Planeswalker Game

Nice, obvious synergies, though Gressord's emblem is missworded; it should be "You get an emblem with "Creatures your team controls have "" style="max-width:100%;"]: This creature deals damage equal to it's power to any target."" I now realize is basically making all your creatures permanently unblockable turn six; so points off for that.Not as much synergy as the previous two (especially the middle abilities and less so with the ults), and the synergies are a little broader, but over all, they seem fine. The bizarre flavor is off putting, though.The synergy between the pluses is a little obscure and and wholely inneffective against anyone running a decent number of basic lands and/or a monocolor deck. The middle synergies are nice, if a bit narrow. The ultimates are where these two shine, however; nice trick making one ult reduce the other to cost .I won't dock points for this, but please be sure to include text versions along side image renders; it makes things easier in case there are rendering issues. That aside, I find the flavor a little odd that it's the same character on both. The Pluses don't synergies, but at least they're nice reflections of each other. The first ults of each are interesting; basically draw two cards each turn for each time you've pulled that off. The second ult on each covering the others weakness is also a nice touch, though, not strictly a kind of synergy.I like the story call back on this entry. Again, text would have been nice, but won't lose you points. The pluses synergies nicely and in a way the others haven't (no one else went for "turn sideways to win"). Jace's middle sets up for Vraska' middle, quite elegantly. (The later does need a woring change "Each player chooses a card name, then reveals the top card of their library. Each player that revealed a card with the name they chose returns a card from their graveyard to their hand.") The ults, while great in a vacuum, are rather lack-luster as counterparts; "more of the same" isn't a kind of synergy in my mind.I'm sorry, but mechanically, these would be better off with Partner rather than Partner with, if even that; these don't have the barest lick of synergy with each other.The first abilities synergies decently, though Yish's same like too much for a plus or 0 ability; making the 0 a +1 in it's place would have worked out nicely. The middles, as-is, don't really synergies with each other. The constant stream of aggro-from-beyond-the-veil is an interesting interaction; even more so if it works like I think it does. (i.e. The creature being sacrificed to Yish's emblem is brought back the next turn with Teresa's emblem.)

Finally, I dub oddnanref the judge of the next round!

Avra, Who Watched in Silence 
Legendary Planeswalker - Avra
: Until your next turn, creatures can't attack unless their controller pays for each creature they control that's attacking.
: Put a silence counter on target nonland permanent. Permanents with silence counters lose all abilities.
: You get an emblem with "At the beginning of each opponent's upkeep, they choose draw step, main phases or combat step. This turn, they skip the phases that they didn't choose."


Equilor is a plane with no future. According to some, it is the most ancient of worlds, and it has played host to thousands of tales over untold aeons - but no longer. It is old, and exhausted, and while wise beyond measure it has no reason to continue.

Avra could have given it a future, and a purpose. As a pre-Mending 'walker, she was mightier than gods. She could have rejuvenated the plane, its mana, and its people. But she waited and watched, and refused to intervene. The Mending came, and stripped her of her powers, and Equilor was forever lost to silence and decay.

Flo00
Two worlds is fine. I meant at least one.

I created a character for such a purpose long ago. I had called them The Worm of Ten Thousand Arms. The idea was that they were so large, they ate entire worlds to sate their eternal hunger. They did this through their many many mouths, which looked a lot like worms or centipedes. To most people who witnessed their world being devoured, that's all they knew it as, a large monstrous space worm. But The Worm was actually much bigger, and all they were seeing was a mouth arm. Please keep in mind, I had designed this character before I started playing Magic, or even had an inkling of an idea of what the Eldrazi were. Anywho, here's my submission.

Casstastrophe

Avra, Who Watched in Silence


Has a way to mitigate damage, It furthers its own plan, and an game ending ultimate. Which arrives at turn 7. She can easily shut down most if not all creature plans and way to deal with her. A inbuilt prison effect and a silence. I guess this balances it off, add the fact that it has little inbuilt card advantage. It is a fine card, though a nightmare for creature based decks. I wonder how does the interact with undying and persist? My guess is it shuts them down too. Although keeping track of silenced creature might be an issue with other counters on the set. The turn 7 ultimate, would probably be a little too strong for turn 7 at least. A little unfun also, because you just shut down the rest of the turn. I had a friend who played Fatespinner like that emblem and hehas not fun playing against it. Though it will decidedly end the game fast if you have a strong board presence.
Lore wise, I am not so sure. She did nothing, to save her plane, but she was not actively preventing others from doing something either. A small flavor clash, which I guess is fine considering it is hard to translate that into a mechanic in the game. The ultimate is really flavorful, showing how the futures was broken/lost/finished.

