I’m glad to see you’re taking it easy with smaller, less comprehensive topics my guy

I like how it seems like early Magic lore is basically "Wow, this Mishra guy is a big piece of garbage, look at all the bad things he caused!" and then it cuts to Urza casually blowing up planes and killing billions.

"...and the Mirrari was given to Glissa for safekeeping. She must have hid it very well because even the writers of Magic's story have forgot it existed for the past 20 years" I'm dead

This feels like when two friends tell you a story about an event you weren't a part of and constantly make inside jokes about it and look at you weird when you don't laugh along

I feel like most of mtg lore can be summed up as "This has made a lot of people very angry, and been widely regarded as a bad move"

The "Phyrexian oil is suddenly useless if New Phyrexia gets phased out" thing feels like a real Commodore Guff move.

I love how Jace keeps stumbling into extremely specific requirements for puzzles and prophecy

I like how you portrayed Nahiri in this. She used to be one of my favourite planeswalker and every one of her apparitions just keeps making her worse and worse...

Okay but Alhammarret forgetting how to breathe is just so metal holy crap

8:40 To be fair, Sorin just wanted to be a good dad to his Angel daughter. He just didn't expect her goth phase to be so hardcore later on.

Glad my fav planeswalker Tamiyo got the same amount of screentime here as she did in the unabridged magic story.

" So let me get this straight. You wanted to fight everyone, everywhere, at once, on an infinite map, forever... and you expected to *_win???_* " Elesh Norn: " yeah pretty much "

Important note on the whole "tezzeret wanted a new pair of rims" thing, the planar bridge in his body was actually killing him because the etherium metal wasnt strong enough to contain it, so he actually needed the darksteel body to stay alive.

spice you have saved me from explaining mtg lore to my friends. you are a hero of our time

It just occurred to me that the Omen Paths are how Nicol Bolas escapes as someone will stumble upon him accidentally and set him free.

"garruk fails to jund her out" is now one of my favourite sentences

The side narratives of "wow Nahiri does kinda suck" and "Lukka is competely useless and loses immediately" are great 🤣

My eyes bugged out of my head during the Commodore Guff bit, literally had no idea about any of that, and I thought I knew the lore like the back of my hand. Incredible stuff.

I’m still angry we didn’t get more Uncle Garruk with Will and Rowan. Especially now with the Wilds of Eldraine set leading to the 3 of them embodying all 5 colors. GIVE US MORE GARRUK, COWARDS!!!

Big respect for the 80 minutes of non-stop rapid fire facts and jokes that just don't stop being entertaining! I cannot imagine how long the writing, recording and editing must have taken for this.

I had no idea that Magic’s story was so simple and concise!

You can really see just how much Spice's skills have grown since the first video. The writing, the editing, the humor all amazing.

I was so incredibly saddened when Slobad didn't make an appearance in Scars of Mirrodin block, just being allowed to die offscreen. But March of the Machine makes me wish he'd stayed down. He shows up in a bonus story with no mention whatsoever of his old life and the potential of his amazing story arc just gets tossed away into obscurity. You could replace Compleated Slobad with literally any nameless Phyrexian and the story wouldn't change a bit, and that's absolutely a crime.

The fact that there’s full manually made captions for this WHOLE VIDEO- goddamn that’s dedication. Really appreciate when people manually make the captions so that made me happy bc sometimes I’m not too good at processing words I hear lol. Rly cool video must’ve taken hella long

Clearly if WotC actually paid any mind to consistency the next arc would be Emrakul using the power of the moon to astral project into Garruk's body to look for the Mirari so she can wish her former secret lover Slobad back to life.

I was always under the impression that Urabrask's whole deal was "Compleation is awesome, but as an embodiment of RED Phyrexia, I'm partially defined by freedom, so I don't want to force people to accept it... Even if I think they're totally missing out by not having bitchin' robot arms.". (Like Atraxa, who doesn't have red 'cause he was all "She didn't consent, I don't want any part in this.") Which I think is awesome, and is why I hope he survived MoM somehow. Sure, he was bleeding out, limbless, and left on the floor to die, but we all know that if we didn't see the actual moment of death, Wizards probably aren't willing to stop producing products with him. Also, him being the only surviving praetor would re-contextualize "All will be one", changing it from "All planes will be part of Phyrexia" to "All of Phyrexia will serve a single leader instead of 5 fractured ones." And I wanna see some heroic Phyrexians, some horrible looking monstrosities that are actually good guys, going around going "Hey, we noticed you're getting old/have an incurable illness/got maimed in a battle, we can cure that! With compleation! Come got bitchin' robot arms!" It could make Slobad a hero again...

