Dork Rituals: The Pauper Project
Issue 6: YOU are STILL a Pauperwalker! Part Deux!!
Hello again, fellow TappedOut.users, welcome back to Dork Ritual: The Pauper Project, TappedOut's only randomly released, pauper-centric article series. My name is still Gattison, that remains unchanged. I still maintain the Obscure List of Obscure Lists, but it's now called TappedOut.User's Lists of Lists (and Other Resources), because it's not about me anymore, it's about the game. I haven't written a theme song for a Magic deck in a while now, but I will again one day, because it's just something I do. And finally, I still like procrastinating too much. I'm still on a mission to brew 32+ different paper pauper decks, one of each color combination (including 4-color & colorless), because if I don't, then who will?
I also want to give a couple shout outs before we get started to celebrate my return. First to eyes2sky, who serves as my main playtesting partner and acts as a sort of creative consultant on all of my articles. Check his stuff out if you get the chance, he's got some killer decks that I truly envy, like Salt Mine Prison Escape. Secondly to Flooremoji, a prominent user around the site, who got me thinking about writing again. Thanks guys.
So, I'm a planeswalker. You're a planeswalker. Everybody at FNM is a planeswalker. Tibalt is a planeswalker, but nobody seems to care. Heck, even Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a planeswalker. You could teach your grandma to play Magic and she'd be a planeswalker. Anybody can be a planeswalker. It's really not that big a deal.
Now, granted it's not that common, but it's not necessarily a rare occurrence, or a mythic one. See what I did there?
War of the Spark has shaken things up a bit by introducing us to uncommon-rarity planeswalkers. I would say the same thing about rare planeswalkers, but technically speaking the first planeswalkers ever released, the Lorwynn Five ( Ajani Goldmane , Chandra Nalaar , Garruk Wildspeaker , Jace Beleren and Liliana Vess ), were all released as rares. Granted this is only because WotC hadn't "invented" mythic rarity yet, but hey, I did say "technically speaking." Wizards of the Coast took the card type in a new direction by changing the amount of loyalty abilities a planeswalker can have and by adding static abilities to them. They redefined what a planeswalker could be, allowing for much more flexibility in the future when it comes to designing planeswalker cards.
What does any of this have to do with pauper? Well, I've seen the inevitable comments on spoiled cards, and even here on this site, people have asked, "will there ever be a pauper planeswalker?" Or "should there be a pauper planeswalker?"
No. And no.
But... just for fun... I wonder... in another time, another place, another meta... what if...?
What if pauper planeswalkers did exist? What they would be like?
I mean, not what I want them to be, with my fan-based biases and all, because that's too easy, and that's not my style. I mean what if WotC made them? What would they really be like? Because no offense, but any one of us could whip up a decent Pauperwalker real quick in the Card Creation Challenge thread, it's been done before and it'll be done again. But that's you and me, and we aren't actual Wizards of the Coast card designers (unless you actually are, in which case, I meant the guy behind you, sorry). If Wizards made the "Tibalt-mistake" again and designed a common planeswalker just to prove they could, what do you think they'd come up with? I think we have enough information to reason this out.
But, why bother, you ask? Because fun! This is the type of stuff I enjoy. Creative thinking, mental challenges and thought experiments are all my cup of tea. So if you think so too, or are just curious where I'm going with all this, then c'mon and let's get thinkin'!
Let's start by setting the stage, and playing a little game of make-believe here. Let's pretend that we don't live on Earth, in the plane of... uh, Universe, I guess? Instead we all live in an alternate plane, called Earthtopia, or Earthlandia or something. And in the plane of Earthlandia, planeswalkers were a card type ever since Alpha/Beta Edition. Thus common planeswalkers were not only an inevitability (especially with the rise in paupularity of pauper) but are now, well, common. Let's also say that when they released War of the Spark, rather than jamming a bunch of experimental planeswalkers in alongside a bunch of "real" ones, instead WotC released a supplemental product marketed toward the pauper player base. A Pauper Horizons product, if you will.
Let's start with the flavor of a Pauperwalker, because that sounds easier. I mean, it's just a concept to guide us. Just a bunch of words and ideas and crap. Traditionally, a planeswalker is an extremely rare character that endures some kind of overwhelmingly emotional experience, typically tragic, igniting a dormant planeswalker spark inside them. This releases or activates their true nature as a planeswalker, someone with the ability to travel to alternate realities. In game terms, you can think of it as a Legendary creature "graduating" or ascending to a new level of power--planeswalkerdom. Traditionally, planeswalkers are mythic rares, to show how very rare an occurrence getting a planeswalker spark is. Out of dozens and dozens of planes that have been named--including everything from Standard sets to one-off Planescape cards, like
Pyrulea
--meaning we can assume an average of 7 billion people per plane... and we know of fifty different planeswalkers. It's rarer than rare. In terms of lore, anyway. Remember this is Portlandia. Or, uh, Earthlandia.
