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Episode 190: What Comes Next (Villain Edition)?
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Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! Now that the Phyrexians have joined Bolas and Emrakul in timeout, what villains will be stepping up to the plate in Magic story? Alex and Taya have a purely speculative conversation on what the future holds for baddies known and unknown. Who is going to be the next big bad and when will they strike?
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Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle)
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast, and a part of their growing Vorthos content – as well as Magic content of all kinds. Check them out at hipstersofthecoast.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Pride Month
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. As this will actually be our first podcast in June, I guess we start saying happy pride everyone. And this week I'm going to remember to thank the Granny Coffee Company right away before we get into things. They're great.
00:00:49
Speaker
Minority-owned LGBTQ ran coffee company. They love to support gamers. They've been supporting us for years. They've been wonderful partners with us and support with a lot of the events that we've done. They also keep Hobbs stuck on caffeine, which is very important for the cast.
Meet the Hosts: Alex and Taya
00:01:06
Speaker
But speaking of Hobbs, he is not going to be here this week. It's just Taya and myself. So I'm going to just do my intro real quick, then we'll get into our topic today. Well, my intro and Taya's intro, I'm sorry. I'm Alex, found on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler pronouns are he, him.
00:01:28
Speaker
Do you want to introduce yourself? And then we can, in question. This is Taya. I'm pronouns are she, her, they, them, and I'm at Taya transcends on Twitter.
Reflections on Magic Storylines
00:01:39
Speaker
All right. And so this week we were thinking, uh, in one of our, our last episodes, Hey, you and I talked kind of about the new story things that had happened and some of these implications. Um, but it was right after this stuff came out and we talked a little more for, I think from the angle of characters that we were hoping to see or that we had seen and talked about their, where they were at were.
00:02:03
Speaker
You know, maybe theorizing about where some other characters might be and we're thinking this week, maybe we come back and talk more about kind of the villain angle or the threats or kind of the story types or some of the tension for some of these stories might be seeing as kind of the nature of the spark, the nature of the universe has changed and we kind of get into that.
00:02:23
Speaker
And so just as a nice opening topic is kind of what your favorite villains from Magic and being who I am, I was kind of stuck between what feels like the obvious to me, which is not always the obvious for everybody, and something strange.
Villain Spotlight: Yawgmoth
00:02:40
Speaker
So I guess I'll say the obvious and maybe I'll say the strange one too. Yagmoth is the obvious for me is still kind of the quintessential Magic villain.
00:02:50
Speaker
The storyline that was built fairly early, the first few sets, the first year, two years of Magic didn't have a ton of story, but they managed to take some of those sets, like Antiquities and Things and with the Urza and the Mishra and the Brothers War that didn't have a lot of greater story and tied this into the storyline that ran for five, six years.
00:03:14
Speaker
culminating in the invasion block with Yawgmoth. And then we see even the echoes of that coming back with the recent, very recent Phyrexian resurgence and invasion sort of echoing what Yawgmoth was doing on a bigger scale. But a lot of how they set up the villain of Yawgmoth in early magic, who knows, maybe it was just the age I was and how I was engaging with the game at the time.
00:03:44
Speaker
It was one of those villains you don't see, and that kind of makes them scarier for a long time. And they managed to build the Phyrexians and Yawgmoth as this threat that had plans that you could see some of the tendrils of, but you couldn't understand fully. And then the invasion block happens and there was three major phases representing the three block sets of that block. And that block is still some of my favorite magic story.
00:04:13
Speaker
Nice. That's the answer I'm going to go with.
Villain Debates: Tybalt vs. Tezzeret
00:04:16
Speaker
No, I'm going to go with. Just someone that I absolutely love to hate, which I think is a sign of a really good villain. And that's Tybalt. No, I'm kidding here. It's pre-show chat. No, it's a tesser. I cannot stand tesser at all, which I think is been a sign that they've done a really good job with him as a villain. He's.
00:04:44
Speaker
one of those people who does nothing but care for himself. He does not care what damage he does. Obviously he just totally messed up the multiverse just so he could get himself a new body. He's always been a terrible person in the story, you know, going back to
00:05:06
Speaker
the initial, you know, early appearances in the books and the comic books, storyline and web comics. Yeah, I just I can't stand him. And I think he's a great villain because of that. Yeah, he's a good choice. And in a lot of ways, very different from Yagmaf, but he has a similar thing of you can see some of the things he's doing, but you don't always know why he's doing what he's doing. He has his own plans in the background.
