MTG Salvation

Quote from ArixOrdragc »

The problem is that it seems like they're trying to mimic two different eras of comic book superheroes - both the over-the-top cheesy fun of the Saturday morning cartoon, and the more mature and realistic modern day take. And maybe it's possible to mix those things in a way that works, but Magic just isn't doing it well. It takes itself way too seriously - and expects to be taken too seriously - to properly capture the sheer fun of the Saturday morning cartoon, but it's too silly and generic to be worth taking as seriously as the modern take on superheroes.

This. I feel like this is especially apparent with some of the dialogue. Too many of the characters talk in this casual Joss Whedon style, where they act like they know they're in an action flick. Not to the point of outright fourth wall breaking, but they'll treat life-threatening situations like an exciting game and reference the story's tropes within the story. I have nothing against gallows humor, and I don't mind some action movie one-liners here and there, but it's really annoying when characters are always making quips that make light of the plot itself and lampshade the cliches that the story relies on.

The flavor text for Lazotep Behemoth is a perfect example of what I mean. A monster like that should be absolutely terrifying, it's an enormous undead zombie beast, it's definitely not something that a normal soldier should be taking lightly. If the quote was from a character who was meant to be a badass who isn't fazed by anything (as opposed to some random grunt), then I wouldn't have minded a generic action movie quip like "the bigger they are, the harder they fall." But when a character says something like "LOL look how ridiculous this thing is," then at that point, the story is just making fun of itself. Which is fine for a story that's meant to be ridiculous like Deadpool or the 60s Batman show, but it really doesn't work in a story that's otherwise meant to be serious.

This is a huge part of why I hated the character of Rat so much. Not the only reason, by a long shot, but a big one. She talked in Whedon speak like that all the time, and it was even more grating in the bonus chapters told from her POV, since even her internal monologue was filled with comments that poked fun at the whole situation she was in.

So I read the War of the Spark "bonus chapters" on the MtG website and I have to say, they're very disappointing.

I'm not going to complain about the fact that 95% of it covers the same events we already saw in the novel. The bonus chapters were meant for people who wanted to follow the story without buying the book, so it makes sense there'd be a lot of redundancy, it's the only way to make sure the people who didn't read the novel were still getting the same story. If anything, I appreciated the fact that there were a few extra scenes here and there, like Kasmina's appearance or Kaya's meeting with the Orzhov ruling council.

My real problem was with the decision to have Rat be the point of view character for all of them. I already mentioned that I thought Rat was irritating: she's a one-note character with an overly contrived conflict, her dialogue is so casual that it takes the reader out of the story (I really dislike the trend of using Buffy/Marvel-style dialogue in otherwise serious works), and she's just such a Mary Sue (the fact that this random untrained teenage girl can take out Eternals with ease makes absolutely no sense). Between her annoyingly cutesy comments, her effortless slaying of Eternals, and her concern over relatively unimportant personal drama in the middle of an active warzone, all of her scenes just serve to make the stakes of the conflict seem lower and make Bolas and his army seem like much less of a real threat. In the novel, it was grating enough, but at least she wasn't that prominent outside of the mission to recruit all the guildmasters. But having six short stories entirely focused on her is just unbearable. Her habit of referring to every single character as "Mister" or "Miss" in her internal monologue was particularly obnoxious, along with the fact that she kept calling the Eternals "creepies" as if they were just normal zombies who weren't worth taking seriously.

Also, leaving aside my many complaints with Rat as a character, I feel like telling the story through a single narrator was just a poor decision for a plot like this. They should've switched between characters so we could see things like the mission to Amonkhet; someone who didn't read the novel and only read the short stories on the website would miss out on so much of the plot. And a lot of the plot points we did see were stripped of all meaning and emotion, like Liliana's betrayal and Gideon's sacrifice; not only were we seeing the moment from the perspective of someone who doesn't know or care about either of them, but we didn't even get to hear any of their dialogue! And this was also a missed opportunity, since there were much more interesting characters we could've gotten perspectives from; for instance, it would've been great to actually find out Dovin's motivations, or what caused Sorin and Nahiri to stop fighting, or how the hell Ashiok was even involved in this event.

