Amazingly awesome card. But why is seemingly every Benalish and Serran black? Benalia was definitely European in Invasion... And am I wrong, or is every evil character white? Correct me if I am wrong, by all means.
I've noticed this as well. But it's not really surprising, given that most of WOTC hold to a far-left ideology that they try to force on us at every opportunity. From here on out we'll be seeing a lot more black and female Mary Sues, and we'll probably also see a few autistic sphinxes and transsexual dragons in wheelchairs because diversity.
I would actually love to see more black, LGBT, and disabled characters, but I'd like them introduced organically, not shoehorned in. Having what was clearly a Western medieval realm of knights suddenly filled with black people without explanation is jarring, just as having white Jamuraans in traditional African garb would be (though WOTC wouldn't do that, just as they wouldn't have blonde people on Amonkhet, because it'd be cultural appropriation, which only works one way). I know that this is fantasy and all, but suspension of disbelief and aesthetic coherence matter.
And I'm also insulted that WOTC thinks that it needs to push ethnic minority characters in order to get ethnic minority players. I come from an Indian background, and Saheeli Rai did nothing for me, because I don't need someone to share my skin colour in order to sympathise with them. I'd prefer that WOTC created characters with, y'know, character, rather than just expect us to like them because they're brown or female.
But hell, the true minority in this game seems to be people who think like us, because we get called Nazis and attacked for our opinions by the far-left people who dominate this game, including WOTC itself. End rant.
1
In addition, there are certain pieces of art on here that would make no sense on a new card in a standard-set. Our next colorless walker will almost certainly be Ugin, most likely in the third Ravnica set. This leaves little room for another colorless planeswalker in the near future, so I wouldn't expect a new card for Karn anytime soon. Rather, I think that the art on the poster is either going to be in Commander 2018, or alternate art for his most recent card, likely as a SDCC promo. Similarly, Saheeli's art is clearly on Kaladesh, and since we went there so recently, it obviously isn't for a standard-legal set in the near future. Technically, it could be a core set, but I can't imagine Saheeli being either mono-blue or mono-red. Again, this is likely either a promo version of her recent card, or a card in Commander 2018. Teferi would be a little easier to place in a standard-legal set, but the art is pretty generic and doesn't look like Ravnica or Theros, so while Teferi could be in a standard-legal set, I again think that alternate art for his recent card or a card in the Commander set is far more likely. Since Teferi is WU and there are two better candidates for WU planeswalker Commanders who don't yet have planeswalker cards (Azor and Vronos), and since his card in Dominaria is pushed for standard play, and since the art looks like it could easily be on Dominaria, I think that art is more likely to be a SDCC promo. Similarly, Karn would be an odd choice for a Commander deck since he is colorless, and his Dominaria card is very pushed, and the art would be fitting for Dominaria, so I think the promo option is more likely for him as well. Saheeli I could see appearing in Commander more easily since her previous card rotates out of standard soon and sees no play there that I know of anyway, making her less desirable as a promo, and a UR artifact commander has been requested for a long time. Obviously Jhoira exists now, but perhaps a UR artifact deck for the Commander set was decided on before Jhoira was designed. Long story short, I think Karn and Teferi are SDCC promos, and that Saheeli is from Commander 2018, but in theory any of them could go either way. Regardless, they're all out of the picture for standard-legal sets.
With that out of the way, my predictions for planeswalkers in the next six standard-legal, taking the new art reveals into account, are under the first spoiler tag. Explanation for why each one appears where it does can be found under the second spoiler tag.
