#we got the lost caverns of ixalan set

[macabresymphonies]

I appriciate the implications for lore and larger story and all the supplemental stories (please don't get rid of those WOTC) of Thunder Junction, but the fact this is "an empty plane with no living beings before that" makes it feel so forgettable it's actually insane.

I tried to stay positive really, but it's just bunch of returning characters having a cowboy themed party. The events could happen literally anywhere else, Ixalan especially, because there was no inherent faction, history or structure that made it unique to the plane. The Marketable Plushie™ could have been locked in Niv-Mizzet's cabinet for all I care and it would actually make more lore significant, than a random vault desert plane with vaugely native american nomad faction visiting it (you know, it's like native american history, sans most of it's core).

With MKM feeling like "Clue night at Markov Mansion" (to the point actual Clue set came out with it), Caverns of Ixalan not originally being Ixalan, but being "too similar not to not change" (god forbid you have more than one native american set when you have your n-th "vaugely european fantasy" set), I'm afraid it's setting a bad precedent for the future where creativity is stifled by marketability.

"I know you got a plane that suddenly has pissed winged police all over it and crime can no longer fly in demon city, but we can't do two sets on the same plane in such a short time (unless it's scamming you on small packs of course) so the cops and robbers set is instead back on Ravnica, you guys like Ravnica don't you (the sales charts said so)? Look Teysa Karlov is here! Isn't she like your "gagachondra mother boss queen" or whataver you nerds like to say? We're still testing grounds since we lost our last goth girl bait to some "character growth" or whatever back in Strixhaven"

Hoping Blumburrow is good enough to maybe make them reconsider (at least epilogue sets were atrocious enough to make them stop any in the future). It at least looks like it has an original enough story that's not just "Jace is the main character despite not being that well liked".

[markrosewater]

I have noticed a lot of people seem to think LCI is still leaning into the previous themes of Ixalan, while I don't think anyone made that mistake with WAR. Do you think it's just because we got two classic Ravnica sets before WAR?

The Lost Caverns of Ixalan has more node to original Ixalan that War of the Spark had to Ravnica. That's due to both there being two traditional Ravnica guild sets before it, and it not being the first return to Ravnica.

[monorayjak]

Lost Caverns of Ixalan Thoughts

Ok, so, I just finished reading through the Lost Caverns of Ixalan Story plus the side story that's been released. I just wanted to share some thoughts. (Spoilers ahead)

All in all, an interesting story, with lasting repercussions for both the plane and those who were a part of the story. But, the set leaves a lot more questions than answers, and seems to have added some things just because they could; looking at you Leonin - they were literally in the story for like 10 minutes and then promptly forgotten about.

The story of Kellan continues as a small piece of this plot, and I enjoy that it was woven in without him becoming a key player. He was just passing through and got pulled in, he wasn't a deus ex machina or a big part of the ending, he was just there. Really enjoyed the idea of Kellan building a rag-tag multiversal adventuring party throughout his travels, seems like it would be fun, IF they don't just make it him and Amalia. Because if they leave it as just them its just going to turn into a love story, and I'm fine with a love story, but it just feels shoe-horned in if that's the only reason.

Quint's search for the "Coin Empire" seems interesting, but also seems to come out of absolutely no where, like… last we saw of him his spark ignited. When and when did he learn about this empire? What seems so special about it? How is he so sure it connects across planes? How the hell did they travel across planes in the distant past? How did they end up where they did? What caught his attention about them? It just feels out of nowhere, and it would be fine if they had made him have the revelation of "Holy shit, these things are exactly the same as another site I was working on… could it be some kind of multiversal empire??" but no, they have him already fully aware of it out of nowhere. It could have been better implemented I guess.

Also, what the hell was with the descriptions of "long necks" just being there??? Are they talking about fucking Giraffes? Why do they never mention them in more detail than "fuzzy, strange looking, long-necked creatures??" Why??? Where they trying to hide something??? What was the importance of it?? Are they trying to say BATS somehow have really long necks?? But it couldn't be that because people call the bats, well, bats! Just… what???????

