Now that we are done with the Weatherlight Saga, I thought I'd give you all a little heads up on what I'm going to cover next. Because at this point the release schedule of the books get's a bit cluttered. First a list of all the books released, in chronological order, from Invasion block to Mirrodin block. I've color-coded the various cycles for your convenience.
So yeah... at least the anthology titles fit neatly in between the regular cycles, but the Legends I and II cycles get everywhere, each being released simultaneously with two regular cycles. To make it easier for myself to do the continuity and timeline overviews, I'll move them around a bit in my schedule, so we only cover one cycle at a time. Furthermore, since Odyssey block runs straight into Onslaught block I want to keep as few novels as possible in between those. Thus Legends I will be moved forward and covered before we get to Odyssey, while Legends II will have to wait until Onslaught is wrapped up. Don't worry, Legends I and II have absolutely nothing to do with one another. Secrets of Magic can stay put, as it actually has some interesting backstory on minor Odyssey/Onslaught characters like Balthor. Finally there's a handful of other stuff I still need to cover, which makes the review schedule for the coming months as follows:- Invasion (oct 2000)
- Planeshift (feb 2001)
- Johan (april 2001)
- Apocalypse (jun 2001)
- The Dragons of Magic (aug 2001)
- Odyssey (sept 2001)
- Jedit (dec 2001)
- Chainer's Torment (jan 2002)
- Judgment (may 2002)
- The Secrets of Magic (may 2002)
- Hazezon (aug 2002)
- Onslaught (sept 2002)
- Assassin's Blade (dec 2002)
- Legions (jan 2003)
- Emperor's Fist (mar 2003)
- Scourge (may 2003)
- The Monsters of Magic (aug 2003)
- The Moons of Mirrodin (sept 2003)
- Champion's Trial (nov 2003)
- The Darksteel Eye (dec 2003)
- The Fifth Dawn (may 2004)
- The Mirage Document
- The Dragons of Magic
- Johan
- Jedit
- Hazezon
- Odyssey
- Chainer's Torment
- Judgment
- Odyssey online (OdysseyOnline.com, Magic book archive, MagicTheGathering.com)
- The Secrets of Magic
- Onslaught
- Legions
- Scourge
- Onslaught online
- Assassin's Blade
- Emperor's Fist
- Champion's Trial
- An article on the Legends I, Legends II & Greensleeves timeline issues
- The Monsters of Magic
- The Moons of Mirrodin
- The Darksteel Eye
- The Fifth Dawn
- Mirrodin online
From Mirrodin onward the storyline starts following an easy to follow schedule again, with each set getting their own novel and the extra cycles and anthology series being cancelled. At that point we really only have to worry about a few online anthologies and the occasional tidbit from a player's guide. But by the time I'm covering those we should be well into next year, so let's not get ahead of ourselves!
Elsewhere on this site, you mentioned you would eventually cover an online article of coldsnap that takes place 2 years after Alliances. You alluded to some of the events of that story in your Alliances review as well.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like we are making a 'break' from the classic mtg period and I wouldn't want that left behind or forgotten! ice age was my favorite period.
Don't worry, we'll get to Coldsnap eventually. But as I'm going through stuff in the order of release (roughly), it will be a while. After all the above mentioned stuff we also got to do Kamigawa and Ravnica 1.0 blocks. Then we'll finally get a nice continuity-heavy throwback with Coldsnap and Time Spiral block.
DeleteHi.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I'm really something you could consider a fan of your site! :D
Thanks for the hard work!
I got some questions, which maybe you could answer, that don't really go adressed currently.
1. I read the Feldon story (really well writen, good story) but it left me wondering if every mage could learn every “color“ or if there are bondaries.
If so, what makes a mage blue for example? Preference? Heritage?
2. Does the way of casting spells from the Dark and the Feldon Story still apply today for the Gatewatch?
3. When casting a spell, Mages remember/feel their “mana source“, how do Planeswalker do this on other planes? Is there a connection to their home? What happens on a plane like for example Serras which has only white mana. Could you cast a non-white spell?
4. And my last question foe this time. :P
Since you're dutch, I'm wondering dobyou read the books in english or translation or both? Can you recommand the translations to any langue at all? (German here ;))
Thanks for read and mostly for your awesome work!
Thank you for your kind words! Now, for your questions...
Delete1) Personality seems to be the main reason. You can clearly see this in the cards, when characters get other colors after significant character growth. But I personally think anyone can master any color, it just doesn't come easy to learn the ones that match your personality. We've never gotten definitive proof of this, but we have seen the likes of Jodah and Urza use all 5 colors without significant alterations of their character.
2) I'm not as well versed in post-Mending lore as I am in pre-Mending stuff, but I do believe the rules still apply. (Though mana burn seems to have disappeared in the story itself as well, so maybe there were a few alterations)
3) The earliest stories mention planeswalkers exploring new planes explicitly to gain access to their mana, so I assume planeswalkers can draw magic across the Multiverse.
3.5) A litte sidenote: every plane has every color of mana, they just might be very imbalanced. Serra herself stated she couldn't eliminate black mana entirely from her Realm, and Freyalise found a teensy strand of green mana on Phyrexia.
4) I read the books in English. I've got the Dutch translations of the very first books (Arena and Whispering Woods), but I'm not sure if any later were ever translated into Dutch. I'm afraid I know even less about German language versions.
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