a colorless planeswalker?

THEMAGICkMAN

I think a good way to balance a colourless planeswalker would be to let you choose a single colour per deck, but have good abilities and well rounded even mana gains.

DBJones

I just ran across an article about Urza (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Urza,+Academy+Headmaster) and think he would be amusing. Give him horrible mana gains (-2 on all say), access to all colors, and cheap loyalty abilities that randomly choose which of a pool to use after you pay the cost. As long as every level had a few ways to gain mana, he'd be playable if you get lucky. I'd love if he was added to the 50 crystal cost walkers for April fools day!

morgue427

good point on the dual color cards, very few were worth the premium they cost except fevered dreams that was a slow killer i used when i started because i didnt have better cards to chose from. I think were oter is right we have to just wait and see how the next set is set up although i did like that uncommons and commons were more powerful, giving even new players better options for pauper decks

James13

If talking colorless, I think restricting to the colorless pool of cards is appropriate.  Otherwise you should just make an all-colors walker.

Access to all cards while having no intrinsic color is currently all upsides in the current game implementation.  Having walker colors adds some vulnerability to certain cards that target opponent walker colors (to which colorless PvE opponents are currently immune).  A colorless walker immunity to those effects is balanced by the limitation of card pool to colorless only.

Mana gains are not a sufficient handicap to offset colored card access (consider: you are providing green bomb conversion access...).

Llorence

yes, i like the idea of a colorless planeswalker with good abilities, and good mana gains, but only colorless cards. 

wereotter

Though we come back to the same problem I mentioned earlier. Do a search of cards available to a colorless planeswalker and, for standard, the card pool is about 70 cards less than for any other single color planeswalker.

Also, looking past Kaladesh, you’ll notice a colorless planeswalker will only have 12 creatures available to chose from to use. That makes a colorless walker problematic. 

TomB

So make one of the colorless walker's abilities the ability to create a colorless creature token that's worth pumping to compensate for the lack of decent colorless creatures, and introduce some better options in the set the walker is introduced with, so it's at least more powerful during that set.

wereotter

TomB said:

So make one of the colorless walker's abilities the ability to create a colorless creature token that's worth pumping to compensate for the lack of decent colorless creatures, and introduce some better options in the set the walker is introduced with, so it's at least more powerful during that set.

Making creatures is a viable option, but look at Garruk and see how that turned out. He's a decent enough planeswalker, but ultimately a failed experiment, possibly because they were playing it safe with how large a creature he can make with his loyalty abilities. Tezzeret is a better option, but the creature is still small and servos are pretty vulnerable.

As far as adding in colorless creatures, they seem to be bound by what gets printed in the the paper sets. They're not going to just make up colorless creatures for the sake of adding a colorless planeswalker. And, considering the problems of sets like Mirrodin and Kaladesh, Wizards is understandably cautious about going to that kind of plane too often. They're too difficult to balance as all the good cards can be put into any deck. Mark Rosewater had talked about this problem several times. This is also why you generally only see a few colorless cards in any given set. Ixalan has 6 colorless creatures, 5 of which are vehicles. And comparing that to other sets, thats actually a high number where many only ever get one or two colorless creatures.

morgue427

sounds like with so many vehicles rai will end up being the winner in ixalan some new ones for here wouldnt be horrible i dont think a bit more variety would help tired of seeing just the boomship or kiran honestly lol

hawkyh1

you could give 'em lousy mana gains and then allow
planeswalker gems to fill up colourless cards, a bit
like how shrine activate works. could be a nightmare
to balance though. gather the ... (what should I dump
to cheat into play this time...?)

HH

Kinesia

Restrict my original idea further...
Colourless cards plus _common_ cards of any colour, just commons.

Sirchombli

The next plane in paper is dominaria. Karn is one of the focal characters in the story line, so it's possible that we get one with dominaria. I'm not sure how good a colorless pw would be. Giving him access to all 5 colors would be extra broken and only colorless cards would be extra wonky. With that said, I'll take it. I think that it would be fun. I like building decks more than I like playing them. 

Kinesia

Or, let it play coloured cards but they _only_ gain mana from matches made with that colour (the way void cards get mana from void gems, no generic mana)

(I was going to say just make the coloured cards cost double, but I _like_ this plan except for the bit where it biases towards green hugely)

Skiglass6

Kinesia said:

Or, let it play coloured cards but they _only_ gain mana from matches made with that colour (the way void cards get mana from void gems, no generic mana)

(I was going to say just make the coloured cards cost double, but I _like_ this plan except for the bit where it biases towards green hugely)

Maybe not only colored cards get mana from its color, but the base match goes to first card in hand and any bonus colored mana goes to first card with that color. Maybe even void gems could give bonus mana to 1st colorless card. 

FindingHeart8

Kinesia said:

Or, let it play coloured cards but they _only_ gain mana from matches made with that colour (the way void cards get mana from void gems, no generic mana)

(I was going to say just make the coloured cards cost double, but I _like_ this plan except for the bit where it biases towards green hugely)

That could put players with this walker at a serious disadvantage (unless Karn's abilities were amazing) against other players who could use any mana for their spells.

I'd rather see a Karn with significant mana boosts across the board (say a +3 or +2 to all swaps) but could only use colorless creatures/spells.  It would bring back a need for Kaledesh cards and actually give Eldrazi a home (in relation to planeswalkers that they really sync with).

Bil

Even if he gets +2 to all colors it will be a massive avantage in terms of mana, and colorless creature generally cost much but mostly because they generally strong... Bad matches in one of the only breaches in most decks and I'm not sure giving a walker the opportunity to get rid of them would make it balanced.

wereotter

FindingHeart8 said:

Kinesia said:

Or, let it play coloured cards but they _only_ gain mana from matches made with that colour (the way void cards get mana from void gems, no generic mana)

(I was going to say just make the coloured cards cost double, but I _like_ this plan except for the bit where it biases towards green hugely)

That could put players with this walker at a serious disadvantage (unless Karn's abilities were amazing) against other players who could use any mana for their spells.

I'd rather see a Karn with significant mana boosts across the board (say a +3 or +2 to all swaps) but could only use colorless creatures/spells.  It would bring back a need for Kaledesh cards and actually give Eldrazi a home (in relation to planeswalkers that they really sync with).

But then that kind of limits him to legacy playability only. They would want to make sure the planeswalker is standard playable as well. And, if we look into what a Karn planeswalker can use in a post-Kaladesh environment (because that will be gone when Dominaria enters the scene) he currently would have access to:

15 spells
12 creatures
44 supports, 17 of which are gem converters or require you to have certain color creatures.

I still say that trying to add in a colorless walker just wouldn't work because it wouldn't have enough cards to really be playable, doubly so outside legacy.

morgue427

not sure that is a bad thing look at c2 she is pretty much unplayable with such limited cards within kaladesh( yes she can play other cards but not much within that block she is an also ran).

Kinesia

@wereotter, so what would be avaia
lable with that plus commons of all colours? I'm come around to uncommons to be a bad addition.

wereotter

Creatures: 156
Spells: 96
Supports: 56

It would be interesting and the spells added would definitely help him, though despite adding so many creatures, the vast majority of them are either small (1-3 power) or over priced.

There might be some possibility for a deck that focuses on supports. Karn in the past was able to animate non-creature artifacts into creatures, so maybe he could have an ability to sacrifice supports to make X/X colorless constructs.