The free "bonus chapters" get a 2 out of 10 rating from me. If I'd read them before reading the novel, I would've been incredibly disappointed with War of the Spark as a whole. I doubt I would've even gotten the book, especially knowing it was written by the same person.

I'm just glad we finally got Urza and Yawgmoth cards. (Yes, I know we had Blind Seer and the joke Urza from Unstable, but they don't count.) Still hoping we eventually get cards depicting them at full power, though.

Quote from Omen Morningstar »

The best possible scenario and explanation would be that since Ugin is at or near the top of the food chain when it comes to powerful entities, his powers are left open ended within a reasonable extent. Add to that the fact that they are both elder dragons and may possibly share some unexplained relationship where Ugin is able to manipulate Bolas' ability to use his magic which would have nothing to do with the spark itself.

As you posted, Bolas knew his name(s) but couldnt say them.......Ugin says he's forfeited the right to those names AND the powers that went along with them (key point there) as well as Bolas cowering down before Ugin.......so what it sounds like to me is Ugin has put some kind of mental whammy on Bolas that has cut him off from his magic. It could be an actual spell, it could be a mental block (like what Professor X did with Jean Grey and the Phoenix Force)or it could go back to that Elder Dragon connection. Whatever the case, it doesnt seem like losing the spark is what causes the loss of magic.

As far as the how long Bolas would live afterward, I see some people saying he was already ancient way back when and we still see Ugin saying he has plenty of time left just not eternity. I don't see anywhere a set in stone amount of time he has left.......and even if Ugin said he didnt have much time left, time for a nearly immortal Elder Dragon would be much different so not much time for Bolas could be anywhere from 2000 to 5000 years on the downside. Without trying to break down and scrutinize every little detail, it's basically just saying Bolas has nothing left. No spark, no magic, no name, no freedom, no more immortality........he's lost it all. And it's not so much that he won't continue to live for a very, very , very long time by human standards, it's that he won't live forever as the Dragon God he fancies himself to be.

If he lived another million years it wouldnt be enough for him because he's the physical manifestation of evil and a large part of that is greed as evidenced by his plans to obtain unlimited power at the expense of the entire MTG multiverse.

Yeah, Ugin specifically says that Bolas might still live for thousands of years, he's just emphasizing that Bolas isn't a true immortal anymore. It's never suggested that Bolas is going to die soon.

And Bolas losing his magic and his names isn't a result of him losing his spark. After Bontu absorbs all the stolen sparks and explodes, he recasts the Elder Spell in an attempt to gather them up again, only to find that they've dispersed back into the Aether. And he gives one last speech along the lines of "This cannot be! I am the great Nicol Bolas!" before dying/falling unconscious/whatever happens that Ugin is able to take his body into the Meditation Realm. So we see that he can still cast spells and still remember his name in the moments after losing his spark. It's only months later, when he comes back to life/consciousness in the Meditation Realm, that he's shown as being unable to use magic and unable to remember his names.

One popular theory is that Ugin got Ashiok to erase his names, since we see Ashiok in the Meditation Realm on his/her card. Or maybe Ugin did it himself using the psychic link he had with Bolas. In any case, it's clearly not just because he lost his spark.

Quote from Dom4419 »

Has Vraska regained her memories? What happened between her and Jace?

Vraska got her memories before the book starts, we don't actually find out the details because it was supposed to be explained in the prequel novella that still hasn't come out. Her and Jace get together in the end.

Quote from AUTUMNTWILIGHT »

Haven't read the book but presumably Teferi did nothing correct? So he is on the gatewatch has a connection to Bolas and he is just on the team for what diversity brownie points? I don't have a problem with diversity in magic for the record I do have a problem though with faux diversity where we had diversity to the team and then have those characters do nothing of note. Made even worse when said characters is more powerful and has more experience then all the rest put together.

