Mutha****er I'd love to but someone thought it was a good idea to wait until after the whole set was spoiled and we were all confused as hell by cards like Chandra's Triumph to release the damn book.
They are not Phyrexians and they are not Eldrazi. They aren't even etherium users like Esperites. They are not aliens, because Magic has consistently shown that humans are humans are humans no matter which plane they come from.
He wasn't saying they are 'aliens', like from outer space. Anything that isn't native to your planet (or plane, in this case) is 'alien', even if they are still biologically the same race. If biologically identical humans somehow evolved on Mars, they'd still be aliens to Earth.
The Eternals are alien (aka foreign, different, odd) to Ravnica. Their edge is in their numbers, the element of surprise, and the magic that Bolas has imbued them with.
This whole discussion is getting bogged down in details as if this was a real world fight. Most of these details, while mostly valid, are completely irrelevant. Unfortunately, the real reason being 'magic' and 'plot'. However, consider that the gatewatch defeated two eldrazi, that were absolutely wrecking an entire plane of people, many of whom had powerful magic due to the abundance of it on Zendikar. Bolas crushed the gatewatch with very little effort. The Eternals are simply acting as Bolas hands in this. He has to focus on other things, and can't be everywhere to harvest all the planeswalkers. However, he would have made sure they powerful enough to do the task he has assigned them to do. Whether that is through magic he personally gave them, magic the zombie gods are/have given them, or some other combination of reasons. So, instead of thinking 'can a zombie amonkhet human beat a ravnica soldier' you should be asking 'can a tool Bolas created, specifically for this purpose, beat a ravnica soldier?'. Whatever advantage you believe Ravnicans have (and I don't necessarily disagree with most of the points everyone has brought up) would have surely been accounted for by Bolas.
He's been scouting out Ravnica for decades, if not centuries. He knows the general capabilities of the armies of each guild, so he would have ensured his soldiers don't just fold like paper to an average fighter. He may not know exactly how powerful each of the paruns are, though, but that's why he's got himself and the gods with him; as a failsafe towards bigger threats. I'd bet that any of the amonkhet gods could take on most of the paruns individually, especially the 3 multi-colored ones, and as a group they could surely defeat any of them on their own.
The only thing Bolas may not have factored in properly, is how well the guilds might work together. His plans were to destabilize them beforehand, which he did. But, if they are putting aside their hatreds quicker then he anticipated, if their teamwork is better than he expected, that would explain them winning a bit more than they should. However, again, his failsafe is first his gods and then himself. He COULD go beat anyone on Ravnica if he acted directly, but he didn't want to bother and couldn't be everywhere at once. Plus, he isn't intending to take over the entire plane. He just needs his Eternals to assassinate enough planeswalkers for him to cast the spell. So, he's got them as his shock troopers, his gods as his bodyguards, and they all just need to buy enough time for him to finish his ritual, then nothing else matters. Given enough time, I'm sure Ravnica would beat his entire army of Eternals, but that's not relevant to his plan.
My only issue with the Eternals being a threat is one of logistics. The whole Amonkhet scheme has been going on for 50 years, and the trials are implied to take several weeks/months to complete so realistically there should be a very limited number of trials per year.
The upper estimates at most would mean an army of around 1000.
Ravnica has a lot more than just that.
Where are people getting these numbers from? When were we given a population estimate on Amonkhet? The city could have had a million babies when he started his plans, and maybe they all breed like crazy, too. For all we know, each woman has an average of 5 babies, magically sped up pregnancies only taking a few weeks/months, or something equally crazy like that.
Plus, as others have stated, its not just the people who 'won' the trials. Those winners got special spots, but there's plenty of others that make up the bulk of the horde. The purpose was to have a civilization constantly practicing and training, completely devoted to learning to fight, from the day they were born. i.e. the Spartans of ancient Greece. Even the weakest warriors of theirs will be more than a match for an average soldier elsewhere. Then, you add in all the non-human creatures he's added to them, and it could be an army that is very big indeed. The pictures on cards are obviously up to the artist, but some of them (the basic lands, mostly) show way more than 1000 eternals in them.
My only issue with the Eternals being a threat is one of logistics. The whole Amonkhet scheme has been going on for 50 years, and the trials are implied to take several weeks/months to complete so realistically there should be a very limited number of trials per year.
The upper estimates at most would mean an army of around 1000.
Ravnica has a lot more than just that.
Where are people getting these numbers from? When were we given a population estimate on Amonkhet? The city could have had a million babies when he started his plans, and maybe they all breed like crazy, too. For all we know, each woman has an average of 5 babies, magically sped up pregnancies only taking a few weeks/months, or something equally crazy like that.
Plus, as others have stated, its not just the people who 'won' the trials. Those winners got special spots, but there's plenty of others that make up the bulk of the horde. The purpose was to have a civilization constantly practicing and training, completely devoted to learning to fight, from the day they were born. i.e. the Spartans of ancient Greece. Even the weakest warriors of theirs will be more than a match for an average soldier elsewhere. Then, you add in all the non-human creatures he's added to them, and it could be an army that is very big indeed. The pictures on cards are obviously up to the artist, but some of them (the basic lands, mostly) show way more than 1000 eternals in them.
I mean, nothing indicates that the people were magically speeding up their pregnancy or exceptionally fertile. And being more than a match for an average soldier doesn't really help the numbers or gear disadvantage they're working with. Ravnica itself is rising up, quite literally with stuff like Vitu Ghazi coming alive. No matter what there just aren't enough soldiers to really compensate.
To be fair, the eternals apparently can be repaired or "reraised", so that would help with the numbers issue. The only forces that are equally "endless" on the Ravnican side are the zombies of the Golgari, but a) the Golgari probably don't turn until very late and b) Golgari zombies are no match for eternals.
I'm actually curious how Ravnica will change as a society in the aftermath. Will the guilds come together, the gruul get a legitimate place in the system (tending to the truly wild places). Will the use of undead be frowned upon after the eternals? Will some eternals even be salvaged and used as elite troops and body guards by some of the guilds and guildmasters? So many question and although I'm okay with not going back to Ravnica for a while, this makes me curious for when we do return eventually.
About numbers in the dreadhorde:
Before the reboot of Amonkhet, Hoazoret's trial probably did not kill the worthy... Because the last words Bolas says to Hazoret (while she was trying to protect the children before the reboot) were something like "You will kill with your spear the children you are now trying to protect"
Edit: here it is...
The two gods set the babes in a small alcove within the chamber and stood side by side at the entrance to the sacred mausoleum. Hazoret readied her spear. Oketra drew her bow.
"The children of Naktamun will not die at the hands of a beast!" Hazoret cried.
"The children of Naktamun will die at the end of your spear," replied the dragon.
Okay, before I start, I looked it up and Lazotep is almost certainly not a metal. WOTC based it off of the semi-precious stone Lapis Lazuli, which the Egyptians used in jewelry and apparently makeup. I also searched for information about what Lazotep is supposed to do for the Eternals, and all I can find is two things: protecting them from the Blind Eternities when they step through the planar bridge, and helping them keep their muscle memory unlike normal zombies. The leap from "mineral" to "metal" seems to be pure Vorthos speculation, not canon.
He wasn't saying they are 'aliens', like from outer space. Anything that isn't native to your planet (or plane, in this case) is 'alien', even if they are still biologically the same race. If biologically identical humans somehow evolved on Mars, they'd still be aliens to Earth.
