Wizards has been going on for over a year now that people are tired of seeing the Gatewatch, they have heard the public and they are responding.
Solution 1? Let's make cards that say they lost a battle!
Not good enough? HMMMMMMM Solution 2: Let's make Nissa a little more masculine, give her a bow, and a new name. Voila! New planeswalker.
There are some things I really like about the new set, but if you claim you are listening to the public and killing your sacred cows, please actually do it. I am as tired of the Gatewatch as anyone (except Liliana, she is sweet) but as it stands, I would rather just have another Nissa than this knock off.*
I say she is more a Garruk replacement. The core Green abilities are Summon Creatures and Animate Lands and Elf Tribal. I actually would like more Tribal Walkers.
There's only so much thematic space within any color, and with multiple versions of multiple characters over the years we are bound to see some repetition. In this case, though, Vivien is probably closer to what Garruk used to be about than Nissa. Nissa, Worldwaker, Nissa, Vital Force and Nissa, Sage Animist are probably the most representative set of her cards, all caring about turning lands into creatures and getting some card advantage. Nissa, Steward of Elements even stays in that space after gaining blue. Nissa Revane was a pretty early version before she got her main characterization. Nissa, Voice of Zendikar has a little bit of creature pump but it sort of works with the idea of helping support Zendikari forces in the battle.
That leaves us with Nissa, Genesis Mage and Nissa, Nature's Artisan as the closest to Vivian in that they have some creature pump and the first one digs for creatures and lands, but those are the planeswalker deck cards and probably skew towards easier abilities than land animating.
Almost every Garruk makes tokens, and his plan is usually to generate creature-based card advantage. Vivien of the Arkbow could have easily been a Garruk if he weren't turning into a demon currently.
Vivien's middle ability is a cool way to show that she has a magic bow and gets some destructive card advantage that she can do directly. That's something neither of the other green walkers have really done (Vraska does some), and I think that's about the best we could ask for in terms of differentiating green walkers outside of really niche roles like enchantress (which is more white) or tribal. I wouldn't be surprised to see her dip into tokens in the future, either, given the visuals of spirit animals. But for now, by focusing on creatures that aren't lands or tokens, she is putting up a decent effort at being new. If anything, I expect her to overlap more with Garruk's green cards going forward.
Yeah, overall I think the theme of Creatures Matter from Vivien makes her an heir to Garruk, thematically, even if chronologically we're having her replace Nissa in the Core set right after Nissa left the Gatewatch. The Planeswalker Deck Vivien of the Arkbow looks even more thematically tied to creatures, with +1/+1 counters, fight, and Overrun.
I am curious if the decision to go with an all Creatures Matter Green planeswalker in M19 is reflective of both the need to replace the Green slot left open by Nissa, and the desire to have an easier introduction to Green's abilities. They could have kept the Planeswalker Deck Vivien more simplistic and done something non-Creatures Matter for the main Core set, but they didn't.
I mentioned this elsewhere on Vivien's design, but if you look at Maro's list of Green color pie abilities from the old head to head, they've used almost every single one on a planeswalker so far except for three: Fog ability (hah), Destroy Fliers (now on Vivien) and Must Be Blocked. They are going to have to recycle some space from previous Green planewalkers. It would be nice to see a non-Elf Tribal, as well as a token creation Green planeswalker. Also by replacing Garruk thematically and not Nissa it keeps the door open to seeing Nissa in the next few years (before another Return to Zendikar).
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----- "I cannot tune a harp or play a lyre, but I know how to make a small city great." - Themistocles
I've had my complaints about Vivien as a card, but your complaint just sounds like you want to find something to complain about. Even if she's a Nissa replacement, Wizards never said they'd kill off the Gatewatch, but that we'd see less of them in sets. Also she's not a Nissa knockoff by any stretch, because Nissa deals with lands and elementals, not strictly creatures. Vivien is more Garruk 2.0 from a mechanical point of view.
She is absolutely Garruk replacement, i.e. a green creature-matters planeswalker. Not Nissa, who is more about land and animating lands.
She's even a hunter, although of a different sort of Garruk. She's a crib of his thematic space, which is not at all bad. It's something green needs to have available to it.
I think you guys that have a tone of disagreement, are still sort of agreeing in your explanation. I hear a lot of "Well, kind of like Nissa but more like Gurruk because she leans a little more on creatures than most previous versions of Nissa." If Gurruk is THE green male planeswalker and Nissa is THE female green planeswalker, then Vivien very clearly fits the statement "Let's make Nissa a little more masculine, give her a bow, and a new name. Voila! New planeswalker."
