Meet Naamet. The {G}{W} Planeswalker selections are limited to Ajani and Huatli. Ajani is all about the Utility, boosting your team in various ways. Huatli is a little more focused, wanting you to go wide. I didn't want to design to either of those, so I decided on a new one.
Enchantress is ostensibly Primary in white, secondary in green, although they get used very seldom. They are a resonant overlap in the color pair though, so that's the direction I decided to take. The mana is to help you cast one out of the gate if you have one available, and she tutors for one if you don't.
The ultimate could have made an emblem, and maybe it should have been. An earlier draft of Naamet cared about the number of enchantments on the battlefield, and Nahiri, the Lithomancer gives us precedence to create a token instead of an emblem.
She has a lot of text there, which is something I want to be cognizant of if she makes the cut to my next pass of these. Of all the card types, Planeswalkers do have the most leeway when it comes to wordiness, but if I'm attempting to show off what I can do, making it readable might be something to prioritize.
Planeswalkers can be fun to design, but they were an odd choice for this design test. The fact is that Vision and Set design don't even bother with them in their files. They're a toy for Creative and Play Design to craft and refine far more than anything.
With all four white cards down, I've used one of each card type but Sorcery, and have made two uncommons, a rare and a mythic.
It's a bit weird to put an overrun ultimate on an Enchantment focused Planeswalker. Replenish or Opalescence would be more thematic and strategic. I'm also not sure that the Walker wants two abilities that draw cards and no way to protect itself. The "traditional" design is something like Tezzeret, AOB or Ob Nix or Dovin Baan because it creates tension as to when to use one ability over the other. The + ability being a +2 helps, but I'm not sure it's enough.
ReplyDeleteI do like the Mana ability, it helps make the card more green. I think the enchantment vs emblem discussion is interesting, although I'd probably side with emblem if it's just going to be a static, global effect.
It definitely needs some more iteration. I envisioned the + ability being used once she lands to cast a pacifism in order to protect her, but that might be a reach.
DeleteI find designing planeswalkers to be especially difficult. I know a lot of the truisms, like the abilities should tie together to tell a story, the ult should basically be "win the game" without saying so, etc.
ReplyDeleteWhat I don't understand is how to evaluate the different knobs. How do you determine starting loyalty? How do you decide when an ability should be + or - ? Why are some +1/+2/+3 etc? And how do you correlate all of that with the mana cost?
Is there an article somewhere that talks about it? General rules of thumb?
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/play-design/designing-rivals-ixalan-planeswalkers-2018-01-19
DeleteI'll do a write up on this for tomorrow's CCDD.
DeleteFor + knobs, after looking at a lot of planeswalkers it actually became pretty apparent. +1 is the baseline, and +2 abilities are usually very minor and don't impact the board. +3 and above are reserved for big splashy walkers like Karn.
ReplyDeleteWhile Nahiri and Kiora give precedent that generating tokens is something planeswalkers can do, neither generate an enchantment-like effect. They created tokens because Equipment and Creatures can't really be done via an Emblem.
ReplyDeleteIf you really want to play with enchantment synergy maybe her ultimate could produce an Emblem that also has an Enchanted Evening type effect?
After some thought, it's probably just going to be an emblem.
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