00:05:36
Speaker
Yeah, and I guess as a villain, he just gets away with everything. Every time you think he might face any sort of punishment, he sort of weasels out of it.
00:05:48
Speaker
you know, you thought he was going to get his, finally get his comeuppance when, you know, he got his end of the bargain upheld by the phyrexians to the point where then he was going to be, you know, phyrexianized and he manages to skip out on that too. It's like every time he's about to face any sort of punishment, he gets out of it.
Multiverse Changes: Impact on Storytelling
00:06:11
Speaker
Yeah. And he's still at large in the multiverse. I think in honor of Hobbs, maybe we can say Ugin as a big villain. It might be his favorite villain. I don't know. I still don't think he's a villain, but I know Hobbs has to say about that. Yeah. Yeah.
00:06:33
Speaker
And for what it counts, I guess my weird one, I was just for some reason in my head, and this isn't really even a villain thing, but did you ever read any of the early magic fiction that was like anthologies of short stories? Yeah, I did. Did you read the one about the ragman?
00:06:51
Speaker
i think so but it's been a long time it i don't know why this particular this particular story stuck in my head i can't remember any of them from that book but that one was about a card from the dark just called the ragman and i don't
00:07:07
Speaker
feel that that card is terribly significant outside of the fact that there's a story written about it, at least from a mechanical standpoint. I don't know that anyone's really playing that card. But there was just this story of this small village in a mountain, and he is this personification of the Grim Reaper.
00:07:26
Speaker
And there's this whole story and I actually really enjoyed it. And that story is one set up kind of like, he's set up as a villain role, but by the end of the story, you understand that he's not really the villain, he's fulfilling a function that needs to be done.
00:07:41
Speaker
And that sets him in a place where sometimes people don't like what he's doing, and it's not great for everybody, but it's a function that has to be done. So that was kind of my weird one. But anyway, so I guess just a quick recap for people who may not have
00:07:59
Speaker
may not be caught up on the story. I say this, it feels like it's been a while, but it's only been not even a month, really. I mean, maybe a little over a month since the March of the Machine and the March of the Machine Aftermath stuff sort of resolved and came out. And so we've got another major change to the nature of the multiverse, similar to what we had back in the Time Spiral block now all of a sudden.
00:08:24
Speaker
Sparks are very very infrequent they're very very few planes walkers but there are these paths between worlds. From stuff wizards has mentioned it sounds like some will be permanent and some will be not permanent and there's some variance within there.
Embracing New Storytelling Opportunities
00:08:43
Speaker
that will give them a lot of flexibility for storytelling just to zoom out on a little bit to a little more of a meta lens. I appreciate how that will help them build more flexible with their stories.
00:08:57
Speaker
And I think, and I don't know how much of this they've said and how much is just me inferring, but it feels like they made planeswalkers initially toned, I should say toned down planeswalkers initially to make the Neowalkers and planer chaos and time spiral block.
00:09:13
Speaker
Because they wanted to have these characters that could move world, they wanted to build characters that could move world to world and kind of be part of all these stories without the godlike powers of the old walkers and that made sense from a storytelling standpoint, but I think they kind of.
00:09:28
Speaker
with the Gatewatch, and people talk about Gatewatch fatigue for years and all of the things going on with these stories, it made it hard, it still made it hard for them to develop characters on the worlds, I feel, because if they make this really cool legend like Rata or any of these other people that players really care about, players can only see them when they go back to that world. But this change in story allows them to potentially
00:09:56
Speaker
build some of these types of characters who travel world to world and can be present in more sets. To be honest, going back a little bit to the old weather light saga, because that was a big part of how that story worked. You had a crew on a ship moving from world to world.
00:10:17
Speaker
The total roster of that crew went up and down as some people joined and some people left, but by and large, you had the same core crew as a thread through a number of sets, through a number of years in different worlds.
00:10:31
Speaker
So with that, it feels like there's going to be different types of stories. Hey, it opens up. This just opens up different types of stories. But even you look at our last three major threats, the Bolas, I nearly said Ugin there instead, because I guess I'm in Hobbs mode right now.