But even beyond mechanics, Vivien just isn't very interesting from a flavor perspective. Artistically, I look at her and see "generic female ranger." There is a lot more design space to be harvested. Ajani, Gidien, and Elspeth are all mono-white and feel like different interesting characters. Same with Jace, Tezzeret, Tamiyo, and Teferi. So on and so forth. Other than Jaya feeling like old-Chandra, most planewalkers seem like interesting individuals. Vivien just strikes me as uninspired.
I didn't realize until after I reread my post, but Vivien made me want Nissa back. Maybe that was wizards real goal.
To the poster above mentioning that Wizards never said they would kill the gatewatch, I was being more metaphorical. They said something to the effect of stepping away from them.
I think you guys that have a tone of disagreement, are still sort of agreeing in your explanation. I hear a lot of "Well, kind of like Nissa but more like Gurruk because she leans a little more on creatures than most previous versions of Nissa." If Gurruk is THE green male planeswalker and Nissa is THE female green planeswalker, then Vivien very clearly fits the statement "Let's make Nissa a little more masculine, give her a bow, and a new name. Voila! New planeswalker."
But even beyond mechanics, Vivien just isn't very interesting from a flavor perspective. Artistically, I look at her and see "generic female ranger." There is a lot more design space to be harvested. Ajani, Gidien, and Elspeth are all mono-white and feel like different interesting characters. Same with Jace, Tezzeret, Tamiyo, and Teferi. So on and so forth. Other than Jaya feeling like old-Chandra, most planewalkers seem like interesting individuals. Vivien just strikes me as uninspired.
I didn't realize until after I reread my post, but Vivien made me want Nissa back. Maybe that was wizards real goal.
To the poster above mentioning that Wizards never said they would kill the gatewatch, I was being more metaphorical. They said something to the effect of stepping away from them.
Nissa and Vivien are extremely different mechanically. Nissa has never been creature-focused in the way Garruk or Vivien has been. Nissa's first card was strictly Elf-focused, and every card she's gotten after that has been land and elemental focused. Vivien cares about creatures overall, and none of Vivien's cards have shown any care for lands.
Also Jaya pre-dated Chandra. It's actually more accurate to say that Chandra feels like young-Jaya.
I am not feeling the "extremely different mechanically." I will concede there is a little. But look back at the post from Gerrod's Mom to see Nissa has cared about creatures more than once. But as I have tried to articulate, apparently poorly, it is the flavor/art that bother's me more even more than the mechanics. She is just a boring character.
While badass dominatrix creature Jaya predated Chandra, and seems like a different unique person, the old Planeswalker version does not. Again, the latter just strikes me as a more boring version of the Gatewatch member we are told to expect some distance from.
Or maybe wait until the story comes out to judge a character since we literally have a small blurb of backstory of her and thats it.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Seeing how Nissas have been largely "meh", Vivien could get there. The -3 is Vraska light but still relevant; and +1 and -8 are usable and decent. @ 14 USD i could get a copy and not be upset with the price dropping a little. The CMC is a bit concerning, not everything can be 4 colourless.
I hate to come off as a total ******* cynic but it seems their origin story for Nissa (a borderline xenophobe) doesn't score very well with the focus groups..
I mean, we essentially got another female elf with slightly more 'ethnic' skin tone and a new backstory. Not MUCH of a change, tbh. What are we supposed to make of it?
Is she an elf? I mean on this art she does look more like she has pointed ears and I guess green animal lover with a bow does scream elf in a fantasy story.
Visually and personality wise she does scream Nissa with an animal obsession instead of Land (World) and no Racism of course. However, ability wise she is more Garruk summoning spirits not actual animals no doubt due to the in universe confusion over whether characters are summoning the actual creature across planes or copies. Except instead of hunting the biggest game, she is cataloguing like Steve Irwin.
Well replacing Nissa with another elf would be too obvious that said I could go for less human walkers.
I mean take some notes from D&D and at least do more basically humans besides Nissa, Sorin and Nahiri.
We simply didn't have very many mono-green Planeswalkers. Garruk has been laboring under the curse of the Chain Veil for years now. We had tried bringing him back as a mono-green card in Magic 2014's Garruk, Caller of Beasts, and the audience reacted with confusion. "Is Garruk still cursed? What's going on?" Besides, Garruk had no story connection to Bolas at all. Nissa didn't have a very compelling story connection to Bolas. Jiang Yanggu was still being worked on for Global Series: Jiang Yanggu & Mu Yanling, and we didn't want to entangle our process with that of the team working on that product. Freyalise was dead, and she didn't have any story connection to Bolas either. We didn't feel comfortable making mono-green versions of any of our multicolored characters who had green in their colors.
