OK, a format I'm trying to fix right now.....
Each player has a 60 card deck PLUS an extra planeswalker. The deck cannot be outside the colors of the Planeswalker, in all prints. (Meaning, if Ajani is your planeswalker, you can have Red, Green, and White in your deck, regardless of which Ajani) Your deck can only have 1 of any legendary creature and 1 of any planeswalker card (different prints of the same planeswalker are allowed) and the normal 4 of any other. Your planeswalker starts on the battlefield with 20 loyalty, and you are that planeswalker. If your loyalty drops to 0, you are out. These planeswalkers cannot be destroyed by cards like Sip of Hemlock. However, if you wish to change your abilities, you may play a different version of yourself, moving all loyalty counters to the "new you." You can play other planeswalkers to aid you. You are not these planeswalkers, and they do not have loyalty equal to your loyalty. Once everyone has taken a turn, you can activate abilities of your planeswalker. This is intended to be a multiplayer format, so Jace, the Mind Sculptor is not banned, since to get it to work, turn two, you are at 8 loyalty. Very vulnerable. Opinions?
A planeswalker does not count as a creature, so unless you are referring to the 2 damage Sip of Hemlock does to the controller (which doesn't make sense to me) this scenario isn't a concern in the first place.
This sounds like it could be a lot of fun but The Chain Veil and a lot of proliferate in a deck could get out of hand really fast. Maybe consider limiting the number of planeswalkers in each deck? Or maybe throw a little story into it and only let planeswalkers that have allied at some point in the lore be in a deck at the same time. (So Ugin and Sorin could be in the same deck, but Gideon and Chandra couldn't.)
There are probably too many walkers that are OP in this format. At a minimum, a lot of them are probably not going to be fun to play against. Like the Ajani Mentor of Heroes guy who is gaining 92 life every turn of his. Or the person playing Nissa Worldwaker, and a deck that is 56 Forests 4 Concordant Crossroads, they mulligan to Crossroads or zero cards whichever comes first, and then turn 2 put 50 forests into play as 4/4 tramplers (hopefully with haste). Tamiyo, well I guess you just make storm, since turn 2 just having a lotus petal and a peek you can draw your entire library, and having the ability to generate infinite mana and storm count.
At a minimum, there has to be a turn counter or something before you can activate ultimate. Maybe even turn lock all abilities, as you already sort of do this
Turn 1: No Abilities
Turn 2: First Ability Unlocks
Turn 4: Second Ability Unlocks
Turn 6: Third Ability Unlocks
The solution to the problem of horribly unbalanced planeswalkers could be A) play with people with a similar definition of OP, B) add a mana requirement for abilities, or C) add a turn based solution like unlocking the first ability first ability first turn, second unlocked on third, ultimate on 6th or seventh, or you can't activate abilities requiring adding or subtracting more turns than it has been.
I'd suggest that the ultimate should be only allowed when a Planeswalker has the relevant loyalty above 20. Eg. Mind Sculptor can play his first three abilities at any time, but can only play his ultimate if his loyalty is 32 or greater.
There is one potential problem with this idea: How do you decide if a Planeswalker has an ultimate or not? Eg. How do you decide if original Gideon and mad Sarkhan should have a limit like this?
But in general, I think it'd:
be the fairest (going down to 8 loyalty wouldn't be very vulnerable at all when the opponent has no cards in hand and is 7 cards in the library away from auto-loss)
the easiest to keep track of (I like Onyx's unlock by turn system, but it would be annoying to track and I can imagine some play groups forgetting what turn it is)
still make ultimates really feel ultimate!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Each player has a 60 card deck PLUS an extra planeswalker. The deck cannot be outside the colors of the Planeswalker, in all prints. (Meaning, if Ajani is your planeswalker, you can have Red, Green, and White in your deck, regardless of which Ajani) Your deck can only have 1 of any legendary creature and 1 of any planeswalker card (different prints of the same planeswalker are allowed) and the normal 4 of any other. Your planeswalker starts on the battlefield with 20 loyalty, and you are that planeswalker. If your loyalty drops to 0, you are out. These planeswalkers cannot be destroyed by cards like Sip of Hemlock. However, if you wish to change your abilities, you may play a different version of yourself, moving all loyalty counters to the "new you." You can play other planeswalkers to aid you. You are not these planeswalkers, and they do not have loyalty equal to your loyalty. Once everyone has taken a turn, you can activate abilities of your planeswalker. This is intended to be a multiplayer format, so Jace, the Mind Sculptor is not banned, since to get it to work, turn two, you are at 8 loyalty. Very vulnerable. Opinions?
This sounds like it could be a lot of fun but The Chain Veil and a lot of proliferate in a deck could get out of hand really fast. Maybe consider limiting the number of planeswalkers in each deck? Or maybe throw a little story into it and only let planeswalkers that have allied at some point in the lore be in a deck at the same time. (So Ugin and Sorin could be in the same deck, but Gideon and Chandra couldn't.)
At a minimum, there has to be a turn counter or something before you can activate ultimate. Maybe even turn lock all abilities, as you already sort of do this
Turn 1: No Abilities
Turn 2: First Ability Unlocks
Turn 4: Second Ability Unlocks
Turn 6: Third Ability Unlocks
There is one potential problem with this idea: How do you decide if a Planeswalker has an ultimate or not? Eg. How do you decide if original Gideon and mad Sarkhan should have a limit like this?
But in general, I think it'd: