There was some discussion on the nature of oldwalkers in the Dominaria thread, which raised some interesting questions about the extent of their capabilities. For a long time, I've maintained that for all the talk of oldwalkers being "godlike" and having "vast magical power," they weren't as powerful as a lot of people seem to think they were. The common consensus seems to be that post-Mending planeswalkers are superheroes of varying power levels, while pre-Mending planeswalkers were all invincible reality warpers who could do almost literally anything they wanted with merely a thought. Yet that seems to be a drastic exaggeration of oldwalkers' capabilities. From what I can tell, both pre-Mending and post-Mending planeswalkers are akin to superheroes, and pre-Mending planeswalkers just got a few extra superpowers (most notably Wolverine-style healing and longevity) thrown in for free. There was also just as much variance in power between oldwalkers as there is between neowalkers; Nicol Bolas could certainly be considered godlike, but he's hardly representative of oldwalkers in general, since his power largely stems from him being an elder dragon and one of the multiverse's most powerful sorcerers.
The biggest difference between oldwalkers and neowalkers is that planeswalkers were functionally immortal prior to the Mending, since they didn't age and they were significantly more difficult to kill (although this still applies to planeswalkers like Sorin and Ugin, who are completely ageless and nearly impossible to kill as a result of their species). Aside from that and their shapeshifting abilities, many oldwalkers were extremely powerful mages, but their power came from their mastery over magic, not from any innate aspect of their nature as planeswalkers. They tended to be significantly more powerful than mortal mages for two reasons: First, their ability to travel between planes enabled them to learn a greater variety of spells and granted them access to vastly more sources of mana than any planebound mage. And second, they usually lived for centuries or millennia, which gave them vastly more time to learn and practice and perfect their magical abilities. But these reasons don't exclusively apply to pre-Mending planeswalkers: the first applies to neowalkers too, the second applies to non-planeswalker immortals, and both still apply to post-Mending oldwalkers.
That's why it doesn't bother me when particular neowalkers are portrayed as being more powerful than particular oldwalkers. Even though a lot of fans get upset at such portrayals, I don't see the issue; neowalkers should be less powerful than oldwalkers on average, but I don't see the differential as an enormous one, and I think it's silly to assume that every single oldwalker was more powerful than every single neowalker. For instance, post-Mending Bolas is probably still vastly more powerful than the majority of pre-Mending planeswalkers, and post-Mending Nahiri stated that despite being mortal now, she was more powerful than ever in terms of magicial ability. (If oldwalkers had vast magical power simply by virtue of being oldwalkers, this would seem strange, but if their mystical prowess was simply a result of their longevity and experience, then it makes perfect sense: Even though she's no longer immortal, Nahiri still has 6,000 years of magical expertise to draw on, so while she's easier to injure or kill now, there's no reason she should be weaker overall.) Post-Mending Sorin can probably recover from injuries that would incapacitate or kill a lot of pre-Mending planeswalkers, since his nature as an elder vampire grants him even greater regenerative capabilities than oldwalkers had. Likewise, Gideon could probably survive attacks that many oldwalkers couldn't, due to his near-impenetrable shield, and if Jace is indeed the second most powerful telepath in the multiverse (even if he's a very distant second to Nicol Bolas) then I'd imagine he could mentally annihilate any oldwalkers who didn't have sufficiently strong mental defenses. So I have no problem with Nissa and Chandra being able to kill Eldrazi Titans that Sorin and Nahiri couldn't hurt, since none of Sorin or Nahiri's powers involve channeling energy or dealing damage on that scale (it's also worth mentioning that Nahiri was only a few decades old when she sealed the Titans, meaning she didn't have anywhere near her current levels of power, and was probably more comparable to a century-old planeswalker like Nissa than to her current self). I'm sure Freyalise and Jaya would've been able to kill Ulamog and Kozilek if they'd had the knowledge and preparation to utilize a similar strategy (though for that matter, post-Mending Jaya could probably manage the feat too).
I'm not saying that Lord Windgrace wouldn't beat Ajani at least 9 times out of 10, I'm saying that it would still be a challenging fight for him.
For further clarification, let's look at the actual abilities that oldwalkers had simply by virtue of being oldwalkers, and how they differ from the abilities that neowalkers have.
Somatic Control: The single most obvious difference between oldwalkers and neowalkers is that prior to the Mending, planeswalkers had a great degree of control over their own physical forms. The bodies of oldwalkers were described as being extensions of their will, which some have interpreted as meaning they were completely non-corporeal beings who simply chose to take on physical form out of convenience; however, the evidence contradicts this interpretation, as oldwalkers were still reliant on having a physical (and almost always organic) body to survive, and would cease to exist if that body was destroyed. Nonetheless, oldwalkers' bodies were extensions of their will in the sense that they had near-absolute conscious control of the physiological makeup of their body.
Immortality: Oldwalkers could prevent themselves from aging, and survive indefinitely without food, water, or any kind of sustenance (although Sorin still needed to consume blood as a result of his vampiric nature, possibly because his hunger was magical in nature rather than purely physical). I'm not sure if they could survive without air, though some oldwalkers were able to survive in Phyrexia's toxic atmosphere without protection; my guess would be that they still needed to breathe by default, but could consciously choose to waive their requirement for air, likely for a prolonged but not indefinite amount of time. However, some of the old stories actually do show planeswalkers dying of old age, which suggests that this may have been a consciously controlled ability rather than an inherent trait that was automatically active.
Invulnerability/Regeneration: Oldwalkers could survive injuries that would be fatal to any normal person, and they could heal any damage to their bodies almost instantaneously with merely a thought (one of the most extreme cases being when Teferi literally pulled himself back together after being dismembered and decapitated by Bolas). They could also cure themselves of any poisons and diseases they were afflicted by.
However, they were not completely invincible: They could still die if they suffered damage that was severe and/or precise enough to instantly kill them (the most obvious example would be complete vaporization, though even something as mundane as being stabbed through the head could do the trick; effectively, they could be killed by anything that destroyed their brain). They could also be killed if they kept sustaining injuries faster than they could heal themselves, or if they were simply damaged so much that they ran out of the mental/magical energy necessary to keep healing. They could also be stunned, incapacitated, or knocked unconscious from sufficiently powerful attacks, or from pain or exhaustion. (People often refer to the fact that Urza was able to survive as a severed head, but that was because his life force was stored in the dual powerstones embedded in his eyes, not because he was an oldwalker. He was effectively a powerstone lich, and his capabilities shouldn't be taken as an indication of what oldwalkers in general were capable of, no more than Ashiok surviving without the top half of her head should be taken as an indication that Jace could do the same. Teferi was clearly shown to be dying when Bolas decapitated him, and while it's impressive that he didn't die instantly like a normal human, he would've died in very short order if he hadn't been allowed to heal himself; it was obvious that he couldn't have survived indefinitely in that state.)
Additionally, their ability to heal was consciously controlled, so if an oldwalker wasn't conscious to heal themselves (or simply chose not to, as in Serra's case), they could potentially die from even a relatively minor injury. Similarly, they could probably die from a poison that displayed no symptoms before killing them, since they wouldn't know to cure themselves, but that's just conjecture on my part.
Shapeshifting: Oldwalkers could change size and take on alternate forms at will. They could use this ability to alter their appearance, change their apparent species, transform into animals, assume monstrous forms, or grow to gigantic proportions. (I've heard that one of the old stories featured a planeswalker who transformed herself into a pavilion, which sounds like the single most impressive example of their shapeshifting abilities, but the MtG wiki says that the pavilion was "entirely illusory" and that she was merely hiding her true body within the illusion, in which case it was nothing that a neowalker like Jace or even an ordinary mind-mage like Raff couldn't do.) Once again, this ability seemed to be consciously controlled, as oldwalkers would automatically revert to their original forms when incapacitated or killed. They did not seem to be capable of permanently altering their true forms (some of the old stories made a point of the fact that Leshrac was physically weak despite his vast magical power, and he could only temporarily assume more combat-capable forms; Tevesh Szat and Ob Nixilis were permanently transformed into demonic beings, but this was a result of corruption by dark magic, rather than an innate oldwalker ability).
Planeswalking: The single most definitive ability of any planeswalker, pre-Mending or post-Mending, is their ability to traverse the Blind Eternities and travel between planes at will. This ability also allows them to teleport to different locations of the plane they're on, and to draw mana from lands on other planes.
Prior to the Mending, planeswalking was a lot easier, to the point where planeswalkers could teleport or planeswalk instantaneously. (Perhaps the most extreme demonstration of this ability was Urza casually repositioning his body at different points around a room in order to face different directions, since it required no more effort than simply turning his head would've. However, this was also related to the fact that Urza's consciousness was stored in the mightstone and the weakstone, rather than in his physical body.) After the Mending, planeswalking became significantly more difficult, to the point where it takes a significant amount of time and concentration for a planeswalker to teleport or travel between planes (they can still instantaneously planeswalk if they're in mortal danger or in a state of extreme emotional distress, but this isn't a consistent or reliable ability, and they often don't have conscious control over their destination when it does happen).
