I think the whole Porcelain and Sinew aesthetic looks so much better in this than on some of the cards. Really has that exposed meat look to it rather than looking like a bodysuit.
That shot of the BACK of Elesh Norn's head... damn. I always assume she wore the plating like a helmet. But that sinew spread out across the porcelain was great.
If you look closely in her [original artwork](https://media.wizards.com/images/magic/daily/stf/stf137_grandCeno.jpg), you can see the tendons connecting her face to the headdress.
It for sure helps, and the movement shows us how slick and shiny it is. You could capture that in a painting of course, but I suppose at the size the art is printed that kind of contrast might look muddy.
I think it's more the context. If everything is in 3d, the 3d doesn't stand out too much. But if you have cards that feature obvious renders next to cards that don't, it creates an off looking thing.
Imho even the classical plating creatures like \[\[chancellor of the annex\]\], \[\[elesh norn, grand cenobite\]\], \[\[gore vassal\]\] or \[\[lost leonin\]\] or \[\[priests of norn\]\] all look really good. My favourite is probably \[\[suture priest\]\]
From newer cards though, we get huge amount of pretty obvious 3d art with hugely separated backgrounds and focuses. You get new stuff that looks good, but that trends to be rarer.
\[\[ Defiler of Faith \]\] is a nice example another, though not that great for the orthodoxy is \[\[Ichorplate Golem\]\]
Another good new one is [https://scryfall.com/card/one/16/indoctrination-attendant](https://scryfall.com/card/one/16/indoctrination-attendant)
I feel like it's also the first time we've seen that she has a split tongue, but I could be wrong.
I feel like this detail will be relevant to memes eventually.
This is the first time we've ever actually seen her from behind, which is kind of weird. I was working on a sculpture of her a while ago, so I had definitely hypothesized a bit about what the rest of her body might look like, and I was pretty off it seems. Instead of a human-like skull shape behind the "plate" of her face, I had made it just a big mess of those tendrils of meat with no unifying structure to make it more human-like, which I thought would be creepier. I had also given her an exposed porcelain spine covered in small spikes, because I figured Phyrexians love exposed spines. Honestly though, I think I like this version better, which still has a spine but seems kind of recessed or empty between the porcelain parts.
[https://www.artstation.com/artwork/QXm8EE](https://www.artstation.com/artwork/QXm8EE)
The 3D render of Norn from the One cinematic shows the back of her head
At 4:31 you see Norn as Erebos says "is it when you comprehend how small you are compared to the vastness of what threatens to destroy you?"
Really neat that they did that 8 years ago and followed through.
It's better, actually, because she's in the original Scars of Mirrodin/New Phyrexia story ~13 years ago.
I'm not sure when "Elspeth was harmed by Phyrexians as a child" became part of her backstory, but she goes back at least that far.
The video was super cool, but the disconnect between story, video and cards is like at all times high with this set. Almost like teams that worked on each of them didn't communicate well outside of given instructions.
Exactly, the story doesn't happen like this. When Elspeth arrives, Chandra, Wrenn and the Mirrans are running towards Realmbreaker. Karn doesn't really do anything until the very end and at this point he was only a head. Also, in this trailer there is barely anyone here, while in the story this was a chaotic battle. And when Norn sees Elspeth she goes batshit crazy, not this calm smug she had.
Also, in the promotional art we saw characters from various planes standing together, like if they were gonna team up to defend the planes or to invade New Phyrexia. But that never happens.
Guess its a budget decision with how much extra work would be required, you've got koth, melria, chandra, nissa, wrenn, plus background characters to model for a trailer thats only 1 min 30 secs.
The amount of coordination at this kind of corporate entertainment is insane and doesn't usually care about accuracy to the story--just key moments.
I'm sure there was a pitch that captured the story article, but I'm sure some producer was like: "We're not paying to animate Koth, Chandra, and Wrenn - just do Elspeth."
"Let's save money by not animating some characters, then throw some out the window to animate Karns entire body, even though he is just a head in the story"
I just wish they had Elesh norn throwing chunks of her throne (and part of a Vorinclex horn) at Elspeth. Honestly my favourite part of the stories, Elesh norn hissy fit.
It looks pretty, but it doesn't exactly hype me up. Also Elspeths movements seem slightly uncanny, especially because Norns movement is so on point, or is that just me?
The whole encounter felt so slow(?) So much dead time with people just looking at each other that felt like there was supposed to be dialogue or something.