Speculating New Villains and Story Types
00:10:50
Speaker
You've got the Phyrexians and the Eldrazi. We're all major galactic level threats.
00:10:57
Speaker
to some degree or another. Bolas was maybe a notch below that, but pretty close. He was a large threat, threatening a lot of people across multiple worlds. And this is going to make those stories more difficult to tell, I think. But that, I don't know, I think overall it could be good, we'll see. And I really appreciate the stories, the people they've had writing. And I guess I'll just start with one of the things I wanted to talk about.
00:11:28
Speaker
The nature of villains is a big part of this. What types of villains are we going to see? Who are we going to see? I have some things there. But I think we might actually, we could see. And we'll see what types of stories they want to try to tell in these sets. But we could potentially see more stories that don't feature a singular villain as much. Because now, for kind of the first time, there's a few very specific isolated places where you could do this. But we could have stories where someone is stranded on a world
00:11:58
Speaker
and has to either be rescued or has to find a way to survive and leave themselves. Because the nature of planar travel before this, even both before and after the mending, didn't have a lot of space for that. I mean, Ixalan kind of had that, but they had to build an entire MacGuffin around that to have that type of story.
00:12:22
Speaker
But now you can kind of just, they could kind of spice that in whenever they feel that that would be a good story to tell in this space. Yeah, I would. I'm interested in we discussed this a couple of episodes ago where we thought things might be going with the story and you know now we're focusing more on the villains but I do think that.
00:12:44
Speaker
What's going on lets them focus more on some small stories for now. And the same thing kind of happened after War of the Spark, where they were planting things that would be important for the Phyrexian arc, but in, you know, the stories themselves were pretty self-contained. It's true. And I think we're going to see that for the next year or so, where we get a bunch of self-contained stories.
00:13:12
Speaker
that have some kind of tie into whatever the next big arc is, but are going to be pretty self-sufficient as far as no multiversal level threads.
Future Predictions for Magic Stories
00:13:26
Speaker
Yeah, and this is so hard to try to speculate on, but it'd be interesting to me to see if we even have another one of those threats in the next five years. Maybe by that point, they're starting to build into something, but I think this we could have a number of years where it's just let's focus on some smaller things because they can do those smaller things now and still have
00:13:54
Speaker
specific characters as threads through them. And we saw in the aftermath story, Nissa and Chandra are going to go travel a bit. I mean, trying to get Nissa home, but some of that is like that could easily lead into you could have characters like that who are traveling world to world a little bit similar to how the planeswalkers used to, but now they don't have to be planeswalkers to do that. Yeah.
00:14:20
Speaker
I'm going to be really interested to see what they do, whether they focus on the fact that characters can walk world to world, or if they actually use this as more of a thing to de-emphasize planes walking completely and focus just on individual worlds. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good thought, too. And it'll be... We'll see. There's kind of seats for both.
00:14:51
Speaker
For instance, we have Nahiri, I guess, to just hit the other aftermath story. Nahiri lost her spark, but the way the story was written with her, it feels like she's going kind of guru. She didn't just lose her spark, she dropped her spark. Yes, it was, yeah, that's fair. It was a little more dramatic than that.
00:15:20
Speaker
Uh, we kind of lost it, almost got it back and then it got broken in front, like right in front of her. Yeah. But it, so there's the potential that she goes and starts hunting planeswalkers maybe. I don't know. I don't know. It sounds like she, you know, like planeswalkers, a show of on Zendikar are going to be automatically, you know, in her site.
00:15:46
Speaker
No, that's fair. That's fair. The way she was. Yeah, that's, that's, that's less, let's Garuk and more just, I'm going to zealously protect this piece of land, this plane. See that. They have, you know, just talking about villains in general, Nahiri has been used as a villain since her introduction. I'm kind of one of those minor scale villains. Yes.
00:16:12
Speaker
You know, I know Seanan has a lot to say about how Nahiri's been used and we did talk to her a bit about that when she was on. You can go back to the Nahiri Comics episode to hear that. But, you know, it's, they have used her mostly as a villain and they started during the all will be one storyline. She kind of, you got to see the other side of her where she was,
00:16:41
Speaker
you know, working for the greater good. And, you know, even to the point of being sacrificial for it. But, you know, now she's been hardcore cast as this local villain that's basically going to be a complete zealot about planeswalkers on Zendikar. Yeah, which I didn't like seeing that. I feel
00:17:09
Speaker
in a weird way. I feel bad for the character outside of, I don't know. There are times where there's things that are having good characters where you're supposed to connect with them and be empathetically like connect with that character and feel sympathy for what they're going through. And there's some of that, but I also feel it more on a meta sense where it feels like just let Nahiri rest, like just stop making her, casting her in this villain role.
