Hm, I really feel like Mastery should be used on her card somehow, but based on TP and Ruwin's feedback I'm now wondering if that would be inherently problematic since there's always a chance the ability will fizzle if you don't actually have Mastery... Hm hm hm.

Generally speaking, planeswalkers don't use set specific keywords/ability words. I don't think there are any exceptions.

Oh, well, I'm not all that worried about that. Flavor overrides mechanics here.

I'm more interested in the question of whether or not the mechanic is inherently unfun in combo with planeswalker abilities.

Mechanics is how you represent flavor, so that doesn't make much sense.
I don't know where I got the impression from. I think it's something wotc actively does, but I don't have any source behind the claim. I'm not sure if it's because they want to have the ability to reprint them, or make them more independent from the plane.

Have a submission, I suppose. It's a little on the wacky side, but I like how the abilities work together.
Aloise, Spatial Adept
Planeswalker - Aloise
[+2]: Exile the top three cards of your library. You may put a land card exiled by ~ onto the battlefield tapped.
[-1]: Exile target permanent. Its owner may play it while its exiled this way.
[-6]: Exchange target permanent with another permanent card exiled by ~ that shares a card type with it.
3

[rolls eyes] Ok, flavor overrides rules about the application of mechanics then. Not really the point of the post.

It's probably a combination of both things you mention, though. I don't think we need to worry too much about either thing here, though. And really, I think it's to our benefit if we mechanically show that she's involved in the Moonrise project rather than just a Planeswalker that happens to be hanging out on the plane.

I'm not saying that they aren't involved in the plotline, more that they are flavorfully disconnect from the world, usually not being born there.
Anyway, do you feel that mastery really accomplishes that? Because I find it to be a pretty mechanical keyword, the flavor is very bare bones and generic.

Welcome back, keeper.

Well, part of the problem with that is that we haven't done a great job of expressing its flavor on the cards.

But the idea with the Moonrise project is that it's using all the different disciplines of magic on the plane to do something that none of them could do alone. Mastery thus represents coming to understand the world holistically rather than as all different totally unrelated things. It IS a very bare bones mechanic so it needs a bit more work in flavor text and naming and so on to carry it. The same is honestly kind of true of Oblation which similarly is very mechanical unless you really push the flavor. The whole idea of the separate disciplines of magic and their unification during the Moonrise project is kind of an attempt to solve the weaknesses of both mechanics and of the weirdly mechanical basis of the set as a whole.

...This has not been expressed well on the cards, though, unfortunately. I think some of what's already been made is going to need a flavor facelift to bring it in line with the actual world guide before all is said and done.

@storyteller:

Thanks. There's too much interesting stuff going on on the forums right now for me to be driven off for too long.

This is around the time that I would close this thread and open it up for voting, but I'll leave that up to TP since he started it.

I was thinking the same thing Parad. Since there's so much to digest here though I'm going to do this a little differently. We need to cut down on the options.

Everyone can vote for two separate cards. I'll take the top [undecided number] and we'll choose a winner from those.

I vote for Echo_Robin and storyteller.

I think I gotta go with Szat and Storyteller. Shazzeh was a close third and honestly it could've gone any which way.

My vote is going to have to go towards Shazzeh and Tevish Szat!

Unless I'm not allowed to vote and am only allowed to veto, in which case I vote for nothing and veto nothing! O_o

TP and Mown.

Echo and Shazzeh.
Ugh, brutal decision. So many cards would've been in the running with just one small tweak; feels wrong to decide against them on that criteria.

Shazzeh and keeper. Parad was a close third.

Cool designs by everyone.

Whoops, I did just recreate Venser, didn't I?

In all fairness, Aloise pretty much has the same powers as Venser (Teleportation and artifice dabbling), plus a bit of healing.

Mown and Echo.

Well, Venser is dead, isn't he? So we need someone to take over his mechanical identity.

Going to vote for Echo_Robin. Don't have any other I can decide on. I want to nominate Shazzeh as well, but it doesn't feel like a real card, just a ymtc submission. (It's also mechanically disjointed which limits the natural part of Planeswalkers in that they give a lot of branching play options.) I also liked Storyteller's submission, but when I ultimate a planeswalker, I actually want to impact the game state, not gain more work.

This really felt more like one of those things we should have created together, suggesting abilities and not whole designs.
I actually haven't looked at everyone's designs, so I'll be voting later.
Vote Echo. I won't be using my other vote.

She's not actually that much like Venser. He's an artificer. She's a polymath. He's kind of awkward and useless. She's a problem solver who makes friends easily. He wears short skirts. She wears t-shirts. Different, you know?

...

Kinda want some art of Venser in a short skirt now.