Theros: Pastoral & Pastiche | Greek Myths in Magic 

*slow claps* This one should be pinned.

A man of culture I see - even more than was already apparent!

I believe you spelled "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" wrong. :>

Percy Jackson anyone?

plebs be plebs

I know right?

Comes second only to “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve”.

Someone @me when it hits 666

@@kiwiwasoncehere3623 got it just for u bb xoxo

@@kiwiwasoncehere3623 sup

I'm so glad you caught on.

the album is called Floral Shoppe, the track itself is "リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー" (or "Lisa Frank 420 / Modern Computing")

I second that emotion.

An aesthetic reference of an a e s t h e t i c remake :P I do think it presents an interesting thought though - as someone who enjoys both classical music and the gaudy memery of vaporwave, the piano rendition is actually quite nice, and is something that wouldn't be the same or carry the same weight if it was just a piano cover of the original song. I've quite liked what I've played from Theros, it's mechanically interesting and the draft environment is quite good. I don't disagree with the video either though, as I missed the first Theros block so all the rehashes and fairly substantial retreaded ground is still new to me.

That was the cherry on top of an already excellent video.

And wait again we shall. And wait again we have.

@@sirreginaldfishingtonxvii6149 and now we're waiting again

@@justabeholder4753 _The cycle continues..._

Do you know why he left?

I'd be curious to see what it'd look like if WotC expanded on the titan and underworld aspects. They'd have to work to make it still feel like Theros, but also that we're exploring new parts and stories of the setting.

I'll throw in my voice as someone who LOVES the Nyx lands. I don't even slightly care that they don't depict plains, islands, etc. They're GORGEOUS.

Hahahaha I'm one of the Minotaur tribal lovers. Never leave home without my Neheb EDH ;]

I honestly agree with your comment but specifically with your point of newer players experiencing these things for the first time. I just started to play and learn about the big story of MTG during the first weeks of the War of the Spark release (Started playing/learn how to play about a month prior) and there are so many stories and sets that looked amazing to play, like the Inistrad blocks and the Phyrexian/Mirrodan sets. I was not happy about some specific things with the return to Theros, but because it was new for me and showed me many of the old themes and mechanics it became an overall enjoyably experience, and that also extends to this third visit to Ravnica with Guilds/Allegiance which is now one of my favorite plains. I get that for the older players it can get boring to got to the same places, but it can be refreshing every once in a while. And new plains are totally good as well and needed to keep the game fresh and unique, I had fun with Eldraine and I hope to enjoy Ikoria. The return to Zendikar should be fun later in the year even if the Eldrazi are back, that could be a worthwhile experience learning wise. This aspect of having new players experience these older things is one of the main reasons I want some of the older plains/sets to return because I want to experience them (along with my playgroup/friends as well) but with new improvements/canges being welcome as not to just copy the original. The main one that I would want to return from what I have learned is Kamigawa, but any that have not been visited for a long time would be cool just for experiencing them.

Self-referential Magic is fine, and I'm glad we're at a point where we can recognise tropes within this game that we all share. But self-referential cards are only good under 2 conditions: A) If they come from a bottom-up design. We just had a return to Ravnica, and we're about to see a return to Zendikar. Magic came up with and created those worlds, so it feels more authentic for them to focus on those. To do anything else feels cheap. B) If they're used in moderation. Again, we have a lot of returns to Magic's past recently (and we're expecting some from Commander Legends), so just seeing riffs feels like they can't come up with anything new or expand on the ideas they had before. This is only exacerbated by the clear directions they COULD have taken to expand their worldbuilding (with a larger focus on the "Old Gods" in Ravnica, or the Erstwhile, for example)

Don't forget the Titanomachy.

@@LadyLunarSatine how is the titanomachy a Copy of a Copy ?

⁠@@anblueboot5364the overthrow of cronus by zeus is nearly identitcal to the story of the overthrow of uranus by cronus

ΟΠΠΑ!

Χα!

Us, Vorthos, hardly matter to WoTC since we don't make them nearly as much money as the other demographics, so it wouldn't surprise me if originally they meant for it to be an underworld set but when the first struggles started they dove into scraps of design from the past and just threw a set together from there.

Maro talked about this and said that 2 sets was the original plan, but they wanted to show off the new lack of a block system after spending 3 sets on ravnica and visit 4 worlds in one year, something that hasn't bee done in magic yet.

