tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1665375410624300606.post3458268321085739961..comments2023-09-28T02:15:26.930+02:00Comments on Multiverse in Review: Invasion cycle: the reviewSquirlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00455795032822945487noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1665375410624300606.post-14674998011296441532020-08-26T02:31:06.137+02:002020-08-26T02:31:06.137+02:00Why didn't Urza contact the dragon nations bef...Why didn't Urza contact the dragon nations before the Invasion started?<br />- Dragons are notoriously arrogant. Asking them to help would probably be an insult to them. Perhaps they were banking on the idea that if the dragons were directly attacked by the phyrexians, they would retaliate in full. <br /> <br />How does Multani not know about the coming Overlay?<br />- Why would he? It's been a while since I read the stories but is sensing such a planar event within the scope of powers that a maro-sorcerer would have? <br />(unless I'm not remembering something and someone told him somewhere in the story. In that case, mea culpa)<br /> <br />Why didn't the planeswalkers tell their armies they were taking them across the world after Koilos? Everyone is surprised when they are teleported out during the first Phyrexian attack on Planeshift. But that all the 'walkers are doing it simultaneously shows coordination, and they just spend 3 days having a party. Surely they could've taken a little time out of that to discuss their next step?<br />- No clue and it shows bad planning. Chalk it up to the "We're planeswalkers and we do what we want" mentality. <br /> <br />Why are Shiv and Keld the next battlegrounds?<br />- Bad battle plan, yada yada yade. More likely that it is just to showcase those regions in the story.<br /> <br />Why are the Metathran entirely useless without Agnate? Wasn't this Urza's super army that he generated over many centuries?<br />- The Metathran are supersoldiers that will blindly follow orders. But they are barely human and Phyrexian DNA was spliced into the project at one point. I'd take this that they suffer the same flaw as the phyrexians: they lack imagination and need a superior officer to guide their actions.<br /><br />All of this is just speculation on my end so feel free to take it as you will.MrFhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10478806771112335341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1665375410624300606.post-37714638702540328062020-08-26T02:30:44.882+02:002020-08-26T02:30:44.882+02:00Why do planeswalkers need to train with the Titan ...Why do planeswalkers need to train with the Titan Engines rather than just have the knowledge telepathically beamed into them? And if they do need to train, why do they only start after the Invasion began?<br />- Because every underdog story needs a training montage :p<br />On a more serious level, beaming information directly into someone sounds like a serious breach of privacy. Regular mortals would not have a say in it but if you try to pull that on someone of equal power, they might take issue with it. Or it could be that something like that requires a two way connection and some would prefer not having Urza poke around in their mind. <br /> <br />Speaking of the Engines, why does Taysir stay in his while confronting Urza when he knows Urza put kill rubrics into them?<br />- Urza needed only planeswalker's soul/spark to power the bombs. Could just be a powerplay by Taysir to see if Urza would go so far as to execute someone without cause to complete his scheme. Could just as well be that no one at that moment was thinking rationally and were being guided by their emotional response to the whole situation. <br /> <br />Why does Urza pose as the Blind Seer, rather than just telling Gerrard what is going on? And why does he languish in a Benalish brig while he should be fighting? He basically lets Benalia get routed in order to hang around in a prison he could've gotten out of all the time! (He's as bad as Squee!)<br />- Because having an all-knowing character come in and dump exposition on the protagonist does not make for suspenseful storytelling. This is a more Doylist explination because from a Watsonian viewpoint, it does indeed not make any sense to withhold information. <br /> <br />If Rath is warded again Urza, why not Phyrexia?<br />- Yawgmoth wanted Urza to come to Phyrexia would be my guess. <br /> <br />Why didn't Urza know of Jhoira's improvements to the Mana Rig?<br />- It's a Thran artifact, maybe he thought it was already perfect? It could be that it just never came up (rather unlikely) or maybe Jhoira has the impression that Urza wouldn't like/appreciate someone else improving on his work. MrFhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10478806771112335341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1665375410624300606.post-7254066629515884952020-08-26T02:29:59.576+02:002020-08-26T02:29:59.576+02:00Right, let's see here:
