If pure chaos is what you want, I'd recommend something like Grip of Chaos.
I've wanted to build a deck around Eye of the Storm + Grip of Chaos for forever, but it's a combo that probably should be reserved for online play, where you can let the program do all the hard work, rather than the tabletop where you have to do it all.
Given that YOU are a Planeswalker when you play Magic, almost every Planeswalker relies on summoning creatures. I’d hope player options are more inspired by iconic spells from the same than from the design of Planeswalker cards, which are far more limited in comparison.
City of Heroes was a supreme MMO, so much character design, even the same “class” could be modified into your personal uniqueness. Healing with darkness (via damage) plays very differently from healing with radiation (mutates your target while you heal), tanking with Will Power too plays differently from Super Strength, the list could go on.
And Mastermind, Warshade, Widows, etc, that game allows you to play true hybrid in YOUR own way. I cannot complain.
Let’s not oversell CoH/V. Character creation and design was fantastic. The rest of the game had a lot of questionable elements. Repetitive missions leading to no real variety in leveling, total lack of interesting enemies (a world of superheroes and you never saw a super villain...yay, more thugs), not much endgame content... I still dream of a game that marries CoH character creation with diverse and varied gameplay.
I think that, to an extent, a lot of that simply goes with the MMO trappings. MMOs have always been, and likely will always be, built on repetitive gameplay elements. You're always going to have huge numbers of generic enemies to defeat just by shear virtue of MMO progression. They can't all be super villains, or the term "Super Villain" stops meaning anything.
I don't disagree that this WAS one of the game's problem areas, though for what it's worth, I think that CoH/V got better at this later on in its run. This was especially egregious back in the beginning.
I hope the trinity is in full force in this game. Games who tried to kick that aspect of MMOs out were dreadful.
City of Heroes (interestingly, the OG Cryptic designed game) did a good job of it.
It didn't try to completely reinvent the wheel. There were still class archetypes, not some sort of freeform "everyone can be everything" type of system. The Trinity classes were still PRESENT in the game (Tankers (Tank, duh), Defenders(Support) and Blasters/Scrappers(Ranged/Melee DPS respectively), but there were also Controllers which were a primary control focused archetype. Not like you see in most games (A 3second stun with a 1 minute cooldown), but to the point where if you had a competent Controller you could do without a Tanker or without a Defender, or sometimes even with them filling the DPS role depending on what powersets the controller had. (Which was another great thing with CoH, every archetype had an array of different Primary and Secondary powersets to chose from (1 of each) so you could have two characters of the same Archetype that performed wildly differently, only really sharing their core traits.)
CoH's Support was also a lot more than just "Heals" as well. In fact there were a few Support sets that lacked heals entirely. Support was far more centered around buffing and debuffing, essentially preventing damage rather than just recovering from it. Buffs also stacked from different casters, so you were never in a situation where adding a second player with the same support set was redundant and actually hurt your performance. In fact, some of the strongest teams in the game came in the form of All Defender groups, where stacking multiple buffs or multiple types of buffs from different sources could push everyone into Tank level survivability with pure DPS levels of damage output.
You COULD run a group strictly adhering to the Trinity (and some players even insisted on it, since that was the system they were used to), but you could really run content with almost any team buildup, and never NEEDED to strictly obey "Tank, Healer, 3 DPS." No tank? Get a Controller; They can lock down enemies enough that you don't have to worry about who has agro. No DPS? Add another Defender; they'll either buff everyone else's damage/recharge/resource recovery, or debuff enemy defense/resistance enough to make up the difference (possibly more than that, even). Don't have a Defender? Get a Controller; they'll neuter incoming damage and have enough support powers to mitigate anything that slips through.
Well, while we are accustomed to characters from 80s-90s cartoon who did not EVEN ONCE change their clothes, we can't actually say she does not seem like Mu, because we only see arms and legs of her. Consider Mu is extremely tamiyo-ish in the original art for the global series (blu dressed, white hair similar to white moonfolks appendages-ears), so maybe they tried to revamp her style in a way that could strongly differentiate one from another EVEN in a great picture including more planeswalkers, for example promotional illustrations or even cards'. We should doubt more about the type of weapon she is brandishing than her clothes. It's more like a plummage weapon or a lance with wind/sonic effect than water (even though water should have more that aspect of pale transparency than freaking sky-blue, especially in the winter of ravnica)
Edit: on second analysis Tamiyo is more of a green-ish turquoise hue than blue...
Except that exactly 0 planeswalkers have changed their clothes for the entire time there has been planeswalker cards. Because clothes are part of being able to quickly identify an image of a person, as well as a major part of a characters silhouette. Also the wanderer's weapon is part of the look that we are considering. Nothing about the image fits Mu. Not clothing, or weaponry, or color. It already didn't make sense to bring Jiangg into the main story when they could have made a new walker and needed to put in just about the same amount of work into creating them. The last thing, I think, that we want is a throw away walker from a supplemental product.
Not that I'm disagreeing about Mu Yanling, but, Gideon, Liliana, Tezzeret, Sarkhan and Vraska have all had outfit changes (Some only temporarily, but Liliana at least has had a different outfit from her original since... Liliana of the Veil). Vraska and Tezzeret are on their 3rd outfits, where Sarkhan seems to be on his 4th.
Arguably Garruk as well, in that he put a shirt on: Garruk Wildspeaker vs Garruk, Apex Predator (EDIT: Err, the M15 version, not the stupid black on black. I just don't know how to specify which to display.)
All that aside, I think this actually reinforces your argument, rather than detracts from it, because in just about every one of those cases their new outfit is EXTREMELY similar to their old ones. Same color. Similar shapes/motifs. If Windblade-hat-lady is Mu Yanling, then she's undergone a radical and sweeping redesign that honestly doesn't fit the established pattern of Planeswalker visual updates.
I'd agree that Humans should be a generic default Race, and not tied to any color. They appear in large volume in every single color of Magic, so any sort of limitation would be contrived and awkward. Plus, White has other characteristic Races they could use (Kor and Leonin).
I'd do: 1 Human W Kor/Leonin U Merfolk/Vedalken (though I think I'd save Vedalken for a later content pack/microtransaction, since IMO they're not distinct enough from Humans, unless we're talkin the Mirrodin, four-armed version, which would require a distinct skeleton/animations to work) B Innistradi Vampire/Azra (Azra are still very new, but black has the problem where MOST of its characteristic Races simply can't hold a spark, so slim pickins) R Goblin G Elf
For Classes, I think Soldier, Cleric, Wizard and Rogue for base classes, branching into numerous options for Advanced Class. I feel like Cleric needs to be distinct from Wizard, because the source of their power and how they acquire it is very, VERY different. They're only contemporary in that they're magic users, but the same could be said about the relation between Soldier and Rogue (They're both melee based weapon users), so they should be distinct from each other.
They are. Champions Online has been in maintenance mode for ages, basically, and City of Heroes was super sweet but got shut down, sadly.
I think their Star Trek game is pretty ok, but man, passing hard here. Not looking forward to lootboxes and keys on every street corner.
Now, to be fair, Cryptic had long since sold off their stake in CoH before it got canned. That was entirely NCSoft's doing.
I'm willing to give Cryptic another chance on this one. Wizards has a vested interest in not being too greedy since the MMO will fuel card sales.
There's so much potential for an amazing MMO experience in the MTG IP. I'm delighted at the thought of running around casting the spells from the cards in an actual MMO, at visiting the planes in person. They could do some really interesting things with an open-ended class design that ties into the color pie. I hope they can pull it off!
I'll still keep an eye out for the game, it could prove decent. But Cyptic certainly doesn't inspire my confidence. This really seems to be Cryptic's standard MO. Acquire rights to develop game for popular, established IP. Half-ass it and turn in a game designed entirely on farming the wallets of your consumer base, then let it crash and burn.
