I would think Nicol will be stripped of spark (he hasn't got the Gem of Becoming here, which may or may not be the same thing) and will be locked in Meditation Realm. So returning him to the story would require resparking.
But my pet theory is that only Ugin has a spark - Nicol wasn't a planeswalker originally, he just stole the spark from that "demonic leviathan", and kept it within the Gem of Becoming.
Returning Nicol Bolas to main story would probably happen as sidenote and off screen.
It’s a card game. I’m honestly amazed at how many people are so invested in a story I think everyone knows is mediocre at best. I’m just thrilled at how good this set is from a card standpoint.
"Being unable to die even though he wished it, eventually, Bolas stopped thinking"
Bolas: Did you plan this too, Ugin!? Tell me! Ugin: Do you have to ask, brother!? I set a trap and you walked right into it! All of this went down like clockwork! (thinking) I just got lucky, but thinking I outsmarted him will drive Bolas nuts!
Well, Tyrant's Scorn looks so playable, Smother saw play back in the day, and the Unsummon effect is really good against Amass cards. ALso, get ready to see the Oblivion Ring with Scry gracing white SBs in Standard until the set rotates out. Storywise, I think the Blackblade plan failing is cool, and the flavor text kills it, on the other hand, I'm not so sure about Bolas not dying for good, seeing him coming back in the future will feel like a cartoon cliche, and unnecessary anyway, the Phyrexians are nearly impossible to erradicate so that's the recurring villain spot filled out, and there's so much about the Eldrazi that remains unknown, especially just how many of those things are running around in the Blind Eternities, oh, and Emrakul is down but not out yet. Let's hope Bolas stays imprisoned until the end of time (or 10 years' worth of MtG sets, give or take)
what a ******* cop out. god forbid a villain succeed for more than half a set.
not only that but herpaderp lets just seal him away like we did emrakul is really *****ty storytelling considering we did that just a few sets ago.
you seriously mean to weave a story where a dragon planeswalker that's millenia old, could come up with a way to harvest sparks, enslave an entire plane, invade another plane, turn walkers against each other... but somehow coulnd't see he could get possibly get sealed away somewhere?
okay sure wizards, jerkingoffmotion
talk about story with zero pay off.
maybe we'll get lucky and it'll be a doublebluff where he's only temporarily sealed away and a card tomorrow shows he broke free and succeeded with his plans. doubtful because they're clearly a bunch of hacks.
But with absolute certainty, many planeswalkers are DEAD in the aftermath of these events. Them being background characters doesn't diminish their deaths,
It absolutely does. They're background characters because WotC chose them to be. And considering how rare Planeswalkers are supposed to be, that's dozens or hundreds of characters we'll never know anything about, or will even get mentioned again. Ever. Because WotC seems absolutely uninterested in showcasing ANYTHING that isn't Gatewatch-related in a set, which includes visits to the past - something all those dead planeswalkers are now a part of.
It'd be just as simple to kill a named character as to kill a background character. So what if they still have dangling plotlines? It's hard to care when a bunch of faceless people are killed off in a story, there's no emotional attachment. Other than disappointment that we never got to know anything about them because of crappy story direction choices, I guess.
Shelved him to bring him back at a later date, not surprised at all, but it gets rather repetitive.
Let me guess...
A) Emrakul senses him in there and gets him out for some purpose, or possesses him, mutates his form etc.
B) We have another Phyrexian set regarding planar portals and at their moment of defeat they somehow let him out and it turns out they've had dealings with him as it's all part of the plan.
Reading the posts about the "next multiverse menace", but... Do we really need one?
Having Bolas being behind everything for almost 10 years was bad enough, do you really want another saga like that? With the same characters over and over and over again with the same menace on the horizon in almost every set all for a predictale payoff where the good guys win with near to 0 casualties?
I sure don't.
The reach to bring down Bolas in this story telling is abysmal and shameful. They spent too much time building him up to let him down so moronically. Pitiful work.
At least the art and cards are good. After all it's a card game.
