#also i got impatient and read blue and gold as well as booster gold from 2007 as well as super buddies already

[jerrythebug]

So in my read through Booster just died. But through amazing apocalyptic powers he was still up and running, until the evil of the week was defeated. And then Ted (who fucking saved the day!!!! Let's go bug man!!!!! I live for this!!!!) was like let me press the Special Button on your new armor buddy - and now our poor Booster is stuck in that ugly ass tin can permanently, which serves as life support.

He literally died and Beetle raised him from the dead. What's little casual necromancy between friends? Fuck me. Those were great issues. Very homoerotic.

But not great for Bea and Tora - who also had great homoerotic moments (the whole evil Tora kidnapping Bea? Come on! Gay!). I may be reading mainly for the Boostle, but Fire and Ice also had a Very Special Relationship going on that was fun to see, even if I kinda rooted for Guy sometimes (but hey, Tora has two hands! Multi shipping is good for the soul and super fun!). So Ice was brainwashed, went evil for a bit, but in the end she broke through and was killed for it. Which sucks! I liked her so much! I hope she comes back but I don't think she is. She should be resurrected is all I'm saying.

And Superman is back already??? Also with slightly longer hair? I thought he was gone for longer or maybe I'm reading too little too fast. I just complained about knowing that he comes back, saying that maybe sometimes those big characters should die permanently, but now when it's Tora I'm like bring her back this instant I miss her!!!! I miss my cool wife!!!

And coming back to Booster, he was so silly. For the first time he used his Future Knowledge to tell people what was going on. I didn't think he'd do that, to not contaminate the time stream or whatever. The way Ted reacted ughhhhhhhh that was so good! Love those fools! I need to draw them kissing with tongue! I need to draw them more and more!

Overall. The whole end of the world arc with the big evil guy whose name I already forgot was neat! I liked it! Now the League is about to break into more fractions and Extreme Justice with Extreme Art is incoming. More Iron Booster. More spider bug? We'll see!

[vorthosjay]

Ixalan: A First Look

Ixalan! The new set seems to have all the ingredients for pure insanity, I don’t even know how to begin. Thankfully, the name was changed from Atlazan to avoid the ‘Atlantis’ confusion that continually popped up (for the record, it was a reference to Aztlan, a lost Aztec city). Instead, the story seems focused on the myth of El Dorado, with a number of factions vying for control of the hidden city of Orazca.

For centuries, the untamed jungles of Ixalan have hidden a coveted secret: Orazca, the city of gold. But no secret can remain undiscovered, and no treasure can be taken uncontested. Unfurl your sails, saddle up a dinosaur, and battle your rivals as you embark on a journey to claim the plane’s greatest fortune for yourself!

Wizards of the Coast does not hold back this set, and I think the key art can best sum it up.

Ixalan Key Art

Unfortunately, the massive nature of the June Ixalan leak means I have to talk about it here. While most of this is still speculation, we have learned about about the factions on Ixalan and most of the planeswalkers we’ll meet. This is likely all stuff you’ll know in a couple weeks anyway, but be forewarned! Please, do not reblog this with additional details from the leak. If I omitted something it’s for a reason. Any other ideas are welcome.

SPOILERS AFTER THE BREAK

Factions

There are four known factions, which are perfectly color balanced if uneven (two are shard-color, two are enemy-color).

The Empire of the Sun

Colors: Red-Green-White

Main Tribe: Dinosaurs

The Empire of the Sun are the natives of the jungles of Ixalan. Presumably, they’re defending their home against the rest of the factions, who are invaders. It’s not clear if they already control Orazca or not when the plot begins. They clearly worship the sun, which they view as a god of some kind. They have a connection to the dinosaurs of the jungle, with carnivorous dinosaurs making up their known mounts (both T-Rex and Raptor). What’s interesting is that the sun seems to go through phases, and there are dinosaurs that are avatars of the sun of each phase. Those avatars and phases coincide with the Red-Green-White color scheme.

Even more intriguingly, we see the set’s native planeswalker holding a halberd with a dragon banner. Could the sun, or Orazca itself, have something to do with a known dragon? Either Bolas or Ugin, or perhaps someone new (or very old).

We don’t know the name of the planeswalker affiliated with the Empire of the Sun yet. In the bottom right hand corner, there’s a mural on the wall that’s very hard to make out, but it involves a red phoenix-looking bird facing off against a long-necked saurian figure (perhaps a dragon or dinosaur).

Rivals of Ixalan Key Art

Pirates

Colors: Blue-Black-Red

Main Tribe: Pirates

The pirates of Ixalan are many. I’ve got a feeling they’re not all a united front, given that we have multiple legendary captains. Based what we’ve seen so far, not all the pirates will have the same motivations, either. They’re looking for Orazca just like everyone else, and ultimately want to exploit it, but that by no means makes them allies. I would expect some interesting rivalries among the pirate bands.