00:17:38
Speaker
You know, and she has done villainous things, but she also absolutely has, you know, she has a hell of a lot of trauma going on. Yes. And yeah, and, and did, well, it was part of now two major.
00:17:56
Speaker
you know, heroic acts, though there's a lot of trauma around both, tons of trauma around both, actually, both with the trapping the Eldrazi initially, and then the Phyrexian invasion, and it would be nice if... We go back to this a lot, and it's true, but like, the multiverse needs a lot of therapists, it would be... That's the whole thing that...
00:18:24
Speaker
We don't need to go into more, but that's. So yeah, I had to hear you on my list just because it seems that the story was kind of casting her into that role. We'll see where that goes and what they do with it. I, again, I'm not happy with it, but that's. Kind of what one that I have on my list is Ash shock and.
00:18:48
Speaker
We never did get to see the Theorist Beyond Death story, which definitely seemed to have cast them as the villain for that, where they were the one tormenting Elspeth instead of Elspeth having her peaceful rest that she was supposed to have. And then whatever's going on in Eldraine, it sounds like they're either behind it or they're profiting on it off of it.
00:19:18
Speaker
I'm interested to see what they do with Ashyak from here because they've always been a minor character that's been in the background. We missed their one set where, you know, they could have been more, we kind of introduced on the original Theros as the comic, they were a comic book character, but that comic book ended before we got any real conclusion as to what was going on with them. Yep.
00:19:43
Speaker
So it's twice Ashiok is tied to some events going on. And twice that story is either not told at all or ends abruptly before we get to learn much at all. Yeah. So, you know, we had them play their role in the Phyrexian invasion with giving Elspeth nightmare, or giving Elishinorn nightmares about Elspeth, I mean.
00:20:09
Speaker
So yeah, speaking of another character whose motivations are unknown and whose actions are sort of unknown, Ashyak is a great character in that way and could potentially be set up as a great villain in some way. I mean, and even to the fact that Ashyak's powers are perfect
00:20:34
Speaker
perfectly suited to the working from the shadows sort of archetype as well. Yeah, you know, we don't really know what they're after what they get out of this. No, you know, other than they enjoy causing and feeding off of nightmares, but we don't know what their real motivation is. Yeah, and and
00:20:56
Speaker
from what we know of Ashiok's power set, which is fairly limited. Again, because two stories that this character was involved in that we just didn't get to see really, it seems like this is the type of character too that even when there is a confrontation with, you don't know how much of that is actually happening or how much of that is a part of the plan or how much of that is, you know, Ashiok seems like the perfect character to
00:21:26
Speaker
you know, introduce, have some things going on, have them seem defeated, and then they actually aren't, because this was, you know, maybe a set, a minor setback or whatever. So it's like, I, that's, Ashiok was a good character to break up. I did not. And we know nothing about their background or where they're from or anything. I mean, they could easily be the harbinger of some new big bad that we know nothing about. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. You're Ashiok is a perfect character for them to,
00:21:53
Speaker
to kind of cultivate into new storylines now in this sort of new age. And I honestly is, is part of why I think this pruning or what did they call it? The great pruning could be a really good thing for the story. Like there's just so many planeswalkers who kept getting added that you had a bunch of promising ones like Ashiok that had, was supposed to have a story that didn't get to be told and so many others that didn't really ever get story even.
00:22:21
Speaker
And so start to get to focus on some of these characters again, bring them into the story. Could be some good stuff. Yeah, I guess we'll find out more and I'll drain unless they cancel the Eldraine story. Well, that one's coming up pretty soon, right? Is that the next block? The fall set, yeah. It's the next actual set. Yeah.
00:22:49
Speaker
I mean, we have the Lord of the Rings set coming out now. That story was spoiled 80 years ago, so. Yeah, yeah. We need to talk about the villains of that set and how they interact with what we have going on. So I don't know, it's.
