I'm really confused by mtgsalv's stance on the book leaks. Like, they have posted card spoilers that were literally stolen from the factory before. How is that any different, legally, from posting story spoilers? Most of which are referenced, or hinted at, on cards now. I could understand wanting to protect yourself, I just don't see why this is somehow way worse then posting leaked cards.
Woah, wait a second. I'm not sure if you're implying this or I'm realizing it. But if the trials existed before Bolas came and the "worthy" were being embalmed for literally thousands of years, couldn't this explain the numbers discrepancy? In other words, what if the em embalmed dead from long before Bolas' arrival were retroactively eternalized?
Yea, this is what I was suggesting earlier. I don't think that every member of his Eternals is made up from JUST the trial winners of the last 60 years. Maybe the novel will go into this, maybe not, but it's a plausible explanation that doesn't break the continuity. There could be an unending number of trial winners from before he took over, plus he may be filling out the ranks with some of the 3rd/4th/5th/etc.. place finishers. The act of competing being what drove them to train harder, but maybe you didn't have to win for Bolas to want to use you. There are also the viziers and such, that never took part in the trials (I think? I don't remember if they went into how they became viziers), random demons and creatures from the plane, and lots of other possibilities. The plane had the Curse of Wandering before he showed up, it was already a big old zombie factory, so there is a potentially unlimited supply of corpses for him to draw from, if he so chose. I think he'd prefer the more elite warriors that trained to fight their whole lives, but beggars can't be choosers if he didn't have enough of them for his purposes. 50% elite warriors and 50% 'fodder' is still better than just the 50% elite warriors.
I really don't think we are. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alien
Literally the first 3 commonly used definitions of the word fit this scenario. The example in your link is referencing the fact that we are using the same term for humans from another country as we would beings from another planet, but Amonkhet is actually a different planet than Ravnica. Also, the fact that, until recently, the government was even using the term 'illegal alien' to refer to other humans, further supports the first usages in the dictionary.
The connotation of how he used the word was also perfectly correct, but you have ingrained definitions of both 'alien' and 'aliens' (not the same thing, either) in your mind and ignored the context. 'An alien invasion' on its own, can describe both a foreign invasion force or ETs from outer space, depending on the context. He was referring to blue metallic zombie soldiers, some of whom are clearly not humanoid, from another plane... that's pretty alien to the denizens of Ravnica. If you just say the word 'aliens' to a random person, what pops into their head? Sure, ETs. If you say 'the soldiers were alien to this country', however, then it simply suggests weird or unknown.
I find it surprising that you are choosing this specific hill to die on.
Didn’t one of the cards with civilians depict Niv Mizzet on a poster, implying he was one of the fallen? Or something to that effect?
Yea, but we never saw when that happened is the problem. They are acting as if the novel is already out or something. They should have put his death on a card if they were gonna reference it like this.
Also, the timing of when they released the card you are talking about, suggests he may have died in the initial invasion. Like, right after the planar bridge opened, maybe Bolas flew in, setup his citadel while the Eternals started going ham, and niv-mizzet immediately flew out to fight him? Idk, just speculating, but it's clear it happened early on in the events.
WotC really failed this time, we got the rebirth of Niv Mizzet, an artifact speaking of his death. But where is the card depicting his death? They missed the opportunity to make us cry.
"Niv Mizzet Death" was a card that should have been made.
Ok, thank goodness I didn't miss something. I came here to ask if maybe I missed a bit of story somewhere, cause the line in the article about Bolas striking him down really made me go 'wait, what?'. Like, we've known it happens from the leaks of these cards, but WotC has not 'officially' shown us that happening.
I think you are overstating things. In fact, the only guild that is really on Bolas's side (and we can clearly see this on the cards) is the Azorius, and I think even they are actually neutral. I'll get to that. The Gruul are shown fighting Eternals. I think they are just in it for the End Raze and will fight anyone who gets in the way of demolishing the cityscape. That presumably incudes Bolas, because Bolas is a tyrant and Domri Rade firmly believes in anarchy. Its even in his title. The Orzhov aren't on Bolas' side because Kaya is on Bolas's kill list, and her lieutenant was always suspicious of Kaya's actions. So we see the Orzhov fighting for Ravnica. And we have yet to see much spoiled about the Golgari's role, but we know it won't work to Bolas's favor because Vraska is a sleeper agent for Jace. Has been since Ixalan.
I didn't overstate anything. You are the one implying that all the guilds are setup in the same spot fighting the invasion simultaneously. Yes, Domri would fight either side, which is exactly my point. He's just as likely to fight ravnicans in his way, which is all Bolas needs. It's one less guild allied against him. The orzhov are in shambles, so they aren't helping much either. The azorius being neutral is, again, a point FOR bolas, not against him. When I said things those guilds did to start, I meant before he even showed up. He co-opted some, weakened or disabled others. Even the ones he didn't have any control over, he used the ones he did to weaken them beforehand. All the ravnica stories were about things like Azorius locking up tons of people, especially Rakdos, or the gruul getting more aggressive in demolishing other guild's areas. Orzhov had the majority of its power removed, as they used their spirits in many different functions, including soldiers. Basically, Ravnica isn't at full strength.