Teferi does a lot of fighting. It was mentioned that he was using his time magic to slow down time right at the entrance of the Planar Portal and may have saved more lives than anyone else by delaying the Eternals' advance so much.

He was also part of the team that attempted to kill Liliana, along with Jaya, Jace, and Vivien. He slowed down time around Lili to prevent her from reacting while the other three attacked her with fire, mindblasts, and arrows. Lili only survived because Bolas intervened on her behalf and destroyed the buildings they were sniping her from.

Teferi wasn't as instrumental in Bolas' defeat as Gideon, Liliana, or Niv Mizzet, but aside from those three, he probably had the single biggest impact of all the heroes.

Quote from Maritrakul - Swallower of Lore »

Wasn't Jeska on Dominaria when she expired? While Gideon is not on the right plane with the right afterlife... Is it explicitly wrote down that it is an allucination of the last sparks of elettricity in Gid's brain?

So... Ral was NOT working directly for Bolas... Then the end of the Amonkhet story is proclaimed retconned?

There's just a brief scene of Gideon being reunited with his companions, with no explicit confirmation on whether it was the Theros afterlife or if it was Gideon's dying hallucination. (The story team may have deliberately wanted to leave it ambiguous, it's never been established what happened to planeswalkers' souls after they die. Elspeth went to the Theros afterlife but that was because of her deal with Erebos, not necessarily just because she was on Theros when she died.)

As for Ral, he was working for Bolas, it just turned out that he was a triple agent who was actually loyal to Niv the whole time. But Bolas was also aware of Ral's true loyalties, which is how he was able to manipulate Ral into activating the beacon. To make things even more complicated, Niv knew that Bolas knew, and had secretly been working with Ugin to outmaneuver Bolas from the very start.

Quote from Xeruh »

http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/184286909883/i-must-say-i-am-a-little-disappointed-with-the

I feel like Maro really gets why just killing characters off haphazardly is pretty bad. There isn't any merit in just tossing characters into a grinder, even if some people like it that doesn't really resonate with most people.

I get that, and I agree they shouldn't have just killed off a ton of walkers for the hell of it. But Vivien and Samut have no purpose now that Bolas is dead, their entire story was based around getting revenge on Bolas and now he's gone. And the writers haven't known what to do with Kiora since the Eldrazi plot ended. Keeping some of these characters around is pointless, I get the sense we won't even see them in any major capacity again.

That's exactly how I feel. I was following the leaks from the start, and initially they seemed fairly disappointing, with some plot threads apparently dropped and seemingly random new ones thrown in. But as more details started coming in, it all started making sense, and I'm actually pretty happy with how everything turned out.

The twist with Chandra's Triumph is probably the best example of what I mean. When I first read that, I just thought "wow, that's really weird and totally out of left field." But then I found out why things happened that way and it's actually pretty brilliant.

Quote from OathboundOne »

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.

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.

Quote from AUTUMNTWILIGHT »

Only thing Baral and Chandra shows is inconsistent power levels strong enough to beat Eldrazi Titans but not strong enough to beat Baral? Yeah yeah he counters did Chandra not know any uncounterable fire spells.

"It's unrealistic that a hunter can kill an elephant when he has a high-caliber rifle and the elephant is trapped, but gets stomped by Mike Tyson in a fist fight. Obviously the elephant is a lot more powerful than Mike Tyson!"

Quote from OrzhovPlaneswalker »

I think these are both good points, in that the Cult of Rakdos as an institution (strangely, it qualifies) likely enjoys some measure of cultural and legal protection that defines where and when the spectacles are deemed 'appropriate' andwith an understanding that even attending an event may remove certain liabilities.


But as others mentioned/hinted and as I previously said: I think I can empathize with people like Tajic who'd rather see the Cult severely curtailed or even destroyed.