00:23:11
Speaker
I think it kind of brings it to the, you know, I mentioned like Ash Shot could possibly be like a hit roll or something for the next new big bad, but what, what is our next new big bad? We don't really have any idea. You know, we've just wrapped up all of the major villains in magic history with the Frexian art coming to a close and they're all in cold storage right now. All the ones that we know about.
00:23:37
Speaker
So, you know, I'm, I'm expecting something new. I'm expecting them to come up with some kind of new multiversal threat. And this has been hinted to a little bit with Kazmina, you know, recruiting or cultivating Planeswalkers to battle some big threat that is still never been revealed as to what she's gathering Planeswalkers for. Or if that plot line is just going to be dropped with the, uh,
00:24:06
Speaker
Spark rupture. Yeah. No, that's, that's an interesting call out too. Cause that's another, that's another storyline. Whereas they're setting things up. We could have a storyline with Kasmina desperately trying to connect with any planeswalkers who are left.
00:24:25
Speaker
without having an actual like villain in this storyline. We have the shadow of whatever the next thing is looming, but we might have a storyline there without an actual villain in confrontation in just like Kazmina's desperation to build some group, you know, connections and build some group to stand against this thing.
00:24:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting because if we look through kind of the history of the magic story,
00:24:56
Speaker
We had this period in sort of, I guess, right around the actual modern, quote unquote, set up. But we had three blocks in a row that introduced new villains. I guess that's actually a little after modern, because this was after the first Mirrodin. But if there was, you know, the Phyrexians were brought back in Scars of Mirrodin, you had Bolas, sort of his plans sort of revealed a little bit, or Bolas
00:25:21
Speaker
having his debut as a galaxy-wide threat, even though it was referenced a little bit earlier that he was around in Alara. And then the Eldrazi were introduced for the first time in the Rise of the Eldrazi, and that was three blocks in a row. And then we've kind of been dealing with that ever since. There hasn't been any other... There've been a few illusions, like the Cazmina storyline, you've got...
00:25:46
Speaker
whatever the hell Tezzeret has going on, sometimes it feels like he's got his own thing happening. Sometimes he's working with one or more of those three big threats. But for the most part, there was those three big threats. And that's what we've dealt with in the last decade or so of Magic Story. Yeah, the last 15 years. Yeah. And so that's where it's like, I'm not even sure we're going to have a name or a face to a cosmic threat in the next five.
00:26:16
Speaker
We might have a few illusions, or we might have something where they start to set up a couple things. I'll be interested to see how they decide they want to tell their story, because they set up a bunch of that stuff, but in that 15 years, they've hit a few rough patches with consistency in their story for various reasons, for people they brought in or things that they kind of did that caused a lot of issues and backlash.
00:26:45
Speaker
There've been some, some issues there. And so I'm curious if they want to try that model again, or if they're going to be trying to do something else. And we, I don't know, we might get small stories and then one villain, and maybe we get the breadcrumbs of the next big thing while they're still out there somewhere. That's, that's, that's fair. That's a big one that is in the story. That's still around. I don't know. I'm.
00:27:14
Speaker
I'm hopeful. I'm actually really hopeful for the magic story right now. But there is a small part of me that's a little worried just from comparisons of other things. And I don't want to get too deep into World of Warcraft, but that was a game I played for a long time.
00:27:30
Speaker
They hit a point in their story where it kind of felt like the creators, well, the game had run on long enough that the people who were making the game at that point were not the people who made the game originally. And it kind of felt like they just threw out a bunch of things and just sped through several major plots and villains just to get them out of the way.
00:27:54
Speaker
and didn't give them a lot of, a lot of space. There was at least one villain I can think of during one of the expansions that feels like that should have been an entire expansion. And they just, you know, which one are you talking about? I'm, I'm thinking about The Last Elder God. And yeah. Oh my God. Battle for Azeroth. Yeah. Were they that, that, that expansion in particular, or, or even, Oh, what's her name? The Naga queen.