New walker
Ral
Vraska
Planeswalker decks
Jace
Gideon
Ravnica Allegiance
Tibalt
Kaya
Kiora
Planeswalker decks
Tamiyo
Domri
Untitled Third Ravnica Set
Bolas
Samut
Ugin
Planeswalker decks
Liliana
Vivien
Core 2020
Nahiri
Dovin
Ob Nixilis
Daretti
Garruk
Planeswalker decks
Same as above
Theros Set 1
Ajani
Elspeth
Dack
Planeswalker decks
Elspeth
Dack
Theros Set 2
Ashiok
Samut
Gideon
Planeswalker decks
Ashiok
Samut
Guilds of Ravnica has Dimir, Selesnya, Izzet, Golgari, and Boros. The walker balance in standard currently leans in favor of white, blue, and especially red - Core 2019 and Ixalan block as a whole are both color-balanced, but Teferi and Jaya in Dominaria throw it off slightly. Since only main set planeswalkers are intended for standard play, and three dual-colored planeswalkers in a set results in one overlapping color, I would expect one of the first two Ravnica sets to favor black and the other to favor green. A black-favoring Guilds of Ravnica would put both Jace and Gideon in the main set along with Vraska, while putting Ral and whoever the Selesnya walker is into the planeswalker decks. This seems unlikely since they've stated that their goal is to put Gatewatch members in planeswalker decks and other characters in the main set. Therefore I expect this set to lean towards green, putting the Selesnya walker (who I'm going to assume will be a new character), Ral, and Vraska in the main set while leaving Jace and Gideon for planeswalker decks.
Ravnica Allegiance has Azorius, Rakdos, Gruul, Orzhov, and Simic. This set should lean towards black, meaning that the Rakdos walker, Kaya, and Kiora belong in the main set with Tamiyo and Domri in the planeswalker decks. Tamiyo has gotten a card more recently than the others and although she isn't technically a Gatewatch member currently, she will either become one or continue to be an ally they can call upon, meaning that she will have plenty of opportunities to get cards and should be fine to appear only in the planeswalker deck. Domri is the least popular of the three new planeswalkers from RTR so while I still expect him to return, restricting him to a planeswalker deck so that more popular characters can get the spotlight makes sense. I'm also going to assume that the Rakdos planeswalker is Tibalt. Ob Nixilis and Daretti are also possible but I think that the former would be better used as a villain of his own story arc rather than a Bolas pawn, while the former would be out of place without artifact support that this set, and the Rakdos faction specifically, don't have enough room for.
The third and final set will almost certainly include Bolas and Ugin. The foreshadowing in Core 2019's story is pretty obvious: we're going to see those two fight. The question is who the third planeswalker will be. There are two planeswalkers who basically have to appear in this story arc because their motivation is centered around getting revenge on Bolas: Samut and Vivien. Of the two, I think that Samut would fit better in the main set, since she could easily be RGW as to not throw off color balance, and her previous card was less recent. I think Vivien will show up in the planeswalker decks along with Liliana, meaning that the color not represented in the first set's planeswalker decks (green) and the one not appearing in the second set's (black) will both be the focus in the third set's. Both of these characters are almost certainly going to be involved in the climax of the story but don't fit particularly well into any of the guilds, and both have had main set cards recently in Core 2019 so they shouldn't take up a spot in the main set.
For Core 2020, I expect a new lineup of monocolored walkers that fit a certain theme, just like Core 2019. The desire for a Villains set by both the players and the designers is clear, and the resolution of the Bolas story arc is the perfect time to establish a rogue's gallery of other villains that the Gatewatch can fight. Green and white are both easy picks: Garruk and Nahiri. Both have leaned toward other colors in the past but could still conceivably be monocolored, especially since core sets can show past versions of them. The spoiled Garruk art looks vaguely villainous but not fully BG, which would be perfect for this set. For blue, the obvious choice is Tezzeret, but after his appearance in Core 2019, we'll need someone else instead. Dovin Baan is a popular character and a potential future antagonist, and as a Vedalken artificer, he could easily be given a mono-blue card (though not a mono-white one). There are only two mono-black planeswalkers in existence currently, and of them Ob Nixilis is the one who is more unambiguously villainous and who has not appeared as recently. For red we could see Tibalt or Daretti or even a new character in theory, but since I expect Tibalt on Ravnica, I'm going to give the edge to Daretti.