Interestingly, it's been stated that this difference didn't result from any change in the nature of planeswalkers, but rather from a change to the nature of the Blind Eternities themselves: Nahiri explicitly stated that she didn't feel any 'weaker' in terms of her ability to breach the walls between planes, but the walls themselves were 'stronger' now. This may be why interplanar portal technology has become even more difficult to develop since the Mending, and why it now seems to be completely impossible for interplanar portals to transport living beings (other than planeswalkers) without protection.
Interplanar Summoning: Another difference between oldwalkers and neowalkers is that pre-Mending planeswalkers were able to summon people and things from other planes, whereas post-Mending planeswalkers absolutely cannot, to the point where even an extremely powerful former oldwalker like Bolas needed to orchestrate an elaborate 60 year plan to find a way to work around this limitation. Again, this is technically a result of the Blind Eternities becoming harder to traverse, rather than a result of planeswalkers becoming less powerful; nonetheless, other than the changes to the physical nature of planeswalkers' bodies, this is probably the single most definitive change in planeswalkers' capabilities that's resulted from the Mending.
Planar Creation: Perhaps most impressive of all, pre-Mending planeswalkers had the ability to create their own artificial planes within the Blind Eternities, bringing miniature worlds into existence and shaping them through sheer force of will. However, these demi-planes had to be continually sustained by the planeswalker who created them or else they would rapidly destabilize, collapsing back into the Blind Eternities and ceasing to exist. Because of this limitation, and because of the immense amount of time and effort and energy it took to create demi-planes, oldwalkers only rarely used this ability.
Some extraordinarily powerful oldwalkers were able to create true planes that would remain stable and continue to exist in their absence. However, this was astronomically rare, as it required the use of extremely complicated and powerful magic.
Meh Jace is third at best. Ugin is also better.
Also yeah Jace is strong but most oldwalkers had some degree of telepathy/mental protection and Jace has poor physical defenses ergo any AOE spell would one shot him.
Gideon doesn't have regen though so yeah maybe he could he take a harder hit them most Oldwalkers maybe but they can regenerate from nothing. He cannot.
Its the difference between say Wolverine and Colossus. Wolverine can recover from a lot of damage but is not super durable. Whereas Colossus is super durable but if he gets hurt he cannot instantly regen it. I don't think Sorin has greater recovery now then the average Oldwalker.
Ob Nixilis also ran roughshod over most of the Gatewatch. He won a 3 v 1. Which does not suggest great things for the average Oldwalker vs Neowalker and I argue that Ob is far closer to average then oldwalker then the gatewatch is to average neowalker.
The only Oldwalker who has dragged down the Average so far has been Lili. But she is not average, she is easily the weakest known Oldwalker and not the smartest either. There is a reason Sorin gave her a once over and then ignored her. He didn't view her as a real threat or a potential threat which is not a ringing endorsement for her.
The problem with the Titans is Walkers got weaker after the mending. The Titans presumably did not. Plus you know them going down to a Fireball I don't care how maximized it is is just lame. Nissa and Chandra go from taking out two Titans to struggling against Baral....I know some power inconsistency is part of the story but that is a bridge too far for me.
That said I don't disagree with the notion that Bolas and Ugin should not be better then every other Walker especially Oldwalkers at their specialties such as not a better Temporal Mage then Teferi, a better Lithomancer then Nahiri and so on. Because if they are then well its not going to be especially good writing when Bolas loses.
Experience and Expertise should count for something.
On the subject of somatic control and related abilities. Igniting freed walkers from the need of a body and the various weaknesses tied to that, but only as they could understand and except. Most walkers needed to breath, not because they actually needed oxygen, but because they were used to breathing so they subconsciously needed to breath. Their 'base' physical forms were how they precieved themselves rather than an actual physical core. The walker who built phyrexia left behind a dragon corpse despite not being a dragon. Urza is a great example of what walkers 'could' be capable of; he would stretch his arms out to grab items not by shapshifting but because he had little concern with his physical form so it simply moved as he willed it in defiance of physics or biology. He also had to consciously blink and keep his eyes actual eyes, overall being human was a chore for Urza. Though Urza was a mental case long before he ascended, so its reasonable to say that in order to truly utilize the powers an oldwalker had required an unhealthy helping of insanity.
Meh Jace is third at best. Ugin is also better.
Also yeah Jace is strong but most oldwalkers had some degree of telepathy/mental protection and Jace has poor physical defenses ergo any AOE spell would one shot him.
Gideon doesn't have regen though so yeah maybe he could he take a harder hit them most Oldwalkers maybe but they can regenerate from nothing. He cannot.
Its the difference between say Wolverine and Colossus. Wolverine can recover from a lot of damage but is not super durable. Whereas Colossus is super durable but if he gets hurt he cannot instantly regen it. I don't think Sorin has greater recovery now then the average Oldwalker.
Ob Nixilis also ran roughshod over most of the Gatewatch. He won a 3 v 1. Which does not suggest great things for the average Oldwalker vs Neowalker and I argue that Ob is far closer to average then oldwalker then the gatewatch is to average neowalker.
The only Oldwalker who has dragged down the Average so far has been Lili. But she is not average, she is easily the weakest known Oldwalker and not the smartest either. There is a reason Sorin gave her a once over and then ignored her. He didn't view her as a real threat or a potential threat which is not a ringing endorsement for her.
The problem with the Titans is Walkers got weaker after the mending. The Titans presumably did not. Plus you know them going down to a Fireball I don't care how maximized it is is just lame. Nissa and Chandra go from taking out two Titans to struggling against Baral....I know some power inconsistency is part of the story but that is a bridge too far for me.
That said I don't disagree with the notion that Bolas and Ugin should not be better then every other Walker especially Oldwalkers at their specialties such as not a better Temporal Mage then Teferi, a better Lithomancer then Nahiri and so on. Because if they are then well its not going to be especially good writing when Bolas loses.
Experience and Expertise should count for something.
You're right that Ugin is a better telepath than Jace, the statement about him being the second best telepath in the multiverse came from one of the stories (I think Vraska said it, and she doesn't know Ugin exists). I'm sure Kefnet was better too, for that matter. Still, I'd imagine that in terms of telepathy alone, Jace would've outclassed a great deal of oldwalkers. And I agree with your Colossus/Wolverine comparison; Gideon is invulnerable in a different way than oldwalkers were. Gideon couldn't have survived being completely dismembered by Bolas like Teferi did, but pre-Mending Teferi probably couldn't have survived taking a direct hit from Ulamog like Gideon did; in all likelihood, he would've either disintegrated like everyone and everything else that Ulamog touched, or he would've been instantly killed by the sheer force of the blow. (Though obviously Teferi wouldn't have been stupid enough or arrogant enough to try fighting an Eldrazi Titan hand-to-hand in the first place.) My broader point was that neowalkers (and some especially powerful non-planeswalker mages, for that matter) can very well be superior to the average oldwalker when it comes to their specific areas of expertise, and powerful neowalkers are likely superior to the average oldwalker in general, despite lacking some oldwalker-specific capabilities.
I would also consider pre-Mending Liliana to be more representative of the typical oldwalker than Ob Nixilis, who went around the multiverse killing other oldwalkers and thus was presumably at least above-average by oldwalker standards, even if he wasn't top-tier like Urza and Bolas. (It's worth noting that Ob Nixilis was only ever defeated by Nahiri, who herself was one of the most powerful oldwalkers in the multiverse.) Major characters like Taysir, Freyalise, and Windgrace might've been especially powerful, but when you look at side characters like Dyfed, Feroz, and that illusory pavilion girl, they certainly didn't seem very impressive.
As for your problems with the destruction of the Eldrazi Titans, I get where you're coming from, but it's not like Chandra just cast fireball and killed them. Nissa channeled an entire plane's worth of mana (a particularly large and mana-rich plane, at that) into Chandra's spell, almost killing herself and Chandra in the process. That's almost Death Star levels of pure destructive power, on par with the Null Moon blast that helped to destroy Yawgmoth. The sheer amount of energy involved there would've destroyed almost anything. And despite all that, it wouldn't have actually done anything more than briefly inconvenience Ulamog and Kozilek if they hadn't been bound to the plane by the Hedron network. And it's still debatable if Ulamog and Kozilek were truly destroyed.
