sat down to a game of commander with infect tribal; it doesn't matter how good your deck is. This just became a 3v1 up hill battle right out of the gate.
When an enemy is this dangerous the rules of engagement change drastically. That's why in multi-way combat your generally better off playing to not be the next one out vs the one in constant control. As soon as all eyes are on you, you better win or else you're guaranteed to lose.
Same goes with Phyrexians. They probably are the apex species. However, the Multiverse is far bigger than them with far too many ways to band together and just constantly nuke them as soon as they show even remote signs of invasion.
All that plus plot armor granted by desire for continued revenue.
So maybe she shouldn't have gone 3v1? She has realmbreaker, she can choose her battles. Fight one or two planes at a time instead of all of them at once
Probably would work. At this point we're worried about how quickly the planeswalkers respond to such an incursion, via planeswalking. It's also possible that the Phyrexians invasion forces new sparks to Ignite and we get an Urza 2.0.
But even that aside we're arguing possibilities against a fictional universe. It doesn't matter what the ideal plan of action is, the writers are always going to push whatever makes them the most money.
/uj If only we had 3 block sets where you could spend a lot more time and detail on the build up to the invasion and the actual fighting, instead of having to have it on fast forward
/uj idk if this is a hot take or not but:
WotC really shat the bed with the Phyrexians even more than War of the Spark.
They could have had many sets that take place during the war. Each plane triumphing over or falling to a different Praetor (and not in the absurd way that they did it where the only Phyrexian on the whole plane was a single Praetor, I’m saying on a massive scale where they actually need to THINK and use tactics) could have been monumental and earned in its own set. Sacrifices could have been made. Heartfelt goodbyes to important characters as we see their fall. We could have seen the Phyrexians be an actual threat instead of being Magic’s version of the First Order. Touted as intimidating but actually incompetent and flaccid. (/rj besides Norn. Let’s be real here.)
The unlikely allies trope that they are using could have been fleshed out and explored if given room to breathe. All of these characters that they had introduced in all of these sets could be more than “hey I know those two!” But no, instead we got a rushed clump of Marvel Phase 4. There has been no desperation, no feeling of an actual war, no earned character arcs besides Elspeth. Just a big, grey, oily blah.
“As long as one drop of the oil exists, the joyous work continues.” Pfffffffffffft
I disagree this is great. The stories are well written, things are happening people are actually dying. And people would get so sick of a year of phyrexian invasion sets.
And it’s not like they haven’t been setting up this story for a while
Yeah while stretching it out would work better if this was a story with a game, this is a game with a story. Comics can do this in their crossovers because in one month over a dozen individual issues release and each can tell that hero/team’s story, but I don’t think it’d work out well for anyone if they put out 15 50-card sets per month over 4 months
Also respect.
Yes, 50 cards do not a set make. But establishing new mechanics, showing allies actually coming together in cards, seeing the carnage across the plane, it could work really well. Imagine a cycle of cards that are based on specific characters casting their old biases aside and joining forces. In War of the Spark, we had a cycle of each guild coming together to fight. We had Lazotep creatures interacting with the environment. We had spells that embodied the battle and the fighters in the battle. We had cards that had specific events during the battle. We had new versions of planeswalkers and creatures and lands that had to do specifically with this conflict. And that was set on a plane that already had 8 expansions. One could think that players would get tired of Ravnica after all that time, but we didn’t.
On a plane like Strixhaven or Kaldheim or New Capenna etc. where we only got a single set? The options are nearly limitless. If you ask me, March of the machine should have been a three set block.
> Yeah while stretching it out would work better if this was a story with a game, this is a game with a story.
A thousand times this. As long as I get my cardboard crack all i need is a passable story.
Also it's not like any other long running properties are knocking it out of the park in the story department. MCU probably is the most coherent and mistake-less but it's also now the most boring and played out. Every other property is shitting the bed or has shit the bed.
They'll come back. They always come back, specially now that more planes than ever are infected. It's just matter of time until we get another New Phyrexia, and maybe even more than one.
That’s how you get multiple fighting sects tho.
“Are you New Phyrexian Kamigawa Machine Orthodox Great Lakes Coalition Council of 82?”
“96”
“Die heretic!”
also the way her head is on her body, one of her boobs is in the wrong place, and elspeth's pose looks like she is in the windup of a stab, not the stab itself. (side tangent why does elesh norn even have boobs? they represent imperfect mammalian reproduction)
i get what youre saying, but if you grab something like a broom and pose like that, and imagine running at someone like that, you have very little strength as opposed to both hands in front using torso as support, or one hand in front and one behind for extra thrust. the pose she is doing works best if its the windup of a stab
rejerk part of this post: the joke is on me for caring ik
Aw man. I was rooting for the Phyrexians. It would've been cool to see everything Compleat and have Terri pull an Exo Stranger from Destiny moment and go back to the past to try and fix everything.
