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Episode 36: MTG Ranked – Unique Planeswalker Skillsets
103 Plays6 years ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to the Goblin Lore Podcast!
In our thirty-sixth episode, Joe wraps up the cast's coverage of War of the Spark with a top-six ranking of the most unique planeswalker skills and magic types in Magic lore. This episode is the debut of a new episode format for the show, so please let us know what you think!
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You can find the hosts on Twitter: Joe Redemann at @Fyndhorn, Hobbes Q. at @HobbesQ, and Alex Newman at @AlexanderNewm. Send questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to @GoblinLorePod on Twitter or GoblinLorePodcast@gmail.com.
Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle).
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast, and a part of their growing Vorthos content – as well as Magic content of all kinds. Check them out at hipstersofthecoast.com.
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Transcript
Intro & Episode Format
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to another episode of Goblin Lore. This episode is going to be one of our Goblin Games episodes. So we're going to do something slightly different from our typical flagship episodes and take a look at a ranked list that I've made and sort of just do a little bit of a fun look at some of the elements of lore here.
00:00:43
Speaker
So we have discussed briefly in the past what the Goblin Games would look like and this is going to be one of the show formats for them is Magic the Gathering Ranked.
Ranking Criteria Clarification
00:00:57
Speaker
So this is just a set of my opinions and you know if there are other cast members or guests that come out of these shows
00:01:07
Speaker
For all of us, these are simply opinions, not by any means a firm, hard and fast, you know, cannon-backed ranking or anything like that. This is not a judgment. This is simply our thoughts on something.
Unique Planeswalkers in Magic Lore
00:01:25
Speaker
So with this episode, I want to take a look at a list of Planeswalkers that I think have the most unique skill sets in the multiverse, in Magic Lore.
00:01:38
Speaker
especially since we're in the middle of the War of the Spark right now in terms of Magic's story and the card set is currently situated right there in Ravnica with a bunch of Planeswalkers, I figured let's keep up the fun, let's keep talking about Planeswalkers, and specifically let's talk about ones that have odd or sort of tangential skill sets that don't get a lot of buzz for that.
00:02:07
Speaker
So before we leap into the rankings, I just want to remind everybody that this show is brought to you by Hipsters of the Coast.
Sponsor Mention: Hipsters of the Coast
00:02:16
Speaker
Hipsters of the Coast is a website full of Magic the Atherin content for spikes, for
00:02:22
Speaker
Vorthos for Johnny's, Timmy's, Tommy's, Jenny's, Jax, and Jill's of all sorts. So go to hipsterthecoast.com, check it out. You can find my writing there as well in the Vorthos sections, but there's great stuff if you're a competitive player as well, and you'll really, really enjoy it. So let's get into Magic the Gathering Ranked, Unique Planeswalkers Edition.
Top 6-4 Ranked Planeswalkers
00:02:52
Speaker
I'm going to start off with my number six unique planeswalker and that is Taesir of Rabaya. So Taesir, for those who don't know, is a bit of a throwback. He's an old school planeswalker. He's one of the old walkers, one of the pre-revisionist planeswalkers in fact.
00:03:12
Speaker
And he's one of very few planeswalkers who ever fully mastered all five colors of magic. But that's not really what makes him unique. What makes him unique is the fact that he's from the plane of Rabaya. And if you know anything about Mark Rosewater's Rabaya scale, you know that that's a plane that we're not ever going back to. We did talk about it in an earlier episode as well.
00:03:38
Speaker
But Taseer mastered all five colors of magic specifically because he was shattered into multiple selves across the 1001 refractions of the plane of Rabaya.
00:03:56
Speaker
So there were five different versions of Taesir across these multiple realities that eventually planeswalked to find each other, united, and he became his whole person. According to the prophecy on Rabiah of the ancients, the sages, he was known as the one made of five.