Urza is a great example of what walkers 'could' be capable of; he would stretch his arms out to grab items not by shapshifting but because he had little concern with his physical form so it simply moved as he willed it in defiance of physics or biology. He also had to consciously blink and keep his eyes actual eyes, overall being human was a chore for Urza. Though Urza was a mental case long before he ascended, so its reasonable to say that in order to truly utilize the powers an oldwalker had required an unhealthy helping of insanity.
Again, Urza is a special case, since his soul was contained inside his twin powerstones. I definitely don't consider him an example of what all oldwalkers could've been capable of, I see him as a wholly unique and exceptional case.
That wasn't something that all oldwalkers could do. To the best of my knowledge, only a small handful of especially powerful oldwalkers were able to create planes from scratch. I can only think of four examples of artificial planes - Serra's Realm, Phyrexia, Mirrodin, and Rath - and the latter was created by Yawgmoth, who wasn't even a planeswalker. If Bolas created his Meditation Plane (which I'm not sure about), that would make five.
EDIT: You're correct. It's obscure as hell, but that was apparently something all oldwalkers could do. Edited my other post to add it.
No, that was something all Old-walkers could do. It took effort but it was stated by Dyfed that creation of planes something all of them could do, most just did not because it required them to stay near that plane or it would collapse which meant giving up the biggest advantage to what they are.
Meh Jace is third at best. Ugin is also better.
Also yeah Jace is strong but most oldwalkers had some degree of telepathy/mental protection and Jace has poor physical defenses ergo any AOE spell would one shot him.
Gideon doesn't have regen though so yeah maybe he could he take a harder hit them most Oldwalkers maybe but they can regenerate from nothing. He cannot.
Its the difference between say Wolverine and Colossus. Wolverine can recover from a lot of damage but is not super durable. Whereas Colossus is super durable but if he gets hurt he cannot instantly regen it. I don't think Sorin has greater recovery now then the average Oldwalker.
Ob Nixilis also ran roughshod over most of the Gatewatch. He won a 3 v 1. Which does not suggest great things for the average Oldwalker vs Neowalker and I argue that Ob is far closer to average then oldwalker then the gatewatch is to average neowalker.
The only Oldwalker who has dragged down the Average so far has been Lili. But she is not average, she is easily the weakest known Oldwalker and not the smartest either. There is a reason Sorin gave her a once over and then ignored her. He didn't view her as a real threat or a potential threat which is not a ringing endorsement for her.
The problem with the Titans is Walkers got weaker after the mending. The Titans presumably did not. Plus you know them going down to a Fireball I don't care how maximized it is is just lame. Nissa and Chandra go from taking out two Titans to struggling against Baral....I know some power inconsistency is part of the story but that is a bridge too far for me.
That said I don't disagree with the notion that Bolas and Ugin should not be better then every other Walker especially Oldwalkers at their specialties such as not a better Temporal Mage then Teferi, a better Lithomancer then Nahiri and so on. Because if they are then well its not going to be especially good writing when Bolas loses.
Experience and Expertise should count for something.
You're right that Ugin is a better telepath than Jace, the statement about him being the second best telepath in the multiverse came from one of the stories (I think Vraska said it, and she doesn't know Ugin exists). I'm sure Kefnet was better too, for that matter. Still, I'd imagine that in terms of telepathy alone, Jace would've outclassed a great deal of oldwalkers. And I agree with your Colossus/Wolverine comparison; Gideon is invulnerable in a different way than oldwalkers were. Gideon couldn't have survived being completely dismembered by Bolas like Teferi did, but pre-Mending Teferi probably couldn't have survived taking a direct hit from Ulamog like Gideon did; in all likelihood, he would've either disintegrated like everyone and everything else that Ulamog touched, or he would've been instantly killed by the sheer force of the blow. (Though obviously Teferi wouldn't have been stupid enough or arrogant enough to try fighting an Eldrazi Titan hand-to-hand in the first place.) My broader point was that neowalkers (and some especially powerful non-planeswalker mages, for that matter) can very well be superior to the average oldwalker when it comes to their specific areas of expertise, and powerful neowalkers are likely superior to the average oldwalker in general, despite lacking some oldwalker-specific capabilities.
I would also consider pre-Mending Liliana to be more representative of the typical oldwalker than Ob Nixilis, who went around the multiverse killing other oldwalkers and thus was presumably at least above-average by oldwalker standards, even if he wasn't top-tier like Urza and Bolas. (It's worth noting that Ob Nixilis was only ever defeated by Nahiri, who herself was one of the most powerful oldwalkers in the multiverse.) Major characters like Taysir, Freyalise, and Windgrace might've been especially powerful, but when you look at side characters like Dyfed, Feroz, and that illusory pavilion girl, they certainly didn't seem very impressive.
As for your problems with the destruction of the Eldrazi Titans, I get where you're coming from, but it's not like Chandra just cast fireball and killed them. Nissa channeled an entire plane's worth of mana (a particularly large and mana-rich plane, at that) into Chandra's spell, almost killing herself and Chandra in the process. That's almost Death Star levels of pure destructive power, on par with the Null Moon blast that helped to destroy Yawgmoth. The sheer amount of energy involved there would've destroyed almost anything. And despite all that, it wouldn't have actually done anything more than briefly inconvenience Ulamog and Kozilek if they hadn't been bound to the plane by the Hedron network. And it's still debatable if Ulamog and Kozilek were truly destroyed.
Urza is a great example of what walkers 'could' be capable of; he would stretch his arms out to grab items not by shapshifting but because he had little concern with his physical form so it simply moved as he willed it in defiance of physics or biology. He also had to consciously blink and keep his eyes actual eyes, overall being human was a chore for Urza. Though Urza was a mental case long before he ascended, so its reasonable to say that in order to truly utilize the powers an oldwalker had required an unhealthy helping of insanity.
Again, Urza is a special case, since his soul was contained inside his twin powerstones. I definitely don't consider him an example of what all oldwalkers could've been capable of, I see him as a wholly unique and exceptional case.
I am not going to comment on Gids blocking that strike because yeah I think that was BS personally.
Well sure but I am more fine with Yawgmoth going down like that because the Heroes paid a price to beat Yawgmoth and it took Urza millennium to do it and far more of a price was paid by Urza, Gerrard and Friends to win then the Gatewatch has ever paid. The End Game against Yawgmoth devastated Dominaria. Cost 7 Oldwalkers out of the 9 Titans. Half The Weatherlight Crew and the Ship Itself. With the leads of the franchise in Urza and Gerrard paying the ultimate price.
What do the Gatewatch lose to launch that Fireball on Two Eldrazi Titans? Absolutely nothing. The only positive is Emrakul sealed herself. There were consequences for the Oldwalkers and the Heroes of old, the Gatewatch doesn't really suffer much in the way of that for their bad decisions much less the right decisions.
As for the Gatewatch. Lili is clearly one of the weakest Oldwalkers or at least the weakest that has been a character of note. Not like we haven't seen weaksauce Neowalkers, I mean sheesh Samut is basically just Captain America. Whereas the Gatewatch is a team of basically the strongest Neowalkers around. I would say only Gideon isn't close to the top Neowalkers of his color cause Elspeth was just a beast and he has Ajani in his color space. But Chandra, Nissa and Jace are easily the best of the best so far in their colors or at worst top 2.
Sorin as an oldwalker created Avacyn, is this some kind of power that newwalkers coudn't do? Not an illusion, not a summoning....actually creating ex-nihilo living, sentient beings.
I think Sorin said he couldn't do it post Mending so yeah I am going to say that is Oldwalker only. I mean Ugin, Bolas and Serra have all done similar.
But were oldwalkers able also to completely annihilate worlds or universes other than creating them? I don't recall anything like that, but I ask on who's more expert with the storyline.
Ob Nixilis origin story has him killing a whole world and then he says he did it to others.
Bolas has also claimed to end whole planes. And he did have the power to crack Dominaria without an Anchor so he is probably not exaggerating.
Urza turned Serra's Realm into a Power Source to power the Weatherlight. Granted the plane was already collapsing.
One last thing if you don't mind and I'm done for now : do you recall anything related to the power of resurrection? Not in the necromancer style (brainless zombies) but a true return in world in both mind and soul and body integrity, in a more "christian-style". Bolas was able to resurrect himself, but I wonder if also for other Planeswalkers were able to resurrect themselves or other people.
Eh Bolas wasn't really dead. His spirit was trapped outside of Normal time and space.
Oldwalkers could regenerate from a lot. However, I don't remember any true Resurrection when a character was really dead. Not just ripped to shreds or had a spirit lingering.
If your dead you stay that way at least so far in this series. Theros has a loophole but outside of that I don't remember any others.
Being an old walker did not itself grant unimaginable power.
It gave them quite a few gifts, but the power is an eventuality of these gifts, not an inherent property.
The biggest difference between oldwalkers and neowalkers is that planeswalkers were functionally immortal prior to the Mending
This is one of the most quantifiable difference between gods and men.
