Magic: The Gathering (Unreleased Sets)

I've been thinking that he might plan on throwing the Eternals at New Phyrexia for a while now. Bolas sent Tezzeret to monitor the New Phyrexia situation. We already know he's interested in what's going on there; precisely why is a thing that just hasn't come up yet.

edited 24th Jan '18 9:47:12 PM by TobiasDrake

Which is pretty blatant Gameplay and Story Segregation, since the special ability of Metathran soldiers (and the elites if enchanted) is that they can't be blocked.

edited 24th Jan '18 9:46:23 PM by M84

Musing further, I would definitely not be surprised if Phyrexia is a part of Bolas's scheme. He's the new Big Bad, so when he makes his move, it's probably going to be a Chekhov's Armory situation; the kind of huge blowout where everything shows up in some capacity.

The Gatewatch is basically the new Weatherlight crew. The story's ramping up and shit's going to get ugly.

edited 24th Jan '18 9:48:32 PM by TobiasDrake

I'm kind of curious to see how Lazotep reacts to Phyrexian Oil...

Let's hope things end better for the Gatewatch than they did for the Weatherlight crew...several of them, including The Hero, died, two of them turned evil and died, the one with Resurrective Immortality was killed a hundred times a day by one of the evil ones, the Weatherlight itself was lost, one nearly became the new The Father of Machines and is accidentally responsible for New Phyrexia...

edited 24th Jan '18 9:52:05 PM by M84

I have certain doubts that Bolas intends to use the Eternal Sun against the New Phyrexians, for two reasons.

One: Using a planar lock against people who haven't developed planar travel yet strikes me as a...curious stratagem, to say the least.

Two: Mirrodin already has too many goddamn suns.

The planar lock could potentially be used to trap planeswalkers in New Phyrexia. But that would be a little convoluted.

Actual footage of Nicol Bolas.

Azor was dissapointing, I expected more from him. And the punishment was... rushed? At least Jace can visit on him on Useless Island if needed.

Also, yay Jace!

I don't think that Bolas knows that Ugin is alive, unless the fail-safe Ugin put in Jace's head didn't work correctly.

My theory on Bolas' plan with the Eternal Sun: Planeswalker Spark Farming. Because once you start to kill planeswalkers on a plane, the remaining have a tendency to flee, which is not really great when you want to harvest them. But if they cannot escape, you can hunt each of them at your leisure and get back your godly power. (And Bolas' army can be used to slaughter the plane's population, igniting more planeswalkers to be harvested!)

Story's up.

I guess Ravnica 3 is on the cards in the near future.

Was there really much doubt? Ravnica is one of the most popular planes they have, and now they don't need to worry about how to handle a third set because they don't have to do one.

Or a second set, for that matter.

Ravnica is one plane where they pretty much have to do two sets. They'll probably be using faction keywords and ability words like previous Ravnica sets, because that's worked very well for them so far, and ten of them would lead to a set that's cramped and overcomplicated - not as bad as Dragon's Maze, but still stuffed too full of guilds to really give any of them room to breathe or provide a look at the rest of the setting.

What does Ravnica have that could possibly be of interest to Nicol Bolas, but that he would need an army to obtain? The only reason to have an army like this is as an invasion force, but that suggests Bolas intends to massacre the population. What could that possibly—

...

Oh. Ohhhh. I think I get it.

This is about Agyrem, the spectral district. See, Ravnica was sealed off from planeswalkers being able to visit, which also cut it off from the afterlife. The souls of the dead had nowhere to pass on to. As a result, Agyrem was created; a purgatorial city where Ravnica's dead would persist as spirits.

After the creation of the new not-magical Guildpact that preceded Jace's Living Guildpact title, Ravnica became unsealed and Agyrem merged with the plane, becoming its own district. Then the Mending happened and Agyrem f*cked off again.

If Bolas is planning on hitting Ravnica with an extermination force, it can only mean that he intends to flood Agyrem. But that still doesn't feel like the endgame. Only the nextgame.

Bolas' endgame is likely going to be an attempt to undo the Mending and regain all of the god-like power and immortality old Planeswalkers had. His whole thing is that he's so afraid of being powerless that he wants ultimate power.

And if he has to tear apart the entire Multiverse to get that power, he'd do it in a heartbeat.

edited 31st Jan '18 6:26:39 PM by M84

Nicol Bolas vs Niv Mizzet. 'Squeeeee!'

Either Bolas thrashes Mizzet, or Mizzet decides to join Bolas.

I don't think that such a confrontation would go well for Mizzet at all. Though is Mizzet is forewarned and given time to plan, and Bolas doesn't know he's forewarned, we might get a Batman vs Superman (not the movie) situation out of this.

I mean... yeah, it's kind of funny to think of a thousand-year-old hypergenius dragon as the Batman in any matchup, but compared to Bolas? I think it's fair.

What Bolas doesn't know is that Jace now has a head up on his agenda and can try to cut him off at Ravnica by bringing Niv-Mizzet onboard.

What Jace doesn't know is that Ral Zarek of the Izzet League, the guy specifically monitoring comings and goings of planeswalkers and trying to stay apprised of what Niv-Mizzet knows, is an Agent of Bolas.

edited 31st Jan '18 6:46:46 PM by TobiasDrake

Niv Mizzet might quickly realize that Ral is hiding planeswalker detection from him, depending on what he suspects already.

I mean, Jace helped Ral do it. Jace can just tell him.

But that doesn't change the fact that Ral is an agent of Bolas. That he's hiding planeswalker detection from Niv-Mizzet isn't going to reveal that either, because again, Jace helped him do it. They both agreed that this is a good idea. There's no more reason to deduce from it that Ral serves Bolas than there is that Jace does.

Ral's a Chekhov's Gun waiting to fire and Ravnica 3: Electric Boogaloo seems the place to fire it.

edited 1st Feb '18 7:33:36 AM by TobiasDrake

It really depends on if Jace thinks Mizzet needs to know about that. He might, because knowing when Bolas hits the plane is gonna be important.

That's certainly possible. And if they're relying on an agent of Bolas to inform them when Bolas arrives, they're going to be mighty surprised.

<.< I'm really looking forward to seeing how Ral plays into all of this. I just really love this paranoia element of Bolas having agents all around the Multiverse and not really knowing who you can trust, and maybe also not even knowing that you would need to know who to trust.

edited 1st Feb '18 9:22:32 AM by TobiasDrake

Magic Story: Who Tells the Stories

Also, Vote for Control of the Golden City!

Fuck it, I'm voting pirates. They're all awful, but the pirates aren't pretending otherwise.