Meet Oko, The New Planeswalker for MTG!

Browsing on Facebook earlier, the Magic: The Gathering page came up on my newsfeed with news of the newest planeswalker for the upcoming set, Throne of Eldraine!

In an exclusive interview with Forbes writer Lauren Orsini, Wizards of the Coast’s Head of Story and Entertainment Nic Kelman spilt some beans on Oko.

The interview can be found on this link, but here’s a quick breakdown of what we’ve found out (along with some additional information from the MTG Wiki)

• Oko is a Fey (kinda like a fairy) and was born with the power to shapeshift. He can also heal people and has mind-control powers.

  

  ART BY CHRIS RALLIS

• Kelman described him as “charismatic” yet “mysterious, clever, and vain” – so I can see he’s going to be a bit of a dick.
• Oko’s home plane (not Eldraine) believe in a unified society, but ultimately one that is ruled by a higher class who think they know best. For this reason, the “natural mischievousness of the Fey” was kept under wraps which Oko disagrees with.
• He thinks of himself as someone who holds the mirror “to the hypocrisy of the world” which landed him in hot water with the higher-ups.
• The ruling class wanted to suppress those pesky powers Oko had and subjected him to magical procedures. Of course, they didn’t succeed. However, they did ignite Oko’s planeswalker spark.
• Because of this, Oko doesn’t really like people anymore and thus is quite mean in his “pranks” that include:
  – Ruining a wedding day
  – Stealing the spotlight at someone’s lifetime moment of triumph
  – Fooling a mother into believing her child has returned from a conflict
• Oko is a dick confirmed.
• He doesn’t like to play with other planeswalkers, but Kelman said maybe he’d get on with Chandra if he wasn’t a dick.
• He doesn’t stick around to see the consequences of his actions, as he usually just buggers off by planeswalking away.
• At some point, Oko gets stalked by Garruk. Oko goes ahead and traps Graruk in a net of thorn-laced vines, brainwashes him, and turns Garruk into a slave bodyguard which Oko unoriginally names Dog. 
• He’s apparently met Liliana according to the Wiki?? I can’t find anything to support this at the moment since he’s so new.

So, it’s pretty much confirmed Oko is going to be an arse, even if it is justified. I can see him being aligned with blue mana, purely because he sounds as annoying as people who play mono-blue decks in MTG Arena. But that’s just me!

This is only a snippet for what we know about Oko at the moment, with the ebook titled Throne of Eldraine: The Wildered Quest by Kate Elliott which comes out soon and will give us the juicy details for the lore of the new set. Hopefully, it’s an improvement from the War of the Spark book.

The reveal also helped give me a much-needed distraction to procrastinate on some university work. I guess now I should really get back to work…

MTG: Huatli’s Story (condensed!)

Huatli. Ixalan’s resident Warrior-Poet, dinosaur knight, vampire hunter, and overall badass.

Huatli is one of the many amazing things which came from the Ixalan storyline for Magic: The Gathering. Despite appearing in the War of the Spark on Ravnica earlier this year, we haven’t seen much more of her since the Ixalan sets. Me being me went and read through the flavour text for the cards and the official story on the Wizards website. After reading it all, I’m pretty sure Huatli is now up there as one of my favourite planeswalkers – and yes part of it is because she can communicate with dinosaurs.

Alison Luhrs blew me away with the writing for the Ixalan story. It was some of the most engaging and entertaining stuff that I’ve read since finishing Good Omens. That being said, I thought I’d try and condense the story for others who might not have the time to go trudging through the lore like I have. I’m going to keep all the juicy bits and hopefully provide an entry point for the MTG story – but if you want the full story, I definitely recommend the official story. Here goes!

 

Pride of Ixalan

Our story starts on the plane of Ixalan. This plane is covered head to toe in jungles and forests, and for the most part, has 5 main forces at play trying to assert their power over the others. We’ve got:
– Vampire Legion running about doing blood sucky things

– The River Heralds – funky merfolk that squirt water at things

– Pirates, including a crew run by the gorgon planeswalker Vraska (her story itself is inevitably going to get its own post)

– Dinosaurs (hell yeah)

– and the Sun Empire, who are based off the Aztec & Inca cultures and ruled by their Emperor, and it’s where our main girl Huatli is from.

How video games help my mental health

Over my 23 years of existence, video games have always been a staple in my life. My first experience with gaming was at a very young age with the Sega Mega Drive and the PlayStation 1. When I was quite literally a newborn baby, my dad looked after me a lot, and it turned out an easy way to entertain us both was for him to play the original Tomb Raider games on his PS1. It’s no surprise that as soon as I was old enough to understand that I was playing games.

In this regard, video games have always provided me with a sense of enjoyment.

Whether it be Barbie: Race & Ride on the PS1 all the way to Halo 3 and Pokemon, video games have kept me entertained – which was essential because being an only child can often get lonely. I think that my parents thought that I would grow out of games as a lot of children did, but they have stuck with me to this day because of what they offer me. And what they offer me is a sense of escape and release when I really needed them.

