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Episode 252: The Tarkir Story!
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Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! Today Alex and Taya dig into the flavor and story of Tarkir! Someone might even say something nice about Bolas?
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Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle)
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Theme
00:00:00
Speaker
are
00:00:09
Speaker
are are
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast. ah We are here to talk about the story that has kind of been finished for a little while that we've been meaning to get around to. Yeah, it's been like a full month since the story came out.
00:00:45
Speaker
Yeah, so we're talking Tarkir story. um Tarkir Dragonstorm. That's the name of the set, right? Tarkir Dragonstorm. Okay. oh And we've got for two voices. Unfortunately, our our third member, Hobbs, is is not feeling well today.
00:01:02
Speaker
So he is
Meet the Hosts
00:01:03
Speaker
taking the night off. But why don't I introduce myself? Okay. Alex found on ah oh found on the the Discord. i so have habit of of mentioning social media there that I'm no longer a part of. My pronouns are he, him, and I'm realizing we don't have an opening question.
00:01:24
Speaker
no we yeah, we just talked for like 10 minutes, and I realized the same thing as soon as you hit record, is that we did not have a question. ah so I don't know. Maybe we just both talk about the kind of cool thing and we both talked about in the intro and we just make that part of the show. does that Yeah,
00:01:45
Speaker
i'm I'm sure. Why not?
Alex's New Game Experience
00:01:47
Speaker
How excited are you for Final Fantasy? Knowing that you can't actually get it. Oh, that yeah, there there's that. that wasn't i meant to how we started where I was talking about this game I've been playing. and Oh, yeah. Cool thing that...
00:02:01
Speaker
that happens first of all if you're new welcome this is uh slightly more chaotic goblin energy than normal but it's a little bit more than normal it's just just a scooch so i guess is for the opening question of whatever however you want to phrase whatever i the two of us just said for the last 30 seconds um i just i've been playing this game I mentioned it to Taya, I'm kind of tired because I've been going to bed late every night since, well, four days ago when I bought this game um when it came out. So if you are familiar with it, you can figure out what day we recorded this, I guess.
00:02:39
Speaker
ah There's a game called Promise Mascot Agency that... um that released ah few days ago and I heard about it just on a video game podcast I listened to. And one of the guys on there was like really, really hot on the game. So it's like, Oh, I'll give it a shot.
00:02:55
Speaker
Uh, yeah, I put 17 hours to it in the last four days. Um, it's, It's a weird one. It's a very strange game where the ah the voice actor for Kazuma Kiryu, the main character of most of the Yakuza slash Like a Dragon games, the voice actor for that guy is once again playing a gruff, serious, but part of goal member of the Yakuza, who instead of doing all the various weird things he was doing in that series, is doing, has got a mascot agency that he's trying to run to make profitable, to make money, to pay off a family. His family was trying to pay off for various things for whatever reasons. But the the the extra part of weirdness, besides this guy being in a cursed mountain town,
00:03:44
Speaker
where the mayor is corrupt and everything is terrible, ah is that mascots in this world are not humans in costumes. They are a separate sapient life form living alongside humans.
00:03:57
Speaker
And it is bizarre in all the best and fun ways. But the game boils down to a business management sim with...
00:04:09
Speaker
With an occasional weird card-based combat, of the card-based part is really, really pretty thin. it's There's not a lot of emphasis on that, but every so often the mascots get in trouble and you have to send in the superheroes, which is just a hand of cards that you collect while you're out in town.
00:04:24
Speaker
But it's things like the the first mascot you get is this giant... block of tofu and he gets stuck in a normal sized door and you need to call in the heroes to fight the door so he can get through the door um and they all get more bizarre from there But it's it's weird and a lot of fun. And it's the exact addicting gameplay that I like. And again, it's like these little bunch of little tiny systems that aren't super complex on their own, but they all interconnect in ways that are just a lot of fun and kind of endlessly engageable for me.
00:05:01
Speaker
So that's what I've been doing. Sounds really cool. so It's a lot of fun and and nice indie game, relatively cheap. i want to say it was like 25 bucks in that range.
00:05:14
Speaker
So pretty solid. I'm going to get, I'm nearing the end, but I'll get at least 20 hours out of this game by the, by the end. Yeah. That's a pretty good deal. Yeah.
00:05:26
Speaker
But that's my introduction. Five minutes in. How are you doing?
Taya's New Setup and SCG Con
00:05:30
Speaker
I am doing pretty good. I guess. Um, I ain't giving everything that's going on, but yeah. Um,
00:05:40
Speaker
yeah unfortunate asterisk. Yeah, ah have been ah having fun with my new PC. I ordered a new PC and a new monitor before tariffs wreck everything.
00:05:54
Speaker
ah And I've spent mostly yesterday and today just cleaning off my desk so I can actually remove my old monitor and replace it with a new one.
00:06:05
Speaker
Because if I had tried to move it, I would have had stacks of magic cards falling all over the place. a ah About three years worth of doom piles of magic cards.
00:06:18
Speaker
That's a good description. Yeah. ah But my desk is now looking a lot cleaner, even though there's there are boxes of magic cards all over my desk, but they're in boxes now.
00:06:32
Speaker
So that's a big improvement. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, ah but yeah, I'm a i looking forward to getting my new monitor set up so I can really see what my new GPU can do.