While I was a huge fan of City of Heroes and played it basically from release to shut down, nothing else Cryptic has ever done has impressed me, and in fact the blatant money-grabbing nature of all of their other games (whether the studio's fault, or the distributors or who-evers) has seriously damaged the company's reputation for me. The the point where reading that it was being done by Cryptic essentially killed any budding excitement I might have had for the project.
I'm INCREDIBLY EXCITED for more Ashiok, Angrath, Ob Nixilis, and Kaya. I love me some dark walkers.
Do we know who is below Ugin? Reminds me of an Aetherborn. Is Gonti a walker?
Maybe the dark aura means it's Chain-Veil-corrupted Garruk. He had a helmet,I suppose.
Davriel "Greystone" Cain. He is from the novel "Children of the Nameless" by Brandon Sanderson. He is human, he makes deals with devils, he is primarily black with a splash of blue and red magic. However his outlook on the world is very Esper.
Deals with devils? Is he Liliana's soul mate or something?
Won't spoil too much, just he be smarter than her when maken deals.
I mean Lili is especially dense when it comes to demon/dragon pacts.
Its been a frequent question for Brandon Sanderson, about Davriel and what he would think about Liliana and her contracts. When you read the book you start to understand why the question is asked quiet a bit.
Will be entertaining to see what set of abilities they give him with WAR.
Davriel is also anti necromancy so he probably bash Liliana. Lili is dumb though there is no question.
Oh yeah. From reading the novella and what Sanderson has said about the character, Davrial's much less Liliana's "soulmate" and far more her foil. I think that he'd look at just about everything she's done and all her reasoning behind it with utter disdain.
Personally, I don't think the story needs tobe "darker" per se (I frankly lose interest in stories that push it too far that direction).
What I feel like the story DOES need, is more actual consequences for events/character actions. And for the authors to take the time to make sure characters advance the plot in logical manners rather than the constant stream of "right place, right time" happenstance we've been having, where characters literally blunder/stumble into exactly the plot device/information they need to advance to the next plot point. Bolas just *happens* to find the person who overheard Azor/Ugin's conversation (despite Azor ordering everyone else out of the room) Chandra just *happens* upon a Renegade Prime bombing right after getting back to Kaladesh, who just *happens* to be her mother, and Tezzeret just *happens* to be there personally to arrest her so that Liliana just *happens* to see him and have reason to call in Jace/Gideon, and so on. There's virtually no *effort* on the part of the characters to advance the plot, the plot just chugs along dropping whatever information/motive on the characters that is/are needed to drag them along with it. For no reason. There's no reason that the characters couldn't have actively worked to reach the very same information in the same word count and thus had any sense of actual agency.
No to all your questions. For a spell to be cast it goes from the zone it is in to the stack and all costs (if necessary) are paid. The downside is that abilities like Bruna don't count towards cast triggers, but the upside is that they also can't be countered by counterspells. You need an ability counter like squelch.
Specifically one would need a spell like Stifle or Disallow that counters a triggered ability, since that's what Bruna's is (Squelch specifies activated abilities so wouldn't work in this situation).
We got another cute story, but all the stories are kind of the same and all the main characters have the same personality: a low ranking member of the guild has confidence issues but is trying his/her best to make it in the guild. It’s a brutal world that can be difficult to live in, but the main character is really a nice person who really wants to succeed. In the end, everything works out.
I'm just waiting for the Azorius story to inevitably come along and instead portray the main character as some laughable, incompetent lawful stupid - or even directly villainous - putz, because "gov'ment bad." It'd certainly fit the theme that MTG's been playing up in recent sets. (Seriously, when was that last set where the governing body wasn't either pointlessly useless, or actively corrupt?)
Unless you guys are looking at a different image than I am that is CLEARLY Lili. Shoulderless black dress, gold headdress, clearly Lili. Nothing about that hints at Elspeth.
