At this point I'm practically rolling on the floor at the need rage. It's so delicious. You people are such hypocrits. Thousands, possibly millions of humans, Mer, Kor, Vampires and others die on Zendikar and it's "meh, show don't tell, wotc. It's not an emotional impact on the reader." But a few dozen nameless angels die along with a couple of the leaders and you people flip your tables. It's just absurd. As always I'm happy to see angels get their due.
I feel the same way, it seems like people really want to have their cake and eat it too. If they kill off a bunch of nameless goons, people get upset that the story's not impactful enough. If they kill off the named characters we care about, people get upset about their favorites dying. But here's the thing, it's supposed to be upsetting when the characters we care about die, that's exactly what makes it impactful! Don't get mad at Wizards for giving you exactly what you said you wanted last time.
While this ending was the only possible way to end the story (considering players, fans and maybe even selling graphs), I think the abuse of the "Gatewatch saves the day" will be terrible. It is indeed just the second time we see them doing something big, and it is probably something much smaller than killing two eldrazi, but I feel like they should lose some battle.
Except the Gatewatch doesn't save the day. From what I can tell, they serve as a distraction at best. And by "they", I mostly just mean Liliana and her army of zombies.
Tamiyo of all people ends up being the big damn hero of the story, which is honestly a little surprising to me. Most people thought it would be either Sorin or Nahiri who sealed Emrakul, or possibly the Gatewatch defeating an Eldrazi Titan for a third time (which I agree would've been very disappointing). I definitely didn't expect Tamiyo to be the one to do it. I like her a lot, but I really thought of her as a secondary character until now. I'm curious exactly how she'll manage to do so, it seems like a feat of that magnitude would be beyond her power unless she uses one of her iron scrolls.
Killing her was never an option. If he could have, he would have, he very clearly was completely devoid of any sympathy/regret for Nahiri or his words toward her.
Of course Sorin could have killed her. She was incapacitated, he could've easily finished her off. Avacyn was about to do precisely that before Sorin stopped her, which is pretty solid proof that he didn't want her dead.
After seeing Nahiri's side, we now realize that Sorin was never in mortal danger and knew he wasn't (or at least ought to have known). Nahiri was doing what, for them, was the equivalent of throwing your drink in someone's face.
Basically, up to the point that he sealed Nahiri in the Helvault, Sorin was completely in the wrong. Nahiri may share a little blame too, since she might have been able to handle things better, though it's worth pointing out that we don't actually know that's true. Nahiri thought she had to use force to make Sorin respect her before he'd listen, and she might not have been wrong. Do we really think that if she'd been submissive and let Sorin act like a dismissive jerk, once he'd regained his strength he'd have gone and helped her? Or would he have just found another excuse to blow her off, and then another, ad infinitum? It seems pretty clear that she was right that he'd decided to build a shield for Innistrad so he could stop caring so much about the rest of the multiverse.
What Nahiri did after getting out of the Helvault is another matter entirely, but in their older interaction, Sorin was wrong and Nahiri was, at most, guilty of not handling him as well as possible.
Yes, we know that Sorin wasn't in mortal danger because we were privy to Nahiri's thoughts. We know that she didn't want to hurt him or kill him. We know that she was simply trying to prove a point to him and gain his respect. There's absolutely no way that Sorin could've known that, though. For all his power, he can't read minds, and it's not like Nahiri bothered to explain herself after she started attacking him. He even gave her a chance to leave and go back to Zendikar, and she still kept on attacking him with volleys of stone and blades of steel. That's hardly the equivalent of throwing your drink in someone's face, it's more like trying to stab them with a switchblade or at least burn them with a lit cigarette.
As far as Sorin knew, Nahiri was trying to kill him in a fit of rage. We know that's what he was thinking, because we're privy to his thoughts too. It was an incorrect assumption on his part, but hardly an unreasonable one. If someone starts punching you hard enough to cause serious injuries and they won't stop, are you going to assume they're simply trying to prove their strength? No, you're going to rightly assume that they're intent on harming you or worse.
Also, Nahiri was completely wrong to think that she could win Sorin's respect by attacking him. He's not Garruk, he doesn't respect brute strength as a virtue in its own right. He eliminates anything that he sees as a threat to himself or his plane, and by attacking him, Nahiri proved herself to be a threat. It wasn't just "not handling him as well as possible", it was the absolute worst choice she could've possibly made.
And yes, I do think that Sorin would have kept his promise if she'd given him some time to recover, especially since we saw in the original Zendikar block that he kept checking up on the Eldrazi even after she was gone.
