Welcome to Magic Arcanum. I'm Ryan Gomez,
and I'm so glad you're here because it is story time! Our What's Happening on
Ravnica video crossed 40,000 views recently which is awesome! I had a lot to
be thankful for over the holiday break. I'm so glad you guys are enjoying these
videos and I appreciate all the feedback and comments. I really do read every one
of them so keep them coming! So we already set the stage for the
Magic story on Ravnica, so this week I want to talk about the hero characters.
Who are we rooting for? Who are the good guys?
Who stands between Nicol Bolas and his assured victory? The answer is five
teenagers with attitude! What? Oh it's a different group of five color-coded
heroes? Okay now the real answer is the Gatewatch: a handful of Planeswalkers who
each took an oath to defend the multi-verse from like, just about
everything, and we're gonna cover all that here in just a minute. The group was
founded at a place called Sea Gate, hence the name Gatewatch. Sea Gate is on
Zendikar and the plane was being attacked by the Eldrazi and in some
desperate need of help. How did the Eldrazi get there, you ask? That is a
story for another time so let me know down in the comments if it's one you
want to hear. Anyway a planeswalker named Gideon was the first to come to the aid
of Zendikar so let's talk about him for a minute.
Originally from Theros, Gideon's powers include the ability to make himself
pretty much immune to damage and you can see this reflected on almost all of his
planeswalker cards where he can turn himself into an indestructible creature
until the end of the turn. As a younger lad Gideon got a little cocky and
attacked one of the gods of Theros. As punishment, that God killed all of
Gideon's friends right in front of him. And so began Gideon's lifelong quest of
defending the weak, punishing the unjust, and putting everyone else's needs ahead
of his own. He would have seen Zendikar falling to the Eldrazi as a personal
failure to protect people in need but he also realized he couldn't defend them
all by himself, so he went to Jace for help.
Jace at the time was serving as the living guild pact of Ravnica but Gideon
managed to win over his support by pitching it as this
giant puzzle that needed to be solved and of course Jace couldn't resist so
off he went. Jase is from a plane called Vryn and he
excels at all the mind stuff. He can make illusions, he could make people forget
things, he's just a really smart tricky guy.
Returning to Zendikar, Gideon and Jace ran into Nissa, an elf and a native of
the plane who was also kinda responsible for the Eldrazi being let loose. Man I'm
gonna have to tell that whole story someday! Nissa is an animist. She can turn
the land of any plane that she's on into an elemental creature and her magic works
especially well on Zendikar where she has access to Ashya, a very powerful
elemental native to that plane. Anyway those three planeswalkers got some
last-minute help from Chandra who initially didn't want to get involved
but she did show up at the last minute to help them kill two Eldrazi titans and
win the battle for Zendikar. Chandra is from Kaladesh and her powers include
fire, burning, and flames, and yes I know that that is kind of one-note but I
still like her more than Vivien Reid! So in the wake of what they accomplished by
working together those four Planeswalkers - that's Gideon, Jace, Nissa,
and Chandra - each took an oath. These were all captured as legendary enchantments
in Oath of the Gatewatch and while the flavor on each one's a little bit
different the idea behind them is all the same; that these characters are going
to pledge themselves to protect the multiverse from all sorts of threats.
Their second stop was Innistrad, which was experiencing some really spooky
stuff, and for a plane where it's basically Halloween everyday that's kind
of saying a lot. A planeswalker named Nahiri was summoning Emrakul,
the Eldrazi titan, to Innistrad as punishment on Sorin. Sorin is a
planeswalker who originally locked away the Eldrazi on Zendikar which is Nahiri's home. Sorin promised to come back if the Eldrazi ever did escape. They
did escape. He did not come back. So Nahiri brought the problem to his
doorstep. The newly-formed gatewatch, feeling
confident in their Eldrazi slaying powers, jumped in ready to save the day...
only this time they were way out of their league. Emrakul's mind-control
powers would have been the end of the gatewatch were it not for the timely
intervention of Liliana who raised a zombie army to fight back. Turns out you
can't control the minds of a bunch of mindless brain-eating decaying corpses.
Liliana is from Dominaria and she was originally a healer until she
accidentally turned her sick brother into an undead Lich. That could happen to
anybody! Lilliana's zombies held off the assault
but ultimately it was a planeswalker named Tamiyo who sealed
Emrakul inside the silver moon of Innistrad - although it wasn't entirely
her own choice. Once again, big story, comment below if you want to hear it.
The gatewatch offered Tamiyo a spot on their roster, obviously she
declined, so they turned instead to Liliana who did accept. I want to point
out here that the other four original founding members of the gatewatch all
joined up for reasons bigger than themselves; they wanted to protect the
multiverse, they want to protect their homes, they want to protect their friends,
they want to protect the lifestyle that they'd become accustomed to. Liliana
joined because she wanted to use the gatewatch for selfish reasons. She was
beholden to a contract she made with four demons and she figured the
gatewatch would be strong enough to help her kill them and free herself from that
contract. So for her own selfish reasons Liliana took the oath and got her own
card in Eldritch Moon to commemorate the occasion. And this is the first era of
the gatewatch: five members, one for each color of Magic, all united in purpose
more or less. They just killed or exiled three Eldrazi titans and had saved two
planes from sure destruction. What could possibly stand in their way?