Lower part looks a little like Elspeth, but the head is clearly Liliana's. You can see her golden tiara.
I r/woooosh you once, I r/woooosh you twice, I even r/woooosh you thrice.
So, we have Bolas under The Immortal Sun, and the archetypal "each side lined up perfectly against the other because that's basic tactics right there" shot.
Those are all Eternals. On both sides. There's no faction based 1v1 lineup at all in that image.
Fair enough. I mean they did make an Esper Walker recently but eh she is in Commander. Dimir is I guess fairly open since dual color walkers are prominent then tricolor. Doesn't fit with the guild but he be different from Ashiok so that is plus. Still we got shocklands so its not like a Grixis Manabase is all that taxing if he is UB. Could make a cool UBControl Deck with him I guess. Still UB is weird colors if he is a Demonolgist so probably best off as monoblack. His theme doesn't fit Dimir or Esper that great. A quick says only 4 Demons or Devils with Blue exist. Could make more I guess, its pretty open after B and R. They could make Grixis I guess he did like the finer things in life and that fit Demon and Devil Summoner way better but WOTC doesn't want annoy Sanderson so he is probably monoblack.
Ultimately I think that WotC could make him whichever colors they felt like, but Sanderson did a pretty good job of fitting Davriel into the color pie as is.
UB works for him, even if it doesn't seem the most likely combination for a Demonologist simply due to the manner in which he goes about it. Unlike Liliana who apparently just signs whatever paper you put in front of her, Davriel specifically engineers contracts that are impossible for his demonic associates to fulfill. His deal with Crunchgnar for example, was for Crunch to ensure that Davriel lived to the age of (65 i think?) without dying, but Davriel has apparently already died once prior to crafting the contract, so Crunchgnar was literally incapable of fulfilling his end of the bargain and would never have been able to claim Davriel's soul.
The deals themselves are black, the methodology he applies to them is blue.
I mean this plane does have lots of demons and devils so he fit right in.
What colors is he suppose to be I assume Black at minimum? Although he is not really Red which doesn't really fit Rakdos I guess its fine if he is monoblack. Maybe a devil and demon tribal like sarkhan fireblood.
I bet they push his card considering who wrote him. Card wise.
He was a fun character though although I am still tired of so many Humans. I hope he the last one for awhile.
Sanderson said he originally pitched Davriel as a monoblack heroic character, but he thinks that Dimir or Esper also fit, depending on the needs of the set. (He's a black character who utilizes blue means and has some (more minor) white (orderly) characteristics.)
I mean the problem with say Koth showing up is why would he care about Ravnica. I mean Phyrexia is a threat on the level of Bolas and no one is helping him. Karn will come back eventually but I don't see why Koth would give an ef about Ravnica.
I would say legendary creature would be temp as trapping characters who don't care about Ravnica on Ravnica would be a waste of time.
I don't think Koth would give a damn about Ravnica. There's nothing (to my knowledge) even saying that he knows about Ravnica, or that the beacon includes any sort of information at all.
I think the reason he'd show up to investigate is because, ostensibly, in all the years he's been capable of traveling between planes, never once has he ever experienced and event where a signal or message of any kind has proved capable of breaching the barrier between worlds. NOT investigating would be as if humans were capable of interstellar travel, received what could be the first ever signal from another civilization, and then simply decided not to bother checking it out.
I've wanted to build a deck around Eye of the Storm + Grip of Chaos for forever, but it's a combo that probably should be reserved for online play, where you can let the program do all the hard work, rather than the tabletop where you have to do it all.
There's also the Mono Red Mono Random decklist played on Commander Clash. It has a lot of good chaos options you can pull from it.
I think that, to an extent, a lot of that simply goes with the MMO trappings. MMOs have always been, and likely will always be, built on repetitive gameplay elements. You're always going to have huge numbers of generic enemies to defeat just by shear virtue of MMO progression. They can't all be super villains, or the term "Super Villain" stops meaning anything.