Also, I don't see why everyone's complaining about Sorin's portrayal so much. I don't think it's out of character for him to give up on Innistrad, simply because he knows just how much of a threat the Eldrazi are. As far as he knows, there's no way to stop an Eldrazi Titan other than sealing it away, and that was a process that required decades of preparation. It makes perfect sense that he'd think the situation is hopeless and focus all of his efforts on going after Nahiri. To him, Innistrad is already dead, and the only thing left to do is get revenge on the person who killed it.
It's also worth keeping in mind that this story was written from Liliana's perspective. If he seems like a cold uncaring bastard in this story, it's because that's how Liliana sees him. If we saw more of his internal monologue, he'd probably come across as more sympathetic.
I get the feeling that she kinda hit "**** it" in this story. Her most promising attempt to get rid of the Chain-Veil fell flat on its face. She recently alienated the only person who could help her, whom she has a mild crush on. The world around her is coming apart as she watches. She doesn't have a whole lot of other things to do, so why not go help someone who could help her? It's not like she's in actual danger. If things go really bad, she can just planeswalk away.
This is pretty much my take on it too. All her attempts to escape the Chain Veil's curse failed, she doesn't have the power to deal with the remaining demons without it, and she thinks that Jace is either already dead or about to be killed. She's already basically out of options, may as well try to save her favorite world and just maybe save one of her few real friends in the process. To quote Jayne from Firefly (a black-aligned hero if I've ever seen one), "If you can't do something smart, do something right."
The angel hate at WOTC needs to stop. It's annoying and not justified. Angels are second to Dragons as most popular.
The story is being handled well unlike BFZ, but it is still annoying that Innistrad is being compromised, even if it does layer cosmic horror over gothic horror. Notice I said annoying, not bad.
It's fine if it occurs here in this story. It's understandable that it had to on Zendikar. But when Maro says peaceful returns which simply explore a loved plane without introducing catastrophic apocalypse each time like RTR are some special exception exclusive to Ravnica that can't work anywhere else, I will vehemently disagree. Theros should NOT feature a cataclysm when we return there, for example. There is no need for it. Greek mythology, Elspeth's own story, and the natural plane of Theros as a world of gods, monsters and heroes has enough material for a story and for interesting cards. Stop trashing loved planes and acting surprised to find those who loved it for what it was get upset that it's trashed. Why bother returning to a plane if it isn't even going to be what it was? The whole point of returning is consistency. Replicating what worked. Letting people enjoy what they did the first time, but in a new way. Catastrophically altering and changing what the plane was originally in the revisit after fans waited YEARS experiencing other planes in the hopes of reliving that prior experience is going to upset people to find it trashed, changed and entirely different. I don't want to return to Theros to experience its conflicts and its disasters. I want to return to THEROS. Not to the ruins of Theros. Not to Theros that now is no longer Theros. I want THEROS. I want Elspeth. I want Ajani. I want their story continued. I want to know what happened to Thassa after she lost her Bident. I want Krakens and Hydras and beautiful sunset scenes and idyllic coastal cities and Grecian-inspired beaches in Islands. That's what I freaking WANT. Oh and Arixmethes.
Maro and his excuse of every return needing to be a trashed world is infuriating and outrageous. Creative can do better - and it has. Godsend was a lovely way to have conflict without rending the plane while also telling a beautiful Greek tragedy story involving Elspeth, Daxos and Ajani. Switch things up, do some of that.
I disliked Battle for Zendikar largely for that very reason, it bore almost no resemblance to the original Zendikar. On the other hand, Return to Ravnica was somewhat underwhelming for the opposite reason, it was too similar to the first set and felt rather bland and predictable as a result. I thought Shadows Over Innistrad (the set, not necessarily the whole block) struck the perfect balance in that regard, it still kept the overall tone and feel of the original Innistrad, but with enough changes and differences and new concepts that it didn't feel like a complete rehash. I'm not sure if Eldritch Moon will continue to keep that balance, but I really like what I've seen of it so far. For instance, the newest Delver shows that they can incorporate the Eldrazi into Innistrad in a way that enriches the gothic horror feel rather than detracting from it.
I did say that Ugin could be "on par" with Bolas, but we really don't get much from him lore-wise... he hasn't really done anything but tinker with hedrons just as Nahiri did. When he was fighting Bolas on Tarkir you gotta remember Bolas is in a much weaker form since fighting Leshrac, or he would just absorb Ugin or whoever by touching them.
I'm gonna stick with Nahiri being stronger than Sorin, she is childish compared to Sorin, but as I said: Sorin really seems like nothing more than a big ego... and he didn't fight Nahiri, he used the Helvault on her. Which pretty sure Nahiri made the Helvault, they suggest Sorin did but he didn't understand anything about lithomancy like Ugin and Nahiri did.
