I'm mildly annoyed that they didn't kill Borborygmos. His fall has already been foreshadowed, and yet they still can't seem to bring themselves to kill off a popular legend.
Then again, the body count in the next set will probably be insane, so they could just be pacing themselves.
I'm still a little confused as to what Bolas' plans are for taking over the guilds. No word yet at all on what he expects Ral to do? Or what he wants Vraska to do? Or Domri, or Kaya? What is he trying to achieve with these takeovers?
Kickass ability, probably my favorite on any Rakdos so far. But I hate that ******* name.
Others have already pointed out how the Rakdos Guild has degenerated from a scary chaos cult to a bunch of weird carnies and flashy showmen. You can see that very devolution in Rakdos's own card names: Rakdos the Defiler and Rakdos Lord of Riots are solid titles. But now in 2019 he's Rakdos the Showstopper. Everything is carnivals and circuses and performers now, and I'm just done with the whole guild. A pity, since Rakdos was one of my favorite guilds in OG Ravnica.
As for the art, I need to find a high-res before I can judge it.
-The Elder Dragon War was't just one of many conflicts that ravaged Dominaria. It was the first world war, and by far the longest-lasting conflict that we know of. We're talking a planar war that emerged from out of Dominaria's most ancient history and lasted for centuries, probably millennia. We're talking countless generations of primeval human beings who knew existence only as chattel to be sacrificed at the whims of immortal tyrants, generations in which the entire purpose of being was waging war for one's winged overlords. This is far and beyond the cold war on Tarkir-this was mass devastation and nonstop global conflict. Consider the implications of that all, and the horror of it for a moment. Whenever such things as "civilized values" and "human dignity" finally took lasting hold among humanoids, it was only after the dragons were done using them as pawns. No wonder Bolas scorns such concepts as meaningless--it's not (just) because he's evil, but also because he predates such things as law, justice, civilization, and "rights." Arcades Sabboth trafficked in these ideas early on, but he was far ahead of his time.
This is what I took away from reading about the Elder Dragon War: the human element. What must the human experience have been like in such an era? No written history predates the war - war was the only history humans had. What values, what norms, what beliefs, philosophies, and morals did these chattel civilizations develop to find meaning in their existence? It must have been very alien to us, nothing at all resembling, say, Judeo-Christian morals or Confucian ethics. Generation after generation, humans were inferior lifeforms who existed solely to feed the jaws of a global, neverending war.
To me, this is far more horrifying and interesting than Superdragons brawling across the Multiverse. That's fun in concept of course, but to me the idea carried all the emotional and dramatic weight of a kaiju battle or a Michael Bay robot fight. Dominaria is a world I care about, and its people and cultures matter to me. Seeing how its early civilizations were born in the clutches of dragon tyranny was a fascinating choice, and I honestly much prefer this more localized version of the Elder Dragon War, involving victimized human kingdoms, to the multiverse-wide monster brawl I'd pictured before.
Alara: sucked, but it wasn't the author's fault. He had literally never written a book before and had no training at all as a writer, and was tasked with condensing what should have been three books worth of material into one short book. The fact that he turned out something half competent is something he should be proud of, and I give him props for dealing with an impossible situation.
Here's what I'll give the Alara book, though: the highlight of the novel was Bolas's speech to Ajani at the end, which made the whole novel 100% worth it just to get to that part. I don't think I've ever, in all my years of reading, encountered such spectacular, delightfully evil villainous boasting--not even in Hour of Devastation. I remember laughing and then going back to read those passages out loud, just to experience how deliciously, theatrically wicked they felt on my tongue.
Edit: Here's Bolas's speech, in all its scenery-chewing glory, while he curbstomps Ajani in the Maelstrom:
"What now? What's the next link in this chain, little walker? Will you get your revenge? Will you--kill me? Put your dead brother's axe in my guts, and wiggle the handle till I'm dead? Stop me from fulfilling my goals here on your beloved worlds? And after that, what, march home a champion? I'm sorry; I don't mean to be flip. It is very important to you, I know. But you can't see. You can't see how painfully trite you are. There will be no pathos in your death, Ajani Goldmane, no grand nobility. Only the shabby banality of a thousand indistinguishable upstarts."
With that, Bolas flicked his claw and blasted Ajani back with the force of a meteor. Ajani slammed backward into the slope of the gorge and slumped limp.
"I've lived hundreds of your lifetimes," continued Bolas. "I've survived more apocalypses than you've had chest colds. I've experienced more of this cosmos than any being there has ever been. And you think you're going to stand in my way, matchstick? You think you're the one to finally take me down? I can tell you now, if Nicol Bolas is to fall, it won't be because of the likes of you."
Ajani elbowed his way off his back into a sitting position. With his weight on one arm and blood dripping from his mouth, he spoke. "For being so old, you throw a tantrum like a child."
