Please realize that I am trying to get somebody to answer the question of how this five-card planeswalker cycle is going generate the excitement necessary to move packs.
...because according to my theory, they're a bonus rare. The same as the prospect of opening both an Akroma and a Flagstones of Trokair in the same booster helped move packs of Time Spiral.
And this doesn't even have to be a Lorwyn-specific addition. Each block hereafter could include new Planeswalkers. They already stated that the new cardtype isn't just for Lorwyn; it's part of Magic permanently.
This isn't about what Planeswalkers do (yes, go ahead and spew some nonsense about your argument precluding my argument and continue you're digression, but I will listen no further). This is about how you get a Planeswalkers. My proposal is that there will be no fewer printings of each Planeswalker than there are of any other rare. It's just that not every pack will contain a Planeswalker. Think of how you don't always open a Watery Grave in every pack of Ravnica. Does that mean Watery Grave is more rare than all the other rares?
Again, I call it the "bonus rare," not an ultra rare. The probability of opening a Planeswalker in a pack doesn't necessarily have to be less than that of opening any given rare. However, that's not the same as saying that every pack will have a Planeswalker.
The official reason for the price increase was to adjust for inflation and such. WotC is a business; they aren't going to lower the price again, and I highly doubt planeswalkers will be one per pack. That would make them practically more common than common.
Obviously (a bit of tongue-in-cheek in my first post), but the 3-rare possibility was certainly a good way to market the price increase rather than just saying, "You have to pay more. Deal with it." Since timeshifting was temporary, they may have conceived the Planeswalkers as a way of making boosters have more value to the players to justify the new price.
If so, it may be no coincidence that Time Spiral rewrote the rules of Planeswalkers, prepping them for print in the set that ushered in with the price increase.
Remember how WotC upped the price of boosters and product because timeshifted cards in Time Spiral sometimes acted like an extra rare? Likewise, they also made it so that foil doesn't necessarily replace a card of the same rarity, making it possible to open a pack with three rares in it.
Moving on to Lorwyn, we don't have timeshifted cards, but we do have Planeswalkers. Does this mean a Planeswalker will be included in every pack? Probably not, but people are speculating whether or not Planeswalkers will have an "ultra rare" rarity. From what WotC did with timeshifted cards, I'm thinking Planeswalkers will have more of a "bonus rare" rarity, meaning they do not replace your regular rare in a pack, and while it probably won't be possible to open more than one Planeswalker in a pack, their rarity doesn't necessarily have to be greater (or is it less?) than that of regular rares.
So that whole RIppling for 8 damage off two mana is quite possible as long as you've got the other three copies every 4 cards down...
There's better Doomsday combos out there. You won't be getting 8 damage for two mana unless you spend a huge investment making it happen, at which point it's better to do something more powerful.
Although it's funny that Memory Lapse is from Homelands.
Wait, what if you have two of the same Forecast card in your hand? You can still only use the ability once? Seems fuzzy.
Anyway, a blue-white control deck that needs lots of creatures does not sound very effective. However, using zero cards in your hand and zero mana to draw a card is crazy good. Somewhere there's a blue-white mage wringing his hands looking at that card saying, "My preciousss..."
For the love of god, please give us some discard spells in Rakdos.
In Limited, the two creatures you're going to see people tearing their hair out over are Silhana Ledgewalker and Skarrgan Pit-Skulk. Unblockability is fun in Limited.
Will a 3/3 for four get played in constructed? It's hard to say. Because of the new layer rules, I don't think he's going to be effective at weakening your opponent's creatures. I suppose you could throw this guy into Selesnya to give +2/+2 to your saprolings, but that's not a huge effect.
All in all, Omnibian is not a card you can build a deck around, but it's a very interesting card that might fit into another deck.
Myth 1.) You have to waste cards -- Everyone seems to think that the only way to make use of Hellbent is to discard cards for no good reason. The real way to use Hellbent is to be super aggressive. You play lots of threats and overwhelm your opponent. When you run out of cards, the cards you have in play become much better.