@@jeffreydenenberg7101 They already showed it off with Dominaria and Eldraine tho

I come from the future! they did the same for Innistrad... ehmmm didn't work so well

I think that what hurts the most is to see MTG being pushed away from a work of love into a money maker for the corporate heads. Just throw the players a bone in the form of a half-assed return set with some spicy new cards and keep the ball rolling.

all i have heard and read about the second return to zendikar tells me they bet on the "world of exploration and adventure" side of things. But wasnt that the same feel that Eldraine capitalized on?

@@goncaloferreira6429 We'll see. I don't know how you go from being the apocalypse plane back to the adventure plane, when we now have another plane which, imo, already captures a lot of the adventure/exploration feel that Zendikar lost in Ixalan. (Though, who knows, maybe if we return to Ixalan, it'll be the "colonial resistance" plane or something. It would be cathartic for many people around the world, I think, to have the Sun Empire and merfolk successfully resist the colonial ambitions of the vampires and kick them and the pirates off the continent.)

@@mrrodgers0 I mean, there can be multiple adventure planes. Ikoria, Zendikar and Ixalan are different enough.

​@@goncaloferreira6429 - Eldraine is designed top-down as a Arthurian legend and fairy-tale set. Zendikar is a bottom-up design focusing on D&D-like "adventurer" and exploration mechanics with equipment upgrades and characters leveling up or forming adventuring parties (Allies). I second Ford Mulligan's concern though - the original Zendikar and Worldwake were largely centered around discovery and a hint of mystery. What was the deal with the gods, Ula, Cosi, and Emeria? Where did they go? Who were the Eldrazi referred to in Eldrazi Monument? What was the deal with Eye of Ugin - helps cast artifact creatures? Those are the only colorless creatures, after all, are Eldrazi mechanical like Phyrexians? There was lot we knew we didn't know, which I think is what helped make it so appealing. Then they ran into the classic horror trope: "don't show the monster". Once we knew that the Eldrazi were eldritch horror monstrosities the people of the plane had mistaken as gods, the allure of mystery was gone. They didn't really play into the "unimaginable horror" thing much either, as we could clearly see them in the card art. So what's the mystery now? The world has essentially been razed, the Eldrazi destroyed everything the Roil didn't, so what long-lost dungeons are there left to crawl? It'll be interesting to see where they go with the story, I hope they can come up with something completely new lore-wise while harkening back to the original mechanics. This is D&D land, after all.

Dont forget the PJ books!

Images of a badly dubbed Arnold Schwarzenegger running around New York as Hercules flash feverishly through my mind...

Aidan Quiett oh my god I thought I was the only one. I’ve been scrolling through this comment section for five minutes looking for a reference to it.

I think this is why bringing Core Sets back was a good idea - reprints, plus a facility to scratch little nostalgia itches.

I don't even slightly understand what the supposed "problem" with Gary is. Reprinting one of if not the most beloved cards from the original block (definitely much more than a mere "cult classic") is a no-brainer if you want people to love your set.

I see the reprint of Gary and shock lands are completely different. We need shock lands for a greedy mana base of a block like ravnica, but they cloud build a better devotion card than Gary, it's like reprinting Bob just because it's ravnica, or to put in a gameplay perspective repri thing the same Niv mizzet reborn that was printed last year, not a new version like the gods or Niv himself, just the good 5c legendary dragon again

Alex Vinicus Now see if they printed an homage to Grey Merchant, people would be upset. You have all these other obvious parallels, but amid all of them Grey Merchant remains unchanged (other than rarity). I think it's probably one of the things they got right with the set, but most of the other self-referential content just seems to be a rush job/extra pressure from Chinese overlords.

LMAO same

I can dig it. there are so many little elements I love about TBD, as with all new magic sets and worlds, and Theros is still very much among my favorite planes. I took a holistic approach here to give some bird's-eye observations, but I agree that it can nonetheless be enjoyable to visit a familiar place. cheers, thanks for responding.

@@RhysticStudies Thank you for making such consistently great content!

Rhystic Studies Also thank you for not going “EWWW YOUR OPINION IS WRONG.” Or some other dumb fallacy. Someone countered your point? You take it like a champ. BTW I agree. Theros inspired me to write fantasy/sci fi. And TBD was more of a disappointment then War of the Spark. ...which I never thought i would say back to back but whatever.

