You could also make an argument for it being green/black, because Winter and Loot are associated with those two. Ultimately, there are some safe guesses, and then there are guesses that you land on with the leftovers.
Wouldn't Valgavoth's team be Red/Black, since that's his color?
That would make sense, but the Endriders art they showed is very rakdos coded, so I'm not sure where to put them if they aren't red/black. They do not seem very blue compatible.
No hate for anyone who sees this and thinks it's cool, but the overview has confirmed that I won't be interested in an expansion for like the next 6 months.
My friend is working on a roguelike game you can play if you want to. (It has free demo)
I do appreciate that they are using the set to do universe building with all of the hints at other, unexplored planes. It could have very easily have been some version of "Here comes the Innistrad Squidmobile piloted by Emrakul, followed by some New Capenan Gangsters, who just barely avoid running over the tiny cars from Segovia and Bloomburrow..."
oh that seems definitely crazy given the amount of teams!! I guess there will be a lot of "build your own" with the two color team captains serving as commanders.
I wonder if the vehicles will have colors? I guess they will but it would be fun to mix and match vehicles and riders.
To step back and talk in general, sets are almost always designed mechanically around 5 color pairs, 10 color pairs, or 5 color triads (wedges/shards) because that's what works for Limited (O.G. Ixalan mixed things up and that's a large part of why it sucked). These pairs/triads often represent distinct factions (racing teams, animals in Bloomburrow, guilds in Ravnica, schools in Strixhaven). Commander decks, however, can be a bit more freeform and don't always match up with the factions in a set, especially when the factions aren't really the core focus of the set (racing teams, the 10 realms in Kaldheim, the monocolor spheres in New Phyrexia).
So with Loot apparently being held by the Speed Demons... I'm going to assume Jace and Vraska are crashing the race at some point to deal with that, because it's the one good chance to rescue Loot. Even odds on Jace infiltrating the Keelhaulers, what with his brief stint as a pirate on Ixalan.
So with Loot apparently being held by the Speed Demons... I'm going to assume Jace and Vraska are crashing the race at some point to deal with that, because it's the one good chance to rescue Loot. Even odds on Jace infiltrating the Keelhaulers, what with his brief stint as a pirate on Ixalan.
I've seen a lot of speculation already that he's going to steal the identity of Masked Rider Spitfire on the Kaladesh team, because that gives him the option to try and manipulate the Pia/Chandra tension to his advantage
So with Loot apparently being held by the Speed Demons... I'm going to assume Jace and Vraska are crashing the race at some point to deal with that, because it's the one good chance to rescue Loot. Even odds on Jace infiltrating the Keelhaulers, what with his brief stint as a pirate on Ixalan.
I've seen a lot of speculation already that he's going to steal the identity of Masked Rider Spitfire on the Kaladesh team, because that gives him the option to try and manipulate the Pia/Chandra tension to his advantage
I'm not really sure there's going to be any tension there. The public wants drama, I suspect Pia's fine with it. ...okay, the public might rile Chandra up, but.
While there have been details about the individual sets and worlds I haven't loved (but everyone's sick of talking about the 80s), I'm surprised at how much restraint WotC has shown in the overall metaplot. There's a lot of spinning plates:
-The Coin Empire
-What's Jace Up To?
-Valgavoth
-The Consequences Of Omenpaths In General
And we can't really tell how it's all going to come together. Like, once the Phyrexians showed up in a set, we knew it was going to eventually hit a Phyrexian Invasion. Once Bolas was making an army, we knew that army was invading something. The pieces on the board for the current metaplot could go in a lot of different ways. And honestly, to me, that ambiguity really emphasizes the core tension of Omenpaths. It's an era of unknown consequences. There's all these little details that in abstract are innocent, but in aggregate you're just like "this is gonna break bad". When I think about Magic lore of the last year, I think a lot about how Thunder Junction's magic became "more chaotic" or whatever the phrase was after the Omenpaths opened, and what people did with that magic was they made devices to shoot it like bullets. They had the opportunity to make anything on a new world and they made guns. A dragon stepped through a portal and entered a world of unlimited prey. A world that hates you opens new doors. There's this energy of "this can't hold" that's creeping in the background, like everyone's ignoring it until it breaks. Like the innocent headlines playing on the tv in the background of the first five minutes of a disaster pic.