00:06:47
Speaker
right, cool. Well, also, do you want to introduce yourself? Oh, yeah, that might help. Hi, I'm Taya. Pronouns are she, her, they, them. I'm Taya Transcends on Blue Sky.
00:06:58
Speaker
and one of the things I think we can mention real quick while we're here is... ah uh, SCG con Minneapolis is coming up in a couple of weeks, like three weeks. i yeah.
00:07:09
Speaker
Less than three weeks now. Yeah. May, May 2nd through 4th. Yeah.
00:07:16
Speaker
Uh, and we're pretty much all going to be there at some point or another. So, uh, if you're going to be in Minneapolis, ah Come on by. The ah event itself is free. They do have a pass for the command zone as an optional pass, but coming to the con, it's like the old GPs. There's no admission fee to come into the con.
00:07:38
Speaker
So if you're in the area, come on by, say hi maybe play some commander with ah us. Yeah. And if you're interested in other games, I guess they run other games there now too. I haven't been to one of their events in a long time.
00:07:53
Speaker
And now they run Flesh and Blood, Larkana, a few other games there too. Yeah. I mean, SCG really runs East Coast tournaments. I've never been to one of their events before. Yeah. i They've had some events here back in the before times.
00:08:11
Speaker
um They would do events here occasionally. So I went to one or two, but would mostly doing GPs. But like I went to a GP that they also ran because I had a One point in time when Magic did 40 or 50 Grand Prix's a year, they often had ven tournament organizers like Star City Games to do chunks of those events.
Magic Tournament Memories
00:08:34
Speaker
So I went to a GP in Florida that they ran, but that was that was more than a decade ago. That was 2014. That was right when the original Tarkier came out.
00:08:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah it was it was for the original Tarkir, in fact. It was it was like a weeks, a week after the set came out. ah hit I hit a lot of, I went to four pre-releases to try to like get good at the sealed event.
00:09:00
Speaker
And I didn't get good, but what I did do is get good at building a deck. So my friend who also went to that GP with me registered a deck with 15 lands because he was not good at, he was not practiced at building a deck and registering it. And he didn't realize he'd only registered 15 lands until after he'd already registered it and then had to go back to that every round.
00:09:23
Speaker
Oh, geez. that's Yeah, he he and I both dropped out fairly early, but I at least didn't feel a lot of that stress because I was familiar enough with the cards in the set. I was knew what I was looking for, the things I like to put together, and I i put together my deck pretty quick.
00:09:39
Speaker
Yeah, Sealed's just not my favorite format. i'll I enjoy Sealed 2-Headed Giant, but regular Sealed just bores me. And it's it's so, like,
00:09:53
Speaker
I mean, there's there's obviously there's still a lot of skill involved in deck building and in playing a game, but it also the just opening the packs and getting whatever you get is a little too random for me.
00:10:05
Speaker
ah yep That is fair. And that was, honestly, I don't know that my poo was bad, but it was, it didn't have things I liked to play. So even when I was like, I built what I felt like was the best deck I could build, but even when I did, it did well, it didn't feel fun to play.
00:10:21
Speaker
So I only played three rounds of the the main event and that is the furthest I've gotten in a main event at a intendeded event like this. I realized very quickly that organized play at these is not my speed. I like to just,
00:10:33
Speaker
maybe like a side of event or two and then play with folks I know. and just, yeah I do have to say that that is one of the big differences between FCG con and, ah MagicCon is the options for side events are a lot more limited at SCGCon. Like, they always have these wild formats at MagicCons, like Gavin's Unknown and Full Box Sealed and all these other crazy options, but it's kind of just the usual... ah They don't even have any Sealed Commander ki commander Precon events on them. I always love doing the Commander Precon events, too, yeah when they're available, but they didn't have any on the schedule.
00:11:14
Speaker
yeah. Yeah, im I'm hoping and I noticed on the roof website, like they didn't have the any on demand events listed, though their FAQ for the like their events as a whole mentions on demand. of event Yeah, i I mean, they obviously have some because the commander package comes with like, I think it's like eight tickets for commander um events in the command zone.
00:11:36
Speaker
Yeah, I just, I want to do at least one Mystery Booster 2 event. That's my goal. And there's some skilled ones that are scheduled, but I didn't see any drafts, and then I realized, well, those are probably on demand. and Yeah, um I would be much more interested in doing draft ah Mystery Booster 2 than sealed, that's for sure.
00:11:54
Speaker
Although I don't think they had two-headed Mystery Boosters, because that would be a lot of fun, too. Yeah, that'd be fun. hu I think they only had Tark here for two-headed.
00:12:07
Speaker
I've not done a lot two-headed. I used to do two-headed with x Xavier, like every event. And um Battle Bond is still probably my favorite set of all time.
00:12:20
Speaker
ah like Xavier and i were on a really good win streak playing Battle bond I don't think we've ever finished worse than three-in-one playing that. Wow.
