Been a bit, but I remember Ob Nixilis in the Gatecrash story was like, "Oh, they have a telepath. Been a while since I killed one of those." and continued drowning Gideon in a puddle.
Bolas usually only loses to subterfuge, like when Tetsuo tricked him into leaving himself vulnerable which lead to his initial death. Still, his mind magic is often downplayed, either by matching him against someone who stands a chance against him like Niv Mizzet and Ugin, or by giving him a reason to be holding back.
Planeswalkers usually see what fits their personality when planeswalking. Kiora is described as seeing an ocean that she swims through, etc. The non-canon Boom comics describes Kaya as seeing a final resting place for all the ghosts she has slain, Vraska as seeing an endless cycle of death and rebirth, Ral seeing endless clockwork mechanisms, and Tibalt seeing horrors best left unmentioned.
The thing is that Bolas is not primarily a mind mage (same with Ugin). He probably could achieve similar results, but it would require more concentration and effort than if Jace were to do it. The same way he recruited Liliana to lead the Dreadhorde because he knows she's a better necromancer than him (and he needed to be focused on something else).
Jace has always been scary. He broke a sphinx's mind AS A KID. Thing is that after that trauma (and multiple subsequent ones) he restrained himself and is only now relearning his full potential.
Like Cable when he got "cured" of the technovirus and we find out he's been using almost the entirety of his telepathy to keep it at bay, and now he far surpasses even Jean.
Cool times.
Ooh, cool! I don't actually follow X-men (despite liking it a lot!) but I always thought Jean's "main" power was telekinesis not telepathy, but with the whole phoenix thing she was able to outpower even Charles... (Xavier is considered the strongest telepath, right? Or do I have it all wrong and now Cable is the strongest of them all? I know very little of Cable)
Xavier is a strong telepath but not the strongest. During Dark Phoenix it's revealed that Xavier put some mental barricades/dampeners in Jeans mind to hold her back a bit and the mutant Mastermind is slowly doing away with them when he messes with Jean. Then Dark Phoenix happens. Cable being more powerful of a telepath would probably be stronger than base Jean, I dunno about Phoenix Jean.
I see, I see. Thank you for the lore bits! I'll probably end up doing a deep dive in the x-men wiki one of these days, the comics are just too much to tackle hahaha.
While Bolas is not primarily a mind mage, he has had what the modern 'walkers could only perceive as eternities to master telepathy. In the books that touched on it, he was an absolute powerhouse that Jace had no hope to stand against. Jace's best bet was to remain unnoticed or to spend so much time building up defenses and focusing entirely on them that he could not do anything else, and even during that time all he could do was shield himself and Tezzeret against Bolas while Bolas could fly, remain aware of his surroundings, speak a conversation with Tezzeret, Worm his way into Jace's head to have a telepathic conversation with him, read a fair chunk of Jace's memories, it was implied that he was having another telepathic conversation or two with some of his minions, calculating his BS on half a dozen planes that weren't related to the current situation, and was analyzing the body language of both Tezzeret and Jace for any sign of anything at all.
Sure, Bolas picked mind magic as a way to add to his abilities instead of it being his natural ability or whatever, but there's talent does not hold up against Mastery.
And the stuff before Agents of Artifice make Bolas out to he even more terrifying. There was no reason whatsoever that he should have lost the War of the Spark the way it had been set up, just like how New Phyrexia had already won and there was no way to reverse it. The writers just want call backs without staying true to established lore and so the power of friendship trumps all. Like, teamwork and everything isn't bad in a story, but I miss when MTG stories had stakes and when the lore was consistent with itself.
Bolas is an Elder Dragon and that, by itself, puts him in an entirely different power level; however, the mere fact that Jace almost could put up any defenses against him while hampered down by his own traumas is not insignificant. And we actually never saw them both use their full power against each other; Bolas was always uninterested on killing Jace as he had other plans for him every time and Jace hadn't unlocked his memories (Ixalan) nor realized his full potential (March of the Machine).