Planeswalkers are characters like
Gideon Jura
, or
Nissa Revane
, who were already legends (
Kytheon, Hero of Akros
,
Nissa, Vastwood Seer
) before they got their planeswalker spark. Very archetypal and iconic, but very specific character types, champions and heroes or villains and monsters all. Now with WAR, WotC has basically shown us that an uncommon-rarity planeswalker is a peripheral character, one not really crucial to the storyline, but is there regardless. Characters like
Ob Nixilis
and
Vraska
are obviously much more powerful than can be depicted on an uncommon Magic card, therefor much more powerful than their uncommon War of the Spark counterparts... but it's not about that. Ob's and Vraska's impact on the story overall are both minimal, thus they are relegated to almost background status as Uncommon-'walkers. Think of it like this, if that dope-ass trailer for War of the Spark was a feature-length movie, it would be about the mythics, the rares and mythics would be the main characters, and the uncommon 'walkers would all be cameos, special guest appearances, easter eggs and stuff like that. It's not their story, so of course they don't get any special attention--like mythic rare status.
But wait a minute... I'm a planeswalker, and you're a planeswalker too, aren't you? Otherwise, how did you get here, to Earthlandia? But seriously, we're all planeswalkers too. Don't we get cards? Well if we live in a world where pauper 'walkers is a thing, then I say yes. We would be the common rarity planeswalkers, and those cards would represent us, as the unsung heroes (and villains) of the planes. Going from one undiscovered world to another, slinging spells and battling each other just to survive in epic struggles and sagas that will never be known by the masses, creating stories that will never be told, but will always be remembered. Yes. Sometimes it gets that dramatic.
Consider this though, maybe you and I aren't actually common Planeswalkers. Take myself for example; I play a crapton of pauper, yeah, but I also play a healthy amount of EDH/Commander. I also also play Pauper EDH/Pauper Commander (of course he does, amiright?). I also also also play a few casual Modern-format decks. You could say that my power level as a planeswalker is self-defined, or maybe defined by the challenges/battles I actually accept, or participate in. To depict me as a "Pauperwalker" would be depicting only a single facet of my true nature as the planeswalker that I actually am, considering the decks I build/play. But maybe that's okay. Remember this is a Pauper Horizons product, right? So these cards would have been designed with pauper foremost in mind. Maybe just a snapshot of the relevant bits is all that should be considered.
Also remember what I said about the uncommon planeswalkers, that their status as an "uncommon-level" planeswalker in this set (War of the Spark) wasn't actually indicative of a decrease in power level, but instead it was a determination of their role in the current, overall storyline? Another interesting thing to note about planeswalkers that I feel is relevant here is that no single card actually depicts a character's full power. It's not like Jace is actually weaker now than he was before just because the last time we saw him he wasn't as impressive as that time he did whatever he did to get the nickname Mind Sculptor . Jace can still Mind Sculpt , he's just not doing the same things in this story, so they depict him a different way. So, each iteration of a planeswalker is a just a snapshot of them "currently" so to speak.
I feel like we're starting to circle in on something there. A way to nail this concept down before it gets too out of hand. I'm starting to think that, beyond what I stated above--that a Pauperwalker could represent you and me and anyone as pauper players--that a common-rarity planeswalker could represent a variety of things, lore and/or flavor-wise. It could represent just your average, run-of-the-mill, boring ol' planeswalker that never really accomplished much--a weakling basically. It could also represent a "new" or fledgling planeswalker, one whose spark just ignited within the past month or so, meaning they just experienced their first planeswalk and may not even understand what is happening to them right now. It could even represent a well-known, high-powered planeswalker just kinda passing through, having very little impact on the story overall--a true cameo appearance just to titillate the fans. Maybe it could even represent someone whose spark is igniting "right now," allowing us to--flavorwise--see a character in mid-transition from "creature" to "planeswalker."
Alright, so it looks like we have a bunch of different backgrounds we can work with. I'm not saying all these ideas are legitimately acceptable just yet, but they seem like decent starting points to me, so maybe we'll end up weeding out some chaff as we go. Let's see.
Moving on to mechanics, I think a pattern emerges among the new planeswalker cards pretty quick. Do you see what I see in their depiction across the different rarities? If not, then first of all, every planeswalker in WAR has a "permanent" ability of some sort, be it a static effect or a triggered ability, they each have something extra, in addition to the traditional loyalty-abilities. I wonder what that signifies? Is it a vested interest in the outcome of the current events, thus they consciously exert more influence on their surroundings? Is it a sign of "more permanence," meaning normally when we see a planeswalker on a plane, they can leave any time they please. But this time, in War of the Spark the characters are stuck here--on Ravnica--and can't leave, so these non-loyalty planeswalker abilities "manifest" as a side-effect or result of them being more "here" than they normally are, if that makes any sense? Or maybe it's something more thematic, like maybe when there are so many planeswalkers in one place--so many people with so much power individually--that there's actually A LOT going on at any given moment--a lot of power being thrown around. Having these additional abilities on planeswalkers is just a way to represent that despite their role in the overall storyline, be it large or small, each and every planeswalker is constantly contributing to the events occurring around them all. Maybe we've just never seen planeswalkers this active before, and that's why they have the constant, "always-on" abilities.