Old walkers lost two main things: Immortality and the ability to gain infinite knowledge. The former making the latter possible, and it's new limits extremely relevant. There is now a literal limit to how much knowledge a neo walker can have - even if he is immortal. At a certain point, new knowledge replaces old; power is forgotten. Interestingly, they've only touched on this a few times, and never fully quantified it. BUT there is a restriction on total knowledge, which is one of the ways they are restricted in total power.
The Hour of Revelation
The dragon opened his eyes and every mortal old enough to walk dissipated into the sky.
While Bolas is still powerful enough that he can toy with the Gatewatch with little fear of them being able to defeat him, he is, as he says, a mere shadow of what he once was.
Bolas has only a fraction of the power he used to have. Why? It isn't just a power cap.
He literally forgot more about magic than a thousand life times could begin to understand.
His most valuable possession was his immense knowledge and experience—and he's seeing that slipping away, like puzzle pieces floating out of the intricate jigsaw puzzle of his memory. The Mending was the salvation of the Multiverse, in that it sealed the time rifts that threatened to obliterate everything. Yet that healing event has effectively put limits on Bolas's capacity for power, encroaching on his ability to hold inside of him all the vast knowledge that he once held. At first his mortality caused the eerie feeling of remembering that he had forgotten something. Soon it may bring the even darker feeling—the realization that he has been forgotten things he doesn't even know he once knew.
It's not the inherent properties, it's the consequences of those properties.
This is why Urza and many of the old wakers never seemed even remotely as powerful as Bolas and other god walkers.
They were mere children to him. Infants who had only scratched the surface of what they could be capable of.
For all their power that people reveled in, they knew nothing compared to his millennia of learning.
Now? He's forgotten more than most walkers ever knew.
He's still quite powerful, but he is literally a fraction of the mage he once was.
I wonder for example that if Ugin couldn't be just resurrected with white mana (since his essence/soul was still alive and communicating with Sarkhan) instead of all this time travel mess just to bring him back...
Sorin makes a point about this being impossible because his essence was in fact dead.
Blue mists of energy began to swirl around Sorin. He kneeled down to brush the snow from the solid ice below. There, within the darkness of the ice, gleamed Ugin's unmistakable skull. It looked at Sorin through the dead hollows of his eyes. Sorin reached out and felt for any sign of life, any shred of Ugin's spirit, but there was only a palpable void.
Sorin gazed into Ugin's black sockets. "There's more life in me than in you, dragon."
Sorin pressed his forehead against the ice and spat a curse into the snow as the reality sank in.
On the journey down the cliff into the canyon, he had held onto the hope that Ugin's spirit had not been destroyed. He had hoped there would be something that could be resurrected, a shred of consciousness that could be pulled back from the brink of annihilation. But Sorin's hopes were snuffed out like a feeble flame.
Ugin wasn't communicating with Sarkhan. A message Ugin left behind was playing on loop in Sarkhan's head, not at all the same as communication.
Yawgmoth is.. complicated, but much of his power he is known for comes from the original Phyrexian plane. Similar to how Theros can empower a mortal into literal godhood, Phyrexia bestows godlike power upon it's "controller". When Yagmoth bound himself to the plane, he became a "Phyrexian God" so to speak. Theros grants its gods power that rivaled that of neo-walkers. It wasn't fully quantified, but Phyrexia granted him at least as much power, if not more. This was compounded by the fact that Phyrexia grants its god the power to mold the entire plane to his will, etc.
It is important to note that Yawgmoth spent nine thousand years in exile. He used this time to amass power, both in his army and his own personal power. At no time during this period did Yawgmoth face a planeswalker head on outside of his dominion. (And on his plane, he still often relied on trickery, etc). When he finally came to Dominaria, he still didn't meet his foes face to face. He did so in a giant death cloud form that wasn't really susceptible to your average killing spell, and after Urza was just a decapitated head. Whether he could have actually stood toe to toe with a full fledged planeswalker then.. we may never know, but I suspect he orchestrated everything the way he did because he didn't want to know the answer to that question.
If I think about Xenagos for example, his transformation from planeswalker to God was really an upgrade with most upsides overall?
Again, not fully quantified*, but the Theros Gods are considered to be at least comparable power to a Neo Planeswalker, if not outright stronger, on Theros.
In order to kill Xenagos, Eslepth needed the Godsend - a weapon so powerful it literally cut through the fabric of the Nyx itself. Even then, he had all but defeated her when she threw the Godsend at him. It struck an arrow head in his chest that Nylea had shot him with before his ascension. The arrowhead exploded within his chest. It was also implied that Xenagos was not fully ascended either.
Toe to toe without the Godsend, Elspeth would have lost.
Perhaps another Planeswalker could have bested him, perhaps not.
At minimum, Xenagos the God was as powerful as a Neo Walker.
**A lot of these things are specifically not quantified. Many times this is fully intentional, since once they add specifics they are bound by them. Leaving room for interpretation leaves them room to adjust things to how they want to story to unfold later.
---
But the gods give a good baseline for the original Old Walker question.
Old-Walker Bolas tore through the Amonkhet gods like playthings, and the Gods definitely appeared more powerful than the Neo-Walker Gatewatch.
Of course, Neo-Bolas easy tore up the Gatewatch, so ... still less quantified with plenty of wiggle room for later.
I am not going to comment on Gids blocking that strike because yeah I think that was BS personally.
Well sure but I am more fine with Yawgmoth going down like that because the Heroes paid a price to beat Yawgmoth and it took Urza millennium to do it and far more of a price was paid by Urza, Gerrard and Friends to win then the Gatewatch has ever paid. The End Game against Yawgmoth devastated Dominaria. Cost 7 Oldwalkers out of the 9 Titans. Half The Weatherlight Crew and the Ship Itself. With the leads of the franchise in Urza and Gerrard paying the ultimate price.
What do the Gatewatch lose to launch that Fireball on Two Eldrazi Titans? Absolutely nothing. The only positive is Emrakul sealed herself. There were consequences for the Oldwalkers and the Heroes of old, the Gatewatch doesn't really suffer much in the way of that for their bad decisions much less the right decisions.
As for the Gatewatch. Lili is clearly one of the weakest Oldwalkers or at least the weakest that has been a character of note. Not like we haven't seen weaksauce Neowalkers, I mean sheesh Samut is basically just Captain America. Whereas the Gatewatch is a team of basically the strongest Neowalkers around. I would say only Gideon isn't close to the top Neowalkers of his color cause Elspeth was just a beast and he has Ajani in his color space. But Chandra, Nissa and Jace are easily the best of the best so far in their colors or at worst top 2.
From a narrative perspective, I completely agree with you. Having the Gatewatch defeat two Eldrazi Titans without really having to sacrifice anything in the process is bad storytelling. I was just saying that in terms of the established rules of the MtG universe, the method that was used to destroy Ulamog and Kozilek does make sense.
I'm not sure why you view Liliana as being particularly weak. She's able to raise and command zombies by the thousands, create flesh golems from body parts lying around within a matter of seconds through sheer force of will, de-animate or steal control of zombies that were animated by other necromancers, and release blasts of pure necrotic energy that instantly kill living beings and destroy organic matter. That's a lot more than the average necromancer could do. She could potentially devastate a plane within a very short amount of time, if she were so inclined.
Sorin as an oldwalker created Avacyn, is this some kind of power that newwalkers coudn't do? Not an illusion, not a summoning....actually creating ex-nihilo living, sentient beings.
I think Sorin said he couldn't do it post Mending so yeah I am going to say that is Oldwalker only. I mean Ugin, Bolas and Serra have all done similar.
It took Sorin decades to create Avacyn. The process required extensive research and elaborate magicial rituals, and permanently cost Sorin a significant portion of his own life essence. He said that he wouldn't be able to re-create a new Avacyn, but that wasn't a result of the Mending; even before the Mending, he wouldn't have been able to perform a feat like that again, as he noted in his original confrontation with Nahiri.
Now, if Sorin hadn't already performed that once-in-an-immortal-lifetime ritual prior to Mending, it's debatable whether he still would've been able to do so after the Mending. I'd imagine a lot of people would say he couldn't, but I'd argue that he could, since it was his ability to manipulate life energy and his knowledge of ritual magic that allowed him to create Avacyn, rather than any particular trait inherent to oldwalkers. At any rate, I don't think most oldwalkers would've been able to create a fully sapient living being from nothing like Sorin did, and it certainly shouldn't be taken as something that all oldwalkers were capable of.
But were oldwalkers able also to completely annihilate worlds or universes other than creating them? I don't recall anything like that, but I ask on who's more expert with the storyline.
Ob Nixilis origin story has him killing a whole world and then he says he did it to others.
Bolas has also claimed to end whole planes. And he did have the power to crack Dominaria without an Anchor so he is probably not exaggerating.
