WAR - Planeswalker Thoughts & Speculation

Brakkis

As the other thread started out as a "Oh dear god, they didn't", let's start one dedicated to our individual speculations on how they'll handle the 36! Planeswalkers coming with War of the Spark.

First of all, the Planeswalkers are coming out at Uncommon, Rare, and Mythic Rare quality. The ones at Uncommon only have a single ability - a negative - and so they'll eventually kill themselves through its use. The Rares have two abilities - one positive and one negative - so they avoid that. Finally the ones at Mythic Rare have three abilities as per usual - I personally question the Gideon Blackblade spoiler due to it having an entirely different set image than all the others.

As far as I can see, the Planeswalkers at Uncommon and Rare can be added as either creatures or supports. Either way, the uncommon ones should eventually kill/destroy themselves as you activate their abilities either by lowering their toughness each time or reducing their shield count. The ones at Rare shouldn't have this degrading mechanic. While the Mythic Rares are most likely the ones we'll get as Planeswalkers in PQ.

Also, who's going to die?

cmassive13

I hope Nahiri kills Sorin tbh

i would guess Ugin will be mythic, possibly the last mythic PW in war?

Mburn7

Nahiri and Sorin duke it out, only one will survive.  Sorin's the stronger fighter, but my money is on Nahiri winning.  She's sneaky.

Liliana is probably going to die going against Bolas, and I'll bet Gideon does too (you will be killed by a god...)

Karn is definitely going to survive, and it would be a real **** move to kill off Teferi before he can bring his home back into existence, so he'll survive but leave the story for a bit anyway.  Ajani hopefully stays but probably won't, Jaya's too old to do much anyway so she'll probably kick the bucket, and Tammiyo I have no idea.

Nissa and Chandra will (hopefully) survive too.  Jace probably will as well even though we all want him to die, since he's kind of the most iconic walker and the (non-bolas) face of MTG.

As for everyone else, it's 50-50.  Most of the uncommon walkers are pretty small scale in the stories, so they can be killed or not without much issue.  I'm probably missing some obvious ones, but its late and I don't feel like looking anything up.

Laeuftbeidir

I'd say the uncommon pws who will eventually kill themselves are a strong indicator that they won't survive.

I'm on sorins side of the encounter. He'll be more angry and likely insane than ever before.

I hope that only the mythic pws get transferred to pq as playable pws, and that the rest will be used as pve encounters for the circle of five new coalition events that we need

Ampersand

Laeuftbeidir said:

I'd say the uncommon pws who will eventually kill themselves are a strong indicator that they won't survive.

I'm on sorins side of the encounter. He'll be more angry and likely insane than ever before.

I hope that only the mythic pws get transferred to pq as playable pws, and that the rest will be used as pve encounters for the circle of five new coalition events that we need

I LOVE this idea. @Oktagon_Daiane might this be in the works?

arNero

In terms of mechanic, I'll just repeat what I've said somewhere else, a statement which half-agrees with what OP said:

Only the Mythic planeswalkers will be buyable planeswalkers; the rest will likely be supports since in paper Magic, planeswalker cards are something of a glorified enchantments (since they can't attack like actual creatures, at least, most of the time)

As for who will die in the story, I don't want to guess, but I hope Sorin and Angrath will die. Let those two of my favorite planeswalkers who have been HORRIBLY sullied by Magic creative team be put to rest, PLEASE >_<

James13

I half expect a "Just kidding.  Reset." plot ala Dragon Ball or such.  Where they get to kill them for story beats/drama, but then either revive them all or reset the universe to a peaceful state at the end.

I think that we are NOT going to get them all as walkers is a given.

If they go the "cheat" ending route, I'd expect basically everyone to kick it but the "final guy/gal" who would likely be retired from use at the end ("noble sacrifice" turn or such).  It could very well be Jace.