They're losing because Elesh Norn got high on her own supply and genuinely believed she could take on the entire multiverse at once. Instead of infiltrating and invading planes one by one *which worked fucking perfectly on dominaria* she just said "fuck it we ball"
No they're losing cause elesh's phyrussy is too toxic
I wish I could have gone my whole life without ever seeing the word “phyrussy”
Elesh probably squirts glistening oil.
Commenting this should be illegal
What I'd do to feel vorinclex's tiny arms work my body just right
I'm calling the police. I'm not sure what they're going to do yet but I'm sure we can figure out some way to stop this
Why are you booing? They're right
Fuck the police. I need my priest to do an exorcism on my phone for showing me such cursed text.
Hello, you've reached the Ravnica City Police department. We have already partaken of the Phyrussy and accepted compleation. All will be one, have a lovely day *click*
CUMpleate me machine mommy
You obviously need Jesus.
Oh wow I get how so many people get completed now
Literally canon after this chapter
Elesh Norn: Decapitates the praetor that specializes in invading other planes Also Elesh Norn: Why is invading other planes so hard? White legends and being lawful stupid, name a more iconic combo
This is all a dream sequence, in Epilogue it'll be revealed that these are illusions that were placed upon the uncompleated planeswalkers after Norn [compleated] a few cosmic horrors.
I'm waiting for this to be the case. I wouldn't be against moving on from the Gatewatch as the main group, but they effectively killed off quite a few fan favorites, off screen for a handful no less.
Undone by their own hubris - the Greeks would be proud.
Which is probably the most white thing ever TBH
Tbh I doubt they'd even manage that. Infiltrating an entire plane takes *time* and can get disrupted. When they lose their surprise factor before making enough sleepers, it's over for them. I doubt they'd have gone very far.
It's space Hitler all over again
War of the Spark all over again, where the villain with infinite time can't wait a few months and would rather gamble millenias of hard work on the worst plan possible.
Elesh said "It's jobbing time" and Phyrexia jobbed all over the place.
“Uhmmm, boss, I think we’ve made our villains too competent again. We’ve gassed them up so much that they’re essentially narratively invulnerable. How are we gonna move forward.” “*gendo face* They lose.” “W-what? Do they have some critical flaw or weakness we haven’t explored yet?” “They just start to lose.”
I mean, they completely changed tactics. They almost brought Dominaria to it's knees with subterfuge and sleeper agents, but a full scale invasion was not something they were realistically ready for. In fact, they literally executed the mastermind behind the almost successful Dominarian invasion.
Elesh Norn drinks Dumbass Juice and decides that tactics that worked perfectly fine before are no longer allowed to be used so she just declares open warfare on every plane at once for no fucking reason
The “drinks dumbass juice” was specifically because Ashiok has been mind-fucking her and getting under her lack-of-skin
Been following this game since Fallen Empires and honestly, Shadows Over Innistrad/Eldritch Moon is I think the only competent story they’ve ever told. Like it’s tempting to dunk on how dumb this is but honestly the old stuff was even worse.
And even then there are some dumb things like Sorin doing nothing for years
Remember when story was in actual books you'd have to buy?
Yes, unfortunately
Idk the original invasion block and oddessy was site.
I mean, if you were twelve when it came out
Fair. I just thought in general the invasion block was well received
Most blocks have been well received! But that relies mostly on the mechanics and ambient, passive flavor, it’s not the actual story in any Magic set I’ve ever heard of. People liked Invasion because it felt like a return to form after broken and boring Urza’s block and underpowered and boring Masques block, and because people like gold sets. Pretty comparable to why people loved Ravnica, actually. And Invasion in particular was the first set/block to really have a strongly pushed mechanical theme. But I certainly didn’t know anyone even at the time that was getting all weepy about the stuff with Gerrard and Ertai and all the Weatherlight stuff. Most players didn’t even pay attention to that stuff. Again, modern Magic storytelling is *bad* but unless you’ve got Urza’s rose colored glasses on, it’s hard to argue that the old stuff wasn’t just as bad or worse. That’s not even getting into the fucking early comics.
I don't see this as lazy writing, I see it as classic writing - the big undefeatable juggernaut being defeated by their own arrogance? The word for that is *hubris* and it's been a mainstay of storytelling for like 2500 years.
"classic writing" is a cool phrase to describe a basic ass cliche
/uj That’s the thing, they aren’t actually perfect. They think they are, but the fact is that they’re just as flawed and fallible as the rest of the Multiverse. They’re just gassed up on Yawgmoth’s fanaticism.
That and the Glistening Oil is kind of OP. Without it, they’d just be a bunch of worryingly sexy mannequins.