00:12:31
Speaker
Yeah, i did ah I did Battle Bond like release event. I don't think they did a pre-release for it, but I did a Battle Bond event with a friend of mine. And I think that's the only time I've done two-headed giant at a release or pre-release event. Yeah, ah they still had, I think it was GP Portland 2019 still had Battle Bond. And I played that with some, I did some,
00:12:57
Speaker
games of that uh might have been 2018 it's just been so long it's like i want another battle bond set so bad and you know i i've talked to gavin about it and he's just like oh there's really no place to slot it in on the schedule even though he knows a lot of people wants it yeah yeah that's that's too bad there's too many uses universes beyond sets that are taking up all the places where we used to get fun sets like battle bond so they should have done as a as a battle bond universe beyond set do do do like a two-headed giant marvel set or something that feels that would be amazing cool yeah yeah
00:13:40
Speaker
random ideas but it but i guess that they would make it have made it harder to make that a standard set but what was there was the there the uh the Zendikar set that was supposed to have some like two headed giant. Oh, the gate watch, uh, had, uh, or not oath, but the second one, um,
00:14:02
Speaker
whatever it was had the, ah the ability that make your spell cheaper. If someone on your team has cast a spell yet this turn, or well, if if someone has cast a spell yet this turn, uh, um, that one was one of my most memorable wins and two had a giant because we were down to two life and totally dead on board. And, uh, Xavier ripped off the top, the, uh,
00:14:28
Speaker
red ah the red fireball that hits two targets, which is perfect for two-headed giant. yep And it just costs... if If you cast it with the alternate cost, it just costs red and an X to do damage to two different targets. And I had the...
00:14:43
Speaker
I had a throwaway spell I could cast to trigger the... I still can't remember what that mechanic was called, but... Oh, nice. To trigger that mechanic, but yeah, we ah they were still at like 24, and it had been a long slog of the game, so we had enough mana to just kill them outright with that spell.
00:15:01
Speaker
That's awesome. All right, well, do we want to... Yeah, let's... I mean, you were talking about... We can segue in the Tarkir off of your Tarkir story.
00:15:13
Speaker
yeah I think yeah the yeah really interesting thing about ah the new Tarkir story is that um and we got seven episodes and five side stories. We got more than usual.
00:15:29
Speaker
ah But and I'm going to I'm going to preface this before we talk anything about the story. The I have a lot of issues with it, but none of those issues are on Cassandra call. This is with how wizards chose to structure the story.
00:15:42
Speaker
Yep. i and I'm exactly there. And thank you for make but having that preempt, like all of the things we're going to say, like as that to start that. Because I thought what what was written was really good, but we were missing a lot too.
00:15:58
Speaker
yeah and And again, this part of this problem goes back to the, we don't have blocks anymore. this this needed This needed to be a two set block to tell the story.
00:16:10
Speaker
and Yeah, all of the all of the story that they wanted to fit into this set, cards and written word, had to be crammed into one set. So even when we get ah you know like two extra episodes, that's still only 40% of like what we would have had with two sets.
00:16:27
Speaker
Right. So kind of give a background for people who weren't around that long. When the original Tarkir came out, it was set up as a ah time travel story. The first set was Kanzatarkir, which um had the present timeline with the five clans warring with each other, ah but there were no dragons at all. So Sarkhan didn't like that.
00:16:48
Speaker
Um, so, ah following Ugin's, uh, mind, uh, whispers, Sarkhan got himself traveled back in time. And that was the Fate Reforged set, which took place about 1200 years before, ah the concept did,
00:17:04
Speaker
ah And then ah he resurrected Ugin, which brought back the... or Well, he saved Ugin in the Chrysalis, which brought back the dragons when he returned to the new timeline.
00:17:18
Speaker
ah And ah which he liked a lot better, but it turned out that ah the community liked the Khan's timeline a lot better than the dragons' timeline.
00:17:29
Speaker
Yeah, and and this is a thing that if you're interested in like the the design ethos and philosophies and stuff, kind of that behind-the-scenes stuff, Mark Rosewater, who has been the head designer of Magic for a long time now, he talked a lot about this at the time.
00:17:45
Speaker
kind He did, yeah, and afterwards. is like their Their main concern was not having enough three-color designs to do a whole block when it was still three-step blocks. Yep, because was... A big part of their design was this hinge, because this was also back when it blocks were always three sets.
00:18:02
Speaker
There was a bunch of things that was happening. But so the first set were these three color. So that's one color plus its two enemies. so that's ah one color plus its two enemies And we had never really had a set with that color setup. And so like that was part of the impetus of this. That was part of the cool stuff. We got some nice lands for all of those wedge decks. We got the names of the wedges from there.
00:18:27
Speaker
yeah Before they all just kind of had community names that they'd come up with like Bug and Rug. Yeah. and And junk USA for some reason. and And so they we got some a lot of good stuff came out of that.
00:18:43
Speaker
But then the the hinge with Fate Reforged, like they were saying, this set set the set set in the past. It's a fun sentence to try to say um that had those same clans were present.
00:18:57
Speaker
But there were some like hybrid mana, some fun things. That's where like, yeah, all the, all the cons have hybrid mana. ah They were monocolor with a hybrid mana ability of the other two colors.
00:19:09
Speaker
Yep, which which kind of fit them into, you know, either the three or into the two, which is then kind of what happened with the resolution where the dragons came back and they sort of stamped out one of these colors out of the pair. They removed the enemy color from each of the pairs and just left the two allied colors. Yes, which is, you know, from a mechanical standpoint, is way, way less interesting because we've been seeing ally color pairs in Magic since 1994.
00:19:37
Speaker
ninety ninety four And it also was just the dragon's timeline was a lot less interesting than the comms timeline. and And that is true from a so from a story standpoint as well. It was a lot of a lot of the the cool, weird, you know, some of that was the representation of the enemy colors in those pairs, and some of it was just in general.