Urza turned Serra's Realm into a Power Source to power the Weatherlight. Granted the plane was already collapsing.
Again, the vast majority of oldwalkers couldn't really create true worlds, they could basically just create tiny pocket dimensions in the Blind Eternities that immediately dissolved once they weren't being consciously sustained anymore. It was vanishingly rare for oldwalkers to create full-fledged planes that would be stable in their absence - to the point that there are only three known examples of it happening in MtG history - and only extraordinarily powerful oldwalkers like Karn could accomplish it.
Oldwalkers could regenerate from a lot. However, I don't remember any true Resurrection when a character was really dead. Not just ripped to shreds or had a spirit lingering.
If your dead you stay that way at least so far in this series. Theros has a loophole but outside of that I don't remember any others.
Mmm. How do you explain the "white" power of resurrection? (Angel of Glory's Rise, Breath of Life, Emeria Shepherd, Marshal's Anthem, Reya Dawnbringer, Yomiji, Who Bars the Way, etc). Seems that white, especially managed by clerics and angels, are able to resurrect virtually anyone, and not as brainless marionette's but as the same people with their original mind that were before (the flavor text of Yomiji is very explicit on this). What's the powerand limit of white mana about resurrection, and if it could be managed by an angel or spirit, why not a white planeswalker could manage that same power?
Planeswalkers can be resurrected like anyone else (Windgrace tore out Taysir's heart to prevent him from being resurrected by necromancers), but if they're raised as a zombie, they're definitely not going to have their spark anymore. White mana users - whether oldwalkers, neowalkers, or non-planeswalker mages - can cast true resurrection spells, rather than simply raising corpses as mindless zombies, but there are a lot more limitations involved: The body has to be mostly intact, it can't have rotted away and it can't have been vaporized or torn apart. The spirit can't have been destroyed either, and it can't have passed on to the afterlife (on planes where afterlives exist) or been absorbed back into the mana flow of the world (on planes where afterlives don't exist). There's a reason that Yomiji's card depicts a soldier getting up on the battlefield a few minutes after he'd been killed, rather than days or months later.
Being an old walker did not itself grant unimaginable power.
It gave them quite a few gifts, but the power is an eventuality of these gifts, not an inherent property.
Old walkers lost two main things: Immortality and the ability to gain infinite knowledge. The former making the latter possible, and it's new limits extremely relevant. There is now a literal limit to how much knowledge a neo walker can have - even if he is immortal. At a certain point, new knowledge replaces old; power is forgotten. Interestingly, they've only touched on this a few times, and never fully quantified it. BUT there is a restriction on total knowledge, which is one of the ways they are restricted in total power.
It's not the inherent properties, it's the consequences of those properties.
This is why Urza and many of the old wakers never seemed even remotely as powerful as Bolas and other god walkers.
They were mere children to him. Infants who had only scratched the surface of what they could be capable of.
For all their power that people reveled in, they knew nothing compared to his millennia of learning.
Now? He's forgotten more than most walkers ever knew.
He's still quite powerful, but he is literally a fraction of the mage he once was.
I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about, in regards to oldwalkers being able to gain infinite knowledge. Oldwalkers were usually incredibly knowledgeable as a result of their immortality and their travels through the multiverse, as I said in my original post, but I don't remember any oldwalker ever having literally infinite knowledge, or even claiming that they did.
Urza was also one of the most powerful oldwalkers in existence, so I don't think there were many other "god walkers" like Bolas, just Bolas himself and Ugin. Even the other Elder Dragons weren't anywhere close to Bolas' level in terms of power (and it's also debatable whether they were planeswalkers or just especially powerful plane-bound beings).
It's strange to me that Bolas apparently started forgetting things when the Mending happened, since I don't remember that happening to any other oldwalker. There's no indication that Liliana, Sorin, Nahiri, Ob Nixilis, or Ugin ever lost knowledge as a result of the Mending, unless I missed something in one of the earlier post-Mending stories. Which story are those Bolas quotes from?
I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about, in regards to oldwalkers being able to gain infinite knowledge. Oldwalkers were usually incredibly knowledgeable as a result of their immortality and their travels through the multiverse, as I said in my original post, but I don't remember any oldwalker ever having literally infinite knowledge, or even claiming that they did.
Miss-wording on my part. I don't mean to imply they were granted any additional knowledge, but they were able to amass as much as they could. There weren't any constraints or limits.
Urza was also one of the most powerful oldwalkers in existence
I've always questioned these claims. He was one of the most powerful characters in the past story, but there are surprisingly few displays of raw power from Urza. Of course, my memory is crap, so I may be forgetting something awesome, but he rarely did some big powerful thing with raw magic. Urza seemed more like Gandalf. It wasn't his raw potential that made him powerful, it's how he influenced those around him. That, and his ability with machinery and artifice. He created the Titan machines, temporal manipulations, etc. Take the Sylex Blast. Contrary to Urza's Ruinous Blast's depiction, the Sylex Blast had nothing to do with Urza's Power. It was an artifact that unleashed the power, Urza simply activated it. He was strategic, intelligent, and cunning... but not impressively powerful on his own right.
In truth, much of the old storylines make the old walkers appear weaker than the Gatewatch, with the awesome displays of power that the neo walkers show. What they were actually capable of, in post-revisionist storyline, is a separate matter though. Bolas is, unfortunately, one of the only old-walkers that showed what power they could hold. His battle with the Leviathan, for instance, destroyed two thirds of Madara and created a temporal rift; more akin to the Sylex Blast than to any display of magic power that Urza did. Interestingly, this also shows an Old-Waker so powerful that he could match Bolas' strength, battling him for a Month.
It's strange to me that Bolas apparently started forgetting things when the Mending happened, since I don't remember that happening to any other oldwalker. There's no indication that Liliana, Sorin, Nahiri, Ob Nixilis, or Ugin ever lost knowledge as a result of the Mending, unless I missed something in one of the earlier post-Mending stories. Which story are those Bolas quotes from?
It's a quote form The One, The Only, Nicol Bolas.
As I said, rarely touched on, never quantified.
The whole "Neo Walkers aren't as powerful" is completely unspecific.
Oldwalkers could regenerate from a lot. However, I don't remember any true Resurrection when a character was really dead. Not just ripped to shreds or had a spirit lingering.
If your dead you stay that way at least so far in this series. Theros has a loophole but outside of that I don't remember any others.
Mmm. How do you explain the "white" power of resurrection? (Angel of Glory's Rise, Breath of Life, Emeria Shepherd, Marshal's Anthem, Reya Dawnbringer, Yomiji, Who Bars the Way, etc). Seems that white, especially managed by clerics and angels, are able to resurrect virtually anyone, and not as brainless marionette's but as the same people with their original mind that were before (the flavor text of Yomiji is very explicit on this). What's the powerand limit of white mana about resurrection, and if it could be managed by an angel or spirit, why not a white planeswalker could manage that same power?
IIRC Elspeth once brought a whole bunch of Alaran soldiers back from the dead to turn a battle in her favor during the Conflux. Elspeth if you didn't know is a post-mending planeswalker. She was quite embarrassed about it, feeling as if it broke the honor code of Alara apparently (I guess its technically necromancy even if its white). Also, I think, because she could only raise those who had died very shortly before casting the spell, and there were people coming afterward looking for resurrections she could not provide.
Anyway, as Yomiji and Reya Dawnbringer both show, its definitely not just a planeswalker ability. Its powerful white magic that has divine associations, hence why we see angels, gods, and Kami do it. The gods of Theros can do it too, but they prefer to take your face and identity away first. It seems that the trick is you have to have the spirit of the deceased at hand, and if you read Planeshift: Innistrad's lore on Geists, it appears that souls in the multiverse return pretty quickly to the Blind Eternities when they die unless something blocks their way (such as strong emotions like anger in the case of geists, necromantic magic in the case of liches, unique planar phenomena like Nix or the Time Rifts, and of course divine intervention from beings like the Kami and certain angels). Its certainly harder to do it in the lore than in the game; take Yawgmoth's Vile Offering for example. In the game it brings the creature or planeswalker straight back to the battlefield, no questions asked. BUT, in the story this is something Yawgmoth could not actually do. What he really did was shapeshift a part of himself into a clone of Hanna to spy on Gerrard and the Weatherlight. Of course, having to act human for the first time in millennia and not knowing the first thing about this woman, Gerrard caught onto the deception pretty quickly.
