Your designs are usually elegant and flavorful, but your planeswalkers - this one in particular - sadly lose that in favor of some off-putting gimmickery.

Gimmickery? I guess you could call it that.

I think WotC is being very careful about not expending planeswalker design space since they think it's so small. Personally, I found most of the 'walker designs they put out to be very boring. They're basically walking charms that can be attacked (with rare exceptions like Kaya, Ghost Assassin). IMO the planeswalkers' abilities should always interact with the 'walker itself ("internal interaction" if you will) to take full advantage of being this wacky card type we know as Planeswalker - and not bear too much resemblance to some enchantment with a bunch of activated abilities that have little to no connection to each other.

I felt like this was a pretty good flavorwise too, since I mean, the abilities Morgoth are rather vague (summon storms, spread "evil taint", create orcs, demons, dragons, etc).

This design IMO tells fairly well how he essentially has no loyalty but to himself and attempts to dominate all others at any price.

It's kinda like the "quintessential" walker. I guess the question is whether this would be better without all the variable X costs. Life for loyalty is something that has been seen couple of times before in custom design and I think it's bound to happen sooner or later officially. Also, this is one of the few instances that loyalty costs like that could work - not that it's specifically a reason to use them, but that could be a reason why they seem so weird. Here, IMO they work perfectly with the life payment keeping it in check (and the "5" limit obviously).

Where this design might falter is balance, but as far as I have pictured it in my head, this isn't that overwhelming. You can play it out as (along the lines of) Promise of Power, Priest of the Blood Rite, -2 of Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath, or Shambling Swarm (also Toxic Deluge maybe an appropriate comparison).

Btw, with (((Varda Elentári))) the exile element is (supposed) to reference her role as the "Queen of the Stars" so it's probably more of a flavor-inspired design than you give it credit - although maybe discussion for that should be reserved for comment section of that card...

Well among other things I think using four abilities on an "all abilities a X abilities" 'walker is a questionable design. You basically already have five +1 abilities each turn. And most of the time you will just pay life directly into one of the other abilities.

You may complain about planeswalkers as they are to be too much like enchantments, but I would actually level such a complaint at this card. You circumvent a lot of the loyalty counter economy that gives the card type its identity and create more of an enchantment with activated abilities paid for in life (since life loss and return happen in the same turn).

You also have a lot of processing to do on this since some of the abilities are in themselves multi-parters:

• The second ability does have as many modes as distributions are possible.
• The third ability influences your hand resources and mana development.
• Every ability can get modified by the first ability to be either "Pay to the cost" or "Save up for later".

As a designer you want to create fluid gameplay, but this card screams: "Take into account another option" just by handing out so many.

"Life for loyalty" is a very basic concept many designers hit upon for a black planeswalker eventually, but actually "+X: lose X life." is the least designed of those options - and even requires quite an ugly bit of extra text for balance.

Just some examples you could have done instead:

• +5: You lose 5 life.
• +X: You lose X life. X is the number of creatures you control.

Or best of all (since it avoids messing with the rules of how many loyalty abilities you can activate):

• At the beginning of your upkeep you lose N life, then put N loyalty counters on ~.

You want to use planeswalker design space? This design screams "Use a triggered ability rather than restrict yourself to activated abilities" and saves text space and mental capacity in the process.

> You also have a lot of processing to do on this since some of the abilities are in themselves multi-parters:

C'mon man - this is no mere common - it's a mythic planeswalker, are you saying that a card like this shouldn't be allowed to exist at all? I'm certain that's there are many players that would absolutely adore this card exactly because how many lines of play it provides. So what you list as cons could also be listed as pros.

> "Life for loyalty" is a very basic concept many designers hit upon for a black planeswalker eventually, but actually "+X: lose X life." is the least designed of those options

"+X: lose X life" is one of the most common I've seen.

I would like this to be able to played and used even if you have less than 5 (or so) life. "At upkeep" would require the walker to enter with more loyalty to be playable since entering the field without doing anything the first turn would be just very, very bad. But if it enters with enough loyalty to activate the second or third abilities, then it isn't that "black" since just straight up drawing isn't black.

I posted this on reddit custommagic to see how it does in a general "popularity contest" and it has done pretty decently (actually much better than my other cards).

https://www.reddit.com/r/custommagic/comments/5zij21/a_very_very_black_walker_with_xs_allover/

I agree with Secret, too many gimmicks in one card. You should take one core concept (like "every ability has X in it") and simplify everything else.

See ((C78664)) for a initial attempt. Forget it, my card was dumb.

I hear ya, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. I think it will be a powerful card that would generate a lot of excitement - ie. doing what it's supposed to.

It's unconventional to be sure, but I'm not convinced it's doing anything "too out there." Plus, all the alternative "solutions" seem worse IMO. If it ends up playing like a sorcery most of the time (or something like that) in the actual playtesting, then I've to look for other alternatives.