Pattern Recognition #133 - Green Face'Walker

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

5 December 2019

1113 views

Hello everyone! Welcome back to Pattern Recognition! This is TappedOut.net's longest running article series. In it, I aim to bring to you each week a new article about some piece of Magic, be it a card, a mechanic, a deck, or something more fundamental or abstract. I am something of an Old Fogey and part-time Smart Ass, so I sometimes talk out my ass. Feel free to dissent or just plain old correct me! I also have a Patreon if you feel like helping out.

Green has an issue, and I'll have to let my examples go first before I can summarize it. But in order to that, I want to introuce, in order, the three Face'Walkers for . For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, "Face'Walker" is a community description for a mono-coloured Planeswalker that is the "Face" of the colour, representing it in the cards and in the story - such as it is.

For example, (FCK) Jace Beleren is the Face'Walker for , Chandra Naalar for and the current Face for seems to be Sorin Markov now.

has had three separate Face'Walkers since the introduction of Planeswalkers back in Lorwyn, so I will go over them one at a time.

First up, we have Garruk Wildspeaker. Part of the original cycle of Planeswalkers, he shows the typical conservative design that I have come to expect from those five and other early Planeswalkers. A cost of for a 3 Planeswalker is pretty underwhelming nowadays, and his abilities are, while symbolic of are equally underwhelming. He can Untap two lands, he can create a 3/3 Beast, and on the turn after he comes in - assuming all goes well - he can create an Overrun type of effect.

This was his version for M10 and M11 as well, showing off that for the time, this was how Wizards viewed Planeswalkers. They helped with mana acceleration, they made creatures, and they would make creatures bigger.

But, moving into M12 and M13, Garruk became Garruk, Primal Hunter, where he dropped the mana production and instead focused on making creatures. More and more creatures - in addition to drawing cards as well, which is in Green's colour pie as it's based on the power of your creatures, not something more abstract.

Garruk, Caller of Beasts came to us the next year in M14, this time dropping away form the Creature Token aspect of and more toward focusing on the creature cards in the library, looking for them, putting them into play cheaply, and finally letting you get more creatures when you cast them!

Then Innistrad came, and thanks to Liliana of the Veil, Garruk changed colours, becoming as Garruk, the Veil-Cursed  ^Flip and he was summarilly tossed out as the Face'Walker for .

But, who would replace him? Well, that would be Nissa Revane.

Nissa was.... She was....

OK, so Garruk was the "Great Hunter" archetype, the guy who would go out and find the biggest, meanest and baddest creature he could, and tame it one way or the other. And that hobbled him from advancing as a character or as someone that Wizards could use for plot purposes. So he was replaced with the more player friendly face, someone that the players could relate to more than a muscle-bound, shirtless competitor to the incoming Gideon Jura in the beefcake department.

So we got the actively racist Elf-Supremicist and contender for "Would have been the Token Evil Teammate for the Gatewatch had Wizards been willing to not go with the obvious choice. Her first card was all about the Elves and making them better, only for Wizards to collectively slap themselves and realize what idiots they were, and completely revamped Nissa into Nissa, Worldwaker for M15.

Worldwaker is a Land-focused Planeswalker, something she carried with her through her retconned starting point of Nissa, Sage Animist  ^Flip, through Nissa, Vital Force and her last showing - Nissa, Who Shakes the World.

Actually, if you want to see just how badly Wizards handled Nissa, I would like all of you to go back and read Nissa's "new" Origin from Magic Origins, and compare this to the Nissa we had before then. Oh, and realize that the Elves of Lorwyn don't look like Elves anywhere else, and would view Nissa as an Eyeblight.

For what it's worth, I'm in the camp that Jace did a bit of Mind Sculpting on Nissa when he realized he needed her power to save Zendikar from the Eldrazi. And you can't convince me otherwise what with his multiple on-print examples including on Jori En, Ruin Diver.

But Nissa's focus on lands and Elementals was another developmental dead end. Yes, likes mana acceleration, and also likes Elementals. Like Omnath, Locus of Mana! But untapping lands is a weird location, Seeker of Skybreak not withstanding. actually likes to do mana multipliers more, like with what we see on Nissa, Who Shakes the World's static ability.

