Time to get some planeswalkers in Magic 20XX.

20XX Planeswalkers were designed just a little while after Time Spiral, and their theme was "After the mass house cleaning of planeswalkers in Time Spiral, who could technically be left kicking around?" I came up with six (one for each color and Karn, funny enough, because I assumed he could rebuild himself, which he did.). Serra's here because of a loophole. In theory she's long dead... but that's based on flavor articles written before Weatherlight block. Everything written before Weatherlight is technically 'non-cannon' except for card flavor text... and there isn't a card that talks about her death... just cards that talk about how she left her Realm, or Ulgrotha. (It turned out that J. Robert King also spotted that loophole, and used Serra in the book Scourge, warning her people to leave their realm before the Karona event. Unfortunately, Serra's Realm was... um... kind of destroyed by Urza previously (see Planar Collapse), so who knows what that scene was about.)

As for the card: When a friend of mine first saw this card, he lamented how weak it was. Then someone got their hands on it in draft and started wrecking everyone.

Causation and correlation are two different things, though. I'm pretty sure Serra was nuts because it was a draft, and all Planeswalkers get nutty in a limited format. It is expensive for what it does. Though, I'm not sure what the loyalty costs were all set to (for some reason, the file I'm taking this from didn't save loyalty costs), but this seems about right. I want the casting cost and -4 to stay the same, since I like the idea that this could always just be a Serra Angel for the same converted cost. Hmm. I'd like to move the -6 to -7 so the ultimate wasn't so easy... but the card is on the border of playable.

Oh, I know. Changing +1 to +2, and -6 to -10. Now the card can get lots of loyalty fast, but leaves the -4 alone. Does this card look good? Or do I need to drop the -10 to -8 to make her sexy enough?

Given that Serra Angel is not exactly great these days (she's great in limited, but, well, cf Baneslayer Angel), I feel that either the middle cost should leave the planeswalker alive, or the card should be easier to cast than 3WW, not harder.

The + looks good to me. Glorious Anthem plus global MoLaG is very good for an attacking deck. It's fine on a 5-mana walker.

­Akroma's Memorial as an ultimate doesn't look especially exciting at -10. That's fine by me because the other two effects are so good. But that's not even all of the Memorial.

That's a fair criticism. I moved the starting loyalty from 4 to 5. I always liked the idea of using the -4 as an "always useful emergency option", but I'm sure other players won't enjoy popping their Serra because the designer likes stress.

Akroma's Memorial screws up a lot of cards. I don't like the idea of granting haste and trample in a dedicated white card... hmm... adding lifelink. That will probably push it far enough. It's true... I kind of wanted this card to be promoted based on it's first two ablities, not its ultimate. But I can't make the ultimate bad in the exchange.

Cool. Looks good. Probably wants a planeswalker subtype though :)

Ha! Yes it does. :)