Well, here’s the first Planeswalker card, Liliana Vess:
If you don’t know what the hell you’re looking at, let me bring you up to speed real quick:
- Planeswalkers are a new card type, the very first new card type introduced to Magic.
- They aren’t creatures, and can in fact be attacked like players. You can defend them with your own creatures.
- What happens if your opponent attacks your Walker and deal combat damage? It loses Loyalty points – each Walker comes with a certain amount of Loyalty points, which can be found on the bottom right of the card. Liliana has 5. One imagines other walkers will have more or less Loyalty based on power of their abilities, cost, and so forth.
- It seems that each of Vess’s abilities are of the “once per turn, sorcery speed” variety.
Anyway, enough of that boring rules stuff, since if you’re here, you’ve probably seen all this before. What I want to discuss right now is the abilities of the other walkers. Lorwyn will feature five planeswalkers, and from what little information we have, each character will be pretty archetypal, with personalities and abilities that mirror what their color is all about.
So we have Liliana here. She costs 5 mana, has 5 loyalty, and her three abilities are: Cry of Contrition, Vampiric Tutor, and a souped up Living Death. Inducing from this information, what can we expect of the others?
First, I imagine all of them will feature double CC. Wizard’s probably doesn’t want players easily splashing walkers, at least not with the first run. Second, I think we’ll see varying mana costs and loyalties. Third, I think each walker will have a marginal ability that will increase loyalty and allow for some really gamebreaking stuff. Here’s how I see that breaking down.
Chandra, the red walker, will cost 1RR. Abilities: +1: Target creature gains haste. -2: Deal 2 damage to target creature or planeswalker. -6: Some kind of Inferno effect. I see Chandra having the fewest Loyalty points, perhaps 3.
Jace Beleren, the blue entry, will cost 2UU. His profile says he’s about clairvoyance, telepathy, and illusion. So, abilities: +1: An Opt-type effect. -3: This being blue, some kind of card draw or filtering. -7: Put a token into play copying target creature. Since I think mana costs and loyalties will scale up, I’ll put Jace as having 4.
Next up is Ajani Goldmane, the leonin planeswalker representing white. I think he’ll have high loyalty, which is offset by somewhat weak abilities and no +Loyalty abilities. 4WW mana cost. Abilities: -1: Healing Salve. -2: Shelter effect. -5: Wrath of God. Loyalty of 8.
And then last, and since he’s green, probably least, Garruk Wildspeaker. 5GG, loyalty of 7. +1: Giant Growth. -1: Rampant Growth. -4: Overrun effect.
Lots of interesting rules questions I’d love to see answered about Planeswalkers, but if my givens are correct, there’s my speculation. So if I’m even half right about any of these things, I can say “I told you so.”
Type What? 