00:19:54
Speaker
there There was I don't know, we don't need to litigate that, but yeah, it was just a lot less interesting. um I think structurally it was a really neat idea because this was the first set where they really messed with the draft order, which was kind of fun back then. Normally you, you had fate reforged drafting with cons and fate reforged drafting with dragons, but dragons and cons never drafted together, which was cool.
00:20:20
Speaker
At the time, when you got to the third set, you just drafted one pack of each at that point. Yeah. Normally for other set, for other blocks. Yeah. Yeah. You used to go three the first and then it was two and one. And then the third set, you do one of each.
00:20:35
Speaker
And so this was cool to like play with that. It was also trying to solve the quote third set problem where the third set just always runs out of steam and ultimately just made the second set like that instead. It was, it's a whole thing, but yeah.
00:20:48
Speaker
Favorite forged is not a very good set. No, there's some really fun individual. We got a Luscia from fate report. yeah So, I mean, a Luscia is great. Honestly, I like that whole cycle of cons.
00:21:01
Speaker
Yeah. The cycle is really good. you know, I mean, uh, we still see a lot of, uh, uh, Tastiger, um, not as much as we used to. There's better, there's better recursion commanders now, but, uh, yeah. Um,
00:21:20
Speaker
But then then he just became a necklace in the new timeline. Yeah. And so, yeah, ultimately all of that is preamble to get into one of the struggles.
00:21:30
Speaker
And Mark has said this at various points on his blog when people ask him about going back to Tarkir. Like one of the struggles for them was trying to figure out how to make the world the world that the players like better. Like the version players like is the one we got rid of.
00:21:46
Speaker
And so they did it here. And I don't, I did it very ham, you know, ham, hand yeah it was, it was not handled well. No. Yeah.
00:21:57
Speaker
We got we basically got the entire world flipped upside down and somehow restoring twelve hundred years of lost history. And all that was reduced to half of the first story and some basically bards telling stories on how that happened.
00:22:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's not even half the first story. It's like three paragraphs out of the whole story. And we we barely find out about basically like, well, the the leaders of the the factions got together and decided they had enough of the dragons and did this powerful spell to summon their own spirit dragons and then kicked the dragon lords out.
00:22:34
Speaker
that was yeah That's basically all we got. Yeah, and now and now the clans also have some dragons, so we have both, but then there's also these other wild dragons, and that's kind of what the story's about.
00:22:44
Speaker
It's a good segue. I have a quick... Normally when we do these story breakdowns, we'll go more beat by beat across the stories, but I think as we'll talk about, the the the meat of this conversation is more on ah on a textual level.
00:22:57
Speaker
Yeah. If we did beat by beat, we would be here for two to three episodes. Like I think Borthos cast three episodes to cover the whole story because of it being seven, yeah seven chapters.
00:23:09
Speaker
So I, I've got like a quick one, one ish sentences for all seven chapters. I wanted to like quick run through this and then we can kind of dig into wherever makes sense to get into if that, that works for you. I think,
00:23:21
Speaker
That was a good encapsulation of episode one was basically we learn how this happened. We see Narset. And then we learn about the new problem with the dragon storms. um Episode two, I just wrote down, Elspeth shows up to call Narset to action.
00:23:37
Speaker
Yeah. yeah And like again there's there's there's some more stuff going on in here. but Yeah, because the dragon storms aren't um contained to Tarkir anymore. They're appearing everywhere in the multiverse.
00:23:50
Speaker
And they're not just summoning dragons. They're like changing the landscape. So they're they're changed in what they're doing. And now that's part of why Elspeth is showing up because it's like, we need to come here and try to solve this. And a lot of planes just aren't equipped to he you know deal with dragons. Some of them, their dragons are very rare. They don't exist at all.
00:24:09
Speaker
Yeah. Like we saw this in the Bloomberg story. We get one dragon that shows up and it's like wrecking the whole plane. Yep. Yeah, and and so this is the the the the call to action. And Narcet, despite now being the leader of the Jess guy, she says, I have to go help.
00:24:26
Speaker
And the Jess guy can't move on this right now. The political situation is tense. Here's a slight drop of more information that we can't actually fit in the story because it's an entire story that we didn't write.
00:24:42
Speaker
The one cool thing and about the Jeskai, though, is that their capital city is now a monastery on an airship. Yes. So it's like... Really cool. Lots of cool things in these stories, both world-building stuff and writing stuff and character things. Just unfortunately, they were trying to tell too many stories in one story.
00:25:01
Speaker
um So then episode three, we see a Johnny. He's not doing well. um i yeah I'll go back to my regular statement. Planeswalkers need therapy and he really needs some. He really needs some. And there's there' a little bit of that. i have i have a quote from him later when and he's he's having some breakthroughs after after after seeing Elspeth and getting getting a few words from her and going their own way for a little bit.
00:25:33
Speaker
Episode four, we see Sarkin. He's really not doing well. Then does worse. No, he's very sad about the dragons not being in charge anymore. And even more sad about not being able to transform into a dragon anymore.
00:25:47
Speaker
Yes. He apparently lost that with his planeswalking, his spark. Yep. And then we see Taigam show up and... Yeah, he can't get any of that sweet dragon ass if he can't transform into a dragon.