00:28:23
Speaker
Yeah. Azshara. Azshara. And so it was just like that was one that, again, felt like they could have done a whole expansion around dealing with Azshara and all of the things that she was working with. But that was one raid, one patch, handful of months, and then we'd bond to kind of clear out the next piece of story and the next piece of lore so that we could kind of have a fresh slate. And it's, I can see from a creative standpoint where you kind of want to do your own thing, but
00:28:51
Speaker
From someone who was invested in the story for years, it felt really dismissive of the story. We're like, we're not going to let it sit and bake and come up with our own thing to do with it. We're going to just throw it all out so that it's all out there and it's done and it's over. Magic hasn't done that. I don't feel recently. I can't think of an example of that. I'm not actually worried about that specifically. I don't know that that will happen.
00:29:18
Speaker
as you point out, they've gone through a lot of threats. And so I'm kind of hoping that they take their time to seed and establish things. And don't just try to mine all the stuff that they have and spit that out pretty quick, which I don't think they'll do, especially the way they've set this story, these stories up now, we're going to get storylines in the short term, that don't have to mine all these big things. No, and there's, there's a lot of, you know, just
00:29:45
Speaker
There's a lot of villains out there and villainous things that we don't know about. We don't know who was speaking to Luca through the Ozilith. We don't know what Oko goes up to. Yep, Oko was on my list as a...
00:29:59
Speaker
The Raven Man is sitting in a ring at the bottom of the swamp, but things don't stay buried forever. The Inaki looks like it's possible they might have gotten loose during March for the Machines.
00:30:18
Speaker
Liliana and the Veil and all of that stuff, which is another storyline that has been seeded for years and feels like a good one that can develop and then you can run with that while other things have time to develop and percolate.
00:30:36
Speaker
Yeah, there's, there's a lot of, you know, smaller loose ends that they can chase down now that they can start to pull on. And even, and I joked about Rugen on the, in the intro, but even Bolus is still a loose end, that they seem to like rattle those, that cage just a little bit with this end, you know, point of the, this recent story. And
00:31:05
Speaker
He has been shown to be a person who, if you have a small opening, he will find that and he will exploit that. So he's one who could come back. I mean, and that was, like you say, all three of these major threats that they dealt with recently to one extent or another are still present. Two of the three Eldrazi are killed, but you still got
00:31:31
Speaker
You've still got one in storage. You've got the, the phyrexians aren't gone. They're just phased out. Yeah. Bolus is chilling on the meditation plane and we still have whatever consequences. You can said there would be for killing two all drasy too. Yeah, that's true. And that's, that's something they could pretty much bring up at any time, you know, is.
00:31:58
Speaker
You know, that could, that could happen next year. That could happen in 10 years, but they could eventually come back to that plot thread. Yeah. And that's a plot thread that potentially the, the, the ominous, but vague way that Ugin was talking about that, that could easily tie into a new nature of the multiverse shift sort of thing. If they feel they need that. Yeah. There's a lot that can be done with that.
00:32:29
Speaker
Yeah, I'm, you know, circling back a little bit and I said it earlier is I think the next few steps we're going to get, we're going to get small localized things. You know, we're going to find out whatever's happening and I'll drain with the sleeping sickness and that'll probably be resolved. Um, there on Ixalan, I'm expecting that, you know, we're just going to have the.
00:32:56
Speaker
the three sides, four sides, forgetting the merfolk for a second, fighting over treasure or something. Again, and it's not going to have any major consequences. Yeah. So the multiverse, you know, we don't know what's coming next, but there's been a lot of hints that Tarkir will be there and we'll have the dragon versus the clan cons. Hmm.
00:33:23
Speaker
And they've really been setting that up with the contrast between Narset and Sarc-Con. Yeah. So I'm absolutely expecting a Tarkir set next year with all the seating that they've been doing for that. Okay. Yeah. And we know both of those, Narset and Sarc-Con both lost their sparks. I'm just trying to like put these pieces together in my head. It's like, are there still a Flainswalker? No. Okay.
00:33:52
Speaker
And their flavor text and their de-sparked version both seem to hint that they're going to be on opposite sides of this conflict. Yeah, that would make sense for both of them. In fact, that fits for both. That could be interesting. Yeah, and we'll see. It's June now, so what is it? And each year, usually July, August is often when they announce kind of what's coming.