The set after Core 2020 will almost certainly be on Theros with a returned Elspeth, who should be WB. This is where I expect the new Ajani art to be used, and although is looks more mono-white the GW, GW would be better in a block with at least one other white planeswalker. We should also be seeing Dack Fayden and Ashiok, who were both left on Theros as a loose plot thread that needs to be resolved. That adds UB and UR. For the other two planeswalkers, we could see some combination of Gideon, who would need to be RW due to the large number of white planeswalkers, and Samut, who planeswalked to Theros for her first planeswalk and who has nowhere else to go with her story after Bolas barring a return set on Amonkhet. UB, RG, GW, WB, UR, and RW would overrepresent red and white by one, but is still relatively color balanced. I could, however, see a new planeswalker replace either Gideon or Samut. I would put Ajani and Elspeth in the first set since their art has already been commissioned which means they can't be too far in the future. This would also add Dack to the first set for color balance, which would also make sense if he is one of the main protagonists. The second set would then have Gideon, Samut, and Ashiok, which would still make sense: if Ashiok is the main villain, and Gideon ends up dying as has been heavily foreshadowed, both should have their most dramatic moments in the second set, and Samut should be held off on until the second set anyway if she recently appeared in the third Ravnica set. For planeswalker decks, I would choose Elspeth and Dack for the first set, and choose Ashiok and Samut for the second. This would avoid both overlapping colors in the same set, and giving more planeswalker decks to Gideon and Ajani, who have both already had multiple planeswalker decks.
1
Speculation time: She obviously isn't in Dominaria. She could be in the core set. The next three sets after the core set should be some combination of Ravnica and/or Theros, both of which will have plenty going on in terms of planeswalkers without her: Ravnica has a showdown between the Gatewatch and Bolas that will require a lot of planeswalker cards, and there's not much room to introduce a new one (especially if she's not from Ravnica and not tied to a guild), while Theros already has Ashiok, Dack, Gideon (who obviously is going to return there at some point), Samut (where else are they going to go with her storyline?), and/or Elspeth (assuming she returns as a planeswalker, which she may or may not). I don't think she's in the Commander set either: it should be dedicated more to old planeswalkers who lack cards than new ones, and making a mono-green deck, especially when we got the Freyalise deck in 2014, would be disappointing. I really think the best place for her is the core set, meaning we can expect a monocolored cycle that includes her and Tezzeret for sure. If there were any other planeswalkers in the same set, it seems like they would have also been in this survey, so I would assume that the white, black, and red planeswalkers are returning characters, and probably not Gideon/Liliana/Chandra, because the other two aren't Gatewatch members and because they've promised to cut back on the Origins 5. I also suspect we're getting more flipwalkers, which is another reason to avoid the Origins 5 since they already have theirs. I have a feeling we're going to get mono-white Ajani, mono-blue Tezzeret, mono-black Ob Nixilis, mono-red Tibalt or Koth, and mono-green Vivien.
Additionally, while I think that her first card will definitely be mono-green based on color scheme and desperate need for a new mono-green planeswalker, I do think that that she could become Abzan eventually. Remember in the Theros block when they tried to finish up giving each color pair a planeswalker with GU Kiora and GW Ajani? I think we're going to start seeing the same thing with tricolor combos. GWU has Tamiyo. They can make a WUB Tezzeret whenever they feel like it. UBR already has THREE Bolas cards. Sarkhan Unbroken was originally going to BRG so wouldn't be surprised to see a BRG Sarkhan card someday. Ajani, Samut, and Huatli all have a RGW color identity if you combine all their cards, though Huatli seems the most likely to get a full RGW card. URW should be Narset, obviously. BGU would be a good fit for Vraska, between the romance with Jace, her becoming a pirate, and the reference to her having ties to the Silumgar on Tarkir (I wouldn't be surprised to see her help restore the Sultai in Return to Tarkir once she's a Gatewatch member). RWB could be Angrath if they decide to play up the blacksmith part of character rather than the pirate part next time we see him, or it could be Sorin if he's really pissed when he gets out of the wall. And GUR has Sarkhan. What's missing? WBG. Garruk and Vraska don't seem white at all, Sorin and Kaya don't seem green at all, and Ajani and Huatli don't seem black at all. Abzan, more than any other shard or wedge, requires a new planeswalker rather than just adding colors to a preexisting one. With spirits being white/black on most planes and five-color on only a few, I think we're likely to see Vivien eventually expand into white and black.