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The biggest difference between oldwalkers and neowalkers is that planeswalkers were functionally immortal prior to the Mending, since they didn't age and they were significantly more difficult to kill (although this still applies to planeswalkers like Sorin and Ugin, who are completely ageless and nearly impossible to kill as a result of their species). Aside from that and their shapeshifting abilities, many oldwalkers were extremely powerful mages, but their power came from their mastery over magic, not from any innate aspect of their nature as planeswalkers. They tended to be significantly more powerful than mortal mages for two reasons: First, their ability to travel between planes enabled them to learn a greater variety of spells and granted them access to vastly more sources of mana than any planebound mage. And second, they usually lived for centuries or millennia, which gave them vastly more time to learn and practice and perfect their magical abilities. But these reasons don't exclusively apply to pre-Mending planeswalkers: the first applies to neowalkers too, the second applies to non-planeswalker immortals, and both still apply to post-Mending oldwalkers.
That's why it doesn't bother me when particular neowalkers are portrayed as being more powerful than particular oldwalkers. Even though a lot of fans get upset at such portrayals, I don't see the issue; neowalkers should be less powerful than oldwalkers on average, but I don't see the differential as an enormous one, and I think it's silly to assume that every single oldwalker was more powerful than every single neowalker. For instance, post-Mending Bolas is probably still vastly more powerful than the majority of pre-Mending planeswalkers, and post-Mending Nahiri stated that despite being mortal now, she was more powerful than ever in terms of magicial ability. (If oldwalkers had vast magical power simply by virtue of being oldwalkers, this would seem strange, but if their mystical prowess was simply a result of their longevity and experience, then it makes perfect sense: Even though she's no longer immortal, Nahiri still has 6,000 years of magical expertise to draw on, so while she's easier to injure or kill now, there's no reason she should be weaker overall.) Post-Mending Sorin can probably recover from injuries that would incapacitate or kill a lot of pre-Mending planeswalkers, since his nature as an elder vampire grants him even greater regenerative capabilities than oldwalkers had. Likewise, Gideon could probably survive attacks that many oldwalkers couldn't, due to his near-impenetrable shield, and if Jace is indeed the second most powerful telepath in the multiverse (even if he's a very distant second to Nicol Bolas) then I'd imagine he could mentally annihilate any oldwalkers who didn't have sufficiently strong mental defenses. So I have no problem with Nissa and Chandra being able to kill Eldrazi Titans that Sorin and Nahiri couldn't hurt, since none of Sorin or Nahiri's powers involve channeling energy or dealing damage on that scale (it's also worth mentioning that Nahiri was only a few decades old when she sealed the Titans, meaning she didn't have anywhere near her current levels of power, and was probably more comparable to a century-old planeswalker like Nissa than to her current self). I'm sure Freyalise and Jaya would've been able to kill Ulamog and Kozilek if they'd had the knowledge and preparation to utilize a similar strategy (though for that matter, post-Mending Jaya could probably manage the feat too).
I'm not saying that Lord Windgrace wouldn't beat Ajani at least 9 times out of 10, I'm saying that it would still be a challenging fight for him.
Somatic Control: The single most obvious difference between oldwalkers and neowalkers is that prior to the Mending, planeswalkers had a great degree of control over their own physical forms. The bodies of oldwalkers were described as being extensions of their will, which some have interpreted as meaning they were completely non-corporeal beings who simply chose to take on physical form out of convenience; however, the evidence contradicts this interpretation, as oldwalkers were still reliant on having a physical (and almost always organic) body to survive, and would cease to exist if that body was destroyed. Nonetheless, oldwalkers' bodies were extensions of their will in the sense that they had near-absolute conscious control of the physiological makeup of their body.
- Immortality: Oldwalkers could prevent themselves from aging, and survive indefinitely without food, water, or any kind of sustenance (although Sorin still needed to consume blood as a result of his vampiric nature, possibly because his hunger was magical in nature rather than purely physical). I'm not sure if they could survive without air, though some oldwalkers were able to survive in Phyrexia's toxic atmosphere without protection; my guess would be that they still needed to breathe by default, but could consciously choose to waive their requirement for air, likely for a prolonged but not indefinite amount of time. However, some of the old stories actually do show planeswalkers dying of old age, which suggests that this may have been a consciously controlled ability rather than an inherent trait that was automatically active.
- Invulnerability/Regeneration: Oldwalkers could survive injuries that would be fatal to any normal person, and they could heal any damage to their bodies almost instantaneously with merely a thought (one of the most extreme cases being when Teferi literally pulled himself back together after being dismembered and decapitated by Bolas). They could also cure themselves of any poisons and diseases they were afflicted by.
However, they were not completely invincible: They could still die if they suffered damage that was severe and/or precise enough to instantly kill them (the most obvious example would be complete vaporization, though even something as mundane as being stabbed through the head could do the trick; effectively, they could be killed by anything that destroyed their brain). They could also be killed if they kept sustaining injuries faster than they could heal themselves, or if they were simply damaged so much that they ran out of the mental/magical energy necessary to keep healing. They could also be stunned, incapacitated, or knocked unconscious from sufficiently powerful attacks, or from pain or exhaustion. (People often refer to the fact that Urza was able to survive as a severed head, but that was because his life force was stored in the dual powerstones embedded in his eyes, not because he was an oldwalker. He was effectively a powerstone lich, and his capabilities shouldn't be taken as an indication of what oldwalkers in general were capable of, no more than Ashiok surviving without the top half of her head should be taken as an indication that Jace could do the same. Teferi was clearly shown to be dying when Bolas decapitated him, and while it's impressive that he didn't die instantly like a normal human, he would've died in very short order if he hadn't been allowed to heal himself; it was obvious that he couldn't have survived indefinitely in that state.)
- Shapeshifting: Oldwalkers could change size and take on alternate forms at will. They could use this ability to alter their appearance, change their apparent species, transform into animals, assume monstrous forms, or grow to gigantic proportions. (I've heard that one of the old stories featured a planeswalker who transformed herself into a pavilion, which sounds like the single most impressive example of their shapeshifting abilities, but the MtG wiki says that the pavilion was "entirely illusory" and that she was merely hiding her true body within the illusion, in which case it was nothing that a neowalker like Jace or even an ordinary mind-mage like Raff couldn't do.) Once again, this ability seemed to be consciously controlled, as oldwalkers would automatically revert to their original forms when incapacitated or killed. They did not seem to be capable of permanently altering their true forms (some of the old stories made a point of the fact that Leshrac was physically weak despite his vast magical power, and he could only temporarily assume more combat-capable forms; Tevesh Szat and Ob Nixilis were permanently transformed into demonic beings, but this was a result of corruption by dark magic, rather than an innate oldwalker ability).
Additionally, their ability to heal was consciously controlled, so if an oldwalker wasn't conscious to heal themselves (or simply chose not to, as in Serra's case), they could potentially die from even a relatively minor injury. Similarly, they could probably die from a poison that displayed no symptoms before killing them, since they wouldn't know to cure themselves, but that's just conjecture on my part.
Planeswalking: The single most definitive ability of any planeswalker, pre-Mending or post-Mending, is their ability to traverse the Blind Eternities and travel between planes at will. This ability also allows them to teleport to different locations of the plane they're on, and to draw mana from lands on other planes.
- Interplanar Summoning: Another difference between oldwalkers and neowalkers is that pre-Mending planeswalkers were able to summon people and things from other planes, whereas post-Mending planeswalkers absolutely cannot, to the point where even an extremely powerful former oldwalker like Bolas needed to orchestrate an elaborate 60 year plan to find a way to work around this limitation. Again, this is technically a result of the Blind Eternities becoming harder to traverse, rather than a result of planeswalkers becoming less powerful; nonetheless, other than the changes to the physical nature of planeswalkers' bodies, this is probably the single most definitive change in planeswalkers' capabilities that's resulted from the Mending.
- Planar Creation: Perhaps most impressive of all, pre-Mending planeswalkers had the ability to create their own artificial planes within the Blind Eternities, bringing miniature worlds into existence and shaping them through sheer force of will. However, these demi-planes had to be continually sustained by the planeswalker who created them or else they would rapidly destabilize, collapsing back into the Blind Eternities and ceasing to exist. Because of this limitation, and because of the immense amount of time and effort and energy it took to create demi-planes, oldwalkers only rarely used this ability.
Some extraordinarily powerful oldwalkers were able to create true planes that would remain stable and continue to exist in their absence. However, this was astronomically rare, as it required the use of extremely complicated and powerful magic.
Prior to the Mending, planeswalking was a lot easier, to the point where planeswalkers could teleport or planeswalk instantaneously. (Perhaps the most extreme demonstration of this ability was Urza casually repositioning his body at different points around a room in order to face different directions, since it required no more effort than simply turning his head would've. However, this was also related to the fact that Urza's consciousness was stored in the mightstone and the weakstone, rather than in his physical body.) After the Mending, planeswalking became significantly more difficult, to the point where it takes a significant amount of time and concentration for a planeswalker to teleport or travel between planes (they can still instantaneously planeswalk if they're in mortal danger or in a state of extreme emotional distress, but this isn't a consistent or reliable ability, and they often don't have conscious control over their destination when it does happen).