00:26:01
Speaker
that's That's right. And so Taigam shows up and and they both, you know, do a dark ritual and... Yeah, Taigam's an asshole in every timeline, though. So that is that is one thing that's been constant through all the Tarkir stories. Yeah, every timeline, all the time.
00:26:19
Speaker
Yep. uh yeah and even i like the the um blurb for episode four is uh sarkin and tigem steaming comes to a dark fruition tigem scheming was a card in uh one of the previous sets you're right that was a dragons yeah dragons or uh cons i think that was in the concept um Yeah, so episode five, Ajani shows up to say Sarkin's big and scaly and looking for friends, ah gets Elisabeth and Narset unimprisoned.
00:26:53
Speaker
Yeah, they got they got picked up by the Abzan, ah and the Abzan being a clan made up of a bunch of different houses, were having a very long political bait debate over what to do with them, because and they're kind of paralyzed by their political structure because they won't do anything unless the houses all agree to it.
00:27:16
Speaker
Yep. Yeah. And so they were, they were kind of stuck there. Elspeth was about to act in some fashion. yeah and then and Yeah. She said if they don't get out of there in like two hours or whatever, she's going to get them out of there.
00:27:30
Speaker
Yeah. And then, and then he shows up with portents of, of dismay, destruction that Sarkin's a big dragon and gathering dragons. And we need to do something about this.
00:27:40
Speaker
Um, and then they go their own way because Johnny is still struggling with all of the things that, uh, he did during the Phyrexian, uh, arc invasion while he was, uh, Phyrexianized.
00:27:56
Speaker
And then, uh, Elspeth and Narsit end up in the meditation realm. Yeah. They, they go into one of the dragon, one of the biggest dragon storms. And in the middle, there's a temple, which has a, uh,
00:28:11
Speaker
Which is an open path. Open path. Yeah. To the meditation realm. That there was some insinuation and maybe because there's some insinuation that was something ancient there. And um now i'm I'm thinking maybe it was just that they were feeling the meditation realm, not the omen path itself. But for a second, I'm like, has that path always been there? Is that the implication there? But maybe was just the the realm itself.
00:28:33
Speaker
And then they find Jace because of course, I have some some comments about Jace, but I'll bring that up with done with this high-level thing because it's it's relevant. do i do want I want to bring up ah ah one ah set of lines in this story, though, that I think is... yeah ah the um The last I saw you, you were Elspeth's voice died as she spoke. Run through with your sword. Yes, said Jace. I imagine you thought I was dead.
00:29:05
Speaker
Yes. Or maybe, you know, it's a good time to talk about that. Literally in that conversation, i was I was reading that on the bus ride home tonight.
00:29:16
Speaker
um And i as soon as I i hit that, like... Then there's the point where they're asking him how he like escaped Firesis. I don't know. Firesis.
00:29:28
Speaker
Firesis. Yeah. And, and he just said, if I, if I said I did it myself or something, would, would you believe me? And nurse, it's like, oh yeah, you're, you're a mind mage. It would make sense that you could, you know, compartmentalize yourself and kind of do this again. And he's like, oh wait, how did you know that? Yeah.
00:29:44
Speaker
And it's, I literally, I stopped reading to take out a note and I just wrote, Jace has so major smartest person in the room energy. Yeah. Narset's response was, what do you mean surprising? It's rather obvious.
00:29:57
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And, and it's, and it, it, This is a thing that is is such a such an annoyance. A thing that I hate so much or really, really bugs me so much about both fictional and real people.
00:30:10
Speaker
um Sometimes they're just characters and Jace is like emblematic of this. But Radley, cover your ears if you're listening. But it's who just... Who are intelligent people, but who then assume that that means that they are always the smartest person in the room.
00:30:29
Speaker
It's still better than dumb people who think they're the smartest person in the room. That's how we got our government. There's that too. But like, he just... apparates or thinks in his head that there is no one else who can understand what he's doing because he is clearly the only person who understands and puts these things together.
00:30:49
Speaker
And there's a few little offshoots from that. There's the like, therefore, especially this is especially in the archetype of the really smart planning people, the mastermind people who then don't,
00:31:02
Speaker
forget this was this was a bolus downfall thing who forget that other people have agency and wills of their own and can make choices they showed it a lot during the zendikar rising set too where he thought you know he was basically you know trying to tell nissa and nahiri what to do with their own plane yep Yes. and And he also has sort of a branch of that related to that in I don't know, bad for sync with that is the Thanos problem um where and this is like an actual line from him in one of the later stories. think it was six where he said, I can fix it. I can fix everything where he believes he is the only person who can make a plan and can execute a plan.
00:31:48
Speaker
And that was Thanos' plan. He's like, I see an issue that lots of other people probably already see. My solution is the only solution that can possibly work. No one could possibly come up with any solution that could work.
00:32:03
Speaker
And all i'm goingnna I'm just going to hammer this down everybody's throat, but regardless of anyone else's capabilities to try to fix this problem. Yeah, and we also do get Jace, of course, is ah has loot with him, but loot is still um under Jace's sleep spell, which is how he ended up at the end of Aether Drift.
00:32:25
Speaker
Yep. And that was like part of the, I think the line he said that I can fix it, I can fix everything was was part of ah like a flashback sort of thing where he was having a conversation with Vraska where she's just like, really, Jace? Like, is this really the right thing to do? And and yeah, it it he's it's so bad.
