What are the chances of a Planeswalker not being a Mythic?
A simplified PW can be a rare, it's not out of the possibility.
But what about as an uncommon - I mean something bare-bones basic, for a limited environment, or for new players to grasp the idea of a PW. I know they're supposed to be mythic in nature, but can the essence of a PW be put into a simplied package?
Nowadays 0%. A simplified PW would just be an artifact with multiple abilities such as Trading Post. You can make it colored and you can mess around with counters and such for an ultimate (such as Shrine of Burning Rage).
They have explicitly stated that Planeswalkers are mythic only. It's due to power reasons somewhat, but also because having a spark is supposed to be an absurdly rare thing.
Yeah, sparks are supposed to be incredibly rare. Both flavor and power level concerns would indicate that a Planeswalker will always be Mythic.
That said, Magic breaks its own rules all the time. Another block centered around a cataclysmic event (like the unstable nature of time and Mending process from the Time Spiral block) could totally result in a massive distribution of sparks. If something like that was written into Magic, I could totally see Uncommon and Rare planeswalkers (scaled dramatically down in power, of course).
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Due to the nature of Planeswalkers and how they play in Standard, I don't expect it to happen any time soon. FuriousMarsupial and Megadog hit it on the head. on one side, there's the flavor. Having a spark (and having a spark that activates, at that) is supposed to be an extremely rare event - 1 in 1 million are born with a spark, and even fewer ignite it.
As noted in Doug Beyer's tumblr:
Q: How rare is the spark exactly? If there were planeswalkers on our Earth today, how many could we expect to see with a population of 6 billion people? One? Five? A hundred?
A: We’ve generally said “one in a million” has the spark, and even less than that have their planeswalker spark actually ignite during their lifetime. There wouldn’t be more than a handful of active planeswalkers on a world with 7ish billion people.
It follows that, if you go to a big Grand Prix, a lot of those people are aliens.
So, if ~5 people on our entire planet are planeswalkers, it seems like a mythic thing.
Beyond flavor, there's also the mechanical aspect - they don't want to start making powered-down planeswalkers just to have them, and having planeswalkers strong enough to be exciting at mythic limits the quantity they can have due to having "too many in Standard at once". While an appealing thought, I don't expect it to be something that comes up soon, although the thought is interesting. At least there'll always be the Lorwyn 5.
Why would they have to scale them down in power? Isn't one of their design cornerstones that "rare" != "more powerful?" At any rate, the Plansewalker permanent type has enough inherent complexity that we aren't likely to see them as anything below rare, and flavor reasons pretty much guarantee that they'll always be Mythics. i'm sure they'll break this rule eventually, but don't think they'll do it often.
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Cards are game pieces, and should be treated as such, easily replaceable.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
Why would they have to scale them down in power? Isn't one of their design cornerstones that "rare" != "more powerful?" At any rate, the Plansewalker permanent type has enough inherent complexity that we aren't likely to see them as anything below rare, and flavor reasons pretty much guarantee that they'll always be Mythics. i'm sure they'll break this rule eventually, but don't think they'll do it often.
Yeah but they also can't break limited. A strong uncommon Planeswalker would be hard to keep from breaking Limited.
I hope to never see a rare planeswalker, but then again I am not a fan of them at all. Obviously, anything is possible, but so far the trend has (thankfully) been to keep them at mythic.
A simplified PW can be a rare, it's not out of the possibility.
But what about as an uncommon - I mean something bare-bones basic, for a limited environment, or for new players to grasp the idea of a PW. I know they're supposed to be mythic in nature, but can the essence of a PW be put into a simplied package?
You are forgetting Deathrite Shaman.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
That said, Magic breaks its own rules all the time. Another block centered around a cataclysmic event (like the unstable nature of time and Mending process from the Time Spiral block) could totally result in a massive distribution of sparks. If something like that was written into Magic, I could totally see Uncommon and Rare planeswalkers (scaled dramatically down in power, of course).
As noted in Doug Beyer's tumblr:
So, if ~5 people on our entire planet are planeswalkers, it seems like a mythic thing.
Beyond flavor, there's also the mechanical aspect - they don't want to start making powered-down planeswalkers just to have them, and having planeswalkers strong enough to be exciting at mythic limits the quantity they can have due to having "too many in Standard at once". While an appealing thought, I don't expect it to be something that comes up soon, although the thought is interesting. At least there'll always be the Lorwyn 5.
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Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
Yeah but they also can't break limited. A strong uncommon Planeswalker would be hard to keep from breaking Limited.
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