And he's been a really boring villain ever since his resurrection. Possibly before even then; I haven't read any of his pre-Time Spiral appearances, so I don't know how good he was in Legends. But WotC clearly doesn't know how to do anything interesting with him these days, so I think it's time they got rid of him.
The story of Madara in Legends was pretty fun. Bolas' part isn't exactly original--he's the powerful boss who likes it when his minions stab each other in the back to "prove their ambition"--but it works. His arrogance lets him think he's in control when he's really being tricked and he both gets his body smushed by the Meteor Hammer and his spirit vanquished and crushed on the Meditation Plane.
Apparently someone in the lore department has/had a massive crush on him so he was suddenly alive and whole again for Time Spiral, because reasons.
On a side note, "Bolas" can apparently mean "balls" in Italian, and yes, they do use it in the same slang way that English speakers do, so he will forever be "Nick Balls" to me.
Nope.
Not at all, this is false, "bolas" in italian means what it means in english, a pair of balls tied together with a string that has been used for hunting by past civilisazions.
The story of Madara in Legends was pretty fun. Bolas' part isn't exactly original--he's the powerful boss who likes it when his minions stab each other in the back to "prove their ambition"--but it works. His arrogance lets him think he's in control when he's really being tricked and he both gets his body smushed by the Meteor Hammer and his spirit vanquished and crushed on the Meditation Plane.
That matches what I've heard. I've just never read it myself to get my own opinion.
Apparently someone in the lore department has/had a massive crush on him so he was suddenly alive and whole again for Time Spiral, because reasons.
Oh, definitely. Bolas is characterized like he's in a bad fanfic, and the middle-schooler who wrote it was a massive fanboy of the character who's still mad about how he was defeated by the heros in-canon, so he wrote the fanfic to "fix" that.
And then, Bolas swooped in, and blasted the Gatewatch and defeated them. "Muah ha ha! All according to my plan!" he said.
"No! We have been defeated!" said Gideon, "He's just too powerful and handsome!"
"He's just too cool for us!" said Jace.
And then, Nicol Bolas put on a pair of sunglasses, and stole all their girlfriends, before plainswalking to his meditation realm. The Gatewatch could only watch, and wallow in their failure.
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Melek, Izzet Paragon
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Bruna, Light of Alabaster
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
Rhys the Redeemed
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Sen Triplets
The Mimeoplasm WUBRGSliver OverlordGRBUW WUBRGSliver Hivelord(Superfriends)GRBUW
At this point Bolas is about as threatening as Discord in My Little Pony. And aesthetically they’re pretty similar. What ever happened to that cold, solemn elder dragon reading a book? Sigh.
Speaking of Bolas, what the heck happened to all those Eternals he reanimated?
Probably in the same storeroom the Immortal Sun is currently in, to be unleashed when we get to that grand war on Ravnica...
While we didn't know Bolas brokered the deals between Liliana and the Demons right from the start, when the broker was revealed, it actually became sort of obvious immediately (seriously why would Bolas help anyone, especially someone like Liliana if it didn't benefit himself?) Honestly this card is just the point Liliana "cliche" Vess falls into Nicol "Obviously self-serving evil" Bolas's plans...
If Liliana is actually surprised when the actual story for this rolls around, I would find it unbelievable (and bad planning) considering what she just said to Belzenlok before this. "You accepted the deals I brokered and you thought me the fool?"
Am I really mentally ill for wanting this to cost three and only be able to steal legendary permanents?. As I see it, this can still be uncommon with the changes I'm asking for. Maybe make it able to steal any historic permanent?
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Manna cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.
serves you right you vain, angel murdering W-- ~ All those work, all for nothing. She thought she out manouevered Bolas...
You forgot cursing your hazubando Garruk. (Hazubando, that's what a male waifu is, right? If not, make it a thing.)
If that W-word is "witch", first, it's not a dirty word, and second, yes, yes, she is a witch. That's pretty much her whole archetype. Witch Classic, not the Twilighted version that we saw starting in the 19th century and really took off when Wicca became a thing.
Anyway, HAH! She thought it would be easy? I mean, I thought Gideon was a moron for trusting gods (especially when he's not only from Theros, the plane of bat***** gods, but...has experience with said gods) on Amonkhet, but this? This takes the cake.