00:04:19
Speaker
So Taseer, you know, sort of had a typical, you know, old walker skill set of being able to do anything whenever you wanted. But this origin story, I think, makes him really unique. And the fact that he was one of very few planeswalkers to master all five colors makes him that much more interesting and unique as well.
00:04:45
Speaker
He had a long and interesting life. He did die in the invasion as part of the Nine Titans, Urza's attack on Phyrexia. And Urza was one of the other planeswalkers who had mastered five colors of mana, but he's not on this list because he, you know, didn't have anything crazy unique about his origin story. He just got exploded in a big old artifact. So, with that,
00:05:12
Speaker
We have Taesir of Rabiah at number six for the most unique planeswalkers of all time. Number five, we're going to another of the nine titans and another old walker. And we're going to talk a bit about Commodore Guff.
00:05:33
Speaker
So Commodore Guf is a bit controversial in Magic Vorthos communities because he's sort of just seen as kind of silly and ridiculous. Guf was an old planeswalker that lived in a hidden library on Dominaria and his skill set we don't know a ton about because he's sort of a member of the ensemble group of the Nine Titans.
00:06:02
Speaker
But we do know that he was a big aficionado of books, that he was very interested in stories, and specifically that he held books that contained the destiny of the multiverse in his library, in his possession. So, Guff, the big moment that he has is at the end, or sort of the early end of Apocalypse, the Apocalypse novel.
00:06:34
Speaker
He's told every other major planeswalker that no, the end of the story is already written, the Phyrexians will win, that's how the book goes. Because he had somebody literally write a book for the history of Dominaria. And that magically would determine the end of the apocalypse.
00:06:59
Speaker
and so he was told by them to go erase the end of the book and so there's this very meta moment that has to do that sort of jokingly tongue-in-cheek talks about wizard's story magic story at that point in time and I think it's a very funny section but
00:07:18
Speaker
even more so I really like the idea of a planeswalker who through literature is able to shape the entire fabric of reality and destiny and I really think that's great that he's there's this ethos of
00:07:40
Speaker
of determinism, but then by erasing the last chapter of the book, he gives everyone a chance to write their own destinies on Dominaria. And I think that's very, very cool. So, Golf erases that last chapter, gives everyone a fighting chance, and then eventually is swarmed over by Yawgmoth's death cloud as he entered the plane of Dominaria.
00:08:08
Speaker
So Commodore Guff, silly as he might be, has a really interesting skill set to me and so he makes our list at number five. Number four is one of the newest planeswalkers that we've ever seen and we still don't know that much about her. It's the Wanderer who we were introduced to in The War of the Spark.
00:08:31
Speaker
We don't know where the wanderer's home plane is. We weren't sure for quite some time what the wanderer's skill set was. But the wanderer is sort of this, she has an aesthetic that's very similar to old Japanese yojimbo samurai.
00:08:51
Speaker
long sort of conical hat, flat brim conical hat, sort of a sari style, like a kimono almost sort of dress, and then this whip sword that she wields as well, and you don't see her face.
00:09:10
Speaker
but she also has a whip sword that she wields against her opponents and what we found out about her skill set in the War of the Spark as she and a bunch of the other planeswalkers are out on the Ravnican Gateway Plaza. Fighting the army of Eternals back is that she has the ability to turn
00:09:34
Speaker
Kinetic energy into magic and in fact, that's where she draws all of her magic from so when they discover that the Eternals after the Elder spell is cast and the Eternals have the ability to harvest planeswalker sparks The planeswalkers are all trying to not get touched by these Eternals so that they can't get a grasp on them. They can't you know use that grasp to harvest their spark and then you know die and
00:10:04
Speaker
The Wanderer therefore though can't really get hit by an opponent and convert their energy back into a magical swing. And so she asks Gideon at one point to hit her as hard as he can.
00:10:20
Speaker
And so Gideon hauls back, punches her in the face, and that sends her into an attack frenzy where she just swings through just the blue lazza tap after blue lazza tap and cuts down, you know, swathes of Eternals.
