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Recent updates to Multiverse Design Challenge: (Generated at 2025-05-18 14:24:01)
For Challenge # 075, based on Brothers Yamazaki
I wanted something that synergised with Brothers Yamazaki rather than doing the obvious copy of allowing two Yamazaki planeswalkers, although that would have been very interesting too. After all, presumably only one brother would have got a spark :)
I debated on the abilities and I'm still not sure. But I wanted a reference to bushido, a way of supporting legendary creatures, a way of copying creatures, putting a potential blocker onto the battlefield, and doing something useful when you have yamazaki out without spelling it out. And this was the way they fell into three abilities.
It's still wordy though. Several planeswalkers have 20+ lines of text, but much more than ten often looks cramped.
Very nice. Quite a direct translation of the mechanics, but all the abilities' costs and power levels look right.
This is just a fun, relatively low-thought challenge for somewhat top-down design. Just take any song title and make it the name of your card!
I've already made Stolen Moments, which inspired the challenge.
I agree the bottom ability shouldn't be able to fire the turn you cast it if you can cast it for five mana. The middle ability being Explosive Impact is also really rather cheap for -1; compare how much the middle "kill a creature" abilities cost in loyalty even on the 7- and 8-mana walkers Karn Liberated and Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker.
I think just upping the cost (I like
) is a good start, but some tweaking to the costs may be needed too.
Mmm... I get the idea that 'one is as difficult to achieve as the other'.... kind of. Honestly, I think WUBRG is probably about as hard as 7, which is very different than 8. Child of Alara seems like a solid wubrg, but it's no Akroma, Angel of Fury. There's also the question of "Is Dragonstorm a fair card?" I get the impression that many Wizards employees are sorry they reprinted that card... and it costs 9. Would it have been fair at 10? Who knows. What a tough nut.
But how to fix the costs? I see your problem. These do seem to be the most fun costs for this Planeswalker... they're just all a little too much.
seems more fair to me, but I don't know if you find that appealing (
?). Alternatively, perhaps the [-1] could also be a [+1], and the ultimate could be a [-5]? That way you have to at least wait a turn before it goes off? It kind of brings up the problem of having a Planeswalker that Lava Axes every turn if left unchecked... but it already did that. Left alone, this card will clock someone for 20 damage in four turns. I don't really think it matters much if the counters go up or down in the process.
The proper analogy seemed to be dragonstorm for bogardan hellkite :) But if RGWUB is about equivalent to 7-8 mana, getting dragonstorm over two turns doesn't seem implausible for a mythic.
OTOH, yeah, I chose these costs to try to reflect Scion, but they probably need to change. Any suggestions for mana/loyalty costs?
Added Gerrard of the Legacy.
For Challenge # 075 based on Gerrard and part of the Weatherlight Planeswalker Project. Gerrard is tough to pin down. He's kind of all over the map on his cards, but none of his cards are very interesting. They're just a way to repackage old mechanics by slapping the name 'Gerrard' on them.
I knew, however, that I really wanted to see that [+1] on the card as an homage to Master of Arms. The -1 is inspired by Gerrard's Command and... um... Gerrard's Battle Cry? I know it isn't a direct translation, but it's supposed to be Gerrard shouting to ready the men. The ultimate is my attempt to take the most obvious Gerrard ability from Gerrard's Wisdom and Gerrard Capashen and give it relevance as an ultimate by turning into a pile of +1/+1 counters. I thought about gaining life with the counters, but the card is already a little messy, and that was one step too many.
Huh. The Ultimate alone is well-worth the price of admission. It's pretty broken, to be honest. I've been trying to find the proper analogy for it, but my ability to compare it to something else is kind of shot, since Ur-Dragon cheats, both tutoring and failing to be influenced by a tempo set back. I really can only compare it to Tinker, which is considerably cheaper, but does roughly the same thing. The fact that you're probably going to get another Tinker to go off next turn, and two-card combo win (May I suggest Kokusho, the Evening Star followed by Kokusho, the Evening Star) is pretty sick.
Meh. I think they missed with Garruk. It was a good idea, but I don't see why Planeswalkers can't 'fight' the same way creatures do. I understand why they didn't do it in Innistrad... fight was a new keyword then. They really should have held Garruk's [+0] for later, so they could decide if they wanted to expand the keyword to planeswalkers. Poor timing, as far as I'm concerned.
Oh, cool. It's very nice to see an interesting planeswalkers made from simple original cards.
Yikes. Seems very powerful, though it is five colors...
symbol as 
, mainly because of Reaper King.
Also, remember that the CMC is actually 9. This just happens to be castable for anything between 5 and 9 mana.
EDIT: I automatically read the
For Challenge # 075 based on Scion of the Ur-Dragon
I wanted to hit iconic dragon abilities, so we have form of the dragon, generic 5 damage, and dragonstorm-lite. I considered dragonstorm-classic as a bigger ultimate, but decided it was more fun if you constantly got to choose which dragon was most useful, rather than having an "I win" button.
I don't like "clever" mana costs, but I wanted to keep the CMC at 5, yet obviously "play any dragon" needs to cost more than that and I wanted it to go off multiple times. So I reverted to 5-colour rather than 4R. And yet, it seemed unfair that this was only good in 5 colour decks, when dragons are normally so red.
Garruk Relentless showed us the proper way for Planeswalkers to fight.
I figured that I'd pay 5 for a common that dealt 4 to a creature and 4 to a player. Everything else is just gravy. But yeah, he's only ever grows bigger to smack people around more and more, so +2 it is.
Heh, fun. If the only thing his + is building you up to is fighting more stuff I'd suggest it should be +2 rather than +1; and the cost also looks a little high. But I like it.