Excuse me, but he specifically said (and I bolded the important bit):
These, as far as generic the parameter of HUMAN goes, are not Ravnica Humans, different biology probably...
Which again, would be true of humans Compleated by Phyrexia or corrupted by Emrakul, but they aren't. You probably won't be surprised to hear this, but we know that humans from different planes are biologically the same because the Phyrexian plane of Rath kidnapped humans from multiple planes, and only the Kor raised eyebrows (because only Zendikari have any experience with them). Its technically true that some races are found on Amonkhet but not Ravnica, but that's why I pointed out that Ravnica is more diverse. Its a moot point. And yes, Eternals are zombies, but even the ability to easily repair zombies is known to Ravincans (see: Dredge). The Ravincans have been preparing for war for so long the only surprise about this one is that its lead by a planeswalker (for reasons I will get to later).
This whole discussion is getting bogged down in details as if this was a real world fight. Most of these details, while mostly valid, are completely irrelevant. Unfortunately, the real reason being 'magic' and 'plot'. However, consider that the gatewatch defeated two eldrazi, that were absolutely wrecking an entire plane of people, many of whom had powerful magic due to the abundance of it on Zendikar. Bolas crushed the gatewatch with very little effort. The Eternals are simply acting as Bolas hands in this. He has to focus on other things, and can't be everywhere to harvest all the planeswalkers. However, he would have made sure they powerful enough to do the task he has assigned them to do. Whether that is through magic he personally gave them, magic the zombie gods are/have given them, or some other combination of reasons. So, instead of thinking 'can a zombie amonkhet human beat a ravnica soldier' you should be asking 'can a tool Bolas created, specifically for this purpose, beat a ravnica soldier?'. Whatever advantage you believe Ravnicans have (and I don't necessarily disagree with most of the points everyone has brought up) would have surely been accounted for by Bolas.
If people are complaining based on lore details that they misunderstand, I aim only to point out those mistakes. And when people make illogical arguments, I don't see any way to correct them without getting into detail. Do you?
He's been scouting out Ravnica for decades, if not centuries.
Decades, maybe, but distinctly not centuries. First of all, Bolas was dead up until 60 years ago, remember? He, in spiritual form, had to trick Venser and Jhoria into resurrecting him during the time rifts crisis. Before that, when he was running Madara he showed no interest in leaving Dominaria. In fact, it seemed like he was rooted there by the Madaran Rift. His power both created and stabilized it. Lastly, as I recall the original Guildpact before the Living Guildpact actually had a magical effect preventing planeswalkers from entering the plane, and any who left could not return. This is opposite to the Immortal Sun's effect, and something we've seen happen to other planes as well (i.e. when Urza accidentally created the Shard of Twelve Worlds and when Feroz deliberately created a barrier around Ulgothra). The original Guildpact lasted for thousands of years, and it was only broken by the Dimir sometime shortly before the rifts crisis/Mending. So all of that puts a hard limit on how much time Bolas has had to study Ravnica and plan all of this. 60 years or less.
I mean, nothing indicates that the people were magically speeding up their pregnancy or exceptionally fertile.
Of course not, we weren't given a census or in depth documentary about life on amonkhet. We were given a relatively short story of the gatewatch being there for like.. a week. Just because it wasn't mentioned in a story, doesn't mean it's not possible. To be clear, I'm not saying this is actually what was happening. I think its very unlikely, in fact. But, my point is, how is anyone even 'doing the numbers' when there are no population numbers to base them on. Did some lore state, definitively, that there was X number of people on all of amonkhet when Bolas took it over? Did it also state how often people have babies?
Plus, the trials happened before he came there, just for a different purpose. Due to the curse of wandering, there could have been literally hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of corpses already there for him to use, and he simply repurposed their way of life. Potentially, he could have left them alone and shown up a few months before he needed to use them and done almost the same thing. But, he instead decided to lay some groundwork decades ahead of time and his ego wanted them worshipping him in the meantime. Since he did that, everyone is basing their estimates on the time from when he took over to when he showed up again, but we don't know enough to know if that's the only corpses he used. I think it's very unlikely, as the whole world was already a desert grixis, with everything turning into zombies when they die. I believe the real reason he planned it ahead of time, was to have people coating the corpses in lazotep. That may have been what took the most time, rather then the actual raising and training of enough people.
How one "binds" a person with a wrap of fire without killing them (or at the very minimum severely, debilitatingly burning them) I don't know.
From the MtG subreddit:
Lavinia: Good Lord! What is happening in there?
Jace: ...Dovin's being restrained.
Lavinia: Restrained? By cuffs made of fire? Which somehow don't burn him? While completely surrounded by flames? As a result of a Red burn spell that exclusively deals damage?
Jace: ...Yes.
Lavinia: *long pause*
Lavinia: May I see him?
Jace: No.
Dovin: Jace, I'm on fire!
Jace: Hohoho no, Dovin, it's just unharmful detainment.
It didn't state any of those, but without evidence to support "magic fertility" you apply common sense. Ravnica is a plane-wide city. Amonkhet is smaller than it. By a sizeable amount. There should be a decently large size disparity between the populations of the Eternals and that of Ravnica.
As for Eternals with pre-Bolas stuff, we don't know what the Trials were like, but I'm going to guess that they weren't killing people and coating them with lazotep. Until the lore says otherwise there isn't any evidence to support this. We don't even know that the trials were combat-oriented, a trial can be many things that have zero to do with fighting. These Eternals would probably be a lot lower quality than the others though, since you're losing the "raised since birth to fight" aspect, so even if he is supplementing his army with others they're going to be less able. Are there any number of possible answers they could have to explain things? Certainly. It also wouldn't be the first time that there was some semblance of a logistics issue in MtG stories though either. It's also assuming a lot of things about the Eternals story-wise with regards to how much of a threat they're meant to be that isn't necessarily supported.
These, as far as generic the parameter of HUMAN goes, are not Ravnica Humans, different biology probably...
Which again, would be true of humans Compleated by Phyrexia or corrupted by Emrakul, but they aren't. You probably won't be surprised to hear this, but we know that humans from different planes are biologically the same because the Phyrexian plane of Rath kidnapped humans from multiple planes, and only the Kor raised eyebrows (because only Zendikari have any experience with them). Its technically true that some races are found on Amonkhet but not Ravnica, but that's why I pointed out that Ravnica is more diverse. Its a moot point. And yes, Eternals are zombies, but even the ability to easily repair zombies is known to Ravincans (see: Dredge).
For one, he used the word 'probably', he didn't state it definitively. But, the point was that either way, whether they have different biology or not, they are still alien. Alien just means foreign to the world. Also, just because the end result is the same (zombies) doesn't mean the process or magic behind it is. The curse of wandering on amonkhet could be weird magic that the golgari don't know how to control in the same way. Or, the manner in which they regenerate might be different, and therefore they don't know how to stop it.
If people are complaining based on lore details that they misunderstand, I aim only to point out those mistakes. And when people make illogical arguments, I don't see any way to correct them without getting into detail. Do you?
If the argument was 'who would win, the entire plane of Amonkhet denizens or the entire plane of Ravnica denizens?' then most of the points would be valid. But, it's not just the regular Amonkhet as normal zombies. It's also Bolas and his magic, and they aren't even trying to conquer the entire plane. Just control a small portion until his zombie assassins jump a few hundred/thousand people. Not to mention any help he's getting from the azorius, golgari, gruul, orzhov, etc.. to start. Dovin may have previously enacted some laws that are hindering some of the resistance, Domri's raids might be diverting attention, Orzhov is in shambles from Kaya setting all the spirits free, etc.. Ravnica isn't at full strength.