Liked the political intrigue we got from every side:

Vampires having a kind of Reformation level split in the church/government

The sun empire being ruled by a literal 4-year old (ADVENTURE!!!!!!!!!!!) who is being manipulated by two relatives

Huatli working to start a coup

Huatli, Elenda, and Admiral/Governor Brass working together to form a powerful enough force to stop another war

Saheeli being sent in Huatli's place and the fact she is from another world is used in the story by having her keep notes in her home-worlds language, with her also being the voice of reason to everyone without even thinking about it

Enjoyed the fact that Huatli is becoming a tired veteran after the race for Orazca, the War of the Spark, and the phyrexian invasion, and now just wanting a peaceful life with no more needless death.

Enjoyed the moments of Saheeli and Huatli being together, even we don't get many and I'm still not a fan they were desparked.

I found some bits of writing a bit lazy, notably:

These lines are both in the same section about 3 paragraphs apart. There is no break between in the form of a viewpoint switch or anything. There was no reason to have this repetition beyond wanting to compare his use of it to something else and being too lazy to think up another one.

This joke just falls flat. I understand Malcolm has talked like this the entire story, but it just feels so forced and atonal. And it isn't like they couldn't have good jokes in tense moments, for example:

A funny and natural exchange in a very tense moment.

To top off the final bit, I do need to gripe about my BIGGEST annoyance in this set specifically. The discrepancy between both the description and depiction of the "Cosmium Eaters" and the multiple depictions we get of them. Like, this is the description of the lead-up to the transformations

We have a mental image of a large bat god giving this power to Vito and his followers. Which is followed by this image.

Which is fine. Its a great image showing the beginning of the transformation. The transformation, which is described as:

Ok, so they've turned into man-bat like creatures. Cool, good. BUT, then we see this image in the next article, one where Huatli kills Vito.

That isn't a Man-Bat like person... that's Vito with bat wings. Ok, so maybe the transformation was exaggerated a bit in the story... except

No, it wasn't. So why the hell does Vito, as the first person to transform, look like his normal self but is written as if he's become some kind of horrifying monster, one which the characters mention they really only make out its him because he's holding the same staff as before. Why does no one else look like that? What do these people look like?????

Long story short, the story is a mixed bag I think.

[8bitsupervillain]

End of the Year 2023: Games I didn't like

The Bads

With the worst games I played list I decided to exercise more restraint with it. If I listed every game I thought was simply fine or a bit below average this and the meh list would've combined into a big twenty plus monster. So instead I decided to focus on the ones that I just found particularly bothersome. The first two on the list are given the dual honor of being a Dishonorable Mention as well as being a numbered entry because of the short amount of time I spent with them.

Dishonorable Mention/10: The Coffin of Andy and Leyley

I went into this somewhat blind. I saw people vague raving about it, but I don't really know what it's about other than cannibalism and murder. That being said I made it roughly ONE minute into this game before I decided that this isn't the game for me. The dialogue that was on display for the four whole minutes I gave it before I abandoned it to the wilds just annoyed me. According to the Steam page for it the complete story will be done some time next year, maybe then I'll be more willing to engage it on its terms. I'm sure the edgy Hot Topic teens love this game. Also, is it Lay-lay or Lee-lee?

Dishonorable Mention/09: The Last Oricru

This game is on here simply for the fact that for the thirty minutes I owned the game I literally could not play it. It's allegedly a Soulslike, but I wouldn't know. After doing the character creation the game would load with my character falling out of some sort of hibernation chamber/grave into a featureless black void until they let out a pained death scream, where it would reload and do it again. The game itself would not let me actually interact with it in any way. Keyboard didn't work, Xbox and PS5 controller wouldn't work, and hitting ctrl alt del just caused my computer to crash. Eventually I just called it quits, because unless the game is absolutely stellar I was not, and am not, willing to put up with this.