00:34:21
Speaker
I don't know, maybe that's not what they do recently, but so we fairly soon, the next few months probably, we'll have a better idea of what they're looking to do next year, but yeah, probably small things. Local stuff. Tarkir makes a lot of sense. It's been a while since they've been to Tarkir, especially if they can set up that cons versus dragons conflict, because Mark Rose Waters even talked about that being
00:34:46
Speaker
The first set was the more interesting set that had the cons and all the conflict there, and then they sort of did the whole timey-wimey thing and reset that to be just the dragons around. Yeah, but people really liked the clans. Yeah, and with Ugin gone and preoccupied, they could very easily make a story justification that now, nope, the nature of this world is flipped again.
00:35:14
Speaker
like in the other timeline where Ugin died, and that is what kind of created that opening. And so we could see that happen. Yeah, the dragon tempest could be thinning out because Ugin isn't there to keep them going. And that could even, depending on what's going on with Ugin, create an opening for Bolas to escape for them to seed for future years, or maybe not. Maybe that has nothing to do with it. Maybe that won't show up at all.
00:35:40
Speaker
If stuff is going on there and Ugin still has his spark, he might feel compelled to go do something. Yeah. So I'm totally expecting them to introduce some new large villain over the next couple of years, but I think we're going to get a piecemeal a little bit here and a little bit there.
00:36:01
Speaker
Uh, and then start to see the larger picture develop after, you know, a couple of years. I mean, you said, you said within five years, I think it's going to be sooner than that before they start seeding another big villain. But I think we're going to get something new. I don't think it's going to be any of the ones that we've seen before. Yeah, I think you're right. I think it'll be something new and yeah, we'll, we'll see seeds by then. I'm not sure that we'll see it show up in five years.
00:36:28
Speaker
I'm not confident enough to say for sure, but I think there's a solid chance that we don't actually see it show up in the next five years. There'll be seeds for sure. They want to have some of those threads, regardless of how they want to tell their exact methodology of telling these stories. Even if they're not going to do the, hey, let's introduce a few big things and then work on that over the next decade or more, I don't know that we'll do that.
00:37:00
Speaker
kind of introducing those little threads here and there, while we're dealing with smaller things, like a single plane things, maybe we'll have some stuff with a planeswalker like an Oco or an Ashiok, who's kind of causing havoc in a couple of places, but not, you know, galaxy wide sort of thing, multiverse wide. I think we're gonna see, we're gonna see a lot of PvE in the next couple of sets, because, you know, it's the
00:37:26
Speaker
The lack of sparks and the change to the multiverse is going to result in the.
00:37:31
Speaker
the multiverse itself being the enemy in a lot of the storylines. Yeah. I mean, and this, to get to another sort of non-villain thing I had on my list, we could see, especially, I think this, this might be something seeded a little more in the future, but we could start to see smaller scale encroaching in between worlds. Like maybe some sort of, I mean, we had a little bit of this in the Nissa story. They might have some sort of invasive species that's not necessarily intelligent, but is
00:38:01
Speaker
some jund thing that wanders into another plane and has no predator and starts to take over or you could start to see some things like that that are more smaller scale but it's the nature the new nature of the multiverse causing things to bleed over in a way that needs some pruning potentially like a little more local attention than they had to do before. Yeah, instead of
00:38:26
Speaker
Like the time spiral block where you had things leaking out of the time riffs, you're now having things leak out of these planer riffs. Who knows what's going to come out of them.
00:38:39
Speaker
Yeah, and that's, I think in the short term, that'll be more the individuals getting lost or whatever, but in the maybe more middle term, you could see like, there was this thing that we didn't know was at the bottom of a lake and now the entire area around this lake is full of X thing that just eats everything that comes near it.
00:39:02
Speaker
And now we need to figure out how to deal with this thing that came from, you know, some other plane that we have no analog to here. Yeah. Or maybe you have some random person from that plane shows up and it's like, y'all need some help with this. Let me tell you how to do it. And it's a way to introduce some new character or something. I don't know. Yeah. There's a lot of possibility with what's going on right now and.
00:39:28
Speaker
We kind of have, I think we have the biggest opening for new story potential that we've had in the last 15 years because we've dealt with all of those big bads. And it's kind of a, you know, it's an open canvas for, you know, what's going to happen. Yeah. I mean, you go back to the last time, some major thing like this with the mending happened there, there were several sets in a row that were just.