Decades, maybe, but distinctly not centuries. First of all, Bolas was dead up until 60 years ago, remember?
Yes, after Azor showed up and created the initial guildpact, he sealed it off from planeswalkers. But, 1200 years ago is when Azor and Ugin were trying to trap Bolas before he ever 'died' on dominaria. Bolas tracked Ugin down through Azor and all the worlds he had visited. He likely didn't physically visit, or send someone to visit, Ravnica until the last 60 years.. but he could have studied information he found about the place from before the first guildpact even being enacted. The plane existed before Azor got there, we just haven't seen much from that time period. Maybe bolas studied info about the nephillim, or Niv-Mizzet, or heck, if the authors wanted, Bolas may have been the one person to somehow crack Azor's magic and find a way into the plane for himself. Who knows? Azor isn't some omnipotent god, his enchantment may have had some kind of weakness/loophole in it that Bolas found a way to use. The other plane barriers have had various ways they could be broken or circumvented. Leshrac, Tevesh Szat and Lim-dul got out of the dominaria shard from another plane 'moving' into range of it, for example.
I do think it's unlikely he spent much effort on trying to get into Ravnica. He probably stopped caring about it after he beat Ugin. I think the place only caught his attention again after the first guildpact broke and it became a kind of magical hub. Or, maybe he chose it as some kind of revenge against Azor. If the guildpact never broke, it seems just as likely he would have chosen Dominaria as his planeswalker trap instead.
How valuable would information over 10,000 years old be? Like... a lot can happen in 10,000 years (time between the signing of the Guildpact and it breaking).
Okay, before I start, I looked it up and Lazotep is almost certainly not a metal. WOTC based it off of the semi-precious stone Lapis Lazuli, which the Egyptians used in jewelry and apparently makeup. I also searched for information about what Lazotep is supposed to do for the Eternals, and all I can find is two things: protecting them from the Blind Eternities when they step through the planar bridge, and helping them keep their muscle memory unlike normal zombies. The leap from "mineral" to "metal" seems to be pure Vorthos speculation, not canon.
Sure, but while it is certainly inspired by Lapislazzuli, a stone can't be used to create a coating like the one we see on Eternals. We even saw kind of an ancient-magicesque-egyptian foundry in which melted lazotep is dripped. While everything has a fusion temperature, a thing that can be melted, used for coating and is metallic in the final facies seems more metallic to me in its nature than simply rocky. Also Nissa remembers them as blue metallic (giants). Sure it still is speculation, but based on some hints collected in franchise that do point out in a direction about a characteristic of lazotep not explicitly (as I understand is not) noted by the creatives.
Which again, would be true of humans Compleated by Phyrexia or corrupted by Emrakul, but they aren't. You probably won't be surprised to hear this, but we know that humans from different planes are biologically the same because the Phyrexian plane of Rath kidnapped humans from multiple planes, and only the Kor raised eyebrows (because only Zendikari have any experience with them).
"Alien" means what I said and there is nothing to reprimand about the use I made of the word "alien".
About the probability of humans having different biological traits it's a totally different discussion. Thinking Humans are on nearly every plane I assumed they are the product of parallel evolution throughout the multiverse (we know the real reason is a creative one, but in lore I assumed this), so I also assumed there must be different traits, so while they are apparently mostly similar, there should be biological differences; talking realistically even humans on Earth have some substantial biological differences: I'd expect humans in different UNIVERSES to be at least different in some ways. And reading the Humans page on MTG wiki I see there are biological differences, for example in lifespan or even physical evident differences (not talking about Mirrans obviously...). I mean, they could even have organs in different places for all we know.
Its technically true that some races are found on Amonkhet but not Ravnica, but that's why I pointed out that Ravnica is more diverse. Its a moot point.
What I meant was not a confront on biodiversity, but much more of a utilitarian approach to it: Ravnica has steeds, Eternals too; Ravnica has flying troops, Eternals too; Ravnica has amphibian troops, Eternals too; and so on...
The Ravincans have been preparing for war for so long the only surprise about this one is that its lead by a planeswalker (for reasons I will get to later).
Who was listening to the warnings of Niv-Mizzet did prepare themselves, those who didn't did not. There already are, by the way, armies on Ravnica and where you see them as "armed to the teeth", I see a number of elite squadrons that should technically work in unison, when for their entire life they have been enemies (in one way or another), which should be a BIG difficulty for the integrity of formations and strategies, arguably an enormous weakness. When we put in the midst things like civilians armed with borrowed weapons and armors, I see a recipe for defeat, because they are not trained at all, don't know team work on a battlefield at all, they don't know strategies at all, don't know priorities... Basically trained troops should spend most of their time saving unprepared civilians instead of killing eternals (being killed by eternals in the process of saving said armed civilians). But this all is a matter of opinion to me.
And then we see things like "United we stand, divided we fall" and topos along the lines, which are good for a story(like this), or activism, but it's a lot less useful in a real war.
Regarding numbers: The size of Amonkhet is less important than the amount of Hazoret's trials that have been completed since Bolas subdued the gods. Ravnica's soldiers are (mostly) living assets that die eventually. That means you have a ROUGHLY stable amount of soldiers on Ravncia throghout the time (with ebbs and flows of course) whereas the eternals accumulate in ever increasing numbers. The longer the trials of Amonkhet go, the more eternals would be at Bolas' disposal. And even if Naktamun was only 1% in size of Ravnica, if the trials went for a thousand years, the army of eternals could easily grow to Ravnican proportions if we went by real life percentages of military personnel per capita.
Of course, it falls a bit apart because creative has stated Bolas implemented the whole system mere decades ago, which I found to be a mistake even then, but hey it is what it is.
TL/DR: Comparing the size of both civilizations is misleading because one civilization has an expiration date attached to its soldiers while the other has not.
In an effort to help bring this debate to rest, I humbly submit the following analysis of Amonkhet’s possible population. Obviously, as a fictional place, I have to use data and numbers that would not be applicable generally, but for the purposes of this post, I’m using them anyway. Please read to the end to see where I’m coming from before getting angry and ornery!
The data I’m starting with:
Population of Thebes in 1500 BC: ~60,000 (“Thebes A”)
Population of Thebes in 700 B: ~450,000 (“Thebes B”)
% of US population under the age of 18 (1950 – 2010): 25 – 35%
In the Amonkhet story, upon Bolas’ arrival at the original Amonkhet, before his influence, he caused "every mortal old enough to walk” to be “dissipated into the sky.” Using available data online that indicates that children learn to walk by age 1, we can assume that all the survivors are infants who are younger than age 1 ("faraway cries of thousands of motherless, fatherless infants").
Assuming (weakly) that the ages are evenly distributed in the 25 – 35% above, that means children under the age of 1 = 1.4 – 2.0% of the total, pre-disintegration population.
Taking the population of Thebes A, this leaves us with: 840 – 1,200 children. But the story says there were ‘thousands . . . of infants.’ Taking the population of Thebes B, this leaves us with: 6,300 – 9,000 children. Thebes B seems to match more, but let’s keep going with both for now.
Using an online population calculator, a population of 840 – 1,200 (Thebes A, decimated) would produce 2,756 – 3,937 over 60 years, assuming 2% growth (world growth rate peaked at 2% in the 1960s). A population of 6,300 – 9,000 (Thebes B, decimated) would produce 20,670 – 29,529 over 60 years.