On top of that, while Ravnica might be smaller than some other planes (we've never been given a full map or size, though, this is just commonly accepted speculation) it's not just the size of London or something. The tenth district itself is likely as big something like London, but there are still many other areas where the fighting isn't taking place. The guilds have troops stationed all over that wouldn't be there for the invasion. It's only a portion of their overall strength that would be close enough, and ready, to start fighting.
The cards were showing that it was possible for them to defeat groups of eternals, especially when they work together, but not that they were winning the whole war. Even when one side totally crushes another in a war, the losing side still defeats some of their enemy's troops. They couldn't easily make cards for all 5 colors showing the Ravnicans just getting killed over and over. Especially in green and white. They had to have moments of triumph for the good guys as well, and then have any hope they started to get be crushed by the arrival of the God Eternals, so that it's again all about the Gatewatch's plan. If Ravnica could just beat the eternals on their own, then there wouldn't be any stakes to the story.
This whole discussion started from you and others stating why the Eternals would be no match for Ravnica, based on some cards showing them getting beat. That ignores the bigger picture, and infers way too much from a tiny piece of information. I was giving all kinds of reasons for why they could be a legitimate threat. Yes, they were speculative, because we haven't been given the actual novel yet. I wasn't saying 'these are definitely the reasons', but rather they are possible explanations that might show up in the story, or there might be entirely new ones no one thought of. They didn't create a detailed D&D style book with the stats of every soldier on every side for anyone to do an analysis, so saying one side would clearly defeat the other is already speculative, no matter which side you are in favor of. Making statements like 'Golgari know about zombies, so therefore regenerating zombies wouldn't pose a threat' as if every Golgari member is a necromancer, and they can instantly share all their knowledge with everyone on ravnica, or that every zombie, on every plane, is always created the exact same way.. is so out of touch and irrelevant to the story. You might as well say the Eternal Gods don't matter either, cause the nephillim were considered 'old gods' and Ravnica defeated them, so now they know everything about gods and how to beat them. Its vastly over simplifying what is happening, and things just don't work like that.
That seems actually a pretty personal prejudice on the word "alien", which I highly doubt 99% of people in the world has. It means foreign, stranger, the same meaning it had in latin, and it's only denoting a characteristic of origin, of provenance. Taking in example Lovecraft: he still used the word correctly for the Old Ones, they are aliens, but he also used "inconceivable", "monstrous", "horrendous", "revolting" for the characteristics you seem to blend in the meaning of "alien". Even in scifi it just means "from another world" and not "green monster from space". About Planeswalkers, you might see at the end of one of my repliy I explicitly wrote "alien planeswalkers": because most of those on Ravnica are aliens right now.
This. Just because we use 'alien' to refer to 'outer space extraterrestrials that don't look human' so much, does not mean that's the only correct usage of the word. Superman is an alien, and referred to as such many, many times throughout his history, despite a totally human appearance. 'Outer space aliens' falls under the umbrella term of 'alien', but its general usage is for anything foreign to your world. Whether that world is your country, planet, plane, etc.. That isn't some niche use of the word, but rather the intended definition that has been linked in some people's brains to mean 'from outer space', but that isn't correct.
It didn't state any of those, but without evidence to support "magic fertility" you apply common sense. Ravnica is a plane-wide city. Amonkhet is smaller than it. By a sizeable amount. There should be a decently large size disparity between the populations of the Eternals and that of Ravnica.
As for Eternals with pre-Bolas stuff, we don't know what the Trials were like, but I'm going to guess that they weren't killing people and coating them with lazotep. Until the lore says otherwise there isn't any evidence to support this. We don't even know that the trials were combat-oriented, a trial can be many things that have zero to do with fighting. These Eternals would probably be a lot lower quality than the others though, since you're losing the "raised since birth to fight" aspect, so even if he is supplementing his army with others they're going to be less able. Are there any number of possible answers they could have to explain things? Certainly. It also wouldn't be the first time that there was some semblance of a logistics issue in MtG stories though either. It's also assuming a lot of things about the Eternals story-wise with regards to how much of a threat they're meant to be that isn't necessarily supported.
My point is that people are coming up with estimates of like '1,000 eternals' when you can see more then that in a single piece of art, and clearly 1,000 eternals would barely constitute a threat to even a single ravnica guild. So, obviously the math is wrong, then. How many eternals are there? The real answer is 'enough' and no one at WotC sat down and ran the logistics to come up with a specific number. It's meant to be a mostly unending horde, hence the 'dreadhorde' name. I'm just giving various ways that there could be a massive number of them, that hasn't been specifically contradicted by any existing lore that I know of. Bolas isn't dumb enough to try and invade a plane of millions with just a few thousand run of the mill zombies.
As I said before, pregnancies might be shorter there, especially for the non-human races, or maybe people give birth to twins/triplets a lot more frequently on Amonkhet. Heck, were any of the characters shown as being pregnant? Maybe babies are even made magically or there's a dedicated breeding group pumping out babies as often as possible (this wouldn't make for entertaining fiction, so it's unlikely to come up in a story even if it were true). There may have been tons of extra corpses already stashed away, and he just spent the last 60 years coating them in lazotep. The ones from the last 60 years being the 'elite' of the horde, kinda like squad commanders. Or, when they said 'thousands' of babies to start, that might have meant like 10 to 20,000 rather then the 2 to 3 thousand many believe, or maybe their estimate was just wrong. Etc etc.. that is just off the top of my head. A good writer, spending some thought on it, could surely come up with some more interesting and plausible scenarios.
