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CardName: Venser, the Drifting Spark Cost: 1WUB Type: Planeswalker - Venser Pow/Tgh: /4 Rules Text: At the beginning of your end step, lose life equal to the number of loyalty counters on Venser, the Drifting Spark unless you control a Planar Anchor. [+1] **Create** a Planar Anchor artifact token with “{T}, Sacrifice Planar Anchor: Return target non-land permanent to its owner’s hand”. [+2] **Untap** all non-land permanents you control. [-8] **Exile** all permanents target player controls, then return them to play at the beginning of the next upkeep. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: The Fading Aurora Mythic
Venser, the Drifting Spark
    At the beginning of your end step, lose life equal to the number of loyalty counters on Venser, the Drifting Spark unless you control a Planar Anchor.
+1 Create a Planar Anchor artifact token with “  , Sacrifice Planar Anchor: Return target non-land permanent to its owner’s hand”.
+2 Untap all non-land permanents you control. -8 Exile all permanents target player controls, then return them to play at the beginning of the next upkeep. 4
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Code: MH01 History: [-] |
This looks really jarring when it's missing its card types.
Why is this
?
Type line fixed.
Black because I intend black to be the color that most screws with the divide/blending between the two aspects of the plane. Which makes me realize I shouldmake some flavor edits to the black and red DFC common lands (faeries/goblins instead of goblins/elementals).
Flavorwise, my intended backstory involves Venser being more or less a disembodied floating spark, and he’s less here to fix the aspects of a dual plane than he is to fix himself. This is no altruistic mission; he’s done that once before and look where it got him (dead, stuck inside a golem).
This is quite low impact for a three colored, 5 CMC walker - even the ultimate isn't exactly stellar. +1 doesn't affect the board at all, and you can't use the artifact created by -2 the first time around unless you are willing to sac this. IMO you could easily remove that
from the mana cost, but I think it needs something that makes it mechanically black so maybe a redesign is needed anyway. You could make the first ability so that it drains life amount the artifacts you control, but that's pretty lazy and non-interactive as well.
So is Venser a drifting spark or a spark stuck inside Karn? How can he be a walker is he's just a disembodied presence inside the golem? Do the "Planar Anchor"s have something to do with this?
General backstory for Venser (and mind you, I’m no writer, and it involves some serious speculation/pre-retconning):
Venser died in New Phyrexia when he contracted phyresis and gave his spark over to Karn in an effort to stop the Phyrexian corruption of the golem. This means that going into Dominaria, Venser doesn’t exist, but his spark (analogous to his “soul”?) does.
Now we go speculative.
At some point after returning to Dominaria, Karn regenerates/reignites a spark of his own, and the spark provided by Venser is forced out of its occupation. Sparks, we learn, if displaced, don’t necessarily need a body or host to survive. The displaced spark drifts through the Blind Eternities and numerous planes without much control over itself for a while. It recalls its former selves, but is unable to act on its own.
It drifts into Kaladesh, where it unexpectedly attaches to an artificed construct; after having been embedded within a golem, it is drawn into a mechanical construct, though he struggles to maintain his adhesion to it. He manages just enough will over the machine to build a Tony Stark-style Planar Anchor (we know from Time Spiral that back in Urborg he was an inventor) that keeps him held into it, but it requires constant focus and maintenance for him to keep himself in a corporeal form.
Having an artificial body now, Venser goes off looking for a way to permanently bond his spark and his constructed/simulacrum body into something more whole. He learns of the rejoining of Alara, and goes there to study the metaphysics. He theorizes that being present when similar forces rejoin a world might make his bond to the Anchor permanent and whole.
Lorwyn/Shadowmoor is his best shot. It’s been a few centuries since the last Aurora, and even with the the two planes joined into one, things are breaking down and it’s becoming evident that the halves were never truly made one, but instead were just interwoven in a way that gave both sides “natural” day and night cycles. Entropy is setting in, and the paper-thin line between the sub-planes is dissolving.
Venser sees this as his chance. He doesn’t really care what the outcome for Lorwyn/Shadowmoor is, so long as punching a whole between the two creates a planar singularity that might finally make him whole again.
I’m absolutely with you when you point out that the +1 isn’t right; I needed something short as a placeholder. The “Ultimate” is a souped-up reflection of his original abilities, and it messes with the Light/Dark Aspects of the blending plane(s). Still, open for redesign.
Also worth noting that Planar Anchor exists as an actual card in the set, so it’s possible to get Venser into play and use his +1 without first using the -2.
Maybe the +1 needs to make the Anchor and the -2 becomes a +2 with a lightweight ability.
Tweaking the abilities now...