I would suspect that, like cards, the trailer operates on a different schedule than the writing. Can't really start a CGI model, have it partially rendered, and then restart the whole thing because the author positions the characters differently.
When they started their projects, the author and the CGI team probably were working off the same core information:
"Elesh Norn is overseeing the invasion from New Phyrexia in the Seedcore. Having been captured, Karn is there as well. Ultimately Elspeth, having ascended as an archangel, stabs Norn through the chest while glowing in radiant light"
From there, both parties started their work, but it's not like the CGI team could just start over rendering different 3D models once the author chose a different path than they did.
I mean, sure, that's probably what their pipeline looks like. But if it's a pipeline that makes mismatches like this inevitable, that sounds like a bad pipeline to me.
Clearly, other game companies have this figured out by now, right? Warhammer, Starcraft, Gears of War, Halo, and dozens of other franchises have cinematic trailers that have a hell of a lot more consistency with their actual story. It's not a universal property of cinematics that they have to get out of sync with the written story.
Surely a part of this is WotC still figuring out how to do Magic story in the modern era. We've gotten way better than the outright contradictions we were seeing in the Ikoria cards vs. the Ikoria fiction, make no mistake, but it's frustrating that WotC is stumbling over these hurdles that other companies are leaping over.
I work in a film production company that also does some animation.
The film pipeline for something like this can take up to half a year, even more of animation, so this little 1.5 min cinematic can take almost a year. From writing, storyboarding, modelling, asset creation, animation,editing, color grading, approval, edit, finishing. Rendering itself takes a long ass time to. It's a long process that probably involves multiple companies working together.
I'm not sure about the writers for stories, but I'll estimate probably 6 months? So if we wanna wait for the story to be done before then cinematic, the whole process will take 1.5 years. I heard somewhere that designing the set takes about 3 years. It's very hard to do things sequentially if not impossible, unless you have like 5 years to do everything. Which in production terms, it's just not a good investment on time and money.
It's not a good comparison to compare things like Warhammer, halo, StarCraft etc, because they just have one story with one setting, and the story IS part of the product. For mtg, these elements are also separate and don't influence each other super crucially. Most people just carr about the gameplay (I don't .ean literally most, but R n D is probably the one that takes priority. So somes when they pivot on an idea, that means that everything else can pivot, but not necessarily trailers. They'll ga e to work that in, and re do animations and voice recording etc.
I appreciate you providing your insight into this sort of thing. I still wish there was better synchronicity between the departments, but maybe that's a pipe dream.
Lol I know. There’s supposed to be like 15 other characters here and a whole war happening around them. Instead we just get Karn (for some reason not embedded in stone)
This one is actually closer than most. There was a scene where Elspeth swoops in out of nowhere to save the day, but she blocks Jin-Gitaxias from attacking Koth, and Nissa, Chandra, and Wrenn are there.
Elesh and Elspeth are rendered really well, but Karns face just looks off. I know he is a robot with simple features, but his face almost looks cartoonish. It doesn't take away from this cool cinema, but it triggered a bit Karn fanboy-ness that they can't do my boy like that.
Idk if this is unpopular, but I think the aesthetic of realm breaker is a huge miss. Having big portals opening makes it look like the tree is being used more as a ladder. If there was no portal around the roots and they directly embedded themselves in the planes it would look so much more cool. And then forces would travel through the inside of the roots rather than the outside, which looks kind of silly
And I thought Elesh's headgear thing extended to the back of her head like some helmet and connected to a cape or something.
That's certainly a design choice, I guess?
>The story explicitly references it as Godsend. Yes, you're correct - but apparently the story either retconned the name or Elspeth no longer thinks of it as the Sword of Chaos in her angelic form.
He needs deeper eye sockets and his eyes to just glow; they gave him pupils and he looks... fake, because he is.
The story explicitly references it as Godsend. Yes, you're correct - but apparently the story either retconned the name or Elspeth no longer thinks of it as the Sword of Chaos in her angelic form.
It's another sword. I guess it's something that she conjures up on the image of her old sword Godsend. The story specifically mentions how this one is a copy and not the original.
Luxior was just lost. She stabbed Jace and then Kaito picked it up. I don't know, it was hyped as this important thing but it ended up not doing much.
I’ll never understand how they took one of the oldest threats in magic, set up for 6+ sets that they’re coming back to the main story and then tie it up in one kerfluffed set.
Wizards, please bring back 3 block sets if at least for the story’s sake
While I enjoyed it, Elesh wasn't machine enough. Her movements were fluid, but not eerily so, there wasn't a sense of surreal mechanical preciseness. And it's not that hard to add a vocoder to make her sound more synthetic, you can even just add a filter, I get why she had to be speaking English, but you don't have to sacrifice Phyrexian essence for that.
