Improving Old Walkers

Mburn7

wereotter said:

Mburn7 said:

Redjani still gets a ton of play, although from what I can tell its just because he has better limits for HUF Deploy decks than Nahiri and better abilities than HuatliRed.

You're thinking of Ajani Vengeant. Ajani Unyielding is the white-green Ajani from Aether Revolt.

Haha oops, my bad.    Can never remember which names go where.
I'll edit for a more appropriate comment.

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Caeman

Walkers that are virtually useless outside their blocks:
Arlinn Kord- a total blast to play, but she is werewolf dependant, and unless we get more standard events that let us play with her, a very strong walker is just going to collect dust.
Gideon AoZ- he was bad in his block, and since he can’t use the Rally ability he’s worse outside.
Chandra ToD- REALLY poorly thought out; red is the one colour that has issues with energize, mainly because it focuses on eating energize gems, and has issues producing them, and her abilities don’t work outside Kaladesh.

Walkers that need a tweak:
Saheeli Rai- again, energize is needed, but more, prevalent, VEHICLES are very short in supply outside Kaladesh. Her mana gains are fine, but she needs a bit of an update.
Ajani Unyielding- low mana in green, and, you guessed it, energize.
Vraska RS- still standard, but once the pirates go to Legacy, she’s going to share a space next to Arlinn.
Huatli WP- same as Vraska, but with enrage.
Sarkhan the Mad- Low gains in his own colours.

Walkers that are fine, as is:
Sorin- yes, he’s got a low health, but he gains life back very easily, and lifelink is very easy to find in his colours. He’s designed to be creature dependent. 
Origins walkers- these guys are meant as training wheels, and while Jace Telepath Unbound, I have issues playing with, most of the others are simple enough with practice to put up  a decent fight.

Ampersand

While I won't complain if Vraska1 gets a tweak, I do not think she is pirate dependent at all. IMO she has great abilities (destroy support, create creature tokens, a Cruel Reality type creature killer/direct PW damage) and her color combo allows for explosive speed from Green and good control from Black.

I do think Vraska2 could use some tweaking though.

Mburn7

Caeman said:

Walkers that are virtually useless outside their blocks:
Arlinn Kord- a total blast to play, but she is werewolf dependant, and unless we get more standard events that let us play with her, a very strong walker is just going to collect dust.
Gideon AoZ- he was bad in his block, and since he can’t use the Rally ability he’s worse outside.
Chandra ToD- REALLY poorly thought out; red is the one colour that has issues with energize, mainly because it focuses on eating energize gems, and has issues producing them, and her abilities don’t work outside Kaladesh.

Walkers that need a tweak:
Saheeli Rai- again, energize is needed, but more, prevalent, VEHICLES are very short in supply outside Kaladesh. Her mana gains are fine, but she needs a bit of an update.
Ajani Unyielding- low mana in green, and, you guessed it, energize.
Vraska RS- still standard, but once the pirates go to Legacy, she’s going to share a space next to Arlinn.
Huatli WP- same as Vraska, but with enrage.
Sarkhan the Mad- Low gains in his own colours.

Walkers that are fine, as is:
Sorin- yes, he’s got a low health, but he gains life back very easily, and lifelink is very easy to find in his colours. He’s designed to be creature dependent. 
Origins walkers- these guys are meant as training wheels, and while Jace Telepath Unbound, I have issues playing with, most of the others are simple enough with practice to put up  a decent fight.

I don't totally agree with your assessments here.

Vraska 1 does not need pirates at all to work, in fact I have never used her with pirates and still win all the time.
Saheeli is also a total bomb walker (who I admittedly struggle to build with), and there are juuuust enough vehicles coming out in every set that she always has a valid target for her ult (even if we're never getting Boomship 2.0)

And don't you DARE hate on my man Gid Z.  He was an absolute powerhouse back in Zendikar and I still love running him in Legacy events and win almost every time.  Sure he's useless in Standard, but man is he great with some ralliers.

I do agree that Arlinn, Chandra 2, Huatli Red, Greenjani and Sarkhan 1 all need buffs (although Sarkhan just needs another point or two of mana bonus and he'll be fine).  We've been saying this for a while, though, with no change in sight so its all theoretical at this point anyway.