Basing their numbers off real world, or earth equivalent, figures is forgetting that this is a fantasy setting and magic is in play. The population of ancient egyptian cities are not relevant to how many live on Amonkhet. Their city's physical size might be as big as Thebes, or whatever ancient egyptian city you chose, but maybe the majority of soldiers live in cramped barracks style houses, so their population density is a lot higher. There could be a couple million living in Amonkhet, for all we know. Is that still less than Ravnica? Certainly, but not every Ravnican is an elite soldier, or even a rudimentary fighter, and its only a small portion of the plane being invaded. America has waaaaay less people then China, but most believe we have an overall stronger military. Could we invade one of their major cities if our troops were instantly teleported inside? I would certainly hope so. Would we win an all-out war (without using nukes)against China? Unclear, and probably not.
These, as far as generic the parameter of HUMAN goes, are not Ravnica Humans, different biology probably...
Which again, would be true of humans Compleated by Phyrexia or corrupted by Emrakul, but they aren't. You probably won't be surprised to hear this, but we know that humans from different planes are biologically the same because the Phyrexian plane of Rath kidnapped humans from multiple planes, and only the Kor raised eyebrows (because only Zendikari have any experience with them). Its technically true that some races are found on Amonkhet but not Ravnica, but that's why I pointed out that Ravnica is more diverse. Its a moot point. And yes, Eternals are zombies, but even the ability to easily repair zombies is known to Ravincans (see: Dredge).
For one, he used the word 'probably', he didn't state it definitively. But, the point was that either way, whether they have different biology or not, they are still alien. Alien just means foreign to the world. Also, just because the end result is the same (zombies) doesn't mean the process or magic behind it is. The curse of wandering on amonkhet could be weird magic that the golgari don't know how to control in the same way. Or, the manner in which they regenerate might be different, and therefore they don't know how to stop it.
If people are complaining based on lore details that they misunderstand, I aim only to point out those mistakes. And when people make illogical arguments, I don't see any way to correct them without getting into detail. Do you?
If the argument was 'who would win, the entire plane of Amonkhet denizens or the entire plane of Ravnica denizens?' then most of the points would be valid. But, it's not just the regular Amonkhet as normal zombies. It's also Bolas and his magic, and they aren't even trying to conquer the entire plane. Just control a small portion until his zombie assassins jump a few hundred/thousand people. Not to mention any help he's getting from the azorius, golgari, gruul, orzhov, etc.. to start. Dovin may have previously enacted some laws that are hindering some of the resistance, Domri's raids might be diverting attention, Orzhov is in shambles from Kaya setting all the spirits free, etc.. Ravnica isn't at full strength.
Decades, maybe, but distinctly not centuries. First of all, Bolas was dead up until 60 years ago, remember?
Yes, after Azor showed up and created the initial guildpact, he sealed it off from planeswalkers. But, 1200 years ago is when Azor and Ugin were trying to trap Bolas before he ever 'died' on dominaria. Bolas tracked Ugin down through Azor and all the worlds he had visited. He likely didn't physically visit, or send someone to visit, Ravnica until the last 60 years.. but he could have studied information he found about the place from before the first guildpact even being enacted. The plane existed before Azor got there, we just haven't seen much from that time period. Maybe bolas studied info about the nephillim, or Niv-Mizzet, or heck, if the authors wanted, Bolas may have been the one person to somehow crack Azor's magic and find a way into the plane for himself. Who knows? Azor isn't some omnipotent god, his enchantment may have had some kind of weakness/loophole in it that Bolas found a way to use. The other plane barriers have had various ways they could be broken or circumvented. Leshrac, Tevesh Szat and Lim-dul got out of the dominaria shard from another plane 'moving' into range of it, for example.
I do think it's unlikely he spent much effort on trying to get into Ravnica. He probably stopped caring about it after he beat Ugin. I think the place only caught his attention again after the first guildpact broke and it became a kind of magical hub. Or, maybe he chose it as some kind of revenge against Azor. If the guildpact never broke, it seems just as likely he would have chosen Dominaria as his planeswalker trap instead.
I mean, nothing indicates that the people were magically speeding up their pregnancy or exceptionally fertile.
Of course not, we weren't given a census or in depth documentary about life on amonkhet. We were given a relatively short story of the gatewatch being there for like.. a week. Just because it wasn't mentioned in a story, doesn't mean it's not possible. To be clear, I'm not saying this is actually what was happening. I think its very unlikely, in fact. But, my point is, how is anyone even 'doing the numbers' when there are no population numbers to base them on. Did some lore state, definitively, that there was X number of people on all of amonkhet when Bolas took it over? Did it also state how often people have babies?
Plus, the trials happened before he came there, just for a different purpose. Due to the curse of wandering, there could have been literally hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of corpses already there for him to use, and he simply repurposed their way of life. Potentially, he could have left them alone and shown up a few months before he needed to use them and done almost the same thing. But, he instead decided to lay some groundwork decades ahead of time and his ego wanted them worshipping him in the meantime. Since he did that, everyone is basing their estimates on the time from when he took over to when he showed up again, but we don't know enough to know if that's the only corpses he used. I think it's very unlikely, as the whole world was already a desert grixis, with everything turning into zombies when they die. I believe the real reason he planned it ahead of time, was to have people coating the corpses in lazotep. That may have been what took the most time, rather then the actual raising and training of enough people.