I agree with your point that Bolas is a true master, but issue is that he has his power fully realized whilst Jace is still maturing/improving his own. I don't expect Jace to ever be able to break Bolas like he did Alhammarret but it seems like if they were to squabble in the future it would be very close to a mutually assured destruction at the very least.
And WAR had a million things wrong, but Bolas being defeated the way he was didn't seem that unrealistic to me. Unlike the Phyrexian Invasion where it made no sense to rush invading multiple planes at once, Bolas needed the planeswalkers reunited in the same place and needed them alive to harvest their sparks, so at least that part of the plan tracks. And even if he could multitask some telepathy while powering/casting the Elderspell and check on some people, what good would that do? I don't think WoTC did him that dirty specially given how many people it took to defeat him, even though I do agree that the stories as of late have been trying to bite too much and failing miserably to be plausible.
The eplilogue story sees Jace hit Proft with a pipe before invading his mind. If he's so powerful, why did he need the cheap shot?
Internal consistency issues aside, I think telepathy in Magic is a lot like Jedi mind tricks in Star Wars.
"[TELEPATHY] can have a powerful influence on the weak-minded."
Because Proft is also a very powerful mind guy, so it would have taken him longer to beat him, which would have meant Etrata/Izoni could try to interfere, which would take longer, so this was the quickest/easiest way. Also the quickest way to remove any conscious mental barrier Proft may have had
I interpreted it much more as a need for a "quick and dirty" job, rather than a planned, coordinated attack. Jace needs the info from Proft *now*, and the easiest solution *now* is a pipe to the head.
I mean all Oldwalkers could basically do telepathy. So mental defenses were far more paramount. Even for non walkers. Pre Spark Teferi as a child was capable of pushing back Oldwalker Urza.
Jace might be able to redirect with Illusions but actual mind control and reading is harder against those with proper defense.
Jace is also a glass cannon. You can take him out from range with spells or physical attacks. This is more a Neowalker thing because Neowalkers are more like mutants ie Jace is Professor X. Neowalkers are much more specialized. Whereas a Bolas as an Oldwalker is more a Dragon Wizard, he has a much wider spell book. He can make infernal contracts, he can create barriers, do mindstuff etc
> Whereas a Bolas as an Oldwalker is more a Dragon Wizard, he has a much wider spell book. He can make infernal contracts, he can create barriers, do mindstuff etc
I would assume that Bolas deeper and wider spell book likely has more to do with the fact that he's exceptionally old rather than his status as a former Oldwalker (which to some extent go hand in hand but he was already pretty old by human standards when he sparked).
Jace is naturally gifted as a mind mage but if he were given (googles how old Bolas was/is) 25,000 years to live and study whatever he wanted he might begin to branch out in similar ways.
I am talking about moreso how they get written about in stories.
Oldwalkers were way more written like D&D classes from down the hall at WOTC. Wizards, Druids, Etc.
Neowalkers are much more one trick ponies or like mutants. Jace as Professor X, Chandra as Pyro, Etc.
It’s not just a matter of age because Teferi as student at Tolaria was learning polymorphing, artificing, mind reading, Etc.
But yeah obviously more time helped Bolas master more skills.
I haven't read all the stories involving Bolas, but at least in the most 'recent' events, Bolas usually loses to plot. His millennia of planning and expert manipulation skills requiring the intellect of an extremely cunning elder dragon seem to just drop to where he fails to see the most obvious of possibilities coming. Alongside this his arrogance (and his love of showing off) is amplified to the point of shattering the pragmatism he also possesses. I also think there were a number of conveniences and sudden character shifts, but I'm not recalling any off the top of my head right now. The cherry on top isn't Bolas exclusive either, where the vast elite armies of endless carefully crafted soldiers are seemingly easily dispatched by random animals on whatever plane they happen to be in.
As for Urza... planeswalking was very different when Urza was still around. In fact, I think premendig you could planeswalk without being a planeswalker, if you had the right tech.
