No matter your opinion on the matter, I think most of us can agree the Mending could have been handled better. The Mending was intended to tighten up the story, bring planeswalkers closer to the players (make them more relatable) and update the cast and the stories, as well as the way the stories were told. The goal was to tell better stories.

The stated goal of the Mending, or its sub-goals wasn't exactly reached right off the bat. The transition was especially rough and it took several years to actually come close to those goals. It's only recently that the stories of the planeswalkers have truly became front and center and that the planeswalkers are part of an interwoven network of characters. Wizards has learned a lot since the Mending and will learn a lot more in the future.

My goal with this thread (or series of threads?) is to create an alternate timeline, in which we use the power of hindsight to reach the goals of the Mending from the get-go. We can look at past mistakes and missed opportunities and see if we can apply the lessons we and Wizards learned to create something different (and hopefully better).

Ideally, most of our changes would be minor, but the ripple effect might, of course, turn minor changes in larger ones further down the line. To keep the changes small, I suggest the following "point of divergence:" The Lorwyn Five are originally introduced during Future Sight, as they are were originally intended. That set had multiple cards from the future and Ajani, Jace, Liliana, Chandra, and Garruk could be one of them. It would make more sense than having them in Lorwyn and would take away any need for them to have a great deal of story attached to them at that point.

This would start our alternate timeline with Lorwyn. Since the "Future Sight 5" are already out, the set gets the opportunity to introduce different planeswalkers who can play a larger role in the story. I propose that Nissa should be one of them, but I have no idea about other planeswalkers and I don't know the story of Lorwyn enough to know what needs to be changed to accommodate planeswalkers as part of the cast. I'm curious about your input.

To put simply no planeswalker could have possibly slotted into the story being told in Lorwyn. It was entirely native-centric. While you could have had tourists, they wouldn't mesh in any way with what was going on.

I am a bit of a story novice, newby, casual, whatever you want to call it. The Innistrad stories I liked a lot and I think it is because it showed the life of the people there and had a sprinkling of the walkers. Seemed like you get enough to know they were around but not too much so you were left wanting more. Which i think should be a goal. To me it feels like the story has switched to be completely about the walkers with a sprinkling of whatever setting they might happen to be in. We have a long time to explore the walkers but only one chance to explore these settings.

I'm against starting the Lorwyn 5 in Future Sight. They would be just as out of place there as they would in Lorwyn. The Time Spiral block (with future Sight being the ending) had two-ish Neo-Walkers already (Venser and Radha). Now, for story purposes, Rhada didn't quite make the leap into 'Walker-dom, but having the Lorwyn 5 in Future Sight would have distracted greatly from the story Time Spiral was telling. Also, most of those characters (Chandra, Jace, Ajani, and Garruk) were born Post-Mending, so you'd have to explain what alternate versions of their future selves were doing gathering around the dying husk of Dominaria. time Spiral had enough stuff it was trying to explain and it doesn't need that mess too.

Having them slotted into the background of Lowryn could work if you kept it like a purely coincidental B plot and slowly filtered them in over the course of all four sets.

-Introduce Nissa first. (This would require both swapping her for Garruk and rewriting time so that the Design comes up with her first instead of elevates her from her popularity in the Duels game.) She has actual ties with Lorwyn and would have worked well in-block with the tribal theme.
-Introduce Chandra second. She could have been visiting the Flamekin. Maybe making some friends.
-Introduce Ajani third. He is here coincidentally. He is the oddity of the plane.
-Introduce Jace and Liliana last. Jace is here to look for something, maybe even Oona. Liliana is here to keep tabs on Jace for Bolas.

In the end, everyone gets a little introduced, you can filter in other 'Walkers as you go, Nissa gets a strong intro instead of a poor one and her story is more tied with the Lorwyn elves, and you get a 3-2 girl-boy split right off the bat with your main characters.

That leaves us with two options (assuming they still get introduced in Time Spiral): Either we rewrite most of Lorwyn's plot or (better idea), Lorwyn doesn't get planeswalkers and they only reappear in Alara.



I get where you're coming from, but I'm not sure if shifting the balance more towards the planar natives fixes a lot of problems. I completely understand that it's annoying to see less of, say, Thalia or Drana and instead get five stories about Nissa doing the same thing, but I think you're mistaken about the time you have to explore the 'walkers. In theory this is true, but if you take focus less on the 'walkers you slow down their overarching plots to a crawl. No matter the flaws of current storytelling, the characters are now able to evolve a lot quicker, because their arc ties in to the plane's arc.



Fair points. I hardly know anything about Time Spiral, so thanks for pointing this out.



Having four Blocks to introduce them is a luxury I hadn't considered. Lorwyn's easy-going environment might be a safe and nice place to introduce the planeswalkers.