Here's hoping it's intentional and not just me making shit up!
They haven't named the commanders of the decks so we don't know who it is no. Based on art similarities though it may be Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun, as a zombie.
It's very probable that the Return to Tarkir set later in 2025 will have 5 Commander decks in it.
While there have been details about the individual sets and worlds I haven't loved (but everyone's sick of talking about the 80s), I'm surprised at how much restraint WotC has shown in the overall metaplot. There's a lot of spinning plates:
-The Coin Empire
-What's Jace Up To?
-Valgavoth
-The Consequences Of Omenpaths In General
And we can't really tell how it's all going to come together. Like, once the Phyrexians showed up in a set, we knew it was going to eventually hit a Phyrexian Invasion. Once Bolas was making an army, we knew that army was invading something. The pieces on the board for the current metaplot could go in a lot of different ways. And honestly, to me, that ambiguity really emphasizes the core tension of Omenpaths. It's an era of unknown consequences. There's all these little details that in abstract are innocent, but in aggregate you're just like "this is gonna break bad". When I think about Magic lore of the last year, I think a lot about how Thunder Junction's magic became "more chaotic" or whatever the phrase was after the Omenpaths opened, and what people did with that magic was they made devices to shoot it like bullets. They had the opportunity to make anything on a new world and they made guns. A dragon stepped through a portal and entered a world of unlimited prey. A world that hates you opens new doors. There's this energy of "this can't hold" that's creeping in the background, like everyone's ignoring it until it breaks. Like the innocent headlines playing on the tv in the background of the first five minutes of a disaster pic.
Here's hoping it's intentional and not just me making shit up!
I think you're on to something, especially with how they've used the ambiguity to imply possible consequences as big or bigger than the previous big events without actually needing to tell us what the specific escalation is. Like, Jace/Vraska seem to want Loot to rewrite the rules of the multiverse. The Coin Empire seems to have been an actually successful group of interplanar warlords (take that, Bolas!). Valvagoth breaching containment and turning anything else into More House is... well OK it's that's just Phyrexia again but they hate you instead of assimilate you, but still!
I had assumed that every commander release would continue to be four decks, so that a table could potentially be the four precons.
Is that a new character on the WUB deck? (I haven't read all the info yet)
They've experimented a lot with this and with some faction sets (like Strixhaven) they created 5 decks to fit the factions. I imagine Tarkir would be the same if they brought the clans back.
They announced 10 different racing teams, so I'm guessing those will be the color pairs for limited. My current guesses:
The Aether Rangers (Official Avishkar team) - Blue/Green
The Champions of Amonkhet (Official Amonkhet team)- Black/White
Cloudspire Racing (Chandra's team) - Blue/Red
The Guidelight Voyagers (Automaton team) - Blue/White
The Speed Demons (Valgavoth's team) - Blue/Black
The Goblin Rocketeers (Followers of BOOSTGOD) - Red/White
The Alacrian Quickbeasts (Beast rider team) - Green/White (looks like Mounts are back already)
The Speedbrood (Insectoid racers with living vehicles) - Green/Black
The Keelhaulers (Insert Street Sharks joke here) - Green/Red
The Endriders (Motorcyclists from a Mad Max plane) - Black/Red
I'm impressed with the number of new planes being referenced or introduced in the team backstories. This could have very easily have been another Thunder Junction style pile of famous references from existing planes.
Edit: Boy am I late with this
I think you might have the CRT and Keelhaulers switched.
The Keelhaulers wear blue and red outfits on pretty much all the artwork we see of them. WotC is usually careful not to send mixed messages with outfit colors and color identity. Also, they're fish people.
The CRT being the same colors as Nissa and Chandra could also be a symbolic way of representing their bond.