Bolas gets put in an Oblivion Ring. Seems like the way they'd resolve it. Honestly, there weren't many other ways for this to end. Really the thing that makes this feel so hollow is the fact that they just let the good guys win without any trouble. Gideon dies. Domri dies (right?). Anybody else? Nobody even loses a limb. Seriously, that's a great way to permanently change a character and drive the stakes home without killing somebody. Who wouldn't love one-armed Chandra?
I would have rolled a D4 for each character and killed the ones who rolled a 1. Trying that method leaves death for Narset, Davriel, Jaya, Samut, Saheeli, Ajani, and Gideon. A few of those would be painful, and it would really be a shame to lose Davriel so soon, but it would be a lot more effective than killing nameless nobodies whose stories will literally never matter. Everybody is complaining, but I think they are right to do so. We hate the Gatewatch, and we want real stakes. We get more Gatewatch and no real stakes. The stakes of the main arc were never real, since Bolas couldn't ever win, so the least they could do is make it painful for the unbeatable protagonists. One sacrificial lamb seems paltry. At least they didn't do like BFZ and have the good guys effortlessly win with no consequences. They had the good guys win with almost no consequences instead.
If the entire Gatewatch had sacrificed themselves to completely unmake Bolas, that would have felt much more satisfying. Maybe one or two survive, but much worse for it (again, one-armed Chandra). That would have said "we know you hate the Gatewatch, and we're doing something different now".
Worse yet is that if some things rumoured fall together, Ugin may have had a way to take care of bolas a long time ago but decided to just watch instead. Brothers and all stick together. I am frankly really starting to question Ugin and his motivations for everything. Seems he may be just as "bad" as Nikki, just better at hiding it.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Been a member here for over a dozen years. Playing since '95 just got lost in the twitch shuffle.
I feel the same way. What kind of War is this if only three planeswalkers bite the dust, and even the villain survives? I really expected many more planeswalkers to die (Ugin, Jaya, Nissa or Vivien, Dovin, Ral etc.)
MaRo 100% confirmed that the eternals stripping a spark kills a planeswalker.
So most of the 37 planeswalkers on the stained glass are simply the survivors of this war. That's it. They're the ones who, like in most fictional stories, we see navigate a war, most making it through but seeing many others around them perish.
The dozen to dozens of sparks flying in the air to Bolas in the art and in the trailer? Each and every one represents a dead, dead, dead, dead, dead planeswalker.
Just like in many war stories, the simple fact that a small handful of known people die in the spotlight, but untold numbers die in the background, doesn't diminish the deaths occurring all around.
Many planeswalkers 100% for certain bite it in this War of the Spark. And just like the untolds thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands to millions of Ravnicans who die, is real tragedy. Them being faceless masses doesn't make it any less tragic. And they could easily write in later stories of the tragic deaths of planeswalkers whose sparks we see, of Ravnican citizens caught in the horrors of this invasion of their home. After all, this is an ecumenopolis; this is essentially the Coruscant or Trantor of the Magic multiverse. A planet-sized city that has had a continuous civilization for over 10,000 years. The death toll could be staggering indeed.
But with absolute certainty, many planeswalkers are DEAD in the aftermath of these events. Them being background characters doesn't diminish their deaths, or make them not dead. They're still dead as can be. Dack died on-screen. Domri died "on-screen". We'll see who else when this is all done. And at least a dozen, possibly many more, died off-screen.
I respectfully disagree. Nobody cares about nameless masses, killing them just won't yield the right emotional response. To give the feeling that victory only came at a high price, you just have to kill off a bunch of popular protagonists. I hate to be one of those guys who keep comparing Magic's storyline to MCU, but look at Infinity War and tell me: would the movie impact the viewers nearly as much if Thanos's snap still occurred but all the heroes were among the "lucky" half of the universe?
I respectfully disagree. Nobody cares about nameless masses, killing them just won't yield the right emotional response. To give the feeling that victory only came at a high price, you just have to kill off a bunch of popular protagonists. I hate to be one of those guys who keep comparing Magic's storyline to MCU, but look at Infinity War and tell me: would the movie impact the viewers nearly as much if Thanos's snap still occurred but all the heroes were among the "lucky" half of the universe?