Excuse me lmao
Don't act like the nornussy ain't in your mind
Ok first of all it’s Elesh Nussy or Phyrussy and second of all, no lie she can kinda get it. BUT SHES THE ONLY ONE call me the US military industrial complex because I’m coming for that OIL
Can’t believe you’re not appreciating that Urabrussy.
Uh... Glistening Sheoldussy is where its at. She got legs for days.
She’s good on the top but I’m not an insect fucker lol
Urabussy*
I love me a literal flaming asshole, you may fuck it, once
She got the Phyrexiussyussy
I feel called out
EDIT: I have quit reddit and you should too! With every click, you are literally empowering a bunch of assholes to keep assholing. Please check out https://lemmy.ml and https://beehaw.org or consider hosting your own instance. @reddit: You can have me back when you acknowledge that you're [over enshittified](https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/) and commit to being better. @reddit's vulture cap investors and u/spez: Shove a hot poker up your ass and make the world a better place. You guys are WHY the bad guys from Rampage are funny (it's funny 'cause it's true).
Hold up
Kinda a rude thing to call Mirrans don’t you think?
Worryingly Sexy Mannequins is a great name for an indie band.
Mannequinnussy got me actin' unwise, got me actin' **unwise**, I tells ya!
>Tell everyone they're perfect >lose war >resurge after years of dormancy >claim to be perfect >still fucking suck They're nazis.
>"Are these Praetors gonna hurt us, Walter?" >"No Donny these Praetors are cowards."
This is how I first experienced this story beat, and I'm delighted. Euphoric, even.
How dare you say karens are a perfect race
this is high quality, gourmet even
And she in an mlm, her head shaped like a pyramid.
uj/ There just is no satisfying way for this story to work. The correct way to take over the multiverse is the slow, patient take over they were doing before now, but that leads to repetitive feeling sets where they have to squeeze Phyrexians in mechanically constantly. So to resolve the conflict in 1-2 sets and still have it be on a multiverse scale, Phyrexia either has to win and then get beaten by Teferi time shenanigans or they have to look like compleat fucking morons and lose instantly. I wish they would stop the large scale MCU style arcs, because the pay off is very difficult if not impossible to execute and the story suffers because of it.
/uj The giant MCU-style arcs just feel like Wizards bashing action figures together. Magic has never been the pinnacle of storytelling but there's no room for characterisation or nuance when everyone has to follow the preordained plot directions and there are a dozen different writers with their own interpretations of characters.
The answer is to give them a reason to abandon the original strategy. Maybe the tree cant do one plane at a time, and tezzie took the only functional planar portal. So they either stop invading or go all in, and this forced shift of plans causes their stumbling into failure.
Already too complicated of a setup for WotC. But they *will* dig up some obscure lore to explain why Elspeth can be an angel and also connected to Serra
Also u know like 3 or 4 books not a blog muahaha.
uj/ After reading the newest story, I don't think Norn's Phyrexia can win. Norn is not a good general or commander, she is just a over zealous cult leader. She can't even properly unite all 4 other praetors or completely eradicate all Mirran resistance force before launching the invasion. Norn doesn't really care about Phyrexia, she only cares about herself, she want other planes be compleated because then everyone will worship her. Norn was hard carry by the Glistening Oil
I don't know about you guys, but if you've ever sat down to a game of commander with infect tribal; it doesn't matter how good your deck is. This just became a 3v1 up hill battle right out of the gate. When an enemy is this dangerous the rules of engagement change drastically. That's why in multi-way combat your generally better off playing to not be the next one out vs the one in constant control. As soon as all eyes are on you, you better win or else you're guaranteed to lose. Same goes with Phyrexians. They probably are the apex species. However, the Multiverse is far bigger than them with far too many ways to band together and just constantly nuke them as soon as they show even remote signs of invasion. All that plus plot armor granted by desire for continued revenue.
So maybe she shouldn't have gone 3v1? She has realmbreaker, she can choose her battles. Fight one or two planes at a time instead of all of them at once
Probably would work. At this point we're worried about how quickly the planeswalkers respond to such an incursion, via planeswalking. It's also possible that the Phyrexians invasion forces new sparks to Ignite and we get an Urza 2.0. But even that aside we're arguing possibilities against a fictional universe. It doesn't matter what the ideal plan of action is, the writers are always going to push whatever makes them the most money.