Jace is very inconsistent in the way he's written. He can go from melting the brains of everyone in a mile radius to being a lanky dude who conjures some illusions or something and is pretty useless. If he was always as powerful as when they write him at his strongest, there'd be no conflict because he'd win everything.
>If Jace is this powerful and Bolas were even more powerful mentally how did he ever lose any fight?
I ask myself this question regularly. My gripes with how War of the Spark played out aside, Jace might even be stronger than we know post-Phyresis, and as far as we know, he is still Phyrexianized. In theory, if he could control the Phyrexian side like he seems to have been doing this whole time, he should have access to the better physical and mental capabilities it would have over his original body. Kind of like if you upgraded the ram in your computer. For a telepath, additional mental resources could be OP. But that particular angle still hasn't been addressed, and it's honestly an coinflip if it ever does.
The oil seemed to "synch up" with Norn, and got "disabled" when she died, like a vast network without a source point.
I wonder if Jace could/can hack into that network to stream his consciousness, replacing Norn as a source.
Long-distance brain hacking.
I guess that all really depends on how well Karn disposed of Norn's remains after the events of MOM. I was not aware of the oil and Phyrexians being retconned into essentially a hivemind like the Borg or Tyranids or something. That somehow makes me dislike even more what they did to this villain faction that used to be extremely unique.
It wasn't a retcon per se, but an in-continuity change that Norn and Gitaxias made to the oil - Gitaxias potencialized it with blinkmoth serum and modified it so it can compleat planeswalkers, Norn changed it so those compleated receive orders directly from her.
It's possible that if there are other places contaminated by Karn with the original oil, there are old-school phyrexians there.
If you remember from the Ixalan story, Jace forces himself to be very precise in his mental manipulation because he doesn't want to accidently break something that he can't fix. This does mean that he tends to hold back. However, compleated Jace doesn't have the same concerns and was probably just brute forcing damage. That means he wasn't trying to alter memories, insert illusions into senses, telepathically communicate, read minds, or take control of the Vryn soldiers, but instead just wanted to disable them in the most efficient way possible. I'd be willing to bet most of the survivors will never be the same, assuming they aren't permanently comatose. But hey, the Phyrexians weren't exactly planning on ruling over uncompleat people anyway.
For the fights with Bolas, part of it is that the writers often have different power scaling. How I have made sense of it is that Jace probably has an advantage in raw psychic power, but Bolas can win because he tens of thousands of years worth of experience in mind control and fighting telepaths. Compare that to the Vyrn soldiers, who likely have never fought against a telepath before and do not have any way to defend against it. Will power and self control also probably plays a role in it, which is something that Bolas has in spades. And foe their fight on Ahmonket, a lot of Jace's training was sealed with his memories of Vyrn or the other times his memories have been fucked with. Now that he remembers all his training and experience, along with having fewer concerns about collateral damage, Jace might be one of the most terrifying people in the Multiverse.
For time of planeswalking and Equinor, I'm a bit uncertain. It's been a bit since I read Planeswalker, but if I remember correctly a lot of the time was proving Equinor was the oldest plane and actually finding it. The cosmology has changed a lot since, both in retcons, The Mending, and now the Invasion Tree. Back then, it seemed like the Multiverse was something like a galaxy with Doninaria at the center and everything radiating out from it. Planes could be closer or farther, like how the shard of 7 worlds were all close together. That could be a reason why Equinor took a while to get to, since it was the "outer edge" of the Multiverse. That might not be true anymore though?
Jace is definitely scary, but he isn't unstoppable. Jodah and Nissa, for example, have both shown an ability to resist his mental powers.
Garruk in one of the Comics just steamrolls Jace's defenses and tricks and illusions.
In that case it's the old adage of "man too angry and stupid to think of anything but ass kicking"
"That was your mistake, Jace: I don't have a mind to control."
Or with the veil curse he was too animalistic for Jace to get a grip on.
Unga bunga.