I'm perfectly okay with rewriting time for this exercise. It's, I think, an important part of the exercise. We do need to keep in mind that this creates a need to introduce Garruk later on, because we need to know him before we get too Innistrad. (Unless Innistrad changes a lot due to these ripples.)


The important question is: Does she fight Jace :-)

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I like it. You also get a better division of human-non-human and of the hero-villain spectrum.

Suggestion: use the old walkers instead of killing them off and making new ones

Denied, the point of divergence should be around Future Sight or Lorwyn. The Mending and the associated character deaths happen as planned. You could make the case for using planeswalkers that didn't canonically got killed, of course.

Garruk can show up in either Ravnica (where we see him in-cannon later showing up to throttle Jace, meaning he's been there before) or Alara, where he can be big-game hunting on Jund or Naya. Later he and Liliana will get into their tiff on Innistrad. Having Garruk show up soon is good because it can coincide with Elspeth showing up in Alara and Sorin showing up in Zendikar and the three of them can tag-team out Ajani, Nissa, and Liliana in core sets for a while. This just leaves the problem with having a good Red walker and a good Blue walker to trade places occasionally with Jace and Chandra.

Yeah, I'd be for that last bit. There are actually a number of PWs still out there -- minor names before, but viable. Jaya is probably the biggest, since Chandra is in many ways just her doppleganger. Sandruu could replace Ajani as the token nonhuman and, given Ulgrothan minotaurs existing in colors other than red, would probably swipe the blue slot from Jace with Jaya around. Ravi Sengir brings big recognition for at least her surname and fills the black slot well. She could even be visually revitalized from her 'grandmother' state -- most vampires look pretty good, after all*. This would let her steal Liliana's things. You could make new PWs for the Green and White entries in the Neowalker 5. Frankly, there's been enough carnage that we needed new characters anyway. Nissa would be a good fit for green and Lorwyn. For white, we kind of want a human male so why not let Gideon step up?

So the lineup would look like this

: Gideon Jura
: Sandruu
: Ravi Sengir
: Jaya Ballard
: Nissa Revane

Mixing a continuity with the past and new blood. Gideon would probably have the "face man" role, which he seems to be sliding at least partially into anyway

Over time, more neowalkers would be introduced: Tezzeret, Sarkhan, and Elspeth show their faces in Alara, along with the re-emergence of Nicol Bolas and a new 'walker with ties to the Naya Shard -- perhaps Garruk.


*I am quite aware that Ravi is not, herself, a vampire -- but she belongs to a clan of them and was at least once indicated to have partaken in life-stealing magic of a visceral nature to keep herself alive, so why not young as well for a resurgence into the wider multiverse?

Ravi would step on Sorin's toes and Sandruu isn't 1/10th as marketable as Jace. You line-up lacks a good face-man for the player-base to get behind (Gideon is too "goody goody"). As much as I dislike Jace, it cannot be argued that he is a marketing force to be reckoned with, hitting all the right notes as a brooding, smart, socially awkward hero who plays mind games with his enemies and wears a cool cloak.

We really can't change too much about Alara because the Walkers are already a huge component of that story. It means you cannot move Ajani anywhere else.

Ideally, you'd introduce him here instead of confusing players for years with his older self showing up first.
That being said, Tezzeret had been gone for over a decade, opening up the blue slot at the very least, and in a multicolor block, it affords you to be ambitious with the color combinations.

I think if you were to introduce a bunch of familiar faces in Future Sight and then introduce the new faces in Lorwyn as Azure laid out things would work out well. I REALLY like Azure's plan honestly and I think it'd be a great departure point. Having the 'walkers distributed across the block according to the storyline builds a lot of anticipation for the new characters. But at the same time, I think if we could introduce some cards for older characters in Future Sight, the older storyline fans will feel a LOT better, and a LOT of the major, major issues people had with the Mending will be helped right out the bat--there won't be such a massive wait time for the 'walkers to start being meaningful.

With that in mind I'd like to propose that immediately in Future Sight, Taste the Magic is used to publish five short stories about each of the five Planeswalkers, introducing them to players. It's not a full push to digital yet, but Wizards actually jumps on the web as a platform for introducing these characters to a wider audience.

So the question then is just who we use.

To go through Szat's list:

I don't like Gideon here. For one thing, it breaks the basic premise of this exercise: Gideon ONLY exists as part of Chandra's story when he's first introduced. I also just don't think Gideon is that interesting of a character frankly. On the other hand, Elspeth is a fascinating character who right out of the gate has a bunch of compelling stories that can be told about her. She represents the new generation of 'walkers better than Gideon in my opinion and this sets up a lot of things like the return of Phyrexia as a threat and the existence of Alara. I vote Elspeth for first ever white 'walker.

