Saheeli Rai Changes and Flavour

sunprincess

As of the update tomorrow, the following changes are going to be made to the Planeswalker Saheeli Rai:

With the release of Kaladesh, we’ve tweaked Saheeli Rai a bit so that she has a bit more synergy with the card set.

Her abilities have been changed to the following:

Whirlermaker: Now costs 9 Loyalty, also Energizes 1/2/3/4 gems (per rank)
Construct Artistry: Now costs 12 Loyalty. Removes 2 Energy from the board (this is required for the ability to activate) and each Construct you control gets +3/+3, up to +6/+6 at rank 4
Artifacts Assemble has been renamed to Vehicular Assembly
The Loyalty cost remains the same
It now fetches the next 1 (up to 4) Vehicles in your Library and puts them on the battlefield
The rest of Saheeli Rai’s kit remains unchanged.

While it makes sense that you would want the new planeswalker to have abilities that derive synergy with the set they are from, most of these changes make very little to no sense in regards to flavour.

Take a look at Saheeli Rai's description, taken from a Wizards of the Coast synopsis about her character.

On her home plane of Kaladesh, Saheeli is a famous inventor renowned as the most brilliant metalsmith of her time. She's best known for the bewitchingly lifelike artifact constructs she crafts out of gleaming iridescent metal. From the smallest insect to the largest elephant, Saheeli has an uncanny ability to replicate any creature she sees, capturing the essence of its life in her metal creation. Admirers, collectors, and investors flock to see her designs, spending hours gazing, enraptured by her artistry.

Her innate, effortless talent has made her the envy of many fellow inventors, especially lifecrafters who look to her both for inspiration and as a formidable rival. Saheeli doesn't shy away from competition; when it comes to defending her hard-earned reputation, she is fiercely cutthroat. But when not in contest, she's wholly supportive of the efforts of other inventors, happy to share advice, a kind word, or an encouraging smile. She thrills at the prospect of innovation, and basks in the creative spirit that surrounds her in Ghirapur. Her bright, optimistic personality draws others to her, and her genuine, thoughtful nature resonates with her fans, who hail from all corners of Kaladesh.

Saheeli's talents extend beyond what the people of Kaladesh realize or understand. She's a Planeswalker with a powerful magical command over metal. She can access seemingly endless threads of metal, which she can then weave into one of her creations. And once created, Saheeli's magic allows her to compel her metal constructs to do her bidding. Thanks to her abilities, she's never at a loss for an artifact companion.

Notice that at nowhere in this entire article does it even MENTION the word Vehicle. Saheeli's strengths come from her ability to make LIFE LIKE creations out of metal, not to make vehicles, - an entirely unrelated mechanic. Looking further with the source material, Saheeli's name does not even appear in any of the magic story material with the word "vehicle" in it, except for a single chapter here, where her name is entirely unconnected from Vehicles.

Saheeli's talents do not relate to vehicles, and further, ability to use magic without the need to harness aether - i.e. her metallurgy, which incidentally, is unrelated to energy, and likely far more similar to flowstone.*

The bottomline is that the changes to Saheeli are incomprehensible from a storyline point of view, especially the ones to her third ability. I hope that you at D3Go decide to rethink these changes to Saheeli, and further, when you do release the next Chandra (probably Torch of Defiance), that her abilities do not rely on energy.

Not only would this be an even worse application of the magic story, as she does not depend on aether to cast her spells, but her ability to ignore energy and make her own source of magic through pyromancy is actually the very reason her parents were persecuted by the High Consul, whose very control over the plane depends on its ability to regulate everyone's control of aether, the only source of magic most beings on Kaladesh can use.


*Re: Flowstone

This is speculative, but Saheeli's abilities to "access seemingly endless threads of metal" seem to be no coincidence, as Saheeli is the one who is able to help Rashmi make her matter transporter. The one instance "seemingly endless threads of thinning metal" has occurred in Magic, was when "Flowstone" was used to overlay "Rath" onto Dominaria, during the "Phyrexian Invasion" in order to transport the interplanar conquerers, the Phyrexians there, without the aid of planeswalkers. As Phyrexians have insufficient access to planeswalkers, being a primarily inorganic civilization, portals and the like were essential for them. Before Tezzeret came to Kaladesh, he was busy surveilling the Phyrexians, as their previously depleted civilization recreated itself on former Mirrodin, so it is highly likely that his goal is to use the transporter that Saheeli helped work on in order to transport armies of Phyrexians to do his bidding.

At any rate, creating and transporting artifacts from just her own magic, seemingly out of thin air, and without the use of aether, far better suits Saheeli's character, and whether or not any magic lore buffs at D3Go agree with my speculation, the point above still stands, it's absurd to give Saheeli vehicles - and I am very much hoping you do not give Chandra energizing abilities.

zaann85

+1 is usually a sad attempt at agreement. I share that simply +1 as a reflection of the changes to Saheeli feel. Supports are considered artifacts. Maybe have it draw from the top 4 supports and vehicles.

Ampmp11

I think adding the energy to the first ability is fine to synergize better with the set, but I do agree that limiting her 3rd ability to vehicles is weak.

I don't like that pws are becoming tied to certain types of cards as it really limits play style. There are too many pws now who's abilities are useless without specific cards.

sunprincess

For anyone interested in the Magic story, we get another insight to Saheeli's marvelous metal powers!

She raised her hands and Gideon felt a surge of mana as she gestured toward the broken scrap from the Consulate charger. Gideon watched with admiration as the gears and pieces reassembled themselves into two perfect smaller replicas of the larger battling automatons. At another wave of Saheeli's hands, the two smaller constructs launched themselves into the fray, clambering over the Consulate automaton, severing aether cables and prying at its armor plating, even as the larger golden automaton pressed its relentless assault.