Kink and fetish deserve appropriate limits and spaces conductive to consent, public health, and the emancipation of human life and expression. They are NOT the celebration of forcibly and prematurely ending any of these, or the failure to take precautions that would limit undue risk and permanent harm. True Freedom therefore requires a level of self-restraint and likewise accountability for one's actions. There's no reason why nontraditional relationships cannot be both fun, spicy and conductive towards self- and other's preservation/lives.

Back in the Victorian era, there were underground sex clubs and orgies where simply by attending, you were implicitly giving your consent to potentially have sex with anyone else at the party. This was largely a response to the sexual repression of mainstream society at the time, and it doesn't really happen anymore because modern society has a more developed understanding of sexual consent. Still, there's some real world precedent to the idea that simply attending an event can be considered a form of consent in its own right, and even today, there are situations where you see less extreme forms of that. I remember hearing about a local punk concert where the band sprayed fake blood on the crowd, and when some people got upset about their clothes being ruined, the band's response was basically "well, you shouldn't have been there if you didn't want that happening."

And in the modern kink scene, there are plenty of parties where you can watch people being tied up, suspended, beaten, whipped, cut, burned, shocked, etc. Granted, the "victims" are all consenting volunteers, and the performers are always very careful to keep things within reasonably safe limits. But if you combine that with the Victorian sex club norms I mentioned, with the "shouldn't have been there" logic of that punk band, with the cruelty that circuses displayed toward animals and performers until very recently, and with the total disregard for safety that's been present in a lot of combat sports (particularly in pre-modern times and in some developing countries today), you get something that would look a lot like Rakdos culture. I could see something like that existing here on Earth in an alternate timeline, so I definitely don't see it as unrealistic in a world that has an institutionalized faction of literal torture demons with 10,000 years of cultural history enshrining its place in society.

I'm not saying I approve of it, or think it's a sane or moral or healthy arrangement. I'd be a hell of a lot less likely to attend parties if there was a chance I could randomly be dragged on stage and flayed alive at any time! I'm just saying that I can see the twisted logic behind it, and it's honestly not that far off from things we've seen in the real world.

I wanted to have a thread to talk about the tropes, themes and stories that Wizard drew on to make the world of Eldraine to both dissucce as well as educate people who are unfamiliar with the stories and themes we are shown (as well as throw in some trivia). I'll add on to this as we see more about the set, how/if the cards flavorfully fit and fill it in with card names instead of the art.

Fairy tales where folk stories that have been passed through the generations, mostly in oral form until such people as Grimm or Perrault collected them and put them into wiring though some authors such as Hans Christian Anderson made up their own tales. These authors gave a baseline for most modern adaptation as such the very famous disney movies, though the story go back thousands of years and have hundreds of versions of the same story. The tales of King Arthur is similar with the story being told orally for years until finally written and re-written, the youtube Overly Sarcastic does a good video on the tale(s);
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_jgF-S746o


Version 2

King Arthur References

Excalibur
Embecleave

Lady of the Lake
Emry Lucker of the Loch

The Round Table
The Circle of Loyalty

Holy Grail
The Cauldron of Eternity

Merlin
Gadwick, the Wizened

Stone Henge
The Great Henge

King Arthur and Queen Genevieve
Kenrith, the Returned King Linden, the Steadfast Queen

Oathsworn Knight

Once and Future

Questing Beast

Fairy tale tropes

Beloved Princess

Charmed Sleep

Charming Prince


Claim the Firstborn

Faerie Guidemother

Garruk, Cursed Huntsman


Happily Ever After


Magic Mirror


Once Upon a Time


Royal Scions


True Loves Kiss

Wicked Guardian

Big Bad Wolf
Wicked Wolf Fierce Witchstalker

Fairy Tales

The Adventures of Pinocchio
Inquisitive Puppet Animating Fairy Faerie Guidemother

