a colorless planeswalker?

Llorence

any good ideas for one? i think a colorless planeswalker would be really cool

Bil

On paper magic there ain't much colorless walkers and none exists in the sets reproduced in mtgpq.
Another problem would be... What color restrictions do you apply to a colorless walker?
None would be too much in terms of versatility. And if he's only able to play colorless cards he won't have too much to play with... 

Tilwin90

I would actually love the idea in MTGPQ in spite of being allowed to only play colorless cards. For balance of course a few aspects I would keep in mind:
- Give it decent mana gains (like +2 on each color)
- Decent abilities (if you can't rely on a larger card pool you need to have the advantage on the abilities side)
- Lots of space for deckbuilding - now I'm not saying 10/10/10 is necessarily healthy but 7/7/7 could not hurt much. In fact, looking at existing spells in colorless, it's a pool of 17 cards only out of which most are uninteresting. So probably leaving lots of options here would be much more fun!

Just like Elspeth was introduced in the game, it would be great to have Ugin for instance as a planeswalker. 

wereotter

A colorless walker would really only work for as long as Kaladesh remains in standard. Once that's gone, I don't see there being enough cards to make it work. They could, however, make it work if it could use any cards that reference supports, or even select supports that interact with artifacts, like Thopter Spy Network. But keeping that deck list viable might be work work from a developer's stand point than its worth.

That all said, Karn is in the promo art for Dominaria, so a colorless walker might be in our future.

Kinesia

We actually discussed this a few months back, my idea was They can use _any_ colour common/uncommons but only colorless spells at rare and up.

That gives a different card selection than any other walker and could wind up very weird!

versemage

Karn, Silver Golem seems like a great idea to me. I would offer that he could pack cards of any color and rarity, but as far as Mana gathering goes, he would start off at like -1 on all 5 colors and eventually end up at +1 on all 5 colors. His drawback on being able to use all cards would be no appreciable production of Mana from matches.

morgue427

have to admit i like versemage's idea about mana gain would be a decent way to limit mana gain without capping him horribly in one direction or another, but it would depends on his abilities i think as to weather or not he would work well in a set

wereotter

morgue427 said:

have to admit i like versemage's idea about mana gain would be a decent way to limit mana gain without capping him horribly in one direction or another, but it would depends on his abilities i think as to weather or not he would work well in a set

Though let's be honest, mana gains are a massive part of how we as a community gauge if a planeswalker is good or not. Take Sarkhan as an example. We didn't really see red/black madness vampires decks be a thing when Innistrad was around, partially because his mana gains are so poor. He's +1 on all colors and +2 on red/black which seems good on paper until you realize that other planeswalkers at the time were able to get anywhere from +3 to +5 for an on color match making him simply too slow.

I think making a planeswalker that can use all colors but having low mana gains will just be another Sarkhan. He'll be a fun novelty for a while, but ultimately may not see much play because of how hard it will be to get anything into play.

deletedgone

Low mana but can play all colors? Sounds like a vehicle to further abuse Omniscience, Infinite Cycling, or any of the other methods to generate mana/cast for free.

While it would be fun to put all of the broken cards in one deck, it think it would be terrible for game balance.

FindingHeart8

wereotter said:

morgue427 said:

have to admit i like versemage's idea about mana gain would be a decent way to limit mana gain without capping him horribly in one direction or another, but it would depends on his abilities i think as to weather or not he would work well in a set

Though let's be honest, mana gains are a massive part of how we as a community gauge if a planeswalker is good or not. Take Sarkhan as an example. We didn't really see red/black madness vampires decks be a thing when Innistrad was around, partially because his mana gains are so poor. He's +1 on all colors and +2 on red/black which seems good on paper until you realize that other planeswalkers at the time were able to get anywhere from +3 to +5 for an on color match making him simply too slow.

