Ravnica Allegiance Planeswalkers

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  • Kinesia
    Kinesia Posts: 1,621 Chairperson of the Boards
    Grixis197 said:
    Even with a new BW PW I always have trouble making a good standard deck with Sorin
    I've had the most success with his extreme lifegain feeding into Azor's Gateway
  • Stormcrow
    Stormcrow Posts: 462 Mover and Shaker
    I dunno, I still generally find Sorin to be fine although his low hp total means you have less time to recover from an aggro deck that gets off to an explosive start. Although I have noted the fact that Sorin's ultimate only increases Power and not Toughness plays pretty nicely with Citywide Bust.
  • madwren
    madwren Posts: 2,259 Chairperson of the Boards
    Stormcrow said:
    I dunno, I still generally find Sorin to be fine although his low hp total means you have less time to recover from an aggro deck that gets off to an explosive start. Although I have noted the fact that Sorin's ultimate only increases Power and not Toughness plays pretty nicely with Citywide Bust.

    Sorin's other problem is that his abilities are "win more" abilities; they don't help you dig yourself out of a hole.
  • TomB
    TomB Posts: 269 Mover and Shaker
    Actually I find his 2nd ability quite useful in getting back into a match. And his 3rd, together with his 2nd (or a Lifelink critter) makes my First-Striking Vigilance guys quite strong.

    The biggest problem I seem to have with him is mana... :/
  • Kinesia
    Kinesia Posts: 1,621 Chairperson of the Boards
    TomB said:
    Actually I find his 2nd ability quite useful in getting back into a match. And his 3rd, together with his 2nd (or a Lifelink critter) makes my First-Striking Vigilance guys quite strong.

    The biggest problem I seem to have with him is mana... :/
    Yep. Which is why Azor's Gateway is perfect, but I definitely had trouble trying to balance everything I wanted to get into a deck...
  • TomB
    TomB Posts: 269 Mover and Shaker
    I been meaning to work the Gateway into his deck, but to be honest I haven't been using him as much lately so I've been putting it off... :o
  • madwren
    madwren Posts: 2,259 Chairperson of the Boards
    TomB said:
    Actually I find his 2nd ability quite useful in getting back into a match.
    Sure, and enough things go right, any ability is useful. However, if you start a game with an empty board, and Greg gets the drop you with a strong board presence, then you have a couple of choices.

    1. Defend yourself from said creatures through removal/disable, during which time you are not building a counter-presence, and Greg is able to continually replace what you remove;
    2. Cast 3 creatures and attempt to save up 15 loyalty, while your 82hp walker gets beat down

    Removing cards from the equation and focusing on the planeswalkers themselves, typically good planeswalkers have abilities that can help them establish a board presence, or recover from a bad board state. Sorin's abilities don't; they rely solely on him already having creatures on the board to function.  This is also a prominent weakness of Huatli2, but she at least has a niche that can exploit her abilities.



  • ZW2007-
    ZW2007- Posts: 812 Critical Contributor
    I love Sorin but he's really not very good. The fact that he was the 4th most played PW in 2018 blows my mind. I am convinced their data is bad (like a lot of the coding in this game). Either that or people just hopelessly love the color combination. I am an Orzhov man myself so I can understand (Abzan for life, actually). I really hope Kaya turns out to be good.

    Here's my take at a PQ Kaya:
    Kaya, Orzhov Usurper
    Health: 107
    Creatures: 6
    Spells: 7
    Supports: 6
    5 White  | 0 Blue  | 4 Black  | 0 Red  | 0 Green
    • 6: Exile the top 4 cards of your opponent's library. You gain 8 life if a creature was exiled.
    • 15: Exile your opponent's first creature. If you can't, exile an opponent's support.
    • 21: Create a [insert random ability name here] token [with 4 shields and "At the end of your turn, your opponent loses life equal to the number of cards in each player's Exile and you gain that much life."]
    She absolutely must have more than 100 life. There is just no way the second WB walker can be as weak as Sorin.

    Mana gains are a rough estimate based on newer walkers and I couldn't decide which third color to give the 1 extra mana to. I think she's more white than black even though she is under Bolas' influence.

    As for abilities, I tried to stick to her paper version. With the first I went with library instead just as a way to fuel her ultimate and be occasional lifegain. Paper is graveyard but it honestly wouldn't do much of anything in PQ if it only exiled the graveyard.

    Her second is a straight up copy of her paper with the cost restriction removed. A second ability should not have a restriction. It is similar to Ob's but costs more, is more versatile, and has no drawback (aside from being non-targeted, which has both ups and downs). 

    Her ultimate got a little away from her paper self but a more direct translation seemed too weak. We already have Ob damaging on cards drawn and Angrath on cards going into the graveyard so it's a logical conclusion to tie her to the Exile. Since exiling stuff isn't nearly as easy as drawing cards or getting stuff into their graveyard, I figured it would be better to count the total piles each turn instead of triggering each time something is exiled. I almost added a Rest in Peace effect (Whenever a card would enter a player's graveyard, exile it instead.) but decided that would probably make her too strong.

    I expect RNA to be adding a whole slew of new exile effects for her to work with but still don't think her ult would be that backbreaking. Mainly it would function as an alternate win con for those objectives where you don't want to play creatures. The rest of the time she would just rely on creatures and use her loyalty on her second to supplement the decks removal.
  • Kinesia
    Kinesia Posts: 1,621 Chairperson of the Boards
    Hmm, the 1/1 vamp tokens... Add to his first ability "Create a 1/1 vamp token with lifelink and then..." and leave the rest of the ability the same.... Then he _always_ has a useful ability and a way to recover a little. Doesn't need to increase the number of tokens with level, the extra mana and life is enough.
  • wereotter
    wereotter Posts: 2,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited January 2019
    Kinesia said:
    Hmm, the 1/1 vamp tokens... Add to his first ability "Create a 1/1 vamp token with lifelink and then..." and leave the rest of the ability the same.... Then he _always_ has a useful ability and a way to recover a little. Doesn't need to increase the number of tokens with level, the extra mana and life is enough.
    His "Lord of Innistrad" card was able to make 1/1 black vampire tokens with lifelink. While I do think he's fine as-is, if he is going to make tokens, I would only add they should be the black ones he made in that card rather than the white ones from Ixalan. Especially since white didn't have vampires on Innistrad, this was something added to vampires on other worlds.

    Conversely the other option is his "Solemn Visitor" card was able to make 2/2 flying vampires, which is something that we're more likely to see again in other sets. That might be the better option so as to keep his tokens from bogging up a board later in coming sets.
  • Kinesia
    Kinesia Posts: 1,621 Chairperson of the Boards
    Well, if it's safe to replace tokens again... Grin.
    I am all for a black vamp token instead from his ancient time. Cause the token itself is just "token" to make the rest of the ability work, and it's not out of place comparing it to more recent "complicated" first abilities like Vraska 2s.

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