Planeswalkers - Are They Irredeemably Broken?

[Thomas David Baker]

Creatures with an enters-the-battlefield effect are good because even if they are immediately killed you got something out of them.

 

Artifacts like Staff of Dominance with multiple activated abilities are good because they give you options.

 

Creatures and Artifacts are the two must vulnerable types in the game.

 

Planeswalkers have both of those benefits (to some degree), have no cost associated with their activated abilities, and are (from the hand, anyway) the *least* vulnerable type in the game.

 

Aren't they just fundamentally broken?

 

The other day I was playing my nearly-competitive Suicide Black Legacy deck (it was Tier 1 pre-Time Spiral, probably) and had a Hypnotic Specter, a Nantuko Shade,removal spells in hand and an opponent with 12 life, a Noble Hierarch, a Dryad Arbor and no cards.  Then he drew and played Venser, the Sojourner - not the best Planeswalker of all time.  And suddenly I have to kill this 5 life mini-player that gains 2 life a turn or lose the game.  It wasn't that I minded the game swinging away from me because he drew something good.  It was specifically that *kind* of swing that was annoying.  Am I just being a killjoy thinking that Hymn to Tourach should be part of the game but Venser, the Sojourner should not?

 

[Tom Reeve]

Venser doesn't even do anything in that situation. I guess you can kill him if you want?

Would you rather he just made Progenitus like Bant decks often tend to?

On the main point, I don't think Planeswalkers are inherently broken. I think they are probably very easy to make overpowered or underpowered, relative to other card types. Single increments in casting cost, starting loyalty and ability numbers can make a huge difference in real-terms power level (if Nissa had started with 3 loyalty for example, she probably would have seen quite a lot of play,) and particular confluences of abilities and metagames can have unhealthy results. Jace TMS definitely leapt straight over the line, and I can see some degree of argument against maybe Gideon and Ajani Vengeant in 'frustrating play experiences' terms. The rest? Not so much.

[Philip Dickinson]

the planeswalker card type is really dumb and magic would be better without it

[Daniel Royde]

Can they be fundamentally broken if there are bad ones? Surely it's just a matter of costing/ numbers etc like Mr Reeve says?

[Thomas David Baker]

I guess I don't mean broken, I guess I mean always unfun.

They just aren't fun to me.

I want someone to convince me they are :)

[Dan Barrett]

Have you never played a control deck with Jace Beleren? It's a good card, but totally fair.

 

Or a green deck with Garruk?

 

The non-broken, non-terrible planeswalkers all seem fine to me.

[Glenn Goldsworthy]

to be fair the ones that can defend themselves (garruck, mind sculpter, elspeth) are the ones that are unfair

[James Mills]

Going ultimate with Jace TMS is as fun as it gets.

[Glenn Goldsworthy]

I would say it isn't fun at all, I am no a massive fan of plainswalkers in general as Tom said finding the right balance has obviously proved difficult and if they mess it up then these can easily dominate an entire format.  They are i of the reasons I don't like playing standard as now money talks (much more than it used to)

James Mills said:

Going ultimate with Jace TMS is as fun as it gets.

[Dan Barrett]

No it isn't - cards that make your opponent concede rather than let you play out a win are terrible.

James Mills said:

Going ultimate with Jace TMS is as fun as it gets.

[Glenn Goldsworthy]

mills how often have you been on the receiving end of him, he is not in anyway fun

[Simon Baldwin]

JTMS is not fun (it actually stopped my girlfriend from wanting to go to any more Standard events after attending one single Game Day).

 

Tom, your complaint against Planeswalkers is that they are as powerful as some creature/artifacts, and that creatures/artifacts are still fun because they can be destroyed (or otherwise interacted with), do you think if there were more ways to interact (or just destroy) them, they would be more fun?

[Thomas David Baker]

Well, I don't like the branding/flavor of Planeswalkers but I could definitely live with that or ignore it if they didn't feel so unfun in the game.

Yes, I think the lack of answers is the heart of the problem.  If they were a subtype of Artifact with weird rules around their activated abilities then I wouldn't care.  I'd wonder why they wanted to print such flexible and powerful artifacts, but I'd just have a decent amount of Artifact hate and they would effectively be one-shot spells that ate an anti-artifact spell (hopefully something like Manic Vandal so I don't end up behind on the deal).

I think my main problem is the minigame they create when they arrive because of the lack of answers.  SOM Block.  You have five cards, they have none.  You have 20 life, they have 7.  The board is empty apart from three Wellsprings of yours and they have a 1/1.  You have Glissa in hand.  They draw and play Koth.  Yikes.  There is a good chance they will ultimate it which almost assures victory (Thrun, whom I also hate, might win it for you I guess).  When your opponent plays Koth you must have Beast Within in hand, or be dominating the board.  If either of these things are not true you have to somehow rapidly make them true and throw all your resources, possibly wastefully, at this thing that just arrived, to get back to the game you were playing before he arrived.  Who hasn't attacked a Planeswalker with three creatures, two of whom die, to get in 1 or 2 damage so they don't ultimate?

I don't know quite why they bug me so. There are lots of more powerful things you can do in Magic than most of the planeswalkers.  Gifts Ungiven or Fact or Fiction or Hymn to Tourach or even the M11 Titans are all arguably much more powerful than non-Jace2 Planeswalkers.  But those things feel like part of the game while Planeswalkers feel like an adjunct that doesn't quite work right.  And it's not because I'm a miserable old bastard who doesn't like change - I'd literally never played the game before Eventide, so I've never known the game without Planewalkers.  Apart from in my all-the-best-cards-ever cube which has a blanket ban on them :)

But, I still have a teeny bit of hope that someone will post something on this thread that will give me a different perspective on them.

Failing that, perhaps a year or two from now when the fallout from Jace2 is felt via R&D they will tone them down or de-emphasize them, even stop having them as the marketing "thing" for Magic.  I guess they must be having hard conversations along those lines now.