Why doesn't Yawgmo...Right, let's see here:<br /><br />Why doesn't Yawgmoth come to Dominaria immediately? Or at least start the invasion with the Overlay?<br />- There is the theory that Yawgmoth was too powerful to just manifest in Dominaria. Yawgmoth is to a planeswalker as a planeswalker is to a human as a human is to an ant. The Rathi overlay would ensure that his mere presence would not break the world. Given that he thinks that Rebbec turned into Gaea and his characterization from the Thran novel, it makes more sense that he would want to "conquer" Dominaria/Rebbec and claim it for himself rather than planar genocide.<br /><br />On the other side: what exactly is Urza's plan? Why focus on Koilos? Why then immediately scatter your armies to Keld and Shiv when your main goal is Urborg?<br />- Urza is a great artificer but not a great (military) strategist. Let's face it: his main answer to every problem is to build something to deal with said problem while he goes on to a next problem/project. <br /><br />At one point it is said Koilos is important because its the only stable land portal, but why does that matter when the Phryexians can open a million tiny portals and bomb Llanowar from another plane?<br />- It was the original portal into Phyrexia, maybe that had something to do with it?<br /><br />And if we buy the Koilos portal is important... why didn't Urza destroy during his last 1000ish years of preparations?<br />- My guess would be sentiment. Urza started his whole crusade against Phyrexia because they turned his brother into a monster. Koilos could just be the only place in the multiverse that held actual happy memories for Urza (of Mishra) and as such, he would prefer not to wipe out the last positive bond he had with Mishra.<br /><br />At the end of Invasion it is suggested Urza and Gerrard need to destroy the portal together for some weird mystical reason, but then why send Thaddeus to blow it up? And again, why not bring Gerrard there a year or two earlier?<br />- Urza thinks like an artificer or a clock maker: everything has to be precisely in order in the right spot in the right moment. Again, Urza is not a great strategist as far as I can gleam from the stories. MrFhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10478806771112335341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1665375410624300606.post-48649204031917361672017-09-10T22:15:01.861+02:002017-09-10T22:15:01.861+02:00That's an interesting idea, and not one I'...That's an interesting idea, and not one I've heard before. I don't think it was intended, and the two cycles don't match 100%, but Dromar and Eliminator do sound pretty much the same.<br /><br />And yes, you are definitely trying a lot harder than mister King to tie the various strands of this plot together ;)Squirlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00455795032822945487noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1665375410624300606.post-16116730973723894092017-09-03T21:36:01.326+02:002017-09-03T21:36:01.326+02:00Pure speculation, but is it possible the Primevals...Pure speculation, but is it possible the Primevals awakening triggered the Keldon Twilight with the five of them roughly correlating to the Winds of Ascension from Keld Triumphant?<br /><br />Looking at the flavor text of the Winds cycle from Prophecy with the Attendant cycle from Invasion, I can see some rough similarities, though it's not a perfect comparison by any means. I'm probably thinking harder on this than the writers did.Blacktonguehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11471156059878083417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1665375410624300606.post-26277270329067941132017-06-15T19:08:19.993+02:002017-06-15T19:08:19.993+02:00I was going to do a whole bit where I go off about...I was going to do a whole bit where I go off about "Why introduce ANOTHER race of uber powerful ancient dragons into your backstory when you already have the Elders?" in this review, but it turned out pretty long already, so I decided to move that to the review of Dragons of Magic, where we next hear of the Primevals.<br /><br />In short: we have no idea how the Primevals and the Elders fit together. Nicol Bolas says some things in Legends II that can be interpreted as meaning the Elders are older, but even that isn't spelled out. That said, by the time I'll review the stories that tell us more about Bolas's timeline (Legends II and Time Spiral) I might move the Primvals to a later point in the timeline if necessary. But I'll have to re-read those sources first to be sure.<br /><br />As for Bolas's claim to be older than Dominaria... honestly we can't really prove or disprove that. But I personally I prefer to think it was just boasting. Dominaria is the most realistic of all the planes, in that the creative team actually created a globe for it and worked out its plate tectonics. Thus I prefer to think of it having a realistic age of several billion years to go along with that.Squirlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00455795032822945487noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1665375410624300606.post-22162242168370023382017-06-15T00:12:25.096+02:002017-06-15T00:12:25.096+02:00Shaun, it's probably about as suspect as his c...Shaun, it's probably about as suspect as his claim to have created Amonkhet.Chuck Williamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01542159740969429803noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1665375410624300606.post-90020073121201347622017-06-14T15:35:03.504+02:002017-06-14T15:35:03.504+02:00So if the Primevals are from more then 20,000 year...So if the Primevals are from more then 20,000 years ago, how do the Elder Dragons fit into this? And does this mean that Nicol Bolas's claim to being older than Dominaria is wrong? Or at least highly suspect?A3Kitsunehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04933296731722612458noreply@blogger.com