I am new to Magic (about 6 months) and I find the concept of emblems troubling. Am I the only one who thinks they should be illegal? There is absolutely no way currently to counter them. In my opinion there should never be anything in the game that cannot be answered. Either emblems should be removed from the game OR there should be a way to remove them either by exile or destruction. Just mho.
I can see Wizards eventually printing emblem hate but as previously stated, you have to answer the planeswalker before they have a chance to ult it. Many ways to kill a PW. Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is, of course, an exception as his Emblem is available right out of the gates. The only answer to that one is to kill the creatures that benefit from his emblem or reduce their power/toughness by one, if you happen to be running black.
Planeswalkers have effectively been making emblems since the Shards of Alara set. If the concept was OP, I'm sure the idea would have been phased out. I don't think there's really a problem
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Emblems can be dealt with the same way red deals with enchantments. Kill the opponent nefore the can cast the enchantmet/play the thing generating the emblem.
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"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Outside of derpy conditions in commander using things like rings, d-season, or proliferate; you have plenty of time to react to a planeswalker reaching their ultimate.
If you are facing an opponent and they were able to protect their planeswalker long enough to reach their ultimate you were very likely going to lose with or without the emblem.
I am new to Magic (about 6 months) and I find the concept of emblems troubling. Am I the only one who thinks they should be illegal? There is absolutely no way currently to counter them. In my opinion there should never be anything in the game that cannot be answered. Either emblems should be removed from the game OR there should be a way to remove them either by exile or destruction. Just mho.
Getting rid of them won't do anything. WOTC would just revert to wording like the one below from the original printing of Elspeth, Knight-Errant.
-8: For the rest of the game, artifacts, creatures, enchantments, and lands you control are indestructible.
There is no real difference in the way the ability works just you don't have the emblem to act as a reminder that you have activated her ultimate.
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Emblems are usually strong, no doubt, but you have to know when to deal with a PW before it can even make an emblem, in most cases.
One day they may make something that clears emblems from the game, but that won't be soon, for now you just have to learn to deal with the PW before that happens. You are new to the game so you'll get used to them in time and know how to get past such problems.
Kill the planeswalker or kill the player. Only two planeswalkers can get emblems immediately (ignoring Doubling Season): Gideon, Ally of Zendikar and Sorin, Lord of Innistrad. Neither of their emblems are game-breaking. If you can't deal with a planeswalker before it ultimates and gets its emblem, you were probably going to lose anyway.
Typically speaking stopping a Planeswalker before they hit their emblem (or their ultimate more broadly) is not that back breaking of a challenge. If you're playing a deck with very few creatures and your removal can't hit them then that's more a weakness of your deck than something wrong with emblems. I play a decent number of Planeswalkers in my deck, almost always do they get taken out before they're able to make emblems.
I can see Wizards eventually printing emblem hate but as previously stated, you have to answer the planeswalker before they have a chance to ult it. Many ways to kill a PW. Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is, of course, an exception as his Emblem is available right out of the gates. The only answer to that one is to kill the creatures that benefit from his emblem or reduce their power/toughness by one, if you happen to be running black.
Yeah, but four mana for Glorious Anthem isn't a very good deal without the anthem being permanent. Same for Sorin's 6 mana Orcish Oriflamme
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I can see Wizards eventually printing emblem hate but as previously stated, you have to answer the planeswalker before they have a chance to ult it. Many ways to kill a PW. Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is, of course, an exception as his Emblem is available right out of the gates. The only answer to that one is to kill the creatures that benefit from his emblem or reduce their power/toughness by one, if you happen to be running black.
Yeah, but four mana for Glorious Anthem isn't a very good deal without the anthem being permanent. Same for Sorin's 6 mana Orcish Oriflamme
Given how easy it is to get rid of Planeswalkers before they ultimate and you seem to have a problem with that, I have the feeling if they made a way for you to remove emblems you'd find some way to not actually ever play it. Because, you know, not interacting with your opponent is how they get them to begin with.
Also, did you really just register (or make a gimmick account) just to gripe about an easily avoidable game mechanic? Really?