Love how you used the actual cards. Seeing the art helped me visualize the story immensely, well done good sir!

Im braziliam and i just would like to say that hear you quoting Paulo Freire was incredible, especially because a lot of people here hates him and try to erase his work and legacy

Can't wait for this to become one of those videos I listen to six times a year while walking to Aldi

As someone who has played Magic almost since the beginning this has been 80 minutes of hilarious laughter and flashback memories to players, gameplay and pack openings over the last thirty years. Thanks for the awesome content Spice!

i really hope MoM's story is further expanded on somehow; such a huge moment to just hand-wave so the good guys win

I just got into Magic and I have watched this so many times. Thanks for helping newbies like me understand what’s happening up until now!

Thank goodness the story ended after phyrexia won an ultimately phyrric victory. Oh boy am i sure glad that nasty urza guy got what was coming to him and nothing else bad ever happened because of his actions. It sure would be a shame is phyrexias influence were to expand beyond attacking dominaria, but thank goodness the story ended there! Thanks for the concise video spice!

I didn't expect to see Paulo Freire citation on a magic video made by a british creator. I love you Spice, please come to Brazil.

Hey, could you repeat that?

"oh piss and shit urza's time machine was created by a madman with no moral compass and it exploded the moment somebody turned it on" is exactly why everyone thinks he's more fun than jace

Ixalan Story best story, The Flood is still the best writing this franchise has ever seen and the loss of Allison Luhrs from the writing team is a tragedy

1:09:45 You do really good research Spice, but I do not blame you for missing the story where... Nahiri wasn't de-sparked like how the Invasion Tree fucked up the rest of the walkers. She lost it herself after she put her spark into an artifact and then because of her mental trauma and a surprise, she lost control and destroyed the artifact. She just straight up singlehandedly deleted her most powerful characteristic

This is super well made and hilarious. As someone who doesn't know or care too much about the story of Magic, this sells it really well. Thanks!

Love how you subtly worked in the names of a bunch of the expansions into the script. Really a nice touch.

the ENTIRE STORY?? Spice on a roll with these long vids 💪

You know for all the rage the Teferi planes walker cards have given me, he’s actually a really cool dude.

That was such an amazingly comprehensive and hilarious run down of Magic's history. Please do more of this. It doesn't even have to Magic related. Just as long as I can hear more of the elegant euphemisms, I'll be happy!

As someone who followed Warcraft’s story for many years, to see it rough shod into a contrived ending in Shadowlands made me really sad. I just came to Magic after 10 years (I think the last set I played before this year was Dragon’s Maze) and I missed a lot of story. Invasion block was still the best, IMO.

Tezzeret _did_ need that darksteel body because the Planar Bridge was slowly killing him, but he still definitely overdid the whole "helping the cyborg monstrosities" thing. In any case, brilliant work throughout. Seeing how the various "thousands of years ago" events line up is especially fascinating.

56:09 ok but Grist is legit cool and I really hope we see them more because "bug swarm planeswalker" is EXACTLY my vibe

"Urza then decides that he alone can fix the problem he first caused and has only made worse to this point" Dude was a killer line xD

I need this guy to tell me stories on a daily basis. This has been phenomenal.

"we have spent more cardstock on exploring DND's forgotten realms than the phyrexian invasion of everything" just kill me now

This was excellent. If I can make some notes: The book was pretty explicit that Commodore Guff can’t rewrite the story only edit it. So he doesn’t rewrite the end of the Invasion saga as he wants it to go, only erasing everything written down. Freeing the characters from their respective ends and letting them make their choices rather than being bound to fate. But I guess "Guff Fervently Drafts History" doesn't make as good a card name. I’m a wee little bit sad my boy Chainer didn’t get a mention, since I kinda think Torment was the best book WotC released. But I understand things got to be compressed for time. Here is a take that most probably won’t agree with at all. But when I read WotS: Forsaken and got to the infamous Chandra part my initial response was: Yeah, comfortably straight people don’t have intense inner turmoil about how they’re totally straight for the opposite gender all the time. Totally. This girl is failing to come to terms that she’s gay, or bi. I was actually somewhat surprised by the response from people who took her at face value. And even more surprised when I heard the author said he added that part because higher ups told him to make her straight. So I was reading subtext that truly was not meant to be there. I legitimately thought it was going to be the start of a Chandra comes to terms with her sexuality arc. And it kinda was. Well. Not so much an arc as just announcing she’s in love with Nissa now. But we’ll take it, I guess. I also 100% agree with your take on the disappointment with MotM. Though I thought it was established the watchers were Elspeth and Serra’s spirit. Anyway, excellent video. Can’t wait to see what you do next.

Congratulations on 100k! The first video of yours I watched was on Yawgmoth and I distinctly remember my room layout and my activities that day surrounding it. Here's to many more!

12:28 the use of Paulo Freire's phrase here is amazing. Great job!

There is actually a reason given for why Emrakul sealed herself in the moon, though it is a bit complicated and dives into the nature of the Eldrazi and their existence. There are a few inferences made here for things that aren't explicitly stated, but based on things we know. This is essentially the Vorthos community consensus. Basically the Eldrazi are giant living world recycling machines and while they do have some sort of alien consciousness, they can't really help doing what they do. Also each of the trio fulfils a specific purpose: Ulamog processes a planes matter into raw material to be used in the reconstruction of the world, Kozilek essentially reformats the plane's time-space continuum into a blank state and Emrakul comes in at the end and uses the resources created by the other two to create new life on the plane before they depart. Since Ulamog and Kozilek weren't there anymore, Emrakul couldn't do her job and was just kind of drifting around purposelessly, mutating preexisting lifeforms rather than creating genuine new ones. She understood that she wasn't acting according to her purpose, so as to stop doing that (and because whatever made the Eldrazi/caused them to exist probably either gave them a survival instinct or just made it impossible for them to off themselves for security reasons) she sealed herself in Innistrad's moon.

This was an absolutely wonderful use of time probably slightly more wisely spent sleeping ❤ thank you :)

So basically the problem with magic lore is that every single thing that happens is just the bad guys finding ways to make everything worse to justify powercreep.

Minor point Fallen Empires precedes the ice age, it is not after it ( both the set and lore). In large part, it is the changing climate caused by the sylex explosion that initiates many of the events that cause the empires to fall.

THANK YOU for someone having recognized the awesome story on Ixalan. The stuff with Jace and Vraska is superb

This literally is the first video of yours I've ever seen. What an amazing introduction, your story telling is incredible and I'm glad to have watched

Fantastic work Spice! A phenomenal video. If nothing else this does a great job at showing just how fragmented magics story has become, if you can even call it that. The difference in care that was taken in magics early years compared today is so frustrating and it was great to see everything put back in to context here. Also your caveat on scope creap at the end is valid but I'd be remiss not to mention Wrenn's story on Innistrad: Tangles. Seanan's care and attention makes it by far the best piece of narrative post War of the Spark for me and made Wrenn's sacrifice to defeat realmbreaker actually cause me to tear up. It's telling that the slightest care and attention are able to go so far, that a genuine callback of Wrenn being able to find teferi through their shared encounter is so moving when so much else fails to be. *"The tangles of Teferi's magic aren't visible to the naked eye. You must feel them-feel your growth stuttering, or shooting faster, your leaves going still, your flames at last held in place. ... There is a place somewhere here out of sight. There is a place that time cannot touch. There is a place no one would ever think to look, a place found if only she can trace the clumsy trail of a friend . . . There."*

Thank you for the comprehensive video! I would really enjoy a short follow up on loose ends that we still have. You briefly mentioned it, but a single place to look would be great!

Small correction! Huatli and Saheeli only start dating in the aftermath of the War of The Spark when they anonymously hook up on Ravnica through demi-canon planeswalker craigslist. This is detailed in the 2021 pride month story that released shortly after new Capenna I believe.