00:39:58
Speaker
It was just a couple one-off things and then, including the one-offs, you had some of these villains introduced, but like the first set after Times Square was Lorwyn. Lorwyn had nothing to do with anything outside of Lorwyn, but it was just like, let's just kind of have this thing happen. This one-off set, we're going to a cool world, we're going to do a cool thing with it, with the Shadowmore sort of flip.
00:40:22
Speaker
And then, um, 15 years later, the only notable thing that's happened on Lorwyn is Nissa Plains walked there for her first planes walk. And I don't think there's been a notable thing that's happened. Nope. Nope. Oh, and just cause my friend Reinhardt is not here to represent it. I got to talk about, Oh, why did I dollar blank on the name of the plane? The homelands plane, like he's.
00:40:47
Speaker
He's very excited for that having actually shown up in War of the Spark. They didn't forget about this place, though I just did. What was that plane called?
00:40:58
Speaker
What was it involved with? The plane from the set homelands. Oh, Grothe. Oh, Grothe. Thank you. Yes. There's actually some story with Sengir, Baron Sengir sort of maybe. Yeah. Maybe that's a thing that becomes a thing. We still don't know where Baron Sengir is. You know, 25 years after he walked through the portal, we have no idea.
00:41:20
Speaker
And like he, when they did Commander Legends, the first one, they specifically had, not only had Baron Sankir in the set, but that was like the box promo. So it's like, maybe that's just a nostalgia thing. That totally happens. But maybe that's a seed to something in the future. We'll see. Yeah. We get Commander Legends in two months. They could seed a lot of, or Commander Masters. I mean, they could seed a lot of,
00:41:51
Speaker
potential nostalgic callbacks in that set. I mean, and that's the thing they've done with Commander sets in the past. Even the Commander decks, you have, A, just all sorts of people. They have the opportunity to have people from all sorts of worlds, including both timelines of Tarkir. But there's also things where it's like, oh, Phyrexia keeps showing up in some of this stuff. And some of these other worlds just kind of keep showing up. And Kamigawa showed up in those sets a bunch.
00:42:21
Speaker
So those are good places for them to just say, hey, remember this person? Remember this place? And then six months later, they announce a set for that or a year later. Yeah. They were definitely hinting at the phyrexine return for a long time before they finally showed up. Yeah. So, all right. Well, that's, that's what I had on my list. Do you have anything else you wanted to hit?
00:42:49
Speaker
No, I think that covers it. You know, I brought up a lot of my points on mostly loose threads, which is what I thought of when you brought up this topic, because there, you know, there are a lot, like, I still want to know what's going on with the voice from the Ozilith. And, you know, I'm very interested in, you know, this is just the old Lord person in me, but I want to know what's going to happen with the Anaki. Yes. Because they are, they are terrifying. Mm hmm.
00:43:19
Speaker
You know, they are super intelligent mage ogres, which are a bad combination when you, when you combine brute strength with raw intelligence, your super hard intelligence, you get, you get a mean combination there. Yeah. And, and that ties into a lot of the Liliana storyline of the last five ish or more years, cause for whole stuff with the Jane Vale and.
00:43:46
Speaker
Yeah, that honestly, of all the kind of the loose threads we've talked about, I think that one might be the one I'm most interested to see what they do with from a villain side. I think the thing I'm most interested to see on the other side is what happens to Garrukh and his adopted kids. Yeah, we'll find out at least what happens to the twins in a couple of months here. I don't know if Garrukh's going to make an appearance this time, but we'll have the twins
00:44:15
Speaker
that's our show for today. You can find the host on Twitter. Hobbsq can be found at Hobbsq, and Alex Newman can be found at Mel underscore Chronicler. Editing and production was done by Tom Gustafsson, who can be found on Twitter at PSG Reader. Send any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to at goblinlordpod on Twitter, or email us at goblinlordpodcast at gmail.com.
00:44:39
Speaker
If you want to support your friendly neighborhood gobslugs, the cast can be found at Patreon.com slash GoblinLorePod. Opening and closing music by Vindergotten, who can be found on Twitter at Vindergotten or online at Vindergotten.bandcamp.com. Logo art by Steven Raphael, who can be found on Twitter at Steve Raffle.
00:45:02
Speaker
Goblin lore is proud to be presented by hipsters of the coast as part of their growing vorthos content as well as magic content of all kinds. Check them out on twitter at hipsters MTG or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you all for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.