Something else that’s bubbling in the background that could be a continual fun meta plot is Avishkar is doing what Niv-Mezzet also wants to do: build a lot of infrastructure, transfer a lot of resources, and build a lot of the Bureaucracy needed to run an interplanar empire. Not through conquest, but through trade and cultural hegemony.
The geopolitics of a connected multiverse seems to be something they're rolling out slowly. Ravnica and Avishkar as competing superpowers definitely has a lot of potential. Hub worlds like Thunder Junction profiting off of both sides of that rivalry is another element.
And they seem to be setting up Duskmourn as a rouge state. Everyone publicly denounces it, but they're all still making backroom deals to their own advantage.
it's an interesting direction to take the multiverse but also it makes things feel smaller, planes being reduced down to a city-state instead of a whole world
0
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
God I need to see art of the goblins getting hyped up for the BOOSTGOD while the Speedbrood are just vibing to the hype chittering and dancing all over the place.
I had assumed that every commander release would continue to be four decks, so that a table could potentially be the four precons.
Is that a new character on the WUB deck? (I haven't read all the info yet)
They've experimented a lot with this and with some faction sets (like Strixhaven) they created 5 decks to fit the factions. I imagine Tarkir would be the same if they brought the clans back.
I guess it's mostly the last year, since I started playing that they've been doing 4 decks so much.
Looking at decks further back, I do see a lot of the sets having 2 or 5.
minor incidentpublicly subsidized!privately profitable!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
The racing theme isn’t really my jam for a set, but I’m not gonna lie, if there’s not some kind of Valgavoth Racing Team gear I might have to just design my own.
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
I'm excited they're going to support vehicles more and hopefully provide a bunch of cool car-type artifacts to do stuff with. I always wanted to build a good race car deck.
I really, really, hate that set symbol though, they've had some real stinkers lately but that checkered flag is a big miss for me. Reads like an un-set symbol.
Something else that’s bubbling in the background that could be a continual fun meta plot is Avishkar is doing what Niv-Mezzet also wants to do: build a lot of infrastructure, transfer a lot of resources, and build a lot of the Bureaucracy needed to run an interplanar empire. Not through conquest, but through trade and cultural hegemony.
And that could lead to a lot of fun plots too.
Yeah. Niv-Mizzet is open about his plans to make Ravnica the hub of Omenpath travel. I'm not sure Avishkar's plans are quite as extensive there, and the multiverse is big enough to have more than one major hub anyways, but Niv-Mizzet is a dragon.
I have a niece who is getting into Magic. For fun, I designed a commander deck for her using a legendary from Thunder Junction, since it had the same name as her, and the deck cares about Mounts and Vehicles. There are mostly Mounts in the deck, though, for simplicity. I’m looking forward to possibly making upgrades to it from this set, assuming the Quickbeasts do end up being Mounts.
+1
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I really don’t love the whole goblins thing, like I don’t really like orks in 40k either just like…the whole kind of grubby cockney thing or whatever. But I have to say, boostgod is very compelling…
i should specify one thing that i did not mention about the BOOSTGOD goblins is that the plane they come from literally has an evil god that is anti-velocity
This was a tremendously risky endeavor, not because of the rockets they flew upon but because of the velocity limit imposed upon their plane by the BOOSTGOD's mortal enemy, the dead-stop deity whose name cannot be uttered.
+11
minor incidentpublicly subsidized!privately profitable!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
I’m cackling over the “dead-stop deity” holy fuck
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
+7
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
The nitrNO demon
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
a subtle thing that i think is kinda funny is that it specifies that this is not the first grand prix since the omenpaths opened
it's very easy to imagine the first year having like, a more diverse representation of planes
but in its second year its reach has gotten big enough that it's become dominated by people solely from worlds that already cared about vehicles and races and speed
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That would make sense, but the Endriders art they showed is very rakdos coded, so I'm not sure where to put them if they aren't red/black. They do not seem very blue compatible.
