What ELSE Happens in Outlaws of Thunder Junction?

[@MagicArcanum]

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[@danalbert7166]

Thunder!? At this time of year, at this time of day, on this plane, localized entirely within this Junction!?

[@a_hidden_one]

Yes!

[@WEB-0813]

May I see it?

[@warlock1080]

No!

[@mRboylls]

It’s probably been said before but I love how gisa and Geralf talk in letters. I believe it’s a nod to literary works like Dracula that are written in journal entries. Frankensteins journal was really important too

[@TheLanach]

I felt thst Nashi came back to steal the potion just as a way to show that he could overcome a challenge he failed at before. And to get back at Obeka. Black is a part of his color identity, after all.

[@MagicArcanum]

I dunno. I think Obeka did him a big favor by not killing him outright even with her first move, and then he immediately tried to steal the potion again and lost his drone for it, and she was like "look kid, you should just give up" and then he still came back later to finally took it. That seems really dishonorable, even for someone with black in their color identity.

[@retro.7673]

It still amazes me how Nash’s got a whole entire story. BUT NOT A SINGLE CARD. It’s wild to me.

[@dumplingdepinto]

He got a card but it's Alchemy 🤦🏻‍♂️ Which is a shame imo, as that format basically doesn't exist to me. Other characters featured in the Alchemy set are Rankle, Grenzo, Elenda, Teysa, Tajic, Vona de ledo and Emperor Apatzec Intli IV.

[@aidennoir597]

​@@dumplingdepintoDead or not, I do NOT see Teysa leaving Ravnica in the state it's in to go play cowboy. She would absolutely be staying put and taking care of business. But I suspect the Alchemy team isn't particularly concerned about such things.

[@theaberrantone17]

@@aidennoir597 The cards mentioned are set on their home planes, except for Grenzo, this alchemy set felt more like the MTGA team getting to make a bunch of lore-important legends (spirit Teysa, Emperor Apatzec, Vona, Elenda) and then just throwing some extra things in their for no reason

[@aidennoir597]

@@theaberrantone17 That's a little better, I guess. Random, but better.

[@MexiPerplexi]

@@theaberrantone17 Wow, yet another reason to not care about Alchemy. It's not even relevant to the story of the set.

[@andrewlemley2604]

Gisa and Geralf story being the best story in the set. March of the Machines all over again.

[@AidanWR]

10:03 One of my favorite instances of cards being weird with the story, is that a 3/2 first strike Thalia defeated a lot of eldrazi, and was going toe-to-toe with a 9/10 flying, first strike, lifelink, vigilance Brisela for a while

[@MysteryMedia2001]

As I was watching this video my little brother asked me why I was watching Dr.Eggman

[@tylerkister4628]

I ask that all the time

[@nateperkins9860]

The lack of story for Marchesa is a crime, why is a queen here?????

[@MarkWomack11]

Same reason a demon guild leader is wearing a cowboy hat, the memes.

[@nateperkins9860]

@@MarkWomack11 I mean we got an explanation of that in Murders

[@orian3638]

To sell packs

[@rockassassin64]

@@nateperkins9860 To do some. Crime.

[@TempestDacine]

Nashi is cool but you're clearly Tamiyo's successor

[@darkgloomie]

Clearly that's the reason Nashi stole the powerup potion; he needs it to enhance his technimancer magic to take over this youtube channel

[@mollygladwin8160]

Hey I just wanted to say that I love this channel and I love the mtg lore. I know it's not the most important thing to most players but it means a lot to me. I only got into magic a year ago when my friend started telling me about the horrors of the phyrexians and the planeswalkers battle against them. I have since become obsessed with the card game and the lore around it. So thank you Ryan and Nicole for compiling the stories here in a fun and casual way to learn.

[@MagicArcanum]

Welcome to the game, and thanks for the kind words!

[@Ramperdos]

Yet another lore update from the best MTG lore channel. I'm so glad I found you earlier this year!

[@Quimusik]

The one thing that I actually loved in the otj story was Amalia arriving and giving that romance vibes with kellan :3 xD.