I agree. I totally understand feeling like the second go around not being as special because of the existence of the original, but I find it really hard to agree with the concept that "when you copy a copy there is a tangible loss of quality". I don't think for example Frankenstein movies are any less worthwhile because the book they are based on is itself heavily based on several other classic stories. I definitely agree that maybe centering the block only in the underworld would have been a really novel and interesting way to take this block, but asking a return to Theros block to not touch on at least some of what people liked about the original block is a really hard sell.

Having been around for original, I would say that Theros: Beyond Death is much better as a set. The limited environment is more fun, and the cards in general are more powerful and relevant than most were in the original three sets. Unfortunately, barring a few key cards that were very powerful in the original Theros block, most of the actual cards were received quite badly in terms of pure power level. Cards like the Grey Merchant became well known because they were the key break-out cards from a block that was considered quite weak. Thematically, I think that Rhystic Studies argues well that the original block was much more innovative and interesting than the return. However, I think that as a set, speaking specifically about the cards and their interactions with the Standard meta, Theros: Beyond Death is a better set than any of the previous three, and could be argued to have been better than the entire previous Theros block. I also think that Rhystic Studies is being a bit too hard on Theros as well. In general, returning to a previous plane is a tricky bargain because you both have to hit what people liked about the original visit, and do something new and interesting with it. This is especially hard in a top-down set that exists as a reference to a specific mythology or literary trope. In Theros's case, the original block hit so many myths that it would be really hard to do more of them, since Greek mythology is a self-contained subject and there aren't more myths coming out; once you've hit them all, there aren't any more to do. Now, there definitely were more myths they could have done, which is why I don't fully disagree with Rhystic Studies, but I think overall that Theros: Beyond Death does an acceptable job at returning to Theros. The other thing I would say is that the very nature of Theros itself makes dramatic changes less likely. The five main gods of Theros are embodiments of their color alignment, and their unchanging nature is a major part of the plane's lore. In fact, it is precisely this point that prompted this return, as Heliod killed Elspeth because, needed or not, she had introduced a massive change in Nyx, a realm which was supposed to stay static. Klothys, God of Destiny, from the new set, is also a living embodiment of this concept, as she exists to ensure that the order of the Underworld is not disturbed: in other words, to prevent large-scale changes to the metaphysical reality of Theros and Nyx as happened at the end of Journey Into Nyx when Elspeth killed Xenagos, and as Elspeth plans to do a second time by escaping the Underworld without becoming a Returned. So from that perspective, you could argue (as I am) that making too many changes is antithetical to Theros as a plane. It's a place where the order of the world is memorialized, and any change to that order is seen by its gods as a bad thing. This was true in the first block, with Xenagos's ascension being considered a plane-threatening disaster, and it is still true in Theros: Beyond Death. I would specifically counter Rhystic Studies's point by saying that before Theros was created, Theros was an idea for an MTG pastiche of Greek mythology, but that now that Theros exists, it is a functioning plane in the multiverse with its own rules grounding it aside from just its status as a pastiche. I would agree that Theros: Beyond Death is a worse pastiche of Greek mythology than the original block was, in much the same was as modern high-budget remakes of old classic pastiches usually are, but I think it does a reasonably good job of being an addition to Theros as an existing plane. I think that dramatically altering the status quo of Theros is a great idea, but it would be a fundamental, world-altering change akin to loosing the Eldrazi upon Zendikar. The functioning order of Theros as both a set and a physical/metaphysical place would have to be completely upended. And again, I think that's a great idea, and could result in some seriously interesting cards and a very cool story that doesn't just pastiche ancient stories, but also examines them and helps players look at them in a new light. However, I think that a single set would be way too short for that kind of thing. You'd need at least two sets, but probably a full three, showing the dissolution of the old Theros, the chaotic in-between period as it struggles to become something new while keeping elements of its old nature, and finally the new thing that Theros evolves into. I think that this is a fantastic idea for a three-set saga, but for a singleton set whose point was to reintroduce Elspeth and Ashiok while continuing the story of Theros, Theros: Beyond Death did a good, if not fantastic, job.

I don't think you're crazy to enjoy the Limited of Theros: Beyond Death. To my taste it is assuredly deeper and more fun to play overall than any combination of sets from the first Theros block.

