Thursday, October 17, 2019

The Planeswalker Problem

I have been saying it for years, but Planeswalkers are a problem for Magic. One of the things I've been clamoring for is common rarity removal for the card type. There is common rarity removal for every other card type in Magic.

The argument against has always boiled down to two points:

1) Planeswalkers are mythic and cool and common removal would spoil that!

and

2) Common removal for Planeswalkers would mess up draft environments since they're mythic rarity means that common removal gives drafters useless cards!

Well, since point two isn't true anymore and point one wants to sacrifice good gameplay for "coolness", I think we should disregard both of them. Because Planeswalkers are a problem.

Finally, people are catching on to that. Oko is just the latest in a line of problematic cards that have had people unhappy with Standard and had an impact on formats with much deeper card pools that shouldn't (but do) have severe difficulties with Planeswalkers. The thing that those cards have in common? They're cheap.

I don't think that Planeswalkers shouldn't be good! I just believe that players are not given enough tools to deal with them, which leads me back to the article I linked to and some of the solutions at the end.

While I like some of the concepts at the end of the article, of the ten sketches nine of them are creatures. I feel as though they missed opportunities to make enchantments, instants, sorceries, or even lands that would help deal with the problem. Note, however, that most of those solutions cost 2, in order to come down soon enough to make an impact.

The fact that people can come up with that variety of ideas just for an article suggests that the people at WotC can do something to help balance the game again, too. I hope they decide to do that.

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