My only issue with the Eternals being a threat is one of logistics. The whole Amonkhet scheme has been going on for 50 years, and the trials are implied to take several weeks/months to complete so realistically there should be a very limited number of trials per year.
The upper estimates at most would mean an army of around 1000.
Ravnica has a lot more than just that.
Where are people getting these numbers from? When were we given a population estimate on Amonkhet? The city could have had a million babies when he started his plans, and maybe they all breed like crazy, too. For all we know, each woman has an average of 5 babies, magically sped up pregnancies only taking a few weeks/months, or something equally crazy like that.
Plus, as others have stated, its not just the people who 'won' the trials. Those winners got special spots, but there's plenty of others that make up the bulk of the horde. The purpose was to have a civilization constantly practicing and training, completely devoted to learning to fight, from the day they were born. i.e. the Spartans of ancient Greece. Even the weakest warriors of theirs will be more than a match for an average soldier elsewhere. Then, you add in all the non-human creatures he's added to them, and it could be an army that is very big indeed. The pictures on cards are obviously up to the artist, but some of them (the basic lands, mostly) show way more than 1000 eternals in them.
They are not Phyrexians and they are not Eldrazi. They aren't even etherium users like Esperites. They are not aliens, because Magic has consistently shown that humans are humans are humans no matter which plane they come from.
He wasn't saying they are 'aliens', like from outer space. Anything that isn't native to your planet (or plane, in this case) is 'alien', even if they are still biologically the same race. If biologically identical humans somehow evolved on Mars, they'd still be aliens to Earth.
The Eternals are alien (aka foreign, different, odd) to Ravnica. Their edge is in their numbers, the element of surprise, and the magic that Bolas has imbued them with.
This whole discussion is getting bogged down in details as if this was a real world fight. Most of these details, while mostly valid, are completely irrelevant. Unfortunately, the real reason being 'magic' and 'plot'. However, consider that the gatewatch defeated two eldrazi, that were absolutely wrecking an entire plane of people, many of whom had powerful magic due to the abundance of it on Zendikar. Bolas crushed the gatewatch with very little effort. The Eternals are simply acting as Bolas hands in this. He has to focus on other things, and can't be everywhere to harvest all the planeswalkers. However, he would have made sure they powerful enough to do the task he has assigned them to do. Whether that is through magic he personally gave them, magic the zombie gods are/have given them, or some other combination of reasons. So, instead of thinking 'can a zombie amonkhet human beat a ravnica soldier' you should be asking 'can a tool Bolas created, specifically for this purpose, beat a ravnica soldier?'. Whatever advantage you believe Ravnicans have (and I don't necessarily disagree with most of the points everyone has brought up) would have surely been accounted for by Bolas.
He's been scouting out Ravnica for decades, if not centuries. He knows the general capabilities of the armies of each guild, so he would have ensured his soldiers don't just fold like paper to an average fighter. He may not know exactly how powerful each of the paruns are, though, but that's why he's got himself and the gods with him; as a failsafe towards bigger threats. I'd bet that any of the amonkhet gods could take on most of the paruns individually, especially the 3 multi-colored ones, and as a group they could surely defeat any of them on their own.
The only thing Bolas may not have factored in properly, is how well the guilds might work together. His plans were to destabilize them beforehand, which he did. But, if they are putting aside their hatreds quicker then he anticipated, if their teamwork is better than he expected, that would explain them winning a bit more than they should. However, again, his failsafe is first his gods and then himself. He COULD go beat anyone on Ravnica if he acted directly, but he didn't want to bother and couldn't be everywhere at once. Plus, he isn't intending to take over the entire plane. He just needs his Eternals to assassinate enough planeswalkers for him to cast the spell. So, he's got them as his shock troopers, his gods as his bodyguards, and they all just need to buy enough time for him to finish his ritual, then nothing else matters. Given enough time, I'm sure Ravnica would beat his entire army of Eternals, but that's not relevant to his plan.
The protection it grants from weapons is secondary to that purpose. And a bronze Khopesh is not going to cut through a steel breastplate. It just isn't. Protection wise, a soldier on Ravinca is quite well equipped to fight other, similarly equipped soldiers. And it takes special training to defeat such equipment. Training which a knight or soldier from Dominaria or Alara might have, certainly, because they have comparable equipment. But a warrior from Amonkhet, where that equipment doesn't exist? Probably not. Add on top of this that Ravinca's guilds use mounted cavalry and the Eternals do not, and by all accounts they are actually ill-equipped in the most literal sense of the word to face the armies of Ravnica. That's justification enough for me for all the zombie-killing we have seen in the cards spoiled thus far. And there is probably a lot of art we still haven't seen of the Eternals doing their thing too. Remember, the set still isn't out yet.