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Flo00
Zaram, Collider of Worlds

Seems a little inconsistent for competitive play. It is "extra draws" in red which makes it good for decks looking for that card advantage. The -1 seems way too unreliable to make use of anything. Not sure it even justifies it having -1. But it is a little to strong for 0. As you are getting something. The -8 is fine. It nails the flavor somewhat in the colliding two planes and returning lands that were "saved" before by himself. However the second part of the ultimate give the entire ability memory issues. It might becomes troublesome to remember which lands where put from exile and which ones where not. Though props for making it and end step trigger. Giving time for people to react. It is unreliable as a card, can be a one sided Armageddon, or a normal one.
Lore wise, the card does an okay job selling its flavor. The first two abilities do not mesh well, flavorwise, with the name, but the ultimate does give the name justice.

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Daij_Djan
Animus, the Mage

Interesting name considering what it does. This one does half of what you want a competitive planeswalker to do. It has damage mitigation, but no direct card advantage. The ultimate is very symmetric, though I can see some ways of breaking that symmetry: phasing, and things like Banishing light. It comes with an inbuilt removal for small guy blockers for the next turn. However, the -8 seems extremely hard to pull off, and breaking its symmetry requires jumping through so many hoops that I am not sure it is worth playing competitively. However, the design itself is fine. I cannot say it is overpowered.
Flavor-wise, it has an interesting backstory. It is a little disappointing not all of it could make it into the card. Certainly the restarting of the plane and its destruction are really on point with the ultimate. The -3 goes with the golem creation. I can see the fall damage on its +1. I just wish I could see the game he plays with his sister.

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fluffydeathbringer
Alahal, Who Salts the Eternities

This has everything a competitive planeswalker wants. +1 card advantage, +3 removal, -9 game-ending. The +1 seems fine, though it is basically a 2 for 1 specially since you control what you exile, so you can pick some troublesome cards. Plus drawing another card from that. Considering she gains advantage from her +1, she then gets more loyalty for removing threats on the board, you have to remember that is a color combination that is pretty good at destroying things. Green covers artifact and enchantments and black covers hand and creatures. So, your walker will always have removal in the deck to draw into. It is nice that the +3 is a shortcut to its -9, and that the +3 has synergy with its -9, making impossible for your opponent to play anything without hexproof or shroud and have it stick on the field after turn 10. Considering you want this is a more controlling deck you might make it so the -9 loses you less life.
Flavor-wise, she is rather mysterious on her backstory. +1 does not tell me much. Maybe she gets rid of something destroyed, and through that she gains knowledge of her future location. +3 eliminate further things from her investigation, but where it really shines is showing her attempting to get rid of what remains of her destroyed plane. Which brings us to the ultimate. The destruction of her plane. Seems cohesive enough, though it is hard to place the chronology the same way you execute her abilities. The story goes from the -9 to the +3. The +1 is investigation I guess so it is the last. However you execute her abilities +1.+3 -9.

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burntsquirrelman
Wyrm, of Ten Thousand Arms

This is a little complicated to evaluate. It is basically a massive walker with starting loyalty of 5. Having to include the arms in your deck for maximum playability though, makes the card parasitic. What is even more interesting is that its -13 is not what ends the game, it is mostly the 0. Which is a tutor and cheat into play ability. Combined with the massive things you can tutor for. Specially the Arm of Annihilation. That is basically a 2 for 1, with potential land destruction. That you find in Karn, Liberated but it costs -3. I guess the fact that it is limited to four cards might solve the issue, but damn. The other thing is the 8/8 beater that will keep on beating will the main body feeds it smaller arms, of which there is not end to. CMC8 cards should be powerful, this certainly fits the bill. However, like I mentioned before it is parasitic. You cannot print arms that are too powerful or you make a deck that depends only on arms, but if you make them too weak it is not worth playing.
Lore wise, it is basically another form of eldrazi. Though I guess it has some differences they are minor. Both live in the Blind Eternities, both feed on worlds, killing its presence on a world does not kill the main body, and it spread smaller versions of itself to digest the entire planet. The main difference is the art. One hand you have worms, on the other you have squid. Also, it makes little sense to have an arm summon more arms if the people only see an arm as a big worm. What are the other arms then? Won't they see a big worm mouth, with several smaller tentacles then? Hard to describe. Either it is not anything major.