“Just imagine what’s waiting around the bend. Adventure. Discovery. Riches for the taking. This is why I sail.” —Captain Lannery Storm

We know of Captain Lannery Storm from the leak and from the art book. We also know that Vraska is in the same kind of garb as the pirates (gosh, who could have noticed that?) and is even if the key art with them. She’s likely a Captain in her own right. I have an idea of another planeswalker who would round out the pirate role nicely, but more on that in a minute. Interestingly, Orcs and Harpies seem to show up among the Pirates.

The Merfolk Empire

Colors: Green-Blue

Main Tribe: Merfolk

We know very little about the Merfolk Empire, but from what we can gather they’re probably not allies of the Empire of the Sun. Interestingly, neither do they appear to be after Orazca. They don’t show up in the Rivals of Ixalan Key art, which depicts the three other factions. It’s possible the Merfolk are the first obstacle the Pirates and Vampires encounter, and they’re simply hunting down the invaders rather than chasing down Orazca.

The Vampire Religion

Colors: White-Black

Main Tribe: Vampires

We don’t know much more about Ixalan’s Vampires than we do the Merfolk. They’re a religion of some kind, presumably around darkness. I would imagine their religion of darkness or the night would be directly opposed to the Empire of the Sun’s god. Perhaps they’re coming to eliminate a rival? Perhaps they know something we do not? At this point, we can only guess. Although white-black vampires on a plane were I suspect Ugin leads to some interesting conclusions.

Planeswalkers

Vraska

Vraska is the first and most prominently featured of Ixalan’s planeswalkers. Whatever she’s up to, it can’t possibly be good. One of our biggest clues here is that she disappeared from Ral Zarek’s planeswalker detector.

Ral gave an impatient flick of his hand. "The experiment performed perfectly. The pattern of the departure was authentic, but the endpoint recorded as anomalous. Vraska hasn't been seen since. It's like she planeswalked into a void."

I can only imagine the reason this was brought up is because this relates directly to Vraska and Ixalan. So why is Ixalan a void? Is there a connection between the tomb that her pal Mazirek unearthed and Ixalan or Orazca? I can only guess at this point. The most likely reason has to do with another planeswalker I think is involved. And of course, now that we know Ral Zarek pointed Jace toward Vraska, and a piece of flavor text from the leak seems to imply Bolas gave Vraska a compass of some kind, we can assume his involvement as well.

Mystery Warrior

This mystery warropr, first revealed on the ‘Conquest of Power’ booster test, belongs to the Empire of the Sun. Other than that, she’s clearly has a connection to dinosaurs, but beyond that we don’t know anything about her.

Jace Beleren

JACE? Yup. Apparently after Jace’s ill-fated run in with Nicol Bolas, he somehow ends up on Ixalan. As to why he doesn’t just planeswalk away again? Likely either something to do with that unique nature of Ixalan, or because he legit doesn’t know that he’s a planeswalker. Either way, I think we will see Jace as a reluctant pirate, probably forced to join with Vraska for a common goal. If he even knows who she is. Considering he was very close to mind death when he planeswalked away, he’s probably full amnesiac, and I suspect Vraska will be taking advantage of the wayward guildpact.

Ajani Goldmane

Ajani? Well someone has to save Jace’s butt, and who better than Magic’s original Mesoamerican planeswalker. Ajani has a new hairdo and some eye shadow going on there, but he’ll be back. “But Jay, it was just a test.” Hush now. I hope after Amonkhet we can skip straight past the ‘it was just a test’ thing and go straight into believing that Wizards didn’t commission Ajani art for a test. Like our Mystery Lady and Vraska, it might not be his actual planeswalker art, but he’s there.

Speculative Walkers

Tibalt

Tibalt! Yup. Let’s talk for a second about color distribution. Knowing four planeswalkers in advance is really telling when it comes to speculating on a fifth. Here’s what we know of their colors, and the color distribution that creates:

Vraska: Green 0.5, Black 0.5

Jace: Blue 1.0

Mystery Warrior: White 0.5, Red 0.5

Ajani: White 0.5, Green 0.5

So that leaves us with 0.5 Black and 0.5 Red. Which just so happen to be Tibalt’s Colors. And Tibalt would make a pretty great Pirate, wouldn’t he?

And given the reveal that Ral Zarek has been working for Bolas...

Ugin

Ugin, as a colorless planeswalker, does nothing to the color distribution. Given the heavy dragon themes we’ve seen so far, and how well Ugin as a feathered dragon matches up with the Aztec god Quetzlcoatl, whose domain was wind and learning. It seems to me that he’d be a perfect fit for this plane. Perhaps this was a place where he once did ‘something’ and must return, much like his work on Zendikar? But what would he have done? I’ll talk more about that in a moment.