Mburn7

arNero said:

As for who will die in the story, I don't want to guess, but I hope Sorin and Angrath will die. Let those two of my favorite planeswalkers who have been HORRIBLY sullied by Magic creative team be put to rest, PLEASE >_<

How has Angrath been sullied by the creative team?  His entire story impact is like 2 fights and 3 lines.
Sure he's really cool (Minotaur Planeswalker with flaming chains?  Awesome), and probably shouldn't be in WAR at all, but I don't see the downswing here.

Sorin I agree has been torched, although I would hate to see my first every planeswalker get killed off.

Brakkis

arNero said:

In terms of mechanic, I'll just repeat what I've said somewhere else, a statement which half-agrees with what OP said:

Only the Mythic planeswalkers will be buyable planeswalkers; the rest will likely be supports since in paper Magic, planeswalker cards are something of a glorified enchantments (since they can't attack like actual creatures, at least, most of the time)

They can just as easily be converted to creatures as they can supports. While they may be glorified enchantments, they are indeed creatures. Just ones that serve a separate function. I see no reason why they can't go either way.

The Wanderer [Creature]
5/5
While this creature is in play, your creatures and Planeswalker gain Prevent Damage.
Activate 2 - Exile Target creature with power 4 or greater then this creature gets -0/-2

The Wanderer [Support]
3 Shield (It would take 3 uses of her ability to kill her in paper, so 3 activates here would achieve the same effect)
While this support is in play, your creatures and Planeswalker gain Prevent Damage.
Activate 2 - Exile target creature with power 4 or greater then this support loses a shield.

Also, The Wanderer is Emrakul. Calling it.

arNero

Mburn7 said:

arNero said:

As for who will die in the story, I don't want to guess, but I hope Sorin and Angrath will die. Let those two of my favorite planeswalkers who have been HORRIBLY sullied by Magic creative team be put to rest, PLEASE >_<

How has Angrath been sullied by the creative team?  His entire story impact is like 2 fights and 3 lines.
Sure he's really cool (Minotaur Planeswalker with flaming chains?  Awesome), and probably shouldn't be in WAR at all, but I don't see the downswing here.

Sorin I agree has been torched, although I would hate to see my first every planeswalker get killed off.

On one hand, there's a bit (okay, fine, a LOT) of personal bias here, but if you don't mind, hear me out.

Back during Ixalan storyline, I first pretty much fell in love with Angrath when he apparently was some planeswalker throwing what is essentially temper tantrum over being locked up in Ixalan. Why do I like that kind of character? I don't know exactly, but that first impression hinted to me that he was just a loose cannon, living his life as he sees fit then gets grounded out of sheer bad luck, and for some reason as much as I care little about Gatewatch, Nicki and many other characters introduced around that time or after, I begin rooting for him.

Then in their infinite wisdom, the creative team had to put some sob story for his backstory. That he has been separated from his daughters for 14 years. A tidbit, which, to me, is a **** move which accounts to fishing for sympathy, something I absolutely, absolutely despise from any kind of narrative.

Angrath was really, really cool without that stupid family drama stuff, but no, apparently creative team thought that for any character to be likeable, they have to have heart-rending, soul-crushing, tear-milking backstory to attract sympathy (I still remember full well how I ranted somewhere else about how Samut got her ascension from sheer euphoria; in hindsight, I regretted saying that, as I suspected my impulsive verdict came from the clearly hopeless situation in Amonkhet, which meant that I didn't want to see happy ending there). Anyway, back to Angrath; so the fact that creative team uses such cheap tactic to fish for sympathy just plain ruins him to me (I still like him, but I wish he never had been a father of two, really), but at least in the end he got away and had a happy ending, whatever.

Only for creative team (and likely also R&D team this time), again, in their infinite wisdom, just decided, hey, we just need to make something really cool, something like a blockbuster movie, some hopeless war against Nicki, and thus yank Angrath back to the exact same situation as in Ixalan, and then put him into the role of a lesser villain (I'm basing this on what I've seen in the spoiler). I basically went.... what.