If they printed a red-black version of Wild Mongrel, I'm sure everyone would think Hellbent is the nuts.
The first thing a lot of people in my locality thought when they heard about Hellbent was, "They're copying Squadron." For those that don't know, there's another CCG called Versus based on comic book character teams. One team is Squadron Supreme, which gets benefits for having an empty hand. It also happens to be a strong force in every format of the game.
Myth 2.) All red-black decks must use Hellbent -- Honestly, there's not going to be an entire Hellbent deck. Radiant, Transmute, Convoke, Dredge, Haunt, Replicate, and Bloodthirst. There's some tournament decks that use one or two cards with these keywords, but they are not the main theme of the deck. Just because Hellbent is the red-black keyword, that doesn't mean you have to play them in a red-black deck.
In fact, I suspect there will be a red-black archetype that runs Dark Confidant and Lyzolda. Very aggressive, but all about card advantage.
Ugh. What happens when you animate a Jitte with Karn and try to equip Karn with Kraj after he puts a counter on the animated Jitte?
March of the Machines says equipment that is a creature cannot equip a creature. I assume this rule would apply to all creatures with the equip ability.
Kraj has the same problem as Mizzium Transreliquat. If you already managed to get it into play, why do you need a copy of it? And if you do need another copy of it, why not just play another one instead of copying it?
I've said this before, but what's wrong with just playing spells? How about we just have a lot decent of one- and two-mana spells?
There'd better be some kind of temporary mana in this guild. Some kind of Dark Ritual variant will definitely help. My faint hope is for a card like:
Blood Ritual (b/r)
Sorcery (b/r can be paid with either b or r)
Add three mana of any combination of red or black mana to your mana pool. You lose 3 life.
@Boodah: Maybe, if you've got nothing in your deck over 2 mana. And went first. And don't miss a land drop. And you'll have nothing to play but topdeck after turn four. And you still probably won't have mana to use the regen. And it still may very well have died to a 3/3 or whatnot the turn before.
Gee, so you're saying that a single card isn't going to win the game?Maybe that's why I mentioned Seal of Fire and several other unnamed spells.
The point is, you can dump your hand just by being really aggressive. That's what the Rakdos mechanic is about. You don't need a Putrid Imp variant or One With Nothing. Just beat the snot out of the opponent and destroy all of his stuff until you run out of cards and then beat the snot out of him some more.
I only expect four of those spells to be creatures. Maybe even only three. I also expect one or two of them to be Seal of Fire, since you can get it out of your hand without wasting it.
...because according to my theory, they're a bonus rare. The same as the prospect of opening both an Akroma and a Flagstones of Trokair in the same booster helped move packs of Time Spiral.
And this doesn't even have to be a Lorwyn-specific addition. Each block hereafter could include new Planeswalkers. They already stated that the new cardtype isn't just for Lorwyn; it's part of Magic permanently.
This isn't about what Planeswalkers do (yes, go ahead and spew some nonsense about your argument precluding my argument and continue you're digression, but I will listen no further). This is about how you get a Planeswalkers. My proposal is that there will be no fewer printings of each Planeswalker than there are of any other rare. It's just that not every pack will contain a Planeswalker. Think of how you don't always open a Watery Grave in every pack of Ravnica. Does that mean Watery Grave is more rare than all the other rares?
Again, I call it the "bonus rare," not an ultra rare. The probability of opening a Planeswalker in a pack doesn't necessarily have to be less than that of opening any given rare. However, that's not the same as saying that every pack will have a Planeswalker.
Obviously (a bit of tongue-in-cheek in my first post), but the 3-rare possibility was certainly a good way to market the price increase rather than just saying, "You have to pay more. Deal with it." Since timeshifting was temporary, they may have conceived the Planeswalkers as a way of making boosters have more value to the players to justify the new price.
If so, it may be no coincidence that Time Spiral rewrote the rules of Planeswalkers, prepping them for print in the set that ushered in with the price increase.