Beauty and the Beast
Human token Beloved Princess Merchant of the ValeLovestruck Beast True Loves Kiss Charming Prince

Bluebeard
Malevolent Noble

Cinderella
Wicked Guardian Beloved Princess Faerie Guidemother Enchanted Carriage Crystal Slipper Charming Prince Midnight Clock Turn into Pumpkin Return to Nature Wildwood Tracker Revenge of Ravens


The Frog Prince
Beloved Princess Frogify True Love's Kiss Charming Prince

The Gingerbread Man
Gingerbrute

The Glass Coffin
Glass Casket Beloved Princess Charmed Sleep Kenrith’s Transformation Charming Prince

The Golden Goose
Gilded Goose Golden Egg

Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Flaxen Intruder

Hansel and Gretal
Royal Scions Wicked Guardian Trail of Breadcrumbs Curious Pair Temping Witch Baked into a Pie Witch’s Oven Oakhame Ranger

Jack and the Beanstalk
Merchant of the Vale Bartered Cow Giant Opportunity Tall as a Beanstalk Beanstalk Giant Giant Token Gilded Goose Golden Egg Giant Killer

The Juniper Tree
Wicked Guardian Tempting Witch Foreboding Fruit Baked into a Pie

The Little Match Girl
Escape into the Wilds

The Little Mermaid
Wishful Merfolk Sorcerous Spyglass Charming Prince Beloved Princess

Little Red Riding Hood
Royal Scions Rowan Wicked Wolf Fierce Witchstalker Food Token Garruk, Cursed Huntsman

The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Piper of the Swarm, Rat token

Rapunzel
Claim the Firstborn Beloved Princess Trapped in the Tower Wicked Guardian Charming Prince

Rumpelstiltskin
Beloved Princess Charming Prince Spinning Wheel Rankle, Master of Pranks Claim the Firstborn

Sleeping Beauty
Faerie Guidemother Beloved Princess Spinning Wheel Charmed Sleep Charming Prince True Love's Kiss Wicked Guardian

The Snow Queen
Magic Mirror Royal Scions Queen of Ice

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Magic Mirror Wicked Guardian Beloved Princess Garruk, Cursed Huntsman Seven Dwarves Tempting Witch Foreboding Fruit Taste of Death Charmed Sleep Glass Casket Charming Prince True Loves Kiss

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Overwhelmed Apprentice Sorcerer’s Broom

The Three Billy Goats Gruff
Clackbridg Troll Goat Token Gluttonous Troll

Three Little Pigs
Wolf’s Quarry Boar Token Wicked Wolf Fierce Witchstalker Blow your House Down Food Token

Disney/Other

Barrow Witches

Dance of the Manse

Lonesome Unicorn

Mouse token

Mad Ratter

Oko, Thief of Crowns

Robin Hood and His Merry Men
Robber of the Rich Outlaws’ Merriment

Righteousness

WItching Well

Monkey’s Paw
Wish Claw Talisman

The problem is that pre-gatewatch Wizards loved to start plot threads without any definite plan on how to finish them. Once Garruk was cursed, they probably didn't quite know what to do with him, because nobody planned that far ahead. He went back and forth between "being healed" to "actually kinda not". The same can be seen with multiple storylines inbetween Time Spiral and Magic Origins. With Garruk being cursed now, the (post)gatewatch era being a thing and Elspeth supposed rescue coming up next it might be that Wizards is now trying to collect all those stray plotlines and weave a more coherent and planned story from now on.

The overall plot of WAR was fine. Greg Wiesman's novel however, was genuinely deprived. I couldn't believe how many cardinal sins of literature that book took the liberty of making. Telling, now showing. Juvenile vocabulary. Toilet humor. Run-on sentences that included name-dropping characters over properly writing them in. I was surprised Kiora was neglected, given her nature of opposing gods. Relying on capital letters over descriptive language to emphasize distress or gravitas. Internal monologues in capitals. Lack of focus, improper attention to senseless details while neglecting crucial story moments or relegating them to one-liner scene drops. Flat characters, limited momentum. The book spends its time getting a group of characters from point A to point B, Ravnica to the citadel across a plaza essentially. Just very poorly written by, I resent saying this, an author that I feel was most certainly beyond their own capabilities.