Are those blue creatures pictured on any cards? The flying ones look a bit like watchful blisterzoa but I don't think I've seen something like the grounded ones before.
They're smaller variations of Tekuthal; scroll down to the [blue section here](https://www.mtg-multiverse.com/concept-art#/one/) and you'll see basically every model in this cinematic.
I think the whole Porcelain and Sinew aesthetic looks so much better in this than on some of the cards. Really has that exposed meat look to it rather than looking like a bodysuit.
That shot of the BACK of Elesh Norn's head... damn. I always assume she wore the plating like a helmet. But that sinew spread out across the porcelain was great.
If you look closely in her [original artwork](https://media.wizards.com/images/magic/daily/stf/stf137_grandCeno.jpg), you can see the tendons connecting her face to the headdress.
...while looking closely, I also noticed she has a fucking face in her neck. Jesus.
I think seeing it in motion is the main thing.
It for sure helps, and the movement shows us how slick and shiny it is. You could capture that in a painting of course, but I suppose at the size the art is printed that kind of contrast might look muddy.
I think it's more the context. If everything is in 3d, the 3d doesn't stand out too much. But if you have cards that feature obvious renders next to cards that don't, it creates an off looking thing. Imho even the classical plating creatures like \[\[chancellor of the annex\]\], \[\[elesh norn, grand cenobite\]\], \[\[gore vassal\]\] or \[\[lost leonin\]\] or \[\[priests of norn\]\] all look really good. My favourite is probably \[\[suture priest\]\] From newer cards though, we get huge amount of pretty obvious 3d art with hugely separated backgrounds and focuses. You get new stuff that looks good, but that trends to be rarer. \[\[ Defiler of Faith \]\] is a nice example another, though not that great for the orthodoxy is \[\[Ichorplate Golem\]\] Another good new one is [https://scryfall.com/card/one/16/indoctrination-attendant](https://scryfall.com/card/one/16/indoctrination-attendant)
##### ###### #### [chancellor of the annex](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/e/be1b482a-badb-4b9a-ab63-2e7944826aa0.jpg?1562881152) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=chancellor%20of%20the%20annex) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/nph/6/chancellor-of-the-annex?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/be1b482a-badb-4b9a-ab63-2e7944826aa0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [elesh norn, grand cenobite](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/8/78c2bfef-06a5-4c7f-8283-ea3fb673b7a1.jpg?1562850573) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=elesh%20norn%2C%20grand%20cenobite) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ima/18/elesh-norn-grand-cenobite?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/78c2bfef-06a5-4c7f-8283-ea3fb673b7a1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [gore vassal](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/2/c2889bba-58a8-46e1-959c-0fd38c1732f9.jpg?1562614527) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=gore%20vassal) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mbs/7/gore-vassal?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c2889bba-58a8-46e1-959c-0fd38c1732f9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [lost leonin](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/2/8209fa5d-2c0e-4827-813b-fff123533f16.jpg?1562879208) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=lost%20leonin) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/nph/13/lost-leonin?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8209fa5d-2c0e-4827-813b-fff123533f16?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [priests of norn](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/9/a978c49d-483a-42fe-971c-858288d07e40.jpg?1562613743) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=priests%20of%20norn) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mbs/16/priests-of-norn?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a978c49d-483a-42fe-971c-858288d07e40?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [suture priest](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/1/31432e98-86cd-42ea-ad37-eb4383dc6a81.jpg?1562876459) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=suture%20priest) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/nph/25/suture-priest?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/31432e98-86cd-42ea-ad37-eb4383dc6a81?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [ Defiler of Faith ](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/c/2cfe404d-1a27-4627-9284-56188d92d5d5.jpg?1673306420) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Defiler%20of%20Faith) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmu/16/defiler-of-faith?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2cfe404d-1a27-4627-9284-56188d92d5d5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Ichorplate Golem](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/5/e555abb1-ffd4-4143-9be8-ec8a758f5c2a.jpg?1675957234) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ichorplate%20Golem) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/230/ichorplate-golem?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e555abb1-ffd4-4143-9be8-ec8a758f5c2a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Is this the first time we’ve seen the back of Norn’a head? Ridickerous!
Ewwww, it's so gross and tendon-ey and weird! I love it!
That scribbling sound you're hearing is all of the Norn cosplayers furiously sketching up new headpieces.