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The winner is fluffydeathbringer. Good luck

Well, it took me a while to figure out which character to use (as I sadly either don't know much and/or don't care about the ones we were left with), but in the end I went with Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver. To do something new I decided to take a more tribal focussed monoblack approach - except I tried to broaden up the supported tribes a bit while staying in flavor (just as WotC does sometimes)..

I guess I'll swoop in and try my hand at this.


I thought it would be cool to make a duel deck Saheeli, so this is my attempt.


Saheeli, Boundless Innovator 
Legendary Planeswalker - Saheeli
: Reveal the top two cards of your library. Put all artifact cards revealed this way into your hand, and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.

:Target an artifact you control. At the end of the turn, create a token that's a copy of that artifact.

:Search your library for a permanent card, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle your library.





(I made the -3 this way to prevent some of the broken combos that happened with the original from happening again.)

Yeah,I was considering making it 3 permanents for ult but I kind of forgot to change it.

As for the challenge, I like the battlebond and other commander planeswalkers and everything, but maybe there is more that can be done with the planeswalker with other ability workspace.


Challenge: Create a planeswalker with a non loyalty ability. This can include activated, triggered, or even a static or keyword ability. Allowing it as a commander is still ok, but try to innovate a little. Let's also see some new stuff on it if you do.

Drea, Eternal Champion  
Legendary Planeswalker - Drea  
Whenever a creature without flanking attacks CARDNAME, it gets -1/-1 until end of turn. 
: Until end of turn, CARNDAME becomes a 4/4 white and black Vampire Soldier creature with lifelink and flanking. She's still a planeswalker. Prevent all damage that would be dealt to her this turn. 
: Exile target tapped creature. You gain 4 life. 
: Target opponent's life total becomes 4. You gain life equal to the amount of life they lost this way.

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Teysa, Orzhov Emissary
Legendary Planeswalker- Teysa
, Pay 1 life: Put a loyalty counter on ~. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.
: Up to one target creature gains lifelink until end of turn.
: Choose target creature. You may pay X life, where X is that creature’s converted mana cost. If you do, destroy that creature.
: You get an emblem with “Nonland, nonplaneswalker permanents you control have extort.”


e: should be "Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery." but idk if I will be able to change render

Okay well it's time to judge.

viriss : Zella, Master of Forms: I like the +1. Easily repeatable manifest is actually really cool, although the fact that this basically makes a 2/2 makes it a tad strong, especially with it's activated ability also protecting it from some spells.     Although I have to admit that they work well together and this is the type of stuff I really liked to see for this. The ult is alright and I get that it's supposed to work with manifest, but it probably could have been better if it were just all creatures     getting +2/+2 and trample. The vigilance is also a little weird.

Fleur : Drea, Eternal Champion: The ability being a downside is good but I really don't see why this needs a downside, especially because it doesn't get indestructible like gideon. Speaking of gideon, I see your trying to make it different from     him with flanking and with lifelink, but this still doesn't really separate itself that much, and it doesnt help that some of what makes it different is a bunch of negatives. The +1 in a set with flanking even is more of a hinderence than an upside,     because once again it's not indestructible. Now moving on to the other abilities, the -3 is pretty good but fair, and the ultimate is pretty balanced for how hard it is to get to it.

gateways7 : Ychra, Guileful Assassin: I'm assuming you meant exile Ychra? I can't see why you would make a planeswaker like this that can't be attacked without a downside so I'm going to rate it that it's ability is that it blinks itself.
    In this case, pretty cool evasion ability, although it returns with 1 loyalty every time. Interesting, although it could do with "and isn't blocked" clause, otherwise the opponent can just keep blinking it for free basically. The +1 is cool, with     temporary tokens that you can either attack or block with. And for the ult, I don't know the exactly flavor behind it, but set life to 1 and exile all permenants is about as close to just straight up target player loses the game as I can think,     however as printed it would need to survive 5 turns without even being attacked to use, so ok. For more flavor, maybe it could just set a players life to 1 and give you some unblockable haste guys or something similar, or maybe exiles the     stuff until the end of their turn. I don't know what was the flavor behind the ultimate, but as it stands it's a pretty plain one right now.