So, I guess Nissa will rejoin the Gatewatch just to say "I hate to say 'I told you so.' No, wait, I love saying 'I told you so.'"
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Yeah, if it were most other people getting tricked into being Nick Balls's slave, I'd be pretty upset, but given that it's Liliana, I'm really not that distressed.
I don't really get the flavor of it becoming legendary, is it just because now instead of being anyone's Lantern of Insight it is now Bolas' Lantern of Insight? I guess Legendary is a theme of the set but it's still weird.
I would have though confiscate would have been a nice reprint and some nostalgia since the old art had a young teferi and I'm sure they could have had him being the doing doing the confiscating now.
Also confiscate's flavour text is 100000x better IMO:
"I don't understand why he works so hard on a device to duplicate a sound so easily made with hand and armpit."
—Barrin, progress report
It's even funnier when you realize that the "he" Barrin is talking about is Teferi.
I don't really get the flavor of it becoming legendary, is it just because now instead of being anyone's Lantern of Insight it is now Bolas' Lantern of Insight? I guess Legendary is a theme of the set but it's still weird.
I would have though confiscate would have been a nice reprint and some nostalgia since the old art had a young teferi and I'm sure they could have had him being the doing doing the confiscating now.
Also confiscate's flavour text is 100000x better IMO:
"I don't understand why he works so hard on a device to duplicate a sound so easily made with hand and armpit."
—Barrin, progress report
It's even funnier when you realize that the "he" Barrin is talking about is Teferi.
And when you realize that Teferi still has that type of sense of humour, even after all those years....
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
The flavour text on Disruptive Student clearly illustrates the original mischievous nature of Teferi.
But moving on to something else...
This storyline is getting to the same point as the Weatherlight story: drawn on too long, characters losing their likeability...I’ve felt for a long time that Bolas wasn’t a good choice for a villain.
I guess the difference with the Weatherlight crew is that they weren’t a group of near-omnipotent spellcasters/planeswalkers and relied on tact, skill and magical trinkets à la The Weatherlight in order to planeswalk and get things done. These Gatewatch guys only need to have a bowel movement and suddenly they’re in another realm of existence.
End the Gatewatch arc now! (But do it properly). I want more humane arcs involving Jhoira et al.
‘buster
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'buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset. Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
Seeing as the game is about planeswalkers (that's what we, the players, represent, FYI), it would be stupid not to focus on planeswalkers in the story. That's like asking for a Transformers story that focuses on humans rather than Autobots and Decepticons.
Every time someone gripes about modern Magic story, I thank my lucky stars modern Magic isn't like old Magic. Old Magic is confusing, underdelivered on the planeswalking aspect thanks to almost all the sets being on Dominaria, and the Weatherlight Saga ends with a whole bunch of drama BS including Urza suddenly defecting to Phyrexia and almost none of the heroes receiving the happy end they deserved after all the crap they went through, making the entire story arc feel like a waste of time (and coincidentally is a reason I vehemently dislike Phyrexia). Spare me the pessimistic, nihilstic drama BS, I'll take a modern story with satisfactory results any day.
The Gatewatch are supposed to be a permanent part of the brand going forward (though if the vocal minority bellyache enough, that might change), so there is no "Gatewatch arc". This is the "Bolas" arc, which is going to wrap up sooner or later (hopefully sooner because I want to see Bolas get what he's had coming to him for a long time).
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
Well you consider Bolas whole plot is regaining Omnipotence so obviously he isn't now.
My problem with the Gatewatch is inconsistent power level (they go from killing Eldrazi Titans to having trouble with Baral). I know you can expect some of that but that level of difference is absurd.
The other end is they don't pay a high enough price for their screwups. Bolas should have put at least one of the Gatewatch in the ground. Since Nissa is warming the bench for the forseeable future it should have been her.
The other problem is of course they don't dig deep enough into their colors, they are all far to surface level representations of the their color. Gideon is Captain America, Jace is a introvert nerd, Chandra is impulsive, etc.
Well you consider Bolas whole plot is regaining Omnipotence so obviously he isn't now.
My problem with the Gatewatch is inconsistent power level (they go from killing Eldrazi Titans to having trouble with Baral). I know you can expect some of that but that level of difference is absurd.
