The first line on the back of Magic starter decks and similar products is "You are a planeswalker." So I thought it would be cool if YOU are a planeswalker for a day - literally. So, the point of this event is to design a planeswalker of yourself and play it in a deck that features it. Here are going to be the deckbuilding constraints:
1. Aside from your planeswalker, your deck must be Extended legal (this includes Lorwyn and everything afterwards).
2. You must play at least two copies of yourself in your deck (obviously you can play up to four).
3. You cannot play any planeswalkers in your deck other than your own. This allows for greater design capacity in your card and prevents a lot of really broken stuff.
How do you make your planeswalker? First, you need to download a program called Magic Set Editor. You can find it at http://magicseteditor.sourceforge.net/. Once you download it, open it and then click "New Set." Select Magic: the Gathering on the top bar and "Walkers" on the bottom bar, then press OK. You should see a blank image of a planeswalker card.
Start off by typing a name. I'd recommend a descriptive name along the lines of "Jace, the Mind Sculptor" or "Elspeth, Knight-Errant" rather than "Jace Beleren" or "Elspeth Tirel," but ultimately its your prerogative. Then go to the bar below the picture and type "Planeswalker - [Your Name]" (ex. Planeswalker - Dom). Click the black box to the right of that to change your rarity to mythic rare.
You can then click on the various boxes to type in the ability cost and text, as well as the starting loyalty, mana cost, and artist line. Typing in the ability costs and text should be pretty straightforward. To type the mana cost, use the following guidelines:
To make colorless mana, just type the number. For the colors:
G = Green
W = White
U = Blue
B = Black
R = Red
So, if you wanted to cost 3 colorless, a red, and a green, you would type 3RG (with no spaces). Here are a few guidelines for your planeswalker that you should avoid deviating from if you want your planeswalker to get approved (more on getting approved later):
- All planeswalkers ever printed cost exactly two colored mana. Yours will cost at least two as well (obviously if you want it to be three colors it will need three colored mana symbols).
- Most planeswalkers cost four or five total mana (only Jace Beleren costs three). It will be tough to get a three-mana 'walker approved; I recommend starting at four. There's really no cap on how much it can cost, but you do want to be able to cast it (nobody ever played Nicol Bolas!), so I'd say keeping it between four and six mana is reasonable.
- Your planeswalker will have three abilities. Jace, the Mind Sculptor is excessively powerful and, as much as I hate to admit it, probably shouldn't have been printed. Anything with four abilities will be rejected, even if you don't think they're as powerful - it's hard to use only one broken card as a guideline.
- You don't have to stick to the generic planeswalker setup of +1/2 do something okay, -1/2 do something pretty cool, -a lot do something awesome, but it's probably easier to design something like that. However, feel free to take a shot at different things - just use common sense.
Generally, the first ability should give a temporary bonus (e.g. Ajani Goldmane: gain two life; Sarkhan Vol: Pump & haste creatures this turn) that does not provide intrinsic card advantage. Conversely, the second ability (assuming it's a minus loyalty) can affect the board after the turn it's used (e.g. Garruk: make a 3/3; Gideon: kill a tapped creature). And, of course, the last (or "ultimate") ability is pretty much anything you can think of. The power of an ultimate should be proportional to how many turns it would take you to get there. Abilities that essentially win the game, like Liliana's ultimate, should take 3-5 turns to reach, whereas more conditionally useful abilities, like Elspeth Tirel's ultimate, can be reached faster. Do remember that if your planeswalker costs more to cast, its abilities can bend these rules a bit (such as Sorin Markov's first ability). I'll help you if you have trouble costing your abilities.
I'm going to give you an example that I designed for Nile, who is a very cool guy that used to play Magic in FITSSFF regularly before he transferred. He was well known for playing a black/white life gain deck, so I designed this, which is at the power level where it would be approved for use in this event and would be an effective card in a black/white midrange deck:
Sorry for not finding a picture (or a really cool name), but it can take a while and I've been busy. You can find cool pictures on various Web sites and Google Images searches. Do make sure you credit the artist, if available, even if it's just their screen name or something. People work really hard to make great pictures for us to use. Also, I hope I don't have to say this, but pick tasteful names and images. I will reject anything that others might find offensive, so don't even try.
The first ability is an adaptation of Edge of the Divinity, which would give a black and white creature +3/+3. While this makes a creature more scary for a turn, it doesn't last beyond the turn, which makes sense since it is a plus ability. It's cute but not ridiculous, which is essentially what your first ability should be aiming for.
The second ability is Mortify. Using already-existing cards as abilities is a good way to keep your planeswalker balanced. Since this flat-out kills something, it costs two loyalty. Also note that using it twice in a row after casting him will cause him to reach zero loyalty and be put into the graveyard. This is an intentional design element in the card, as I deemed it too powerful to start him at 5 loyalty and give him the possibility of killing three things over four turns.
Finally, seasoned Magic players might recognize that the ultimate is an emblem of another of Nile's favorite cards - Debtors' Knell. Since having this ability will probably end the game pretty swiftly if it resolves, it takes four turns to be able to activate this ultimate ability. Hopefully these descriptions make sense - ask me if you need some clarification on any of my reasoning.
Your planeswalker must be submitted to the Planeswalker Review Committee, which includes me and two other skilled players. We will review submissions regularly until the day before the event. To submit your planeswalker, save it as a JPEG file (using File --> Export --> Card Image) and send it in an email to me as an attachment. We'll try to get back to you as soon as possible. After your planeswalker submission is reviewed, you will get one of the following responses from one of the reviewers:
1. Approved as Worded - This means we think your planeswalker is great as is, and you're free to use it in the event.
2. Approved with Minor Changes - This means you basically have a good design, but we think you need to reword an ability or make a small change to your card (such as making it enter the battlefield with 4 loyalty instead of 5). You can then use your planeswalker with our changes, or you can rework it if you're really unhappy with the minor change.
3. Approved with Reworking - This means we have changed your planeswalker significantly, and you may use it with those changes. However, we may have changed it enough such that you may not like it and would rather make some changes of your own and submit it again.
4. Rework - This means we don't believe your planeswalker can be used as designed, but that the overall design concept is decent enough that your card may be approved if it is resubmitted with significant changes. However, we felt like we would be changing it too much to rework it ourselves, so we're going to leave that to you.
5. Rejected - This means we think your design is so overpowered or otherwise unusual that we do not believe it is salvageable and we recommend that you start from scratch with a new idea. We hope that this won't happen to anyone, and if you follow the guidelines posted above, I doubt that it will!
I believe that is everything I wanted to cover. Ask me if you have any questions or need some clarification. You can begin submitting planeswalkers as soon as you would like. Thanks for reading.
- Dom
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