It became clear that, if we were going to make a core set every year, and that each core set would have five monocolor planeswalkers in it, and we didn't want to make the same characters over and over again, we would need to increase our stable of monocolor Planeswalker characters. This gave us the freedom to design a character with the power suite we wanted and give her the coolest creative treatment we could come up with to then write a backstory for her that made her an antagonist of Bolas.
I'm glad of this, we need more mono colored walker outside of the gatewatch (even before then the picking where slim), which might explain Jaya, Will and Rowan and the two global series walkers.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
We simply didn't have very many mono-green Planeswalkers. Garruk has been laboring under the curse of the Chain Veil for years now. We had tried bringing him back as a mono-green card in Magic 2014's Garruk, Caller of Beasts, and the audience reacted with confusion. "Is Garruk still cursed? What's going on?" Besides, Garruk had no story connection to Bolas at all. Nissa didn't have a very compelling story connection to Bolas. Jiang Yanggu was still being worked on for Global Series: Jiang Yanggu & Mu Yanling, and we didn't want to entangle our process with that of the team working on that product. Freyalise was dead, and she didn't have any story connection to Bolas either. We didn't feel comfortable making mono-green versions of any of our multicolored characters who had green in their colors.
It became clear that, if we were going to make a core set every year, and that each core set would have five monocolor planeswalkers in it, and we didn't want to make the same characters over and over again, we would need to increase our stable of monocolor Planeswalker characters. This gave us the freedom to design a character with the power suite we wanted and give her the coolest creative treatment we could come up with to then write a backstory for her that made her an antagonist of Bolas.
I'm glad of this, we need more mono colored walker outside of the gatewatch (even before then the picking where slim), which might explain Jaya, Will and Rowan and the two global series walkers.
It sounds like a decent goal. The execution just feels like the creativity wasn't there. I hadn't really connected it with Jaya before the discussion here, but prior to recent sets I never saw a planeswalker and thought "Meh, kind of generic." Even if the goals are good, I personally would rather just have more gatewatch than cranking out a sterile version of them for the sake of doing it.
EDIT for clarification since many people are going off on mechanics. Even if Tibalt was a bad card mechnically, he did not disappoint from an artistic perspective. That is what I am talking about here. Feel free to insert whatever other "bad" planeswalker you don't like.
The only reason i see her as Nissa stand in is bolas destroyed her home plane (Skalla) and could have ben one of the walkers ajani found for the bolas battle on ravnica
I would love to see a version of her that throws creatures from hand into play to fight other creatures, then return them to hand at EoT, even if it was just green creatures. This version is okay, I do like that her -2 pegs fliers making her relevant in commander (and probably brawl) even without things to naturalize.
Flavorwise, I like her. She's like a magical ranger version of Steve Irwin and that's honestly okay with me.
These new walkers of late just seem completely slapped together without a whole lot of design or building for their characters. For this reason alone, I think it is important to bring back Core Sets with the original Core walkers - or at least - walkers we have already seen. Use expansion sets to tell a rich story an THEN bring them to core sets.
Just my thoughts on it. I really do not mind the bland walkers we have had lately, but I think the reason they are so bland is that they were just kind of thrown together without much of a deeper meaning behind them.
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Wizards has been going on for over a year now that people are tired of seeing the Gatewatch, they have heard the public and they are responding.
Solution 1? Let's make cards that say they lost a battle!
Not good enough? HMMMMMMM Solution 2: Let's make Nissa a little more masculine, give her a bow, and a new name. Voila! New planeswalker.
There are some things I really like about the new set, but if you claim you are listening to the public and killing your sacred cows, please actually do it. I am as tired of the Gatewatch as anyone (except Liliana, she is sweet) but as it stands, I would rather just have another Nissa than this knock off.*
Card seems mechanically pretty decent.
Edit *Sneaky WOTC
There's only so much thematic space within any color, and with multiple versions of multiple characters over the years we are bound to see some repetition. In this case, though, Vivien is probably closer to what Garruk used to be about than Nissa.
Nissa, Worldwaker, Nissa, Vital Force and Nissa, Sage Animist are probably the most representative set of her cards, all caring about turning lands into creatures and getting some card advantage. Nissa, Steward of Elements even stays in that space after gaining blue.
Nissa Revane was a pretty early version before she got her main characterization. Nissa, Voice of Zendikar has a little bit of creature pump but it sort of works with the idea of helping support Zendikari forces in the battle.