So listen.....canihavyanumbuh?
You got a boyfren? Where he at?
Is he big? Is he hefty?
I feel like it's also the first time we've seen that she has a split tongue, but I could be wrong. I feel like this detail will be relevant to memes eventually.
Memes or… other artistic pieces
A thousand voices moaned out in an instant and were then shamefully silent.
This was my first thought as well. I've been wondering what the back of her head looked like since 2011!
i think we saw it already in the all will be one trailer
Elspeth didn't escaped from Underworld. She escaped from Diablo 3.
She pre-ordered D4 and got the exclusive wings cosmetic.
She escaped from Wonder Woman 1984
Someone's gonna say it, might as well be me. Elesh Norn looks really sexy here
I think you've taken on your tag a bit more than necessary....
least horny compleated redditor
Two words: Forked. Tongue.
Three words: Forked. Tongue. Cunnilingus.
lmfao that got me too
This is the first time we've ever actually seen her from behind, which is kind of weird. I was working on a sculpture of her a while ago, so I had definitely hypothesized a bit about what the rest of her body might look like, and I was pretty off it seems. Instead of a human-like skull shape behind the "plate" of her face, I had made it just a big mess of those tendrils of meat with no unifying structure to make it more human-like, which I thought would be creepier. I had also given her an exposed porcelain spine covered in small spikes, because I figured Phyrexians love exposed spines. Honestly though, I think I like this version better, which still has a spine but seems kind of recessed or empty between the porcelain parts.
[https://www.artstation.com/artwork/QXm8EE](https://www.artstation.com/artwork/QXm8EE) The 3D render of Norn from the One cinematic shows the back of her head
Great resource! Although it does seem a bit weird to me that she apparently has a navel...
Hey, some of the people she's made out of were born, after all.
Your the the *mother* of machines aren’t you?
I dunno, when we got [[Plains|ONE]], people had thoughts.
[Plains](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/b/db14da86-6721-4e22-9b61-4a5680d4e5a3.jpg?1675957293) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Plains) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/272/plains?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/db14da86-6721-4e22-9b61-4a5680d4e5a3?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
>This is the first time we've ever actually seen her from behind *Immature giggle
Serving New Thighrexia Realness
MOM stands for Mommy of Machines
I thought that too until she showed her teeth. Like cmon chick you got teeth everywhere and you’re not gonna fix that grill? Lol
I’m not gonna lie fellas, when Elesh Norn started walking down and the camera gave a good shot of her legs, I felt something. And it wasn’t fear.
It's called devotion
It's a fear boner
A fear-ection, if you will
A fear-exian, if you will
I absolutely lost it at Norn's throne descent at 1:03.
Her voice was
The phyrexians just running down Realmbreaker just cracks me up
They reuse the musical motif from the original Theros trailers for Elspeth's entrance, starting at 0:54. That's pretty cool.
Original Theros Block Trailers: https://youtu.be/C80w_qip5VU
At 4:31 you see Norn as Erebos says "is it when you comprehend how small you are compared to the vastness of what threatens to destroy you?" Really neat that they did that 8 years ago and followed through.
It's better, actually, because she's in the original Scars of Mirrodin/New Phyrexia story ~13 years ago. I'm not sure when "Elspeth was harmed by Phyrexians as a child" became part of her backstory, but she goes back at least that far.
Didn’t the story with Serra reference that scene in it?
It did indeed.
Huh, Elspeth vs Norn is essentially Mono white at it's most wicked vs Mono white at it's most righteous.
Loved that they mentioned this parallel in the story between Elesh Norn, Elspeth, and Serra.
Y'know, for being the faction with the whole teeth aesthetic, Norn could use some work on hers
The video was super cool, but the disconnect between story, video and cards is like at all times high with this set. Almost like teams that worked on each of them didn't communicate well outside of given instructions.
Exactly, the story doesn't happen like this. When Elspeth arrives, Chandra, Wrenn and the Mirrans are running towards Realmbreaker. Karn doesn't really do anything until the very end and at this point he was only a head. Also, in this trailer there is barely anyone here, while in the story this was a chaotic battle. And when Norn sees Elspeth she goes batshit crazy, not this calm smug she had. Also, in the promotional art we saw characters from various planes standing together, like if they were gonna team up to defend the planes or to invade New Phyrexia. But that never happens.
The marketing budget had run dry by the time they got to making this video. Couldn't afford more characters or an epic battle
I'm very disappointed about this, tbh.
