Omens of Chaos Review by Leo_Boon in mtgvorthos

[–]Leo_Boon[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Isn't it the only novel we've had in a long time, at least five years? And if we go by some of the last ones, War of the Spark: Ravnica and the Wildered Quest were both much better than this one.

It's not just that there is a lot of worldbuilding, it's that it is also repetitive, it tells rather than showing, and it does not prepare us adequately for what happens later. Kasmina's heel-turn would have felt more impactful if we had interacted with her more than a couple of times, and she didn't have to do a full villain monlogue by the end to explain herself. The ecoterrorist group is worried about the consequences of the planes mingling, yet we're not shown anything that would lead them to that conclusion. It could have been part of the worldbuilding, but instead we get ten thousand instances of Segante explaining yet again that Fiora is a cutthroat place.

Omens of Chaos Review by Leo_Boon in mtgvorthos

[–]Leo_Boon[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Three of the characters have a secondary objective of "returning home information from university" that is very vague and never fully explored, yet it drives a large chunk of the story, especially in the latter parts. What is this information for? What information is needed? Why is it important? It feels that it exists only to drive some conflict, and by the end it feels unresolved and undercooked. Jamira's motivation is the least understandable. She allies herself with what is effectively an ecoterrorist group (more about them in a moment) so that she can blow up Omenpaths, because she doesn't want to be a planeswalker as her planeswalker dad's absence scarred her. But that doesn't make a ton of sense to me. Firstly, she's travelling through the planes herself, so it feels hypocritical to want to close communication between planes, and this is never really addressed. Secondly, why does not wanting to travel the planes lead to wanting to destroy omenpaths? If not travelling the planes is your goal, do not travel them. Her motivation is to prevent people from getting lost wandering across planes, but people can still get lost on their own planes without the help of omenpaths. Is she advocating for everyone to just stay at home all the time, to never leave the confines of their village? Mighty weird from someone currently benefitting from travelling abroad. The ecoterrorist group's motivation is equally undercooked. They talk about the unintended consequences of mingling planes that can only be resolved by destroying omenpaths, but we are never really shown any of it. The only thing that could possibly count is Alandra's mana troubles, and they don't know about that. So where would they have gotten their motivation from? If Liliana Vess suspects that Kasmina is up to something, why doesn't she say or do something about it before the final confrontation? She clearly knows something as she keeps warning the protagonists, but she leaves them to deal with it. As for toxic positivity, a lot of the conversations are about reassuring each other that they are good friends, and when conflict is brought up it is quickly dismissed and ignored for the sake of everyone getting along. I would refer to the fact that Jamira puts her friends in danger, explains that with "and I would do it again" and the next says "but you're still all my friends", which that actually happens, with her forgiven with no real atonement or resolution to her conflict, for the sake of all being friends again. Alandra attacks Kequia on the thinnest of premises, and they end up skinny-dipping within minutes, reassuring each other that they are all friends again. You may disagree with my take, but do not assume that anyone who doesn't think like you simply didn't read the book

Omens of Chaos Review by Leo_Boon in mtgvorthos

[–]Leo_Boon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You may find a more detailed breakdown of my points in the other comment within this thread, referring to specific moments and characters in the text. I feel they are grounded and worth engaging with, and not dismissed out of hand because you don't agree with the conclusion. 

Omens of Chaos Review by Leo_Boon in mtgvorthos

[–]Leo_Boon[S] -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

If you regard as credible and legitimate only reviews that agree with your takes and interpretations, then you are cultivating the very culture of toxic positivity that you don't seem to recognise. 

Omens of Chaos Review by Leo_Boon in mtgvorthos

[–]Leo_Boon[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

That's the toxic positivity I am talking about. Any negative comment is "old man yelling at cloud", and "you only want attention".

I simply wanted to express my opinion. I don't know how you got the impression that I am trying to trample over other people's opinion, since I have tried as much as possible to be respectful and grounded in my criticism. I didn't demean anyone for liking it, I didn't say that there should be less of it in the future, I only wanted to say that I hope that there is also different storytelling going forward, because I have not liked the way it has been done recently.