I don't disagree that this WAS one of the game's problem areas, though for what it's worth, I think that CoH/V got better at this later on in its run. This was especially egregious back in the beginning.
City of Heroes (interestingly, the OG Cryptic designed game) did a good job of it.
It didn't try to completely reinvent the wheel. There were still class archetypes, not some sort of freeform "everyone can be everything" type of system. The Trinity classes were still PRESENT in the game (Tankers (Tank, duh), Defenders(Support) and Blasters/Scrappers(Ranged/Melee DPS respectively), but there were also Controllers which were a primary control focused archetype. Not like you see in most games (A 3second stun with a 1 minute cooldown), but to the point where if you had a competent Controller you could do without a Tanker or without a Defender, or sometimes even with them filling the DPS role depending on what powersets the controller had. (Which was another great thing with CoH, every archetype had an array of different Primary and Secondary powersets to chose from (1 of each) so you could have two characters of the same Archetype that performed wildly differently, only really sharing their core traits.)
CoH's Support was also a lot more than just "Heals" as well. In fact there were a few Support sets that lacked heals entirely. Support was far more centered around buffing and debuffing, essentially preventing damage rather than just recovering from it. Buffs also stacked from different casters, so you were never in a situation where adding a second player with the same support set was redundant and actually hurt your performance. In fact, some of the strongest teams in the game came in the form of All Defender groups, where stacking multiple buffs or multiple types of buffs from different sources could push everyone into Tank level survivability with pure DPS levels of damage output.
You COULD run a group strictly adhering to the Trinity (and some players even insisted on it, since that was the system they were used to), but you could really run content with almost any team buildup, and never NEEDED to strictly obey "Tank, Healer, 3 DPS." No tank? Get a Controller; They can lock down enemies enough that you don't have to worry about who has agro. No DPS? Add another Defender; they'll either buff everyone else's damage/recharge/resource recovery, or debuff enemy defense/resistance enough to make up the difference (possibly more than that, even). Don't have a Defender? Get a Controller; they'll neuter incoming damage and have enough support powers to mitigate anything that slips through.
Man, I miss that game.
Not that I'm disagreeing about Mu Yanling, but, Gideon, Liliana, Tezzeret, Sarkhan and Vraska have all had outfit changes (Some only temporarily, but Liliana at least has had a different outfit from her original since... Liliana of the Veil). Vraska and Tezzeret are on their 3rd outfits, where Sarkhan seems to be on his 4th.
Gideon
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar & All other Gideons vs Gideon of the Trials/Gideon, Martial Paragon
Liliana
Liliana Vess/Liliana, Defiant Necromancer vs Liliana of the Veil/Liliana, the Last Hope
Vraska
Vraska the Unseen vs Vraska, Relic Seeker/Vraska, Sceming Gorgon vs Vraska, Golgari Queen/Vraska, Regal Gorgon
Tezzeret
Tezzeret the Seeker vs Tezzeret, Artifice Master/Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas vs Tezzeret the Schemer/Tezzeret, Master of Metal
Sarkhan
Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker vs Sarkhan Vol vs Sarkhan the Mad vs Sarkhan, Dragonsoul/Sarkhan, Fireblood/Sarkhan Unbroken
Arguably Garruk as well, in that he put a shirt on: Garruk Wildspeaker vs Garruk, Apex Predator (EDIT: Err, the M15 version, not the stupid black on black. I just don't know how to specify which to display.)
All that aside, I think this actually reinforces your argument, rather than detracts from it, because in just about every one of those cases their new outfit is EXTREMELY similar to their old ones. Same color. Similar shapes/motifs. If Windblade-hat-lady is Mu Yanling, then she's undergone a radical and sweeping redesign that honestly doesn't fit the established pattern of Planeswalker visual updates.