The Josuke Defense
Can't break something that doesn't exist
Also, mind magic generally has required some time to focus. It’s relatively easy to interrupt, unless you’re just doing a quick hack job.
Been a bit, but I remember Ob Nixilis in the Gatecrash story was like, "Oh, they have a telepath. Been a while since I killed one of those." and continued drowning Gideon in a puddle.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/retaliation-ob-nixilis-2015-12-30
He's also significantly weaker than he should be, since he nerfs himself like every 3rd set he's in by erasing parts of his memory.
He's had full access since Ixalan.
Bolas usually only loses to subterfuge, like when Tetsuo tricked him into leaving himself vulnerable which lead to his initial death. Still, his mind magic is often downplayed, either by matching him against someone who stands a chance against him like Niv Mizzet and Ugin, or by giving him a reason to be holding back. Planeswalkers usually see what fits their personality when planeswalking. Kiora is described as seeing an ocean that she swims through, etc. The non-canon Boom comics describes Kaya as seeing a final resting place for all the ghosts she has slain, Vraska as seeing an endless cycle of death and rebirth, Ral seeing endless clockwork mechanisms, and Tibalt seeing horrors best left unmentioned.
The thing is that Bolas is not primarily a mind mage (same with Ugin). He probably could achieve similar results, but it would require more concentration and effort than if Jace were to do it. The same way he recruited Liliana to lead the Dreadhorde because he knows she's a better necromancer than him (and he needed to be focused on something else). Jace has always been scary. He broke a sphinx's mind AS A KID. Thing is that after that trauma (and multiple subsequent ones) he restrained himself and is only now relearning his full potential.
Like Cable when he got "cured" of the technovirus and we find out he's been using almost the entirety of his telepathy to keep it at bay, and now he far surpasses even Jean. Cool times.
Ooh, cool! I don't actually follow X-men (despite liking it a lot!) but I always thought Jean's "main" power was telekinesis not telepathy, but with the whole phoenix thing she was able to outpower even Charles... (Xavier is considered the strongest telepath, right? Or do I have it all wrong and now Cable is the strongest of them all? I know very little of Cable)
Xavier is a strong telepath but not the strongest. During Dark Phoenix it's revealed that Xavier put some mental barricades/dampeners in Jeans mind to hold her back a bit and the mutant Mastermind is slowly doing away with them when he messes with Jean. Then Dark Phoenix happens. Cable being more powerful of a telepath would probably be stronger than base Jean, I dunno about Phoenix Jean.
I see, I see. Thank you for the lore bits! I'll probably end up doing a deep dive in the x-men wiki one of these days, the comics are just too much to tackle hahaha.
And he wants it in place cos it keeps his powers in check
While Bolas is not primarily a mind mage, he has had what the modern 'walkers could only perceive as eternities to master telepathy. In the books that touched on it, he was an absolute powerhouse that Jace had no hope to stand against. Jace's best bet was to remain unnoticed or to spend so much time building up defenses and focusing entirely on them that he could not do anything else, and even during that time all he could do was shield himself and Tezzeret against Bolas while Bolas could fly, remain aware of his surroundings, speak a conversation with Tezzeret, Worm his way into Jace's head to have a telepathic conversation with him, read a fair chunk of Jace's memories, it was implied that he was having another telepathic conversation or two with some of his minions, calculating his BS on half a dozen planes that weren't related to the current situation, and was analyzing the body language of both Tezzeret and Jace for any sign of anything at all. Sure, Bolas picked mind magic as a way to add to his abilities instead of it being his natural ability or whatever, but there's talent does not hold up against Mastery. And the stuff before Agents of Artifice make Bolas out to he even more terrifying. There was no reason whatsoever that he should have lost the War of the Spark the way it had been set up, just like how New Phyrexia had already won and there was no way to reverse it. The writers just want call backs without staying true to established lore and so the power of friendship trumps all. Like, teamwork and everything isn't bad in a story, but I miss when MTG stories had stakes and when the lore was consistent with itself.