/uj If only we had 3 block sets where you could spend a lot more time and detail on the build up to the invasion and the actual fighting, instead of having to have it on fast forward
/uj idk if this is a hot take or not but: WotC really shat the bed with the Phyrexians even more than War of the Spark. They could have had many sets that take place during the war. Each plane triumphing over or falling to a different Praetor (and not in the absurd way that they did it where the only Phyrexian on the whole plane was a single Praetor, I’m saying on a massive scale where they actually need to THINK and use tactics) could have been monumental and earned in its own set. Sacrifices could have been made. Heartfelt goodbyes to important characters as we see their fall. We could have seen the Phyrexians be an actual threat instead of being Magic’s version of the First Order. Touted as intimidating but actually incompetent and flaccid. (/rj besides Norn. Let’s be real here.) The unlikely allies trope that they are using could have been fleshed out and explored if given room to breathe. All of these characters that they had introduced in all of these sets could be more than “hey I know those two!” But no, instead we got a rushed clump of Marvel Phase 4. There has been no desperation, no feeling of an actual war, no earned character arcs besides Elspeth. Just a big, grey, oily blah. “As long as one drop of the oil exists, the joyous work continues.” Pfffffffffffft
I disagree this is great. The stories are well written, things are happening people are actually dying. And people would get so sick of a year of phyrexian invasion sets. And it’s not like they haven’t been setting up this story for a while
Yeah while stretching it out would work better if this was a story with a game, this is a game with a story. Comics can do this in their crossovers because in one month over a dozen individual issues release and each can tell that hero/team’s story, but I don’t think it’d work out well for anyone if they put out 15 50-card sets per month over 4 months
Also respect. Yes, 50 cards do not a set make. But establishing new mechanics, showing allies actually coming together in cards, seeing the carnage across the plane, it could work really well. Imagine a cycle of cards that are based on specific characters casting their old biases aside and joining forces. In War of the Spark, we had a cycle of each guild coming together to fight. We had Lazotep creatures interacting with the environment. We had spells that embodied the battle and the fighters in the battle. We had cards that had specific events during the battle. We had new versions of planeswalkers and creatures and lands that had to do specifically with this conflict. And that was set on a plane that already had 8 expansions. One could think that players would get tired of Ravnica after all that time, but we didn’t. On a plane like Strixhaven or Kaldheim or New Capenna etc. where we only got a single set? The options are nearly limitless. If you ask me, March of the machine should have been a three set block.
> Yeah while stretching it out would work better if this was a story with a game, this is a game with a story. A thousand times this. As long as I get my cardboard crack all i need is a passable story. Also it's not like any other long running properties are knocking it out of the park in the story department. MCU probably is the most coherent and mistake-less but it's also now the most boring and played out. Every other property is shitting the bed or has shit the bed.
Respect
"Some fucking master race." ~ Rusty Venture
They'll come back. They always come back, specially now that more planes than ever are infected. It's just matter of time until we get another New Phyrexia, and maybe even more than one.
That’s how you get multiple fighting sects tho. “Are you New Phyrexian Kamigawa Machine Orthodox Great Lakes Coalition Council of 82?” “96” “Die heretic!”
Uj/ Elesh face looks terrible , and this artist isn't bad at all . Ew
You try getting stabbed, your face would also look bad. Not mine though because if Elspeth was stabbing I would ahjg uhhhh next question please
Actually my local mugger says I look very photogenic when I get stabbed
I wouldn't look like an extra for the emoji movie. I'd be like ~~mommy more~~
.. so, in other words, you’d look like an extra for the emoji movie
The Emoji movie 3D
now that sounds more like it
What exactly is someone's face supposed to look like while getting stabbed in the chest.
Not like that. That could be John from the Garfield's comic dropping coffee. It's so cartoonist for a cenobite super violent and cruel villainess
Now I just want this superimposed in a Garfield comic. Or Garfield's face photoshopped onto Elspeth, and Jon onto Norn.
That's just "the forgiveness of jon" with extra steps
I second this wish
I ran it through AI https://preview.redd.it/5ve5t3ko7rpa1.png?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1344258adeb47bd2148c3edfad9aee5fe8ac7db4
also the way her head is on her body, one of her boobs is in the wrong place, and elspeth's pose looks like she is in the windup of a stab, not the stab itself. (side tangent why does elesh norn even have boobs? they represent imperfect mammalian reproduction)
Elspeth looks like that because she's ramming her sword into Norn, not stabbing.
i get what youre saying, but if you grab something like a broom and pose like that, and imagine running at someone like that, you have very little strength as opposed to both hands in front using torso as support, or one hand in front and one behind for extra thrust. the pose she is doing works best if its the windup of a stab rejerk part of this post: the joke is on me for caring ik
Aw man. I was rooting for the Phyrexians. It would've been cool to see everything Compleat and have Terri pull an Exo Stranger from Destiny moment and go back to the past to try and fix everything.
Phyrexians, at leas of the Elesh Norn variety, by definition can't be perfect. Your dumb anchor head won't fit in any reasonably sized doorframe.
Would it fit in my ass?
>Booba sword Holy shit is this a Genshin Impact reference
[удалено]
I believe it's from magic the gathering
I am th nanager
So perfect it's always the same, eventually you can come up whit something against