I liked him. I did. And I do. And with creative team having been making very, very unattractive (if not flat out BAD) narrative decisions, I've made my wish: Please, please just put Angrath out of his misery.

At least we agree on Sorin. He has been badly, badly abused far more than enough already.

Brakkis said:

arNero said:

In terms of mechanic, I'll just repeat what I've said somewhere else, a statement which half-agrees with what OP said:

Only the Mythic planeswalkers will be buyable planeswalkers; the rest will likely be supports since in paper Magic, planeswalker cards are something of a glorified enchantments (since they can't attack like actual creatures, at least, most of the time)

They can just as easily be converted to creatures as they can supports. While they may be glorified enchantments, they are indeed creatures. Just ones that serve a separate function. I see no reason why they can't go either way.

The Wanderer [Creature]
5/5
While this creature is in play, your creatures and Planeswalker gain Prevent Damage.
Activate 2 - Exile Target creature with power 4 or greater then this creature gets -0/-2

The Wanderer [Support]
3 Shield (It would take 3 uses of her ability to kill her in paper, so 3 activates here would achieve the same effect)
While this support is in play, your creatures and Planeswalker gain Prevent Damage.
Activate 2 - Exile target creature with power 4 or greater then this support loses a shield.

Also, The Wanderer is Emrakul. Calling it.

I can't disagree with you about planeswalker = creature idea. It can work, but as someone else in this forum said, doing so clashes with putting actual creatures from the paper Magic. Still, it can happen, and I think it can work to an extent.

As of the Wanderer being Emrakul, I don't disagree not because I also think it's her, but because since this is going to be the so-called cool set (My own verdict? No. This is Amonkhet v2, and I don't quite like Amonkhet), such random **** seems pretty plausible just to attract audience.

OmegaLolrus

I'm kind of interested in seeing how they translate Proliferate. Amass seems really easy to pass over from paper, and might be interesting (keeping in mind that I don't care about min/maxing, and I think creatures are fun).

I think it's easier to get the Planeswalkers as supports, just by virtue of there being a lot of potentially insane combos if they're creatures with buffs.

I think Nahiri's got the edge against Sorin. He's got experience, but I think he also has a stronger sense of self-preservation. Nahiri's not going to throw her life away for nothing, but I think if it comes down to it, I think she's willing to die to see him dead. Kinda hoping that this isn't the end for them, that they keep fighting 'til the Immortal Sun gets blowed up.

I have a really strong feeling that Liliana won't make it. Think she's gonna make the sacrifice play. Wouldn't hurt my feelings to see Bolas survive and be imprisoned, the way that Azor and Ugin had planned. Give him a place to come back for like the 30th anniversary or some such.

arNero

OmegaLolrus said:

I'm kind of interested in seeing how they translate Proliferate. Amass seems really easy to pass over from paper, and might be interesting (keeping in mind that I don't care about min/maxing, and I think creatures are fun).

I think it's easier to get the Planeswalkers as supports, just by virtue of there being a lot of potentially insane combos if they're creatures with buffs.

I think Nahiri's got the edge against Sorin. He's got experience, but I think he also has a stronger sense of self-preservation. Nahiri's not going to throw her life away for nothing, but I think if it comes down to it, I think she's willing to die to see him dead. Kinda hoping that this isn't the end for them, that they keep fighting 'til the Immortal Sun gets blowed up.

I have a really strong feeling that Liliana won't make it. Think she's gonna make the sacrifice play. Wouldn't hurt my feelings to see Bolas survive and be imprisoned, the way that Azor and Ugin had planned. Give him a place to come back for like the 30th anniversary or some such.

I have a slight suspicion that they may instead convert Amass into something similar to Servos, or maybe the PQ version of Tolsimir Wolfblood: If you don't have an Army token, make one first, and after you have an Army token, that token gets +x/+x where X is Amass' shield count.

