Karn Discussion

FindingHeart8 said:

Brigby said:

Here's Karn's official Planeswalker Details thread, if anyone is interested: Karn, Scion of Urza

so level 3 and 4 of Karn's token lose prevent damage?

They still have it.

I really thought about buying him. He looks so tempting, and I'm short of gold, so the offer ain't that bad..
but then I realized :
-I am still fighting to get good Huatli to 60 (bad Huatli can stay wherever she is), there is no way I can make him really enjoyable before he is available for gold anyway.. So I can just finish Huatli and then start saving
-there's next to nothing to play him in. This would be the perfect walker to be promoted in a special event, maybe three three colored nodes with him as the only option, and every player having access to him just to try out how nuts thus could be

ManiiNames said:

This feeds back into lots of stuff to buy but nothing to play.  Karn needs runes like they are going out of style.  If I could somehow get runes I might be willing to pay the $20, but given how starved we are I just don't see the point.

Its the same problem I have with Bolas.  Too much need and not enough time.  I had to skip Angrath because there was no way I could level him anywhere near enough to use (luckily H1 and Jace 3 were easy to skip).

I'm worried I won't be able to get Teferi when he comes out, even though I predict really wanting him.

We need more recovery time between sets (ironic considering how much time we had between HOU and IXN)

MADAFAKA said:

Mburn7 said:

ManiiNames said:

This feeds back into lots of stuff to buy but nothing to play.  Karn needs runes like they are going out of style.  If I could somehow get runes I might be willing to pay the $20, but given how starved we are I just don't see the point.

Its the same problem I have with Bolas.  Too much need and not enough time.  I had to skip Angrath because there was no way I could level him anywhere near enough to use (luckily H1 and Jace 3 were easy to skip).

I'm worried I won't be able to get Teferi when he comes out, even though I predict really wanting him.

We need more recovery time between sets (ironic considering how much time we had between HOU and IXN)

Jace 3 is not that bad. Garuk, Tez1 and H1 were easier to skip for me. Jace 3 will be good if more illusion type creatures are released.
So far the game has only 2 illusion creatures. Illusion and lizards need some love.

As for Karn, I wont be able to use him due to lack of runes. I want to level up H2 with the little runes I have left

As far as I know, there are no illusion creatures in Dominaria. So you'll have to wait if you need more.

I am also struggling to level up my walkers, my H2 is at 40, my Bolas is at 40, and my new Karn is only 20.  And I'm expecting Teferi to be awesome and available in a month or so (depending on release).

Low level Karn is decent, but definitely not competitive.  

i am not sure he is though, it is a lot i am hating the graind as much as anyone but i can see some nasty potential in him and with another set of new cards some made for him? hmm could be fun

I think it's great that we have so many options, but we really need more resources to balance it out.

I'll pour most of the stockpile of runes I had into Vraska (because green/black opens up more competitive options right?), but ooooh wait, Angrath just got released and he's 2nd ability is sweet, so I think I'll spend the remaining runes on...wait...they're releasing H2??  Alright I'll put the rest of my runes into her and make her much more powerful than my Ajani2 and...now they're releasing a 5-color walker???  I spent all these runes trying to widen the planeswalker color-spectrum and now there's a planeswalker that's the skeleton key, but maybe over time I can level him up to a competitive level and..wait now they're releasing Teferi...

***shakes rune piggy-bank and only dust comes out***

This is going to take a while

Unless you’re carrying over a ton of runes from some heavy grinding a year or more back, leveling up every PW is something you’ll just have to accept will require patience.  
I’ve been playing about 9 months, and while I have all the PWs in the game, only 9 of them are at level 60.  5 are still at level 1, waiting until I have time and runes to work out a good enough level/deck strategy for them.  
In the meantime I try to find a sweet spot to make whatever one I’m actively working on competitive.  Oftentimes that means my rune reserves are running empty while I play through a few more days to get where I want to be, but that’s how the game works.  
I found Karn to be playable at 6, once his 1st is unlocked, but more competitive at 16.  Currently I have him at 30 and having fun there.  I can’t afford 60 now, not by a long shot, so I might leave him where he is for the time being.

Mburn7 said:

ManiiNames said:

320k runes for Karn is a mistake imo. 

You're right, it should be more.  He's essentially a 5-color walker, with pretty sweet abilities.  Costing him at 3 colors (a la Bolas) is generous

Not so much.  In most standard events he's basically a mono PW... not exactly over-the-top. But yeah, in TG he really emphasizes what a broken waste of time legacy is.

Some people see Karn as an opportunity to break things and go more OP than they used to. And that's fair game. I am half-Spike, so I enjoy that aspect.
With that being said, I agree with @ManiiNames that the truly spectacular use of Karn is in PVE. A smart way of balancing him out for all those important PVP events.

Now on the other hand, Karn is a superb addition to finally building quirky and interesting decks that go beyond what we had as current limitations. So for Johnnies and Timmies, he goes beyond winning, as a goldmine of deckbuilding and experimenting!
Sure, I can always play Deploy-Omni-HUF-combo if I choose to, but over the past week I've been building weird thematic Karn decks that may not be TOP decks, yet are still incredibly fun, such as:
- Molten Nursery-centered deck, focusing on token creation
- Crested Sunmare rainbow combo (basically take full advantage of Crested Sunmare)
- Budget decks, limited to commons and uncommons only (until now I was not actually interested in this, but now, hey, this is actually fun)
- 5x2 Spell Storm (take full advantage of Imminent Doom, but with the restriction of having exactly 2 cards per each color)
- Karn of Ravnica (pick exactly one card for each two-color combination, a.k.a Ravnica guild)
- The most annoying Karn deck ever (okay, this one was a bit nasty of me but it was a one-time experiment... I basically put into the deck all those annoying cards we dread to see and gave it a shot - like Oketra's Final Mercy, Settle the Wreckage, Overwhelming Splendor, Crush of Tentacles, Insidious Will & No Mercy. I actually lost a couple of times due to the lack of synergy and low mana gains and it was actually quite annoying to play with as well...)

I've also started playing with him in Across Ixalan where the stakes are lower, and he's actually forced me to go monocolored (which I haven't done in a long long time).

I still want to experiment with other things like Allies, creatureless decks and infinite combos that go beyond the obvious.

So I'm sorry, I get where everyone's overpowered concern is, but as long as PVP events don't go full rainbow on nodes, I don't see the tragedy.

Besides, even though I am sick of seeing Bolas, Koth and Nahiri everywhere, I've adapted to that metagame. People are excited at first about this planeswalker or that, but then they move on when the next shiny new toy arrives. Look at modern in paper magic, where it's very rare to see a new card in the deck, and if it is ubiquitous for a short period of time you soon see it appear far less. Back when Keranos came out, people were super excited about him. How many modern players actually play it now?

And coming back to MTGPQ, let's not forget that when you have 5 nodes and a Karn. You can't just put him in all nodes (unless you are playing Across Ixalan & Trial of the Planes).