Bolas snarled and snapped his arm back in the other direction. Ajani flew bodily across the gorge, slamming sideways into the ground again.
Ajani groaned and coughed blood onto the walls of the gorge. He searched his mouth with his tongue and felt two teeth loose, but clenched them into place with his jaw.
Bolas approached. "Again, you're centuries too late to play the insolent, devil-may-care hero. It's been done far too many times, and by better beings than you. It's played out. You don't have a million-to-one chance, little walker. This isn't your once-in-a-lifetime shot at the hero's triumph. This is you, flyswatted."
While I'm happy and thrilled at the prospect of TWO books to close out this storyline... if second book doesn't release until next fall, does that mean we're going to have to wait until fall 2019 to see how the story ends?
KarnTerrier and User_938036, thank you for those responses. After mulling these over and reviewing the story again, I do feel a bit better about how things played out at the end. I still think the mechanics of it all could have been explained a better, but I am satisfied enough. I appreciate it.
Could someone provide me with satisfactory explanations for the following points? (KarnTerrier and Flische, your previous posts make some sense and I thank you for taking the time to put forth your thoughts, but I'm still left unsatisfied and will address your posts further below).
What I'm still struggling with is:
1.) Why did Baishya and Yasova not just confirm to Bolas that Ugin was dead, instead of taunting Bolas with the possibility that Ugin might indeed be alive after all? Why couldn't both Ugin could be dead and his Immortal Sun "trap" still in be motion? Bolas may have fled, but now he has even better reason than before to suspect Ugin is alive, and the Termur Trio didn't deny it.
2.) Bolas knew Naiva was a twin. Why wouldn't he at least consider they might have pulled a switcheroo, especially after Baishya started talking back and mocking him? The entire possibility seems to have just escaped him. Why was he fooled by twins when he knew they were twins? On the off chance he didn't know they were identical, ought not the Great and Mighty Bolas, who himself has orchestrated countless deceptions against countless opponents over the millennia - and indeed, whose entire shtick is outmaneuvering and outwitting people - at least have considered something so basic?
3.) The main issue at hand: Why was Bolas not reading their minds all along--both in the previous story and in this one? It's not like it takes any special time or effort for him: way back in the Ixalan story, when Vraska first comes to visit Bolas in the Meditation Realm, he demonstrates several times that he is casually and effortlessly reading her mind. I've heard it suggested that the hedrons might have provided some protection, but even in the previous chapter of the current story, he reads Naiva's mind as she thinks that "In one gulp, he could eat her" and replies out loud to her thoughts. So the hedrons apparently aren't hindering his mind-reading powers that much. Why was Bolas reading Naiva's mind then, but not Yasova's and Baishya's when it actually counted?
4.) From a narrative standpoint: how is the story served by having a trio of mortals dupe Bolas in the end and get away scot-free? Especially in this story, on the cusp of the great final showdown on Ravnica? This is Bolas's story, here to further set up his character and the threat he poses right before we move into the grand climax. Having him so easily played like a fool both diminishes his threat and makes the stakes seem that much lower. We didn't necessarily need another Hour of Devastation-like display of power (though it wouldn't have hurt to show full-power Bolas as a terrifying force of destruction), but couldn't he have killed Yasova and at least one of the twins so that tricking him wouldn't feel so utterly painless and lacking in consequence? He's the one we're here to see, the one being showcased in Core 2019.
Now, I don't believe for a moment that the Wizards Creative Team who commissioned this story just simply forgot that Bolas was a mind-reader. So there must be a satisfactory explanation out there somewhere, but I'm struggling to find it. In any event, I shouldn't have to reread a story three times, dissect the lines, and formulate my own rationalizations in order for it all to finally make sense.
1. The story specifies that Yasova was using her counter-magic to prevent Bolas from reading her and Baishya and Naiva's minds.
Could you please provide the exact quote? It seems to be evading me. It seems to me that Baishya was the one who was mentioned as using counter magic, not Yasova.
2. The story also specifies that the hedrons were also providing their minds with extra protection, like a "whisperer's headdress" (which is presumably some kind of artifact that Temur shamans use to shield their minds from telepathy) but extended to cover multiple people.
As I mentioned above, the hedrons didn't seem to protect Naiva all that well when Bolas invaded her mind in the previous chapter. He read her mind for an instant when she was thinking nothing of consequence, but then repeatedly neglected to do so when it counted.
Plot twist: Bolas did mindread them both and knew they had made it up, but also realized that it was an actual possibility. Afterall, Bolas only knew from Ugin that they planned to trap him on Ixalan, not that they could do so remotely and that the plan was, indeed, to do it while on Tarkir.
Adding these pieces to the puzzle, which Baishya actually knew and Bolas could have easily extracted from her mind could mean that even if he knew that the humans were full of lies, that doesn't mean what they said wasn't actually true.