00:32:45
Speaker
But then I also like that Narset just cuts right through that when she explains to him how he solved this and he just assumed no one else would be smart enough to figure it out. And then I realized in episode six, when they're having a conversation, I do want to go for a little bit more in five because this this bit with Jace is pretty important to kind of show what's going on to the long-term arc is,
00:33:10
Speaker
um you know, Luke's knocked out and, uh, Narset asked Jace, did he agree to be kept in this state? And Jace says, he consented the very first time we released something involved. That's how i learned of the knowledge he had in himself.
00:33:24
Speaker
But did he agree to this Narset persisted? Uh, and then, hearing and then, uh, um, so you didn't answer me, Jace, what are you doing here? So like he, um,
00:33:38
Speaker
you know, he's totally in the, I'm just going to, yeah, like you said, I'm going to do what's right. i don't care if I'm hurting loot or yeah whatever. i see a problem.
00:33:50
Speaker
I'm going to make a plan and I'm the only one who can understand it. I'm the only one who can implement it. And everyone else is neither, either needs to get out of my way or do what I tell them.
00:34:03
Speaker
And we know from years of story with him being involved, he is not the only capable person in the multiverse, e but he is operating like he is. Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:17
Speaker
ah And the other thing i want to I want to bring up at this point is this, the Jace um Meditation Realm thing, is three whole stories, three whole chapters of the story, and we don't see any of it on the card except for Ugin.
00:34:35
Speaker
ah this is I think this one was an even bigger disconnect from the story and the cards than Duskmourne was. Yep. And Dusk Morn was a pretty big disconnect.
00:34:46
Speaker
Yeah. Dusk Morn was a pretty big disconnect that they, they talked about a little bit intentionally going that direction. Cause they put like, there's things in the cards that wouldn't really show up in. Yeah. Like cheerleaders and sports stars because it's been hundreds of years since.
00:35:02
Speaker
And TVs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, but so much aesthetically from the story and the cards jived.
00:35:14
Speaker
And so I think unless you really dug into the granularities, it would be easy to just, you know, not to not see all of that. This has, like you said, a whole, you know, three episodes of this seven episodes, just not even show up like this, this location didn't show up anywhere.
00:35:34
Speaker
Yeah, and it's not in the flavor text. It's not in the cards. ah and You know, it's none of it's there. And this is like critical to the next three sets because this was the but probably more, to be honest.
00:35:51
Speaker
Yeah. Well, down the line, I'm sure it will be. But this is really setting up the next arc. Yeah. um and yeah, we got none of it in a card. So people who don't read the story don't know any of this. Yeah.
00:36:09
Speaker
Yeah. And then so so episode six is basically all in the meditation room. You get back and forth and some forth and back. They're trying to figure out how to navigate it. And Jace makes some comment.
00:36:22
Speaker
And then there is this line that I uh, got from Narset that was perfect, which calls out kind of what he's talking about specifically there, but also a little bit back to what I was talking about with this whole, he he feels like he's the smartest and most, the only capable person.
00:36:40
Speaker
Um, this line was, uh, that was the problem with so many people, especially those who thought of themselves as exceptionally clever. They couldn't fathom a world that did not conform to their vision. was the quote from from the story.
00:36:53
Speaker
And so that happened. um Things clear up. And then the group who... discovers Bolas and Ugin. ah Ugin, like, keeping Bolas. Everybody but Jace is very surprised to find Bolas still alive.
00:37:10
Speaker
Yes, everyone but Jace. And then there's a nice conversation with all of them, and Jace does something and breaks stuff. Yeah, and Bolas is so amusing in this story, though. His his lines are fantastic.
00:37:27
Speaker
Yes. Yes. I think a lot of the characterization in the story was really good. Even, even the writing for Jace, I think was good. Even if I hate the, how the character is being developed, but that I think the writing for Jace was really good. Oh yeah. It's good.
00:37:41
Speaker
i I don't like want what I want to make that, just want to make that distinction clear for, for myself when I'm representing, when I'm complaining about Jace, how much i don't like this kind of character.
00:37:53
Speaker
um The writing was still good, but yeah, Yeah, that's kind of episode the six. Things break. Jace talks about how the meditation realm is the center of all existence or some damn thing.
00:38:05
Speaker
And so his plan is to make everything right. And then he proceeds to break everything. Yeah. And he disappears. Everybody runs.
00:38:18
Speaker
And then episode that's the end of the episode. Yeah, we actually, at the end of episode six, know, Jace not just disappeared, he's shattered is what it says. Yes, you're right. um But ah the the back and forth between Bolas and everybody is just great. If you don't read any other part of the story, read chapter six.
00:38:41
Speaker
Yes, it's good. And maybe chapter one to get whatever they give us of the story that they didn't tell in between. Yeah. least the first half of chapter one.
00:38:53
Speaker
Sounds like that could have been an interesting story if we had had you know, more than half of a chapter to for a writer to write it.
00:39:05
Speaker
Yeah. But then episode seven is kind of the big fight trying to wrap up everything. Elspeth, Narset, Lute, Vraska all get to Tarkir.
00:39:17
Speaker
Then there's a big fight because Sarkin showed up with all his dragons. And it's a lot of dragons. It's a lot of dragons.
00:39:28
Speaker
And then Ajani shows up with the Abzan and their dragons. ah And then Ugin breaks everything up and says, but oh Bolas is free. And then we get this tiny single paragraph that basically tells us Jace is alive and at the beginning of time or some damn thing.