I'd do:
1 Human
W Kor/Leonin
U Merfolk/Vedalken (though I think I'd save Vedalken for a later content pack/microtransaction, since IMO they're not distinct enough from Humans, unless we're talkin the Mirrodin, four-armed version, which would require a distinct skeleton/animations to work)
B Innistradi Vampire/Azra (Azra are still very new, but black has the problem where MOST of its characteristic Races simply can't hold a spark, so slim pickins)
R Goblin
G Elf
For Classes, I think Soldier, Cleric, Wizard and Rogue for base classes, branching into numerous options for Advanced Class. I feel like Cleric needs to be distinct from Wizard, because the source of their power and how they acquire it is very, VERY different. They're only contemporary in that they're magic users, but the same could be said about the relation between Soldier and Rogue (They're both melee based weapon users), so they should be distinct from each other.
I'll still keep an eye out for the game, it could prove decent. But Cyptic certainly doesn't inspire my confidence. This really seems to be Cryptic's standard MO. Acquire rights to develop game for popular, established IP. Half-ass it and turn in a game designed entirely on farming the wallets of your consumer base, then let it crash and burn.
Oh yeah. From reading the novella and what Sanderson has said about the character, Davrial's much less Liliana's "soulmate" and far more her foil. I think that he'd look at just about everything she's done and all her reasoning behind it with utter disdain.
What I feel like the story DOES need, is more actual consequences for events/character actions. And for the authors to take the time to make sure characters advance the plot in logical manners rather than the constant stream of "right place, right time" happenstance we've been having, where characters literally blunder/stumble into exactly the plot device/information they need to advance to the next plot point. Bolas just *happens* to find the person who overheard Azor/Ugin's conversation (despite Azor ordering everyone else out of the room) Chandra just *happens* upon a Renegade Prime bombing right after getting back to Kaladesh, who just *happens* to be her mother, and Tezzeret just *happens* to be there personally to arrest her so that Liliana just *happens* to see him and have reason to call in Jace/Gideon, and so on. There's virtually no *effort* on the part of the characters to advance the plot, the plot just chugs along dropping whatever information/motive on the characters that is/are needed to drag them along with it. For no reason. There's no reason that the characters couldn't have actively worked to reach the very same information in the same word count and thus had any sense of actual agency.
Specifically one would need a spell like Stifle or Disallow that counters a triggered ability, since that's what Bruna's is (Squelch specifies activated abilities so wouldn't work in this situation).
I'm just waiting for the Azorius story to inevitably come along and instead portray the main character as some laughable, incompetent lawful stupid - or even directly villainous - putz, because "gov'ment bad." It'd certainly fit the theme that MTG's been playing up in recent sets. (Seriously, when was that last set where the governing body wasn't either pointlessly useless, or actively corrupt?)
/salt
Those are all Eternals. On both sides. There's no faction based 1v1 lineup at all in that image.
Ultimately I think that WotC could make him whichever colors they felt like, but Sanderson did a pretty good job of fitting Davriel into the color pie as is.
UB works for him, even if it doesn't seem the most likely combination for a Demonologist simply due to the manner in which he goes about it. Unlike Liliana who apparently just signs whatever paper you put in front of her, Davriel specifically engineers contracts that are impossible for his demonic associates to fulfill. His deal with Crunchgnar for example, was for Crunch to ensure that Davriel lived to the age of (65 i think?) without dying, but Davriel has apparently already died once prior to crafting the contract, so Crunchgnar was literally incapable of fulfilling his end of the bargain and would never have been able to claim Davriel's soul.
The deals themselves are black, the methodology he applies to them is blue.
I don't think Koth would give a damn about Ravnica. There's nothing (to my knowledge) even saying that he knows about Ravnica, or that the beacon includes any sort of information at all.
I think the reason he'd show up to investigate is because, ostensibly, in all the years he's been capable of traveling between planes, never once has he ever experienced and event where a signal or message of any kind has proved capable of breaching the barrier between worlds. NOT investigating would be as if humans were capable of interstellar travel, received what could be the first ever signal from another civilization, and then simply decided not to bother checking it out.