If this was a conflict in the real world, I'd agree with most of your points. However, we don't have all the facts and information available to really make a valid point about things such as bronze weapons vs plate armor. For all we know, it's magicalbronze that has been enchanted specifically to be able to cut through plate armor.. Or, the eternals have their own magic that they use to do it, the sword just being the instrument of that magic (like a wand), or bolas gave them extra abilities, etc.. Alternatively, they may be mostly unkillable, able to keep repairing or getting back up. Due to other enchantments either Bolas, or one of the Eternalized gods, has put on them.
I understand you were just making explanations for the art all showing the Ravnicans winning for the most part, and I agree its not unreasonable that they could defeat them based on technological disparities. I think it's been shown this way because, in small numbers the Ravnicans are beating Eternals, and the cards are showing the exceptional moments where this happens. However, it doesn't matter. The Eternals are out numbering them. I don't know where anyone was getting the numbers for the Eternals, but the pictures make it look like hundreds of thousands of Eternals, at least. Which, by the way, are only invading a specific portion of Ravnica. Ravnica as a whole might be one giant city, spanning the entire plane, but the majority of their population is irrelevant if the Eternals are only in this area. Imagine if someone invaded Manhattan with 150,000 troops INSTANTLY, with no warning, our armies scattered across the world would be mostly meaningless. They'd have control of the city within a day or two, which is all Bolas would need if he was looking to control that specific portion of Ravnica. Now, we know he doesn't want to control Ravnica, only to kill planeswalkers, but the planeswalkers didn't know that. So, most of them would likely concentrate in that area of the plane to fight him when they showed up.
The way I think it will go, is the Ravnicans seem to be doing well in their fights against Eternals. They are dropping them relatively easily, but the horde keeps coming for some reason. They start thinking maybe he just has an infinite number of them, constantly coming through the planar bridge, until they realize that every Eternal they seem to defeat, is just getting back up and coming at them. They are being worn down. Their biggest guns show up (Parhelion II, Rakdos, Niv-Mizzet, etc..) and make some headway against the horde, but then are outmatched by some of the Eternalized Gods (and I'm hoping Bolas brought the Scarab, Locust and Scorpion Gods along with zombie Bontu, Oketra, Rhonas, and Kefnet). This will raise the stakes and make it seem like Ravnica is definitely going to lose until the Gatewatch and Co. are able to find the weaknesses in Bolas power structure. Nissa helps defeat/alter some of the gods, Vraska gets her memory back and is critical in finding a way to keep Eternals down (she petrifies them? or the golgari just know how to keep something dead), Niv-Mizzet gets reborn and his power helps fight the gods, Jace + Lavinia find the loophole in Bolas contract on Lilli (altho I'm still hoping Dovin has a bigger plan and betrays Bolas, cause it'd be perfect for him to help with the contract), etc..
In another thread, people were referencing a story about Vraska and Isperia meeting up.. post-ixalan but pre-War of the Spark, as Vraska is the guild master. I don't know where they read this story. Can anyone point in the right direction? I read everything they post on the WOTC story page, but I don't recall this event, unless I somehow missed it.
Yea, this is what I was suggesting earlier. I don't think that every member of his Eternals is made up from JUST the trial winners of the last 60 years. Maybe the novel will go into this, maybe not, but it's a plausible explanation that doesn't break the continuity. There could be an unending number of trial winners from before he took over, plus he may be filling out the ranks with some of the 3rd/4th/5th/etc.. place finishers. The act of competing being what drove them to train harder, but maybe you didn't have to win for Bolas to want to use you. There are also the viziers and such, that never took part in the trials (I think? I don't remember if they went into how they became viziers), random demons and creatures from the plane, and lots of other possibilities. The plane had the Curse of Wandering before he showed up, it was already a big old zombie factory, so there is a potentially unlimited supply of corpses for him to draw from, if he so chose. I think he'd prefer the more elite warriors that trained to fight their whole lives, but beggars can't be choosers if he didn't have enough of them for his purposes. 50% elite warriors and 50% 'fodder' is still better than just the 50% elite warriors.
I really don't think we are. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alien
Literally the first 3 commonly used definitions of the word fit this scenario. The example in your link is referencing the fact that we are using the same term for humans from another country as we would beings from another planet, but Amonkhet is actually a different planet than Ravnica. Also, the fact that, until recently, the government was even using the term 'illegal alien' to refer to other humans, further supports the first usages in the dictionary.
The connotation of how he used the word was also perfectly correct, but you have ingrained definitions of both 'alien' and 'aliens' (not the same thing, either) in your mind and ignored the context. 'An alien invasion' on its own, can describe both a foreign invasion force or ETs from outer space, depending on the context. He was referring to blue metallic zombie soldiers, some of whom are clearly not humanoid, from another plane... that's pretty alien to the denizens of Ravnica. If you just say the word 'aliens' to a random person, what pops into their head? Sure, ETs. If you say 'the soldiers were alien to this country', however, then it simply suggests weird or unknown.
I find it surprising that you are choosing this specific hill to die on.
Yea, but we never saw when that happened is the problem. They are acting as if the novel is already out or something. They should have put his death on a card if they were gonna reference it like this.
Also, the timing of when they released the card you are talking about, suggests he may have died in the initial invasion. Like, right after the planar bridge opened, maybe Bolas flew in, setup his citadel while the Eternals started going ham, and niv-mizzet immediately flew out to fight him? Idk, just speculating, but it's clear it happened early on in the events.