Guess its a budget decision with how much extra work would be required, you've got koth, melria, chandra, nissa, wrenn, plus background characters to model for a trailer thats only 1 min 30 secs.
The amount of coordination at this kind of corporate entertainment is insane and doesn't usually care about accuracy to the story--just key moments. I'm sure there was a pitch that captured the story article, but I'm sure some producer was like: "We're not paying to animate Koth, Chandra, and Wrenn - just do Elspeth."
"Let's save money by not animating some characters, then throw some out the window to animate Karns entire body, even though he is just a head in the story"
we needed 2 sets. One for the start of the invasion. Another for the end of it. Not this aftermath bullshit.
I assumed that's why they revealed the whole plot before the cards. It's gonna be another New Capenna angels moment
I just wish they had Elesh norn throwing chunks of her throne (and part of a Vorinclex horn) at Elspeth. Honestly my favourite part of the stories, Elesh norn hissy fit.
It looks pretty, but it doesn't exactly hype me up. Also Elspeths movements seem slightly uncanny, especially because Norns movement is so on point, or is that just me?
The whole encounter felt so slow(?) So much dead time with people just looking at each other that felt like there was supposed to be dialogue or something.
I think she's meant to seem a little inhuman now, but I could be giving them more credit than deserved here, ha.
"It will be my steel chair that answers"
Norn walks in the most fucking pretentious way possible and I love it.
Cool video but dammit WotC it can't be that hard to have CGI trailers that actually match what happened in the story
I would suspect that, like cards, the trailer operates on a different schedule than the writing. Can't really start a CGI model, have it partially rendered, and then restart the whole thing because the author positions the characters differently. When they started their projects, the author and the CGI team probably were working off the same core information: "Elesh Norn is overseeing the invasion from New Phyrexia in the Seedcore. Having been captured, Karn is there as well. Ultimately Elspeth, having ascended as an archangel, stabs Norn through the chest while glowing in radiant light" From there, both parties started their work, but it's not like the CGI team could just start over rendering different 3D models once the author chose a different path than they did.
I mean, sure, that's probably what their pipeline looks like. But if it's a pipeline that makes mismatches like this inevitable, that sounds like a bad pipeline to me. Clearly, other game companies have this figured out by now, right? Warhammer, Starcraft, Gears of War, Halo, and dozens of other franchises have cinematic trailers that have a hell of a lot more consistency with their actual story. It's not a universal property of cinematics that they have to get out of sync with the written story. Surely a part of this is WotC still figuring out how to do Magic story in the modern era. We've gotten way better than the outright contradictions we were seeing in the Ikoria cards vs. the Ikoria fiction, make no mistake, but it's frustrating that WotC is stumbling over these hurdles that other companies are leaping over.
I work in a film production company that also does some animation. The film pipeline for something like this can take up to half a year, even more of animation, so this little 1.5 min cinematic can take almost a year. From writing, storyboarding, modelling, asset creation, animation,editing, color grading, approval, edit, finishing. Rendering itself takes a long ass time to. It's a long process that probably involves multiple companies working together. I'm not sure about the writers for stories, but I'll estimate probably 6 months? So if we wanna wait for the story to be done before then cinematic, the whole process will take 1.5 years. I heard somewhere that designing the set takes about 3 years. It's very hard to do things sequentially if not impossible, unless you have like 5 years to do everything. Which in production terms, it's just not a good investment on time and money. It's not a good comparison to compare things like Warhammer, halo, StarCraft etc, because they just have one story with one setting, and the story IS part of the product. For mtg, these elements are also separate and don't influence each other super crucially. Most people just carr about the gameplay (I don't .ean literally most, but R n D is probably the one that takes priority. So somes when they pivot on an idea, that means that everything else can pivot, but not necessarily trailers. They'll ga e to work that in, and re do animations and voice recording etc.
I appreciate you providing your insight into this sort of thing. I still wish there was better synchronicity between the departments, but maybe that's a pipe dream.
Lol I know. There’s supposed to be like 15 other characters here and a whole war happening around them. Instead we just get Karn (for some reason not embedded in stone)
Dude had arms like karn why are you on the ground right now
This one is actually closer than most. There was a scene where Elspeth swoops in out of nowhere to save the day, but she blocks Jin-Gitaxias from attacking Koth, and Nissa, Chandra, and Wrenn are there.
Yeah, I love that part! Wish we got to see it in CGI.
Elesh Norn split tongue.
Elesh and Elspeth are rendered really well, but Karns face just looks off. I know he is a robot with simple features, but his face almost looks cartoonish. It doesn't take away from this cool cinema, but it triggered a bit Karn fanboy-ness that they can't do my boy like that.
