Ultimate Fantasy Fight

Who’d win in a fight: a dragon or a phoenix? Or a ninja versus a wizard? Or an angel versus The Dark Lord Sauron? (The dragon, the wizard, and Sauron are the correct answers by the way.)

Although, if you’re looking at this epic fight of good versus evil or slightly evil versus more evil, you may not see it that way. You may think the phoenix wins (you’re wrong), or the angel (still wrong), or you may not even see an angel at all (dude, seriously, how wrong can you get?) But that’s exactly what builder Plutouthere wants you to see: whatever you want.

This epic battle has no story and the characters have no names (you can even give Sauron a new moniker. But, er, don't tell him that was our idea). Instead Plutouthere wants you to see his work, Epic Battle, and draw your own conclusions. He wants you to make your own story, complete with victories and defeats, no matter how factually incorrect they might be.

“I didn’t want to make a story since I hadn’t made one in my head as I was building this,” Pluto says. “I figured it would be better to let others come up with their own reasons why everyone is fighting.”

Ok! So the ninja and the wizard are fighting because the ninja must avenge his clan. The dragon and the purple wizard are fighting because the purple wizard wants to take an ancient treasure from the dragon’s hoard. While Sauron is fighting, laying waste to everyone and everything, because that’s just what Sauron does. The jerk.

What’s really awesome though is that if you look at this battle from another perspective, the stories and the characters change. That angel could be falling because the phoenix used a super effective fire attack. But change the angle, and it looks like that angel is powerbombing a viking. And since this battle is whatever you want it to be, you’re right!

But for all the fighting going on between dragons and angels and demons and vikings, Pluto had his own epic fight just to bring this battle to life.

“It took a year of real life time and anywhere from 100 to 200 hours just to finish this project.” He says. And one of the hardest things for him was coming up with the motivation to keep going.

“Really, the stress of being a college student was what delayed this the most.”

Pluto, we all can relate to that.

Maintaining the drive to complete this didn’t come easy, but Pluto says it was a combination of finding inspiration in his old work, encouragement from fellow builders, and tackling the project bit by bit that finally helped him complete the fight.

“When I finally started seeing the characters on the land, that really pushed me to finish.”

Having help from friends made a big difference. Builder Skywalker crafted the terrain while another builder, Bedeh, helped with some of the rendering. More than that, having friends around helped keep this project going, and they can mean the difference between a build failing or finishing.

“My suggestion for folks who are looking to get into building is to ask for advice. I do it all the time. Ask for help from friends and your community, but remember to embrace help and never abuse it.”

With the Epic Battle of infinite outcomes completed, Pluto is returning to his roots. Literally. “Most people who know me would say I’m known for my trees. I do lots of trees.”

He’s working on building gorgeous trees resources for builders to use in their maps. But in the future, he hopes to assemble a team of Minecraft’s best known builders to get together and “just make something awesome!”

More awesome than a fight between a viking, an angel, a ninja, a warrior, a wizard, a phoenix and a dragon? We’ll just have to wait and see.