MTG Salvation

Quote from Jay13x »

Azor was done in by HIS OWN MAGIC. Jace used the Living Guildpact's magic to punish Azor. He did it to himself, and it's great.

Exactly. He just got got by a failsafe he designed, which is poetic.

Also, Vraska wasn't wrong. Ixalan was thrown into conflict and chaos the past few centuries because of an artifact Azor just dumped on them without any thought to the consequences. He also implemented a complex system on Ravnica and didn't stick around to ensure that it was maintained. Also consider that if Azor and Ugin's plan had succeeded, NICOL BOLAS would have been trapped on Ixalan. Who knows what would have happened to the plane in that scenario, and given Bolas's tenacity, he might have escaped regardless.

At least we know now why Bolas went to Tarkir in the first place. It's because Ugin lured him there, but Bolas was smart enough to strike a deal with one of the locals (something Ugin probably never accounted for, given his mindset) to turn the tide on Ugin and extract some useful info (including about the Sun) in the process.

If you ask me why I like Bolas, it's because he's entertaining for me to follow as a character/plot element. He can brawl like a traditional dragon, but he can also plan complex, centuries-old plots, and leverage assets he just finds hanging around on the planes he's interested in, as well as use telepathy, necromancy and other such magics with great proficiency. Also unlike some oldwalkers, Bolas knows he's a ****, but he just doesn't care.

Quote from 5colors »

Quote from Etherium Sage »

Quote from ryuplaneswalker »

Quote from OathboundOne »

Quote from ryuplaneswalker »

IIRC it didn't work on the werewolves cause they were too "feral"

Yeah. IIRC, the only werewolf he was able to directly affect was the newly turned one. The others were too far from human for him to be able to manipulate. He mostly just threw illusions at them (that they largely saw through cause they lacked scent) and ran (rode his horse) to safety.

Yes which I have a gigantic problem with, it is something of a huge plot hole that Jace is "the bestest mind mage ever" and can't do what Laquastas did.

His illusions were also ineffective against Garruk.

He also talks about how alien Nissa mind is and how she understands things in a way he can't, so I think its green aligned beings in general he just has issues with. I think it supposed to show the hex proof like aspects of green.

Considering a lowly green goblin can just shush blue mages into submission if we're going by game mechanics, I'm inclined to believe that.

Quote from ryuplaneswalker »

Quote from OathboundOne »

Quote from ryuplaneswalker »

He's done that before with the werewolves on Innistrad

IIRC it didn't work on the werewolves cause they were too "feral"

Yeah. IIRC, the only werewolf he was able to directly affect was the newly turned one. The others were too far from human for him to be able to manipulate. He mostly just threw illusions at them (that they largely saw through cause they lacked scent) and ran (rode his horse) to safety.

Yes which I have a gigantic problem with, it is something of a huge plot hole that Jace is "the bestest mind mage ever" and can't do what Laquastas did.

His illusions were also ineffective against Garruk.

I have to wonder though if he had no qualms about just destroying minds, how many of these predicaments he ended up in would have been resolved?

Quote from TheOnlyOne652089 »

It would have been WAY better.

Innistrad lacked artifact removal, Abrade was badly needed to fight vehicles and the non-existence of any actual reasonable graveyard hate made Delirium way stronger than it would be in any normal format.

On the other side, we would have The Scarab-God even earlier and i can only imagine what it means to "reanimate" something like Ulamog and Emrakul with it ... But probably still better than what Aetherworks Marvel produced with the Eldrazi ... so theres that ...

Also, with the addition of MonoRed decks the format would have a reasonable form of aggro decks that could have fought against the stream of Gideon decks , and with Avacyn and friends in the format, it would have been a much more interesting match against MonoRed too.

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Short, switching the sets around was a MASSIVE error and produced all the terrible problems they had to deal with, together with the idea to change up rotation of standard formats only to find out shortly after that was a terrible idea too.

Thanks for commenting, and that is what I was thinking.

I know that it's not that black-and-white, and there were other issues (such as the general design philosophy and rotation problems), but I couldn't help but wonder if this played a role too.

Quote from AdamM »

but cards like Emrakul are not what we want

I'm sure there are players that like having cards like Emrakul around to drop on opponents.

Perhaps if the copious amounts of grave hate they've printed in Amonkhet and Ixalan were around at that time, and Marvel couldn't cast her for free, she might not have been as much of an issue.