00:39:46
Speaker
Yeah, which is going to lead into our next set, which is the space set. Oh, it is the space set, isn't it? Yeah. ah Edge of Eternities, I think, is the name of it.
00:39:58
Speaker
Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, so we won't get any more magic story until the fall because the next standard set is Final Fantasy. yeah We won't get any story for that. So we we won't see story again until the end of August, early September. Yeah.
00:40:17
Speaker
And then we won't get any more story until next year after that. i I hate this. ah Yeah. um I don't mind Universes Beyond as a product. Making it part of the standard rotation, though, I am not happy about.
00:40:32
Speaker
Yeah. i I wonder how much of that is a monkey's paw. Like, there's there's so much product, and they're like, well, if we put it in here, then there's less... others we can kind of fit it into that block but then it like you say it means that there's less story there's less magic happening within magic you though you know i like i like like what a lot of the the universes beyond have done and it's it's great for trying to bring in folks you know assuming there's product on the shelves which sounds like may or may not be a good assumption
00:41:07
Speaker
um Yeah, look for what ah look for what Final Fantasy Commander decks are pre-selling for. ah I would suggest, Prof did a video on ah Final Fantasy pricing, and I would suggest watching it because ah it's just kind of crazy what's going on with that.
00:41:31
Speaker
Yeah, so it's just... yeah Fortunately, he said there's some good story. Did really like what what was written here. yeah.
00:41:42
Speaker
I liked the... yeah I really liked... I loved the ah stuff with Bolas the best, though, because that was so... i mean, she wrote the Chronicles of Bolas. She knows how to write Bolas and Ugin.
00:42:03
Speaker
Yeah, and and and that there was some really cool stuff. like I liked seeing the like what they did with the clans, what we saw of that. um It just felt like they were trying to tell too many stories because you had the the current storyline happening. Chronicles of Bullis wasn't Cassandra Cot, it was Kate Elliott. I thought it was Cassandra, but it wasn't. So my mistake there.
00:42:25
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. Like there there's depending how you want to splice this up, it kind of feels like there's four different stories happening. Yeah. ah There's just not enough space. There just isn't enough space to fit all that in here.
00:42:41
Speaker
No. And obviously it it, there wasn't enough space in the set either because, you know, almost half the story does not show up in the set. Yeah. It, it,
00:42:53
Speaker
it's It's a little frustrating. I got to say, I'm at least happy. Like we got more stories. So clearly they they're trying like more than the normal. We got two extra episodes.
00:43:04
Speaker
And we got five. We got five full side stories. Yep. We still got yeah five side stories, one for every clan. So we got a nice little sort of one story for all them. Really good too. I, yeah they they were, um,
00:43:18
Speaker
very appropriate to each of the clans. and and I really recommend them. And it felt cool that you had five different writers, right? Those, and then who separate from center cop who, who wrote the main story.
00:43:33
Speaker
So there was different voices happening within those episodes for the clans, which was super cool. Yeah. It's a, you know, it was, uh, So yeah, so like the story team, like they're definitely still putting in that effort. They put in that budget because they paid Cassandra for two extra stories.
00:43:52
Speaker
That's great. And I'm happy about that. But this was feels to me like it was sort of compromise. And of course, you got to mention frequent guests. Sean and McGuire had a side story in this one. She did the mar Marty side story, yeah which was very good.
00:44:07
Speaker
yeah And I lost the page, so can't see who all the other folks were. But yeah, they the side stories were oh here we go the side stories were all really good, too.
00:44:19
Speaker
Interestingly enough, if you click on Seanan McGuire's story credit, it does not link back to her Duskborn stories because they were under her other pen You'd think they would group them all together on the website.
00:44:33
Speaker
Yeah, they're... the The story website is very old bare barely functional. Yeah. um Let's say I don't recognize several of these names. That doesn't mean that they didn't write more story, but I do see K. Arsenal Rivera wrote the Teamer story.
00:44:52
Speaker
Yeah. ah I really enjoyed the Sultai one. And the Sultai aren't my favorite clan, but I really enjoyed that story.
00:45:04
Speaker
Oh, couple these folks have written more story. Marcus Trinnell Smith wrote Sultai. He's written two previously. ah This was Rayon and Rasmussen.
00:45:16
Speaker
The Jessica story was written by Michael E. Shaw, who was a former Wizards employee. yeah and has written a bunch. Yeah. Looks like mostly back to the other Bolas story on the desert world. Amonkhet.
00:45:33
Speaker
back to Amon Kemp since Michael has written, but that was, that's cool. So yeah, like get all great stories. If you, if you, if you enjoy, enjoy your magic story, give, give these a read. and But especially episode six, you've got to see the bullets, the bullets.
00:45:51
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's, that is definitely the most, the most relevance. Definitely six. And if you you, you know, if you're really invested what's, in what's happening, maybe read seven as well. but otherwise, if you notice i guess you don't necessarily.
00:46:05
Speaker
Jace is at the beginning of something. There's this weird little paragraph at the end, and we know that Bolas is free. I suspect Bolas is not showing up in the next year. No, i don't expect to I don't expect him either. He's going to need time to get his plotting going again. He just yeah got his name back.
00:46:22
Speaker
Well, yeah, he was without his memories. Yeah. So he's he's got... Someone just had to say his name out loud. Yep.