As for Proliferate, speaking of that, that further supports my thoughts that nonmythic planeswalkers will instead be support, because then they can convert proliferate into: Give each of your supports +1 shield or something. True, in paper Magic, proliferate can be used for creature counters (and in fact was its main use back in Scars), but given the sheer number of planeswalkers in WAR who thus can benefit from proliferate, I say why not?

The trailer has already shown Lili is not in a good shape (although then I question why she isn't wearing her Chain Veil is she thinks this is going to be her last blaze of glory; if she's going bust anyway, the Veil becomes a risk-free killer artifact), so I support your idea that she's gonna be out. Bolas probably won't die indeed, if only because he's an important character for the creative team (not for the story).

wereotter

cmassive13 said:

I hope Nahiri kills Sorin tbh

i would guess Ugin will be mythic, possibly the last mythic PW in war?

Going off their cards, my money is on Sorin.

Based off their cards, Sorin can hit Nahiri, but Nahiri can't hit Sorin:

I do think regardless, this is going to be Wizards culling their roster of planeswalkers. I wouldn't be surprised if most if not all the planeswalkers printed at uncommon die. Espeically since thematically, none of them can up their own loyalty, they all can only slowly kill themselves. Though I could be wrong since there are some new planeswalkers being printed at this rarity too. Additionally there are some we know will die who aren't even getting cards. Dack Fayden is shown being killed in the trailer, and he's not even one of the walkers shown in the initial stained glass to have a card.

OmegaLolrus

I'm guessing Dack got sidelined because there are just a staggering number of Blue planeswalkers, and could only fit so many. Think MaRo said something about it in his Monday blog, that they wanted to keep them balanced across colors.

I'm assuming every planswalker we've met is on Ravnica except for those that they've specifically said won't be there (lookin' at you, Garruk).

Gideon

My speculation is that it will take 3-5 months to release this after they release it in paper. 

SolRing

Amass (x) could create x 2/2 zombie army tokens that have leader: zombie

That way the zombie army token would be on the board as a creature for the creature synergies in the set we've seen already.

OmegaLolrus

SolRing said:

Amass (x) could create x 2/2 zombie army tokens that have leader: zombie

That way the zombie army token would be on the board as a creature for the creature synergies in the set we've seen already.

Oh my gosh, please? I would freaking love that. It wouldn't be a perfect carbon copy of tabletop, which... I mean, this isn't tabletop, not everything has to be a perfect carbon copy. It fits way better with the limit of three creatures.

Snappyturtle

They'll reset the universe but everyone is now evil.

James13

Random thought struck me today.  What if you have a 5 color "Gatewatch" walker?  In essence cut down the number by wrapping multiple walkers into single units.  No separate 5 mono walkers Gideon/Chandra/Nissa/Jace/Lilianna all in one with 5 color access could be suitably epic.

Along those lines, you could conflate multiple walkers into a single one.  I don't know who else one would wrap together, though.  Karn/Teferi/Jaya?  Realms?

This would be at least a possibility to cut down the planeswalker count to something manageable.  Though combining loyalties will certainly be a challenge in that case.

ZW2007-

It would be really awesome if they took two two-color pws that have an overlapping color and make them into a tri-color duo for PQ use.




Give them a static ability just like a support (something new!) 


Maybe something like this:
Ajani & Teferi
GWU
118 life
Creatures you control have vigilance. Cards in your opponent's hand lose flash.
-12 Your opponent can't cast cards during their next turn. You gain 5 life.
-24 Return target creature to your opponent's hand. If you can't, return a non-land support to your opponent's hand. Creatures you control get +4/+4

The color combo itself is very strong. The static ability is cool but not too punishing. The loyalty abilities are expensive and not all that flashy which makes up for there being 3 colors and a static ability. I think this is awesome because I partly came up with the idea but I'm willing to share credit with James13. You're welcome for the great idea that you won't use Oktagon.

The most awesome thing of all would be if they actually commissioned new art just for that. I know none of this would ever happen in a million years. If only WotC actually gave a toss about this game...