The only reason I think the Eldrazi were strong was because they had no idea how to kill them. As soon as they discovered how to kill them in Oath of the Gatewatch; both Ulamog and Kozilek dropped really fast. But now that Nahiri brought Emrakul to Innistrad they again don't have the ingredients for stopping an eldrazi without Nahiri.
The fight between Ugin and Bolas took place 1200 years ago, which I think was before Bolas fought Leshrac, but I'm not sure on that. Either way, I highly doubt that Bolas would simply be able to absorb Ugin at will. Ugin has done a lot more than tinker with hedrons: He was able to transcend the use of colored mana, which no other mage (including Bolas) has done, and his mere existence literally causes dragons to form out of thin air. Also, Sorin made the Helvault, not Nahiri. He was inspired by Nahiri's lithomancy, but he built it himself. And he fought and defeated her (with some help from Avacyn) before sealing her away, despite being in a greatly weakened state at the time.
As for the Eldrazi Titans, the fact that they can be defeated by blasting them with an entire plane's worth of mana hardly makes them weak. That's enough damage to destroy most planes, there's absolutely no one (again, including Bolas) who could have survived that. Hell, Yawgmoth was destroyed by less. The destruction of the Titans was a one time occurrence that can never be repeated, since only Zendikar had the leylines necessary to bind the Eldrazi and enough natural mana to both hold and destroy them, and that mana has now been used up.
Where the hell do people keep getting this misconception from? At no point was Ugin winning that fight, they were equal-ish and then Ugin summoned his brood but they never even got to the fight before Bolas's had them turned on the All-Father. Meaning that if you take away their greatest weapons, Ugin's broods, and Bolas's Plots, then they are close to equal.
Yes, close to equal, which is why I said he should be first or second on that list instead of sixth.
So was it ever explained why it seemed like Sigarda had some natural sort of resistance from the maddening state of Avacyn and the plane itself? I was wondering if Emrakul's presence was lingering around during SOI, which was causing all of the insanity before She eventually showed up. And...it just so happens that the original Sigarda had the one ability that prevents annihilator (so does her ability mechanically allude to her natural resistance to eldrazi perhaps?).
And the new Sigarda has the one ability that prevents new Emrakul's Mindslaver effect, by giving her controller Hexproof. I definitely think that's intentional. Judging by both her cards, she's clearly supposed to have some kind of innate resistance to offensive magic and corrupting effects, which she can apparently extend to others too. Maybe that's why the Order of St. Traft hasn't fallen prey to madness or mutation yet?
Seems like people are only aware of the walkers from the printed cards? O.o Because lore-wise:
1. Nicol Bolas (He is still the most powerful in the lore even after losing beyond godly power, before Bolas's mere touch was enough to drain all the life/mana from anything.)
2. Taysir (A human who became a "god" and was separated into 5 beings, each with it's own color of spark.)
3. Urza (Urza used powerstones to be as strong as if not stronger than Taysir, but I put Urza 3rd cause he needed "equipment" to beat Taysir)
4. Serra (An angel who used her spark to create an entire plane for herself and good-beings, then mysteriously vanished or possibly died when the Phyrexia plagued her new plane, I don't know if she was stronger than Urza, but her bestie Radiant (non-walker) did give Urza a thrashing.)
5. Ravi (Used the Apocalypse Chime to basically vaporize two entire planes of existance, think it emotionally ruined her life.)
6. Ugin (Ugin could possible be on par with Bolas, but we dont see much of his power, he did however create his own form of magic that he can teach anyone to use. Yeah a 6th type of magic beyond the 5 colors.)
7. Karn (A golem created by Urza for time-travelling, Karn created his own plane, Venser and Urza gave their sparks to Karn.)
8. Nahiri (The Kor currently causing trouble on Innistrad, she is ancient and knows many forms of magic, she learned a lot from Ugin and Sorin, and even taught Ugin a few things.)
9. Sorin (Another ancient, of course a vampire, he is very powerful... but to me he just seems like an egotist, who appears to be stronger than actually is.)
10. Freyalise or Teferi (Both very powerful walkers who helped Urza.)
Stronger than most everything though was two non-walker beings: Yawgmoth and Marit Lage.
Ugin is way too low. He should be first or second on the list, definitely not sixth. He was shown to be peers with Bolas, and he was actually winning against Bolas during their fight until Yasova intervened. I'd also switch Sorin and Nahiri, it's close but I see him as being the more powerful of the two. He defeated her in their duel, and while he had help from Avacyn, he was also in a greatly weakened state at the time and still managed to come out on top.