Ok, thank goodness I didn't miss something. I came here to ask if maybe I missed a bit of story somewhere, cause the line in the article about Bolas striking him down really made me go 'wait, what?'. Like, we've known it happens from the leaks of these cards, but WotC has not 'officially' shown us that happening.
I didn't overstate anything. You are the one implying that all the guilds are setup in the same spot fighting the invasion simultaneously. Yes, Domri would fight either side, which is exactly my point. He's just as likely to fight ravnicans in his way, which is all Bolas needs. It's one less guild allied against him. The orzhov are in shambles, so they aren't helping much either. The azorius being neutral is, again, a point FOR bolas, not against him. When I said things those guilds did to start, I meant before he even showed up. He co-opted some, weakened or disabled others. Even the ones he didn't have any control over, he used the ones he did to weaken them beforehand. All the ravnica stories were about things like Azorius locking up tons of people, especially Rakdos, or the gruul getting more aggressive in demolishing other guild's areas. Orzhov had the majority of its power removed, as they used their spirits in many different functions, including soldiers. Basically, Ravnica isn't at full strength.
On top of that, while Ravnica might be smaller than some other planes (we've never been given a full map or size, though, this is just commonly accepted speculation) it's not just the size of London or something. The tenth district itself is likely as big something like London, but there are still many other areas where the fighting isn't taking place. The guilds have troops stationed all over that wouldn't be there for the invasion. It's only a portion of their overall strength that would be close enough, and ready, to start fighting.
The cards were showing that it was possible for them to defeat groups of eternals, especially when they work together, but not that they were winning the whole war. Even when one side totally crushes another in a war, the losing side still defeats some of their enemy's troops. They couldn't easily make cards for all 5 colors showing the Ravnicans just getting killed over and over. Especially in green and white. They had to have moments of triumph for the good guys as well, and then have any hope they started to get be crushed by the arrival of the God Eternals, so that it's again all about the Gatewatch's plan. If Ravnica could just beat the eternals on their own, then there wouldn't be any stakes to the story.
This whole discussion started from you and others stating why the Eternals would be no match for Ravnica, based on some cards showing them getting beat. That ignores the bigger picture, and infers way too much from a tiny piece of information. I was giving all kinds of reasons for why they could be a legitimate threat. Yes, they were speculative, because we haven't been given the actual novel yet. I wasn't saying 'these are definitely the reasons', but rather they are possible explanations that might show up in the story, or there might be entirely new ones no one thought of. They didn't create a detailed D&D style book with the stats of every soldier on every side for anyone to do an analysis, so saying one side would clearly defeat the other is already speculative, no matter which side you are in favor of. Making statements like 'Golgari know about zombies, so therefore regenerating zombies wouldn't pose a threat' as if every Golgari member is a necromancer, and they can instantly share all their knowledge with everyone on ravnica, or that every zombie, on every plane, is always created the exact same way.. is so out of touch and irrelevant to the story. You might as well say the Eternal Gods don't matter either, cause the nephillim were considered 'old gods' and Ravnica defeated them, so now they know everything about gods and how to beat them. Its vastly over simplifying what is happening, and things just don't work like that.
This. Just because we use 'alien' to refer to 'outer space extraterrestrials that don't look human' so much, does not mean that's the only correct usage of the word. Superman is an alien, and referred to as such many, many times throughout his history, despite a totally human appearance. 'Outer space aliens' falls under the umbrella term of 'alien', but its general usage is for anything foreign to your world. Whether that world is your country, planet, plane, etc.. That isn't some niche use of the word, but rather the intended definition that has been linked in some people's brains to mean 'from outer space', but that isn't correct.
My point is that people are coming up with estimates of like '1,000 eternals' when you can see more then that in a single piece of art, and clearly 1,000 eternals would barely constitute a threat to even a single ravnica guild. So, obviously the math is wrong, then. How many eternals are there? The real answer is 'enough' and no one at WotC sat down and ran the logistics to come up with a specific number. It's meant to be a mostly unending horde, hence the 'dreadhorde' name. I'm just giving various ways that there could be a massive number of them, that hasn't been specifically contradicted by any existing lore that I know of. Bolas isn't dumb enough to try and invade a plane of millions with just a few thousand run of the mill zombies.
As I said before, pregnancies might be shorter there, especially for the non-human races, or maybe people give birth to twins/triplets a lot more frequently on Amonkhet. Heck, were any of the characters shown as being pregnant? Maybe babies are even made magically or there's a dedicated breeding group pumping out babies as often as possible (this wouldn't make for entertaining fiction, so it's unlikely to come up in a story even if it were true). There may have been tons of extra corpses already stashed away, and he just spent the last 60 years coating them in lazotep. The ones from the last 60 years being the 'elite' of the horde, kinda like squad commanders. Or, when they said 'thousands' of babies to start, that might have meant like 10 to 20,000 rather then the 2 to 3 thousand many believe, or maybe their estimate was just wrong. Etc etc.. that is just off the top of my head. A good writer, spending some thought on it, could surely come up with some more interesting and plausible scenarios.