2
A lot of things are missing of course, most notably all the cards that don't create enough rules questions to be in the release notes, but also the rarities of the cards that are in there. The main question now is whether we get legendaries at uncommon. While most of the ones in here seem rare or mythic, there are a couple that could be uncommon, and if there are in fact legendary uncommons, a lot of them are probably absent from the release notes for their relative simplicity. The BG legendary in particular strikes me as more of an archetype-defining uncommon than a rare, but I could be wrong. At some point someone should put together a list predicting the rarities of each card, if for no other reason than to find out how many rares and mythics we have left. There's at least one rare since we need the black member of the pushed triple colored mana creatures cycle, as others have said. I've also noticed that there's no Simic legend so we're probably waiting on that one as well. I assume that each color pair gets at least one, while some already have two - probably a 10-card cycle of rares, plus a few mythics in whatever color combos they want.
The wording changes will take some getting used to. Replacing he or she with they could be confusing in a few instances, but 99% of the time it should be fine. That change and the others will take up less space on cards than the current versions, which is always a good thing. A lot of these cards read kind of weird, at least for the time being, but in some ways that's kind of nostalgic in its own way.
As for the mechanics: saga is cool. Cumulative upkeep meets level up. At first I assumed it was three upkeep triggers but it's actually an ETB first followed by two beginning of precombat main phase triggers, which is even better. Legendary instants and sorceries are kind of gimmicky. It bothers me slightly that legendary means something completely different on permanents versus non-permanents. In my opinion the epic mechanic did a better job executing on the concept of legendary instants and sorceries. But I'm sure the gameplay will be fine. It's just undercosted spells that require a very easy condition to meet. Historic is fine. There aren't a lot of references to it here, but I assume there will be some simpler designs using it that were omitted from the release notes. Artifacts + legendaries + specific type of enchantment is a really odd combination, but easy enough to trigger in both limited and constructed. Kicker is the mechanic I'm least excited for. They could have brought back any nostalgic mechanic, and they chose the most generic one. So generic, in fact, that they said they were avoiding it because they were better off making what were essentially more specific versions of kicker, like the awaken mechanic. I guess they changed their minds, because it's back. Nothing I'm seeing so far makes me say "THIS is why they needed to bring back kicker." I'm sure it will play fine, but it would have been nice to have flashback or cycling instead.
There are a lot of tribal themes, it seems. So far I'm seeing W Angels, R Goblins, WB Knights, UR Wizards, and BG Saprolings. Angels and Knights might just be single cards, but the others appear on multiple cards. Wizards and Saprolings are almost certainly going to be the respective draft archetypes. We could see a tribe in each enemy pair, but we also might not.
Thoughts on individual cards:
1
A few people thought that the art was for Saheeli, but the much larger incident surrounding that art was people thinking it was for a legendary creature, and understandably so: WotC put that art with the name "Advika Taar" and a character bio on their website next to a bunch of other characters' names, art, and bios (https://magic.wizards.com/en/products/aether-revolt). Everyone assumed that there would be cards for Advika Taar and Surash along with the other characters, since Kambal already had a card in Kaladesh and Sram and Rishkar were later confirmed in Aether Revolt. There was even speculation of Advika Taar being the long-awaited UR artificer legend, making it all the more heartbreaking for those people when Advika Taar's artwork ended up on a random uncommon (Surash had no art at all, oddly) and neither appeared in the actual story. This is made even worse by the fact that they had five characters with cards in Aether Revolt that they easily could have put on that page - Sram, Baral, Yahenni, Kari Zev, and Rishkar - yet for some god-forsaken reason whoever designed that web page decided to use only two of them and replace the other three with one character from the previous set and two characters that didn't actually exist.
It's perfectly fair to blame the fanbase for hasty assumptions of random art being planeswalkers - both in the past and with the alleged "Narset" and "Huatli" art now - but the misconception with Scrapper Champion was more that it was a new legend than that it was Saheeli, and unlike those other instances, you can't really blame the players for interpreting it that way because they had just about every reason to believe it was a legendary creature. That time it was entirely WotC's fault for being disorganized and misleading on their own website.
1
Edit: Didn't realize the The Mimeoplasm was the background image on the article link. Obviously Devour for Power will be included in Anthology 2, rather than Political Puppets or any other Commander 2011 deck. I stand by my other predictions though: I think it will be Mimeoplasm, Oloro, Daretti, and Atraxa.