This is an art channel. He rarely references the quality of the game play and mechanics. He's simply talking about the artist merits of the 2 sets. You can still enjoy all the art from the original block without playing with them. I never played theros either but I hear it was one of the least enjoyable blocks of the last decade, in terms of gameplay.

Exact same here, the series enraptured me in mythology, and Rick Riordans Magnus Chase series introduced me to my favorite mythology

Counterpoint: A friend of mine DESPISES Eldritch Moon. Innistrad had been by far his favorite plane for years, and he hated what was done to it in that set. Radical reinventions may sound like a universally good idea to those who prize novelty over all else, but that doesn't mean it's actually the correct decision in all circumstances. The fact that when we went back to Theros we went back to Theros is a feature, not a bug.

@@Izandaia Innistrad was not radically reinvented. Eldritch horror was basically the final climax of Gothic horror; consider how much Lovecraft, who basically single-handedly invented Eldritch horror, was inspired by the works of Poe, and how much his early work mirrored the themes of Gothic horror. Not only was Eldritch Moon not a radical reinvention to Innistrad, it was in fact the logical culmination of everything Innistrad is and was, and if you look closely, Shadows and Eldritch Moon do the same for Eldritch horror that original Innistrad did for Gothic horror, there's homages to all the tropes and well-known stories just like original Innistrad had homages to all your typical Gothic horror tales. The only problem I have with Eldritch Moon is that there should have been a slower climax. Maybe just one other set; basically a "Call of Emrakul" in between Shadows and Eldritch Moon, so that the suspense of the coming apocalypse could have been used better and the themes could have been fully utilized.

Tacklepig Yeah, like a Shadows over Innsmouth style set that focuses more on the cultists and fear the eldrazi invoke as an unknown foe, rather than one set that is all about the mystery of the eldrazi and the next set being full on assault of Eldritch horror. I would've liked to see the changes to the landscape made by abandoned farmsteads and villages razed to the ground by the inquisition as the fear level rises. Maybe some cards could have referenced the original gothic horror with a small twist to it, the sense of something else lurking in the shadows rather than the monsters we know. This would have made people slowly adapt to the whole Eldrazi invasion and adapt to the idea of Innistrad going from classical gothic horror to Eldritch horror.

@@Tacklepig This is yet another consequence of the ill-conceived Large-small block model. There just wasn't enough space in one large and one small set for it, so we ended up only getting the beginning set-up of a full arc and the big climax, without something to bridge us between those story beats in a satisfying way. Under the old model, where Eldritch Moon could be made as a large set in spring with your "Call of Emrakul" as a small winter set, we could have SOI as is, and have more build up. Alternatively, under the current flexible block model, EMN would have been a large set, which would make space to move some of the self-contained top-down designs from SOI into EMN to make room for the cultist theme in both to serve as our bridge.

I think what is meant to be shown there is that even though Both Dictate and Blessing of Karametra (Both are shown in the same image) are the blessings of a White-Green God when they are in the trees of the forest it is a mono-green spell. Kinda the idea that the landscape where the individual is has more powerful than the god themselves.

"Homer" may have also been a collective name, with multiple people reciting the tales.

Wait, really? I loved what they did with their brief return to Innistrad. Rehashing the plane would've just been more of the same (even if original Innistrad was fantastic), but the set wasn't about Innistrad, it was about the event that was happening on and to Innistrad. And idk I thought what was happening was really cool.

@@kappaross6124 the thing is, and that's kinda the point of the video. Just trying to invoke the "original feel" of the world is kinda doomed to fail. And I do think that the approach with shadows over innistrad is the better one, as the story itself was good imo, but the expectation of the original innistrad was too hard to overcome. I did say that I didn't like the new innistrad, but I also think, that that's on me... basically people like me are a problem for wizards, who want to design cool new things, but have to please all the "back in the olden days"-folks...

@@jakoberbe4374 And no offense to you in particular, but the approach Rian Johnson/Grant Morrison took to Star Wars and X-Men respectively are the far better options when taking an existing IP in a new direction vs appeasing the fans of the original. As a huge fan of OG Theros, I was disappointed with Beyond Death. 1) Because one set had to balance old flavor with new ideas instead of spreading out an entire block. 2) It went the Rise of Skywalker route with rehashing old ground and light sprinkling of new ideas.

Why want more of the same? You will always have the original Innistrad that you love. Let things change.

thanks so much. I also started around Theros, so I'm glad we could both share a love for the plane. cheers.