The other end is they don't pay a high enough price for their screwups. Bolas should have put at least one of the Gatewatch in the ground. Since Nissa is warming the bench for the forseeable future it should have been her.
The other problem is of course they don't dig deep enough into their colors, they are all far to surface level representations of the their color. Gideon is Captain America, Jace is a introvert nerd, Chandra is impulsive, etc.
Killing the Eldrazi nearly destroyed Zendikar, and Chandra had to channel far more mana than she was used to which took a lot out of her and put her out of comission for almost all of SOI. On Kaladesh circumstances were very different; Chandra wasn't about to risk destroying an entire city just to deal with Baral (she very nearly destroyed herself on the other hand).
Jace lost his memory until halfway through Ixalan, which covers at least three to six months, and Liliana now works for Bolas, so I'd say that's worse than a casualty. I don't have a sick fascination with the idea of one of the Gatewatch dying.
And what pray tell does "dig deep enough" mean? Yes, they're supposed to summarize what their respective colors are about. Gideon is a selfless defender of justice, Jace is a strategic thinker, Liliana is a self-serving witch, Chandra is a fiery freedom fighter, and Nissa is an introverted nature lover. That's why they were picked to be the Gatewatch; they're supposed to be the face of the game brand, exemplifying two of its core concepts: planeswalkers and the color pie. People here have obviously never managed a brand before.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
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The story of Madara in Legends was pretty fun. Bolas' part isn't exactly original--he's the powerful boss who likes it when his minions stab each other in the back to "prove their ambition"--but it works. His arrogance lets him think he's in control when he's really being tricked and he both gets his body smushed by the Meteor Hammer and his spirit vanquished and crushed on the Meditation Plane.
Apparently someone in the lore department has/had a massive crush on him so he was suddenly alive and whole again for Time Spiral, because reasons.
Nope.
Not at all, this is false, "bolas" in italian means what it means in english, a pair of balls tied together with a string that has been used for hunting by past civilisazions.
Modern: UB Zombie hunt UB - WR Boros tokens WR - BGW Treefolk tribal BGW
Commander: UR Mizzix, a Storm of spells UR (Decklist)
as Dom4491 said at the top of the page, its spanish, not italian.
Follow me on instagram @TheMTGWord
Oh, definitely. Bolas is characterized like he's in a bad fanfic, and the middle-schooler who wrote it was a massive fanboy of the character who's still mad about how he was defeated by the heros in-canon, so he wrote the fanfic to "fix" that.
And then, Bolas swooped in, and blasted the Gatewatch and defeated them. "Muah ha ha! All according to my plan!" he said.
"No! We have been defeated!" said Gideon, "He's just too powerful and handsome!"
"He's just too cool for us!" said Jace.
And then, Nicol Bolas put on a pair of sunglasses, and stole all their girlfriends, before plainswalking to his meditation realm. The Gatewatch could only watch, and wallow in their failure.
Reprint Stasis!
Control needs more love.
EDH:
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Melek, Izzet Paragon
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Bruna, Light of Alabaster
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
Rhys the Redeemed
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Sen Triplets
The Mimeoplasm
WUBRGSliver OverlordGRBUW
WUBRGSliver Hivelord(Superfriends)GRBUW
GWUBRDraft my Old Border Nostalgia Cube! and/or The Little Pauper Cube That Could!RBUWG
Modern:WDeath & TaxesW | RUGRUG DelverRUG
Probably in the same storeroom the Immortal Sun is currently in, to be unleashed when we get to that grand war on Ravnica...
While we didn't know Bolas brokered the deals between Liliana and the Demons right from the start, when the broker was revealed, it actually became sort of obvious immediately (seriously why would Bolas help anyone, especially someone like Liliana if it didn't benefit himself?) Honestly this card is just the point Liliana "cliche" Vess falls into Nicol "Obviously self-serving evil" Bolas's plans...
If Liliana is actually surprised when the actual story for this rolls around, I would find it unbelievable (and bad planning) considering what she just said to Belzenlok before this. "You accepted the deals I brokered and you thought me the fool?"
Lilliana is looking her best in this art btw.
Dayum did we see this coming, poor girl. Serves her right for killing angels tho
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
You forgot cursing your hazubando Garruk. (Hazubando, that's what a male waifu is, right? If not, make it a thing.)