An interesting graphic I found from here

Throne of Eldraine: what we know so far

Throne of Eldraine is MTG’s next standard expansion set, releasing on October 4th and pre-releases being held on September 28-29. So what do we know about this upcoming set?

I for one am extremely excited about this set. I saw the artwork shown by Wizards and fell in love. Why am I excited you ask? Well, as Mark Rosewater stated in his blog post this set will be a “high-fantasy medieval world killed with knights and castles along with Magic’s take on the genre of fairy tales”. Personally, I am a massive fan of fairy tales, and with Wizards taking inspiration from a range of European fairy tales I am pretty pumped to see how they are going to depict them.

I also think it’s going to be refreshing to get away from all the drama that’s been going off in Ravnica the last few sets.

Exploring a new plane is going to feel like a much-needed break before we inevitably see ol’ Bolas again.

Kingdom Hearts 3 Review

The first Kingdom Hearts game came out all the way back in 2002, fusing a combination of Japanese RPG’s with the magic from Disney films to create a truly magical world.

Several games and spin-offs later in 2019 we finally got Kingdom Hearts 3 (which despite its title, is far from being the third game in the series). For the most part, I absolutely loved this game, but there were times where I struggled to trudge through.

I found myself having a love/hate relationship with KH3 sometimes, and after completing the game and leaving it alone for a few months I can see why. So I thought I’d collect my thoughts into a small review! Let’s start with one of the most important elements which make a video game enjoyable…

 

The Story

Over the long list of Kingdom Hearts games, Square Enix has created one of the most elaborate and complex storylines I’ve ever seen in a video game.

With Kingdom Hearts 3 being available on multiple platforms and moving away from being a PlayStation exclusive resulted in plenty of newcomers to the series. If you haven’t played a Kingdom Hearts game before there’s an extremely large chance that you will be completely lost as to what is going on with the story. Who is Xehanort? Why is everyone dressed in leather cloaks?? It’s easy for the existing story to go straight over your head.

Stardew Valley: the quintessential RPG

Your poor old grandfather has popped his clogs. But what’s this? He had a whole farm which he left to you, a farm which could give you the chance to escape from working for a heartless corporation. Time to pick up sticks (literally) and embrace your inner farmer!

Stardew Valley has been giving us joy since it’s initial release in 2016 on PC and is now pretty much available on every console with the most recent release to Nintendo Switch in 2017 and Android phones in March this year. You can tell that a lot of love and attention went into making this game (god bless you, ConcernedApe) which has gone on to receive outstandingly positive reviews. That’s why in this blog post I’m going to talk about why I have pumped hours into this game when I should have been doing my university coursework.

Simple farming life

The primary feature of Stardew Valley is that of a farming simulator. You choose what crops you’re going to grow and where on your farmland you’re going to plant them. Each season gives you the opportunity to grow new crops and gather more materials to let you expand and develop your farm in your own way. Given that you have the right materials the player has the opportunity to build barns, mills, and even a cabin for a friend to stay in (which is really useful with the introduction of multiplayer!).

 

When you’ve racked up enough materials and cash you can buy animals too, which allows chicken enthusiasts like myself to overrun my farm with nothing but chickens (and I loved it).

The ‘pets’ of Magic: The Gathering

Magic: The Gathering is absolutely rammed pack with all kinds of weird and funky creatures.

That’s why for this post I’ve decided to write about the ‘pets’ of the multiverse. I use the term ‘pets’ loosely, as a lot of the cards I’m going to talk about aren’t technically pets but I still think they’d make pretty good companions.

To rate some of these creatures I’ve decided to use a ranking system which will be based on: cuteness, abilities, card design, and overall rating. There’s probably a lot more that I could rate them on but I thought best to keep it more condensed (and to control my habit of rambling too much).

Without further ado, let’s look at some of MTG’s best pets!

#1 Promise (or Gideon’s Promise) from War of the Spark.

Promise is a good ol’ boy who is ridden by Gideon Jura into battle against Nicol Bolas. The pegasus appears on two cards in this set (“Trusted Pegasus” was also reprinted for Core Set 20?? the only difference with the reprint is that the flavour text wasn’t included).
The flavour text on “Trusted Pegasus” is a really nice interaction between Gideon and Promise while hell is breaking loose on Ravnica. Gideon asks Promise “Would you give your life to save this world?”, a question which I think he is almost asking himself – is he ready to die to save this world?
Unfortunately, Promise gets shot down by the sneaky Oketra which ultimately answers Gideon’s question that yes, they were ready to give their life. Rest in peace good horse boy, Rakdos finished the job for you don’t worry!

Ratings 
Cuteness: 10/10 majestic as heck – look at the swanky armour!
Abilities: 9/10 for being a flying horse. It would have been 10 but they got shot down which is a bit of a problem. Otherwise very useful than your bog-standard horse!
Card design: 8/10. I like the art for both of the cards Promise appears on. However, something about the colours used on the “Divine Arrow” card doesn’t appeal that much to me.
Overall pet rating: 5/10 would have Promise as a pet if I didn’t have a fear of horses. Don’t judge me, those things are scary up close.