So instead of taking any chances he left.
Of course such a convoluted twist would have required more setting up and resolving, but that's my headcanon.
I would like this and it makes a lot of sense, but as you mentioned, this isn't what was set up, and indeed, it wasn't the explanation we were given. I wish it were; but the author gave us only one explanation, and it was Yasova's: He couldn't take the chance it was a bluff, so he fled.
I like your headcanon, but I'm looking for a way to make this story satisfactory and consistent on the author's own terms, without bringing my own private headcanon to the rescue. Elliot has been an absolutely fantastic writer up until these last two chapters, but this ending has thrown me for a loop, and not in a good way. Here's another line that irked me:
Baishya went on in the same goading tone. "You can't admit you came back to make sure he was really dead this time, after he tricked you last time."
Bolas did admit that. He admitted that to Naiva in the previous two chapters. Granted, it wasn't to Baishya, but the line is still jarring and carelessly written, and further gives the impression that this ending wasn't particularly well-thought out.
Why is this just discarded? The fact that Bolas can read minds like a book has been not only shown repeatedly, but mentioned over and over again in this very story. And Bolas was fooled by the twins? He knows Naiva has an identical twin. That's what he was using, Naiva's resentment for her twin, to manipulate her to begin with.
I LOVED the first six chapters of this story. But these last two... what happened?
This was the line that finally ended it for me:
"He's gone," said Grandmother. "He could not take the chance it was a bluff."
You don't bluff Bolas. He looks into your eyes and sees what cards you're holding; that's why Jace has to erase Vraska's memories of their sabotage plot. And he loses now by being lied to?
If you pushed Bolas off a cliff, would he actually fly, or would he just fall to his death?
Then again, the body count in the next set will probably be insane, so they could just be pacing themselves.
I'm still a little confused as to what Bolas' plans are for taking over the guilds. No word yet at all on what he expects Ral to do? Or what he wants Vraska to do? Or Domri, or Kaya? What is he trying to achieve with these takeovers?
Others have already pointed out how the Rakdos Guild has degenerated from a scary chaos cult to a bunch of weird carnies and flashy showmen. You can see that very devolution in Rakdos's own card names: Rakdos the Defiler and Rakdos Lord of Riots are solid titles. But now in 2019 he's Rakdos the Showstopper. Everything is carnivals and circuses and performers now, and I'm just done with the whole guild. A pity, since Rakdos was one of my favorite guilds in OG Ravnica.
As for the art, I need to find a high-res before I can judge it.
-The Elder Dragon War was't just one of many conflicts that ravaged Dominaria. It was the first world war, and by far the longest-lasting conflict that we know of. We're talking a planar war that emerged from out of Dominaria's most ancient history and lasted for centuries, probably millennia. We're talking countless generations of primeval human beings who knew existence only as chattel to be sacrificed at the whims of immortal tyrants, generations in which the entire purpose of being was waging war for one's winged overlords. This is far and beyond the cold war on Tarkir-this was mass devastation and nonstop global conflict. Consider the implications of that all, and the horror of it for a moment. Whenever such things as "civilized values" and "human dignity" finally took lasting hold among humanoids, it was only after the dragons were done using them as pawns. No wonder Bolas scorns such concepts as meaningless--it's not (just) because he's evil, but also because he predates such things as law, justice, civilization, and "rights." Arcades Sabboth trafficked in these ideas early on, but he was far ahead of his time.
This is what I took away from reading about the Elder Dragon War: the human element. What must the human experience have been like in such an era? No written history predates the war - war was the only history humans had. What values, what norms, what beliefs, philosophies, and morals did these chattel civilizations develop to find meaning in their existence? It must have been very alien to us, nothing at all resembling, say, Judeo-Christian morals or Confucian ethics. Generation after generation, humans were inferior lifeforms who existed solely to feed the jaws of a global, neverending war.
To me, this is far more horrifying and interesting than Superdragons brawling across the Multiverse. That's fun in concept of course, but to me the idea carried all the emotional and dramatic weight of a kaiju battle or a Michael Bay robot fight. Dominaria is a world I care about, and its people and cultures matter to me. Seeing how its early civilizations were born in the clutches of dragon tyranny was a fascinating choice, and I honestly much prefer this more localized version of the Elder Dragon War, involving victimized human kingdoms, to the multiverse-wide monster brawl I'd pictured before.
Here's what I'll give the Alara book, though: the highlight of the novel was Bolas's speech to Ajani at the end, which made the whole novel 100% worth it just to get to that part. I don't think I've ever, in all my years of reading, encountered such spectacular, delightfully evil villainous boasting--not even in Hour of Devastation. I remember laughing and then going back to read those passages out loud, just to experience how deliciously, theatrically wicked they felt on my tongue.