Akai Ryu : Ozkathatl, the Sacred Sage: Nice etb ability the synergizes with the +1 and scales up with multiplayer. The +1 is also cool because it can be very good or very bad depending, although I would add a may to it so it can't backfire. For     the second +1, pretty good ability when the first +1 can't work or if you need hexproof and lifelink on something. The ultimate isn't very good but it's probably for the best considering it has two +1's and one of them is fairly good. Pretty neat     design.

augur : Teysa, Orzhov Emissary: The activated ability is playing with fire, so the rest of the card needs to be made with it in mind, or else it could be broken easily. Keeping this in mind for the three loyalty abilities. At first glance, it's good     that this card doesn't have any +'s, forcing you to pay life for loyalty counters. The two loyalty is also good for this reason. The 0 is pretty good for what it is, which is an ability to use without having to pay life to get up to. -2 is pretty good and     synergizes with what this card wants you to do, which I beleive is gain life to pay life. And the -5 is why this card suffers from it's ability. It's way too easy to get up to an ultimate this powerful, especially since you can hold off for a turn you     know it can stay on the board for a turn, then play it and next turn up it three times with only paying three life and six mana. Now it doesn't seem bad for a finisher to need that much setup, but emblems being untargetable and practically     unkillable means that there is nothing you can do to remove this. It also probably should have been creatures you control have extort or the loyalty cost increased drastically. The ultimate is the only big issue with this, but it's a big issue when     it can be easily gotten to with just a single turn of it surviving.

ZephyrPhantom : Lyriel, Scheming Executor: For the sudo extort ability, I love this and it's actually really good flavor. The starting loyalty may need to be a tad lower because of how many counters can get on this thin in a turn. The +1 is     great life gain but once again gives them another way to gain a loyalty counter, which as I said with the current starting loyalty might be an issue, making it too sticky and easy to ult. Speaking of which, the ult is a big finish unless the     opponent has a board wipe. Since you only really need to extort twice and +1 to even get to seven, it may be too simple to get to the ult, but can be fixed by just increasing the loyalty cost, decreasing starting loyalty, or making the +1 a 0     instead.

Sorry if I was a little wordy on judging this.

And the winner is.....

Don't be, good feedback is always useful.

Thanks for that, by the way- I think I balanced it too much around being a three-drop that you would have to invest in for multiple turns. That could have worked if the activated ability was 1/turn, but it wasn't. You're right in that there's little risk in dropping this if you can ult next turn in lategame.

As for the ult itself, I'm honestly unsure of how useful of a finisher it would be, given the conditions needed for it to have a major impact (need permanents, extra mana, cards in hand). That being said, you're right again in that having no way to deal with it would be irritating. I like the suggestion of switching it to creatures.

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Zurgo Armycleaver
Legendary Planeswalker- Zurgo
: At the beginning of your next declare attackers step, up to one target creature you control gains first strike, indestructible, and menace until end of turn.
: Until end of turn, ~ becomes a 7/4 Orc Warrior creature with haste and indestructible that's still a planeswalker. Prevent all damage that would be dealt to him this turn.
: You get an emblem with "Whenever a creature you control attacks, put two +1/+1 counters on it."


edit 7 21: changed loyalty values

mixedrandomj: Thanks for the feedback. I do agree that the planeswalker in a lot of ways did feel like Gideon (not good), but I'd be inclined to point out the fact that Drea prevents all damage dealt to her while a creature, which functions as indestructible would save for the protection from creature removal, in case you missed that part. 

As well, I'm a bit confused by what you mean when you say that Drea's static ability is a downside - it debuffs creatures without flanking that attack her, making it harder for her to be killed. I don't really see how that's downside, unless I've worded it in a way that's ambiguous for you, in which case I'd love to know how to make it better. 

Nebuchadnezzar the Wise  
Legendary Planeswalker - Nebuchadnezzar  
: You draw a card and lose 1 life. 
: Name a card, then target player reveals their hand. They discard each nonland card with the chosen name, then draw a card for each card discarded this way.
: You get an emblem with "Discard two cards: Gain control of target permanent." 
 

relevant links:
gatherer - gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Discussion.aspx?multiverseid=1671
lore - mtg.gamepedia.com/Nebuchadnezzar