I find it odd that WOTC would create a new card for Venser in the latest Phyrexia set, but never feature him in the story even for a moment. Venser’s spark gets more screentime, and Karn mentions Venser a handful of times across the story. I was disappointed there was no interaction between Corpse Puppet and Karn. I’m curious what your thoughts on this would be. Thanks!With the benefit of hindsight and seeing everything at once, it may seem obvious, but that’s not how story development actually works, unfortunately. The set and story were in development for years before it’s all released at once, and I don’t have the insight to tell you when things lined up and why.
At the very least, this set was chock full of characters and plot beats as is and there were five main stories to tell it with. Adding another character who hadn’t appeared in a decade and who was effectively just a zombie was probably a bit much. In hindsight, I wish there would’ve been a good place to do it, but note that Venser, Corpse Puppet is Venser in name only.
Slobad, in contrast, lined up nicely with the need for a red aligned antagonist in that side story. But things just don’t always work out that way.