Years back when I first tried to roughly crunch the numbers, I assumed only the ultimate champions of each crop were eternalized. However, Samut " . . . could recognize several past champions and *challengers* of recent Trials . . . ,” meaning both champions and challengers were eternalized.
As for those who died before Bolas showed up: "[H]e opened the tombs under the city and led the enchanted bodies of the dead out of their mausoleums and into the light. There were so many orphaned infants now, and the children would need caretakers." The previous enchanted dead were the mummy caretakers of the children and the population generally. I find it unlikely they would be eternalized, as they weren’t warrior champions. How do I come to this conclusion? "There existed an elite religious ceremony - trials of merit, with the result being a single sacrificial champion every revolution of the second sun." - " . . . once every few decades would now demand a constant supply of champions . . . . “ Based on these two pieces, only once every few decades would someone be ritually killed before Bolas showed up, meaning that those champions would be very few compared to the rest of the people dying in the city. Thus Bolas is likely drawing his Eternals only from the children and their descendants when he came and wiped out anyone who wasn’t an infant.
So let’s work with Thebes B, as that is the most favorable figure right now (Thebes A population simply wouldn’t work for the story). Let’s split the figure down the middle. Total population of Naktamun feasibly around 25,000, if no one was dying constantly.
The stories also say those who fail early as children around age 5 – 12, and dissenters, are culled from the crop. What’s a reasonable drop off? I’d say maybe 10%, who don’t go on to be Eternals after they’re culled. That’s 2,500, so that takes us to 22,500. How many of them are still alive when Bolas returns and has the Eternals slaughter the rest of Naktamun? I’m feeling 5,000ish. That leaves us with 17,500.
So with these truly very rough estimates and guesstimates and weak data points, we have an Eternal army of maybe around 17,500. This is more than what I originally imagined years ago (3,000 – 5,000).
As for Ravnica, I’m going to use London as a reference point even though I’m an American.
London Population:
1670s: 500,000
1715: 630,000
1760: 740,000
1815: 1.4 million
1860: 3.2 million
1910: 7 million
So Ravnica, I’m assuming, has hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of residents. I’m leaning millions, because Ravnica appears to cover a far larger area than London, and seems way more populated. Maybe millions in the double-digits of millions. NYC today is about 8 million. Ravnica likely has more than that.
So Eternal army: ~17,500. Ravnica: ~10 million?
------
What’s my final point?
I had to jump through a lot of hoops to try to develop the numbers here, and ultimately, and this is the main point, *it doesn’t matter.* Wizards gonna do what Wizards gonna do. I highly doubt they went through math like this. I highly doubt they scrutinized the story to make sure the figures lined up. Based on numbers alone, the Eternals seem vastly outnumbered (let’s say 400,000 trained-to-fight or capable-of-fighting Ravnicans). They shouldn’t really swarm Ravnica and conquer it. But they, as we, are slaves to Wizards’ desires. If the Eternals are gonna win, they’ll win. If they’re beaten back, they’ll be beaten back.
Let's just all get rightfully excited about Eternalized Gods!
So from the preview article it seems like it was intended for the story feel to have the walkers and Ravnicas not only hold their on but start to win against the eternals until the god eternals showed up at which point the story is gonna get bleak. The gods are now Bolas secret weapon and personal guard for the invasion and are controlled by Bolas directly not Liliana.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
From Nissa's trial, it seemed to indicate that the Amonkhet gods were multiple leylines of mana wrapped together. That Bolas was able to reprogram them messing with how they are entangled. If they are concentrated mana from one plane, how are they able to leave that plane?
While the Gods showing up isn’t good to me it feels more like the start of the fight actually maybe having a chance for Bolas’ side. It feels like things will get going enough for his Elder spell, and I expect that (and possibly Bolas himself) to cap off Act 2 tomorrow. Which leaves about seven walkers or so for next week, mostly good guys and Ashiok. Presuming Sarkhan will oppose Bolas at least.
It didn't state any of those, but without evidence to support "magic fertility" you apply common sense. Ravnica is a plane-wide city. Amonkhet is smaller than it. By a sizeable amount. There should be a decently large size disparity between the populations of the Eternals and that of Ravnica.
As for Eternals with pre-Bolas stuff, we don't know what the Trials were like, but I'm going to guess that they weren't killing people and coating them with lazotep. Until the lore says otherwise there isn't any evidence to support this. We don't even know that the trials were combat-oriented, a trial can be many things that have zero to do with fighting. These Eternals would probably be a lot lower quality than the others though, since you're losing the "raised since birth to fight" aspect, so even if he is supplementing his army with others they're going to be less able. Are there any number of possible answers they could have to explain things? Certainly. It also wouldn't be the first time that there was some semblance of a logistics issue in MtG stories though either. It's also assuming a lot of things about the Eternals story-wise with regards to how much of a threat they're meant to be that isn't necessarily supported.
I feel like the population disparity can be almost handwaved away in large part by the "What is your profession?" principle. Ravnica is huge, but this war is happening in Ravnica City proper, the capital, so most of Ravnica isn't involved. That is still much larger than Amonkhet society, and much, much larger than the eternal army. But that huge population is mostly civilian, and even the guild members fit for war aren't all highly trained soldiers. The eternals on the other hand are magically enhanced zombies who spent their entire lives training to be the most skilled, disciplined, effective, ruthless, and unyielding army imaginable. Only the Boros come close, being themselves a highly trained, highly coordinated, highly effective professional army. The Selesnya work very well together, are highly disciplined, and are willing to sacrifice themselves for each other, but aren't ruthless and aren't as individually skilled in battle. The Rakdos are dangerous fighters individually and utterly ruthless, but untrained and undisciplined.
Still, it's hard for me to see Ravnica actually losing. When it was 5 guilds vs 5 maybe, but with the Orzhov and Izzet apparently switching over almost immediately and the Golgari switching over at some point, it's the Bolas, eternalized gods, eternals, the gruul, and the Azorious vs all the other guilds and a butt load of planeswalkers. I'd be betting on Ravnica from that alone, as it appears to be a miscalculation on Bolas' part. Once Liliana turns the eternals against him his odds should really plummet.
Of course, Bolas might not actually care about winning, and the only purpose of the war is to draw out the planeswalkers for spark harvesting and then delay the residents of the plane long enough for him to harvest Sparks and cast his spell, at which point he is now powerful enough to Thanos snap his way to victory or he simply leaves.
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In regards to the discussion to the Eternals number: the population isn't the issue. Its the fact that the actual participants of the army are only there because of a highly limited window of time, at most five yearly instances in a period of 50 years. True, manticores, hippos and the viziers were not part of these trials, but the bulk of the army is.
I'm assuming Bolas really went for the quality over quantity principal.
So can anyone make sense of what's going on with the "official story scenes" on the MtG website?
1-1: We're seeing the set-up for Bolas' plan. Tezzeret is waiting with the Eternal Army on Amonkhet, prepared to open the Planar Portal. Vraska is waiting by the Interplanar Beacon on Ravnica. Not sure about the Orzhov vampire, I guess she just has a sense that some major conflict is about to go down?
1-2: The Planar Portal opens, destroying the Hall of the Guildpact. The Eternal Army comes marching into Ravnica, led by Liliana, and starts causing wanton destruction.
1-3: Ajani and Jace come to the "rescue" by activating the Beacon, calling planeswalkers to help fend off Bolas' invasion. Then Bolas activates the Immortal Sun, trapping the planeswalkers there.