Word of their successes got around and eventually the group was invited to Kaladesh by a planeswalker named Dovin Baan. He wanted them to serve as a
sort of security team during this big inventors fair that was coming up. There
the group encountered Tezzeret, who was working for Nicol Bolas when he stole
all the inventions and kidnapped all their inventors at the fair. And this is
where Ajani gets involved! He's a Leonin, it's a type of cat person.
He had some friends on Kaladesh and he was pretty protective of them so he teamed
up with the gatewatch to help them rescue all the inventors. They saved the
day but not before Tezzeret can escape with the planar bridge. It's one of the two
most important artifacts in the Magic story at the moment. The other one is the
Immortal Sun and we cover both of them in the video "What's happening on Ravnica?"
so make sure you go and watch that one if you haven't done so already.
Ajani recognizes that the next step is to go after Nicol Bolas directly so he takes
the oath and joins the gatewatch bringing their numbers up to six, but he
also tells them that they need to recruit more allies before they take the
fight straight to Nicky B. Liliana is eager to get rid of her demons and she
urges the group to press onward instead of waiting for a Ajani to get more help.
So she wins and Gideon, Jace, Nissa, Chandra and Liliana head to Amonkhet,
plane known to be under the control of Nicol Bolas and home to Razzaketh, one of
Liliana's remaining demons. So of course Nicol Bolas shows up and
he fights the five of them. I don't know if you've ever seen the Harlem
Globetrotters dunk on the Washington Generals; that's pretty much what happens
here and you feel a little bad for the losing team, the gatewatch in this case,
but they kind of deserve it because they showed up for work that day and they
knew what they were getting themselves into! Anyway Nicol Bolas very easily
defeats the gatewatch and gives each member their own personal send-off as
captured in the so-and-so's defeat cycle. After that battle the group was
scattered. Jace wound up trapped on Ixalan and you can hear more about his
adventures in the video "Who is Vraska?" The rest of the gatewatch managed to
make their way to Dominaria. Nissa was furious that Liliana managed
to drag them all into a fight with a demon,
so she decided her time was going to be better spent helping Zendikar recover
from the Eldrazi invasion and off she went. This is shown on the card Broken
Bond and that's important because it's the first time someone's left the
gatewatch, bringing their count back down to five members. Chandra also felt
discouraged after the outcome of Amonkhet but she didn't quit the group. She
just went off to train more. So that leaves Liliana and Gideon on
Dominaria, and surely someday I will do "What happened on Dominaria," but that day is
not today. Trying to keep the focus here on the gatewatch. So Liliana still has a
demon left on her contract and Gideon, being the good guy he is, didn't want her
to face it alone, so the two of them went off to fight Belzenlok. Along the
way they meet a time mage named Teferi. Teferi has a huge history on Dominaria but there are two things you should probably know: number one, he is like the
most powerful card in standard right now, and number two, that makes a lot of sense
in the story because he helps them defeat Belzenlok and he takes it
one step further: he even agrees to assist the gatewatch in further missions.
He takes the oath and becomes their seventh member, although currently only
sixth because we lost Nissa...and that number is about to drop again! With the
four demons dead Liliana thought she would be freed of her contract.
She should have read the fine print! The contract defaulted to Nicol Bolas,
effectively enslaving Liliana to him. This is captured in the totally awesome
card In Bolas's Clutches, which should be in every Nicol Bolas commander themed
deck ever. So Liliana was forced to planeswalk away and that confused
Gideon. He thinks there is still good in her but the rest of the group took it to
mean she was only ever interested in herself. None of them know Liliana does
want to help but she'll be killed by Nicol Bolas if she does. This tension should
be really interesting as we head into the future battles on Ravnica. By this
point in the story, Chandra returned and she tried to get Jaya and
Karn to also joined the gatewatch. The two of them declined, although they did
pledge to offer their support for the time being.
Jace had also finished his side quest on Ixalan so now the whole gatewatch is
heading to Ravnica to face Nicol Bolas once again. Their current roster includes
Gideon, Jace, Chandra, Ajani, and Teferi. Liliana is also on their side but is
powerless to help them. They also have a hidden ally Vraska if Jace can reach
her and restore her memories. Karn and Jaya will support them as well, and there
may be other Planeswalkers Ajani was able to recruit during the events on
Dominaria that we didn't get to see...and remember, Vivien Reid is out there
somewhere too. And that's it! That is everything about the gatewatch I can
tell you leading up to Ravnica in one video. This team gets a lot of heat. They
are jokingly referred to as the Jacetist League. I kind of like them though. I
think having this big team up of all these great heroes really lets you raise
the stakes and tell some dramatic stories. After Nicol Bolas is dealt with
we'll probably go back to telling smaller more personal stories and the
gatewatch will be put on the back burner for a while, but for now they are the
stars of the whole Magic show. So what do you think? Will Gideon, Jace, Chandra,
Teferi, and Ajani be able to defeat Nicol Bolas? Will they recruit enough extra help
to get it done? Will they rescue Liliana? Will they earn back Nissa's trust? Share
your thoughts in the comments down below and then do me a favor: like this video,
subscribe to the channel so you don't miss the great stories you'll only find
here on Magic Arcanum. I'll see ya!