DumasAG

Caeman said:

Walkers that are virtually useless outside their blocks:
Arlinn Kord- a total blast to play, but she is werewolf dependant, and unless we get more standard events that let us play with her, a very strong walker is just going to collect dust.
Gideon AoZ- he was bad in his block, and since he can’t use the Rally ability he’s worse outside.
Chandra ToD- REALLY poorly thought out; red is the one colour that has issues with energize, mainly because it focuses on eating energize gems, and has issues producing them, and her abilities don’t work outside Kaladesh.

Walkers that need a tweak:
Saheeli Rai- again, energize is needed, but more, prevalent, VEHICLES are very short in supply outside Kaladesh. Her mana gains are fine, but she needs a bit of an update.
Ajani Unyielding- low mana in green, and, you guessed it, energize.
Vraska RS- still standard, but once the pirates go to Legacy, she’s going to share a space next to Arlinn.
Huatli WP- same as Vraska, but with enrage.
Sarkhan the Mad- Low gains in his own colours.

Walkers that are fine, as is:
Sorin- yes, he’s got a low health, but he gains life back very easily, and lifelink is very easy to find in his colours. He’s designed to be creature dependent. 
Origins walkers- these guys are meant as training wheels, and while Jace Telepath Unbound, I have issues playing with, most of the others are simple enough with practice to put up  a decent fight.

How did it take until the second page to mention Arlinn in this conversation?

Laeuftbeidir

I like the block specific pws (apart from chandra. Of course). They're great in a specific environment and I don't play them anywhere else. Why should I? There's enough choice. I totally agree that some pws would need a buff, but before they take on old pws, I'd like to see them change their biggest fails - Vraska 2 and Huatli 1 in particular. Maybe sexy Jace, but it's not like I'd use him even if they did.

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Stormcrow

Yeah I can't really take a post seriously that says Vraska 1 and Saheeli need buffs but Sorin is fine. Vraska 1 is nothing like Arlinn; she has 2 fantastic abilities that are completely creature-independent and the one ability which benefits Pirates also creates them. Saheeli's mana gains and color combo are so strong she'd be great if she literally had no abilities, but while there haven't been great vehicles since Kaladesh there have been enough to keep that ability useful.

Sorin meanwhile has effectively no abilities any time he doesn't have creatures on the board and has too few hit points to have time to recover from a board wipe or a really bad draw. It's not just the creature-dependency or the low hit point total, it's the fact that the two things kind of compound each other.

Honestly, I even think G/W Ajani is basically fine. Not amazing, especially now that there are a number of other PWs with his huge life total, but fine.

Sarkhan 1 needs a boost to his gains, as do the Origins PWs, but Arlinn, Chandra 2 and Huatli 1 are the only ones I really think need serious redesigns.

Even Arlinn probably just needs a couple tweaks to be less werewolf-specific - make her (untransformed) second pull the next Wolf, Human, or Werewolf, and make her (transformed) 1st ability flip Werewolves and give them +3/+3 OR permanently give non-Werewolves the werewolf creature type and +3/+3.

Snappyturtle

When I joined it was when Amonkhet had just dropped. And I knew not to get Arlinn while having no knowledge of MTG. It was that obvious that I wouldn't have found a way to use her. And Samut is bae with double strike...

Edit: BTW what was Jace 1's original abilities? I keep reading about how it was basically OP and had to be nerfed like twice or something.

Caeman

Tweak, not buff. I’m not saying Saheeli, Vraska and Ajani are in need of an overhaul, and I will agree that Saheeli and Vraska are powerhouses, but, honestly, I’ve been seeing a lot less of Saheeli since Kaladesh went to Legacy, and if even one ability gets rendered unusable (and in Saheeli’s case, it’s two) it prevents full enjoyment of a PW’s gameplay, and while Vraska does have independent abilities, her second ability, while it does produce pirates tokens, is severely muted without a full crew. And, obviously Ajani Unyielding does need some kind of tweak, because when paired against Huatli CoS, he’s not up to snuff; yeah he’s... fine, but not much else, whereas Huatli is much more satisfying to play.

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