Have to? I will respectfully disagree. Look at Lord of the Rings. Exactly two big characters died. Two. Boromir in the second act, and Theoden in the third. Exactly no other major heroes died. Not a one. The entire Fellowship save Boromir survived from start to finish. Yet, the stakes remained high. Why? Because so many people who were in the background perished. Not the protagonists. Those the protagonists were trying to help/save. Even the BBEG didn't die. Sauron simply had his power stripped from him, and was doomed to live out the rest of his days as the shattered echo of his former self. Sauron LIVED at the end of LotR.
Star Wars, same thing. Exactly one hero died in the original trilogy, and then only in the first act as a noble sacrifice. One. Obi-Wan. That's it. Then, at the very end, Vader died redeeming himself as Anakin. Thaaaaaat's it. Every single other protagonist lived. All of them. Every other death that increased the stakes were of background characters.
Same with quite a large number of stories, including war-time narratives.
It seems like so many now feel that without The Walking Dead or A Game of Thrones levels of death, the stakes simply aren't high enough. When that is demonstrably not the norm for successful and nuanced narratives delivering great material throughout history; note I'm not giving my opinion about the quality of the Magic narrative at all here. It's ok, not great, not terrible. Pretty run of the mill, really, in many ways.
But killing off a bunch of protagonists on-screen?
Nah. Not necessary in the least to tell a high-stakes story.
Large numbers of background characters perishing consistently makes a story feel high stakes, historically speaking. A single major face character perishing as a noble sacrifice is very often the only death needed to make a story feel high stakes, in addition to the casualties of non-protagonists all around the cast of protagonists.
And the MCU? Yes, the snap felt high-stakes. Although many comic fans will certainly tell you, it's extremely unlikely they remain dusted. Additionally, the MCU storyline is an extreme outlier. It's rather rare that many of the protagonists of an extended narrative perish all of a sudden in a final battle like that.
So yeah. I must simply agree to disagree, here. The sheer number of evocative, high stakes narratives where hardly any protagonists perish is stunning, and they're not lesser stories because they didn't "have to kill off a bunch of popular protagonists" to make their story feel high stakes.
I respectfully disagree. Nobody cares about nameless masses, killing them just won't yield the right emotional response. To give the feeling that victory only came at a high price, you just have to kill off a bunch of popular protagonists. I hate to be one of those guys who keep comparing Magic's storyline to MCU, but look at Infinity War and tell me: would the movie impact the viewers nearly as much if Thanos's snap still occurred but all the heroes were among the "lucky" half of the universe?
Have to? I will respectfully disagree. Look at Lord of the Rings. Exactly two big characters died. Two. Boromir in the second act, and Theoden in the third. Exactly no other major heroes died. Not a one. The entire Fellowship save Boromir survived from start to finish. Yet, the stakes remained high. Why? Because so many people who were in the background perished. Not the protagonists. Those the protagonists were trying to help/save. Even the BBEG didn't die. Sauron simply had his power stripped from him, and was doomed to live out the rest of his days as the shattered echo of his former self. Sauron LIVED at the end of LotR.
Star Wars, same thing. Exactly one hero died in the original trilogy, and then only in the first act as a noble sacrifice. One. Obi-Wan. That's it. Then, at the very end, Vader died redeeming himself as Anakin. Thaaaaaat's it. Every single other protagonist lived. All of them. Every other death that increased the stakes were of background characters.
Same with quite a large number of stories, including war-time narratives.
It seems like so many now feel that without The Walking Dead or A Game of Thrones levels of death, the stakes simply aren't high enough. When that is demonstrably not the norm for successful and nuanced narratives delivering great material throughout history; note I'm not giving my opinion about the quality of the Magic narrative at all here. It's ok, not great, not terrible. Pretty run of the mill, really, in many ways.
But killing off a bunch of protagonists on-screen?
Nah. Not necessary in the least to tell a high-stakes story.
Large numbers of background characters perishing consistently makes a story feel high stakes, historically speaking. A single major face character perishing as a noble sacrifice is very often the only death needed to make a story feel high stakes, in addition to the casualties of non-protagonists all around the cast of protagonists.
And the MCU? Yes, the snap felt high-stakes. Although many comic fans will certainly tell you, it's extremely unlikely they remain dusted. Additionally, the MCU storyline is an extreme outlier. It's rather rare that many of the protagonists of an extended narrative perish all of a sudden in a final battle like that.
So yeah. I must simply agree to disagree, here. The sheer number of evocative, high stakes narratives where hardly any protagonists perish is stunning, and they're not lesser stories because they didn't "have to kill off a bunch of popular protagonists" to make their story feel high stakes.
I' m not sure about Lord of the Rings. I only saw the movies once many years ago and since I really didn't like them, I haven't re-watched any of them since. I guess you're right about the original Star Wars trilogy, although I could argue that those are old films and expectations of viewers change from generation to generation, which is why Revenge of the Sith was something else entirely. Still, I see your point.
It's not like all of the nearly forty planeswalkers in War of the Spark are the story's main characters though, is it? Maybe six to eight of them are the focal figures, the rest are the Uncle Owens and Ben Kenobis of this story. I simply expected many more planeswalkers to bite it, especially since many of them seem to have had their story fully told. On the other hand, more planeswalker deaths would increase the risk of the narrative killing more of those planeswalkers I like and want to see again, so perhaps I should be happy that didn't happen.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Returning Nicol Bolas to main story would probably happen as sidenote and off screen.
Nexus MTG News // Nexus - Magic Art Gallery // MTG Dual Land Color Ratios Analyzer // MTG Card Drawing Odds Calculator
Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkX38meVNxU
It’s a card game. I’m honestly amazed at how many people are so invested in a story I think everyone knows is mediocre at best. I’m just thrilled at how good this set is from a card standpoint.
Bolas: Did you plan this too, Ugin!? Tell me!
Ugin: Do you have to ask, brother!? I set a trap and you walked right into it! All of this went down like clockwork! (thinking) I just got lucky, but thinking I outsmarted him will drive Bolas nuts!
----------------------------
Club Flamingo Wins: 10
----------------------------
EDH Decks
BG Vicious Varolz | RW Jor Kadeen, the Mean Machine | RG Atarka: Muh_Dragons.dec (WIP) | WU Brago, Blink Eternal (WIP)
----------------------------
not only that but herpaderp lets just seal him away like we did emrakul is really *****ty storytelling considering we did that just a few sets ago.
you seriously mean to weave a story where a dragon planeswalker that's millenia old, could come up with a way to harvest sparks, enslave an entire plane, invade another plane, turn walkers against each other... but somehow coulnd't see he could get possibly get sealed away somewhere?
okay sure wizards, jerkingoffmotion
talk about story with zero pay off.
maybe we'll get lucky and it'll be a doublebluff where he's only temporarily sealed away and a card tomorrow shows he broke free and succeeded with his plans. doubtful because they're clearly a bunch of hacks.
Not only that, but when he does return, it will be because he planned for the eventuality that he would be trapped like that.
It absolutely does. They're background characters because WotC chose them to be. And considering how rare Planeswalkers are supposed to be, that's dozens or hundreds of characters we'll never know anything about, or will even get mentioned again. Ever. Because WotC seems absolutely uninterested in showcasing ANYTHING that isn't Gatewatch-related in a set, which includes visits to the past - something all those dead planeswalkers are now a part of.
It'd be just as simple to kill a named character as to kill a background character. So what if they still have dangling plotlines? It's hard to care when a bunch of faceless people are killed off in a story, there's no emotional attachment. Other than disappointment that we never got to know anything about them because of crappy story direction choices, I guess.
At least the Gideon walker art is awesome.
Spirits
Let me guess...
A) Emrakul senses him in there and gets him out for some purpose, or possesses him, mutates his form etc.
B) We have another Phyrexian set regarding planar portals and at their moment of defeat they somehow let him out and it turns out they've had dealings with him as it's all part of the plan.
Having Bolas being behind everything for almost 10 years was bad enough, do you really want another saga like that? With the same characters over and over and over again with the same menace on the horizon in almost every set all for a predictale payoff where the good guys win with near to 0 casualties?
I sure don't.
Except when it happens to Bolas... He 100% survives.
At least the art and cards are good. After all it's a card game.