08: Magic the Gathering

I want you to imagine a world in which we were back in set blocks that lasted more than one set at a time. I know Wizards claims there's market research that proves that people like less time spent on individual planes at a time, but for the purposes of this just imagine we went back to the two sets a block model. Imagine if storylines got a chance to breathe and weren't in such a mad dash to wrap everything up instantly. Imagine if Phyrexia: All Will be One got another set to establish and solidify what a monstrous enemy the multiverse had to face against in the Phyrexians.

What if March of the Machine had a chance to expand the war into an actual war, and took advantage of the extra design space to make some of the stranger designs from the set be better defined. What if Incubate, or the Battle cards actually got stuff to really take advantage of the designs? Plus you'd get the better feeling of the Phyrexian Invasion/War being a larger event than the rather sad showing that we did get. Planeswalker deaths could've been more substantive, and less a thing where you go "oh, Lukka died." But this is all narrative stuff, I'm also saying Magic has been kind of bad this year because of the fact that since there were so many narrow one and done sets things just feel kind of sloppy.

I truly think that some of the mechanics from MoM, or All Will Be One, or Wilds of Eldraine could've been easily expanded upon to be a lot more ironed out. Incubate could have been a really neat variation of the Emerge mechanic from Eldritch Moon. It could have worked in a very flavorful way to convey the mechanical horror of Compleation. But since we had to go instantly from March of the Machine to Lord of the Rings; Incubate, and the Battle cards just exist in their rather half-baked shell, and that's a damn shame. Discover, and Descent from Lost Caverns of Ixalan could tie in very well with Explore, but we won't get anything else for it because we're off to the Murders at Karlov Manor.

Sure people might have gotten sick of the Phyrexians if we stuck with them for five or so sets straight (anyone else remember Eldrazi Winter? Where people got sick of the Eldrazi after TWO sets?). But I think even if we didn't get Dominaria United 2, The Brothers War 2, and just got Phyrexia: Two Can Be Just as Bad as One, and March of the Machine part two before we got the Aftermath I think it could've worked pretty decently. Hell, Magic Arena had a chance to act as a pseudo second block set for these sets but they decided to do nothing of value with Alchemy again. Much as I like the Lord of the Rings set, and some of the cards from the Doctor Who set, making them actual sets in between the other premier sets really stole some of their thunder.

07: Yeah! You Want "Those" Games Right? So Here You Go! Now, Let's See You Clear Them!

A fine enough idea, making an actual game out of all of those mobile game ads where people struggle with the basic concepts of the game. For the first six or so hours of my time with it I was more than prepared to give it a glowing recommendation. But the imprecise controls and aggravating levels as each of the games progress started to grate on my nerves. You can definitely tell that the developers love the ads for those games where you pull the pins to drop a guy into a pile of treasure. That genre of game gets a blistering one hundred levels, where as the other games get either fifty (Color Lab, and Number Tower), or less than thirty (Cash Run, and Parking Lot). I just wish that mouse controls, or hell even keyboard controls were better implemented than they are in this. Also I despise the fact that there's a steam achievement that requires you to get a million in game dollars, but the game itself is very stingy with actually doling out the in game cash. I am not going to keep coming back to this game daily to grind out a useless game currency when I already did all of the levels in all of the games. I also completely refuse to use a grinding method that requires me to sit here and press the enter key for twenty hours straight.

06: Dragon Age: Origins

https://8bitsupervillain.tumblr.com/post/711486689646952448/dragon-age-origins-review

But if you want the quick, nitty gritty:

The story doesn't hold up as well as I remember it, although that may be down to a million other fantasy series more or less using the same shtick. The gameplay was passably decent, but made all the worse when the game kept crashing hard and fast every two seconds. Whatever enjoyment I might have had with the game was just constantly checked by the fact that the game was so crash happy it aggravated far far more than it entertained. Also my issues with the plot could probably be handwaved away with the idea that my proposed fixes for them come from more than a decades worth of time to think about the storyline in Dragon Age. This is actually one of the few times that I would recommend a game from my worst lists (aside from Magic, I'm ride or die with that shit), because it's always education to go back ten plus years and see how a genre has evolved or not during the intervening years.