Other than that, I agree with your list. I'd also include the Eldrazi Titans with Yawgmoth and Marit Lage in the "not Planeswalkers but still more powerful than everything else" category. Emrakul is the most powerful being we've seen in the multiverse thus far. I think the Gods of Theros are also more powerful than some of the Planeswalkers on that list. I would imagine they're roughly on the same level as Serra, and definitely above Nahiri, Freyalise, and Teferi.
I'd also throw in Ob Nixilis as an honorable mention. He's not as powerful as anyone on that list, but he's pretty close. He definitely seems to be vastly more powerful than the average Planeswalker, since he seemed to be a relatively even match for the combined might of the entire Gatewatch, all of whom are above-average themselves. (Poor Daretti is the only Commander 2014 Planeswalker who doesn't belong anywhere near this list.)
Also, if the eldrazi live in the blind eternities (space), why did Emrakul come from undersea?
The Blind Eternities are not outer space, they're the space between planes. They exist on an entirely different axis than familiar spatial dimensions like height, length, and width. Even Planeswalkers only have a very limited ability to perceive and comprehend them.
Something just occured to me: Nahiri's plan was much more intricate and convoluted than anything Bolas had ever come up with so far.
Oh god, Nahiri is smarter than Bolas.
Ironically, I think that's because Bolas is supposed to have superhuman intelligence, which allows the writers to get lazy when describing his plans. They don't have to go into detail, they can just have him say "everything is going as I have foreseen" at any point in the story, leaving the readers to assume that whatever happened was somehow part of his master plan even if there's no explanation for how or why he manipulated events. After all, he's a 25,000 year old near-omniscient interplanar elder dragon sorcerer, it's not like his plans would necessarily make sense to us lowly humans anyway. Laziness aside, it's also very difficult to convincingly portray characters who are supposed to be vastly smarter than the writers themselves.
Nahiri, on the other hand, has a very impressive but still distinctly human-level intellect. Thus, the writers are actually expected to show us how smart she is, rather than simply telling us.
I concede that that was his reasoning, sure. It's just stupid. If he had no intention of releasing her, why not kill her?
He wants to protect Innistrad? He just threw the warden of Innistrads main threat in prison. He didn't even go check on Zendikar for years despite knowing they had almost been released.
Why not regain his strength and force her to listen? Or just kill her if he felt she was going to be a problem?
Is he short sighted? One would assume not considering the reasoning for creating Avacyn.
But this whole Zedikar mess he botched completely. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like he didn't think any of his actions through at all!
So he doesn't even TRY (admittedly only as far as we know)? For 1000 years he just skips merrily across the multiverse ignoring everything? Finally he shows up on Zendikar and helps further botch that whole ordeal too?
First off, we don't know what Sorin did or didn't try. It's possible that there's no way to release someone from the Helvault without destroying it, or at least without releasing all of its prisoners. Maybe Sorin intended to release Nahiri at some point, only to find that it couldn't be done without freeing countless demons in the process. As for why he didn't simply kill her, he might've been reluctant to kill one of the few people he'd considered a friend, plus he knew that she might be needed if the Eldrazi ever broke free again. (If you want to ascribe a less noble motivation to him, there's also the possibility that he simply saw an opportunity to test out the Helvault, though I personally don't think he's that much of a bastard.)
Secondly, he didn't just skip around the multiverse ignoring everything. He periodically traveled to Zendikar to make sure the Eldrazi were still imprisoned, that's why he was there during the original Zendikar block and that clearly wasn't his first time checking up on the place. Also, it wasn't his fault the Eldrazi escaped, he was the only one trying to prevent that from happening. Nissa was the one who deliberately freed them out of a misguided desire to protect her world.
Speaking of walkers, though. Arlinn Kord became an archmage, but besides turning into a werewolf, I don't recall seeing her perform any magic in her flashback story. Do I recall correctly? If so, is archmage just a title, or does it mean the person is a bigtime mage? If Kord is a bigtime mage, why didn't she do any major magical feats (of which I recall none, though they may exist)?
From the Planeswalker's Guide to Avacyn Restored: "Archmages of Goldnight are called "spearsages." The archmages in this order are associated with the power of the sun. Their spells are powerful and aggressive, casting blinding rays of holy light to blast hordes of undead into ash and boosting their allies with courage and speed. Prophecies had spoken about Avacyn one day vanishing from Innistrad and the Archmages of Goldnight took this very seriously. They made sure to train themselves in both the arcane and the martial arts. If push comes to shove, they are not squeamish about taking up weapons. They often wear armor under their robes, and their weapons and armor are emblazoned with the symbol of Avacyn's twin-bladed spear in front of the sun."