2-1: We see all the random planeswalkers who got lured to Ravnica. (They might be pulled there against their will, I'm still not clear if the Beacon is just a beacon or if it forcibly transports planeswalkers to Ravnica. If it's the latter, it would explain the presence of people like Angrath and Davriel who probably wouldn't care about a call for help.) Angrath seems to be using his powers to take control of some Eternals. We also see Kaya, who was already on Ravnica, but I'm guessing this is the point where she turns on Bolas and starts fighting his forces.
2-2: The elite commanders of the Eternal army arrive.
2-3: Meanwhile, Sorin and Nahiri are pulled to Ravnica. (If the Beacon teleports planeswalkers to Ravnica against their will, that would explain how Sorin got out of the stone trap.) They resume their vendetta, ignoring the rest of the war to battle each other one-on-one.
2-4, 2-5: The various inhabitants of Ravnica start mobilizing to fight back against the Eternals.
2-6: The Boros angels mobilize against the Eternals in their giant flying fortress, with Feather leading the charge.
2-7: Chandra, Jaya, Saheeli, and Karn go after Dovin for some reason. (The flavor text on some other cards implies he's zealously guarding New Prahv, which seems to be the location of the Immortal Sun, so maybe they're going to shut it down/destroy it.)
2-8: Nissa animates the giant Selesnya home tree and has it topple Bolas' statue. (I'm guessing this is where the tide of the battle turns against the Eternals, only for Bolas to bring in the Eternalized gods and turn the tides again.)
From the flavor text, I would assume Ajani is the one activating the Beacon and Jace is among the ones coming in. Hence him not being suprised at walking into a trap.
Also, I was always under the impression that Bolas's side is responsible for the beacon. You know, to lure everyone to Ravnica. Why would Ajani be igniting it? Like a call to every planeswalker to come help fight Bolas? Why now? What makes Ravnica so worth defending that you call every planeswalker to your aid? Wouldn't it be smarter to regroup somewhere off-plane after clearly being caught offguard? Call everyone to Dominaria, then make your plan of attack.
Lastly, do we think Liliana turns before or after the God Eternals arrive? It would make sense that Bolas brings in soldiers he controls himself after Liliana turns on him. It would also make for a nicely bitter end of Act 2, with Liliana finally getting redemption, only for it to not really matter.
It didn't state any of those, but without evidence to support "magic fertility" you apply common sense. Ravnica is a plane-wide city. Amonkhet is smaller than it. By a sizeable amount. There should be a decently large size disparity between the populations of the Eternals and that of Ravnica.
As for Eternals with pre-Bolas stuff, we don't know what the Trials were like, but I'm going to guess that they weren't killing people and coating them with lazotep. Until the lore says otherwise there isn't any evidence to support this. We don't even know that the trials were combat-oriented, a trial can be many things that have zero to do with fighting. These Eternals would probably be a lot lower quality than the others though, since you're losing the "raised since birth to fight" aspect, so even if he is supplementing his army with others they're going to be less able. Are there any number of possible answers they could have to explain things? Certainly. It also wouldn't be the first time that there was some semblance of a logistics issue in MtG stories though either. It's also assuming a lot of things about the Eternals story-wise with regards to how much of a threat they're meant to be that isn't necessarily supported.
My point is that people are coming up with estimates of like '1,000 eternals' when you can see more then that in a single piece of art, and clearly 1,000 eternals would barely constitute a threat to even a single ravnica guild. So, obviously the math is wrong, then. How many eternals are there? The real answer is 'enough' and no one at WotC sat down and ran the logistics to come up with a specific number. It's meant to be a mostly unending horde, hence the 'dreadhorde' name. I'm just giving various ways that there could be a massive number of them, that hasn't been specifically contradicted by any existing lore that I know of. Bolas isn't dumb enough to try and invade a plane of millions with just a few thousand run of the mill zombies.
As I said before, pregnancies might be shorter there, especially for the non-human races, or maybe people give birth to twins/triplets a lot more frequently on Amonkhet. Heck, were any of the characters shown as being pregnant? Maybe babies are even made magically or there's a dedicated breeding group pumping out babies as often as possible (this wouldn't make for entertaining fiction, so it's unlikely to come up in a story even if it were true). There may have been tons of extra corpses already stashed away, and he just spent the last 60 years coating them in lazotep. The ones from the last 60 years being the 'elite' of the horde, kinda like squad commanders. Or, when they said 'thousands' of babies to start, that might have meant like 10 to 20,000 rather then the 2 to 3 thousand many believe, or maybe their estimate was just wrong. Etc etc.. that is just off the top of my head. A good writer, spending some thought on it, could surely come up with some more interesting and plausible scenarios.
Basing their numbers off real world, or earth equivalent, figures is forgetting that this is a fantasy setting and magic is in play. The population of ancient egyptian cities are not relevant to how many live on Amonkhet. Their city's physical size might be as big as Thebes, or whatever ancient egyptian city you chose, but maybe the majority of soldiers live in cramped barracks style houses, so their population density is a lot higher. There could be a couple million living in Amonkhet, for all we know. Is that still less than Ravnica? Certainly, but not every Ravnican is an elite soldier, or even a rudimentary fighter, and its only a small portion of the plane being invaded. America has waaaaay less people then China, but most believe we have an overall stronger military. Could we invade one of their major cities if our troops were instantly teleported inside? I would certainly hope so. Would we win an all-out war (without using nukes)against China? Unclear, and probably not.
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It turns out that it really doesn't matter what order they come in, because Chandra's only "Binding" him.
How one "binds" a person with a wrap of fire without killing them (or at the very minimum severely, debilitatingly burning them) I don't know.
Mutha****er I'd love to but someone thought it was a good idea to wait until after the whole set was spoiled and we were all confused as hell by cards like Chandra's Triumph to release the damn book.
He wasn't saying they are 'aliens', like from outer space. Anything that isn't native to your planet (or plane, in this case) is 'alien', even if they are still biologically the same race. If biologically identical humans somehow evolved on Mars, they'd still be aliens to Earth.
The Eternals are alien (aka foreign, different, odd) to Ravnica. Their edge is in their numbers, the element of surprise, and the magic that Bolas has imbued them with.
This whole discussion is getting bogged down in details as if this was a real world fight. Most of these details, while mostly valid, are completely irrelevant. Unfortunately, the real reason being 'magic' and 'plot'. However, consider that the gatewatch defeated two eldrazi, that were absolutely wrecking an entire plane of people, many of whom had powerful magic due to the abundance of it on Zendikar. Bolas crushed the gatewatch with very little effort. The Eternals are simply acting as Bolas hands in this. He has to focus on other things, and can't be everywhere to harvest all the planeswalkers. However, he would have made sure they powerful enough to do the task he has assigned them to do. Whether that is through magic he personally gave them, magic the zombie gods are/have given them, or some other combination of reasons. So, instead of thinking 'can a zombie amonkhet human beat a ravnica soldier' you should be asking 'can a tool Bolas created, specifically for this purpose, beat a ravnica soldier?'. Whatever advantage you believe Ravnicans have (and I don't necessarily disagree with most of the points everyone has brought up) would have surely been accounted for by Bolas.
He's been scouting out Ravnica for decades, if not centuries. He knows the general capabilities of the armies of each guild, so he would have ensured his soldiers don't just fold like paper to an average fighter. He may not know exactly how powerful each of the paruns are, though, but that's why he's got himself and the gods with him; as a failsafe towards bigger threats. I'd bet that any of the amonkhet gods could take on most of the paruns individually, especially the 3 multi-colored ones, and as a group they could surely defeat any of them on their own.
