Planeswalkers

Take a look at this card, isn’t it different somehow? Planeswalkers have been a part of Magic’s history since the beginning and now they are getting their own new card type. Magic’s first new card type since, well, ever!!! Planeswalkers are to be introduced in Magic’s next release, Lorwyn, and were first mentioned on the Future Sight card Tarmogoyf. Get the latest info on Lorwyn from mtgsalvation.com, I hate to advertise another site but they have pretty good spoilers.

Supposedly there are just 5 planeswalkers in Lorwyn, one for each color. I was excited to see an actual planeswalker card this early but unfortunately it still leaves me a little bit clueless. It seems that these new planeswalkers (boy that’s a big word) come with some rules attach that regrettably isn’t mentioned on the card (good luck to newbies).

Let’s review what we can learn from the card. One, it costs 3BB, that’s obvious but you have to start somewhere. Two, the 5 in the lower right corner seems to indicate some kind of resource like strength or magical ability that is left. Personally I call this new resource "magic mana." Three, this new resource is used to activate the abilities of the card, notice the similar shapes outlining the numbers. Four, there is a way to increase your supply of the new resource.
OK, this is pure speculation but I believe there can be only one planeswalker in play at a time. It seems like it would be weird if two planeswalkers were in play together, but it would better emulate a wizard-vs-wizard duel. Shoot, I wish I could figure out how to pay "+1". The rest of the abilities seem simple since they have a negative sign to show that you are actually subtracting something like magical mana.

After staring at Liliana Vess for 15 minutes I’ve made a few educated guesses that seem to make sense. Vess comes into play with 5 counters and she has 3 abilities that add or subtract those counters. Her first ability reads "+1: Target player discards a card" which seems to say "add another counter to Vess and make your opponent discard a card." (You could target yourself if you had a juicy creature in hand.) But the ability to make your opponent discard his whole hand for 5 mana is too strong, so I came to this conclusion. You can only play a planeswalker’s ability once per turn, probably only during your upkeep. This would limit you to only be forcing your opponent to discard one card per turn, which is more acceptable, while making you wait until turn 8 until you can put all creatures from all graveyards into play under your control.

I know my guesses are no better than anyone else’s, but at least I tried. So the first planeswalker Liliana Vess is revealed yet remains a mystery, but hopefully not for long. I’m sure the first split cards were pretty confusing to players also.