I got she was using magic in her wolf form to make her self more powerful, basically doing either of her +1s. Her -1 in her wolf form implies she can do some kind of burn magic.
Now that you mention it, the abilities on her card actually fit really well with that description of Goldnight Archmages. The various boosting effects represent her "boosting their allies with courage and speed", and the burn effect represents her "casting blinding rays of holy light". Intentional or not, that's a real flavor win.
In terms of Arlinn's most recent story, I agree that she was using magic to boost her own physical capabilities while in wolf form. The Archmages were probably all using magic to boost each other's capabilities too. I'd imagine that's the only reason they stood a chance against devils and a mad angel, normal humans and even a normal werewolf would probably get torn apart.
Bolas didn't exactly give me a good starting estimation point, considering the second block after the mending literally revolved around him throwing one huge and subtle tantrum about losing his power and considering he was an Elder Dragon...
I always had the impression that oldwalkers literally didn't need to eat and breathe and only did so to maintain their sanity and also had the ability to literally shapeshift into anything they wanted (Ob-Nixilis was implied to be in his shifted demonic form when he lost his spark) and that it actually overwrote the properties of any species under the planewalker himself/herself - so Sorin technically didn't need to drink blood to sustain himself when he was one... which we're unclear whether he did when he was an oldwalker.
There's also "the how old do Zendikar Kor actually naturally live and at what point (if they do) do they age visually?" I'm starting to think it's just going to be written off as the Helvault having the same properties of Sorin naturally - age in suspension.
I'm pretty sure that Oldwalkers still needed to eat and breathe, unless they could naturally survive without food and air (like Karn). At least, I don't think it was explicitly stated anywhere that they didn't need to eat or breathe, though some of the more powerful Planeswalkers could probably use magic to prevent themselves from starving or suffocating. Nahiri clearly didn't need to eat or breathe when she was hibernating, but I think that's a result of her lithomancy more than anything else, especially since the latest story proves that she can still encase herself in stone. Also, Sorin definitely needed to drink blood as an Oldwalker. In one story, he mentions that he tried to avoid drinking blood when he first became a vampire (which is also when his Spark first awakened) but suffered dire consequences for suppressing his thirst.
Oldwalkers did have innate shapeshifting abilities, but newer stories set prior to the Mending seem to ignore this, which is why we haven't seen any indication that Liliana or Sorin or Nahiri or Ugin could shapeshift. Maybe they didn't know how to shapeshift, or maybe they just preferred to stay in their original form, or maybe they changed forms all the time off-camera and we just haven't seen it. Changing forms might have been very difficult for Oldwalkers, so it makes sense that not all of them would've learned or mastered that particular ability. Ob Nixilis is a special case, since he was transformed into a demon by the Chain Veil. We don't know if he could change forms on his own before that, but the curse locked him in that form permanently.
According to the Zendikar D&D supplement, Kor have normal human lifespans, but we can assume that Nahiri was effectively in suspended animation during her imprisonment. The latest story implies that she was just a disembodied consciousness while she was in the Helvault, so she wasn't really an Oldwalker or a Neowalker during that time.
Regarding Bolas, he may have just been overreacting. For all we know, he could've still been 99% as powerful as he used to be, but he's the type of person who'd take that lost 1% very seriously. He was also 25,000 years old, so it's possible that the effects of aging were finally starting to catch up to him. That wouldn't be an issue for Ugin, who's a spirit dragon and thus likely immune to aging altogether, rather than simply being extremely long-lived.
Well, let's be clear - the mending DID affect them all equally in terms of the mutated spark (even for those who were locked away like Nahiri). The ramifications were different depending on how powerful they'd be without the spark - that's absolutely true.
Re: Ugin - Ugin seems to be all about balance, so he's not really hoarding power for his own sake. I imagine as a creature who has transcended color he's extremely powerful regardless.
That's basically what I meant. All Planeswalkers were affecting by the Mending, but if a Planeswalker still had all the abilities of an Oldwalker (immortality, regeneration, shapeshifting, etc.) for other reasons, then he wouldn't functionally be any worse off. That's my explanation for why Ugin didn't seem to notice any difference: for all intents and purposes, there wasn't a difference for him, at least not one that would be immediately noticeable.
Ob mentioned it when he got his spark back. Though he knew already that planeswalkers where weaker, and he was happy since that many a lot of planes where now defenseless without their godlike planeswalker protecters.
I already guess what Ugin figured it out himself and that like Bolas he still really powerful so he didn't take it as roughly as the more mortal Nahiri as a Kor
Thanks for the information. I don't consciously recall details for the Lore nowadays, so that was helpful, especially on the Ob-Nixilis end, really reminds me why he's so pragmatic (and quite optimistically so for a B-aligned character who lost power).
