Designing Planeswalkers: Overview
Alright, I’ve been doing quite a few of those and for some time now, so I feel confident enough doing a write-up on how planeswalker cards are designed and how to make your own. This article will be dedicated to the creation of planeswalker cards themselves, not necessarily the character behind or getting ideas. It will also be focused on designing cards that could likely be printed on cards by Wizards of the Coast, and most likely in a standard set (planeswalker deck planeswalkers are balanced completely differently, and supplementary set ones are also separate from that) but card creation is still a creative act and, in the end, you’re the only judge of what you can or cannot do on a card.
Examples of good and bad planeswalker designs will be given from existing cards, Wizards printed enough of both to allow this. Without further ado here comes the full overview of the elements of a planeswalker card, with notes on each’s design.
Name, subtype, as well as set/number, language and collector info are all mostly cosmetic elements or determined by outside factors, with little influence on the rest of the card. The subtypes can sometimes matter when abilities refer to “a [NAME] planeswalker” but it rarely comes up when designing a single card or set. A planeswalker must have all the associated subtypes of all the represented planeswalkers, and the name in general contains that subtype. The introduction of a dual-typed planeswalker in The Royal Scions goes against this, but you want the character(s) to be recognizable.
There is one thing you can do here that will influence the rest of the card. All planeswalkers released this far are exclusively planeswalkers, and all legendary. While it is possible to strip the Legendary supertype to represent an anonymous member of a planeswalker-filled group, be aware the entire card will have to be designed around that fact. It is also theoretically possible to add more types to a planeswalker, but Wizards made the decision so far that the planeswalker type superseded any other potentially-relevant type. No Karn card is an artifact planeswalker. Calix isn’t an enchantment planeswalker. But those are possibilities if you want them, be aware it will create a lot of additional interactions with your planeswalker, both ways to synergize with it, tutor it or cheat it into play and removal.
Creature planeswalkers are functional within the rules of magic but very, very complex and confusing, combining the two most confusing permanent types is not recommended unless you know exactly what you’re doing. The solution is generally to make a planeswalker that temporarily turns into a creature during your turn, or a double sided card, or something in that vein, since planeswalker creatures are at their most confusing when being attacked and in blocking situations. Be aware that if something is both a creature and a planeswalker at the same time, they will lose loyalty counters if they’re dealt damage AND may die to being dealt more damage than their toughness.
Also be aware that the “required” elements of a planeswalker typeline, “Legendary Planeswalker - NAME” already fills up quite a bit of space, and typelines are better when they’re readable.
I won’t spend long on rarity. The vast, vast majority of planeswalkers are mythic. Mythic planeswalkers are powerful, often game-changing cards featuring iconic characters. Rare planeswalkers are… The same thing, but aimed a bit less splashy, complex and powerful. Uncommon planeswalkers are often less powerful, typically don’t have an “ultimate” or the ability to win games on their own, or it will take a long, long time. Rarity might warp your design, but generally speaking, stick to mythic planeswalkers unless you specifically want your planeswalker at a lower rarity.
Mana cost will guide you on what impact your planeswalker should have. Planeswalkers are typically very powerful cards, with an insanely high ceiling (best case scenario) and a decent floor (worst case scenario). The converted mana cost first, and then number and weight of colors second, will tell you how to balance your planeswalker. Of course, you can always design the abilities and loyalty first and then determine which cost to set it at, but you generally start getting an idea pretty quickly for both color and cost.
There’s printed planeswalkers all the way from 2 mana to 8 mana. The standard scale for planeswalkers, where you’ll find most of them, is at four and five mana. Two-mana planeswalkers are insanely hard to balance in a way that makes them provide a fair advantage for the two mana invested without being unplayable. Wizards themselves haven’t managed to do that, the two printed two-mana planeswalkers being on opposite ends of that scale, Wrenn and Six being ban-worthy in legacy and Tibalt being a joke to this day, even a constructed-playable card later. I don’t recommend attempting to design a two-mana planeswalker, especially if only to prove you can. Seven and eight mana planeswalkers tend to be insanely powerful and win the game on their own in a couple turns, putting you at a major advantage immediately upon resolving. It’s hard to go overboard on them short of making them an actual, instant win, but they’re also pretty rare.
Six mana planeswalkers will often be able to swing a game in your favor in a couple of turns, or generate more than a single card worth of card advantage immediately after hitting the battlefield. Three-mana planeswalkers are not quite as hard to balance as two-mana ones, but the line is thin between the sweet spot of powerful and balanced and the issue of TOO powerful and unbalanced. Three mana planeswalkers generally can’t protect themselves all too well, and don’t generate positive card advantage the turn they enter. They can have “ultimate” abilities, but they generally don’t win the game without some help.
Four and five-mana planeswalkers are the bread and butter of planeswalker design. At those cost, they can have powerful effects but still be fair, they can win the game if left unchecked but be vulnerable to spells and/or creatures, they can protect themselves from one but not the other, they can generate card advantage repeatedly, etc…
Loyalty is simultaneously the life and the charge of your planeswalkers. Both loyalty costs and starting loyalty can make or break your planeswalker. Together, and with the abilities, they form your planeswalker’s play pattern, or how it will be used.
Starting loyalty generally ranges from 3 to 5, with a few being higher and a few lower. As a general rule, a planeswalker that costs more mana will trend towards the higher end of starting loyalty, and vice-versa, but exceptions exist. Planeswalkers without the ability to gain loyalty tend to have slightly higher starting loyalty.
Now, loyalty costs. They’re generally separated in four categories.
