Can you flame slash a planeswalker

For 1 extra mana. At rare. Why on earth would it ever be rare you ask? Well, because on turn 6, god willing you live that long, you might be able to cause your opponent to lose 4 life. This card raises so many questions…. There are so many slight changes that could have made this an exciting rare for a variety of decks. Would this be too strong at 1 mana?

I think the answer to each of those questions is no. I do think any one of them would have made it significantly more playable.

Flame Slash retaining its casting cost, yet going from a common to a rare because it had an expensive aftermath ability? Adding a mana to Flame Slash because you made it an instant? Also fine! Adding to the cost and making it rare because we tacked on a bad Exsanguinate —a card which never saw a single game of Constructed play?

Not so much. Remember when everyone was just so tired of Jace? When he was everywhere? On every lunchbox and backpack and on all of your fruit snacks? Well, Gideon is the new Jace it seems. Thankfully, Mark Rosewater addressed this epidemic recently on his Tumbly, Blogatog. On the bright side, however, this Gideon only costs 3 mana, and we all know 3 mana planeswalkers rarely see play. No, me neither. Okay, this one is great and what everyone looks for when we get a new planeswalker: a way to protect itself.

Keep in mind that this ability can target everything from Vehicles to opposing planeswalkers. Oh… good. We only had Hero's Downfall, the odd gold card and Hexmage as direct removal options. Now we have multiple variations of Downfall and way way more options in other colours too. I also think that running fewer planeswalkers is counter-productive, either run none or run all those that fit if you have an issue with them.

Just limiting them makes it a bit more RNG, a bit like who opens most power in powered cubes. Much appreciated as always. Ah yes! No clue why I never twigged that before, always read "albeit" as "albeit" but have never written it as such until right now. Friday, 8 November The Power of Planeswalkers. Planeswalkers have been around for a long time now and we are well aware that they are good and why they are good.

Versatility, value, and threats are generally the common answers to the why question. The more I play with walkers however the more I think we overlook a significant element of their play. It was actually the introduction of Saga cards that made me properly realize the power this element of planeswalkers offers. Magic is so well balanced these days that mana advantage counts for so much outside of the properly powered up formats like vintage. So much so that it is not just the total amount you spend over a game but also the amount on any given turn.

If I do four mana's worth of stuff on turn three then I get a pretty big tempo edge out of that which I can ride far deeper into the game even if I have no real edge on mana beyond this one turn spike. Mana above what you should usually have relative to your opponent is typically worth more than normal. Basically planeswalkers and saga cards both do things once deployed for no mana cost which means you are gaining the effect of having ramped your mana.

You get to do your normal stuff with your actual mana but also get that extra boost so as to swing the tempo in your favour. Now obviously both walkers and saga have an initial tempo hit where the return you get on the first turn is lower than what you might expect for the cost but if you can make that work then the following few turns are going to be really good to you.

The card where this was most noticeable was The Eldest Reborn. The third age was such a powerful effect that being able to do it and your whole normal turn was often just unrecoverable.

It was like having a Time Walk or having a personal Mana Flare. Deploying a big threat as a midrange or control player is often risky but if you can do that and something else it is game ending. The number of times you just get the best card from either deck and sit back on double counterspell, or get back a planeswalker that kills their walker and Wrath as well.

The Eldest Reborn is not powerful because of the sum of it's parts so much as it is presented. If you swapped the effects around such that the last one always came first it would be a far weaker spell in most cases in the cube despite seeming like it was better due to being more front loaded.

Even something more direct like History of Benalia has perks that come with the delay. It would be more damage if both knights came at once but it would also make it far easier to handle sensibly with mass removal. A white aggro deck curving out with this is far less likely to eat a Wrath effect when age II is yet to hit. This can really upset how your opponent curves and can easily cause them to take a load of free damage or fail to safely deploy a planeswalker of their own.

Planeswalkers have this same saga like effect on the game although it is not quite so predetermined or reliable an outcome.