Interestingly, it's been stated that this difference didn't result from any change in the nature of planeswalkers, but rather from a change to the nature of the Blind Eternities themselves: Nahiri explicitly stated that she didn't feel any 'weaker' in terms of her ability to breach the walls between planes, but the walls themselves were 'stronger' now. This may be why interplanar portal technology has become even more difficult to develop since the Mending, and why it now seems to be completely impossible for interplanar portals to transport living beings (other than planeswalkers) without protection.
Also yeah Jace is strong but most oldwalkers had some degree of telepathy/mental protection and Jace has poor physical defenses ergo any AOE spell would one shot him.
Gideon doesn't have regen though so yeah maybe he could he take a harder hit them most Oldwalkers maybe but they can regenerate from nothing. He cannot.
Its the difference between say Wolverine and Colossus. Wolverine can recover from a lot of damage but is not super durable. Whereas Colossus is super durable but if he gets hurt he cannot instantly regen it. I don't think Sorin has greater recovery now then the average Oldwalker.
Ob Nixilis also ran roughshod over most of the Gatewatch. He won a 3 v 1. Which does not suggest great things for the average Oldwalker vs Neowalker and I argue that Ob is far closer to average then oldwalker then the gatewatch is to average neowalker.
The only Oldwalker who has dragged down the Average so far has been Lili. But she is not average, she is easily the weakest known Oldwalker and not the smartest either. There is a reason Sorin gave her a once over and then ignored her. He didn't view her as a real threat or a potential threat which is not a ringing endorsement for her.
The problem with the Titans is Walkers got weaker after the mending. The Titans presumably did not. Plus you know them going down to a Fireball I don't care how maximized it is is just lame. Nissa and Chandra go from taking out two Titans to struggling against Baral....I know some power inconsistency is part of the story but that is a bridge too far for me.
That said I don't disagree with the notion that Bolas and Ugin should not be better then every other Walker especially Oldwalkers at their specialties such as not a better Temporal Mage then Teferi, a better Lithomancer then Nahiri and so on. Because if they are then well its not going to be especially good writing when Bolas loses.
Experience and Expertise should count for something.
You're right that Ugin is a better telepath than Jace, the statement about him being the second best telepath in the multiverse came from one of the stories (I think Vraska said it, and she doesn't know Ugin exists). I'm sure Kefnet was better too, for that matter. Still, I'd imagine that in terms of telepathy alone, Jace would've outclassed a great deal of oldwalkers. And I agree with your Colossus/Wolverine comparison; Gideon is invulnerable in a different way than oldwalkers were. Gideon couldn't have survived being completely dismembered by Bolas like Teferi did, but pre-Mending Teferi probably couldn't have survived taking a direct hit from Ulamog like Gideon did; in all likelihood, he would've either disintegrated like everyone and everything else that Ulamog touched, or he would've been instantly killed by the sheer force of the blow. (Though obviously Teferi wouldn't have been stupid enough or arrogant enough to try fighting an Eldrazi Titan hand-to-hand in the first place.) My broader point was that neowalkers (and some especially powerful non-planeswalker mages, for that matter) can very well be superior to the average oldwalker when it comes to their specific areas of expertise, and powerful neowalkers are likely superior to the average oldwalker in general, despite lacking some oldwalker-specific capabilities.
I would also consider pre-Mending Liliana to be more representative of the typical oldwalker than Ob Nixilis, who went around the multiverse killing other oldwalkers and thus was presumably at least above-average by oldwalker standards, even if he wasn't top-tier like Urza and Bolas. (It's worth noting that Ob Nixilis was only ever defeated by Nahiri, who herself was one of the most powerful oldwalkers in the multiverse.) Major characters like Taysir, Freyalise, and Windgrace might've been especially powerful, but when you look at side characters like Dyfed, Feroz, and that illusory pavilion girl, they certainly didn't seem very impressive.
As for your problems with the destruction of the Eldrazi Titans, I get where you're coming from, but it's not like Chandra just cast fireball and killed them. Nissa channeled an entire plane's worth of mana (a particularly large and mana-rich plane, at that) into Chandra's spell, almost killing herself and Chandra in the process. That's almost Death Star levels of pure destructive power, on par with the Null Moon blast that helped to destroy Yawgmoth. The sheer amount of energy involved there would've destroyed almost anything. And despite all that, it wouldn't have actually done anything more than briefly inconvenience Ulamog and Kozilek if they hadn't been bound to the plane by the Hedron network. And it's still debatable if Ulamog and Kozilek were truly destroyed.
Again, Urza is a special case, since his soul was contained inside his twin powerstones. I definitely don't consider him an example of what all oldwalkers could've been capable of, I see him as a wholly unique and exceptional case.
Planeswalkers could create planes from scratch.
Dragons of Legend, Lead by Scion of the UR-Dragon
The Gitrog Monster
Gonti, Lord of Luxury
Shogun Saskia
Hive World
Atraxa hates fun
Abzan
EDIT: You're correct. It's obscure as hell, but that was apparently something all oldwalkers could do. Edited my other post to add it.
Dragons of Legend, Lead by Scion of the UR-Dragon
The Gitrog Monster
Gonti, Lord of Luxury
Shogun Saskia
Hive World
Atraxa hates fun
Abzan
I am not going to comment on Gids blocking that strike because yeah I think that was BS personally.
Well sure but I am more fine with Yawgmoth going down like that because the Heroes paid a price to beat Yawgmoth and it took Urza millennium to do it and far more of a price was paid by Urza, Gerrard and Friends to win then the Gatewatch has ever paid. The End Game against Yawgmoth devastated Dominaria. Cost 7 Oldwalkers out of the 9 Titans. Half The Weatherlight Crew and the Ship Itself. With the leads of the franchise in Urza and Gerrard paying the ultimate price.
What do the Gatewatch lose to launch that Fireball on Two Eldrazi Titans? Absolutely nothing. The only positive is Emrakul sealed herself. There were consequences for the Oldwalkers and the Heroes of old, the Gatewatch doesn't really suffer much in the way of that for their bad decisions much less the right decisions.
As for the Gatewatch. Lili is clearly one of the weakest Oldwalkers or at least the weakest that has been a character of note. Not like we haven't seen weaksauce Neowalkers, I mean sheesh Samut is basically just Captain America. Whereas the Gatewatch is a team of basically the strongest Neowalkers around. I would say only Gideon isn't close to the top Neowalkers of his color cause Elspeth was just a beast and he has Ajani in his color space. But Chandra, Nissa and Jace are easily the best of the best so far in their colors or at worst top 2.
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
Do they die because Gids deflects the shot at them by accident? Like he did to his friends?
I think Sorin said he couldn't do it post Mending so yeah I am going to say that is Oldwalker only. I mean Ugin, Bolas and Serra have all done similar.
Sure probably why Bolas gets a Special Look in his eyes when he craps on Gods.
Ob Nixilis origin story has him killing a whole world and then he says he did it to others.
Bolas has also claimed to end whole planes. And he did have the power to crack Dominaria without an Anchor so he is probably not exaggerating.
Urza turned Serra's Realm into a Power Source to power the Weatherlight. Granted the plane was already collapsing.
Eh Bolas wasn't really dead. His spirit was trapped outside of Normal time and space.
Oldwalkers could regenerate from a lot. However, I don't remember any true Resurrection when a character was really dead. Not just ripped to shreds or had a spirit lingering.
If your dead you stay that way at least so far in this series. Theros has a loophole but outside of that I don't remember any others.
It gave them quite a few gifts, but the power is an eventuality of these gifts, not an inherent property.
This is one of the most quantifiable difference between gods and men.
Old walkers lost two main things: Immortality and the ability to gain infinite knowledge. The former making the latter possible, and it's new limits extremely relevant. There is now a literal limit to how much knowledge a neo walker can have - even if he is immortal. At a certain point, new knowledge replaces old; power is forgotten. Interestingly, they've only touched on this a few times, and never fully quantified it. BUT there is a restriction on total knowledge, which is one of the ways they are restricted in total power.
While Bolas is still powerful enough that he can toy with the Gatewatch with little fear of them being able to defeat him, he is, as he says, a mere shadow of what he once was.
Bolas has only a fraction of the power he used to have. Why? It isn't just a power cap.
He literally forgot more about magic than a thousand life times could begin to understand.
It's not the inherent properties, it's the consequences of those properties.
This is why Urza and many of the old wakers never seemed even remotely as powerful as Bolas and other god walkers.
They were mere children to him. Infants who had only scratched the surface of what they could be capable of.
For all their power that people reveled in, they knew nothing compared to his millennia of learning.
Now? He's forgotten more than most walkers ever knew.