05: Diablo Immortal

https://8bitsupervillain.tumblr.com/post/724989316514938880/8-bit-reviews-diablo-immortal

A quick summation:

An extremely boring ARPG that doesn't respect your time by making you do multiple hours of fetch quests in an attempt to just soul steal as much time from you as possible. There are some legitimately good ideas in Diablo Immortal, but so much of it is just completely swallowed up by the insane free to play MMO bullshit that drips from every orifice that there's basically no reason to play this game.

04: Shining Song Starnova

https://8bitsupervillain.tumblr.com/post/738121163470946305/8bit-reviews-shining-song-starnova

To keep it brief:

An annoying story that feels really blatant which parts are just filler meant to just waste some of your time until you get to unlock the storyline that actually matters. It has decent art for the most part, but also has some of the absolute worst phrases and metaphors for sex I have ever seen anywhere. The only emotion it was able to wring out of me was a confused guffaw when a character was revealed to have been sent to prison. You'd also think that a story about an idol group would have more songs from said idol group instead of generic music, but aside from maybe two songs the game/VN offers you nothing.

03: MyHouse.wad

That's right, I'm putting a fan made "level" in as one of the worst things I've played this year. I'm sure a lot of work went into this, from a purely technical objective standpoint it's pretty well-made. But true objectivity is impossible, at the end of the day what matters is how you feel about the experience, and quite frankly I found MyHouse.wad to be extremely annoying to play. I don't particularly care if this makes people think that I'm an idiot, but I don't think it's good design to just throw out puzzles with no hints or suggestions that you might be doing the right steps to solve it.

02: Euphoria

https://8bitsupervillain.tumblr.com/post/738294071653728256/8bit-reviews-euphoria-the-game-not-the-show

For those with no time to spare:

A rather disgusting visual novel that eventually ran out of steam and I just started feeling bored with. Sure the villain characters are written pretty decently, but that's it really. I wouldn't recommend it. Holds the dubious honor of being the visual novel with porn in it that had the least amount of bad porn dialogue.

01: Pathfinder: Kingmaker

https://8bitsupervillain.tumblr.com/post/738586159481012224/8bit-reviews-pathfinder-kingmaker

If you don't want to listen to me whine for a time:

A thoroughly miserable time. Just positively wasted potential for the vast majority of its ridiculous run-time. Nearly ninety hours of wishing and praying you were doing literally anything else, but you stick with it because in your diseased head you think that maybe, just maybe it'll pull itself together and somehow stick the landing. It really doesn't. Play literally any other CRPG. Play either of the Pillars of Eternity, play Tyranny, play the original Baldur's Gates games! There are so many better choices for how to spend your time than playing this miserable pile. I played the game for eighty nine hours and I regret ever starting it. This one game may have completely and utterly ruined the idea of any Pathfinder game for me. Normally I have to be invested in a series before something comes along and ruins an entire franchise for me. Pathfinder Kingmaker did it with its very first entry.

[i-am-nickelbolt]

Bronze to Mythic: Lost Caverns of Ixalan, draft #1

Trophy!

I usually start out with a draft analysis, but this time, I think I'll start out with my impressions of the set going into the draft. I didn't spend much time on the spoiler, but I did watch the LR set review and also the Limited Level-Ups draft guide, and took in some of the streamer early access event. Here are my initial thoughts.

Red aggro looked like the best thing going. Goblin Tomb Raider looks very impressive given how many cheap artifacts that affect the board exist. One mana spells are also just so incredibly good. I also noticed that the removal in this set looks to be on the slow side, and I wasn't convinced that it could keep up with a 15 land red aggro deck.

I expect discover to be a really good aggressive value ability. Stuff like the caves that discover isn't where you want to be with that ability, you're just going to flip up your mediocre 2 drop most of the time. But, if you're aggressive, and you think the removal can't keep up, the you just want more bodies.

I'm skeptical about the craft mechanic. The front-halves are slightly overcosted in general and the backsides don't look strong enough to catch you up. And also, Abrade exists at common. Do you really want to spend a bunch of time and mana on an effect that will just eat Abrade? Craft is something that's going to have to beat me before I start playing around with it.