This was an awesome video. It was filled with epiphany moments of me going "ohhh I never realized that's what was happening in this card" or "I never recognized that this object shows up in this card also" and things like that. I am also grateful that I didn't have to do all this research myself lmao

I'm heading to my first prerelease event tomorrow and watched this video to brush up on The Lore (TM). Thanks for making this as a handy guide and keep up the great work!

incredible video! I read all the books from war of the brothers up to mirari all those years ago, but you summarized it wonderfully (from what I can remember) with all the information you had to share. Great work!

This seems like the best place to put this. I firmly believe that in the original script for War of the Spark Elesh Norn was intended to be Radiant and Elspeth was Serra or Serra's daughter. It makes the whole story fit together so much better, ties it in to the old stories they were pulling from, and gives the whole thing actual emotional weight. Think about it. Radiant, who was Serra's number 2 and was put in charge of her Domain while she was working with Urza mainly struggled with fear. She was so scared of threats she entombed herself in a nest of cameras and ultimately destroyed the plane because she was so scared of Urza and Phyrexia and everyone outside. This dovetails really nicely with what we see happening with Elesh Norn in the story. She's built a world where everything is stable and nothing can surprise her again. That's why she wants to make everything Phyrexian. We even know that her driving motivation is fear because Ashiok says it in one of the first stories. It covers everything that doesn't quite make sense in the story. It covers the whole Phyrexian oil being centralized thing because Elesh Norn is paranoid. She needs to be the one in control, even to her downside. It even covers why Radiant got a random full art card in Modern Horizons 2 which would have been around when they were writing this story which would remind players she existed. This would also explain why it's Elspeth who can kill her. If her mother really is Serra which makes sense with the whole doesn't know her mother angel refugee thing then its Serra's power that can unmake her. That's why Elspeth goes full avenging angel in the end of the story. She was supposed to be fully taking Serra's powers and becoming not only a pre-mending planeswalker, but the strongest white planeswalker in lore of all time. It just makes so much sense. I'm not sure why they would have changed it. Maybe it was too involved with old lore? Anyway it's my head cannon and I recommend you make it yours. It makes the ending of MoM a looooooot better.

I'm so glad you mentioned Gideon's weakness: three inches of muddy water. My read was that the Watchers during March of the Machine were Elspeth and Serra.

Singlehandedly the best video I have ever seen on Magic the gathering lore. Thank you so much fot this over an hour of entertainment. I loved the Prague (I live here) reference. I also loved the Garruk bit (I cosplay him :D ). Most of the stuff in the story I kinda knew how it went down but some details and the elaboration on stuff really enriched my knowledge. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Excellent vídeo, with excellent references! Wasn't expecting see 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed' quoted in a Magic: The Gathering vídeo! Subscribed, and starting to watch all videos from the channel! Cheers from Brazil!

The "shadowy watchers" in the March of the Machine story were Angels. They hadn't all materialised at that point, they were waiting for their moment or something. Realmbreaker allowed them to leave New Capenna to join the fight across the Multiverse, turning the tide, even though no one could see them. Also, the spirit of Serra resurrected Elspeth as an angel while in the blind eternities. Oh and Kaya slew Heliod.

I love the nod to Emerakul still hanging out in the moon for. . .reasons. . .and Garruk literally just vanishing from the plot.

The "so much for the tolerant left" bit was so good

This is amazing, thank you for laying out the lore in a digestible way. I can’t tell you how nice it is to know what any of the cards backstories are now.

I knew Urza was a mad man, but this video has really put into perspective just how much impact he actually had on the story. What a wild guy.

You have no idea how hard it is to find Magics' lore in one place for a newcomer. I really appreciate you making this video (even if you dislike Starmer) so thanks. Would be real interested in you making some "shorter" videos on the stories you weren't able to include, if you would be up to it.

I want to say thanks specifically to all of the Patrons that enabled the creation of this video. And thank you all also for making Spice8 read all of your ridiculous names, lol. Also I suppose the video itself is okay. Seriously though, awesome video. Highly informative and highly entertaining. I will definitely be coming back and listening to this one again.

man this was a great summary. i've always been tangentially aware of what's happening but this ties it all together. i'd love to see more in depth the lore broken down by the set blocks.