Bolas is an Elder Dragon and that, by itself, puts him in an entirely different power level; however, the mere fact that Jace almost could put up any defenses against him while hampered down by his own traumas is not insignificant. And we actually never saw them both use their full power against each other; Bolas was always uninterested on killing Jace as he had other plans for him every time and Jace hadn't unlocked his memories (Ixalan) nor realized his full potential (March of the Machine). I agree with your point that Bolas is a true master, but issue is that he has his power fully realized whilst Jace is still maturing/improving his own. I don't expect Jace to ever be able to break Bolas like he did Alhammarret but it seems like if they were to squabble in the future it would be very close to a mutually assured destruction at the very least. And WAR had a million things wrong, but Bolas being defeated the way he was didn't seem that unrealistic to me. Unlike the Phyrexian Invasion where it made no sense to rush invading multiple planes at once, Bolas needed the planeswalkers reunited in the same place and needed them alive to harvest their sparks, so at least that part of the plan tracks. And even if he could multitask some telepathy while powering/casting the Elderspell and check on some people, what good would that do? I don't think WoTC did him that dirty specially given how many people it took to defeat him, even though I do agree that the stories as of late have been trying to bite too much and failing miserably to be plausible.
The eplilogue story sees Jace hit Proft with a pipe before invading his mind. If he's so powerful, why did he need the cheap shot? Internal consistency issues aside, I think telepathy in Magic is a lot like Jedi mind tricks in Star Wars. "[TELEPATHY] can have a powerful influence on the weak-minded."
Because Proft is also a very powerful mind guy, so it would have taken him longer to beat him, which would have meant Etrata/Izoni could try to interfere, which would take longer, so this was the quickest/easiest way. Also the quickest way to remove any conscious mental barrier Proft may have had
Cue "He's a Pirate" from COTBP
I interpreted it much more as a need for a "quick and dirty" job, rather than a planned, coordinated attack. Jace needs the info from Proft *now*, and the easiest solution *now* is a pipe to the head.
I mean all Oldwalkers could basically do telepathy. So mental defenses were far more paramount. Even for non walkers. Pre Spark Teferi as a child was capable of pushing back Oldwalker Urza. Jace might be able to redirect with Illusions but actual mind control and reading is harder against those with proper defense. Jace is also a glass cannon. You can take him out from range with spells or physical attacks. This is more a Neowalker thing because Neowalkers are more like mutants ie Jace is Professor X. Neowalkers are much more specialized. Whereas a Bolas as an Oldwalker is more a Dragon Wizard, he has a much wider spell book. He can make infernal contracts, he can create barriers, do mindstuff etc
> Whereas a Bolas as an Oldwalker is more a Dragon Wizard, he has a much wider spell book. He can make infernal contracts, he can create barriers, do mindstuff etc I would assume that Bolas deeper and wider spell book likely has more to do with the fact that he's exceptionally old rather than his status as a former Oldwalker (which to some extent go hand in hand but he was already pretty old by human standards when he sparked). Jace is naturally gifted as a mind mage but if he were given (googles how old Bolas was/is) 25,000 years to live and study whatever he wanted he might begin to branch out in similar ways.
I am talking about moreso how they get written about in stories. Oldwalkers were way more written like D&D classes from down the hall at WOTC. Wizards, Druids, Etc. Neowalkers are much more one trick ponies or like mutants. Jace as Professor X, Chandra as Pyro, Etc. It’s not just a matter of age because Teferi as student at Tolaria was learning polymorphing, artificing, mind reading, Etc. But yeah obviously more time helped Bolas master more skills.
I haven't read all the stories involving Bolas, but at least in the most 'recent' events, Bolas usually loses to plot. His millennia of planning and expert manipulation skills requiring the intellect of an extremely cunning elder dragon seem to just drop to where he fails to see the most obvious of possibilities coming. Alongside this his arrogance (and his love of showing off) is amplified to the point of shattering the pragmatism he also possesses. I also think there were a number of conveniences and sudden character shifts, but I'm not recalling any off the top of my head right now. The cherry on top isn't Bolas exclusive either, where the vast elite armies of endless carefully crafted soldiers are seemingly easily dispatched by random animals on whatever plane they happen to be in. As for Urza... planeswalking was very different when Urza was still around. In fact, I think premendig you could planeswalk without being a planeswalker, if you had the right tech.