Basing their numbers off real world, or earth equivalent, figures is forgetting that this is a fantasy setting and magic is in play. The population of ancient egyptian cities are not relevant to how many live on Amonkhet. Their city's physical size might be as big as Thebes, or whatever ancient egyptian city you chose, but maybe the majority of soldiers live in cramped barracks style houses, so their population density is a lot higher. There could be a couple million living in Amonkhet, for all we know. Is that still less than Ravnica? Certainly, but not every Ravnican is an elite soldier, or even a rudimentary fighter, and its only a small portion of the plane being invaded. America has waaaaay less people then China, but most believe we have an overall stronger military. Could we invade one of their major cities if our troops were instantly teleported inside? I would certainly hope so. Would we win an all-out war (without using nukes)against China? Unclear, and probably not.
For one, he used the word 'probably', he didn't state it definitively. But, the point was that either way, whether they have different biology or not, they are still alien. Alien just means foreign to the world. Also, just because the end result is the same (zombies) doesn't mean the process or magic behind it is. The curse of wandering on amonkhet could be weird magic that the golgari don't know how to control in the same way. Or, the manner in which they regenerate might be different, and therefore they don't know how to stop it.
If the argument was 'who would win, the entire plane of Amonkhet denizens or the entire plane of Ravnica denizens?' then most of the points would be valid. But, it's not just the regular Amonkhet as normal zombies. It's also Bolas and his magic, and they aren't even trying to conquer the entire plane. Just control a small portion until his zombie assassins jump a few hundred/thousand people. Not to mention any help he's getting from the azorius, golgari, gruul, orzhov, etc.. to start. Dovin may have previously enacted some laws that are hindering some of the resistance, Domri's raids might be diverting attention, Orzhov is in shambles from Kaya setting all the spirits free, etc.. Ravnica isn't at full strength.
Yes, after Azor showed up and created the initial guildpact, he sealed it off from planeswalkers. But, 1200 years ago is when Azor and Ugin were trying to trap Bolas before he ever 'died' on dominaria. Bolas tracked Ugin down through Azor and all the worlds he had visited. He likely didn't physically visit, or send someone to visit, Ravnica until the last 60 years.. but he could have studied information he found about the place from before the first guildpact even being enacted. The plane existed before Azor got there, we just haven't seen much from that time period. Maybe bolas studied info about the nephillim, or Niv-Mizzet, or heck, if the authors wanted, Bolas may have been the one person to somehow crack Azor's magic and find a way into the plane for himself. Who knows? Azor isn't some omnipotent god, his enchantment may have had some kind of weakness/loophole in it that Bolas found a way to use. The other plane barriers have had various ways they could be broken or circumvented. Leshrac, Tevesh Szat and Lim-dul got out of the dominaria shard from another plane 'moving' into range of it, for example.
I do think it's unlikely he spent much effort on trying to get into Ravnica. He probably stopped caring about it after he beat Ugin. I think the place only caught his attention again after the first guildpact broke and it became a kind of magical hub. Or, maybe he chose it as some kind of revenge against Azor. If the guildpact never broke, it seems just as likely he would have chosen Dominaria as his planeswalker trap instead.
Of course not, we weren't given a census or in depth documentary about life on amonkhet. We were given a relatively short story of the gatewatch being there for like.. a week. Just because it wasn't mentioned in a story, doesn't mean it's not possible. To be clear, I'm not saying this is actually what was happening. I think its very unlikely, in fact. But, my point is, how is anyone even 'doing the numbers' when there are no population numbers to base them on. Did some lore state, definitively, that there was X number of people on all of amonkhet when Bolas took it over? Did it also state how often people have babies?
Plus, the trials happened before he came there, just for a different purpose. Due to the curse of wandering, there could have been literally hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of corpses already there for him to use, and he simply repurposed their way of life. Potentially, he could have left them alone and shown up a few months before he needed to use them and done almost the same thing. But, he instead decided to lay some groundwork decades ahead of time and his ego wanted them worshipping him in the meantime. Since he did that, everyone is basing their estimates on the time from when he took over to when he showed up again, but we don't know enough to know if that's the only corpses he used. I think it's very unlikely, as the whole world was already a desert grixis, with everything turning into zombies when they die. I believe the real reason he planned it ahead of time, was to have people coating the corpses in lazotep. That may have been what took the most time, rather then the actual raising and training of enough people.
Where are people getting these numbers from? When were we given a population estimate on Amonkhet? The city could have had a million babies when he started his plans, and maybe they all breed like crazy, too. For all we know, each woman has an average of 5 babies, magically sped up pregnancies only taking a few weeks/months, or something equally crazy like that.
Plus, as others have stated, its not just the people who 'won' the trials. Those winners got special spots, but there's plenty of others that make up the bulk of the horde. The purpose was to have a civilization constantly practicing and training, completely devoted to learning to fight, from the day they were born. i.e. the Spartans of ancient Greece. Even the weakest warriors of theirs will be more than a match for an average soldier elsewhere. Then, you add in all the non-human creatures he's added to them, and it could be an army that is very big indeed. The pictures on cards are obviously up to the artist, but some of them (the basic lands, mostly) show way more than 1000 eternals in them.
He wasn't saying they are 'aliens', like from outer space. Anything that isn't native to your planet (or plane, in this case) is 'alien', even if they are still biologically the same race. If biologically identical humans somehow evolved on Mars, they'd still be aliens to Earth.