The Ugin case still strikes me as odd, considering Bolas took his loss of power quite roughly. I suppose we could just write Bolas off as being not quite as "extremely close-minded" instead and that perhaps Ugin is not exactly the same type of "Elder" Dragon that Bolas was, so perhaps his natural powers were actually of a higher-tier.
Not all Planeswalkers were affected by the Mending equally. Some of them were greatly weakened, while others were barely affected at all, if that. It really depends on how powerful they were naturally, without their Planeswalker abilities. In particular, the races of Planeswalkers mattered a lot more than they had before. It makes sense that Liliana would be hit especially hard, the Mending basically turned her back into an ordinary human. The same goes for Nahiri, who became an ordinary mortal flesh-and-blood Kor. Likewise, it makes sense that Sorin and Ugin wouldn't be any less powerful than they were before, since as an ancient vampire and an elder spirit dragon, they'd still be immortal and nigh-unkillable.
I feel the same way, it seems like people really want to have their cake and eat it too. If they kill off a bunch of nameless goons, people get upset that the story's not impactful enough. If they kill off the named characters we care about, people get upset about their favorites dying. But here's the thing, it's supposed to be upsetting when the characters we care about die, that's exactly what makes it impactful! Don't get mad at Wizards for giving you exactly what you said you wanted last time.
Except the Gatewatch doesn't save the day. From what I can tell, they serve as a distraction at best. And by "they", I mostly just mean Liliana and her army of zombies.
Tamiyo of all people ends up being the big damn hero of the story, which is honestly a little surprising to me. Most people thought it would be either Sorin or Nahiri who sealed Emrakul, or possibly the Gatewatch defeating an Eldrazi Titan for a third time (which I agree would've been very disappointing). I definitely didn't expect Tamiyo to be the one to do it. I like her a lot, but I really thought of her as a secondary character until now. I'm curious exactly how she'll manage to do so, it seems like a feat of that magnitude would be beyond her power unless she uses one of her iron scrolls.
Of course Sorin could have killed her. She was incapacitated, he could've easily finished her off. Avacyn was about to do precisely that before Sorin stopped her, which is pretty solid proof that he didn't want her dead.
Yes, we know that Sorin wasn't in mortal danger because we were privy to Nahiri's thoughts. We know that she didn't want to hurt him or kill him. We know that she was simply trying to prove a point to him and gain his respect. There's absolutely no way that Sorin could've known that, though. For all his power, he can't read minds, and it's not like Nahiri bothered to explain herself after she started attacking him. He even gave her a chance to leave and go back to Zendikar, and she still kept on attacking him with volleys of stone and blades of steel. That's hardly the equivalent of throwing your drink in someone's face, it's more like trying to stab them with a switchblade or at least burn them with a lit cigarette.
As far as Sorin knew, Nahiri was trying to kill him in a fit of rage. We know that's what he was thinking, because we're privy to his thoughts too. It was an incorrect assumption on his part, but hardly an unreasonable one. If someone starts punching you hard enough to cause serious injuries and they won't stop, are you going to assume they're simply trying to prove their strength? No, you're going to rightly assume that they're intent on harming you or worse.
Also, Nahiri was completely wrong to think that she could win Sorin's respect by attacking him. He's not Garruk, he doesn't respect brute strength as a virtue in its own right. He eliminates anything that he sees as a threat to himself or his plane, and by attacking him, Nahiri proved herself to be a threat. It wasn't just "not handling him as well as possible", it was the absolute worst choice she could've possibly made.
And yes, I do think that Sorin would have kept his promise if she'd given him some time to recover, especially since we saw in the original Zendikar block that he kept checking up on the Eldrazi even after she was gone.
It's also worth keeping in mind that this story was written from Liliana's perspective. If he seems like a cold uncaring bastard in this story, it's because that's how Liliana sees him. If we saw more of his internal monologue, he'd probably come across as more sympathetic.
This is pretty much my take on it too. All her attempts to escape the Chain Veil's curse failed, she doesn't have the power to deal with the remaining demons without it, and she thinks that Jace is either already dead or about to be killed. She's already basically out of options, may as well try to save her favorite world and just maybe save one of her few real friends in the process. To quote Jayne from Firefly (a black-aligned hero if I've ever seen one), "If you can't do something smart, do something right."