Descend 4 (and 8)... what are we even doing here?

After watching the early access event, I was struck by a couple of things. First, the combination of Sunfire Torch and Goblin Tomb Raider looks just unreasonably good. Second, Sunshot Militia is really incredible. A 2-mana 1/3 is reasonably statted for blunting early game pressure, and it carries a Torch as well as anyone. But games have looked either very one sided, or they stall out and the board just fills up with gunk. With a full board, you can cast Militia, dome them for some number, leaving back a few blockers, and then they're just dead the next turn. Like if you're in a stalled game at like 10 life against red, you might just die out of nowhere.

I said in the last set, lets give it a week or two for the format to self-correct, but Lost Caverns of Ixalan has got me shook. If this 15-land masterpiece is the future of the format, I won't be here long. I'm skeptical that this set can keep up, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. As I said, give it a couple weeks and we'll see.

[pxper-cranes]

MTG sets I want to see in the future (Post Phyrexian Invasion)

Ok so something weird that's happened is that aside from the whole destruction in their wake' thing, I don't really buy the weight the phyrexians had on the greater multiverse. In Wilds of Eldraine, their presence only enacted to destabilise the courts and allow for a new villain to take the stage, and as of yet the level of influence in Lost Caverns of Ixalan isn't discernible. but when I saw the plans for the next couple years of Magic story, I was a bit sad to see some planes left out of the roster. So, I thought to just spit out some ideas I've seen or thought of myself that I would thing would be really good in showing off and giving weight to the destruction that phyrexia supposedly did, as well as more adequately exploring the concept of planes bridging with omenpaths.

#1, Theros rebuilding set.

From what we saw in march of the machine, Theros got absolutely RAILED by the phyrexian invasion, so much so that its oceans, cities and even most of its pantheon were decimated. I think that sucks because its a plane that I really like and think has a pot of potential. So, after all the dust settles, it would be cool to see surviving Therosian people pilgrimaging across the places to try to enlist other planar factions to help in their rebuilding of their society. It would be cool to see people from Kamigawa, Ravnica or Kaladesh to come and help clean the plane up and rebuild its society. I'd even like if a new pantheon was partially formed from the people that help the most, since we know that belief in a single person is enough to send mortals to godhood. perhaps that's where the set's conflict is again, as a diabolical group tries to establish themselves as a new pantheon to lead new Theros, but people from other planes step up to help and maybe even become gods. You could have double sided cards for the mortal and god sides, and then establish new gods for new domains. perhaps there is a split between the Theros people; some welcome help to fix the plane, while others are more xenophobic to interplanar visitors. I just want to see Theros get back on its feet.

#2, Innistrad's Mass Exodus

something that is able to happen now are sets that feature multiple planes, and while we've been to Innistrad pretty recently, it technically could still work. with the emergence of omenpaths, eventually some bleed is going to happen into Innistrad, and the humans of the plane can find out that there are other worlds that are in fact free of the nightmarish and terrible, life threatening horrors that are all over Innistrad. it would be interesting to essentially see a whole buttload of Innistradian people basically becoming refugees on another plane or multiple to escape the terror of living in their own plane. to balance it out, there might be swaths of people trying to get *into* Innistrad for all matter of reasons. the cabal from Sominaria might be a bit interested in their demon cults, Strixhaven's Witherbloom classes might fancy an excursion or exchange to learn more about necomancy, or monster hunters from Ikoria may take on a more 'Van Hellsing' type of vibe, and form a guild to hunt monsters and help the humans that choose to stay on the plane.

#3, Planar Wars

Its a bold move, and would probably take a mini-arc to build up to, but it would be cool to see two plane's forces to go at each other, or at least run a type of cold war against each other. idk what planes specifically it could fit, but it could even be cool to see single factions on different planes go against each other. that would the Simic combine mesh against the Mardu horde? what about the Cabretti trying to extort the dinosaurs of Ixalan and team up with the Legion of Dusk to smuggle dinos to Capenna from the sun empire's clutches. its a less baked idea than others but still something with a bit of potential.

