For Challenge # 042. The idea here is that there's a plane with some sort of mystery involved in it. Let's say an ancient artifact that's been prophesied to be on it. The plane, however is vast. Jace couldn't trust agents with this delicate search, so he did the most logical thing he could think of to find it as fast as possible; make multiple copies of himself to fan out and search the plane for clues. Other Planeswalkers, however, quickly noticed what Jace did, and repeated his trick, leaving a slew of Planeswalker Mirror-Images in their wake.

Since I wanted to show this at its extreme, I used Chandra, who probably wouldn't have chosen to do any of this, if the artifact in question wasn't so damned powerful. Funny thing, though... Chandra still just runs around and burns things. Her 'Ultimate', though, is designed to do what many of the rest of Planeswalker's Simulacrums are doing: Find more information.

This is just far too complex to be a common. Seriously.

I don't know... that's roughly like saying that Planeswalkers, in general, are too complex to be common... which is probably true, to be honest.

I did intentionally choose simple abilities. Are you complaining that the abilities themselves are too complex, the confusion that this causes on the board state is too complex, or having to make decisions about which ability to use is too complex?

I wouldn't expect to have more than 5 of these printed in a large set. Do you think there's no room for complexity on common cards, even if those cards are surrounded by normal commons? If I were to fan a pack, and this popped up, do you think the amount of words on it would upset a new player?

@jmg: I think he means that it has too many abilities. Having a bunch of commons in a set with full text boxes is a little daunting to the new player. Almost every common they print these days has 0 or 1 ability, and most of the time the ability they have is something super simple like "Flying", or "First strike". That's why I think a common PW should have 1-2 short abilities, at most.

Mmm. Noted. But while I would normally agree with that sentiment, I think I need to disagree in this one instance. Players have come to expect a few things from Planeswalkers, and one of those things is a certain amount of options and choice. A lot of the other designs that we're been working with here, and I don't want to sound like I'm dissing people, because I think they're very good designs, but a lot of the designs I've been seeing fail to excite me. If I can be a bit of a pessimist for a second here... they just kind of look like Enchantments with quest counters on them. The only thing that makes them different is that they can be attacked... which is a drawback, not a feature.

That being said, I'm very aware that this challenge is potentially impossible. It's asking for us to do something that will automatically be rejected by a certain segment of the audience, no matter what spin we put on it. If there are 3 abilities on the planeswalkers, some people will complain that the card is too confusing, and not a good 'common'. If there are 2 abilities, some people will complain that the Planeswalker doesn't feel 'alive' enough... whatever that means. I think I'd rather err on flavor, and get the idea of a Mythic card pulled down to the realm of a common, than err on the side of mechanics, and turn a mythic mechanic into a common mechanic. I'm pretty sure plenty will disagree with me.

On the flip side, assuming I'm keeping three abilities, do you think the ultimate is too much? I'm guessing I probably should have stuck with "Discard three cards, then draw 3 cards". At least that doesn't require as much thinking...