00:10:37
Speaker
So it's a really interesting skill set that we haven't seen anyone use yet, and I'm really interested to see the wanderer in future stories and what she is able to do with these unique powers.
00:10:55
Speaker
The Wanderer is also up here because we just don't know that much about her. And so that's pretty unique that there's a planeswalker, a confirmed planeswalker character that we know the skill set for that we have now seen at least sort of tangentially in a main story that we know nothing about. So that's unique in and of itself too. So the Wanderer comes in at number four on our unique planeswalkers list.
00:11:26
Speaker
Number three is another planeswalker that we see involved in the War of the Spark, and unfortunately he's one of the few that doesn't make it out.
Top 3-1 Ranked Planeswalkers
00:11:36
Speaker
And that is Dak Faden. So Dak Faden is a blue-red planeswalker who hails from the plane of Fiora, which was the setting for the conspiracy blocks.
00:11:47
Speaker
Dak is known, possibly, you know, self-proclaimed as the greatest thief in the multiverse and specifically his magic skill set centers around something called psychometry. So this is an ability to absorb knowledge from objects by touch. So that means that he's able to track objects by touching them and seeing who else in the past has used them.
00:12:17
Speaker
he is able to sort of soak up facsimiles of magical spells or enchantments that are in artifacts or attached to objects and just generally he's very good at being stealthy and sneaky and using his variety of learned and stolen spells to keep himself hidden and
00:12:47
Speaker
away. So Dak Faden is a typical rogue character. He's very charming. He's kind of the Han Solo of the multiverse in the sense that he's the thief with the heart of gold. But
00:13:10
Speaker
He uses his skills, his sort of obtained found spells, to great effect in the War of the Spark and in many other places where he will just pull out a little cantrip and use it to trip up his enemies.
00:13:28
Speaker
It's you know is willing to save the innocent people as well So he's a really interesting character with an interesting backstory But I think what really makes that well-rounded is sort of this very versatile skill set that comes from a very unique Source in hit in the fact that he has no innate magic of his own. It's all about him stealing magic from other places and
00:13:53
Speaker
So, Dakfaden, may he rest in peace, comes in on our list at number three. Number two on our list is the Kamigawan planeswalker, Tamio. So, Tamio is a Soretami or a moon folk from the plane of Kamigawa. She is blue, green, white in certain varieties aligned.
00:14:21
Speaker
and specifically is very interested in the study of moons and sort of how nature works on different planes but very very specifically what she
00:14:38
Speaker
What she studies as she walks the planes and researches different cultures and different realities is the stories and the truth of these different planes, hidden secrets, that she records on magical scrolls and then accesses them to use as spells. So she will take and record down the history of a place and that will become a spell for her to use in her arsenal.
00:15:07
Speaker
Now, what's really interesting about that in my mind is that she has a few spells, a few scrolls that she specifically has bound in iron bands so that they cannot be just casually opened. They are really earth-shaking, world-shattering spells
00:15:31
Speaker
that could change the course of humanity or people-ity. I don't know how to be inclusive for all species with this term. But Tamio has certain very dangerous stories and spells locked away.
00:15:52
Speaker
and we see one of those get used in the fight against Emrakul during the Shadows Over Innistrad block where Emrakul possesses Tamio's mind and rewrites one of the scrolls to seal Emrakul in the moon of Innistrad
00:16:15
Speaker
And and sort of converts one of those stories and one of those spells into something different So I think this says something about me honestly in this list that I have two characters whose magic is centered around stories and writing and and sort of the magic of lore and destiny and all that
00:16:38
Speaker
Whereas Guff was mostly focused on the future in Destiny though, Tamiyo is focused on recording the past and I think that's an interesting difference there. I'm also not sure that Guff casts spells through his stories, that wasn't necessarily the medium that he used, he just
00:16:55
Speaker
had magical stories at his availability, whereas Tamiyo uses these scrolls specifically to cast her spells. So Tamiyo comes in at our list at number two for the most unique Planeswalker skill sets in Magic History.
