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.
I understand that I offended the dignity of the M:EM by suggesting any of the characters were like Venser, but the the skill sets do overlap by quite a lot. Which isn't to say that as a character she is all that similar to Venser, but there are only so many teleporting tinkers running around.
I guess I just don't think of her skillsets as being all that similar since as far as what we've seen in the stories she's fiddled as much with enchantments as artifacts arguably, dabbled in healing magic, and generally done a bunch of stuff that isn't really in Venser's wheelhouse. Like, his artificer nature is hugely integral to his character and what he's capable of. His teleportation even was a product, for a while, of an artifact. Aloise has a much more diffuse focus.
It's odd, though, because so far much of her impact in the narrative has been uh... basically being the moirail for the entire freaking Multiverse. She's never gotten into a Planewalker Duel, she's mostly just... facilitated other people in various ways.
Anyway, so. On the topic of similarity with venser: Like I said, mostly mechanical. Now, Venser only has one card, so he barely has an established one, to be fair. However, excluding his ultimate, both the global unblockable and the temporary exile are abilities that could feasible show up on Alise (just look at all the entries for the latter one.)
For the topic of Mastery, it's more difficult to have internally flavorful cards. It's a lot of work to convey "I have four different types of permanents -> Thefore X happens", as opposed to Oblation's "Something new showed up -> Therefore X happened and caused me to die." Technically, Oblation should have a religious emphasis, given the name, but in a vacuum, the mechanics of Oblation are easier to explain, and have more flexibility. There's a limit to how many different ways to you can say "Four different mages met and created something new!" It could feasibly work out better if each of the studies is more detailed, so you have different aspects to draw upon, but that will sometimes require more knowledge on the user base, as opposed to using the flavor as an exposition tool.
To be fair, Aloise's skillset is set apart from Venser's, because Venser's current notable skillset is rotting. And possibly having his fluids, tissues, and remaining organs analyzed by Phyrexia. For science.
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From 14 submissions 8 got votes. That's still too many to decide on so I'm going to limit voting to the 4 cards with multiple votes. You may now cast 1 vote for Echo, Storyteller, Shazzeh or Mown. You can also attach a condition or recommendation to your vote, like, "I'll vote for X, but only if that ultimate changes". Of course you can also make recommendations for people you're not voting for.
Aloise Hartley | Planeswalker - Aloise (M) [+1]: Until your next turn, if a source an opponent controls would deal damage, prevent 1 of that damage. [-3]: Look at the top five cards of your library. You may reveal any number of cards that don't share a card type from among them and put the revealed cards into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order. [-7]: Exile up to three other target permanents. You may play those cards without paying their mana costs for as long as they remain exiled. [4]
Aloise the Polymath Planeswalker - Aloise (M) +1: Prevent all damage that would be dealt to creatures you control this turn. 0: Exile Aloise the Polymath. Return her to the battlefield under your control at the beginning of your next upkeep. -3: Draw two cards if you've cast an artifact or enchantment spell this turn. [4]
+1: You may play an additional land this turn. Draw a card. -3: Search your library for a permanent with converted mana cost X or less and add it to your hand, where X is equal to the number of lands you control. -8: You get an emblem with "Mastery - At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control a land, a creature, an artifact, and an enchantment, you win the game." //3
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
I am going to go with Storyteller this time around as well, but I'm going to add my condition as well. Mown (I think?) brought up a valid point - we want PW ults to effect the game state, not create more work. Granted, her -3 makes it easier to get the requisite permanents out, but that's a lot of hoops to jump through on top of popping a -8. Especially since it takes 5 turns to even GET to 8, and then another turn to activate it. Granted, it's winning the game (maybe) but I can't think of many situations where I wouldn't just want to pay 3 and Wargate right off the bat.
The more I think about it, the less I like the idea of Aloise just winning the game for you. She may want to complete the moonrise, but rather than achieving "victory" from that, it makes more sense for facilitate the project.
Here's my suggestion: [-6]: Search your library for an artifact, enchantment, creature, and land card and put them onto the battlefield. Shuffle your library.
