The Big Three

ArielSira

I would have loved it if they would have made the latest Ajani a tricolor walker, his mana is already +3 in Naya colors.

wickedwitch74

Regarding ways to address the issue...

I think what is needed is a fundamental change to the cards you can add to a Planeswalker's deck.

If a walker has positive mana gains in a color, then you should be able to add cards of that color to your deck.

Thus, the original five Planeswalkers would essentially all be allowed to build three-color decks.

This would make many single-color Planeswalkers immediately viable in competitive events, and far more dangerous in their deck construction, plus it would be more in-line with the paper game, where you splash colors all the time.

This would allow for countless new strategies, and a Planeswalkers abilities would be far more relevant, since access to certain cards (translation: blue) is no longer the most important consideration for using a walker.

Leaving node access the same as it is now, would still give multi-color walkers far greater exposure to the events and nodes they can participate in. I see no reason to change this, and this gives those walkers an edge.

It's a minor tweak in functionality, but the impact would be far-reaching and allow for a much richer gaming experience.

greenmeanie

In facing what some say are the big 3 only S3 really gives me problems.  I think Ugin the spirit Dragon is underrated.  With his first ability to up your Mana bonuses by a total of 6 and has access to every card.  He can be a problem.  

nerdstrap

@wickedwitch74 that’s an amazing idea

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wickedwitch74

starfall said:

It's an interesting idea but I don't like it in practice.

Challenge is created by including more restrictions, not removing them, and there are too many things in this game making things easier for the player, whether through power creep, or making Greg stupider, or shifting events from Standard to Legacy. (I prefer changes to the game like running a Block format, like RaW!)

It's much harder to cast your splash colors in paper than you suggest!

I disagree about restrictions. Suddenly flooding players with a huge amount of deckbuilding options would open up the Metagame enormously, and it would likely solve the issue at the heart of this post, which is the overabundance of Big Three decks in competitive events.

Plus, people have spent money on this game. Taking things away from players after they have paid for it is a sure-fire way to piss them off. 

As the designers go through the growing pains of recognizing and fixing issues, they will sort out problems like BSZ and Etali. In that sense, I agree with restrictions. Removing problems caused by poor game design is necessary.

In continuing to think about my proposal, I recognized that using this system, it would be possible for a single-color Planeswalker (like Chandra I) to suddenly build a straight black or green deck. This should not be possible, and I would propose the following change:

Do away with the deckbuilding restrictions on Creature/Spell/Support. This is an unnecessary, un-fun restriction. 

Instead, impose a "splash" limit. Chandra can have card maximums of 10 Red Cards, 1 Black card and 1 Green card when building a deck.

The 1 is not arbitrary. Instead it is the value of the walkers' (Chandra I, in this case) mana gains in black/green.

This would allow some deckbuilding variety, but not an overabundance of splashing into other colors.

Narcoticsagent

I like your splash idea. But I'm not sure about the removing creature/spell/support limits.

greenmeanie

Its a novel idea you have but what do you do about the dual color cards.  How would they count. 

Mburn7

I like that splash idea.  Its similar to one that was proposed a while ago.

That one said that any walker could use any card, but the casting cost would increase for each color of the card not in your walker identity.  So, for example, Reason//Believe would cost 11 for Kiora, but cost 16 for Garruk and 21 for Koth (if the cost increase was 5 per color, it would take some testing to find the right balance).

This splashing idea seems much simpler, though, and probably less broken.  I like it!

wickedwitch74

greenmeanie said:

Its a novel idea you have but what do you do about the dual color cards.  How would they count. 

The most elegant solution would be to say... if a walker has a positive mana gain in both colors, then you can use a dual-color card. Thus, Chandra I could use Gruul Ragebeast but not Firemane Avenger.

Unfortunately, though, this creates a problem with five-color cards (Niv-Mizzet Reborn), which would only be available to Karn and Ugin.

Maybe that's kind of cool, though, giving those walkers access to everything.

greenmeanie

wickedwitch74 said:

Unfortunately, though, this creates a problem with five-color cards (Niv-Mizzet Reborn), which would only be available to Karn and Ugin. 

