Oversoul
The Tentacled One
Ha, didn't expect that one, did you? Or perhaps you did. I don't know.
Homelands is almost universally panned as the worst Magic set. And on that topic, I'm not really interested in swaying from public opinion. There are other contenders, and it really all depends on how you weigh different aspects. But in general, yeah, Homelands was the worst.
While the mechanics are lackluster and the cards are overcosted (hint: the cards are overcosted because the mechanics are lackluster, a bit of a secret you very likely won't see stated anywhere else), the lore of Ulgrotha, the plane created for Homelands does see some praise. My own reaction is, well, mixed. Positive, overall, I'd say. I'm mostly amused that the story of Homelands creates a bit of a problem for any future return to the plane, which WotC will inevitably retcon with some absurd revisions...
So, in the story as it is now presented, Nicol Bolas is set up to be the Big Bad. He's the oldest pre-mending planeswalker anyone seems to know about, and he's apparently capable of charging headlong into a pantheon of gods and utterly trouncing them. Not only that, but he used to be even more powerful before the mending. In my own opinion, the character worked better as a puppetmaster and schemer than he does as nigh-omnipotent god-smasher, but that's the direction in which WotC decided to move this. Anyway...
The backstory for Legends wasn't done away with entirely, so it's still canonical that the five elder dragons (including Bolas) were the survivors of a great war and that they were summoned and used as weapons by ancient planeswalkers, sometimes outright enslaved by them. Because elder dragons were powerful, but planeswalkers could be powerful enough to do that and get away with it. Nicol Bolas became a planeswalker himself, but he fought other planeswalker and we have no reason to believe that by virtue of his being an elder dragon he completely outclassed all other planeswalkers. Some were weaker than him, but others might not be. He had an extended duel with a "demonic leviathan." He fought Leshrac and struggled against him, but ultimately won through trickery. So pre-mending, Nicol Bolas was a powerful planeswalker, maybe one of the most powerful, but not in a league of his own.
One of the most important planeswalkers in Dominaria (the most important plane) was Serra. While I don't think it's ever outright stated that Serra is more powerful than most other planeswalkers, she does do some spectacular things, like creating powerful angels and Serra's Realm, which Urza needed to use for the Legacy. Urza was canonically established to be one of the most powerful planeswalkers, so it seems likely that if she was doing something he couldn't, Serra herself was extremely powerful too (granted, they specialized in different types of magic, but pre-mending planeswalkers were already established to have little trouble with most ordinary kinds of magic). Also, it just strikes me as implausible and silly for one of the most iconic planeswalkers in Magic's history, one of the original names used in Alpha itself, to turn out to be a run-of-the-mill planeswalker. No, Serra simply had to be extraordinary. Maybe not as powerful as Nicol Bolas, but still a very, very powerful planeswalker.
After sacrificing her Realm to help fight the Phyrexians, Serra traveled to Ulgrotha, where she met and married Feroz. There, the two planeswalkers, united, opposed Baron Sengir, but could not defeat him. Feroz accidentally blew himself up, and then later Serra fled the realm after a confrontation with Baron Sengir. Maybe Feroz wasn't as powerful as Serra, but they'd still be two planeswalkers, at least one of which was extraordinary. They couldn't beat Baron Sengir. They couldn't even come close. Baron Sengir also took control of another planeswalker, Ravi. So, Baron Sengir wasn't a planeswalker, but he was able to surpass the power of at least some pre-mending planeswalkers. It was also established canonically that the mending massively scaled down the power of the planeswalker spark. All planeswalkers in the multiverse, Nicol Bolas included, lost a tremendous amount of their power. And it is this post-mending Nicol Bolas who is the current Big Bad in the lore. But if Baron Sengir was more powerful than some pre-mending planeswalkers, enslaved Ravi, and drove off Serra and Feroz, and if his power has only grown in the years since (also evidenced: Leshrac visited Ulgrotha and had no desire to tangle with the Baron), it stands to reason that the current Baron Sengir would spank Nicol Bolas like a baby—to say nothing of how easily he'd dispatch the good guys.
I do think that the story will eventually see a return to Ulgrotha. But they're going to have to make up some clumsy excuse for why Baron Sengir isn't, by this point, untouchably powerful, utterly dominant over just about anything else in the multiverse that might face him. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
But as for Sengir Autocrat, the card is among my favorite creatures, and one of the few cards in Homelands that manages to be cool on every level.