He's still quite powerful, but he is literally a fraction of the mage he once was.
No longer staff here.
Ugin wasn't communicating with Sarkhan. A message Ugin left behind was playing on loop in Sarkhan's head, not at all the same as communication.
It is important to note that Yawgmoth spent nine thousand years in exile. He used this time to amass power, both in his army and his own personal power. At no time during this period did Yawgmoth face a planeswalker head on outside of his dominion. (And on his plane, he still often relied on trickery, etc). When he finally came to Dominaria, he still didn't meet his foes face to face. He did so in a giant death cloud form that wasn't really susceptible to your average killing spell, and after Urza was just a decapitated head. Whether he could have actually stood toe to toe with a full fledged planeswalker then.. we may never know, but I suspect he orchestrated everything the way he did because he didn't want to know the answer to that question.
No longer staff here.
Also, power really seems to fluctuate between different old walkers.
Again, not fully quantified*, but the Theros Gods are considered to be at least comparable power to a Neo Planeswalker, if not outright stronger, on Theros.
In order to kill Xenagos, Eslepth needed the Godsend - a weapon so powerful it literally cut through the fabric of the Nyx itself. Even then, he had all but defeated her when she threw the Godsend at him. It struck an arrow head in his chest that Nylea had shot him with before his ascension. The arrowhead exploded within his chest. It was also implied that Xenagos was not fully ascended either.
Toe to toe without the Godsend, Elspeth would have lost.
Perhaps another Planeswalker could have bested him, perhaps not.
At minimum, Xenagos the God was as powerful as a Neo Walker.
**A lot of these things are specifically not quantified. Many times this is fully intentional, since once they add specifics they are bound by them. Leaving room for interpretation leaves them room to adjust things to how they want to story to unfold later.
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But the gods give a good baseline for the original Old Walker question.
Old-Walker Bolas tore through the Amonkhet gods like playthings, and the Gods definitely appeared more powerful than the Neo-Walker Gatewatch.
Of course, Neo-Bolas easy tore up the Gatewatch, so ... still less quantified with plenty of wiggle room for later.
No longer staff here.
From a narrative perspective, I completely agree with you. Having the Gatewatch defeat two Eldrazi Titans without really having to sacrifice anything in the process is bad storytelling. I was just saying that in terms of the established rules of the MtG universe, the method that was used to destroy Ulamog and Kozilek does make sense.
I'm not sure why you view Liliana as being particularly weak. She's able to raise and command zombies by the thousands, create flesh golems from body parts lying around within a matter of seconds through sheer force of will, de-animate or steal control of zombies that were animated by other necromancers, and release blasts of pure necrotic energy that instantly kill living beings and destroy organic matter. That's a lot more than the average necromancer could do. She could potentially devastate a plane within a very short amount of time, if she were so inclined.
It took Sorin decades to create Avacyn. The process required extensive research and elaborate magicial rituals, and permanently cost Sorin a significant portion of his own life essence. He said that he wouldn't be able to re-create a new Avacyn, but that wasn't a result of the Mending; even before the Mending, he wouldn't have been able to perform a feat like that again, as he noted in his original confrontation with Nahiri.
Now, if Sorin hadn't already performed that once-in-an-immortal-lifetime ritual prior to Mending, it's debatable whether he still would've been able to do so after the Mending. I'd imagine a lot of people would say he couldn't, but I'd argue that he could, since it was his ability to manipulate life energy and his knowledge of ritual magic that allowed him to create Avacyn, rather than any particular trait inherent to oldwalkers. At any rate, I don't think most oldwalkers would've been able to create a fully sapient living being from nothing like Sorin did, and it certainly shouldn't be taken as something that all oldwalkers were capable of.
Again, the vast majority of oldwalkers couldn't really create true worlds, they could basically just create tiny pocket dimensions in the Blind Eternities that immediately dissolved once they weren't being consciously sustained anymore. It was vanishingly rare for oldwalkers to create full-fledged planes that would be stable in their absence - to the point that there are only three known examples of it happening in MtG history - and only extraordinarily powerful oldwalkers like Karn could accomplish it.
Planeswalkers can be resurrected like anyone else (Windgrace tore out Taysir's heart to prevent him from being resurrected by necromancers), but if they're raised as a zombie, they're definitely not going to have their spark anymore. White mana users - whether oldwalkers, neowalkers, or non-planeswalker mages - can cast true resurrection spells, rather than simply raising corpses as mindless zombies, but there are a lot more limitations involved: The body has to be mostly intact, it can't have rotted away and it can't have been vaporized or torn apart. The spirit can't have been destroyed either, and it can't have passed on to the afterlife (on planes where afterlives exist) or been absorbed back into the mana flow of the world (on planes where afterlives don't exist). There's a reason that Yomiji's card depicts a soldier getting up on the battlefield a few minutes after he'd been killed, rather than days or months later.
I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about, in regards to oldwalkers being able to gain infinite knowledge. Oldwalkers were usually incredibly knowledgeable as a result of their immortality and their travels through the multiverse, as I said in my original post, but I don't remember any oldwalker ever having literally infinite knowledge, or even claiming that they did.
Urza was also one of the most powerful oldwalkers in existence, so I don't think there were many other "god walkers" like Bolas, just Bolas himself and Ugin. Even the other Elder Dragons weren't anywhere close to Bolas' level in terms of power (and it's also debatable whether they were planeswalkers or just especially powerful plane-bound beings).
It's strange to me that Bolas apparently started forgetting things when the Mending happened, since I don't remember that happening to any other oldwalker. There's no indication that Liliana, Sorin, Nahiri, Ob Nixilis, or Ugin ever lost knowledge as a result of the Mending, unless I missed something in one of the earlier post-Mending stories. Which story are those Bolas quotes from?
Miss-wording on my part. I don't mean to imply they were granted any additional knowledge, but they were able to amass as much as they could. There weren't any constraints or limits.
I've always questioned these claims. He was one of the most powerful characters in the past story, but there are surprisingly few displays of raw power from Urza. Of course, my memory is crap, so I may be forgetting something awesome, but he rarely did some big powerful thing with raw magic. Urza seemed more like Gandalf. It wasn't his raw potential that made him powerful, it's how he influenced those around him. That, and his ability with machinery and artifice. He created the Titan machines, temporal manipulations, etc. Take the Sylex Blast. Contrary to Urza's Ruinous Blast's depiction, the Sylex Blast had nothing to do with Urza's Power. It was an artifact that unleashed the power, Urza simply activated it. He was strategic, intelligent, and cunning... but not impressively powerful on his own right.
In truth, much of the old storylines make the old walkers appear weaker than the Gatewatch, with the awesome displays of power that the neo walkers show. What they were actually capable of, in post-revisionist storyline, is a separate matter though. Bolas is, unfortunately, one of the only old-walkers that showed what power they could hold. His battle with the Leviathan, for instance, destroyed two thirds of Madara and created a temporal rift; more akin to the Sylex Blast than to any display of magic power that Urza did. Interestingly, this also shows an Old-Waker so powerful that he could match Bolas' strength, battling him for a Month.
It's a quote form The One, The Only, Nicol Bolas.
As I said, rarely touched on, never quantified.
The whole "Neo Walkers aren't as powerful" is completely unspecific.
No longer staff here.
IIRC Elspeth once brought a whole bunch of Alaran soldiers back from the dead to turn a battle in her favor during the Conflux. Elspeth if you didn't know is a post-mending planeswalker. She was quite embarrassed about it, feeling as if it broke the honor code of Alara apparently (I guess its technically necromancy even if its white). Also, I think, because she could only raise those who had died very shortly before casting the spell, and there were people coming afterward looking for resurrections she could not provide.
Anyway, as Yomiji and Reya Dawnbringer both show, its definitely not just a planeswalker ability. Its powerful white magic that has divine associations, hence why we see angels, gods, and Kami do it. The gods of Theros can do it too, but they prefer to take your face and identity away first. It seems that the trick is you have to have the spirit of the deceased at hand, and if you read Planeshift: Innistrad's lore on Geists, it appears that souls in the multiverse return pretty quickly to the Blind Eternities when they die unless something blocks their way (such as strong emotions like anger in the case of geists, necromantic magic in the case of liches, unique planar phenomena like Nix or the Time Rifts, and of course divine intervention from beings like the Kami and certain angels). Its certainly harder to do it in the lore than in the game; take Yawgmoth's Vile Offering for example. In the game it brings the creature or planeswalker straight back to the battlefield, no questions asked. BUT, in the story this is something Yawgmoth could not actually do. What he really did was shapeshift a part of himself into a clone of Hanna to spy on Gerrard and the Weatherlight. Of course, having to act human for the first time in millennia and not knowing the first thing about this woman, Gerrard caught onto the deception pretty quickly.