That leaves us with Nissa, Genesis Mage and Nissa, Nature's Artisan as the closest to Vivian in that they have some creature pump and the first one digs for creatures and lands, but those are the planeswalker deck cards and probably skew towards easier abilities than land animating.
Almost every Garruk makes tokens, and his plan is usually to generate creature-based card advantage. Vivien of the Arkbow could have easily been a Garruk if he weren't turning into a demon currently.
Vivien's middle ability is a cool way to show that she has a magic bow and gets some destructive card advantage that she can do directly. That's something neither of the other green walkers have really done (Vraska does some), and I think that's about the best we could ask for in terms of differentiating green walkers outside of really niche roles like enchantress (which is more white) or tribal. I wouldn't be surprised to see her dip into tokens in the future, either, given the visuals of spirit animals. But for now, by focusing on creatures that aren't lands or tokens, she is putting up a decent effort at being new. If anything, I expect her to overlap more with Garruk's green cards going forward.
I am curious if the decision to go with an all Creatures Matter Green planeswalker in M19 is reflective of both the need to replace the Green slot left open by Nissa, and the desire to have an easier introduction to Green's abilities. They could have kept the Planeswalker Deck Vivien more simplistic and done something non-Creatures Matter for the main Core set, but they didn't.
I mentioned this elsewhere on Vivien's design, but if you look at Maro's list of Green color pie abilities from the old head to head, they've used almost every single one on a planeswalker so far except for three: Fog ability (hah), Destroy Fliers (now on Vivien) and Must Be Blocked. They are going to have to recycle some space from previous Green planewalkers. It would be nice to see a non-Elf Tribal, as well as a token creation Green planeswalker. Also by replacing Garruk thematically and not Nissa it keeps the door open to seeing Nissa in the next few years (before another Return to Zendikar).
"I cannot tune a harp or play a lyre, but I know how to make a small city great." - Themistocles
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
She's even a hunter, although of a different sort of Garruk. She's a crib of his thematic space, which is not at all bad. It's something green needs to have available to it.
I̟̥͍̠ͅn̩͉̣͍̬͚ͅ ̬̬͖t̯̹̞̺͖͓̯̤h̘͍̬e͙̯͈̖̼̮ ̭̬f̺̲̲̪i͙͉̟̩̰r̪̝͚͈̝̥͍̝̲s̼̻͇̘̳͔ͅt̲̺̳̗̜̪̙ ̳̺̥̻͚̗ͅm̜̜̟̰͈͓͎͇o̝̖̮̝͇m̯̻̞̼̫̗͓̤e̩̯̬̮̩n͎̱̪̲̹͖t͇̖s̰̮ͅ,̤̲͙̻̭̻̯̹̰ ̖t̫̙̺̯͖͚̯ͅh͙̯̦̳̗̰̟e͖̪͉̼̯ ̪͕g̞̣͔a̗̦t̬̬͓͙̫̖̭̻e̩̻̯ ̜̖̦̖̤̭͙̬t̞̹̥̪͎͉ͅo͕͚͍͇̲͇͓̺ ̭̬͙͈̣̻t͈͍͙͓̫̖͙̩h̪̬̖̙e̗͈ ̗̬̟̞̺̤͉̯ͅa̦̯͚̙̜̮f͉͙̲̣̞̼t̪̤̞̣͚e̲͉̳̥r͇̪̙͚͓l̥̞̞͎̹̯̹ͅi͓̬f̮̥̬̞͈ͅe͎ ̟̩̤̳̠̯̩̯o̮̘̲p̟͚̣̞͉͓e͍̩̣n͔̼͕͚̜e̬̱d̼̘͎̖̹͍̮̠,͖̺̭̱̮ ̣̲͖̬̪̭̥a̪͚n̟̲̝̤̤̞̗d̘̱̗͇̮͕̳͕͔ ͖̞͉͎t̹̙͎h̰̱͉̗e̪̞̱̝̹̩ͅ ̠̱̩̭̦p̯̙e͓o̳͚̰̯̺̱̰͔̘p̬͎̱̣̼̩͇l̗̟̖͚̠e̱͉͔̱̦̬̟̙ ̖͚̪͔̼̦w̺̖̤̱e͖̗̻̦͓̖̘̜r̭̥e͔̹̫̱͕̦̰͕ ̗͔̠p̠̗͍͍̱̳̠r̰͔͎̰o͉̥͓̰͚̥s̟͚̹̱͔̣t͉̙̳̖͖̪̮r̥̘̥͙̹a͉̟̫̟̳̠̟̭t͈̜̰͈͎e̞̣̭̲̬ ͚̗̯̟͙i͍͖̰̘̦͖͉ṇ̮̻̯̦̲̩͍ ̦̮͚̫̤t͉͖̫͕ͅͅh͙̮̻̘̣̮̼e͕̺ ͙l͕̠͎̰̥i̲͓͉̲g̫̳̟͈͇̖h̠̦̖t͓̯͎̗ ̳̪̘̟̙̩̦o̫̲f̙͔̰̙̠ ̹̪̗͇̯t͖̼̼͉͖̬h̹͇̩e͚̖̺̤͉̹͕̪ ͚͓̭̝̺G͎̗̯̩o̫̯̮̟̮̳̘d̜̲͙̠-̩̳̯̲̗̜P̹̘̥͉̝h͍͈̗̖̝ͅa͍̗̮̼̗r̜̖͇̙̺a̭̺͔̞̳͈o̪̣͓̯̬͙̯̰̗h̖̦͈̥̯͔.͇̣̙̝
But even beyond mechanics, Vivien just isn't very interesting from a flavor perspective. Artistically, I look at her and see "generic female ranger." There is a lot more design space to be harvested. Ajani, Gidien, and Elspeth are all mono-white and feel like different interesting characters. Same with Jace, Tezzeret, Tamiyo, and Teferi. So on and so forth. Other than Jaya feeling like old-Chandra, most planewalkers seem like interesting individuals. Vivien just strikes me as uninspired.
