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Fundamentally Rings of Power did far more to faithfully engage with the actual themes and philosophies and intricacies of it's source material than PJ's films ever did. Like just focusing on Adar for a second, they have created a character to be the active thinking avatar for Tolkien's unresolved orc problem and that's so fucking ballsy. Tolkien never decided how orcs exist in his world, they have souls but the birth of a soul is Eru's prerogative and that would make Eru actively to blame for the continuation of a brutalised slave race that is used to enact vast harm upon middle earth. So do they not have souls? No they must, Sauron cannot field an entire army of automatons, and within the books themselves orcs clearly show culture, aspirations and a fear of death.

And so you have Galadriel, standing there, telling Adar that orcs were a mistake, a mistake by whom? God? It's a fascinatingly niche nod to her hubris. And then Adar says no, we have souls and names, souls created from the very same One as you were. And that's such an incredibly exciting premise to go into the second season with, that these orcs do have souls. That each individual was made by Eru, that they do possess a piece of the secret fire, it'S!!!! I'm so thrilled. And that's not to even get started on the acknowledgement of Elven resistance to returning to Valinor being a bad thing that is against the divine order as expressed by Durin III and much more just!!! It's so refreshing to even see it attempted when PJ's 'hope and friendship' whitewash has been all anyone's ever thought Tolkien was about up until now.

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Taking thoughts about the role of Matt's kindness in Critical Role to the next level, I find myself thinking about how one of the most powerful aspects of this entire story was the good faith that drove it. By which I mean: I hear people say that campaign 1 was more plot/bigger stakes - and technically they're right, but the stakes in campaign 2 and the stories being told reverberated on a personal level in a way that spits in the face of the more conventional message we get from so many stories these days along the lines of "well that's just how it is." Those are the stories that had us bracing for Jester to be let down by her mom and her dad, expecting nobody to follow up on Beau being kidnapped, waiting for Yeza to crack under the strain of Veth leaving so often. In the jaded mainstream we're used to, Vandran would've been callous and dismissive when they finally found him and Fjord would have realized he'd outgrown the sort of approval he was never going to get. Astrid and Eadwulf would have just been using Caleb, too broken to escape the cycle. Cynicism would've been so easily hidden under the guise of realism and hardly questioned. Even applauded. Let me emphasize: it still would have been a great story.

None of that happened. Instead, incredibly, Matt took every chance to love his friends through the very narrative itself in a more explicit way, one that wouldn't have matched the priorities of the first campaign but which shaped the second into something so extraordinary. The world we live in has been darkening in so many ways and there's something bright and healing about watching Matt craft a whole world around uplifting his friends' creations - validating them, avenging them, righting the sorts of tiny, personal wrongs we're so often powerless in our own day-to-day lives to affect. I think that's at the crux of what makes the Mighty Nein so personal to us all. It truly is the little things, and seeing personal struggles given as much weight and resolution as epics about kingdoms and dragons struck a chord the likes of which I'm not sure I'll ever see again.

The narrative conflicts of this story were so much more realistic than the first. But it made all the difference in the world that it was a realism presented through the eyes of people who believe in hope and light. And none more than the DM himself.

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Disliked:

It just feels so out-of-place. So many elements of its design, important elements, seem to run counter to normal MtG orthodoxy.

Dice-rolling has become something intrinsically tied to silver-border; it's one of the things the border color is known for. So when I see dice-rolling in AFR, I don't think "Oh hey, they figured out how to do dice-rolling in black-border", I think "What's this silver-border mechanic doing in black-border". It makes the set feel like a silver-border set. Because nothing was "figured out"; unlike augment being iterated into mutate, *dice-rolling is just dice-rolling*.

The narrative cards (You See a Pair of Goblins) are the same thing. Something like that, which explicitly references the player (or worse, the *mechanics* of either game, like +2 Mace and the Classes (which should have been Enchant Player auras) does) is, again, something that you see in silver-border: Avatar of Me, Booster Tutor, Look at Me I'm the DCI, Rare-B-Gone, the gotcha mechanic, ... Again, it makes the set feel like a silver-border set.

Venturing & Dungeons, where you have these external game components that tell you what your cards do, and the mini-game aspect, feels like Planechase and Archenemy and Explorers of Ixalan: another system overlaid on top of "regular Magic". And yeah, those things are all *technically* black-border, but you wouldn't say they're "normal Magic".

I know AFR wasn't designed to be a Universes Beyond set, but it *feels* like it is. It *feels* like a silver-border set - or, if you don't think it "silly enough" to be silver, then make up a new border color and put UB in that. Because this isn't black-border.

Hated:

Flavor words. Yes, ability words didn't *technically* mean anything, but that's not how everybody treated them. But flavor words come in and say "No, really, they don't mean anything. We can just put whatever we damn well please here with no rhyme or reason."

Non-MtG IP on MtG cards. I think the set showcases really well why an entire set of this sort of thing just doesn't work: these other worlds were not built on the same design premises that MtG worlds are built on. Why is Bahamut a planeswalker, but Tiamat isn't? Mordenkainen, but not Vecna? Why are the devils in AFR black while the demons are red? Why is the White Dragon white, etc?

