Planeswalker Game

Ashtor, Roilbender
Legendary Planeswalker - Ashtor
: Search you library for a Plains card. If an opponent controls more lands than you, put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise, put it into our hand.
: Put X +1/+1 counters on target land you control. It becomes a 0/0 Elemental creature with haste that’s still a land.
: Destroy all nonland permanents you don’t control.

Mu’ag, the Defiler
Legendary Planeswalker — Mu’ag
: You may sacrifice a Swamp. If you do, target creature gets -2/-2 until end of turn
: Search your library for a Swamp card and put it into your hand, then shuffle your library. Each opponent loses 2 life.
: Return all Swamp cards from your graveyard to the battlefield, then for each Swamp you control, destroy up to one target creature.

This was the only basic type left, but fortunately Black loves their Swamps

Daij_Djan Judging soon?

It's been a couple of tomorrows, now.

Thank you very much for the win, Daij_Djan ! Fortresses were actually half the inspiration for implements, with the other half being a thread about wanting to have equipment the player could attach to themselves and use to get directly into the battle. The idea resonated with me, but general sentiment was that it mucked up the paradigm of the game too much, so I looked for another way to represent the player wielding mighty tools too great for lesser hands. As far as the potential benefits of being an artifact, I'm still working on what the proper PL should be, but it's something I keep in mind, and there's already a list of various guidelines I use in designing them to try and keep things at a good balance and theming.

As for the next challenge...

Design a planeswalker card for Mishra.

Yeah, that's right. Mishra. Urza's brother.

This might be a weird one, since you'll all be designing the same character. However, keep in mind that it doesn't have to be the historic Mishra. Canonically, Mishra never became a planeswalker, so whatever you design will be a planeshifted/timeshifted version of him. You're free to take things in any direction where his life might have gone differently, either as a consequence of or resulting in his gaining the planeswalker spark, as long as there's still a recognizable connection to the original character. Or, maybe you think that in the instant his brother went to destroy him, his latent spark awakened and he planeshifted away. It's really up to you.

Endless Ranks of the Dead and March of the Machines together at last, with Coat of Arms thrown in for good measure. Needed? No. Balanced? Probably also no. Fun? Oh yeah.

Edit: viriss Uh, I think you missed one of the requirements, friend. ^^;

For some reason he sort of looks like a samurai to me...

Sorry for being a few days late on this.

viriss : You know what? I would have actually judged the original entry on the bold choice to stick with canon and not make a planeswalker.

That said, making a sparker is an interesting choice too. The condition to get him to spark seems pretty easy to meet, though, considering that he actually gives you two token artifacts to spare (and speaking of "him", cards don't have a gender, so using gendered pronouns is a bit wonky). Even without sparking, getting two clues and a 3/3 for 3 is pretty good, even with a three colour split. On the flip side, things seem a bit more reasonable, though I have to nitpick that it's actually Urza who has the strongest connection to Ornithopters (as noted in the flavour text). Giving permanent +1/+1 to all artifact creatures might be considerable better, though, when he can both generate tokens and pull historics onto the board. Grant you, only pulling from the hand - and not having a way to fill your hand - helps a lot with the latter. Altogether, I don't think it's necessarily broken, but still feels a bit pushed to me.

Jartis : Well, I'd have to agree with your assessment on balance. I think any one of these abilities could make for a strong planeswalker. The combination of all of them seems pretty over the top. I think the aggressive costing and low loyalty (it's interesting that even his basic -L will pop him on turn one) almost makes up for it, but not really. Definitely in the fun-but-unprintable category.

Flo00 : First thing I notice, some solid use of lore. The abilities work well both for Mishra, and for Phyrexia, which is a plus. None of them seems too powerful for where they're costed, and there's some nice synergy with the first and second, which I appreciate because too often it feels like the best way to use a 'walker is to pretend their middle ability doesn't exist. I would almost have preferred the middle ability cost -4, but as-is, it's a significant stall not just on the ultimate, but on getting to use it again, which means there's some real tactical decision making that needs done. The only other area I could see for complaint is that permanent type changes will mean added bookkeeping, but it's so thematically appropriate here, that I can't really make a serious complaint there, either.

Tesagk : Don't worry, he looks like a samurai to me too.

This feels like a pretty solidly balanced card, and I'd say you have the "burning quest for vengeance" angle down. On the middle ability, I'm not sure if I'm reading it right, but it seems like once you have exiled cards, they're a part of your hand from exile for the rest of the game until you cast them? That might actually be a little strong, if I'm reading it right, since it's essentially "draw three cards" with the added perk that opponents can't touch them. That may be a fault of my interpretation, though. My real biggest concern here is that there's not too much to make this card recognizably Mishra. Contrast with Braids, Conjurer Adept, where its the same cost with a different colour, same P/T, and the ability is a direct inversion of her original version's effect. Grant you, there's not an original card to take that approach with. Still, Mishra is best known for being an artificer, so having your card do something with artifacts would have helped tie it all together. It's not a bad card. It's just that the flavour feels a little weak.

gateways7 : Overall, this seems fairly solid. Getting a +2 from sifting up artifacts might be a little strong, but it's helped by his having a low loyalty. On the second ability, I'm not sure if "controls an Urza's" works, though. Yes, that is the subtype given to the Urza-lands, but it feels like an odd condition to go off of. I could also see it leading to arguments on whether or not cards like Urza's Avenger or Urza's Tome qualify as "an Urza's"...or for that matter, if having one of the "Urza's" spells on the stack counts. I imagine you did this because the only Urza planeswalker is silver-bordered, but it still feels off. Otherwise, like I said, in terms of flavour and balance it's pretty solid.


My overall favourite, and this week's winner, is Flo00.

I might have gone too far this time, but "nothing" is technically something different from the usual mana symbols, right?

Hybrid might seem like the obvious "weird" cost, but it's very tricky to design for while staying in color (Also, my card represents my BB character who also is my next set's protagonist for those interested )