Moving on to Lorwyn, we don't have timeshifted cards, but we do have Planeswalkers. Does this mean a Planeswalker will be included in every pack? Probably not, but people are speculating whether or not Planeswalkers will have an "ultra rare" rarity. From what WotC did with timeshifted cards, I'm thinking Planeswalkers will have more of a "bonus rare" rarity, meaning they do not replace your regular rare in a pack, and while it probably won't be possible to open more than one Planeswalker in a pack, their rarity doesn't necessarily have to be greater (or is it less?) than that of regular rares.
There's better Doomsday combos out there. You won't be getting 8 damage for two mana unless you spend a huge investment making it happen, at which point it's better to do something more powerful.
Although it's funny that Memory Lapse is from Homelands.
Agreed.
Anyway, a blue-white control deck that needs lots of creatures does not sound very effective. However, using zero cards in your hand and zero mana to draw a card is crazy good. Somewhere there's a blue-white mage wringing his hands looking at that card saying, "My preciousss..."
For the love of god, please give us some discard spells in Rakdos.
Will a 3/3 for four get played in constructed? It's hard to say. Because of the new layer rules, I don't think he's going to be effective at weakening your opponent's creatures. I suppose you could throw this guy into Selesnya to give +2/+2 to your saprolings, but that's not a huge effect.
All in all, Omnibian is not a card you can build a deck around, but it's a very interesting card that might fit into another deck.
Myth 1.) You have to waste cards -- Everyone seems to think that the only way to make use of Hellbent is to discard cards for no good reason. The real way to use Hellbent is to be super aggressive. You play lots of threats and overwhelm your opponent. When you run out of cards, the cards you have in play become much better.
If they printed a red-black version of Wild Mongrel, I'm sure everyone would think Hellbent is the nuts.
The first thing a lot of people in my locality thought when they heard about Hellbent was, "They're copying Squadron." For those that don't know, there's another CCG called Versus based on comic book character teams. One team is Squadron Supreme, which gets benefits for having an empty hand. It also happens to be a strong force in every format of the game.
Myth 2.) All red-black decks must use Hellbent -- Honestly, there's not going to be an entire Hellbent deck. Radiant, Transmute, Convoke, Dredge, Haunt, Replicate, and Bloodthirst. There's some tournament decks that use one or two cards with these keywords, but they are not the main theme of the deck. Just because Hellbent is the red-black keyword, that doesn't mean you have to play them in a red-black deck.
In fact, I suspect there will be a red-black archetype that runs Dark Confidant and Lyzolda. Very aggressive, but all about card advantage.
March of the Machines says equipment that is a creature cannot equip a creature. I assume this rule would apply to all creatures with the equip ability.
Kraj has the same problem as Mizzium Transreliquat. If you already managed to get it into play, why do you need a copy of it? And if you do need another copy of it, why not just play another one instead of copying it?
There'd better be some kind of temporary mana in this guild. Some kind of Dark Ritual variant will definitely help. My faint hope is for a card like:
Blood Ritual (b/r)
Sorcery
(b/r can be paid with either b or r)
Add three mana of any combination of red or black mana to your mana pool. You lose 3 life.
Gee, so you're saying that a single card isn't going to win the game?Maybe that's why I mentioned Seal of Fire and several other unnamed spells.
The point is, you can dump your hand just by being really aggressive. That's what the Rakdos mechanic is about. You don't need a Putrid Imp variant or One With Nothing. Just beat the snot out of the opponent and destroy all of his stuff until you run out of cards and then beat the snot out of him some more.
Turn 1: Land, Spell. 5 cards left.
Turn 2: Draw, Land, Spell. 4 cards left.
Turn 3: Draw, Land, Spell, Spell. 2 cards left.
Turn 4: Draw, Land, Spell, Spell. 0 cards left.
I only expect four of those spells to be creatures. Maybe even only three. I also expect one or two of them to be Seal of Fire, since you can get it out of your hand without wasting it.