I think making a planeswalker that can use all colors but having low mana gains will just be another Sarkhan. He'll be a fun novelty for a while, but ultimately may not see much play because of how hard it will be to get anything into play.

I'd debate your point here.  I was reading the threads too back when Sarkhan was a thing, and the most common complaint about him wasn't his mana basis, (which in comparison to the commonly used basic planeswalkers at the time was really good) but it was that his abilities were only good if you had 1 of the 4 mythic dragons available at the time.  The only other walker who rivaled Sarkhan at the time of release.

The planeswalkers of current times are a somewhat-stable gamble.  Yeah you're building your army quickly with Samut or Elspeth if you can line up the right gems, but you're treading water if your colors aren't on the board.

To this day, Ajani, Garruk, Tezz2 are my most played walkers, partially because their abilities are great, but also because they have the best balance of any walkers in-game.  Yeah you may be a turn behind Samut/Elspeth if the game starts with primarily their gems (reminiscent of a Koth battle) but you can almost guarantee that your deck will get rolling by turn 2 or 3 and keep rolling.

MTG_Mage

I have suggested this before, but colorless PWs would use the already colorless mana gem that exists in the game: Planeswalker gems

Matching PW gems does not give any mana, only PW points. So for a colorless PW matching PW gems will also give mana. Whether they decide to make this mana equivilant to the PW gems matched and its bonus or just the bonus is a up for debate. I suggest it only be for the bonus for PW gems which will be high.
The mana bonus for all other colors should be very low like +0 or +1 for the three artifact friendly colors (white, blue and black) and -1 for the two anti-artifact colors (green and red)

As for card variety, MTGPQ has done a decent job with keeping all the creatures types that would be available to a colorless PW already are colorless. There are a few exceptions, so the colorless PW (which I am assuming will be Karn coming soon) should have available all artificers and constructs of any color. 
A colorless PW should not be allowed to play cards of any color even if it has low mana gains as that would be very broken. 

FindingHeart8

I would also like to add that Bolas is not included in the gamble, with a 3-color deck range and first ability being creature-destruction, he can easily coast from any gem-match surplus to the next with little setback when the gem board isn't favoring his colors.

FindingHeart8

MTG_Mage said:

I have suggested this before, but colorless PWs would use the already colorless mana gem that exists in the game: Planeswalker gems

Matching PW gems does not give any mana, only PW points. So for a colorless PW matching PW gems will also give mana. Whether they decide to make this mana equivilant to the PW gems matched and its bonus or just the bonus is a up for debate. I suggest it only be for the bonus for PW gems which will be high.
The mana bonus for all other colors should be very low like +0 or +1 for the three artifact friendly colors (white, blue and black) and -1 for the two anti-artifact colors (green and red)

As for card variety, MTGPQ has done a decent job with keeping all the creatures types that would be available to a colorless PW already are colorless. There are a few exceptions, so the colorless PW (which I am assuming will be Karn coming soon) should have available all artificers and constructs of any color. 
A colorless PW should not be allowed to play cards of any color even if it has low mana gains as that would be very broken. 

A very interesting concept...but I doubt Octagon would implement it.  Their focus needs to be bringing players back and making the game more noob-friendly.  A planeswalker with your schematics would only be really effective for expert players with a vast collection of artifact/colorless cards

morgue427

a small gain +1 on all colors may not seem much but overall it adds up to +5 total which while less than the spikers like koth or elspeth is eaier in the long run because you can pretty my be sure to get a + match on everything but loyalty. To me that would be worth the effort rather than having to try to force + matches with gem changers.

wereotter

FindingHeart8 said:

I'd debate your point here.  I was reading the threads too back when Sarkhan was a thing, and the most common complaint about him wasn't his mana basis, (which in comparison to the commonly used basic planeswalkers at the time was really good) but it was that his abilities were only good if you had 1 of the 4 mythic dragons available at the time.  The only other walker who rivaled Sarkhan at the time of release.

