According to http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/ixalan-mechanics planeswalkers will now be covered under the legend rules and the planeswalker uniqueness rules are going away. So planeswalkers turning into commanders in the next set? I figured the commander rules won't change any time soon to cover planeswalkers due to very busy and hard working RC staff.

Sheldon answered in another thread to say:

As I mentioned in another thread, Planeswalkers will not become legal generals for the same reason Mindslaver, Day of Destiny, and Academy Ruins are not currently legal generals.

Funnily enough I asserted awhile ago that superfriends weren't really that much of a problem. Well thanks wotc for completely turning that statement on it's head. post-Ixalan EDH is going to be a planeswalker filled nightmare...

Oh the horror that will roil beneath my flesh when an opponent taps JTMS to untap Honor-Worn Shaku...

Neat tech... I'm totally going to try that card in my Atraxa deck now. And Captain Sisay now gets to to be silly good in the 99 instead of just as a commander. Yay, just what everyone was clamoring for.

I asked my friend who has an absolutely miserable-to-play-against Sisay deck if he would include any Planeswalkers now that he can fetch them with his commander. His response? "Still not good enough." I could see her impact in the 99 for Atraxa though, despite the difference between having her on demand in the command zone vs. having to tutor or natural draw her. But you also get access to black and blue, which boosts your SuperFriends options. I think Captain Jace Sparrow and Doubling Season is way more scary than Sisay in Atraxa's 99, though.

Uh.... clearly I'm missing something. Why does being able to tap a planeswalker for one <> mana now make a grand difference?

it doesn't, I think that was the point. My point on the other hand was that having every jace/liliana/whatever in existence in play simultaneously is going to make planeswalkers absolutely miserable. Before they were pretty good but not overbearing unless you are ulting Narset or Erayo Jace or any of the other douchewalkers. Now though... eww.

Umm what? I don't know what meta you could possibly live in where the dividing line between PW's being playable and broken is whether or not you can have both JTMS and Jace Beleren in play. L

Out of all the decks I own the only one that even noticed the difference is my Omnath deck which has Garruk Wildspeaker and Primal Hunter. And considering the latter usually dies the second he enters, it's really rare for me to care either way.

Historically the things I hated about my playgroup's planeswalker deck(s) was the Doubling Season into Samut, the Tested into Tamiyo, Field Researcher, Dovin Baan etc that doesn't care about planeswalker volume. I think this change makes the worse planeswalker more playable as they don't become dead cards in a PW or value deck when their better name-sharers are in play.

My bigger question is when do these changes become official/official in commander? I know my playgroup will be on the legendary planeswalker train asap (we picked up the vancouver mulligan the week it was described by wizards). If I roll up to FNM with my new mediocre-friends deck pre-Ixalan am I in for a world of disappointment?

I have a 5c super friends deck, and I think the Planeswalker Uniqueness rule has been relevant in <15% of games and critical in less than that. When it comes to card selection, I think there was one time I cut a Jace because I had too many total Jaces, but really there is a ton of redundancy in what PW do. There isn't a lot of difference between any of the 5-mana Jaces and Sarkhan Unbroken, Ob Nixilis Reignited, etc, for example, so you aren't really going to generate much in the way of game states that are truly novel.


The best assumption is that they'll become official as soon as they become official in the rest of MTG. That is how it went down with the legend rule change, and this seems like even less of a reason to rock the boat than that.

We've always operated under the idea that cards are legal and rules changes are in effect on the day the cards become available--so once you hit a pre-release next month, jam your deck full of dinosaurs and legend rule those Jaces.

Seconded. When I built my 5c walker deck I technically limited myself to two walkers of the same name to avoid the uniqueness rule. And then, as I was building it, I found it was hard to see myself even wanting three of a given walker, given the number of powerful walkers, the overlap in abilities, etc.

I might add one or two walkers to the deck as of the rule change. Maybe. When playing it, the uniqueness rule is rarely relevant. I don't see the change meaning much to how my deck plays out.

I guess it means decks with fewer colours can go harder on planeswalkers. That might not be a bad thing in the end.

If someone wants to "improve" their GW deck now that they can jam 6 Ajanis, 3 Elspeths, 3 Garruks, 6 Gideons and 7 Nissas with no fear of the Uniqueness rule stranding cards in hand, well, so be it.

I can't wait until I land Yomiji, Who Bars the Way and start popping some PW