I disliked Battle for Zendikar largely for that very reason, it bore almost no resemblance to the original Zendikar. On the other hand, Return to Ravnica was somewhat underwhelming for the opposite reason, it was too similar to the first set and felt rather bland and predictable as a result. I thought Shadows Over Innistrad (the set, not necessarily the whole block) struck the perfect balance in that regard, it still kept the overall tone and feel of the original Innistrad, but with enough changes and differences and new concepts that it didn't feel like a complete rehash. I'm not sure if Eldritch Moon will continue to keep that balance, but I really like what I've seen of it so far. For instance, the newest Delver shows that they can incorporate the Eldrazi into Innistrad in a way that enriches the gothic horror feel rather than detracting from it.
The fight between Ugin and Bolas took place 1200 years ago, which I think was before Bolas fought Leshrac, but I'm not sure on that. Either way, I highly doubt that Bolas would simply be able to absorb Ugin at will. Ugin has done a lot more than tinker with hedrons: He was able to transcend the use of colored mana, which no other mage (including Bolas) has done, and his mere existence literally causes dragons to form out of thin air. Also, Sorin made the Helvault, not Nahiri. He was inspired by Nahiri's lithomancy, but he built it himself. And he fought and defeated her (with some help from Avacyn) before sealing her away, despite being in a greatly weakened state at the time.
As for the Eldrazi Titans, the fact that they can be defeated by blasting them with an entire plane's worth of mana hardly makes them weak. That's enough damage to destroy most planes, there's absolutely no one (again, including Bolas) who could have survived that. Hell, Yawgmoth was destroyed by less. The destruction of the Titans was a one time occurrence that can never be repeated, since only Zendikar had the leylines necessary to bind the Eldrazi and enough natural mana to both hold and destroy them, and that mana has now been used up.
Yes, close to equal, which is why I said he should be first or second on that list instead of sixth.
And the new Sigarda has the one ability that prevents new Emrakul's Mindslaver effect, by giving her controller Hexproof. I definitely think that's intentional. Judging by both her cards, she's clearly supposed to have some kind of innate resistance to offensive magic and corrupting effects, which she can apparently extend to others too. Maybe that's why the Order of St. Traft hasn't fallen prey to madness or mutation yet?
Ugin is way too low. He should be first or second on the list, definitely not sixth. He was shown to be peers with Bolas, and he was actually winning against Bolas during their fight until Yasova intervened. I'd also switch Sorin and Nahiri, it's close but I see him as being the more powerful of the two. He defeated her in their duel, and while he had help from Avacyn, he was also in a greatly weakened state at the time and still managed to come out on top.
Other than that, I agree with your list. I'd also include the Eldrazi Titans with Yawgmoth and Marit Lage in the "not Planeswalkers but still more powerful than everything else" category. Emrakul is the most powerful being we've seen in the multiverse thus far. I think the Gods of Theros are also more powerful than some of the Planeswalkers on that list. I would imagine they're roughly on the same level as Serra, and definitely above Nahiri, Freyalise, and Teferi.
I'd also throw in Ob Nixilis as an honorable mention. He's not as powerful as anyone on that list, but he's pretty close. He definitely seems to be vastly more powerful than the average Planeswalker, since he seemed to be a relatively even match for the combined might of the entire Gatewatch, all of whom are above-average themselves. (Poor Daretti is the only Commander 2014 Planeswalker who doesn't belong anywhere near this list.)
The Blind Eternities are not outer space, they're the space between planes. They exist on an entirely different axis than familiar spatial dimensions like height, length, and width. Even Planeswalkers only have a very limited ability to perceive and comprehend them.
Ironically, I think that's because Bolas is supposed to have superhuman intelligence, which allows the writers to get lazy when describing his plans. They don't have to go into detail, they can just have him say "everything is going as I have foreseen" at any point in the story, leaving the readers to assume that whatever happened was somehow part of his master plan even if there's no explanation for how or why he manipulated events. After all, he's a 25,000 year old near-omniscient interplanar elder dragon sorcerer, it's not like his plans would necessarily make sense to us lowly humans anyway. Laziness aside, it's also very difficult to convincingly portray characters who are supposed to be vastly smarter than the writers themselves.
Nahiri, on the other hand, has a very impressive but still distinctly human-level intellect. Thus, the writers are actually expected to show us how smart she is, rather than simply telling us.
First off, we don't know what Sorin did or didn't try. It's possible that there's no way to release someone from the Helvault without destroying it, or at least without releasing all of its prisoners. Maybe Sorin intended to release Nahiri at some point, only to find that it couldn't be done without freeing countless demons in the process. As for why he didn't simply kill her, he might've been reluctant to kill one of the few people he'd considered a friend, plus he knew that she might be needed if the Eldrazi ever broke free again. (If you want to ascribe a less noble motivation to him, there's also the possibility that he simply saw an opportunity to test out the Helvault, though I personally don't think he's that much of a bastard.)