If that W-word is "witch", first, it's not a dirty word, and second, yes, yes, she is a witch. That's pretty much her whole archetype. Witch Classic, not the Twilighted version that we saw starting in the 19th century and really took off when Wicca became a thing.
Anyway, HAH! She thought it would be easy? I mean, I thought Gideon was a moron for trusting gods (especially when he's not only from Theros, the plane of bat***** gods, but...has experience with said gods) on Amonkhet, but this? This takes the cake.
So, I guess Nissa will rejoin the Gatewatch just to say "I hate to say 'I told you so.' No, wait, I love saying 'I told you so.'"
On phasing:
It's even funnier when you realize that the "he" Barrin is talking about is Teferi.
Based on the Ixalan block storyline, I think Jace will give up on Lili and "save" Vraska instead.
And when you realize that Teferi still has that type of sense of humour, even after all those years....
Liliana: Really? You're going for that old trope? What, next you're going to put me in a skimpy slave girl outfit?
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
But moving on to something else...
This storyline is getting to the same point as the Weatherlight story: drawn on too long, characters losing their likeability...I’ve felt for a long time that Bolas wasn’t a good choice for a villain.
I guess the difference with the Weatherlight crew is that they weren’t a group of near-omnipotent spellcasters/planeswalkers and relied on tact, skill and magical trinkets à la The Weatherlight in order to planeswalk and get things done. These Gatewatch guys only need to have a bowel movement and suddenly they’re in another realm of existence.
End the Gatewatch arc now! (But do it properly). I want more humane arcs involving Jhoira et al.
‘buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset.
Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
Seeing as the game is about planeswalkers (that's what we, the players, represent, FYI), it would be stupid not to focus on planeswalkers in the story. That's like asking for a Transformers story that focuses on humans rather than Autobots and Decepticons.
Every time someone gripes about modern Magic story, I thank my lucky stars modern Magic isn't like old Magic. Old Magic is confusing, underdelivered on the planeswalking aspect thanks to almost all the sets being on Dominaria, and the Weatherlight Saga ends with a whole bunch of drama BS including Urza suddenly defecting to Phyrexia and almost none of the heroes receiving the happy end they deserved after all the crap they went through, making the entire story arc feel like a waste of time (and coincidentally is a reason I vehemently dislike Phyrexia). Spare me the pessimistic, nihilstic drama BS, I'll take a modern story with satisfactory results any day.
The Gatewatch are supposed to be a permanent part of the brand going forward (though if the vocal minority bellyache enough, that might change), so there is no "Gatewatch arc". This is the "Bolas" arc, which is going to wrap up sooner or later (hopefully sooner because I want to see Bolas get what he's had coming to him for a long time).
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
My problem with the Gatewatch is inconsistent power level (they go from killing Eldrazi Titans to having trouble with Baral). I know you can expect some of that but that level of difference is absurd.
The other end is they don't pay a high enough price for their screwups. Bolas should have put at least one of the Gatewatch in the ground. Since Nissa is warming the bench for the forseeable future it should have been her.
The other problem is of course they don't dig deep enough into their colors, they are all far to surface level representations of the their color. Gideon is Captain America, Jace is a introvert nerd, Chandra is impulsive, etc.
Killing the Eldrazi nearly destroyed Zendikar, and Chandra had to channel far more mana than she was used to which took a lot out of her and put her out of comission for almost all of SOI. On Kaladesh circumstances were very different; Chandra wasn't about to risk destroying an entire city just to deal with Baral (she very nearly destroyed herself on the other hand).
Jace lost his memory until halfway through Ixalan, which covers at least three to six months, and Liliana now works for Bolas, so I'd say that's worse than a casualty. I don't have a sick fascination with the idea of one of the Gatewatch dying.
And what pray tell does "dig deep enough" mean? Yes, they're supposed to summarize what their respective colors are about. Gideon is a selfless defender of justice, Jace is a strategic thinker, Liliana is a self-serving witch, Chandra is a fiery freedom fighter, and Nissa is an introverted nature lover. That's why they were picked to be the Gatewatch; they're supposed to be the face of the game brand, exemplifying two of its core concepts: planeswalkers and the color pie. People here have obviously never managed a brand before.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.