1
That's true; they probably could have divided up the workload a little better. All the more reason that bringing in a professional for Dominaria is an extremely good idea.
8
This is easily the worst story we've had in months. Granted, some of those months had no stories at all, but it's still most certainly the worst story for this set (so far) and quite possibly the entire block. It's clear that this was intended to be part of a longer story and was written to condense several large events into a relatively short span. Eventually, the decision was made to split up the last story into two, so one would think that they would add more detail to the rushed first half. But they didn't. The solution was so blindingly obvious and they still just left it the way it was. And as a result, things like Huatli calling Zacama - which should have been one of the most epic moments in the story - is instead reduced to a few lines the have no relevance to anything else except for calling out a card in the set. It was absolutely pathetic. The exchange with the emperor could have been longer as well. And, of course, there's the fact that Huatli gets visibly upset about the emperor' revisionist history... and then proceeds to leave the plane for a week instead of doing something about it. What? They had more than enough time to have her give a speech telling what actually happened and THEN planeswalk away. But they didn't, and the story - as well the character of Huatli - suffers.
And the fact that Huatli's cousin survived adds insult to injury: we already - in this exact same set - had them try to make us think that Vona and Kumena had died. They kind of did it with Tishana in the previous set as well. They pulled this FOUR times in one block. Why would they do that? It's so obvious what they're doing. We know not to consider a character dead until we see the body. We're not idiots. They've pulled this stunt so many times recently that not only will we never fall for it again, but that it causes more irritation than suspense. And they really could have used an actual death too. This whole storyline stinks of Kaladesh and Aether Revolt's constant death-teasing with no actual death (except Yahenni, but that was related to the conflict). At least Kaladesh block had the excuse of the revolution being somewhat civil with neither side wanting to completely destroy the other. Ixalan is about four very different cultures that hate each other and are at actual war with one another. They can't kill off a single named character in the conflict? Seriously? They've passed up so many chances to kill characters and have teased us to the point where it's become annoying. Amonkhet block, to its credit, was not afraid to kill off relatively major characters. What happened to that mindset? Why does everyone have to start constantly surviving near-death experiences again?
There was also, of course, plenty of awful dialogue. Vona is still the most aggressively terrible and Bond villain-esque character we've had in a while. Mavren yelling an extended "no" was almost a funny way to mock a cliche, but kind of undermined by how the rest of the dialogue uses tons of cliches without any irony or self-awareness. People seem to truly enjoy Breeches but his outbursts seem like comedic low-hanging fruit to me, and it hasn't been very funny since the first time they used it. Angrath's all-caps dialogue has also gotten old and seems to undermine their attempt at making a more sympathetic and less stereotypical BR character. When we see Angrath actually talking normally, it shows us an insightful and reasonable version of the BR philosophy (even if he does repeat the word "freedom" way to much). But that's only 10% of his dialogue. The other 90% is just YELLING ANGRY THINGS IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT'S FUNNY. It's such a waste of what could and should be an amazing character. I really did enjoy the unexpected yet perfectly in-character timing of Angrath's exit. I just don't like the way most of his dialogue has been.
This storyline had the potential to be really great. It had everything it needed for me to like it: only one Gatewatch member instead of five, another returning character who I actually like getting an equal role to said Gatewatch member, well-conceived new characters like Angrath and Kumena, a morally grey conflict between factions for the first time in years, exploration of the plane itself instead of just the main plot, etc. But the writers seem to have really stumbled in resolving the story. I could have thought of a dozen better ways to end the story than this. Part of the issue is writing quality. You would think that they would have figured out who should be writing which types of stories (and who shouldn't be writing any at all) by this point, especially since they seem to be losing creative team members rather than gaining them. They have a few writers who can actually write, so give them the reigns and stop letting the weaker ones keep writing to spare their feelings. I thought that the writing quality was significantly better throughout Hour of Devastation and Ixalan, but in parts of previous stories for Rivals and the entirety of this one, the writing simply hasn't been that good.