And so Nissa's shot at being the Facewalker died partway through the Jaceitus League Saga, as she, like her predecessor before her, picked up an enemy Colour with Nissa, Steward of Elements.

You know, I liked that version of Nissa. A better 'Walker than Oko ever could be. Her abilities made sense, were in colour and they were synergistic as well. And the in her casting cost was a nice touch.

But Nissa was out, and her replacement landed with a stale thud. Vivien Reid was revealed as Nissa's successor in M19 (as in, three months after Nissa got the boot) and she represented a return to the old as well as something new not found on a Planeswalker - but could be found on a common Instant. First, she brought back Garruk's creature searching, as well as her Ultimate ability of an Overrun like effect. Her middle power was a combination of Plummet and Naturalize, two utility effects that I saw use for given that they were printed in the same set. Why, it was almost like she was a Spellshaper or something.

In addition, two of her versions - Vivien, Arkbow Ranger and the former Vivien of the Arkbow allow her creatures to Fight - or at least deliver a Rabid Bite, which I think is a nice thing for a colour that already likes creatures.

As a character through...

Uh... Her character has received some hasty additions over the past year, but at the start, she could be summarized as "Hello, my name is Vivien Reid. You killed my Plane. Prepare to die."

I'm serious. That's it!

In the past year though, she has actually developed a second character axis, specifically in that she is the Magic equivalent of a Nature Game Warden - someone who looks out for the animals of the Multiverse and makes sure they are either undisturbed or being taken care of properly.

A respectable job, don't get me wrong. But I would love to see her highline in a set, rather than being a cameo in War of the Spark, and whatever you call being a Facewalker in a Core Set to be. But for now, Vivien Reid is someone that we are being told about, not being shown.

But she's just barely gotten started, being in the game for barely the blink of an eye. Let's see how Wizards handles her, shall we?

So... here's the problem. Unlike , which has stayed with Chandra as their Face'walker, or which only now moved away from Liliana Vess to Sorin Markov and dropping Jace Beleren in favour of Mu Yanling and how went from Ajani Goldmane to Gideon Jura and back, [symbol:G hasn't had any sort of long term consistency to their Planeswalker representative.

Part of the problem isn't mechanical, but don't worry, I'll get to that. No, the problem that I have as a Vorthos player is that none of these three are actual characters. They don't do anything to really stand out. I mean, I can describe Sorin or Jace or Chandra or Koth of the Hammer without much issue, but these three? Uh, one's a fairy tale huntsman (thanks Throne!), one's the victim of mind control, and the other should have been hired to work at Jurassic World.

This isn't good design for characters. If Wizards wants us to be invested in these people, to help drive sales and brand loyalty, then they need to put the effort into giving these names and faces something to work with! There is a reason why the Weatherlight Saga is so beloved, and it's not because of the cards, it's because of the characters! Stuff that is lacking here.

Mechanically speaking as well, these cards are in a very poor place, being in a weird cloud of having too much focus - a problem for and too little, with land untapping, creature searching, creature making and a couple of miscellaneous effects for flavour. There's nothing here that really seems .... emblematic of . Certainly not in a way that isn't all-powerful like Nissa, Who Shakes the World.

So, what would I look for in a Green Face'Walker? Well, the answer to that lay in the colour identity of , but as a character? Well, why not make 's Face'walker a Centaur? Elves are boring, humans are everywhere, and that would make the current spread of 'Walkers of a single colour two Humans, a Leonin, a Vampire and a Centaur. Just as long as the 'Walker isn't defined as being a Centaur and nothing else. As for abilities? Well, I think I'll wait on that. I have a project in mind that the answer to that would fit nicely into.

And there you have it. A whole lot of nothing. Because Wizards just doesn't know what to do, they keep trying new things rather than reinforcing the old.

Wizards has lost the ability to tell a story, to create characters as more than caricatures, and here is yet another victim.

I don't know what I'll be writing about next week, as it's getting crunch time and I work in Retail. But I'll think of something. Or maybe one of you lovely people could suggest a thing?

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!