Maybe that's kind of cool, though, giving those walkers access to everything.

Don't forget about Shaleeli Rai.  She has all plus Mana gains in all colors too.

Gabrosin

This game already has a problem where the strongest cards are all you ever have reason to play, and making it easier for monocolor planeswalkers to mix and match among colors is only going to make that worse.

wickedwitch74

Gabrosin said:

This game already has a problem where the strongest cards are all you ever have reason to play, and making it easier for monocolor planeswalkers to mix and match among colors is only going to make that worse.

this is also how it is in paper magic.

the problem you are talking about is card balance, which certainly needs addressing.

i'm suggesting we, at least, allow other planeswalkers to join the party. sure, under my proposal i can BSZ/Etali/Scapeshift/Thunderherd to my heart's content with new walkers, but at least i'll be able to try some new strategies and not see the same three walkers EVERY time in competitive events.

Bil

All those walkers have something in common that could, i suppose, explain why they are overplayed.

They allow to splash blue in nodes of other colors ... And blue is probably the most powerful color in the current meta due to BSZ (in particular) and other extremely powerful cards like StV, River's rebuke and so on ...

I suppose we could see more variety of walkers in events when those cards rotate out.

IM_CARLOS

greenmeanie said:

In facing what some say are the big 3 only S3 really gives me problems.  I think Ugin the spirit Dragon is underrated.  With his first ability to up your Mana bonuses by a total of 6 and has access to every card.  He can be a problem.  

 No color pw are not really great for color node events. But thry are great for pve or free nodes. 

IM_CARLOS

Bil said:

All those walkers have something in common that could, i suppose, explain why they are overplayed.

They allow to splash blue in nodes of other colors ... And blue is probably the most powerful color in the current meta due to BSZ (in particular) and other extremely powerful cards like StV, River's rebuke and so on ...

I suppose we could see more variety of walkers in events when those cards rotate out.

Blue was the key to victory for a long time in MTG too. 

But you are right, in MTGPQ they overextended the power of blue a little. 

Matthew

wickedwitch74 said:

I disagree about restrictions. Suddenly flooding players with a huge amount of deckbuilding options would open up the Metagame enormously, and it would likely solve the issue at the heart of this post, which is the overabundance of Big Three decks in competitive events.

....

This would allow some deckbuilding variety, but not an overabundance of splashing into other colors.

Your updated suggestion about splashing off-color cards is a much better option. Here is why:

At the time of this post, there are 27 monocolor PWs. Six of those are mono-blue, so we'll remove them from the equation for reasons I'll elaborate on shortly.

Of the remaining 21 PWs, 13 would have access to blue under your original proposal. A few others have pointed this out as well. 13 new blue-capable PWs is the last thing this game needs right now. Instead of focusing on this sort of thing as a design aspect, they should be focusing on card balance. Fix the cards and it won't matter nearly as much that "The Big 3" can play with blue cards.

Your updated suggestion, about allowing a splash based on the blue mana bonus, is better at least in theory. But then you still have most of these characters now able to run amok with BSZ at the very least, or StV, or River's Rebuke, or any of a dozen other apex threat cards that currently exist in blue. Which brings me back to my counterargument: fix the pie chart and implement better checks and balances in the card design process first, while also giving some attention to long-time offenders like Startled Awake, Prism Array, and other similarly busted cards.

Finally, I have to say that I do at least agree with the sentiment of your argument. Many of the monocolor PWs need some updating. Badly. They've said for months now that it's something on their radar, and there was even an in-app poll a few months back that asked about PWs we thought needed a redesign. So hopefully we see something about it soon-ish, maybe by Christmas. But as they say, they're "a small team and these things take time", so I'm not holding my breath.

arNero

Yeah, even I admit that if I bother playing things like Legacy events or Trial of the Planes, usually I'll include Sarkhan and Tamiyo in the mix to abuse Prism Array. I do admit I did call for its nerfing, but looking at the grindy mess this game has become, I feel forced to play fast, and especially in Trials of the Planes, where you cannot lose more than 4 matches, this gives me no incentive to experiment and take risk. Thus, Prism Array on Tami, Sakrhan and Kiora....