[@MexiPerplexi]

I am SO here for the Kellan/Amalia romance

[@houssemsama1535]

Thank you Ryan for always providing the coffee break video your the best

[@ThePhantomTomo]

You can write down the words to an incantation, by definition an incantation is spoken but you can read the words from an incantation and recognize them as an incantation. Like the words to a spell or a song or poem. Runes are specific symbols, I don't think just any written form of magic is automatically a rune.

[@dklyokosanctum]

They definitely holding out for a later set to reveal the untold stuff, as a surprise like they did with war of sparks.

[@GozMaster]

First off thanks for the work you do. these recaps are invaluable. Your insights are excellent and frankly the BIGGEST reason I found/subbed to your channel is... ...WoTC's poor story telling, lack of critical thought or care into the actual plot lines or emotion of each character is too dissapointing to read directly anymore. I argue, this universe has some of the most interesting and beautiful stories and character archs with full blown cinematic potential, but have almost never been developed properly. And I know they're a game company first, fine. but... they have such a rich foundation to build a stand alone product on the strength of these characters, it's too dissapointing to see them phone it in every set like this to invest the time and hope that I'll get my readings worth. So, primo (cousin, cause our last names are the same.) i LOVE that you read these stories for me, keep me up to date on the lore and recommend the good ones to read (as rare as those are) but more important... ...provide really great alternate approaches that would work better if , you know, WoTC cared. So again, my man, thank you for these. You remain... lore master.

[@Cephalopopo]

+1 for real. Imagine they made an actually good anime for wotc lore. But it all goes downhill. Just watch the Gideon trailer from like 2011 or something to see that they had good lore and worldbuilding and check out the booklets in fat packs to see that they once cared about their lore. So dad but this channel is enjoyable to I am doing the same. Listening to this sir telling me what is up nowadays

[@MarioJPC]

I like to think how the Innistrad people are dancing and partying without the Cecani siblings being there. I mean...

[@АйдоралСмертестойкий]

Incantation can be in form of text, same way as a song. It must be verbally spoken to cast but you can write it down, on a tombstone for example.

[@MagicArcanum]

Ok so Geralf sees individual marks on many stones and realizes together they form "an incantation." He doesn't read them all. Nobody says anything out loud. Yet the 'trap' is triggered anyway by Gisa digging. So is than an "incantation" if it was never verbally spoken?

[@SquidWithABigIdea]

I think it would be an Inscription, not an Incantation. Like OP said, Incantations are spoken. Inscriptions are written.

[@АйдоралСмертестойкий]

@@MagicArcanum The way I understood it is that it was an incantation with a trap that triggered and then disctracted the necromancer siblings so they have not read it in the end. But you are right, it is confusing.

[@billygregory1547]

I think it would be cool to give stories for the commanders from the precons. That’s all. I don’t feel like i need to justify it but i can if someone wants me to

[@TheGentlemanDuelist]

I’m glad we got one for Yuma, but I do wish we could have gotten the others too

[@MagicArcanum]

Technically Stella Lee shows up in the Gisa and Geralf story but she has no real agency in that and we don't learn anything about her so I don't count it.

[@billygregory1547]

@@TheGentlemanDuelist right like I wanna know what Olivia was doing in Thunder Junction, i could see her maybe robbing a bank or something idk.

[@123silverslash]

From my interpretation, a rune is a symbol that in itself holds magical power, and an incantation is like words that hold no power unless strung together, like a witch’s chant. So what they likely found on the tombstones was a poem or king form spell written in an actual language, rather than runes like in kaldheim

[@albertoparolin7170]

I wish thunder junction was a plane devoid of previous sentient life, it would have been more interesting to see the people from various planes leave their previous places and watch them cooperate and struggle together as the main focus. Like, of course humans of innistrad would like to not be eaten by random zombies or killed in the usual apocalypse scenario(wether is homegrown of external), of course some ravnicans of the 9th district are tired of the guilds infighting and want to leave and so on and so forth...

[@andrewlemley2604]

I am biased towards the siblings story because they always make me happy, but I will say Geralfs study of how magic is affected on different realms was cool, I'm just worried they are not going to go anywhere with it.