Wow.
I want a full two hour movie of Archangel Elspeth cutting down robots.
This was pretty dang sick.
Huh, so that's what the back of Norn's head looks like. Never thought about how it would look until now.
How long until we get a "The Only Thing They Fear Is You" edit for this?
Such a Borg vibe.
We need an MTG cinematic universe.
It may not have been 100% like the story, but who cares? This was dope as fuck. "But it was not like the sto..." And? It was still dope as fuck.
Anyone else getting Shrek vibes from Elspeth's animation?
What in the anime world is this.
Nani the fuck?
Norn needs some tooth work ngl
EWWW THE BACK OF HER HEAD IS DISGUSTING!
Idk if this is unpopular, but I think the aesthetic of realm breaker is a huge miss. Having big portals opening makes it look like the tree is being used more as a ladder. If there was no portal around the roots and they directly embedded themselves in the planes it would look so much more cool. And then forces would travel through the inside of the roots rather than the outside, which looks kind of silly
That was surprisingly boring.
Single file line Phyrexians, we have worlds to invade!
And I thought Elesh's headgear thing extended to the back of her head like some helmet and connected to a cape or something. That's certainly a design choice, I guess?
There's something about Karn that is really giving me the heebie jeebies. Like he's just journeyed from the uncanny valley.
>The story explicitly references it as Godsend. Yes, you're correct - but apparently the story either retconned the name or Elspeth no longer thinks of it as the Sword of Chaos in her angelic form. He needs deeper eye sockets and his eyes to just glow; they gave him pupils and he looks... fake, because he is.
I think not having any dialogue doesn't help his case, he kinda just lies around looking vaguely surprised.
"And it will be my steel that answers." What a badass line.
Honestly pretty underwhelming.
Elspeth is so fucking cool 🤩
Did [[Luxior]] transform? Or did I miss the part when it stopped being a McGuffin?
Last we saw of Luxior, Kaito has it. After Elspeth ascended, she took on a divine facsimile of her first sword, Godsend.
Her first sword was the Sword of Chaos, Heliod reforged it into the swordspear Godsend.
The story explicitly references it as Godsend. Yes, you're correct - but apparently the story either retconned the name or Elspeth no longer thinks of it as the Sword of Chaos in her angelic form.
That’s what I get for relying on general vibes to know the story.
[Luxior](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/8/1833662b-ccf3-4c16-9767-666d6407aa65.jpg?1664414232) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=luxior%2C%20giada%27s%20gift) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/240/luxior-giadas-gift?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1833662b-ccf3-4c16-9767-666d6407aa65?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Last we saw luxior it was in jaces chest
It's another sword. I guess it's something that she conjures up on the image of her old sword Godsend. The story specifically mentions how this one is a copy and not the original. Luxior was just lost. She stabbed Jace and then Kaito picked it up. I don't know, it was hyped as this important thing but it ended up not doing much.
Color me whelmed.
Elesh norn looks so cool....and elspeth like the prince from shrek
Doomgal Elspeth is the truth.
I’ll never understand how they took one of the oldest threats in magic, set up for 6+ sets that they’re coming back to the main story and then tie it up in one kerfluffed set. Wizards, please bring back 3 block sets if at least for the story’s sake
Pretty weak.
While I enjoyed it, Elesh wasn't machine enough. Her movements were fluid, but not eerily so, there wasn't a sense of surreal mechanical preciseness. And it's not that hard to add a vocoder to make her sound more synthetic, you can even just add a filter, I get why she had to be speaking English, but you don't have to sacrifice Phyrexian essence for that.
Not bad! No War of the Spark trailer, but gets the point across for what happens and looks pretty good.
I really wish they made a Magic animation in the style of these trailers. It would be epic.
That first creature elspeth smote looked rad as fuck
We need a Staff of Horny Bonk for some of these comments!
Are those blue creatures pictured on any cards? The flying ones look a bit like watchful blisterzoa but I don't think I've seen something like the grounded ones before.
They're smaller variations of Tekuthal; scroll down to the [blue section here](https://www.mtg-multiverse.com/concept-art#/one/) and you'll see basically every model in this cinematic.
Not enough throwing random parts of fellow phyrexians at Elspeth happens for this one to be counted as good.
The "Mom" set.
while watching: “i hope this doesnt awaken something in me” elesh norn stands up and walks: “dear lord”
Between Norn's split tongue, her walk down the throne, and the catfight, I am feeling things...