I see a lot of fleeing and not a lot of actual change.

Eh, I'm not too upset. Actually a little relieved just because it means they didn't murder the hypotenuse on the Chandra love triangle.
Now only if they'd murder the OTHER hypotenuse (IE Nissa. Who should shut up.)

Good gods I await the speech Bolas gives to Nissa about how hugging nature and being friends with leylines is stupid and she should shut up.

...That last bit may be a little transference.

Looks like I was right about Jace going into the Ixalan story being temporarily memory crushed and a planar castaway.

Given some of the changes (ie all three gods appear at the same time), I wonder how accurately this portrays the finale.

Hazoret remaining alive would justify the focus on her, and would give this a happy ending.

I really hope this is another case of early spoilers from artbooks being wrong or only showing us a part of the picture, like what happened with EDM (anyone remember Olivia Voldaren dying? Me neither). If this is exactly what happens, I might as well stop trying to care. How can Jace planeswalk away when he's catatonic? Given that they like to emphasise how much effort and concentration 'walking takes post-Mending, that sure is convenient. Besides, floating around in the Blind Eternities without control will kill you after a short while (see also: TPF). And that description of what happens to Chandra is just infuriating. Seems like they're completely ignoring Bolas' mind-shattering touch, one of his most striking characteristics. Once Bolas has grabbed you, you become defenceless and aren't going anywhere. He basically could have defeated all of them by merely licking their faces like a puppy and then slowly eating them one by one. Chandra literally escaping from Bolas' grasp is the most idiotic instance of plot armour since Gideon tanked Ulamog. I'm just sick of this stupid cartoon villain trope that the Gatewatch's enemies will rather torture and humiliate than kill them and then let them escape. It was bad enough when Ob Nixilis did it, but I'm not going to swallow the exact same thing again.

I mean nothing overly surprising. They aren't going to kill the Gatewatch,, they have killed very few of their card based planes walkers. Maybe in another year or 2 but I doubt it even then. Could the escape be done better? Probably, but it's gonna happen.

You know what would be really interesting ? Me neither

Bolas killing all but one members of the gatewatch. So that last survivor could drastically change in personality, and show some real strategy and competence in dealing with Bolas.
Imagine serious, grimly determined Chandra that lost her friends, swore vengeance to Bolas, changed her colors to , started to act like a real warlord (or assasin, if they are keeping that "interplanar travel is impossible except for Mary Sues" crap), etc...

As far as the mind-shattering touch goes... Bolas can still shatter minds, but much like shattering planes just by arriving (rather than with a little effort) he's probably legit lost that in the Mending. The frantic Planeswalks are a little troubling, and I can kind of accept them pretty much iff they're blind. (Especially Jace, mid Blue-Screen-Of-Death, just catapulting "out"). Chandra is a little harder to justify. Really, if the scene on Chandra's Defeat is LITERAL, all Bolas has to do is squeeze, which he should totally do if he has the opportunity, ESPECIALLY if Chandra can escape under her own power (and Bolas should know whether or not she can). Now, with Wizards explicitly worried about getting a "50/50 male female split" in Planeswalkers it's probably safe to say the female PWs got +10 Plot Armor, but I would totally support Chandra getting squashed into crimson jelly here. From a storytelling sense it would be the kind of bold move we need to restore stakes to the Gatewatch.

I'm going to focus on the positive though: It looks like Bolas wins, and wins big. That's probably the main thing we were all asking for and signs point to we're going to get it.

Bolas had the Touch (and the power) before he was a planeswalker. It's the primary reason given that he survived the Elder Dragon War.

Also, yes, I'm cool with him winning, even if they ignore his touch. Because you have to take your victories where you can.

Are the Amonkhet URs worth going back and reading? I skipped out on Kaladesh from lack of interest, but Bolas winning is intriguing.

Oh, and there's a card in HOU called 'Visage of Bolas.' Titus Lunter is the artist. He said all the gods except Oketra are featured on the card. He said we'd find out later when they left Oketra off the art.

Generally, they are. Put up with Nissa a bit, but they're high quality as far as post-Origins go

The Amonkhet URs are... a mixed bag. The first one was very scattered because it did the perspective-jumping nonsense, but it had some meta-funny moments. Anything focused on Nissa or to a lesser extent Chandra is still godawful but the Jace, Liliana, Gideon, and Samut stories range from perfectly serviceable to actually pretty good.

Also, Visage is a Planeswalker Deck Exclusive

Before getting too hyper-angry about art book spoilers, please remember that what we got were basically summaries from someone on Reddit and there's probably a lot of nuance that was left out. Also remember that the art books are also sort of summaries of the stories about like the story spotlight cards are. So while we know what happens, we don't really have a good read on how it happens yet.

So before blowing our collective tops about fights we haven't read yet, just take a breath and be happy that Bolas trounces the Gatewatch and scatters most of them (except Nissa?) across the Multiverse.

http://www.magicspoiler.com/mtg-spoiler/ominous-sphinx/

Kind of hard to listen when everyone's dead.

Reportedly from the artbook:

So Bolas' was just to test them? I'm hoping there is more to it than this, cause I'm not liking where that plot thread is heading.

Here's to hoping that Bolas overdid it.

That makes even less sense when compared to his original need to put things in motion on Amonkhet. Like, years before three fifths of the Gatewatch were ever born, Bolas hatched a plan, while desperate to preserve his immortality and power, to unleash various multi-planar threats to see if any groups of 'Walkers would step up to the plate so he could see if they were manipulate-able? And he knows Ugin is once again among the living some how?

Yeah, I either don't buy this art book spoiler or I don't trust that it truly represents the actual story yet. It's so off-base from any level of sense.

Bolas can more or less manipulate anyone, thats not really a problem.

Bolas knew WotC wanted a face to Magic: the Gathering 60 years into the future, so he made an army to test the inevitable Gatewatch so he could ascertain whether or not he would have to exist in the same universe as a bunch of mary sue cardboard cutouts, ultimately letting him determine whether or not he should Planeswalk out of the franchise.