[@robertotenreiro]

I feel WotC doesn't actually care much about the lore... they just put things together and hope for the best. I mean, sure, it's a game first, but it feels that they really don't give a crap. The recent continuous use of universe beyond crap is a testament to this. sigh... it's a shame, really... mtg has such a rich diverse universe...

[@Infamouscritter]

What a huge joke of a comment … you must be new and only seen murders of karlov or something . Last years phyrexian story was one of the greatest stories ever. This year was a little lacking but luckily we had kellan who really helped drive the story .

[@rennac3152]

@@Infamouscritter WotC isn’t going to give you cards for defending them. Phyrexia was a great story, and was given the game of thrones treatment at the end. This guy is right, they do just enough because they’re probably burnt out and over worked, not that they don’t care

[@kylerunkle4398]

@@Infamouscritterthe lore has went downhill since war of the spark. The phyrexian war was absolute garbage and not coherent

[@trumpets101]

I would agree that WotC doesn’t care about the story, to an extent. Sure, they have people that are dedicated to driving the story from point A to point B. They work in conjunction with the top dogs like MaRo to decide which planes we visit throughout the years. Then it goes into concept design and they work on making cards for the sets. I don’t have any proof, but I would assume story is one of the last things to be worked on in the life cycle of a set. But everything is already set and the story writers only have limited information to work with. They probably have little to no guiding direction for the story other than “Here are the story beats, please fit it in.” And this is why some of the story spotlights don’t match up to the art. They aren’t working in tandem but all separately.

[@robertotenreiro]

@@trumpets101 hum... would that mean that the writers are the ones doing a crappy job?

[@Frankenstein3r]

I'm so sad we didn't get a paper Nashi card 😭

[@thatonefirekestral]

Do you have a video about what happened back in lorwyn?

[@MagicArcanum]

I do not. I've tried doing videos about older sets, and they usually perform far below anything current so I've pretty much given up on them for now.

[@colerockman385]

Time for stories

[@123silverslash]

I think it makes sense that Nasho took the potion. He wants to be stronger, and while his newfound confidence helped with that, it didn’t take away that desire. He’s adapted his skills to be more of himself instead of like Tamiyo, but he’s still a black mana character, so he’ll take whatever power he can get. Hopefully, this extra power helps him be even more of his newfound self.

[@MagicArcanum]

I dunno. I think Obeka did him a big favor by not killing him outright even with her first move, and then he immediately tried to steal the potion again and lost his drone for it, and she was like "look kid, you should just give up" and then he still came back later to finally took it. That seems really dishonorable, even for someone with black in their color identity.

[@123silverslash]

@@MagicArcanum that’s a fair interpretation, but I’ve never really considered Nashi to be especially “honorable” in the first place. What I have considered him being is resourceful and determined. If anything, being told to give up probably spurned him on to do it just to prove he could.

[@tersecwalsingham5778]

Great stuff.

[@captainflapjax7240]

ABRACADABRA!! Those letters in that order form an incantation. Say it out loud and magic happens. At least, I assume thats what the story meant; that the letters and symbols throughout combined to form a phrase

[@MagicArcanum]

But nobody said anything out loud (Geralf didn't even try to read what was written on all the stones) and yet the spell was triggered anyway.

[@captainflapjax7240]

@@MagicArcanum well, damn. I got nothing bro. Sorry.

[@ajh22895]

They really buried the lead on that one. Demon fire-breathing snake should be an important detail.

[@Mrtfarrugia]

I'm picturing a spitting cobra with dual flamethrowers right now.

[@RibusPQR]

The stories were okay, but Gisa and Geralf are delightful characters. Question: did the (fomori) Coin Empire fall when Urza used the Sylex? How long ago was that?

[@MagicArcanum]

At this point we don't know enough about the Fomori to be sure. It seems they existed across multiple planes (between the vault on Thunder Junction and whatever Quint discovered on Ixalan, at least) so it is unlikely Urza's use of the Sylex on Dominaria would have directly affected them. (I suspect they were already long gone before then, actually.)