I didn't realize until after I reread my post, but Vivien made me want Nissa back. Maybe that was wizards real goal.
To the poster above mentioning that Wizards never said they would kill the gatewatch, I was being more metaphorical. They said something to the effect of stepping away from them.
Nissa and Vivien are extremely different mechanically. Nissa has never been creature-focused in the way Garruk or Vivien has been. Nissa's first card was strictly Elf-focused, and every card she's gotten after that has been land and elemental focused. Vivien cares about creatures overall, and none of Vivien's cards have shown any care for lands.
Also Jaya pre-dated Chandra. It's actually more accurate to say that Chandra feels like young-Jaya.
While badass dominatrix creature Jaya predated Chandra, and seems like a different unique person, the old Planeswalker version does not. Again, the latter just strikes me as a more boring version of the Gatewatch member we are told to expect some distance from.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
(W/U)(B/R)GForm of Progenitus, Shape of a Scrubland
BRGJund Tokens with Prossh, the Magic Dragon Foil
URGAnimar, the RUG CleanerFoil
RRRFeldon of the Third Path 2.0 Foil
BG(B/G)Not Another Meren DeckFoil
UR(U/R)Mizzix, Y Control and X Burn Spells
(W/U)(B/R)GHarold Ramos - The 35 Foot Long Twinkie (In +1/+1 counters)
UB(U/B)Dragonlord Silumgar
I mean, we essentially got another female elf with slightly more 'ethnic' skin tone and a new backstory. Not MUCH of a change, tbh. What are we supposed to make of it?
Visually and personality wise she does scream Nissa with an animal obsession instead of Land (World) and no Racism of course. However, ability wise she is more Garruk summoning spirits not actual animals no doubt due to the in universe confusion over whether characters are summoning the actual creature across planes or copies. Except instead of hunting the biggest game, she is cataloguing like Steve Irwin.
I mean take some notes from D&D and at least do more basically humans besides Nissa, Sorin and Nahiri.
Spirits
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-preview/creating-core-set-2019-2018-06-19
I'm glad of this, we need more mono colored walker outside of the gatewatch (even before then the picking where slim), which might explain Jaya, Will and Rowan and the two global series walkers.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
It sounds like a decent goal. The execution just feels like the creativity wasn't there. I hadn't really connected it with Jaya before the discussion here, but prior to recent sets I never saw a planeswalker and thought "Meh, kind of generic." Even if the goals are good, I personally would rather just have more gatewatch than cranking out a sterile version of them for the sake of doing it.
EDIT for clarification since many people are going off on mechanics. Even if Tibalt was a bad card mechnically, he did not disappoint from an artistic perspective. That is what I am talking about here. Feel free to insert whatever other "bad" planeswalker you don't like.
Flavorwise, I like her. She's like a magical ranger version of Steve Irwin and that's honestly okay with me.
Just my thoughts on it. I really do not mind the bland walkers we have had lately, but I think the reason they are so bland is that they were just kind of thrown together without much of a deeper meaning behind them.
STANDARD|UW Control MODERN| UBG Midrange PAUPER| UG Fog COMMANDER| UBG The Mimeoplasm