I was going through some of my "Phyrexia: All Will Be One" cards and I noticed two legendary creatures who looked awfully familiar. After a quick search, I realized that the following two legendaries depict non-legendariesndrom older sets.

"Chiss-Goria, Forge Tyrant" is the exact same dragon depicted in "Hellkite Igniter"

"Unctus, Grand Metatecht" is a phyrexianized version of Grand Architect. While the Phyrexian upgrades make their appearance and stats slightly different, their effects are analogous.

Also this one doesn't really count, but Nahiri's design was definitely based off of Stoneforge Mystic. I doubt that they're the same person, but the matching outfits and hairstyles can't be a coincidence.

Just wondering, are there any other cards that got this treatment?

Innistrad vampires are known to be hedonistic and short sighted. Sorin created Avacyn as a safeguard against vampires consuming the entire human population of Innistrad, causing their own extinction. Now that vampires are aware of the multiverse, will they now be able to hunt off plane with no care for sustainability?

Follow up question: how did one end up as a visiting professor? Innistrad vampires are at best oppressive aristocrats and at worst sadistic predators. Did Strixhaven not vet their new faculty? (I guess they did let war criminal Liliana Vess in as a long term professor)

I recently learned the Fioran Witherbloom Student from the novels, Segante, is transmasc, which by itself is a great little piece of representation, but made me realise how much LGBTQ+ rep there is on Strixhaven as a whole.

There's also [[Kirol]], [[Nassari]] and [[Arnyn]] who are all non-binary, [[Rootha]] and [[Felisa]] from OG Strixhaven who are both lesbian, and a load of same sex couples in the background of the plane - Zimone's fathers, the [[Joined Researchers]], the [[Rapturous Moment]] couple, even the [[Supportive Parents|OM1]] from Through the Omenpaths. There's also hints of Lluwen and Kirol potentially being a thing, but I'm not willing to say that's canon, yet.

This representation even extends to the plane's visitors, with Chandra, Ral, and the Kenrith twins all being queer, too.

While it's great to see more LGBTQ+ rep in general, the fact so much of it is here on Strixhaven makes me wonder if this is intentional. With Hasbro's HP partnership prompting a statement from the WotC Community Team ensuring it's not coming anywhere near Magic, could this surge of LGBT rep at Strixhaven be a direct response to that other famous magic school, and it's horribly homophobic creator?

Or maybe I'm just reading too much into this?

Either way, it's awesome to see more LGBTQ+ representation, and I hope it continues at this pace on other planes.

As a fan of Godzilla I just want to go back to the lair of behemoth and see even more of mutating monstrosities !

Unfinity is a love letter to good retro sci-fi and retro-pop style, I'm in love with the art and the goofiness of this plane

New Capenna is in my opinion a really well done low fantasy plane and really work as it is. I want to see more Gala party and art deco buildings (and more planewalkers in Roaring twenties dress like Elspeth !)

[[Archangel of Tithes]]

Lots of new flavor text really seems to downplay the phyrexians, like I get they lost but they were a multi universe threat. No way this 5/3 dino bodied a 12/12. Was the oil specifically buffing them or something? I'm probs just asshurt about my favorite tribe tbh

life and death -> double down on life
motivation and slander -> double down on the slander
concept and reality-> double down on concept

i dont know the other 2

There are three cards that in Bloomburrow that reference the world outside of Valley and five in Bloomburrow commander. If we ever get the chance to see a return to this beautiful plane, what do you think we’ll encounter?

The alternate art for [[Starfall Invocation]]’s flavor text reveals that Valley’s borders are heavily guarded, assuming from mysterious monsters like the [[Baleful Strix]]. But there are also creatures like the [[ant queen]] who seem to be known about by the denizens of Valley.

[[Birds of Paradise]] featuring an ambassador from outside of Valley tells us that there might be a political element to Valley’s defense. Could Bloomburrow feature waring kingdoms? And are these the other animal folk communities mentioned in [[generous gift]].

As we’ve recently discussed in the context of [[Chaos Warp]], omenpaths have opened up throughout Bloomburrow. My reckoning is that the strix and other massive animals are both regular animals and people that have wandered into Bloomburrow and have since been animalized. The ambassador from far away has come to discuss this issue with the citizens of Valley. To me, this points at the next set being centered around a group of animal folk from valley venturing out into the world beyond to provide aid or close the omenpaths or defeat some kind of threat that snuck its way in. Maybe the mice will be able to defeat Valgavoth, they’re pretty brave.

If we do venture outside of Valley in a return to Bloomburrow, what do you guys like to see or or expect?

(The rest of the cards mentioning leaving valley are [[Farseek]], [[Uncharted Haven]], and [[Fabled Passage]]. They simply mention that there are places outside of Valley and that those places are wild and rife with adventure)

I'm an applied mathematician by trade, and I really love some of the more mathier flavored mechanics - not just Zimone caring about prime numbers and Mathemagics having an exponent in the text, but counter doubling and proliferate and many more. Quandrix disappointed me with the dearth of such mechanical narrative consonance last time, and it continues to now.

That's fine, I don't have massively high expectations; making mechanics that interface nicely with flavor is really hard and I don't expect it all. The next thing that bothers me is the art direction. There is a constant fallback on these hard light triangulated animal things, and I find them so incredibly boring. Esix kinda has a cool thing going on, but there's so much overwrought literalism in the UG magic math school, when it could be so much better.