The only thing Bolas may not have factored in properly, is how well the guilds might work together. His plans were to destabilize them beforehand, which he did. But, if they are putting aside their hatreds quicker then he anticipated, if their teamwork is better than he expected, that would explain them winning a bit more than they should. However, again, his failsafe is first his gods and then himself. He COULD go beat anyone on Ravnica if he acted directly, but he didn't want to bother and couldn't be everywhere at once. Plus, he isn't intending to take over the entire plane. He just needs his Eternals to assassinate enough planeswalkers for him to cast the spell. So, he's got them as his shock troopers, his gods as his bodyguards, and they all just need to buy enough time for him to finish his ritual, then nothing else matters. Given enough time, I'm sure Ravnica would beat his entire army of Eternals, but that's not relevant to his plan.
Where are people getting these numbers from? When were we given a population estimate on Amonkhet? The city could have had a million babies when he started his plans, and maybe they all breed like crazy, too. For all we know, each woman has an average of 5 babies, magically sped up pregnancies only taking a few weeks/months, or something equally crazy like that.
Plus, as others have stated, its not just the people who 'won' the trials. Those winners got special spots, but there's plenty of others that make up the bulk of the horde. The purpose was to have a civilization constantly practicing and training, completely devoted to learning to fight, from the day they were born. i.e. the Spartans of ancient Greece. Even the weakest warriors of theirs will be more than a match for an average soldier elsewhere. Then, you add in all the non-human creatures he's added to them, and it could be an army that is very big indeed. The pictures on cards are obviously up to the artist, but some of them (the basic lands, mostly) show way more than 1000 eternals in them.
I mean, nothing indicates that the people were magically speeding up their pregnancy or exceptionally fertile. And being more than a match for an average soldier doesn't really help the numbers or gear disadvantage they're working with. Ravnica itself is rising up, quite literally with stuff like Vitu Ghazi coming alive. No matter what there just aren't enough soldiers to really compensate.
I'm actually curious how Ravnica will change as a society in the aftermath. Will the guilds come together, the gruul get a legitimate place in the system (tending to the truly wild places). Will the use of undead be frowned upon after the eternals? Will some eternals even be salvaged and used as elite troops and body guards by some of the guilds and guildmasters? So many question and although I'm okay with not going back to Ravnica for a while, this makes me curious for when we do return eventually.
Before the reboot of Amonkhet, Hoazoret's trial probably did not kill the worthy... Because the last words Bolas says to Hazoret (while she was trying to protect the children before the reboot) were something like "You will kill with your spear the children you are now trying to protect"
Edit: here it is...
Excuse me, but he specifically said (and I bolded the important bit):
Which again, would be true of humans Compleated by Phyrexia or corrupted by Emrakul, but they aren't. You probably won't be surprised to hear this, but we know that humans from different planes are biologically the same because the Phyrexian plane of Rath kidnapped humans from multiple planes, and only the Kor raised eyebrows (because only Zendikari have any experience with them). Its technically true that some races are found on Amonkhet but not Ravnica, but that's why I pointed out that Ravnica is more diverse. Its a moot point. And yes, Eternals are zombies, but even the ability to easily repair zombies is known to Ravincans (see: Dredge). The Ravincans have been preparing for war for so long the only surprise about this one is that its lead by a planeswalker (for reasons I will get to later).
If people are complaining based on lore details that they misunderstand, I aim only to point out those mistakes. And when people make illogical arguments, I don't see any way to correct them without getting into detail. Do you?
Decades, maybe, but distinctly not centuries. First of all, Bolas was dead up until 60 years ago, remember? He, in spiritual form, had to trick Venser and Jhoria into resurrecting him during the time rifts crisis. Before that, when he was running Madara he showed no interest in leaving Dominaria. In fact, it seemed like he was rooted there by the Madaran Rift. His power both created and stabilized it. Lastly, as I recall the original Guildpact before the Living Guildpact actually had a magical effect preventing planeswalkers from entering the plane, and any who left could not return. This is opposite to the Immortal Sun's effect, and something we've seen happen to other planes as well (i.e. when Urza accidentally created the Shard of Twelve Worlds and when Feroz deliberately created a barrier around Ulgothra). The original Guildpact lasted for thousands of years, and it was only broken by the Dimir sometime shortly before the rifts crisis/Mending. So all of that puts a hard limit on how much time Bolas has had to study Ravnica and plan all of this. 60 years or less.
Of course not, we weren't given a census or in depth documentary about life on amonkhet. We were given a relatively short story of the gatewatch being there for like.. a week. Just because it wasn't mentioned in a story, doesn't mean it's not possible. To be clear, I'm not saying this is actually what was happening. I think its very unlikely, in fact. But, my point is, how is anyone even 'doing the numbers' when there are no population numbers to base them on. Did some lore state, definitively, that there was X number of people on all of amonkhet when Bolas took it over? Did it also state how often people have babies?
Plus, the trials happened before he came there, just for a different purpose. Due to the curse of wandering, there could have been literally hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of corpses already there for him to use, and he simply repurposed their way of life. Potentially, he could have left them alone and shown up a few months before he needed to use them and done almost the same thing. But, he instead decided to lay some groundwork decades ahead of time and his ego wanted them worshipping him in the meantime. Since he did that, everyone is basing their estimates on the time from when he took over to when he showed up again, but we don't know enough to know if that's the only corpses he used. I think it's very unlikely, as the whole world was already a desert grixis, with everything turning into zombies when they die. I believe the real reason he planned it ahead of time, was to have people coating the corpses in lazotep. That may have been what took the most time, rather then the actual raising and training of enough people.
From the MtG subreddit:
As for Eternals with pre-Bolas stuff, we don't know what the Trials were like, but I'm going to guess that they weren't killing people and coating them with lazotep. Until the lore says otherwise there isn't any evidence to support this. We don't even know that the trials were combat-oriented, a trial can be many things that have zero to do with fighting. These Eternals would probably be a lot lower quality than the others though, since you're losing the "raised since birth to fight" aspect, so even if he is supplementing his army with others they're going to be less able. Are there any number of possible answers they could have to explain things? Certainly. It also wouldn't be the first time that there was some semblance of a logistics issue in MtG stories though either. It's also assuming a lot of things about the Eternals story-wise with regards to how much of a threat they're meant to be that isn't necessarily supported.
For one, he used the word 'probably', he didn't state it definitively. But, the point was that either way, whether they have different biology or not, they are still alien. Alien just means foreign to the world. Also, just because the end result is the same (zombies) doesn't mean the process or magic behind it is. The curse of wandering on amonkhet could be weird magic that the golgari don't know how to control in the same way. Or, the manner in which they regenerate might be different, and therefore they don't know how to stop it.
If the argument was 'who would win, the entire plane of Amonkhet denizens or the entire plane of Ravnica denizens?' then most of the points would be valid. But, it's not just the regular Amonkhet as normal zombies. It's also Bolas and his magic, and they aren't even trying to conquer the entire plane. Just control a small portion until his zombie assassins jump a few hundred/thousand people. Not to mention any help he's getting from the azorius, golgari, gruul, orzhov, etc.. to start. Dovin may have previously enacted some laws that are hindering some of the resistance, Domri's raids might be diverting attention, Orzhov is in shambles from Kaya setting all the spirits free, etc.. Ravnica isn't at full strength.
