I'm just wondering if anyone else is worried about this huge influx of Planeswalkers. I am in the camp of limiting the number of Planeswalkers. I know many people disagree with me, which is fine. I am just wondering how cube managers without a limit on Planeswalkers are taking this set. Are there a lot of includes or are majority too weak to make the cut?
I run caps (3 per color and colorless and 1 per guild at 450 unpowered) and still the majority of these walkers are too weak to make the cut. Gideon Blackblade, Domri, Anarch of Bolas and maybe Liliana, Dreadhorde General will likely get some testing. Of all of these I think only Domri is the only one likely to stick around since he fits ramp/aggro/and has built in removal--also he isn't 4CC, thank heavens.
I capped them because midrange value decks are something I think is bad for cube, and unfun to enable.
I stopped capping walkers when I realized that they aren’t the problem. Obstinate Baloth and Flametongue Kavu do more to kill aggro than Garruk Wildspeaker or Daretti, Scrap Savant, and do less to enable sweet combos or unique play lines.
I do think there’s a threshold of midrange-based cards I can run, and a threshold of planeswalker-threatening attackers I need to maintain, but I think it’s at least as big of a deal to regulate Nekrataal- or Allied Reinforcement-counts as it is to regulate walkers, especially the walkers without the ability to bury aggro.
I actually like walkers a lot more now, because they make for games that happen outside the combat step paradigm, and make for more interesting and more memorable gameplay, as long as there’s still enough aggro support to rein them back in.
The WAR walkers actually mostly look pretty benign. The ones that look like they might give problems are like Jace and Chandra, which just tick up for card advantage but honestly look pretty interchangeable with other similar planeswalkers that came before. The WAR walkers I think are exciting are ones that do things outside that paradigm - Saheeli, Teferi and maybe Ral
I don't run a strict quota of planeswalkers (though I'd still like at least one representative per guild pair), but I feel like they should be balanced for gameplay just like anything else. If I start to notice that games are becoming too focused on planeswalkers, I'll cut back on them.
I don't keep a hard cap but it's definitely something I think about. This set isn't going to break the planewalker balance wide open though, we might get 3-4 if we are lucky.
In my 540 I'm generally sticking to:
5 per color (and eventually colorless)
1ish per guild (Izzet breaks this but some guilds don't have a walker I like yet).
Once all of that criteria is filled I'd have about 40 walkers in a 540 cube. This comes down to a tad more than 1 walker per pack on average which feels good to me. I agree w/ BZ Gunshot. It's not about the walkers its about the gameplay. I think gameplay is going to get better and more interesting the more unique and archetype supporting walkers we get.
The problem is that planeswalkers are often hard to remove and often don't offer any new additions to strategies. I would be super happy if the new set added alot of planeswalkers but also alot of removal for walkers.
If I had a cube that wasn't a pauper cube I'd not run any planeswalkers. I don't like how they play and the game would be better if they weren't in it.
I agree with you about focusing on the gameplay and not the planeswalkers. I think when I initially asked my question I was not clear.
I think too many walkers dilute game play and the draft experience. With so many planeswalkers taking the slots of creatures they are naturally becoming more difficult to handle. I have drafted a few powered cubes that use some of the lists on here as a skeleton and I find if I am not drafting a broken archtype the default 'superfriends' deck is almost always superior to the creature decks. I have found the best cube experiences with planeswalkers as a utility and not the focus of deck. I completely understand that this is my bias but the superfriends deck is not fun to play against the creatures decks, combo decks, or the other superfriends deck.
I think focussing some number of your selected 'walkers on supporting specific decks helps to lower the "feel" of being oversaturated. It's when you have a ton of generic goodstuff walkers that are playable in everything that the density starts feeling too high, IMO.
I want to chime in to revise my above statement. I've pretty much abandoned all notion of walker caps and now have almost 65 walkers in my 540 cube. I've found that having more walkers helps midrange decks fight against control strategies and that "superfriends" decks fold to well built aggro decks easily.
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I capped them because midrange value decks are something I think is bad for cube, and unfun to enable.
I stopped capping walkers when I realized that they aren’t the problem. Obstinate Baloth and Flametongue Kavu do more to kill aggro than Garruk Wildspeaker or Daretti, Scrap Savant, and do less to enable sweet combos or unique play lines.
I do think there’s a threshold of midrange-based cards I can run, and a threshold of planeswalker-threatening attackers I need to maintain, but I think it’s at least as big of a deal to regulate Nekrataal- or Allied Reinforcement-counts as it is to regulate walkers, especially the walkers without the ability to bury aggro.
I actually like walkers a lot more now, because they make for games that happen outside the combat step paradigm, and make for more interesting and more memorable gameplay, as long as there’s still enough aggro support to rein them back in.
The WAR walkers actually mostly look pretty benign. The ones that look like they might give problems are like Jace and Chandra, which just tick up for card advantage but honestly look pretty interchangeable with other similar planeswalkers that came before. The WAR walkers I think are exciting are ones that do things outside that paradigm - Saheeli, Teferi and maybe Ral
In my 540 I'm generally sticking to:
5 per color (and eventually colorless)
1ish per guild (Izzet breaks this but some guilds don't have a walker I like yet).
Once all of that criteria is filled I'd have about 40 walkers in a 540 cube. This comes down to a tad more than 1 walker per pack on average which feels good to me. I agree w/ BZ Gunshot. It's not about the walkers its about the gameplay. I think gameplay is going to get better and more interesting the more unique and archetype supporting walkers we get.
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I think too many walkers dilute game play and the draft experience. With so many planeswalkers taking the slots of creatures they are naturally becoming more difficult to handle. I have drafted a few powered cubes that use some of the lists on here as a skeleton and I find if I am not drafting a broken archtype the default 'superfriends' deck is almost always superior to the creature decks. I have found the best cube experiences with planeswalkers as a utility and not the focus of deck. I completely understand that this is my bias but the superfriends deck is not fun to play against the creatures decks, combo decks, or the other superfriends deck.
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