The bullet point story moments from the cards, or condensed version of the story were good.

"Bolas OBLITERATED Oketra"

I honestly laughed when I read this. It's like an 8 year old's idea of writing a passage.

"Bolas was growing more powerful"

Really? What did the look or feel like, what does it mean to grow more powerful? Did he appear more youthful, radiate a luminous aura of energy, cast more potent spells thereafter, audibly absorb sparks causing a myriad of eruptions that were deafening? Or he just grew more powerful because Greg told us?

Man, a far cry from Scott McGough's Kamigawa trilogy, and Godsend by Jenna Helland. Those are my favorite.

I mean, we saw stuff like that coming from a mile away. Remember the article where they annoucned that Magic will play fast and loose with continuity if it makes for a better story? Here we see the results of such an approach.

Personally I don't believe it leads to a better story, but whatever.

There has never been a character in Magic that almost made me want to quit reading. (Well, maybe the two portal men in Onslaught, but the entire novel was a bit unhinged.) Until Rat. Sheesh, she hits all the boxes of how not to write a character. She doesn't fit the tone of the story, she's got too many abilities that don't fit her and actively detract from the plot, she has no weaknesses, no story arc, no nothing. I'm trying hard to find a single good aspect about her character, but there isn't any.

Okay, I have finished the book this morning on my way to work.

Final thoughts: I am giving this 7,5/10.

First of all, it was a titanic effort to describe such a conflict believably. With the chosen method of different POVs and not an omniscient narrator, some things were just hinted and not explored deeper, like Sorin-Nahiri fight. But that is okay, because otherwise it would be a damned mess. Choosing a rookie walker like Teyo to be basically the main spectator was a good move. Yes, someone would complain that it means we got several pages of Teyo and the company underground, and just like two paragraphs of some emotional reunion..but that is how it is meant to be.

Second, I liked the writing. Simply liked. It is no worse than Martha Wells' Dominaria. What I find disruptive was the seemingly random capitalization of some words. Okay, I grudgingly accepted seeing Planeswalker again with capital (P), like in the ancient comics. But Hazoret's Spear?

Third - for everyone complaining about predictability - I actually liked how all the stratagems supposed to lead to Bolas's downfall played (at least to some extent) to his hand.

Quote from 5colors »

Quote from OathboundOne »

So, what exactly WAS the deal with Angrath? Was he actually on Bolas' side, or was he just commandeering eternals and running amok all on his own, like some here speculated? (Or did the implications of his card have literally no basis in story?)

Angrath was anti-Bolas and we don't see if Angrath takes control. Maro mentioned that most of the planeswalkers cards where made with their abilities first and then later matched wth a character, they wanted the black/red planeswalker to have amass for game play reasons and Angrath was the only red/black they had.

Angrath was pretty awesome, especially before he went hunting Eternals with Huatli. His speech like "well, I am trapped for the second time by this stupid thing, and I just want to go home to my daughters and kick this dragon's minions ass. Just show me what to hit."

Some musings:

Ok I just read the book. I think a lot was lost without the Prequel. There was so much story we missed. The attempted Niv Mizzet ascension and death; the lighting of the Beacon; Vraska getting her memories back and then betraying them; Kaya killing the Obzedat and taking their debts; etc.

Overall I think the story was very satisfying. All of the POV walkers had good moments. There were several satisfying arcs with Dack, Liliana, Teyo, and Gideon. I like how their was progressive tasks that were needed to stop Bolas to fill out the 2nd Act, and yet it was still difficult to beat Bolas. The careful machinations of Ugin. How Bolas laughed at how he tricked the walkers, and didn't realize that Liliana was slowly gaining the courage to sacrifice herself.


As for the aftermath, I like it. We have some interesting plot-hooks hunting down the remaining Bolas Aligned walkers. Vraska hunting a blind foe, Ral hunting Tezzeret as a fellow scientist of sorts, and then Kaya the death killer vs Liliana the necromancer. Liliana has a lot of potential now. She is hated by most of the current walkers adding inherent conflict when she appears. There is internal tension in the gatewatch with their complicated history with Liliana. And she has her own internal conflicts with her sacrifice and Gideon sacrificing himself for her. Plus you have the Onakke and Raven Man.

The other 2 don't have a major plot hook aside from Tezzeret and New Phyrexia. But now each can branch out into their own plots. And you still have Ob Nixilis who also disappeared to plot.

Another strong moment was seeing the various complex interactions. The various Ravnican walkers, Angrath with Arlinn and Huatli, Dack with Nixilis and the others, etc. Apparently Kiora seems to be part of Tamiyo's story circle, which actually makes some sense.

Finally a shoutout to my man Sarkhan. He played a key role at points and Ugin points out that Bolas pissed him off a lot. He also apparently has a history with the Wanderer who is almost definitely not Elspeth.

Quote from KarnTerrier »

As for Ral, he was working for Bolas, it just turned out that he was a triple agent who was actually loyal to Niv the whole time. But Bolas was also aware of Ral's true loyalties, which is how he was able to manipulate Ral into activating the beacon. To make things even more complicated, Niv knew that Bolas knew, and had secretly been working with Ugin to outmaneuver Bolas from the very start.

Quote from Pollaski »

Quote from AUTUMNTWILIGHT »

Haven't read the book but presumably Teferi did nothing correct? So he is on the gatewatch has a connection to Bolas and he is just on the team for what diversity brownie points? I don't have a problem with diversity in magic for the record I do have a problem though with faux diversity where we had diversity to the team and then have those characters do nothing of note. Made even worse when said characters is more powerful and has more experience then all the rest put together.

Oh goodie, you're on this bent again.

If you actually read the book, you'll see that Teferi, while not a focal point character, basically saves half the Planeswalkers butts at times thanks to his time manipulation. So no, he doesn't have any incredibly huge moments, but he certainly plays a factor in helping other Planeswalkers stay alive.

He also WAS set to be one of the lynchpins of Plan A, until the portal opening completely screwed everything up.

To add on, Teferi wasn't a main fighter but he was cast time magic all over the eternals. First part he was doing on the portal slowing down how fast the army could enter Ravnica and when the elder spell is cast, we find out the eternals only need get a solid grip on a walker to drain them. Teferi time magic slowed the eternals down at key moments giving many walkers the seconds they needed to get away or to take out an eternal. Teferi was also a part of a plan to kill Liliana, which fail due to Bolas blowing up the building they where one, which Teferi had fall in slow motions so he and the other 3 walkers could get down safe. Jace says it and I agree, Teferi probity is the walker who saved the most lives during the war due to his magic.

edit

Quote from Maritrakul - Swallower of Lore »

Quote from Pollaski »

Quote from Maritrakul - Swallower of Lore »

Wasn't Jeska on Dominaria when she expired? While Gideon is not on the right plane with the right afterlife... Is it explicitly wrote down that it is an allucination of the last sparks of elettricity in Gid's brain?

So... Ral was NOT working directly for Bolas... Then the end of the Amonkhet story is proclaimed retconned?

The book very clearly states Ral WAS working for Bolas, had been for a while, but defected when he realized what Bolas' ends were.

Okay, I was misled by the "planted idea". Thanks.

To clarify, Niv and Ral thought they had the idea to make the beacon and call to other walkers for help, but Bolas had come up with it and put it into Niv and Rals thoughts in order for them to build it thinking they could use it against him.