To step back and talk in general, sets are almost always designed mechanically around 5 color pairs, 10 color pairs, or 5 color triads (wedges/shards) because that's what works for Limited (O.G. Ixalan mixed things up and that's a large part of why it sucked). These pairs/triads often represent distinct factions (racing teams, animals in Bloomburrow, guilds in Ravnica, schools in Strixhaven). Commander decks, however, can be a bit more freeform and don't always match up with the factions in a set, especially when the factions aren't really the core focus of the set (racing teams, the 10 realms in Kaldheim, the monocolor spheres in New Phyrexia).
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
I've seen a lot of speculation already that he's going to steal the identity of Masked Rider Spitfire on the Kaladesh team, because that gives him the option to try and manipulate the Pia/Chandra tension to his advantage
I'm not really sure there's going to be any tension there. The public wants drama, I suspect Pia's fine with it. ...okay, the public might rile Chandra up, but.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
-The Coin Empire
-What's Jace Up To?
-Valgavoth
-The Consequences Of Omenpaths In General
And we can't really tell how it's all going to come together. Like, once the Phyrexians showed up in a set, we knew it was going to eventually hit a Phyrexian Invasion. Once Bolas was making an army, we knew that army was invading something. The pieces on the board for the current metaplot could go in a lot of different ways. And honestly, to me, that ambiguity really emphasizes the core tension of Omenpaths. It's an era of unknown consequences. There's all these little details that in abstract are innocent, but in aggregate you're just like "this is gonna break bad". When I think about Magic lore of the last year, I think a lot about how Thunder Junction's magic became "more chaotic" or whatever the phrase was after the Omenpaths opened, and what people did with that magic was they made devices to shoot it like bullets. They had the opportunity to make anything on a new world and they made guns. A dragon stepped through a portal and entered a world of unlimited prey. A world that hates you opens new doors. There's this energy of "this can't hold" that's creeping in the background, like everyone's ignoring it until it breaks. Like the innocent headlines playing on the tv in the background of the first five minutes of a disaster pic.
Here's hoping it's intentional and not just me making shit up!
Is that a new character on the WUB deck? (I haven't read all the info yet)
It's very probable that the Return to Tarkir set later in 2025 will have 5 Commander decks in it.
I think you're on to something, especially with how they've used the ambiguity to imply possible consequences as big or bigger than the previous big events without actually needing to tell us what the specific escalation is. Like, Jace/Vraska seem to want Loot to rewrite the rules of the multiverse. The Coin Empire seems to have been an actually successful group of interplanar warlords (take that, Bolas!). Valvagoth breaching containment and turning anything else into More House is... well OK it's that's just Phyrexia again but they hate you instead of assimilate you, but still!
They've experimented a lot with this and with some faction sets (like Strixhaven) they created 5 decks to fit the factions. I imagine Tarkir would be the same if they brought the clans back.
I think you might have the CRT and Keelhaulers switched.
The Keelhaulers wear blue and red outfits on pretty much all the artwork we see of them. WotC is usually careful not to send mixed messages with outfit colors and color identity. Also, they're fish people.
The CRT being the same colors as Nissa and Chandra could also be a symbolic way of representing their bond.
And that could lead to a lot of fun plots too.
And they seem to be setting up Duskmourn as a rouge state. Everyone publicly denounces it, but they're all still making backroom deals to their own advantage.
All the best MTG villains end in oth
I guess it's mostly the last year, since I started playing that they've been doing 4 decks so much.
Looking at decks further back, I do see a lot of the sets having 2 or 5.
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I really, really, hate that set symbol though, they've had some real stinkers lately but that checkered flag is a big miss for me. Reads like an un-set symbol.
Yeah. Niv-Mizzet is open about his plans to make Ravnica the hub of Omenpath travel. I'm not sure Avishkar's plans are quite as extensive there, and the multiverse is big enough to have more than one major hub anyways, but Niv-Mizzet is a dragon.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Scarab God digs through the ditches and burns through the witches
it's very easy to imagine the first year having like, a more diverse representation of planes
but in its second year its reach has gotten big enough that it's become dominated by people solely from worlds that already cared about vehicles and races and speed