I don't like Sandruu for monoblue. I don't think people at WotC would introduce a blue minotaur at this point, even with the other time spiral weirdness, and I'm not sure we really need two characters from Ulgrotha, much as I love it. Instead, drop Venser in this slot. He's an established character from Time Spiral's storyline so he makes for a good bridge here, and whether or not we agree the public does like him for some freaking reason. I think he's our Leading Man for the time being.

I'd actually vote to keep Ravi the same visually speaking--I like Ravi's visuals, they're strange and cool. I think her introduction here is also great because it allows the Ulgrothan storyline to be reintroduced subtly and also allows for her story to lay out in narrative terms the limitations of 'walkers post-Mending. Because of course, if she remembered her powers before the Mending she could've just taken the whole family off the plane. But now, she awakens to some aspect of her power, only to realize that she's lost much of it for unknown reasons.

Jaya is great. I do still like the idea of introducing Chandra as a character though so Jaya could get a card but take kind of a back seat to Chandra as a new character. Make Jaya more obviously present within the storyline as an influence but maybe make a bit of a mystery about her absence.

I have no idea what to do with green. I guess you could plausibly introduce Nissa this early but I like her so much better in Lorwyn. Garruck should be introduced later on when the Chain Veil becomes relevant.

Can I suggest that we eventually nail this plan down and then progress to the next stage in the same way Wizards would? So like, now we're talking Time Spiral and Lorwyn primarily and noting the changes Alara will make, so next we'll focus primarily on Lorwyn and Alara with Zendikar on the radar and so on, and we will be forbidden from retconning anything we've decided up till that point. So any 'walker rules we establish at this point are things we'll have to adhere to from here on out for example.

The problem, again, with Ravi is that she's going to wreck Sorin. If we already have a vampire old-'walker, then we don't need to invent Sorin. If we don't invent Sorin, who is our stand-in for the events on Zendikar (Who does Nissa feud with?), Innistrad (Who created Avacyn? Whose story did we completely ignore when we visited, instead focusing on Liliana?), and even Tarkir (Who gets the band back together with Ugin.....is there even a band?)....

I'd actually like Liliana at that spot (and maybe change her card a little to fit her necromantic powers better). She's an Oldwalker who loses her powers. That might be a good character to have at the turning point.

This does leave us without a Black planeswalker for Lorwyn though. Maybe we should create a planeswalker native to Lorwyn?

No, just do what I suggested earlier and have her skulking around spying on Jace (or Venser if we change him to the Blue front-man). Whatever Oona was doing to influence the switch from Lorwyn to Shadowmoor would likely have caught Bolas' attention and he would have sent Lilly to go check it out.

Dammit, why do big and interesting threads like this always pop up when I'm drowning in uni work and shouldn't even be here?
Just throwing in a random alternative, what if we introduce the first planeswalkers in a story-heavy Core Set (either before Lorwyn or Alara)? Could tie in with the webcomics and the first two planeswalker novels (assuming the timing was optimal and they'd be ready), feature stuff from those stories on cards etc. You know, basically like Magic Origins, except it wouldn't be six years late and support the other material instead of randomly retconning it. And said Core Set could be abused to advertise the novels like crazy.

Can we still cheat a bit and say the new block structure is introduced with Tarkir rather than Zendikar 2.0? If we can, I have an idea how to bring back Ugin and finish Sarkhan's arc in a two set block without timetravel. If we can't, we could go with Maro's draft structure but make the block about something else entirely. The block could be about a revolution or civil war. Like, the first set shows the status quo and its factions at the beginning, the second set shows the cataclysms of a revolution, and then a new status quo with a new order emerges in the third set. Which would explain why you can draft the middle set with either the first or third set, but those can't be drafted together. We could even keep the "from wedges to hybrid wedges to allied colour pairs" theme. May or may not be about Fiora.

I'd agree with the core set idea. Introducing all the new walkers during blocks has a few flaws; you don't get to introduce the new planeswalker faces for each color immediately, and you'd can't introduce a particular planeswalker character until their story comes up. Since we're rearranging what's already happened and we're not WotC back in 2007, we can't change too much.

Conveniently enough, we do have a core set between Future Sight and Lorwyn, 10th Edition, that could be used to tell the planeswalkers' stories.

However, we'd have to replace tenth edition with m10 for this exercise with the addition of the new cards, which will knock an entire set of Lorwyn block out. Though, strictly speaking, that won't hurt too much, but it means reshuffling what was going on in Lorwyn, or at very least, redressing the pace of the changes going on.

The minimum would have to be following the tribal component all the way and abandon the color matters theme. That might have an impact on the themes going on in Alara as well.

I'm not sure I get that, though. Why would changes to Tenth Edition knock out a set from Lorwyn block? You mean because the new generation of Core Sets (from M10 onwards) had more cards and that would mess with the total number of cards in that year?

No. M10 introduced the core set as a yearly model as opposed to a core set every two years. If you do m10 early, it means Lorwyn loses the slot it used on eventide.