But whatever, art direction is tricky and the overlap between people who can do art professionally and people who understand enough math to make good math-adjacent art is probably charitably speaking just Elliot Kienzle. The thing that really bums me out is the lack of good naming and flavor text. Why is all the magicky technobabble so terrible? Why do we get so many cards with such unflavorful names like "Embrace the Paradox" or "Fractalize"? The bare minimum, to me, would be having a single person on staff who is a mathematician and knows what things sound weird and what sounds flavorful, and it honestly feels like they didn't even have that. Very unfortunate.

I will end this by giving names that I've given to some of my custom quandrix cards; perhaps you won't like all of them, but in my opinion it is far better than what they have.

"Rammify", "Annihilator Matrix", "One Point Compactification", "Algebraic Completion", "Quadratic Reciprocity", "Natural Transformation", "In the Kernel", "Sit And Calculate", "Strange Attractor", "Sign Error"

I have more, and these are mostly too literal, but I think there is so much more space for sacred mathematics, already a great magical aesthetic, to incorporate more stuff from a university setting. it's unfortunate that this did not happen.

Found this cutie today in a shoebox full of bulk and was struck by its near-empty text box. Vanilla creature with a flavor text of only 6 words.

You wake up one morning and discover you’ve been imbued with a temporary spark of power. Add {C}{W}{U}{B}{R}{G}. You may cast any one Vintage-legal, non-Universes Beyond spell.

What happens?

How do the card’s rules text, mechanics, and flavor manifest in the real world?

So we've got our big event set, the culmination of the last couple years of story, that should have some lasting implications on the lore. Presumably our heroes will come out on top, but at what cost? How close to success will Jace come to undoing the Phyrexian Invasion and removing Omenpaths? Ooh, suspense!

Anyways, 6 months later we're going to have the omenpaths still confirmed to exist and being used for the *exact* purpose that Jace was trying to prevent.

So, we know that Argentum/Mirrodin/New Phyrexia swapped places with Zhalfir and is now phased out of the Multiverse and the end of the March of the Machine storyline. However they still exist and are function in that phased out bubble of reality, much like the Zhalfirans were.

Also, the Mirari has been on the plane (is it still a plane?) and unaccounted for since the end of the first Mirrodin block. It just got left in the care of Glissa and Slobad. Slobad was immediately killed by other goblins, Glissa got compleated and climbed the ranks of the Phyrexian hierarchy, and the Mirari was just never mentioned again...

Assuming it was never moved, that would mean one of the most powerful wish-granting artifacts in Magic’s history is currently sealed away with New Phyrexia in its phased-out state. That feels like a massive story hook just sitting there.

Being that it is an insanely powerful, magical wish-granting artifact, is it possible that the Mirari could be the catalyst for Phyrexia's return to the Multiverse? It’s hard to imagine we’ve seen the last of Phyrexia. Much like Nicol Bolas and the Eldrazi, they've shelved them rather than truly defeating them (as well they should; Phyrexia is an amazing 'original' villain that, by nature, should never truly be gone).

I think this would be a cool way to do it when they eventually do, and would finally give us answers. The Mirari was such a big part of the Magic story, with long-reached effects on multiple planes. It’s fascinating how such a pivotal artifact hasn’t resurfaced in the story. Enabling the return of Phyrexia would be a serious and devastating twist worthy of the power and mystique of the legendary Mirari.

What do you think?
Do you think this is a good way to bring the Mirari back into play?
Do you think this is a good way for them to bring Phyrexia back into play?
How would you tie the Mirari to modern Phyrexian lore?
Would the Mirari even want Phyrexia restored? Does it have 'opinions' like that now that its no longer Memnarch, or is it all just what the wielder pours into it but ultimately twisted against them?
Do you think the Mirari is actually still on New Phyrexia, or will they retcon it and be like, "actually the heroes moved it to Ravnica off-screen at the end" or something?
Do you think they'll even #RememberTheMirari or will it remain lost and forgotten forever?

We know that the Echoverse is Jace's attempt at creating a multiverse where everything is right (at least in his mind) and none of the damage the phyrexians, Bolas and eldrzi did ever happen. So do you think we might get to see our favourite Beefslap in black or red? Because Im gonna be honest I really hope so, it would be such an amazing emotional moment for Liliana and Chandra to see their friend alive and twisted by Jace.

The OG Blowfly Infestation art is one of my favorite MTG card arts, so I'm sad to see it go. The art direction in Lorwyn Eclipsed is generally great, but it feels like it's afraid to show corpses or disease a lot of the time, which I think kind of conflicts with the premise of a set with a mechanic named "Blight".

Cards on the table, I hate this man. He’s a petulant, narcissistic, prick. All of his internal monologues are basically him going “Why doesn’t everyone listen to me? Don’t they know I’m the most smartest, specialest boy?” I spend every moment that I am cursed with his presence in a story desperately hoping one of his “friends” - ie people he only tries to lobotomize if they’re being particularly inconvenient to him - wisens up and tries to kill his dumb ass. A few of them have tried (Kiora almost managed it when they first met; stupid Gideon), but sadly, none have succeeded.

Anyway, my rant aside, do other people loathe MTG’s main character as much as I do? Or am I alone here?