But I think that the greater issue is disorganization. Let us not forget that they took two months off from writing stories. Two months. And yet still we see tons of issues. There have been huge disconnects between the story and the cards. At least three cards show characters doing things that they never actually did in the story. There are also inconsistencies between the fat back booklet and the actual stories (like the former saying that Huatli and Angrath leave Ixalan together), and the art book, while not technically incorrect, leaves out major details of the story. Several missed legendary creature cards, which I thought might be a thing of the past after Amonkhet and was proven overwhelmingly wrong. Malcolm, Breeches, Inti, and the emperor all play significant roles in the story but don't have cards; while Arguel, Captain Vance, Hadana, and the "Grim Captain" are all called out on cards in such a way that would likely make players want to see cards for them. Instead, we get five dinosaur legends that do nothing in the story and one that was a glorified taxi. Then, of course, there's the last minute change from five stories to six that gave us this absolute gem of a story: short, poorly-written, and in desperate need of details that they could have easily added. This, of course, is the result of the tribe poll, which in itself has been a dumpster fire: complete inconsistencies in scoring up to this point and a horribly designed poll on the mothership released today that accidentally made everyone vote for vampires. As a result, many people have lost faith in the poll and believe that it was rigged from the start (personally, I think that their intention was to have an actual vote and simply managed it horribly, but I don't know for sure that it wasn't rigged).
I would like to think that most if not all of this storyline's issues were caused by the polling experiment. Writing four stories instead of one would have to take a long time, plus planning out how to poll people on social media, distribute and track geocaching materials, etc. This probably took up a lot of the time on their two month story break that could have otherwise been devoted to actually giving us stories during that time or having better quality control for this set's story. Hopefully the realize that the poll was a failed experiment that only distracted them from more important things, and as a result, we see the quality increase significantly for Dominaria since it has no such poll. I just wish that they had realized from the start that the voting was a bad idea. Why they thought that devoting time to an arbitrary gimmick instead of more important things was a good idea is beyond me. And I don't know why they would think we would rather have them write four stories and release one than just write four stories and release all of them. But if the polling was the main cause of some of these issues and we see far fewer issues in Dominaria as a result, I'll be relieved. The resolution of Ixalan left a lot to be desired, but I'll call myself cautiously optimistic for Dominaria.
3
It's not the actions that are hypocritical, it's the justification. Jace criticizes Azor for abandoning Ravnica to its own devices so that he could go and meddle in the affairs of various other planes. He says this after we have just watched Jace abandon Ravnica to its own devices so that he can go and meddle in the affairs of various other planes. Why is it only wrong when Azor does it?
Just to be clear, I don't have an issue with this logic. It's some of the other accusations that are hypocritical. It's extremely ironic that Jace is upset at someone for doing the exact same things he's been doing, except on a larger scale. Maybe that's the entire point, and this experience will make Jace realize the error of his ways and try harder to not be like Azor. Or maybe it's selectively forgetful writing to establish a clear protagonist and antagonist despite the similarities between them. We'll see if they can justify it in the next story.
If Jace can get Azor to do whatever he wants, which seems to be the case, then why wouldn't he make more use of that? Sure, he doesn't necessarily need to, but he certainly could have if he wanted to. Assuming that Azor getting his spark back is not possible, he could have at the very least given Azor instructions that would have been beneficial to the inhabitants of the plane - for instance, not meddling with the factions any further and acting exclusively to protect the plane from external threats.
And if it is possible for Azor to get his spark back, Jace could get even more use out of him. Granted, there's no way for Jace to know if retrieving the spark is possible (unless he found out from Azor's memories), but what it really comes down to is whether the writers want Azor to be a planeswalker again or not. There are several reasons why having Azor be a planeswalker would be beneficial - namely, the popular demand for a sphinx planeswalker, the necessity of explaining why Jace would let Bolas have the Immortal Sun, and the potential benefits of getting Jace out of his job as Guildpact - so I think that there is still a possibility they could choose to take the story that direction.
But why banish him when you have complete control over him and can make him do something that's actually beneficial to the plane? Or when you can (assuming that it's possible) give him back his spark and have him take over your job that you can't/won't do?
Jace is guilty of much of same "oldwalker BS" that Azor is. He's meddled in plenty of planes and failed to pay any attention to the consequences of his actions. So far Jace has:
So while someone should call out Azor for what he's done, someone should call out Jace for all the stuff he's done as well.