...This, of course, may necessitate changing her -3 up a little bit (Or not! Making friends and stuff is sort of what Aloise does!) But you could drop the "draw a card" on the -1, and change the -3 to "draw a card for each type among permanents you control" or something.
But my only request is the ultimate! Nothing else needs to change and I certainly don't want to take over your design. T_T
I just prefer the idea of Aloise facilitating victory rather than directly causing/reveling in it, ya dig?
I had a potential ultimate: Search your library for an artifact, an enchantment, a creature, and a land with total converted mana cost 10? (whatever) or less and put them onto the battlefield.
[+1]: Until your next turn, if a source an opponent controls would deal damage, prevent 1 of that damage.
This is the only ability I don't love. I would change it to something like: Put a barrier enchantment token onto the battlefield. It has "Sacrifice this enchantment: Regenerate target creature." It adds the same tension Seals do with the enchantment-mastery thing (I think that opening this card should basically force you to draft Bant, and enchantments/mastery seems like the perfect color for it), and feels distinctly instead of purely like the current ability does.
Quote:
[-3]: Look at the top five cards of your library. You may reveal any number of cards that don't share a card type from among them and put the revealed cards into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.
Love it. Wouldn't change a thing.
Quote:
[-7]: Exile up to three other target permanents. You may play those cards without paying their mana costs for as long as they remain exiled. [4]
Aloise the Polymath Planeswalker - Aloise (M) +1: Prevent all damage that would be dealt to creatures you control this turn.
If we were doing this piecemeal by ability, this would win my choice for the +1. It's very well done.
Quote:
0: Exile Aloise the Polymath. Return her to the battlefield under your control at the beginning of your next upkeep.
I would probably put (with four loyalty counters) in reminder text between "control" and "at", because I actually missed that while reading over the card for the first time, and I think it actually prevented me from voting for it over storyteller's. Reminder text is never a bad thing if it's pointing out something as crucial as that, even and especially if it's on a card as complicated as a planeswalker.
Quote:
-3: Draw two cards if you've cast an artifact or enchantment spell this turn. [4]
I love how between this and creatures, she mentions every card type (besides lands which you will pretty much always have) required for Mastery.
Aloise, Moonrise Architect Planeswalker - Aloise +1: You may play an additional land this turn. Draw a card.
I'm realizing now that this is way too powerful a +1 ability. This strikes me more as a 0 ability. Compare this to Jace the Mindsculptor. For a 3 CMC card, even if it is in three colors, I think that getting something on par with the 0 ability of the most powerful Planeswalker ever printed should not get you +1 loyalty on top of that.
Quote:
-3: Search your library for a permanent with converted mana cost X or less and add it to your hand, where X is equal to the number of lands you control.
Way too derivative from the first ability. Would be much more appealing to my inner Melvin if it simply said 3 or less.
Quote:
-8: You get an emblem with "Mastery - At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control a land, a creature, an artifact, and an enchantment, you win the game." //3
A thing of beauty. The sole reason this card got my vote is how much I loved this ultimate. If I could combine this ultimate with either one of the other cards, I would.
That said, I get what people are saying about not actually using the ability word Mastery. One of the things that's so cool about the other cards is that they spell out Mastery without saying it out loud.
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
Since the three abilities are so completely interrelated, I'm just going to comment on the card as a whole. First of all, it makes my head spin. To some Johnnys that can be more of a good thing. But as a Melvin, it's more important to know exactly how many times I can use each ability before the Planeswalker dies, and having an Ultimate that doesn't immediately kill her after pumping up for two turns with the +2 ability makes it feel much less like a Coup de Grace. I think that she could get away with costing if her Ultimate cost 7 instead of 6.
My vote goes to Echo-Robin, but I would like its +1 changed into something that incorporates a more persona. This reminds me of Urza's Armor, and when Aloise () reminds me of Urza (), I get upset.
Saying Explore and Brainstorm are about on par makes me doubt your reasoning. However, I concede that the ability is probably too strong as is, since it's the -1 on whats-her-name-merfolk-planeswalker-that-showed-up-in-Theros, who is a 4 cmc UG pw.
You and I apparently have different tastes, because the fact that the -3 is so intertwined with the +1 makes it that much more enticing to me.
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