00:46:33
Speaker
Yeah. He knows his name. He knows Ugin's name. And that's all he needs to know to go out and start plotting something. Yeah. And once again, Ugin fails to keep anything contained that he intends to contain.
00:46:48
Speaker
Yeah. just Just real bad. Real bad at this. Yeah. He is not ah not a good Jaller at all. No. oh
00:47:01
Speaker
But yeah, that kind of covers the story at a high level for the set. um Yeah, it's been a. Like I said, it's been about a month since the story came out, but um I once again enjoyed the read, you know, the problems that I mentioned at the start aside.
00:47:21
Speaker
know, um which is, again, on Wizards, it's a structural problem. They decided to change up the they basically retconned the plane. Yes. Cons. Yep.
00:47:33
Speaker
Which i it's, it's easy to, Oh, the different expressions, armchair quarterback and all of that, but it feels like you should have just had that story beat this story, but that they probably was too hard to um insert Jason, whatever the hell he had going on into that.
00:47:51
Speaker
Yeah. But I don't know. But yeah, so um that's it for story for almost five more months. Yeah. Yeah. So we probably won't have much.
00:48:03
Speaker
think there are, but we won't have a lot of Vorthos things. Our next Vorthos stuff will be Final Fantasy related probably. Yeah. oh but May is coming up, which is mental health awareness month. So we'll always, we'll have our regular content in May around that.
00:48:19
Speaker
Yep. Yeah. And then let's see June. And again, we'll be at SCG con the first weekend in May in Minneapolis.
00:48:30
Speaker
ah Yeah, and then June we'll be talking all things Final Fantasy. Yeah. At least two of us are super excited about it. Yes, and and yeah, we'll see we'll see how much ah much you and I have to say on that topic. ah that that may be Obviously we're doing at least an episode, but we'll see what what all we have to say. maybe ah Maybe we can fit it all in an episode, I don't know.
00:48:53
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know. I'm gonna i'm probably going to want to walk through like every card and be like, oh, memories, memories. Yeah. yeah I suspect, especially with all the Final Fantasy games I've played in the in the last year, I still have not played six.
00:49:08
Speaker
ah trying to You need to play six. You need to prioritize it. it's great it's yeah But that's that's the last one that I needed for my my playthrough of all of the mainline games that are not the MMOs. i just I'm calling it quits on those. I was not going to touch 11 14. I mean, 14 would have been, just to do the main storyline, you would have been sinking like 250 hours in to do yeah all the way through the main story.
00:49:37
Speaker
yeah and I'm not going to lie, there was a part of me, because 11 is still online on the PC anyway. Yeah, 11 is still available. um but the like i remember that game being current when I first got into World of Warcraft and I was so into the and MMO game Yeah, that I thought about like I would 11 was i I'm sure it changed later on, but when it launched, it was after level 10. It was basically impossible to do anything with a full without a full party. So it was ah not a good solo experience, which is definitely not. it But even ah
00:50:15
Speaker
ah Yeah, I was playing it with my husband and my brother-in-law, and even the three of us couldn't do anything on our own. and it's ah It's probably a good thing I never got past flipping through the player's guide at a Borders yeah in Minneapolis back then.
00:50:29
Speaker
To really time and place that. Yeah, it was not ah definitely not a friendly go-just-spend-half-an-hour-playing-or-an-hour-playing-you-and-so.
00:50:41
Speaker
You had to find a group. You had to go where you were going. It was it was like classic EverQuest in a lot of senses, which is ah synonymous with TimeSync, if you're not familiar with it.
00:50:52
Speaker
Yes.
00:50:55
Speaker
Yeah, so a game I did not play, but a game which i have of EverQuest. I have some familiarity with. played for six years. ah That was my only source of entertainment, but ah which didn't mean I saved a lot of money on going out on dates when I couldn't afford it. But yeah basically until my son was born, ah that was a lot of my life.
00:51:21
Speaker
Yeah, that that was World Warcraft for a stretch for me. Yeah, um we did we did. The three of us did move over to World of Warcraft for quite a while, ah starting with the beta, but um sort of we ended up back in EverQuest.
00:51:36
Speaker
Okay, as i and started about a year into vanilla. Yeah. A friend of mine got in right at launch and then slowly. Yeah. You, you probably had a better experience than people who started at the beginning because I, I still remember 45 second loop lag every time you kill something. i remember some of it. We get some of that, but it was, it was less frequent and more stable. Yeah. And yeah. And, and, and some, some other weird little quality of life stuff that they,
00:52:11
Speaker
worked on over time. Yeah, because it was like you'd be doing the newbie quest and you'd be stuck for half an hour waiting to get the one kill you needed to progress because everybody else needed the same kill. And ah later on, they introduced things that adjusted the spawn rate based on how many people were in the area, but they did not have that ah at launch.
00:52:38
Speaker
still up anyway yeah anyways yeah uh you know what um i hope uh everybody's doing as well as they can ah while enjoying the collapse of society as we know it ah yeah and um we'll see you next time been the goblin lore podcast Thank you for listening.
00:53:01
Speaker
We can be found both on Twitter and BlueSky at GoblinLorePod. Check out our link tree for our Discord and our discounts. We appreciate you listening and welcome feedback via social media or Discord.
00:53:12
Speaker
Until next time, Podwalkers, remember that goblins, like snowflakes, are only dangerous in numbers.