Who's the Killer

Janosik

This is my favorite new coalition event in quite some time!

I like the color restrictions on the nodes, forcing players to play with more variety of Planeswalkers. We've gotten too used to 5 color nodes in coalition events and it's pretty boring. Even 3 color restrictions are a bit too loose, since most of us play with 2 or 3 color Planeswalkers anyway. In Family Business event, for example, I play exactly the same Ral deck in both nodes as I play in every other coalition event with 5 color nodes! I really wouldn't mind seeing a few single color nodes in the future.

On first glance, the objectives on the top node look a little narrow, and the numbers look a little high, but it works out ok. Thank god the 'Destroy 5 creatures' objective isn't the 'Destroy 5 opposing creatures' objective we've all come to despise in the past (the nightmare scenario here being when Greg plays a creatureless deck!). The synergy of the event node support with both objectives is deeply appreciated (it creates spirits, and those sprits are extra creatures on the board that you can destroy!). Often the event node support is an afterthought in the design of an event, and we players don't even bother to read what it does, but here it's relevant and useful.

'Summon 5 spirits' is probably a bit too narrow as an objective, but at least Spirit is a common creature type that exists outside of the current set, and there are some good playable ones in Standard (like Agrus Kos, Faithbound Judge, or Spell Queller). Still, this objective could probably do with being broadened out to avoid too much of a bottleneck when deckbuilding... perhaps it could name multiple creature types, like the objectives in Ravnica at War used to. There are, according to the search function, 71 cards which say 'Spirit' currently in Standard, but let's not pretend that anything more than a tiny franction of them are playable. Ain't nobody falling over themselves to play with Revenants and Didact Echos in a deck that might face up against Ghaltas and Blossoming Tortoises.

Finally: it helps a lot that Webcore have started designing more cards that say "Destroy target creature" and not "Destroy target opposing creature" so you don't have to durdle around waiting for Greg to play creatures to kill (I wrote about this issue here). One thing, tho, is that because of this, Greg is killing his own creatures more now than he has for a while, and that can make a lot of games pretty easy and dull to play. One boolean flag in the code on every card, guys, it's not a lot of data, and not a lot of work to remember to set it. Please, please don't go back to 'Destroy target opposing creature' on every kill card. You can presumably see how that would make this event much more annoying to play.

Xibvert

The event seems good. I'm okay with the objectives as is. The thing I'd most want to change is the typical behavior of the opponent's decks being all mixed together so that your opponent's deck might be from the other node and not built for the node you're playing. With the colors being more restricted it stands out even more when you're opponent is using a Planeswalker that isn't eligible to be used for the node you're playing.