[@TheyCallMeDio]

Now that I think about it, why is it called "Thunder Junction" ? Have they ever explained it?

[@MagicArcanum]

I don't think it was explained anywhere, no.

[@davidbrasher3595]

The flavor text of Quick Draw says, 'The opening of the Omenpaths awoke the wild magic of Thunder Junction. Settlers dubbed it "thunder" and put it to use in everything from farming tools to deadly weapons." So the plane seems a bit like Kaladesh, where everyone can easily use magic by building enchanted artifacts. It is more like technology and science than mysticism and the arcane.

[@TheyCallMeDio]

@@davidbrasher3595 so I'm guessing the "junction" part of the name comes from the fact that the plane is literally an Omenpath junction?

[@zachariahmerry2396]

@@TheyCallMeDio Yeah, it's a junction filled with something people call thunder. People dubbed it Thunder Junction following the classic naming technique of "Just describe what the place is and call it a day".

[@davidbrasher3595]

As with New Capenna, I was a bit turned off by how almost all the people in the Thunder Junction stories were criminals. Kellan becomes a criminal. Jace becomes a criminal again, like when he was a pirate. Even Ral becomes a criminal at one point. I would have enjoyed it if there were a couple of stories about hardworking honest citizens dealing with the crimewave, lawmen trying to establish order, or lone vigilante heroes fighting outlaws. There could also be the Gatewatch problem again. Readers complained that it was hard to find a threat that was challenging to five or so heroic planeswalkers teamed up together. In Thunder Junction, there is a gang of like ten villains gathered from all across the multiverse. You would think nothing could stand against them. And they have talked about getting together again for future heists in future sets.

[@MagicArcanum]

That's a great point. Both Thunder Junction and New Capenna seemed to think they could tell dramatic stories based around the conflict inherent to there just being "bad guys," but without "good guys" to actually oppose them, there wasn't really any context for the struggle.

[@Cephalopopo]

Like everybody suddenly knows how to use omenpaths. The world building is but a joke. You on the other hand are excellent.

[@MagicArcanum]

The omenpaths have existed for over a year now, and it's not like they require special training to use. You just step through it. Enough time has passed that most of the omenpaths are mapped now too, so it's not a mystery where you'll end up after walking through.

[@Itachi45481]

I still want to know more about why so many characters catch fire 🔥 and go all demonic are they like are they demons or a unique magic to the plane I need some world building explanation here or why Jasper is 😆

[@KnicKnac]

Daily shorts? What about nightly shorts for crime fighting? lol

[@rudian3654]

So the one burning question I have for this set that was never answered is: what is Rakdos doing here? I get that he's big and burly but it seems out of character for one so hellbent (ha, see what I did there?) on just having a good time in his previous stories.

[@MagicArcanum]

I think he was bored with life on Ravnica and the omenpaths provided the opportunity for him to experience something new and different. Add in some hype from Oko and the promise of thrills that can't be found anywhere else in the multiverse, and you've got a demon laughing at a tiny skeleton while fighting a scorpion dragon.

[@rudian3654]

@MagicArcanum I also think there may be a more involved subplot involving him working with Niv-Mizzet. Whether Rakdos likes it or not, he does have a home on Ravnica. Looking at a legends book, he did come to the defense of Ravnica when Project Kraj attempted to destroy the plane.

[@zachariahmerry2396]

@@rudian3654 Adding to Ryan, at the end of the story when Oko was telling everyone "Yeah, I know it's a shame we didn't get payed, but if you want to get revenge you're gonna have to work with me for more heists", Rakdos' response effectively boiled down to "Wow, that was great fun! Got to have a great fight! Anyway, if you're gonna give me more chances to do stuff like that, I'm down"

[@christopherb501]

Obeka was established as a contemporary. Okay. WHERE IS SHE FROM?!