The Beholder, Halfling, and Tiefling creature types. This is 100% just pushing MtG out to make room for D&D.

What did you dislike about Dungeon & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms?

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Liked:

Again, the callbacks. Also loved seeing investigate get some more love.

Disliked:

Again, the fact that this “new cards explicitly for Modern” set is full of chaff because the set has to be draftable.

HATED:

I know in my Kaldheim response I said I wasn’t going to mention specific cards, but ... Garth One-Eye is just that bad. Reading the card should explain the card. You shouldn’t have to know what 6 other cards do in order to know what this one does. (Also imo copies of spells is just a can of worms R&D never should have opened, but that’s not bad enough for me to bring up in every single one of these replies.)

What did you like and dislike about Modern Horizons 2?

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LOVED:

MYSTICAL ARCHIVE. THE COLORLESS LESSONS. MYSTICAL ARCHIVE. HARNESS INFINITY. MYSTICAL ARCHIVE.

Liked: I loved the return of masterpieces in the form of the Mystical Archive. This was the best implementation of masterpieces yet, please stick with it.

Oh and magecraft and ward are neat, I guess. (Like, they're very simple and easy to understand, but they're not exactly flashy. There just really solid mechanics, I guess.) Also I really liked the red-white "leaves the graveyard" focus, that was clever.

Disliked: again, just lore stuff that doesn't really factor into your article.

What did you like and dislike about Strixhaven?

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Liked:

basically everything. Foretell and boast really interesting mechanics to play with. I love snow. I love vikings/Norse stuff. Both were implemented very well, I thought. The characters were all really cool and evocative. The implementation of MDFCs on the gods was very flavorful.

Disliked:

... nothing??? I mean, there were some individual cards I disliked (Reflections of Littjara), but I'm not going to get into that sort of thing in these replies.

What did you like and dislike about Kaldheim?

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Liked:

callback cards like Elvish Doomsayer, big and splashy effects like Sphinx of the Second Sun, and legends that were either really narrow (Siani, Eye of the Storm) or took an archetype in an interesting direction (Ghen, Arcanum Weaver)

Disliked:

the concessions the set's design had to make in order to create a Limited environment. Not every set needs to be draftable; "reprint sets" least of all.

What did you like and dislike about Commander Legends?

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Ok, going to do my best to respond to all of these. For Zendikar:

Liked:

MDFCs are an incredible design space, and ZNR made great use of them. Kicker and landfall are just solid mechanics, but I feel like all three of these really work well in tandem. The set was very cohesive.

Disliked:

mostly just lore stuff. The story was ... messy. I think having ZERO Eldrazi was an unnecessary overreaction. But also I didn't like how much the set pushed mill; not because I don't like mill (I don't), but because I don't like that mill gets solid support nearly every set while stax gets maybe ONE card per set, even though both mechanics are SUPER unfun to play against.

What did you like and dislike about Zendikar Rising?

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beau: when my father paid the Cobalt Soul to kidnap me...

dairon:

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Yasha: *writes Beau a love letter*

Beau: *asks Yasha out on a date*

Yasha:

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Duality of taliesin… based off this meme I can’t find the original I’m sorry hfhgjghg

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Caduceus “honesty is the best policy” Clay: (lies)

The Mighty Nein, containing two members with fake names, a member who they met as a pathological liar, a member who faked an accent for months, and a member who hid that she was married with a child and also originally a different species:

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please let them sleep for two more hours

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sometimes I remember how Everything about veth must look to people in felderwin, and feel like I’m losing my mind

like imagine you’re some small town nobody who went to high school with this chubby, awkward girl that no one paid attention to except maybe to make fun of her or push her around. The only thing you really remember about her is that she brought her button collection to third grade show and tell and the cool kids bullied her about it for like a month. Smart, real quiet, but just an all around weird girl. Married her nerdy AV club boyfriend and had a kid right of of high school, but you’re small town folk, and that’s what you do, so w/e

a few years later, you find out she was murdered. Sad, definitely shocking, but at the end of the day you didn’t really know her all that well. You give your condolences to her parents, maybe bring over a casserole to her grieving widower, but you and the town collectively move on. The most you hear about the brenattos for the next year is that yeza snagged some big time government contract, which is a little weird for a small town chemist, but hey maybe there was something to veth’s nerdy AV club boyfriend after all.

then out of nowhere, the Russians™ airdrop into your podunk little town, torch some buildings, kidnap yeza brenatto of all people, and peace out. Easily the wildest thing that’s ever happened in this shithole, cause what the fuck. What the fuck was yeza working on?

then a couple of weeks later, dead-for-a-year, button collecting, squirrely little professional doormat veth brenatto shows up, not only alive, but with SEAL team fucking 6 at her side and an AK-47 strapped to her back. What the fuck. Every single one of them looks like they could kill you in 10 different ways, and you can tell at a glance that veth has seen some shit. What the fuck. Her and her hypercompetent looking friends announce they’re chasing after the Russians on foot and leave. What the fuck.

you never see veth or her friends again, but last you heard she’s doing black ops wet work for either the government or the russians. Depends on who you ask. She might or might not have helped broker peace between them. Also old edith wrote and the brenattos are living in Sicily and are millionaires now

what the fuck