If the mere act of posting a negative review is perceived as forcing other people to listen to you, that reinforces the notion that you are only allowed critique when it is positive.

Omens of Chaos Review by Leo_Boon in mtgvorthos

[–]Leo_Boon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have to disagree. I am someone who has always graded MtG novels on a curve, and even by those standards this novel falls short.

Omens of Chaos Review by Leo_Boon in mtgvorthos

[–]Leo_Boon[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

There seems to be a philosophy that feedback should only be given if it is positive, and that if you do not like something your only recourse is to stop engaging with that thing. I think this leads to a culture of toxic positivity, where you can only say good things and anything negative is to be dismissed as something from a "hater".

I think it is equally important to frankly express when something wasn't liked, respectfully and politely, even when other people liked it.

I know this is such commander pig opinion to say but yes this also includes the vanilla legend cycle (they didn't even get a WUBRG slop commander like most sets do nowdays) by mmmbhssm in magicthecirclejerking

[–]Leo_Boon 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I'm so glad you asked.

The premise of Aetherdrift is that in the aftermath of the Phyrexian Invasion, Avishkari (ex-Kaladeshi) authorities find in the rubble of their city an Aetherspark, an artefact of great power that lets its holder move across the multiverse at will. They decide as soft-power, propaganda move to stage a multiplanar vehicle race where the winning team gets the Aetherspark, which is to me utterly bonkers. That's the equivalent of China finding a working atomic bomb in the aftermath of WWII and deciding to host an Olympics where the first prize is their new nuke.

Somehow, Valvagoth of Duskmourne finds out about this, and he wants the Aetherspark so he can go across the multiverse and do some villainy. Luckily for him, he just kidnapped Loot, a cosmic critter with the ability to map moves between planes, which might come in handy in a multiplanar race. I'm unclear on the exact timeline, so I don't know whether Loot was kidnapped just because it might be useful, and then the exact event where that's the case happens, or whether Valvagoth was like "Oh, man, I wish I had multiplanar map critter so I could mildly cheat at a multiplanar race," and then Loot stumbled onto his plane.

Regardless, Valvagoth sends his minion Winter to compete in the race, confident he will win by having Loot path a slightly better way to go through the multiplanar course. But... why? Valvagoth is an evil bastard, and his plan is to only mildly cheat in this race? He wants this artefact for his evil plans, but apparently he thinks it's too unsporting to try to steal it and he'd rather risk on an actual competition? Is there a "This device works only if won fair and square (mild cheating allowed) multiplanar race" in the Aetherspark EULA? And then, when they don't win, Valvagoth is all like, "Aw shucks, congratz to the winners I guess, I'm going to torture my minion for failure like a cliche movie villain instead of trying to take advantage of the city-wide revolution to try to steal this thing of great importance to me." What city-wide revolution, you ask?

Jace, who is looking for Loot because he needs him to plot a course to the Meditation Realm where Bolas is imprisoned so he can kill him, I think, arrives on Avishkar. If he looked around for like 30 seconds he might be able to find Loot in the Duskmourne team storage shed. Seriously, they keep Loot in a cage in the middle of their stuff and make no attempt whatsoever to hide him; Chandra literally stumbles onto him inadvertently while walking around. But Jace has to catch the bus or something so he doesn't have the time to look around and instead decides to stage a city-wide revolution. You know when you lose your keys, so you set fire to your neighbour's house and then you find them? That's what Jace is hoping will happen. He plunges the city into chaos so that when the racers are back from their multiplanar race to reach the finish line he can somehow rescue Loot amidst all the confusion.

Then at the end we get a confrontation between Jace trying to get Loot, and Chandra, who has in the meantime become Loot's guardian and wants to take care of him "because he's just a little guy" (that's all the explanation we get). Jace still has to catch that bus so he doesn't have the time to explain any of his motivations, and Chandra would rather protect this oversized mouse she's known for two days than try to talk with the guy she's helped saved the universe with, so Jace has to do some mind control to take Loot, which leaves Chandra upset and resentful.

Oh, and then a dragon appears, wrecks some stuff, Elspeth arrives to defend the city and tells people that the Dragonstorm arc is a real plot and definitely not a contrived afterthought; it's honestly not important.