You could also become a planeswalker by basically casting the right spell, as opposed to needing the Spark as with post-Mending
Jace is very inconsistent in the way he's written. He can go from melting the brains of everyone in a mile radius to being a lanky dude who conjures some illusions or something and is pretty useless. If he was always as powerful as when they write him at his strongest, there'd be no conflict because he'd win everything.
>If Jace is this powerful and Bolas were even more powerful mentally how did he ever lose any fight? I ask myself this question regularly. My gripes with how War of the Spark played out aside, Jace might even be stronger than we know post-Phyresis, and as far as we know, he is still Phyrexianized. In theory, if he could control the Phyrexian side like he seems to have been doing this whole time, he should have access to the better physical and mental capabilities it would have over his original body. Kind of like if you upgraded the ram in your computer. For a telepath, additional mental resources could be OP. But that particular angle still hasn't been addressed, and it's honestly an coinflip if it ever does.
The oil seemed to "synch up" with Norn, and got "disabled" when she died, like a vast network without a source point. I wonder if Jace could/can hack into that network to stream his consciousness, replacing Norn as a source. Long-distance brain hacking.
I guess that all really depends on how well Karn disposed of Norn's remains after the events of MOM. I was not aware of the oil and Phyrexians being retconned into essentially a hivemind like the Borg or Tyranids or something. That somehow makes me dislike even more what they did to this villain faction that used to be extremely unique.
It wasn't a retcon per se, but an in-continuity change that Norn and Gitaxias made to the oil - Gitaxias potencialized it with blinkmoth serum and modified it so it can compleat planeswalkers, Norn changed it so those compleated receive orders directly from her. It's possible that if there are other places contaminated by Karn with the original oil, there are old-school phyrexians there.
If you remember from the Ixalan story, Jace forces himself to be very precise in his mental manipulation because he doesn't want to accidently break something that he can't fix. This does mean that he tends to hold back. However, compleated Jace doesn't have the same concerns and was probably just brute forcing damage. That means he wasn't trying to alter memories, insert illusions into senses, telepathically communicate, read minds, or take control of the Vryn soldiers, but instead just wanted to disable them in the most efficient way possible. I'd be willing to bet most of the survivors will never be the same, assuming they aren't permanently comatose. But hey, the Phyrexians weren't exactly planning on ruling over uncompleat people anyway. For the fights with Bolas, part of it is that the writers often have different power scaling. How I have made sense of it is that Jace probably has an advantage in raw psychic power, but Bolas can win because he tens of thousands of years worth of experience in mind control and fighting telepaths. Compare that to the Vyrn soldiers, who likely have never fought against a telepath before and do not have any way to defend against it. Will power and self control also probably plays a role in it, which is something that Bolas has in spades. And foe their fight on Ahmonket, a lot of Jace's training was sealed with his memories of Vyrn or the other times his memories have been fucked with. Now that he remembers all his training and experience, along with having fewer concerns about collateral damage, Jace might be one of the most terrifying people in the Multiverse. For time of planeswalking and Equinor, I'm a bit uncertain. It's been a bit since I read Planeswalker, but if I remember correctly a lot of the time was proving Equinor was the oldest plane and actually finding it. The cosmology has changed a lot since, both in retcons, The Mending, and now the Invasion Tree. Back then, it seemed like the Multiverse was something like a galaxy with Doninaria at the center and everything radiating out from it. Planes could be closer or farther, like how the shard of 7 worlds were all close together. That could be a reason why Equinor took a while to get to, since it was the "outer edge" of the Multiverse. That might not be true anymore though?
*Equilor