00:17:16
Speaker
Number one, finally we reach our last planeswalker. The planeswalker that I think has the most interesting or unique skill set at least. And we've talked a little bit about destiny and the future and fate and
00:17:37
Speaker
Who could be more unique and more interesting than Amina too? Who is, it seems, seven?
00:17:49
Speaker
She's very young. She's a young child, and she's a young human planeswalker. We're not sure where she's from. We're not sure exactly what happened to spark her, except that she, quote, foresaw it would spark one day, and I decided I didn't want to wait for that.
00:18:12
Speaker
So she has had the ability to see the future for a long time and when she sparked she found the ability to then shape destiny and shape other people's destinies and sort of turn the tides of fate and
00:18:29
Speaker
This is a really powerful... Oh, she's eight years old, sorry. This is a really powerful and compelling skill set. She also expresses her magic. The medium of casting her fate-shifting magic is through these intangible ghostly death-set moths. So when one of her moths lands on a person,
00:18:52
Speaker
that is her nudging their fate in whatever direction she chooses. So she sort of has immense amounts of wisdom despite being so young. She's so calm and has a really reserved demeanor.
00:19:11
Speaker
But she is constantly shifting her own destiny, constantly changing things with that, and sort of can just pluck at the strands of the future at whim. And that's really fascinating to me. Now she came to us in the Commander 2018 set, so that's how we know of her.
00:19:37
Speaker
But we don't have any idea where she came from yet. We don't know where she might end up in story. Hopefully it'll be soon. Hopefully it'll be interesting. But this is one of the most unique Planeswalker skill sets. One of the most unique Planeswalker backstories. And I think so many people would be excited to see Amina 2 in
00:20:04
Speaker
in a main storyline because of all of that. So to run this back down here for our episode of Magic the Gathering Ranked Unique Planeswalker skill set edition,
00:20:17
Speaker
We have number six, Tasier of Rubeia. Number five, Commodore Guff. Number four, The Wanderer. Number three, Dacfaden, greatest thief in the multiverse. Number two, Tamio. And number one, Amina 2, The Fate Shifter.
Listener Engagement & Feedback
00:20:38
Speaker
So let me know if you agree, if you disagree, please send a message to the cast at gobblemoorpod on Twitter or you can email us at gobblemoorpodcast at gmail.com. We'd be very interested to hear who you think has the most unique or interesting skill set among planeswalkers in the multiverse in all of Magic History.
00:21:01
Speaker
There are some that we didn't put on the list that maybe just missed, and so I would be very, very interested to hear who you think is most deserving of that title. But for now, we are going to sign off and say goodbye for now. May you planeswalk safely and responsibly, and we'll catch you again next week.
00:21:39
Speaker
That's our show.
Closing Credits & Social Media
00:21:40
Speaker
You can find the podcast at GobbleMoorPod on Twitter or email any questions, comments, or concerns to gobblemoorpodcast at gmail.com. If you'd like to support your friendly neighborhood Gobslugs, you can do so at patreon.com slash gobblemoorpod.
00:21:56
Speaker
This episode of Goblin Lore was hosted, edited, and written by Joe Redman, who you can find on Twitter, at Finthorn. That's F-Y-N-D, Horn. Goblin Lore's cast also includes Hobbs Q, who you can find on Twitter, at Hobbs Q, and Alex Newman, who you can find on Twitter, at Alexander New M.
00:22:16
Speaker
Our music is by Vintergotten, you can find at vintergotten.com, that's winter g-a-t-a-n dot com. Logo by Steven Raphael on twitter at stevenraffle. Goblin lore is presented by Hipsters of the Coast, which you can find at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you all for listening, and remember, goblins, like snowflakes, are only dangerous in numbers.