Relevantly, we can see the first time Saheeli ever interacts with vehicles! However, it just so happens... her only interactions are using a vehicle Gideon smashed as scrap parts ro make new automaton constructs. While it appears my flowstone-esque speculation was pretty off, and her automatons do see to run on energy, however, the use of vehicles seems further absurd

wereotter

Another observation regarding these changes, vehicles don't have the creature type of construct, so her abilities seem somewhat at odds with themselves. You can build a deck with constructs and energy to make use of her second ability, of you can build a deck with vehicles for her ultimate, and considering how those vehicles she fetches won't get any benefit from using cards like Speedway Fanatic, those vehicles might come out faster, but are inherently weaker than playing those vehicles from hand.

They pigeon holed both her and Dovin into the mechanics of the block to their determent. I feel like if they wanted to adjust Saheeli to have her make sense for the block, let her make servo support tokens, maybe, and her support constructs and artificers.

rafalele

I agree with sunprincess, the changes made in Saheeli Rai are incomprehensible.

You have changed the behaviour of a Planeswalker that worked perfect. If you want a planeswalker that is related with energy or vehicles do a new one.

Who is going to pay for something that you could change in the future and make it worst than it was when you got it.

I understand changes to fix something that it is wrong or unbalnced but it was not the case.

PastrySpider

I may be in the minority but from a gameplay perspective, I really like the change to Saheeli's third, though I think it could be improved thematically.

I played her a lot and never used the 3rd power much. The problem before was that randomly pulling 4 supports wasn't terribly useful, even though I had great supports like Thopter Spy Network because your mana ramps and other supports would likely also show up and supports don't stack usefully. 3rd powers should be game changing and it wasn't, it was just kinda handy. Now, you can just have one vehicle in your deck and summon 4 of them, which makes for a predictable and effective strategic ability. Your choice of a vehicle can give you big critter with haste or card draw or mana ramp or a massive boardwipe (hello Skysovereign). They annoying thing is that if you don't get a good vehicle, you don't have a useful ability and I don't currently have any good vehicles. I am surprised the Skysovereign wasn't put as for sale for exactly this reason.

Thematically, vehicles are a weird choice obviously. Constructs would work better with her back story but I suspect that's already been play tested and maybe there was an exploit with summoning Gearhulks? 4 Torrential Gearhulks in their old pre-nerfed form would have been brutal (8 spells, fully mana costed). Honestly, I don't really see an issue with making her summon 4 constructs now though but maybe they worry about the effects of new constructs in the future.

wereotter

PastrySpider wrote:

I may be in the minority but from a gameplay perspective, I really like the change to Saheeli's third, though I think it could be improved thematically.

I played her a lot and never used the 3rd power much. The problem before was that randomly pulling 4 supports wasn't terribly useful, even though I had great supports like Thopter Spy Network because your mana ramps and other supports would likely also show up and supports don't stack usefully. 3rd powers should be game changing and it wasn't, it was just kinda handy. Now, you can just have one vehicle in your deck and summon 4 of them, which makes for a predictable and effective strategic ability. Your choice of a vehicle can give you big critter with haste or card draw or mana ramp or a massive boardwipe (hello Skysovereign). They annoying thing is that if you don't get a good vehicle, you don't have a useful ability and I don't currently have any good vehicles. I am surprised the Skysovereign wasn't put as for sale for exactly this reason.

Thematically, vehicles are a weird choice obviously. Constructs would work better with her back story but I suspect that's already been play tested and maybe there was an exploit with summoning Gearhulks? 4 Torrential Gearhulks in their old pre-nerfed form would have been brutal (8 spells, fully mana costed). Honestly, I don't really see an issue with making her summon 4 constructs now though but maybe they worry about the effects of new constructs in the future.

I could see that being an issue with both the Gearhulks, really. Consider an empty hand and using her ability to grab Combustible Gearhulks too. That's mean 30 damage from using her ability in addition to a 32/32 creature that doesn't have defender like Torrential Gearhulk will, which means it's not going to die to a deathtouch attacker.

Even something as simple as giving constructs regenerate 1/2/3/4 for her abilities might be thematic and powerful.

Rough Tonality

I've seen some good suggestions for alternate changes to Saheeli that I'd be okay with. Personally, I think you should change her back the way she was. At the very least, her third ability. It's ludicrous and rather worthless. I know this is repeating what has already been said, but it bears be stressed: first, vehicles are totally not in character for her, at least not based on her storyline, if at all; secondly, it doesn't mesh at all with the concept of vehicles in their own right...sure, it gives Saheeli some seeming (spoken: pseudo-) synergy with the Kaladesh theme, but it totally ignores the synergistic effects of vehicles, such as a creature giving haste to all vehicles in hand.

While I eventually could have gotten it via crystals, I devoted a lot of effort to get her via the events, despite what I felt was a major flaw with the event(and I'll address that in another thread, as it still persists in events), and I can't help but feel slighted by the changes. And I'd feel that way even if I had purchased her with crystals. I liked her abilities, that was exactly the card I wanted and tried so hard for, and it's current setup is nowhere near as good.

PastrySpider

I disagree about switching back to the old third ability. The new one isn't great but it's a big step up from the old one because it's predictable and controllable. If you want to revert a ability, I'd change her first back. Energized gems just aren't that useful.

span_argoman

I think changing her third ability to

Fetch the next 4 Vehicles or Constructs from your library and put them on the battlefield.

would be a small change to the ability that would make it quite a bit more futureproof.