I was there at the time, and I can say from trying to run him with dragons was not just that you had to have the right mythic rare cards to use him for his abilities, but that his mana gains were so low that it wasn't feasible to run dragons for his deck considering how much the dragons cost to cast.

I did use him for madness vampires during Innistrad relying only on his first ability to help me keep cards in hand, but even that was a pretty poor deck, and partially because he was so behind the curve mana-wise.

FindingHeart8

wereotter said:

FindingHeart8 said:

I'd debate your point here.  I was reading the threads too back when Sarkhan was a thing, and the most common complaint about him wasn't his mana basis, (which in comparison to the commonly used basic planeswalkers at the time was really good) but it was that his abilities were only good if you had 1 of the 4 mythic dragons available at the time.  The only other walker who rivaled Sarkhan at the time of release.

I was there at the time, and I can say from trying to run him with dragons was not just that you had to have the right mythic rare cards to use him for his abilities, but that his mana gains were so low that it wasn't feasible to run dragons for his deck considering how much the dragons cost to cast.

I did use him for madness vampires during Innistrad relying only on his first ability to help me keep cards in hand, but even that was a pretty poor deck, and partially because he was so behind the curve mana-wise.

I'm sorry to hear you struggled with him so much.  The madness vampires is a cool route to go (I always favored werewolves for that set) but yeah I could see how that wouldn't work out too well.

I faced some well-crafted, powerful decks that dropped the best dragons on the board turn by turn 3 with some effective gem destruction, along with mean board control because his mana bonuses almost guaranteed the cheapest black creature-destruction spells could be cast every turn.  To me, his only superior was Gideon1 with the Runaway Carriage nightmare.

wereotter

He could, yes, but you had to find a red or black match, and you had to have Grip of Desolation and/or To the Slaughter (I do now but did not then) and really the deck didn't work until Kaladesh came out and Smuggler's Copter came out. But even then it was Smuggler's Copter that more than anything was giving me mana than was his matches.

That being said, it'll be interesting to see if Ixalan brings him back out of the shadows as an option for pirate decks, or if he'll be overshadowed by Tezzeret and Saheeli

morgue427

hate to say it but still think he will be overshadowed by tezz2 and rai just because anything that will help sarkhan will also help them as much or more, his abilities just arent as versatile as the others are

FindingHeart8

@wereotter
@morgue427

The only point I'm debating here is that he used to be really good.  Now I would definitely agree with you both that he's overshadowed by Tezz2, Saheeli, Bolas, etc.  But back in the day he was the only walker with +'s across the board, which was very useful except his abilities weren't so great unless you had some good dragons and creature control (which wasn't too hard to get generally, given the zendikar/innistrad sets were the only 2 non-Origins sets available at the time for tinykitty and purchasing).  But yeah, now he makes almost makes me wish I hadn't spent all those crystals getting him (I say almost because his art is still pretty sweet and I have the dragons that makes him still useful).

And I think that would be really cool if he was made useful again with pirates

wereotter

morgue427 said:

hate to say it but still think he will be overshadowed by tezz2 and rai just because anything that will help sarkhan will also help them as much or more, his abilities just arent as versatile as the others are

I think it'll depend on your strategy and what the pirates actually look like when translated into this game. They are a typically more aggressive tribe, so I can see someone wanting red/black but not necessarily wanting blue as part of their strategy, which would mean you're using Bolas or Sarkhan.

Bolas probably will be better as his abilities are more useful, but if pirates run cheap and if treasure tokens work as I expect (basically an exact copy of Vessel of Volatility) then Sarkhan might just be slightly better than Bolas

DBJones

Back to the idea of a colorless Planeswalker, I think it would be interesting to have really good mana, but be limited to multi-color and colorless cards. I find that most of the two-color cards are interesting, but generally too expensive considering many of them are creatures vulnerable to cheap removal. That and some nice abilities would make for a very interesting Planeswalker unlike any of the current ones.