Now, count the loyalty-abilities of all the mythic-rare planeswalkers. You'll notice that on average it is as it always has been, and that is three (or more, we'll see since it's still spoiler season as I write this), right? Now count the loyalty-abilities of the rare planeswalkers. See that? They all get only two. Move on to the uncommon planeswalkers and do the same and guess what you find. A single loyalty-ability each... Aw crap.
Uh-oh, do you see the pattern I see? As the rarity-level "decreases," from mythic to rare and then to uncommon, so do the loyalty abilities of the planeswalker. It's almost like the more common the appearance of a planeswalker, the more watered-down their impact on the game becomes. Or maybe, alternatively, as a planeswalker yourself, you are far more likely to stumble across an unknown, fledgling planeswalker with limited to no control whatsoever over their new abilities and/or level of power. Or maybe even, beyond and in addition to that, if you ever do actually bump into Jace or Chandra in your travails, the time they would waste on you would be so minimal that it could only be depicted as a common card, because it would have so little impact on "your game," your story about your struggle against your current opponent.
It seems like legitimately, a common planeswalker card, a Pauperwalker, would have zero loyalty abilities, and just a (probably) weak little, static effect. At this point the card would simply act as an enchantment or an artifact that can be removed with combat damage, like a crappy Vessel of Crap or something. Which I'll admit right now actually sounds like an interesting concept to me, but I feel like we have more "design space" available for us to play around in. For instance, consider this: we've never seen permanent abilities on a planeswalker before, and now, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, every planeswalker in WAR has them? I gotta admit, that feels like a thematic, flavorful decision rather than a way to justify non-mythic 'walkers. It doesn't seem like a defining characteristic of rare and/or uncommon planeswalkers. I say this mostly because even the mythic rare 'walkers, which had a fine system in place already, got these new permanent abilities. Even the most powerful/important characters were affected by the WAR.
So maybe a permanent ability on a common planeswalker is not a necessity, thus there would have to be a loyalty ability, wouldn't there? Or else the card would just sit there, adding to your devotion and permanent count like a boss. A boss who does NOTHING! Nothing's no good, so let's think about this for a minute. The idea of looking at a planeswalker like an enchantment or an artifact is not new to me, and probably not to you either. Multiple times my playgroup has discussed before how it's interesting that once a character--depicted as a creature card --achieves the level of power of a planeswalker--depicted as a planeswalker card --they actually cease to function like a creature at all, and act more like a non-creature permanent. The precedent of what a permanent could do was established by cards like enchantments and artifacts, and planeswalker cards just mix and match established, accepted "tropes" of permanents.
For instance, check out those uncommon 'walkers again. You know what else they remind me of? I already mentioned artifacts in general, but specifically, they remind me of artifacts with charge counters . Similarly to (energy), charge counters are a resource you can manage independently of all others, like your mana base/pool or life total. Loyalty counters obviously also fall under this category as well, but notice how each one the uncommon planeswalkers has a -X ability, and likewise, not a single one of them has a +X ability? Much like a lot of the artifacts that use charge counters, uncommon planeswalkers cannot sustain themselves. They can't add more counters to themselves, thus eventually you will not be able to use their abilities anymore. Not unless you use outside sources to proliferate, or something like that. The same should probably also be true for common planeswalkers.
Now, remember when berryjon talked about spellshapers? Me too, and what I remember most about them was: give 'em some mana and one of your spells, and they'll convert it into their spell--or one of their spells. I don't think there's much connection here beyond Jaya herself, but another good precedent could be set here. Pauperwalkers (the cards, not you and me) are weak, for whatever reason, in comparison to the planeswalkers we all know, so maybe we could say thematically they can only do things we've seen before--no innovating. What if similar to a spellshaper, a common-rarity planeswalker would really only replicate effects of other common-rarity cards that we've seen before. As creatures that can cast even a single spell on the same level a planeswalker could, I think that could serve as a reasonable ceiling for what a pauperwalker could do.
This is good, I think. We're establishing patterns, finding precedents and building a nice little set of parameters to work within for creating some "reasonable" common 'walkers. To point out another, there are similarities between traditional planeswalkers and modal spells. And yes, there are modal creatures, things like Ainok Guide , Blizzard Specter and Ulasht, the Hate Seed . But what about enchantment? Yep, Citadel Siege , Triskaidekaphobia . And artifacts? Oh yeah, Bow of Nylea , Umezawa's Jitte . So maybe for mana-pricing we could look over here for previously established precedents to follow.
...
And that concludes our broadcast day, ladies and gentlemen. As always feel free to respond in the comments below to anything discussed in the article above, especially if you feel I might have missed something important, or gotten something wrong. Or if you just have something you want to contribute. Remember, my main goal is to create good, productive discussions about pauper, so don't hold back. Questions are always welcome also, because you just don't know until you ask.
Now I'll leave you with the traditional Pauper Highlights, and until next time, stay safe everybody!
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| Date added | 5 years |
| Last updated | 5 years |
| Legality | This deck is not Pauper legal. |
| Cards | 0 |
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