Yes, after Azor showed up and created the initial guildpact, he sealed it off from planeswalkers. But, 1200 years ago is when Azor and Ugin were trying to trap Bolas before he ever 'died' on dominaria. Bolas tracked Ugin down through Azor and all the worlds he had visited. He likely didn't physically visit, or send someone to visit, Ravnica until the last 60 years.. but he could have studied information he found about the place from before the first guildpact even being enacted. The plane existed before Azor got there, we just haven't seen much from that time period. Maybe bolas studied info about the nephillim, or Niv-Mizzet, or heck, if the authors wanted, Bolas may have been the one person to somehow crack Azor's magic and find a way into the plane for himself. Who knows? Azor isn't some omnipotent god, his enchantment may have had some kind of weakness/loophole in it that Bolas found a way to use. The other plane barriers have had various ways they could be broken or circumvented. Leshrac, Tevesh Szat and Lim-dul got out of the dominaria shard from another plane 'moving' into range of it, for example.
I do think it's unlikely he spent much effort on trying to get into Ravnica. He probably stopped caring about it after he beat Ugin. I think the place only caught his attention again after the first guildpact broke and it became a kind of magical hub. Or, maybe he chose it as some kind of revenge against Azor. If the guildpact never broke, it seems just as likely he would have chosen Dominaria as his planeswalker trap instead.
Sure, but while it is certainly inspired by Lapislazzuli, a stone can't be used to create a coating like the one we see on Eternals. We even saw kind of an ancient-magicesque-egyptian foundry in which melted lazotep is dripped. While everything has a fusion temperature, a thing that can be melted, used for coating and is metallic in the final facies seems more metallic to me in its nature than simply rocky. Also Nissa remembers them as blue metallic (giants). Sure it still is speculation, but based on some hints collected in franchise that do point out in a direction about a characteristic of lazotep not explicitly (as I understand is not) noted by the creatives.
"Alien" means what I said and there is nothing to reprimand about the use I made of the word "alien".
About the probability of humans having different biological traits it's a totally different discussion. Thinking Humans are on nearly every plane I assumed they are the product of parallel evolution throughout the multiverse (we know the real reason is a creative one, but in lore I assumed this), so I also assumed there must be different traits, so while they are apparently mostly similar, there should be biological differences; talking realistically even humans on Earth have some substantial biological differences: I'd expect humans in different UNIVERSES to be at least different in some ways. And reading the Humans page on MTG wiki I see there are biological differences, for example in lifespan or even physical evident differences (not talking about Mirrans obviously...). I mean, they could even have organs in different places for all we know.
What I meant was not a confront on biodiversity, but much more of a utilitarian approach to it: Ravnica has steeds, Eternals too; Ravnica has flying troops, Eternals too; Ravnica has amphibian troops, Eternals too; and so on...
Who was listening to the warnings of Niv-Mizzet did prepare themselves, those who didn't did not. There already are, by the way, armies on Ravnica and where you see them as "armed to the teeth", I see a number of elite squadrons that should technically work in unison, when for their entire life they have been enemies (in one way or another), which should be a BIG difficulty for the integrity of formations and strategies, arguably an enormous weakness. When we put in the midst things like civilians armed with borrowed weapons and armors, I see a recipe for defeat, because they are not trained at all, don't know team work on a battlefield at all, they don't know strategies at all, don't know priorities... Basically trained troops should spend most of their time saving unprepared civilians instead of killing eternals (being killed by eternals in the process of saving said armed civilians). But this all is a matter of opinion to me.
And then we see things like "United we stand, divided we fall" and topos along the lines, which are good for a story(like this), or activism, but it's a lot less useful in a real war.
Of course, it falls a bit apart because creative has stated Bolas implemented the whole system mere decades ago, which I found to be a mistake even then, but hey it is what it is.
TL/DR: Comparing the size of both civilizations is misleading because one civilization has an expiration date attached to its soldiers while the other has not.
The data I’m starting with:
Population of Thebes in 1500 BC: ~60,000 (“Thebes A”)
Population of Thebes in 700 B: ~450,000 (“Thebes B”)
% of US population under the age of 18 (1950 – 2010): 25 – 35%
In the Amonkhet story, upon Bolas’ arrival at the original Amonkhet, before his influence, he caused "every mortal old enough to walk” to be “dissipated into the sky.” Using available data online that indicates that children learn to walk by age 1, we can assume that all the survivors are infants who are younger than age 1 ("faraway cries of thousands of motherless, fatherless infants").
Assuming (weakly) that the ages are evenly distributed in the 25 – 35% above, that means children under the age of 1 = 1.4 – 2.0% of the total, pre-disintegration population.
Taking the population of Thebes A, this leaves us with: 840 – 1,200 children. But the story says there were ‘thousands . . . of infants.’ Taking the population of Thebes B, this leaves us with: 6,300 – 9,000 children. Thebes B seems to match more, but let’s keep going with both for now.
Using an online population calculator, a population of 840 – 1,200 (Thebes A, decimated) would produce 2,756 – 3,937 over 60 years, assuming 2% growth (world growth rate peaked at 2% in the 1960s). A population of 6,300 – 9,000 (Thebes B, decimated) would produce 20,670 – 29,529 over 60 years.
Years back when I first tried to roughly crunch the numbers, I assumed only the ultimate champions of each crop were eternalized. However, Samut " . . . could recognize several past champions and *challengers* of recent Trials . . . ,” meaning both champions and challengers were eternalized.
As for those who died before Bolas showed up: "[H]e opened the tombs under the city and led the enchanted bodies of the dead out of their mausoleums and into the light. There were so many orphaned infants now, and the children would need caretakers." The previous enchanted dead were the mummy caretakers of the children and the population generally. I find it unlikely they would be eternalized, as they weren’t warrior champions. How do I come to this conclusion? "There existed an elite religious ceremony - trials of merit, with the result being a single sacrificial champion every revolution of the second sun." - " . . . once every few decades would now demand a constant supply of champions . . . . “ Based on these two pieces, only once every few decades would someone be ritually killed before Bolas showed up, meaning that those champions would be very few compared to the rest of the people dying in the city. Thus Bolas is likely drawing his Eternals only from the children and their descendants when he came and wiped out anyone who wasn’t an infant.
So let’s work with Thebes B, as that is the most favorable figure right now (Thebes A population simply wouldn’t work for the story). Let’s split the figure down the middle. Total population of Naktamun feasibly around 25,000, if no one was dying constantly.
The stories also say those who fail early as children around age 5 – 12, and dissenters, are culled from the crop. What’s a reasonable drop off? I’d say maybe 10%, who don’t go on to be Eternals after they’re culled. That’s 2,500, so that takes us to 22,500. How many of them are still alive when Bolas returns and has the Eternals slaughter the rest of Naktamun? I’m feeling 5,000ish. That leaves us with 17,500.
So with these truly very rough estimates and guesstimates and weak data points, we have an Eternal army of maybe around 17,500. This is more than what I originally imagined years ago (3,000 – 5,000).
As for Ravnica, I’m going to use London as a reference point even though I’m an American.
London Population:
1670s: 500,000
1715: 630,000
1760: 740,000
1815: 1.4 million
1860: 3.2 million
1910: 7 million
So Ravnica, I’m assuming, has hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of residents. I’m leaning millions, because Ravnica appears to cover a far larger area than London, and seems way more populated. Maybe millions in the double-digits of millions. NYC today is about 8 million. Ravnica likely has more than that.