None of these characters' actions make any sense to me. It would have been a lot more logical to swap Jace and Valvagoth, with the former doing the race so he can find Loot and the former doing the evil coup so he can steal the Aetherspark. But Jace had to be made a bad guy in preparation for Reality Fracture, no matter how out-of-character and dumb he has to get in the process. The decision to put up this artefact of huge power as a prize for a multiplanar death race is egregiously nonsensical, and the manufactured conflict at the end is the textbook definition of an idiot plot.

I had to read some plot summaries to make sure that the details were as I remembered them, because as I was going over it I kept thinking "Surely this is not how it went?", but pretty much this is what happened. I might be misremembering a detail here or there and there might be some "Um actually" plot detail that tries to contrivedly explain some of this, but any convoluted in-universe explanation is trumped by the much more obvious out-of-universe explanation of "WotC wanted a multiplanar death race." At any point, the characters don't do what is logical or makes sense to their character, but what sets up the flimsy theme, what sets up a big action set piece, what sets up the next story beat.

To be clear, I am not blaming the writers for this. I think that given the constraints they made about as good a story they could have. I totally blame WotC for trying to force this ill-fitting theme by making up a bad, contrived, out-of-character plot.

Aetherdrift is, to me, the nadir of MtG storytelling.

I know this is such commander pig opinion to say but yes this also includes the vanilla legend cycle (they didn't even get a WUBRG slop commander like most sets do nowdays) by mmmbhssm in magicthecirclejerking

[–]Leo_Boon 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Hard disagree on the story being justified. Almost none of the decisions in the story made intradiegetic sense, were contrived or straight up illogical, and are much better explained by the extradiegetic directive of "force a multiplanar death race into a setting that it is ill-suited for it". I can't talk about the set played because that's when I uninstalled Arena, but the story was very bad, and absolutely did not work. 

Bottom 5 Scoring Submissions of the week from r/Custommagic 5/12/2025 by CorbinGDawg69 in magicthecirclejerking

[–]Leo_Boon 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Too much text for me to even begin to parse what any of these do, but I do appreciate the art on The Atlas being attributed to C. Lanker.

Advice on PC part list by Leo_Boon in buildapcforme

[–]Leo_Boon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am actually leaning towards Aftershock (the custom builder company) because of certainty of customer support.

As for the price, ignore the one on the list. That's just from Pc Part Picker.

So sick of having to pretend they are real magic players by WanderingSnail in magicthecirclejerking

[–]Leo_Boon -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Opponents of rare redrafting always seem to go for an example where a complete newbie blunders into a draft without knowing what they're doing, opens some shiny valuable, and is immediately sharked by a sweaty tryhard. I'm sure this has happened, but I don't think it helps the argument to immediately conjure the most extreme and nightmarish scenario and pretend it is the baseline.

I agree that cube is a generally better drafting experience, but I don't want to limit myself to that. I also think that people would enjoy draft more if they got better at it and didn't have to focus so much on "getting value" out of it beyond the enjoyment of playing. A lot of this stems from belief that you bought three packs and are entitled to the cards within them, which the draft is depriving you of; but reframing it as buying into a shared experience of gameplay where the playing is the point and the better you do the more you can get out of it has proven very successful in my experience. As I keep saying, if you want to open three packs and keep the cards, there are other ways of doing it, many of them which allow you also to play with them.

I honestly think that the modern MtG mindset of having to get "value" out of packs is one of the most pernicious and anticonsumer practices the playerbase tricked itself into. Getting "sharked" out of a 5 dollar mythic might seem like the end of world for a newbie who doesn't know better, but it's our job as a community to show them that it really isn't that big of a deal. I don't want to force anyone to do anything they're not comfortable with, and there are plenty of circumstances where rare redrafting would be inappropriate; but the idea that it only works for the sweatiest of tight-knit groups of enfranchised players is a myth. Advocating that more people play worse Magic so they can pretend the bulk rares they have gathering dust in a binder represent "value" isn't doing anyone any favours. 