“The most comprehensive history of magic” and “mad man screams goofy names at 4am while walking down my street high on drugs” are both equally accurate titles for this video

I still don't get it

I’m subscribing from this video, and I’m in the pre-roll ad and haven’t started watching yet, but I want you to know I just finished watching your goblins video, the reason for my subscription. Anyway spice em up!!

You are completely insane man... what a triumph! Congrats on this video, i cant begin to imagine how much work this was

Spice posted a new video? Welp, time to watch all of the older videos again, because one video is not enough Spice for my day

As someone who never really got into MTG lore, you did a great job of giving a glimpse into the inner pain WOTC and Hasbro are inflicting to you. To me MTG is a hobby that is simply getting to expensive to invest into regularly. But to someone invested to the lore it is much more of a inner conflict. It's a story you want to see continue/conclude with a satisfying end. It's a whole alternate world you have grown to love. Seeing something so carefully crafted being carelessly discarded...

I'm new to the world of Magic after years of my childhood playing Yu Gi Oh, and this was such an entertaining dive into the lore 😂 Thank you for the great content, I can't wait to see more from you!

We just going to ignore the fact that Sengir straight up conquered an entire plane without a spark, that he took off into the unknown to take over another plane, or the he even exists? The man is the head of the only multi planar vampire clan and still can't get some love rip

I have to admit, I had given up on magic all together, but this is so nice to have people that keep me connected to what I used to love. I hope the lore will be getting better, and I hope the best for you.

Its been 4 years since I watched the 10 minute version of this. Thank you for this new upgraded version spicy enby of the internet. You mean a lot to many of us

Wow. As someone that's been following magic on-and-off my whole life, this answered a WHOLE lot of questions I had about certain cards like Weatherlight and Sisay and Nissa and so on. Such an incredibly fleshed out lore video. Amazing amazing job. Also, sidenote, if you were to do another video just about random cool moments in the lore you didn't get to cover, I'd watch that in a heartbeat.

Weismann isn’t as bad as you say. When Forsaken came out and Chandra un-came out, Wizards blamed him. He pulled out the emails stating that they told him to do exactly that and washed his hands of it.

I would absolutely watch a longer video series covering this in more depth

God I wish Urabrask had survived, and even won. Having Phyrexia be a neutral entity in the multiverse under his rule, even for a short time, would've been so cool to see. Since he didn't want to force anyone to accept phyresis. That said I'm now super excited for a potential modern Zhalfir set.

Glad to see this smash your old PB on views!!! I couldnt imagine great work

Incredible work, informative and entertaining! Exactly what I needed to catch up coming back to MTG 20 years later 🙏🏻

I remember the first time I saw one of Spice's videos. It was the Story in 10 minutes and I thought it slapped so God damn hard that I had to subscribe, even if it was likely just a one hit wonder from a really small KZfaqr. And now we're here. One of the largest MTG creators on the platform. I'm honored to have been lucky enough to experience the entire journey, and I'm so excited for the next half a decade. Thank you for all you do, Spice 8 Rack.

Ive loved this channel from the moment i stumbled upon the unhinged goblin video. Incredibly happy to have been there from the start and super happy to see you doing so much good things in the community

I love this video. I would definitely watch a more in depth video series, broken down into 10 to 20 min videos. Love your work dude. Big Thanks

My first introduction to Spice8Rack was on the Command Knight Live episode recently and I fell in love with your comedy wit and fun loving attitude. This was my first video from your channel and I couldn't stop laughing. Here, have my sub.

I cannot iterate how amazed I routinely am with the depth, humour, and insight you are able to pour into each of these videos. Masterful! (also, fuck Urza)

This is insane. How'd you even make this. I haven't played MTG since high school, so when you said "Ice Age" I cheered like you were a rock band saying the name of my city

I can't wait for Spice to make an even more comprehensive video in 3 years after the next major story event.

I have searched for a Lore video for a bit now. I saw you on a shuffle up and play and subbed. I say all that to say great video!!