So Eternal army: ~17,500. Ravnica: ~10 million?
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What’s my final point?
I had to jump through a lot of hoops to try to develop the numbers here, and ultimately, and this is the main point, *it doesn’t matter.* Wizards gonna do what Wizards gonna do. I highly doubt they went through math like this. I highly doubt they scrutinized the story to make sure the figures lined up. Based on numbers alone, the Eternals seem vastly outnumbered (let’s say 400,000 trained-to-fight or capable-of-fighting Ravnicans). They shouldn’t really swarm Ravnica and conquer it. But they, as we, are slaves to Wizards’ desires. If the Eternals are gonna win, they’ll win. If they’re beaten back, they’ll be beaten back.
Let's just all get rightfully excited about Eternalized Gods!
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
I feel like the population disparity can be almost handwaved away in large part by the "What is your profession?" principle. Ravnica is huge, but this war is happening in Ravnica City proper, the capital, so most of Ravnica isn't involved. That is still much larger than Amonkhet society, and much, much larger than the eternal army. But that huge population is mostly civilian, and even the guild members fit for war aren't all highly trained soldiers. The eternals on the other hand are magically enhanced zombies who spent their entire lives training to be the most skilled, disciplined, effective, ruthless, and unyielding army imaginable. Only the Boros come close, being themselves a highly trained, highly coordinated, highly effective professional army. The Selesnya work very well together, are highly disciplined, and are willing to sacrifice themselves for each other, but aren't ruthless and aren't as individually skilled in battle. The Rakdos are dangerous fighters individually and utterly ruthless, but untrained and undisciplined.
Still, it's hard for me to see Ravnica actually losing. When it was 5 guilds vs 5 maybe, but with the Orzhov and Izzet apparently switching over almost immediately and the Golgari switching over at some point, it's the Bolas, eternalized gods, eternals, the gruul, and the Azorious vs all the other guilds and a butt load of planeswalkers. I'd be betting on Ravnica from that alone, as it appears to be a miscalculation on Bolas' part. Once Liliana turns the eternals against him his odds should really plummet.
Of course, Bolas might not actually care about winning, and the only purpose of the war is to draw out the planeswalkers for spark harvesting and then delay the residents of the plane long enough for him to harvest Sparks and cast his spell, at which point he is now powerful enough to Thanos snap his way to victory or he simply leaves.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I'm assuming Bolas really went for the quality over quantity principal.
1-1: We're seeing the set-up for Bolas' plan. Tezzeret is waiting with the Eternal Army on Amonkhet, prepared to open the Planar Portal. Vraska is waiting by the Interplanar Beacon on Ravnica. Not sure about the Orzhov vampire, I guess she just has a sense that some major conflict is about to go down?
1-2: The Planar Portal opens, destroying the Hall of the Guildpact. The Eternal Army comes marching into Ravnica, led by Liliana, and starts causing wanton destruction.
1-3: Ajani and Jace come to the "rescue" by activating the Beacon, calling planeswalkers to help fend off Bolas' invasion. Then Bolas activates the Immortal Sun, trapping the planeswalkers there.
2-1: We see all the random planeswalkers who got lured to Ravnica. (They might be pulled there against their will, I'm still not clear if the Beacon is just a beacon or if it forcibly transports planeswalkers to Ravnica. If it's the latter, it would explain the presence of people like Angrath and Davriel who probably wouldn't care about a call for help.) Angrath seems to be using his powers to take control of some Eternals. We also see Kaya, who was already on Ravnica, but I'm guessing this is the point where she turns on Bolas and starts fighting his forces.
2-2: The elite commanders of the Eternal army arrive.
2-3: Meanwhile, Sorin and Nahiri are pulled to Ravnica. (If the Beacon teleports planeswalkers to Ravnica against their will, that would explain how Sorin got out of the stone trap.) They resume their vendetta, ignoring the rest of the war to battle each other one-on-one.
2-4, 2-5: The various inhabitants of Ravnica start mobilizing to fight back against the Eternals.
2-6: The Boros angels mobilize against the Eternals in their giant flying fortress, with Feather leading the charge.
2-7: Chandra, Jaya, Saheeli, and Karn go after Dovin for some reason. (The flavor text on some other cards implies he's zealously guarding New Prahv, which seems to be the location of the Immortal Sun, so maybe they're going to shut it down/destroy it.)
2-8: Nissa animates the giant Selesnya home tree and has it topple Bolas' statue. (I'm guessing this is where the tide of the battle turns against the Eternals, only for Bolas to bring in the Eternalized gods and turn the tides again.)
Also, I was always under the impression that Bolas's side is responsible for the beacon. You know, to lure everyone to Ravnica. Why would Ajani be igniting it? Like a call to every planeswalker to come help fight Bolas? Why now? What makes Ravnica so worth defending that you call every planeswalker to your aid? Wouldn't it be smarter to regroup somewhere off-plane after clearly being caught offguard? Call everyone to Dominaria, then make your plan of attack.
Lastly, do we think Liliana turns before or after the God Eternals arrive? It would make sense that Bolas brings in soldiers he controls himself after Liliana turns on him. It would also make for a nicely bitter end of Act 2, with Liliana finally getting redemption, only for it to not really matter.
My point is that people are coming up with estimates of like '1,000 eternals' when you can see more then that in a single piece of art, and clearly 1,000 eternals would barely constitute a threat to even a single ravnica guild. So, obviously the math is wrong, then. How many eternals are there? The real answer is 'enough' and no one at WotC sat down and ran the logistics to come up with a specific number. It's meant to be a mostly unending horde, hence the 'dreadhorde' name. I'm just giving various ways that there could be a massive number of them, that hasn't been specifically contradicted by any existing lore that I know of. Bolas isn't dumb enough to try and invade a plane of millions with just a few thousand run of the mill zombies.
As I said before, pregnancies might be shorter there, especially for the non-human races, or maybe people give birth to twins/triplets a lot more frequently on Amonkhet. Heck, were any of the characters shown as being pregnant? Maybe babies are even made magically or there's a dedicated breeding group pumping out babies as often as possible (this wouldn't make for entertaining fiction, so it's unlikely to come up in a story even if it were true). There may have been tons of extra corpses already stashed away, and he just spent the last 60 years coating them in lazotep. The ones from the last 60 years being the 'elite' of the horde, kinda like squad commanders. Or, when they said 'thousands' of babies to start, that might have meant like 10 to 20,000 rather then the 2 to 3 thousand many believe, or maybe their estimate was just wrong. Etc etc.. that is just off the top of my head. A good writer, spending some thought on it, could surely come up with some more interesting and plausible scenarios.
Basing their numbers off real world, or earth equivalent, figures is forgetting that this is a fantasy setting and magic is in play. The population of ancient egyptian cities are not relevant to how many live on Amonkhet. Their city's physical size might be as big as Thebes, or whatever ancient egyptian city you chose, but maybe the majority of soldiers live in cramped barracks style houses, so their population density is a lot higher. There could be a couple million living in Amonkhet, for all we know. Is that still less than Ravnica? Certainly, but not every Ravnican is an elite soldier, or even a rudimentary fighter, and its only a small portion of the plane being invaded. America has waaaaay less people then China, but most believe we have an overall stronger military. Could we invade one of their major cities if our troops were instantly teleported inside? I would certainly hope so. Would we win an all-out war (without using nukes)against China? Unclear, and probably not.