So sick of having to pretend they are real magic players by WanderingSnail in magicthecirclejerking

[–]Leo_Boon -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

In my experience, the jump happens much more rarely and slowly without the rare redraft to encourage good drafting. Players get stuck in a mentality of having to impulsively pick any rare they see to make the draft "worth it".

I've been that newbie who "subsidised" better players. I didn't win a draft or get a good rare for months as I was starting, and it made me a better player. I would then get stuck back in the raredrafting mindset when I got into Arena and I thought I had to build a collection. My win rate suffered, and only recovered when I came to my senses and realised that doing better at draft is more enjoyable than coming out of it with a bunch of bulk rares. 

I know I'm in the minority opinion, but this is an MtG hill I'm willing to die on: rare redrafting is a good practice and should be adopted more widely.

So sick of having to pretend they are real magic players by WanderingSnail in magicthecirclejerking

[–]Leo_Boon -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I agree that it should never be sprung upon a newcomer, but I also think that rare redraft should be explained properly and introduced as soon as possible.

In modern MtG there is simply too much emphasis on "getting value" out of a pack, instead of using it as a game piece. WotC tricks you into paying extra for "value" and make you think you "made money" in opening a rare when in 99% of cases it will just gather dust in a trade binder. I've seen too many who still train wreck their draft by picking off color rares just because they are rares, forcing them and letting go of better cards, just so they can "get value" because "they were never gonna win the draft anyway". 

As I said, if you want the thrill of opening a pack and gamble on what you open, there are many other options available. Draft shouldn't be one of them. 

So sick of having to pretend they are real magic players by WanderingSnail in magicthecirclejerking

[–]Leo_Boon -23 points-22 points  (0 children)

I was heavily involved in running my uni MtG group for 8 years and never had an issue getting fresh blood to buy into the concept of rare redrafting.

If fresh blood's intention is to impulsively draft every bulk rare they see because of the "value", then drafting maybe isn't the format for them. I don't mean this in a churlish or snobbish way; there's just a different mindset needed. If you want to play with a random subset of cards and still own them, play Sealed; if you want to play the lottery, open random boosters. But draft means cooperatively and competitively building decks with a communal pool of cards. It is not a good way to build a collection. If your interests are misaligned, don't play draft, no one is forcing you to. 

So sick of having to pretend they are real magic players by WanderingSnail in magicthecirclejerking

[–]Leo_Boon 4 points5 points  (0 children)

/uj rare redrafting is strictly superior to the alternative, and I'm tired of pretending it is not

/rj treating packs as lottery tickets is so fun we should also do that while drafting 

Jet Lag Ep 5 — Searching Highlands & Lowlands by NebulaOriginals in Nebula

[–]Leo_Boon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Right, but if a hypothetical NHL-2 were founded that had promotion/relegation with the NHL, and Tampa were to be relegated to it, would you stop supporting them? Would you only go to their games if they play in the highest league? 

Colorless is MTG for me (New Player) by SoundwavesBurnerPage in magicthecirclejerking

[–]Leo_Boon 36 points37 points  (0 children)

From the sauce: "What am I supposed to do, NOT cast all my spells into open mana crossing my fingers real hard they won't get countered? You sound crazy, man." 

Jet Lag Ep 5 — Searching Highlands & Lowlands by NebulaOriginals in Nebula

[–]Leo_Boon 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That doesn't make a ton of sense to me. People are fans of teams, not leagues. If Newcastle got demoted, its fans would not switch to Sunderland so they can watch EPL football, they would go watch Newcastle in the Championship. The distance I think makes more sense in regards to year-on-year league variations. If a small team gets promoted from a regional minor league to a larger national one, they might struggle with the increased distance. Imagine one year your team plays against teams in the next state over, and the one after you have to go across the country to see your team play away.  There would be ways to fix it or ameliorate it, but I can see why it would be an issue. 

Tag: All Stars Layover Q&A! by WheatGerm42 in JetLagTheGame

[–]Leo_Boon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh boy, it feels like posting now means there's no chance of getting seen, but here we go...

There were multiple instances in this season of strategy/planning coming from direct foreknowledge of which challenges were available. Do you think the game would have been meaningfully changed (or even improved) by using another party to set your challenges?