The Eternals are alien (aka foreign, different, odd) to Ravnica. Their edge is in their numbers, the element of surprise, and the magic that Bolas has imbued them with.
This whole discussion is getting bogged down in details as if this was a real world fight. Most of these details, while mostly valid, are completely irrelevant. Unfortunately, the real reason being 'magic' and 'plot'. However, consider that the gatewatch defeated two eldrazi, that were absolutely wrecking an entire plane of people, many of whom had powerful magic due to the abundance of it on Zendikar. Bolas crushed the gatewatch with very little effort. The Eternals are simply acting as Bolas hands in this. He has to focus on other things, and can't be everywhere to harvest all the planeswalkers. However, he would have made sure they powerful enough to do the task he has assigned them to do. Whether that is through magic he personally gave them, magic the zombie gods are/have given them, or some other combination of reasons. So, instead of thinking 'can a zombie amonkhet human beat a ravnica soldier' you should be asking 'can a tool Bolas created, specifically for this purpose, beat a ravnica soldier?'. Whatever advantage you believe Ravnicans have (and I don't necessarily disagree with most of the points everyone has brought up) would have surely been accounted for by Bolas.
He's been scouting out Ravnica for decades, if not centuries. He knows the general capabilities of the armies of each guild, so he would have ensured his soldiers don't just fold like paper to an average fighter. He may not know exactly how powerful each of the paruns are, though, but that's why he's got himself and the gods with him; as a failsafe towards bigger threats. I'd bet that any of the amonkhet gods could take on most of the paruns individually, especially the 3 multi-colored ones, and as a group they could surely defeat any of them on their own.
The only thing Bolas may not have factored in properly, is how well the guilds might work together. His plans were to destabilize them beforehand, which he did. But, if they are putting aside their hatreds quicker then he anticipated, if their teamwork is better than he expected, that would explain them winning a bit more than they should. However, again, his failsafe is first his gods and then himself. He COULD go beat anyone on Ravnica if he acted directly, but he didn't want to bother and couldn't be everywhere at once. Plus, he isn't intending to take over the entire plane. He just needs his Eternals to assassinate enough planeswalkers for him to cast the spell. So, he's got them as his shock troopers, his gods as his bodyguards, and they all just need to buy enough time for him to finish his ritual, then nothing else matters. Given enough time, I'm sure Ravnica would beat his entire army of Eternals, but that's not relevant to his plan.
If this was a conflict in the real world, I'd agree with most of your points. However, we don't have all the facts and information available to really make a valid point about things such as bronze weapons vs plate armor. For all we know, it's magicalbronze that has been enchanted specifically to be able to cut through plate armor.. Or, the eternals have their own magic that they use to do it, the sword just being the instrument of that magic (like a wand), or bolas gave them extra abilities, etc.. Alternatively, they may be mostly unkillable, able to keep repairing or getting back up. Due to other enchantments either Bolas, or one of the Eternalized gods, has put on them.
I understand you were just making explanations for the art all showing the Ravnicans winning for the most part, and I agree its not unreasonable that they could defeat them based on technological disparities. I think it's been shown this way because, in small numbers the Ravnicans are beating Eternals, and the cards are showing the exceptional moments where this happens. However, it doesn't matter. The Eternals are out numbering them. I don't know where anyone was getting the numbers for the Eternals, but the pictures make it look like hundreds of thousands of Eternals, at least. Which, by the way, are only invading a specific portion of Ravnica. Ravnica as a whole might be one giant city, spanning the entire plane, but the majority of their population is irrelevant if the Eternals are only in this area. Imagine if someone invaded Manhattan with 150,000 troops INSTANTLY, with no warning, our armies scattered across the world would be mostly meaningless. They'd have control of the city within a day or two, which is all Bolas would need if he was looking to control that specific portion of Ravnica. Now, we know he doesn't want to control Ravnica, only to kill planeswalkers, but the planeswalkers didn't know that. So, most of them would likely concentrate in that area of the plane to fight him when they showed up.
The way I think it will go, is the Ravnicans seem to be doing well in their fights against Eternals. They are dropping them relatively easily, but the horde keeps coming for some reason. They start thinking maybe he just has an infinite number of them, constantly coming through the planar bridge, until they realize that every Eternal they seem to defeat, is just getting back up and coming at them. They are being worn down. Their biggest guns show up (Parhelion II, Rakdos, Niv-Mizzet, etc..) and make some headway against the horde, but then are outmatched by some of the Eternalized Gods (and I'm hoping Bolas brought the Scarab, Locust and Scorpion Gods along with zombie Bontu, Oketra, Rhonas, and Kefnet). This will raise the stakes and make it seem like Ravnica is definitely going to lose until the Gatewatch and Co. are able to find the weaknesses in Bolas power structure. Nissa helps defeat/alter some of the gods, Vraska gets her memory back and is critical in finding a way to keep Eternals down (she petrifies them? or the golgari just know how to keep something dead), Niv-Mizzet gets reborn and his power helps fight the gods, Jace + Lavinia find the loophole in Bolas contract on Lilli (altho I'm still hoping Dovin has a bigger plan and betrays Bolas, cause it'd be perfect for him to help with the contract), etc..