It's also worth mentioning that while emblems do give a significant advantage, most, if not all of them either take 2-3 turns or more to really become backbreaking, require other permanents to do anything, or can be played around fairly easily. The only one that I've seen win just by resolving on a consistent basis is elspeth, sun's champion, and that's much more due to the fact that she puts out a dumb amount of tokens with her +1 than the actual emblem itself.
If you could just destroy them then what's the point? There are some good ones, but they usually don't win you the game on the spot. And you have to invest a lot of time and usually resources to protect them, and they often kill themselves ultimating. They'd be absolutely god awful if you could just destroy them like artifacts. That or the card that specifically gets rid of emblems would never be played because it's so narrow and just killing the planeswalkers is not that hard.
I am fed up with combat, planeswalkers and more combat. I would love a Planeswalker free set, I find their design tedious now, they lost whatever glamour they once had by virtue of being ubiquitous. That should provide a nice emblem free time for the original poster.
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People with belligerent signatures are trying to compensate for something....
At some point we will get an Planeswalker that can "steal" emblems from opponents (Dack Fayden i am looking at you!).
That would be fitting and needed
That sounds like dull ultimate, and that's the only way that would be made, I don't see it being cheaper.
Who ever suggested it has to be his ultimate?
He could have it as a bonus 4th ability which could cost 0 since it would be used so rarely. It could even have a duration effect for X turns or be an ability which puts all emblems into their owner's exile zones with a couple suspend counters which would certainly make things interesting.
In all honesty though, most walkers are easy enough to take out before they can realistically produce emblems as previously mentioned, and even in commander games when someone brings a doubling season into play, someone else almost always makes sure to take that out before the controller's next turn. Players who more often than not can't or choose not to are either not playing enough removal or bad players. And if someone playing superfriends casts eureka, counter it every time!
Beyond that, you can always take out one or more emblems by restarting the game with Karn Liberated's ultimate or temporarily remove them by creating a shahrazad subgame, so technically there are at least two answers or forms of removal for emblems, one hard (which is colorless too and can therefore go in any deck) and one soft (which is arguably banned in all formats but allowed among some playgroups who enjoy wacky casual fun.)
Anyhow, the best I can come up with myself is a game in the top 8 of a PTQ back during Urza block in which we were starting game 3 with time already expired, so the tiebreaker rule was that whoever had more life after 3 turns would win. And I lost to... healing salve.
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If you are facing an opponent and they were able to protect their planeswalker long enough to reach their ultimate you were very likely going to lose with or without the emblem.
Emblems are usually very much WIN-MOAR.
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Getting rid of them won't do anything. WOTC would just revert to wording like the one below from the original printing of Elspeth, Knight-Errant.
There is no real difference in the way the ability works just you don't have the emblem to act as a reminder that you have activated her ultimate.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
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One day they may make something that clears emblems from the game, but that won't be soon, for now you just have to learn to deal with the PW before that happens. You are new to the game so you'll get used to them in time and know how to get past such problems.
I'm OK with WotC never printing emblem hate.
Yeah, but four mana for Glorious Anthem isn't a very good deal without the anthem being permanent. Same for Sorin's 6 mana Orcish Oriflamme
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Also, did you really just register (or make a gimmick account) just to gripe about an easily avoidable game mechanic? Really?
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That would be fitting and needed
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That sounds like dull ultimate, and that's the only way that would be made, I don't see it being cheaper.
Who ever suggested it has to be his ultimate?
He could have it as a bonus 4th ability which could cost 0 since it would be used so rarely. It could even have a duration effect for X turns or be an ability which puts all emblems into their owner's exile zones with a couple suspend counters which would certainly make things interesting.
In all honesty though, most walkers are easy enough to take out before they can realistically produce emblems as previously mentioned, and even in commander games when someone brings a doubling season into play, someone else almost always makes sure to take that out before the controller's next turn. Players who more often than not can't or choose not to are either not playing enough removal or bad players. And if someone playing superfriends casts eureka, counter it every time!
Beyond that, you can always take out one or more emblems by restarting the game with Karn Liberated's ultimate or temporarily remove them by creating a shahrazad subgame, so technically there are at least two answers or forms of removal for emblems, one hard (which is colorless too and can therefore go in any deck) and one soft (which is arguably banned in all formats but allowed among some playgroups who enjoy wacky casual fun.)