Homelands is almost universally panned as the worst Magic set. And on that topic, I'm not really interested in swaying from public opinion. There are other contenders, and it really all depends on how you weigh different aspects. But in general, yeah, Homelands was the worst.
While the mechanics are lackluster and the cards are overcosted (hint: the cards are overcosted because the mechanics are lackluster, a bit of a secret you very likely won't see stated anywhere else), the lore of Ulgrotha, the plane created for Homelands does see some praise. My own reaction is, well, mixed. Positive, overall, I'd say. I'm mostly amused that the story of Homelands creates a bit of a problem for any future return to the plane, which WotC will inevitably retcon with some absurd revisions...
So, in the story as it is now presented, Nicol Bolas is set up to be the Big Bad. He's the oldest pre-mending planeswalker anyone seems to know about, and he's apparently capable of charging headlong into a pantheon of gods and utterly trouncing them. Not only that, but he used to be even more powerful before the mending. In my own opinion, the character worked better as a puppetmaster and schemer than he does as nigh-omnipotent god-smasher, but that's the direction in which WotC decided to move this. Anyway...
The backstory for Legends wasn't done away with entirely, so it's still canonical that the five elder dragons (including Bolas) were the survivors of a great war and that they were summoned and used as weapons by ancient planeswalkers, sometimes outright enslaved by them. Because elder dragons were powerful, but planeswalkers could be powerful enough to do that and get away with it. Nicol Bolas became a planeswalker himself, but he fought other planeswalker and we have no reason to believe that by virtue of his being an elder dragon he completely outclassed all other planeswalkers. Some were weaker than him, but others might not be. He had an extended duel with a "demonic leviathan." He fought Leshrac and struggled against him, but ultimately won through trickery. So pre-mending, Nicol Bolas was a powerful planeswalker, maybe one of the most powerful, but not in a league of his own.
One of the most important planeswalkers in Dominaria (the most important plane) was Serra. While I don't think it's ever outright stated that Serra is more powerful than most other planeswalkers, she does do some spectacular things, like creating powerful angels and Serra's Realm, which Urza needed to use for the Legacy. Urza was canonically established to be one of the most powerful planeswalkers, so it seems likely that if she was doing something he couldn't, Serra herself was extremely powerful too (granted, they specialized in different types of magic, but pre-mending planeswalkers were already established to have little trouble with most ordinary kinds of magic). Also, it just strikes me as implausible and silly for one of the most iconic planeswalkers in Magic's history, one of the original names used in Alpha itself, to turn out to be a run-of-the-mill planeswalker. No, Serra simply had to be extraordinary. Maybe not as powerful as Nicol Bolas, but still a very, very powerful planeswalker.
After sacrificing her Realm to help fight the Phyrexians, Serra traveled to Ulgrotha, where she met and married Feroz. There, the two planeswalkers, united, opposed Baron Sengir, but could not defeat him. Feroz accidentally blew himself up, and then later Serra fled the realm after a confrontation with Baron Sengir. Maybe Feroz wasn't as powerful as Serra, but they'd still be two planeswalkers, at least one of which was extraordinary. They couldn't beat Baron Sengir. They couldn't even come close. Baron Sengir also took control of another planeswalker, Ravi. So, Baron Sengir wasn't a planeswalker, but he was able to surpass the power of at least some pre-mending planeswalkers. It was also established canonically that the mending massively scaled down the power of the planeswalker spark. All planeswalkers in the multiverse, Nicol Bolas included, lost a tremendous amount of their power. And it is this post-mending Nicol Bolas who is the current Big Bad in the lore. But if Baron Sengir was more powerful than some pre-mending planeswalkers, enslaved Ravi, and drove off Serra and Feroz, and if his power has only grown in the years since (also evidenced: Leshrac visited Ulgrotha and had no desire to tangle with the Baron), it stands to reason that the current Baron Sengir would spank Nicol Bolas like a baby—to say nothing of how easily he'd dispatch the good guys.
I do think that the story will eventually see a return to Ulgrotha. But they're going to have to make up some clumsy excuse for why Baron Sengir isn't, by this point, untouchably powerful, utterly dominant over just about anything else in the multiverse that might face him. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
But as for Sengir Autocrat, the card is among my favorite creatures, and one of the few cards in Homelands that manages to be cool on every level.