[@MagicArcanum]

Well, Nashi recognized she was using time magic to defend the potion. He didn't necessarily recognize Obeka personally (though the story does mention him searching his own memories for information about time mages, specifically known to be here on Thunder Junction, so it's possible he at least heard of her and knows her by reputation if nothing else)

[@HereticalPreist]

No wot in Tarnation pun? Now I’m sad

[@williambandet5506]

So how is Oliva still alive?! Like she was left for dead in a graveyard with a sword through her heart! How is she alive? How did she even get the ability to use white mana?! She was a big villian and now is shafted?

[@EffinChat]

I may be misremembering but I thought Olivia and Edgar fled the scene at the end of Crimson Vow without sustaining debilitating (for vampires) injuries? Like, they both got the snot beaten out of them but escaped before they could be executed by Sorin - who is a good example of how hardy Innistradi vampires are, both by rapidly getting his shit together after drinking a lot of blood in the Crimson Vow story and by virtue of getting better from being embedded in a wall. In regards to how she's Mardu now, I think it's probably a representation of how she's sort of got Edgar Markov enchanted by waking him up with her blood in Vow.

[@thenardedgamer247]

MORE! Lol

[@alexparker2432]

Well those were kinda neat. Annie story definitely sounded like a waste of time.

[@ajh22895]

Marchesa wasn't in any of them

[@GozMaster]

PRIMO!

[@EffinChat]

The variety of where these stories come from is what really irked me - you have a face commander, some backstory for probably the most prominent OTJ original character, a story based around an Alchemy card featuring a returning commander legendary as an antagonist, and what is basically an extended cutaway gag from the main story. Any single one of those would be a cool concept for the premise of a bunch of sidestories, but having them all just feels... rushed, i guess?

[@aceundead4750]

To give the story the benefit of the doubt you could use an incantation to enchant something thus creating a rune on it. The amount of brain power i had to use just to justify that as a possible explanation to myself for the use of incantation instead of rune made me tired.

[@YumaNanami]

I approve of Yuma's Side Story

[@christopherb501]

Never enough T

[@N-cromancer]

I do not,but it's because it feels superficial and popularity driven. All of a sudden WOTC wants to write a trans side piece when it's popular? If I'm not mistaken, Yuma is literally the first, so it's obvious profit pandering. In my opinion. Gotta start somewhere but still

[@YumaNanami]

@@N-cromancer Yuma was not the first character, Alesha who Smiles at Death was the first I knew of. Niko Aris from Kaldheim Set, And a quick Google Search says there's many others including Ashiok

[@N-cromancer]

@@YumaNanami oh strange when I googled it I must have found a sensationalist piece. My b

[@CenJohan]

Each of these side stories felt a bit uninspired. It supports my opinion that the overall theme of the plane is real shallow. Nothing really went deeper into what a magic cowboy plane could have been beyond some of the typical stereotypes. Honestly, I would blame the whole “opening up the multiverse” but I had similar complaints to the MKM story and set design.

[@kennydarmawan13]

If you ask me, MtG should stop over-doing these grand arcs and massive plots. It got tired with the Gatewatch chasing Marvel, War of the Spark had many wasted potentials/missed opportunities, and March of the Machines capped New Phyrexia's arc poorly.

[@mega2009man]

Wrong Quint is the greatest 😌 The main story is called Outlaws of Thunder Junction but the side stories changes that to Cameos of Thunder Junction. They went WAY too far. I'm rooting for Jace to Thanos snap/reboot the multiverse I'm snapping this story faster than Star Wars sequels

[@dmv99]

I liked Yuma, after heaing the story, not so much. Everything has to be LGBT now, we can't even enjoy a story without some inclusion bs

[@goob5000]

Dang man I guess die mad about it

[@dmv99]

@@goob5000 no matter how much people try, yuma will never be a man 😂😂

[@goob5000]

@@dmv99 seeth and cope buddy, I'm happy with the cowboy set, you're the one crying in the KZbin comments about inclusivity like a boomer

[@dmv99]

@@goob5000 lmao never said I didn’t enjoy the set, just don’t like the “everything needs to be trans” thing. Don’t know how you’re playing magic though, seems your reading comprehension needs some work

[@goob5000]

@@dmv99 Hey man crying in the comments of a MTG lore video about "Trans people are ruining my game because they got 1 card." Is much more embarrassing.