These are all good points. You're absolutely right that the retcons are probably the reason for the majority of the plot holes, and your explanation could easily account for most of it. I just wish that we could get some sort of acknowledgement from the writers of the past storylines rather than acting like it all lines up in a perfect and obvious way, because it most certainly doesn't.
1
I don't hate the card, and I kind of want to build around it, but it is a bit underwhelming. I feel like a lot of this set's mythics feel like rares. But then again, a lot of rares feel like mythics (elder dinos in particular). Technically having the rares at mythic and the mythics at rare just lets us get the better cards more often, so I guess it's a good thing.
It's unfortunate that its last ability doesn't work well in Commander, because that's where it should shine the most. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that in order to get the death trigger in an EDH game you have to let her go to the graveyard rather than the command zone to get the death trigger. Putting her back in the command zone is a replacement effect, so if you do so, she isn't put into a graveyard from the battlefield (which is the definition of dying). It doesn't make her unplayable in EDH or anything, but throwing in a lot of recursion effects just to be able to use her last ability more than once is an inconvenience, plus I'm sure that it will confuse a fair number of less experienced EDH players and lead to disappointment when they're corrected.
They could have fixed it easily by having the ability trigger whenever Elenda leaves the battlefield instead of when she dies. It would have made her marginally more powerful, but I don't think the card is anywhere close to being too powerful as it is. It would have opened up blinking shenanigans as well, but the counters would fall off and she would only return as a 1/1, so it would be good but not broken. I don't know, I think it's a fun card, but the functionality leaves something to be desired.
1
Granted, we just had a block about how a political leader from one plane planeswalked completely at random to a plane that happened to have his nemesis on it, then almost immediately runs into nemesis from the same plane he's a political leader one, and this plane also happens to be where the founder of the government he's in control of is trapped on. That's an insane series of coincidences. Magic's story is built on coincidences. With focus on a handful of planeswalkers in an infinite number of planes, it has to be. The Ixalan story relied on coincidence but was told in such a way that it felt at least somewhat natural, and much of it was explained decently rather than happening completely by chance. Samut and Hazoret both being planeswalkers (or Samut and Djeru, as I've seen other people suggest) would just feel to forced in my opinion. I think as a general rule, it's best to avoid people who knew each other before either became a planeswalker both becoming planeswalkers later on. We never see two planebound friends both igniting, it's always one igniting (and then, if they're lucky, befriending other planeswalkers, often from other planes). I feel like your proposal violates that unspoken rule. It's almost offensively coincidental.
The other issue that Samut creates for Hazoret as a theoretical planeswalker is that both have the same story role. If we never return to Amonkhet, it does make a lot of sense to have a planeswalker carry on its legacy, much like Tamiyo for Kamigawa. But Samut does that just fine. We don't need a Hazoret planeswalker. Don't get me wrong, I would have much rather seen Hazoret fill that role than Samut, because I think that a fallen god would have been a much more interesting character than yet another human with a superpower, but as long as Samut exists, Hazoret doesn't seem practical.
Samut reminds us that Amonkhet still exists in the same way that Hazoret would. She has the same backstory to motivate her to fight Bolas. She would bring more or less the same set of skills (speed, strength, fighting prowess, and the ability to inspire others) to the Gatewatch. Their personalities might differ (at least Hazoret has a personality), but the whole fish-out-of-water comic relief thing that Hazoret would bring to the table is already present thanks to Nissa, and to a lesser extent, Ajani. Wanting more non-human planeswalkers is a valid concern (and one that I have voiced my opinion on in the past) but there are many other non-human planeswalkers that could also diversify the Gatewatch (and give us more fish-out-of-water humor like Nissa and Ajani; if we even need any more of that, because personally I think they've had every chance at it already with Nissa and have yet to do it particularly well).
So basically, if Samut wasn't a planeswalker, I'd say go for it. But because she exists, I don't think Hazoret as a planeswalker would be very practical. I think that she's mainly a seed for a return block on Amonkhet if they decide to even make one (which will depend on multiple factors, including the perceived audience response to the first block and where the story goes). I could see Hazoret playing a very major role if/when we do return, but I don't think that introducing her as a planeswalker would be the right move even then.