I would have rolled a D4 for each character and killed the ones who rolled a 1. Trying that method leaves death for Narset, Davriel, Jaya, Samut, Saheeli, Ajani, and Gideon. A few of those would be painful, and it would really be a shame to lose Davriel so soon, but it would be a lot more effective than killing nameless nobodies whose stories will literally never matter. Everybody is complaining, but I think they are right to do so. We hate the Gatewatch, and we want real stakes. We get more Gatewatch and no real stakes. The stakes of the main arc were never real, since Bolas couldn't ever win, so the least they could do is make it painful for the unbeatable protagonists. One sacrificial lamb seems paltry. At least they didn't do like BFZ and have the good guys effortlessly win with no consequences. They had the good guys win with almost no consequences instead.
If the entire Gatewatch had sacrificed themselves to completely unmake Bolas, that would have felt much more satisfying. Maybe one or two survive, but much worse for it (again, one-armed Chandra). That would have said "we know you hate the Gatewatch, and we're doing something different now".
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
You can start dreaming that story up.
I respectfully disagree. Nobody cares about nameless masses, killing them just won't yield the right emotional response. To give the feeling that victory only came at a high price, you just have to kill off a bunch of popular protagonists. I hate to be one of those guys who keep comparing Magic's storyline to MCU, but look at Infinity War and tell me: would the movie impact the viewers nearly as much if Thanos's snap still occurred but all the heroes were among the "lucky" half of the universe?
Have to? I will respectfully disagree. Look at Lord of the Rings. Exactly two big characters died. Two. Boromir in the second act, and Theoden in the third. Exactly no other major heroes died. Not a one. The entire Fellowship save Boromir survived from start to finish. Yet, the stakes remained high. Why? Because so many people who were in the background perished. Not the protagonists. Those the protagonists were trying to help/save. Even the BBEG didn't die. Sauron simply had his power stripped from him, and was doomed to live out the rest of his days as the shattered echo of his former self. Sauron LIVED at the end of LotR.
Star Wars, same thing. Exactly one hero died in the original trilogy, and then only in the first act as a noble sacrifice. One. Obi-Wan. That's it. Then, at the very end, Vader died redeeming himself as Anakin. Thaaaaaat's it. Every single other protagonist lived. All of them. Every other death that increased the stakes were of background characters.
Same with quite a large number of stories, including war-time narratives.
It seems like so many now feel that without The Walking Dead or A Game of Thrones levels of death, the stakes simply aren't high enough. When that is demonstrably not the norm for successful and nuanced narratives delivering great material throughout history; note I'm not giving my opinion about the quality of the Magic narrative at all here. It's ok, not great, not terrible. Pretty run of the mill, really, in many ways.
But killing off a bunch of protagonists on-screen?
Nah. Not necessary in the least to tell a high-stakes story.
Large numbers of background characters perishing consistently makes a story feel high stakes, historically speaking. A single major face character perishing as a noble sacrifice is very often the only death needed to make a story feel high stakes, in addition to the casualties of non-protagonists all around the cast of protagonists.
And the MCU? Yes, the snap felt high-stakes. Although many comic fans will certainly tell you, it's extremely unlikely they remain dusted. Additionally, the MCU storyline is an extreme outlier. It's rather rare that many of the protagonists of an extended narrative perish all of a sudden in a final battle like that.
So yeah. I must simply agree to disagree, here. The sheer number of evocative, high stakes narratives where hardly any protagonists perish is stunning, and they're not lesser stories because they didn't "have to kill off a bunch of popular protagonists" to make their story feel high stakes.
I' m not sure about Lord of the Rings. I only saw the movies once many years ago and since I really didn't like them, I haven't re-watched any of them since. I guess you're right about the original Star Wars trilogy, although I could argue that those are old films and expectations of viewers change from generation to generation, which is why Revenge of the Sith was something else entirely. Still, I see your point.
It's not like all of the nearly forty planeswalkers in War of the Spark are the story's main characters though, is it? Maybe six to eight of them are the focal figures, the rest are the Uncle Owens and Ben Kenobis of this story. I simply expected many more planeswalkers to bite it, especially since many of them seem to have had their story fully told. On the other hand, more planeswalker deaths would increase the risk of the narrative killing more of those planeswalkers I like and want to see again, so perhaps I should be happy that didn't happen.