Quote from Greyimp »

They were doing core sets for a long time ya'd think they've got the formula down.

Just reprint Thragtusk, Resto Angel, Noble Hierarch, Hellrider, Geist of St Traft, and Invis stalker... right? All good?

Lots of energy builds still viable but not seeing them as dominant. Merfolk hasn't won yet but damn they seem strong with temp and sudden swing wins.

Considering Hierarch has a specific mechanic tied to it, it would be weird to reprint it there unless Exalted shows up on other cards in the set. Geist is a legend, but his abilities are more generic and he's still around (IIRC), so maybe.

I did remember his mind magic working on at least one of them, but you're right that it was only one.

Quote from ryuplaneswalker »

Maybe he will be able to affect peanut minded beasts like previous mind mages in magic have done.

He's done that before with the werewolves on Innistrad, and he used illusions to escape the Ulamog cultists on Zendikar.

Jace was a strong mind mage before, but now he has actual training to back it up. So the question still stands.

Quote from BlazingRagnarok »

This one is hard to evaluate. There are definitely some potentially broken shenanigans here, but six mana is steep. Potentially transforming cards designed to transform only one way could throw another wrench into how this card works. Casting this would send Atzal, Cave of Eternity as well as any creature-form Origins flipwalkers to the graveyard.

Changed it to having an X cost instead, so that you have more control over what you transform.

Discovery Through Exploration (R)
Mana Cost: X1GU
Instant

Transform X target noncreature permanents you control. If you do, draw a card for each permanent transformed this way. (Only double-faced cards can be transformed.)

Quote from Werewolf_Rawr »

Yeah, they’re already setting up Jace for his conquering of Azor with the whole being even better than he used to be because now he remembers ALL of his training.

Yeah it looks like the difference between Vryn!Jace and the Jace between Vryn and Ixalan in terms of prowess, was that Alhammaret taught Vryn!Jace theories and best practices where mind and illusion magic was concerned. When he lost his memories and walked to Ravnica, while he still had the magical abilities, he had to start from scratch in learning how to use it and basically wing it, which is why he has been so relatively inefficient with his magic.

I want to see how this, in addition to getting buff on Ixalan, affects his ability to fight his enemies going forward.

Quote from Superbajt »

Yeah, I meant also that. Maybe it's just my personal opinion, but I think that Wizards are on the right track making each planeswalker having something to do no matter the board/game state, even if it is only plusing ad infinitum. Having to build your deck very specifically (or counting on an opponent), and then having to draw the cards in a specific order IMO is not a way planeswalkers should play out.
Well, that's probably not a topic for this part of forum

I added a +1 that loots. This lets you dig into your library, while at the same time letting you pitch walkers to your graveyard that you can copy with Zoriel later.

It's not the protective ability you asked for, but I figure this might be better for a walker that wants to copy walkers in the graveyard to begin with.

Quote from Superbajt »

Having a planeswalker that does nothing unless there are another planeswalkers around doesn't sound right to me. I think it needs at lease a reason to exist by itself on the battlefield, like a + that protects it in some way (Maybe phasing it out, or making an attack worse, like -x/-0?)

It also takes abilities from planeswalkers in the graveyard, so technically it can exist on the battlefield by itself, but having a secondary ability wouldn't be bad.

Quote from JinxedIdol »

I think a simple way of doing this is a static ability of “this has all activated abilities of all planeswalkers in the battlefield.”

The ultimate as a result will be too similar though.

The static ability sounds like a good idea, so I put it on there.

I changed the ultimate to be something more powerful, and I raised the loyalty cost to compensate.

So pretty much with the emblem, if you have a Chandra, Torch of Defiance and Jace, the Mind Sculptor at the same time, things can get crazy.

Quote from user_938036 »

Becoming a copy of a planeswalker doesn't effect its loyalty anyways so there's no reason to specifically call out that it doesn't change. The phrase 'its printed abilities' is very strange. Its easily grokable but I'm not sure if its the kind of thing you want to be doing. It would function fine if you changed the copying to end of turn and allowed it to activate a loyalty ability as though it hadn't activated one this turn. Otherwise because you can't activate its clone ability and then ability of what it becomes in the same turn it should drop to either 2 or 3 CMC with 2 starting loyalty.

I made the changes to the copy ability.

Also, no comments on the ultimate?