It is worth noting that the vision Jace has of a ‘crystal mind’ in Hour of Devastation matches up to the description of Ugin’s mind from BFZ block. Might Ugin have influenced Jace into arriving on Ixalan of all places? It seems likely. In Hour of Devastation, a look at Bolas’s mind reminds Jace of something else.

The walls around the dragon's mind were smooth and featureless, like dark obsidian. There seemed to be no entry, nothing to even latch onto. Jace had never encountered a mind so impenetrable, except for . . . the merest moment of a memory surfaced of a mind as smooth and dazzling as a wall of crystal. But even as the thought entered his mind, it erased itself, and he could not remember where he had seen such a thing—or even what kind of thing it was.

What . . . Jace shook off the sudden fugue that had overtaken him. It hadn't seemed to come from Bolas, but rather from inside himself. What was I thinking about? But he could not recall. Bolas's mind still loomed in front of him, closed and locked, as he futilely sought purchase.

Whose mind did Bolas’s remind Jace of? Well, in Revelation at the Eye, Ugin’s mind is described exactly the same way.

Jace had assumed Ugin was long dead, if indeed Ugin had ever been a person at all. Yet here he was, in the luminous flesh. Jace tried to read the great being's mind, to verify his story, but found it as smooth and dazzling as a wall of crystal.

And who better to ‘hide’ Ixalan (hence Vraska walking into a seeming void) than Ugin, whose own magic is used to disguise and hide on Tarkir in the form of Morph and Megamorph.

Sorin

As kind of an outlier here, way back in the Lithomancer it’s clear that Ugin and Sorin had met sometime before they joined forces against the Eldrazi. Given the presence of white-black Vampires on the plane, perhaps Sorin was also present on Ixalan? I doubt it, personally (mostly because Innistradi vampires are red, too), but it’s worth bringing up.

Ixalan’s Sun and Rebirth

Suns play an important part in Aztec culture. The Five Suns references the creation myth associated with those legends, which are somewhat important for a plane based on the culture. I’ll distill it down to the essence: each sun represents an apocalypse and rebirth for the people of the universe, for various reasons.

So... how does that apply to Ixalan? If the Sun is actual divinity (given the avatars, I’m going with yes), Ixalan’s plot is following the Vampire Priests as they attempt to extinguish the sun and bring rebirth to the plane. If they believe this is the order of things, it explains why they’re white (besides the whole organized religion thing), and how some of them are mono-white. Given their propensity for darkness, I wonder if something more is up with Ixalan’s sun. For instance, does it ever actually set? We’ve seen planes with odd day/night cycles before. And it’s possible like many other planes, the Mending has affected Ixalan’s metaphysics in some way. It’s too soon to know for sure exactly what’s going on, but it definitely involves the day/night dynamic in some way.

The idea that darkness is fighting against the light is supported by the Nissa’s vision from The Hand That Moves, which I’ve previously attributed to Theros:

She saw a young man, his face erased, stumbling among a garden of statues. High above the man a growing cloud of dusk attacked the sun. From somewhere outside the garden there was a mighty roar.

The young man is Jace. The garden of statues are the people Vraska has been transforming. The dusk attacking the sun is the invasion of the Vampire Priests, with their goal of bringing darkness to the plane. That mighty roar? A dragon (as depicted on the banner or the mural). Maybe Ugin? Maybe someone else? Maybe even Ajani, as I originally speculated for Theros.

Orazca and the Gods

We should also all keep in mind that El Dorado was never a real place. It’s likely that Orazca is not what it seems. It’s NOT just some city of gold, as the pirates probably believe. But if not that... what? I think the key lies in the mural hidden way in the back of the Rivals of Ixalan key art. Notice we have two figures in opposition:

The figure on the left is bird-like and reminiscent of Quetzlcoatl. The one on the right is terrestrial and is vaguely reminiscent of statues of Xiuhcoatl or perhaps Xolotl. Xiuhcoatl was the spirit form of Xiuhtecuhtli, the god of fire, day, and heat. Which, if this is indeed a parallel, explains the warrior’s fiery chest piece. I genuinely don’t know very much about mesoamerican cultures to say more, but it seems to me like Ixalan is intended to riff on the Aztec creation myth, with an epic confrontation between gods (although probably not creature type gods) for the rebirth of the plane.

So what’s the significance of Orazca? Perhaps it’s the place where such a switch could take place. Where one could tap in to the power of the sun, hence the warrior glowing when she does not in other images.

I’ve suggested Palladia-Mors in the past, half-jokingly. There’s little more to go on there than a potential Ugin connection and a battle between Elder Dragons. Still, it’s worth taking note! There was, or still is, an epic conflict here between day and night!

We’ll know more soon, and I’ll be back with more speculation once we have official word.