#4, Return to Amonkhet

Amonkhet was my first real set that I played magic with, I remembered opening my first pack and seeing Ornery Kudu, but nevertheless, with the return to Ixalan in Lost Caverns, being the second plane I participated in, I hope we go back to Amonkhet, possibly able to see the reestablishment of a new society after healing from Bolas and now phyrexia. Perhaps a kind of dungeon delving themed set, where characters are searching the plane for remnants of their society before the hour of devastation, but also trying to uncover the plane's society and culture from before bolas ever reached the plane. they start exploring ancient necropolis across the deserts and searching deep tombs and pyramids.

But these are just some of my ideas, I hope that the changes and updates that have happened to magic's sotry and lore recently allow the writers of the story to create some really great stuff, but so far I'm keeling my hopes close to my chest. I promise I'll do a couple shorter posts of my opinions and preferences of current or ex-planeswalkers and where I want their story to go in the new arcs of the future, (some I really want to talk about being Calix, Nahiri and definitely Liliana) but until then that's all. I'm trying desperately to escape my mtg brainrot but its a really good basis for inspiring a lot of my personal dnd stories as of late, so we'll see where I go with it.

[thegreatklaid]

Its like you got an arena rip of this.

So, this is from the Lost Caverns of Ixalan commander decks. Which has replaced starter decks. And thus it has to have a different set symbol. Lest we make Sol Ring legal in Standard.

Cornwall's Random Card of the Day #744: Yaheni, Undying Partisan

Yahenni, Undying Partisan is a rare from Aether Revolt, seen here in some commander thing. Why does this thing look so bad?

Man, haste is secondary in black, but it gets used so little you forget it's there. The Aetherborn are dudes made out of aether on Kaladesh who don't live long, so end up having pretty wild lives. Becoming a vampire as one is kind of a no-brainer.

I like the dichotomy in this card: creatures your opponents control dying makes it bigger, and killing creatures you control makes it indestructible. Either way, very vampiric.

[niuttuc]

Lost Caverns of Ixalan was very much not appealing to me as "underground world". With that said, it saved that by still being Ixalan, and building upon what was established last time around. Special shoutout here to the COMPREHENSIVE planeswalker guide we got for the set as well as the side story that helped further the worldbuilding and current political landscape of Ixalan.

As far as mechanics, Explore was once again very neat to play around with, and the introduction of Map was a welcome one in a way that felt straightforward and good. The Gods of Ixalan were neat mechanically. Craft feels like it underdelivered. It seems like a central part of the set and a showcase mechanic, but only a couple cards I can remember actually use it in a way that's memorable and that comes up in games. The Enigma Jewel and The Grim Captain's Throne are cool, but not practical to actually craft in most games, so the main way I ended up interacting with the mechanic was very basic with the craft with artifact cards. Which worked fine, but wasn't exciting in the slightest. Caves were neat and were there, adding a bit of flavor. Does feel exceedingly weird that Cavern of Souls is in the set and is NOT a cave. Discover was fun, like cascade, when not built around. Even better feeling! Discover was deeply unfun, like cascade, as soon as constructed decks were built to abuse it. That shouldn't have come as a surprise.

Now, Descend N, Descended and Fathomless Descent. Why. I understand you wanted to explore more adjacent design space for the mechanic since it was very open, but having three or more variations on the same ability is confusing at beast. Yes, they all care about roughly the same thing, but they're presented in three different ways, and not fully the same thing. Pick one, or make a single mechanic that can encompass multiple of those.

The full art basic lands for this set are, once again, gorgeous.

Not the biggest fan of the showcase treatments for this set, there's been better, but there's also been much worse. Solid middle of the pack there.

Feedback on The Lost Caverns of Ixalan

I’m about to write this year’s “State of Design” article, and I’m interested on your feedback of The Lost Caverns of Ixalan. What did you like? What did you not like? Tell me all your thoughts.