Edit: Here's Bolas's speech, in all its scenery-chewing glory, while he curbstomps Ajani in the Maelstrom:
*Looks at Etrata, the silencer*
I don't get it. Is she supposed to be black or Caucasian?
Consistency, Wizards. Consistency.
Between Mission Briefing, Assassin's Trophy, and the five shocklands, I can hardly afford not to buy a booster box of this set.
Ugh, Wizards, you win.
Sweet ****ing Lord, that man can paint.
What I'm still struggling with is:
1.) Why did Baishya and Yasova not just confirm to Bolas that Ugin was dead, instead of taunting Bolas with the possibility that Ugin might indeed be alive after all? Why couldn't both Ugin could be dead and his Immortal Sun "trap" still in be motion? Bolas may have fled, but now he has even better reason than before to suspect Ugin is alive, and the Termur Trio didn't deny it.
2.) Bolas knew Naiva was a twin. Why wouldn't he at least consider they might have pulled a switcheroo, especially after Baishya started talking back and mocking him? The entire possibility seems to have just escaped him. Why was he fooled by twins when he knew they were twins? On the off chance he didn't know they were identical, ought not the Great and Mighty Bolas, who himself has orchestrated countless deceptions against countless opponents over the millennia - and indeed, whose entire shtick is outmaneuvering and outwitting people - at least have considered something so basic?
3.) The main issue at hand: Why was Bolas not reading their minds all along--both in the previous story and in this one? It's not like it takes any special time or effort for him: way back in the Ixalan story, when Vraska first comes to visit Bolas in the Meditation Realm, he demonstrates several times that he is casually and effortlessly reading her mind. I've heard it suggested that the hedrons might have provided some protection, but even in the previous chapter of the current story, he reads Naiva's mind as she thinks that "In one gulp, he could eat her" and replies out loud to her thoughts. So the hedrons apparently aren't hindering his mind-reading powers that much. Why was Bolas reading Naiva's mind then, but not Yasova's and Baishya's when it actually counted?
4.) From a narrative standpoint: how is the story served by having a trio of mortals dupe Bolas in the end and get away scot-free? Especially in this story, on the cusp of the great final showdown on Ravnica? This is Bolas's story, here to further set up his character and the threat he poses right before we move into the grand climax. Having him so easily played like a fool both diminishes his threat and makes the stakes seem that much lower. We didn't necessarily need another Hour of Devastation-like display of power (though it wouldn't have hurt to show full-power Bolas as a terrifying force of destruction), but couldn't he have killed Yasova and at least one of the twins so that tricking him wouldn't feel so utterly painless and lacking in consequence? He's the one we're here to see, the one being showcased in Core 2019.
Now, I don't believe for a moment that the Wizards Creative Team who commissioned this story just simply forgot that Bolas was a mind-reader. So there must be a satisfactory explanation out there somewhere, but I'm struggling to find it. In any event, I shouldn't have to reread a story three times, dissect the lines, and formulate my own rationalizations in order for it all to finally make sense.
Could you please provide the exact quote? It seems to be evading me. It seems to me that Baishya was the one who was mentioned as using counter magic, not Yasova.
As I mentioned above, the hedrons didn't seem to protect Naiva all that well when Bolas invaded her mind in the previous chapter. He read her mind for an instant when she was thinking nothing of consequence, but then repeatedly neglected to do so when it counted.
I would like this and it makes a lot of sense, but as you mentioned, this isn't what was set up, and indeed, it wasn't the explanation we were given. I wish it were; but the author gave us only one explanation, and it was Yasova's: He couldn't take the chance it was a bluff, so he fled.
I like your headcanon, but I'm looking for a way to make this story satisfactory and consistent on the author's own terms, without bringing my own private headcanon to the rescue. Elliot has been an absolutely fantastic writer up until these last two chapters, but this ending has thrown me for a loop, and not in a good way. Here's another line that irked me:
Bolas did admit that. He admitted that to Naiva in the previous two chapters. Granted, it wasn't to Baishya, but the line is still jarring and carelessly written, and further gives the impression that this ending wasn't particularly well-thought out.
CAN.
READ.
MINDS.
Why is this just discarded? The fact that Bolas can read minds like a book has been not only shown repeatedly, but mentioned over and over again in this very story. And Bolas was fooled by the twins? He knows Naiva has an identical twin. That's what he was using, Naiva's resentment for her twin, to manipulate her to begin with.
I LOVED the first six chapters of this story. But these last two... what happened?
This was the line that finally ended it for me:
You don't bluff Bolas. He looks into your eyes and sees what cards you're holding; that's why Jace has to erase Vraska's memories of their sabotage plot. And he loses now by being lied to?
If you pushed Bolas off a cliff, would he actually fly, or would he just fall to his death?