Secondly, he didn't just skip around the multiverse ignoring everything. He periodically traveled to Zendikar to make sure the Eldrazi were still imprisoned, that's why he was there during the original Zendikar block and that clearly wasn't his first time checking up on the place. Also, it wasn't his fault the Eldrazi escaped, he was the only one trying to prevent that from happening. Nissa was the one who deliberately freed them out of a misguided desire to protect her world.
From the Planeswalker's Guide to Avacyn Restored: "Archmages of Goldnight are called "spearsages." The archmages in this order are associated with the power of the sun. Their spells are powerful and aggressive, casting blinding rays of holy light to blast hordes of undead into ash and boosting their allies with courage and speed. Prophecies had spoken about Avacyn one day vanishing from Innistrad and the Archmages of Goldnight took this very seriously. They made sure to train themselves in both the arcane and the martial arts. If push comes to shove, they are not squeamish about taking up weapons. They often wear armor under their robes, and their weapons and armor are emblazoned with the symbol of Avacyn's twin-bladed spear in front of the sun."
Now that you mention it, the abilities on her card actually fit really well with that description of Goldnight Archmages. The various boosting effects represent her "boosting their allies with courage and speed", and the burn effect represents her "casting blinding rays of holy light". Intentional or not, that's a real flavor win.
In terms of Arlinn's most recent story, I agree that she was using magic to boost her own physical capabilities while in wolf form. The Archmages were probably all using magic to boost each other's capabilities too. I'd imagine that's the only reason they stood a chance against devils and a mad angel, normal humans and even a normal werewolf would probably get torn apart.
I'm pretty sure that Oldwalkers still needed to eat and breathe, unless they could naturally survive without food and air (like Karn). At least, I don't think it was explicitly stated anywhere that they didn't need to eat or breathe, though some of the more powerful Planeswalkers could probably use magic to prevent themselves from starving or suffocating. Nahiri clearly didn't need to eat or breathe when she was hibernating, but I think that's a result of her lithomancy more than anything else, especially since the latest story proves that she can still encase herself in stone. Also, Sorin definitely needed to drink blood as an Oldwalker. In one story, he mentions that he tried to avoid drinking blood when he first became a vampire (which is also when his Spark first awakened) but suffered dire consequences for suppressing his thirst.
Oldwalkers did have innate shapeshifting abilities, but newer stories set prior to the Mending seem to ignore this, which is why we haven't seen any indication that Liliana or Sorin or Nahiri or Ugin could shapeshift. Maybe they didn't know how to shapeshift, or maybe they just preferred to stay in their original form, or maybe they changed forms all the time off-camera and we just haven't seen it. Changing forms might have been very difficult for Oldwalkers, so it makes sense that not all of them would've learned or mastered that particular ability. Ob Nixilis is a special case, since he was transformed into a demon by the Chain Veil. We don't know if he could change forms on his own before that, but the curse locked him in that form permanently.
According to the Zendikar D&D supplement, Kor have normal human lifespans, but we can assume that Nahiri was effectively in suspended animation during her imprisonment. The latest story implies that she was just a disembodied consciousness while she was in the Helvault, so she wasn't really an Oldwalker or a Neowalker during that time.
Regarding Bolas, he may have just been overreacting. For all we know, he could've still been 99% as powerful as he used to be, but he's the type of person who'd take that lost 1% very seriously. He was also 25,000 years old, so it's possible that the effects of aging were finally starting to catch up to him. That wouldn't be an issue for Ugin, who's a spirit dragon and thus likely immune to aging altogether, rather than simply being extremely long-lived.
That's basically what I meant. All Planeswalkers were affecting by the Mending, but if a Planeswalker still had all the abilities of an Oldwalker (immortality, regeneration, shapeshifting, etc.) for other reasons, then he wouldn't functionally be any worse off. That's my explanation for why Ugin didn't seem to notice any difference: for all intents and purposes, there wasn't a difference for him, at least not one that would be immediately noticeable.
Not all Planeswalkers were affected by the Mending equally. Some of them were greatly weakened, while others were barely affected at all, if that. It really depends on how powerful they were naturally, without their Planeswalker abilities. In particular, the races of Planeswalkers mattered a lot more than they had before. It makes sense that Liliana would be hit especially hard, the Mending basically turned her back into an ordinary human. The same goes for Nahiri, who became an ordinary mortal flesh-and-blood Kor. Likewise, it makes sense that Sorin and Ugin wouldn't be any less powerful than they were before, since as an ancient vampire and an elder spirit dragon, they'd still be immortal and nigh-unkillable.