“Plusses”, or positive abilities, abilities that give you loyalty when activated. The vast majority of those are +1, a non-negligible amount are +2s, and a handful are higher than that. Considering how hard a planeswalker with even just a +2 can be to remove, I would recommend against going any higher unless it’s the entire point of the card. Always consider the fact you can activate plusses immediately when setting starting loyalty. If your card has a +2, the starting loyalty will tend to be lower, etc…
“Zeroes” are abilities that cost no loyalty to activate nor do they grant any… Or at least that’d be the basic definition. I would expand zeroes to -1 abilities as well. While you technically lose loyalty to activate them, a typical 4-loyalty planeswalker will be able to activate their -1 four turns in a row without any setup, which in an actual game of magic is very close to forever. -1 abilities are zeroes with downside more than minuses with upside.
“Minuses” are abilities that cost a significant but not huge number of loyalty to activate, generally less than the starting loyalty. Most of them are -2s or -3s, with a few -4s. They will generally represent the most immediate impact your planeswalker will represent on board. Together with starting loyalty and plusses, they make up the play pattern of your planeswalker way more than anything else. How many times can you minus from the starting loyalty? Does it result in the planeswalker dying or sticking around? (Recommended to go with the latter.) How many times do you need to plus before being able to minus another time? Is it different if you’re willing to let your planeswalker die or not? (That last one mostly with +2s.) A subset of minuses are “-X” abilities, scalable effects that slot somewhere between zeroes and ults. The versatility there is to take into account when considering their power level.
“Ultimates”, or “Ults”, are minus abilities that take a lot of loyalty to activate. More than the starting loyalty at least (although arguably abilities that cost the entire starting loyalty are minor ults). They generally have major effects that change the game. The more time they leave the opponent to be able to stop them, the more they can do. Ultimates’ costs are often determined by a number of turns of activating the highest plus ability before being able to use it, rather than raw loyalty numbers. Planeswalkers with +2s will generally have higher ultimate costs. The absolute highest number of plusses needed to reach an ult on printed cards so far is 5, on Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Teferi, Temporal Archmage, excluding cards that have means to add loyalty counters to themselves in other ways than loyalty costs. Most are between two and four plusses needed, with a few ones. Ultimates are also the main thing in the game capable of generating Emblems (a few minor emblems are generated by some plusses and minuses, and a few big spells can have game-altering effects that aren’t called emblems but are similar.) Emblems can do a lot.
Not all planeswalkers have all of those types of abilities. The most common combination is plus, minus, ult, but any combination of one to four of those is in theory possible (although I would recommend avoiding a planeswalker with just four ults.)
Circling back to that term, the play pattern of your planeswalker can now be established.
This is a very common play pattern, mostly because it works very well. A five mana planeswalker, with five starting loyalty, that has a plus, a minus and an ult. It can minus once when it enters, but not two turns in a row. It can minus another time after a single plus, but will die as a result. Otherwise, it requires three plusses to fully cover a minus. Three plusses are required to get it from its starting loyalty to its ult. Now to see what will drive the choices the player will take among those options.
Abilities are the playing ground of planeswalkers, of course. They’re what they do. Sadly they’re also the broadest topic there is, and more fuzzy than the rest of what we’ve covered. As such, the following paragraphs are gonna be a bit more disjointed than the rest of the article.
First off… Statics! They weren’t covered at all previously, because they don’t influence loyalty, but they’re always stronger than you think. Statics are additional value you get ON TOP of your normal planeswalker activation every turn. If you have a coherent design, they’re also a modifier that apply to those abilities. If we take the example of that image, making a 2/2 zombie is much stronger if it draws you a card when it dies. Each player sacrificing two creatures is much stronger if you draw two cards as a result.
Which brings us to coherent design. While it is possible to just take three on-color abilities that have value and slap them onto a planeswalker, if you want an “elegant” design, you generally want abilities that play onto each other, feel like they click together. Ults are generally a bit more standalone because of how powerful they are, but it’s always interesting when the plus is magnified by the ult, incentivizing one to wait an extra turn and keep the planeswalker around after the ult if they can.
Talking about that, the interesting part about planeswalkers is the CHOICE. The skill-rewarding decision of which ability to activate. As such, it is important to make sure the abilities are balanced accordingly to make it a real choice which to activate. One of the easiest ways to make a planeswalker boring is to put them “on rails”, more akin to a Saga than a planeswalker. Generally, this issue raises up by having either a plus or a minus that’s way better for their cost than other options, so the choice will always be to activate that one ability as much as possible or get to it as much as possible. Ults can do that, of course, but even ults need to be balanced in a way that doesn’t invalidate minusing even if it puts you behind on the race to the ult. A recent example of bad planeswalker design there (at mythic) is Lukka. While his design might look coherent on the surface, his minus encourages deckbuilding that makes his +1 irrelevant, which in turn leads to choice between his plus and minus void since his +1 is blank. Only cases you would activate his +1 is if you can’t activate the -2 or it would do nothing. Good examples are too numerous to count, even recently, but Calix and Ashiok are excellent examples, offering two potentially useful abilities relevant in different situations.
Now let’s go over what kind of abilities can do what.
As shorthands, plusses generally will generate effects that are two and a half (often rounded to three) mana below the cost of the planeswalker (hence the difficulty of designing three mana planeswalkers… and two mana planeswalkers’ very hard conundrum). Zeroes will be closer to two, but still a bit more than two mana below the planeswalker’s cost. Minuses will be one and a half mana below, and ults can generate effects that would cost a lot of mana. If you want a hard number, something that’s worth at least the planeswalker’s mana cost plus a number of mana equal to the number of plusses necessary to reach the ult from the starting loyalty, often more than that.
Ults are really strong, often winning games solely on the back of the advantage they provide, but all ults should leave a fighting chance to the opponent(s). Even Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God’s ult that outright kills people has a way for opponents to survive it.
Card Advantage is a big concept of magic and similar games. Each card generates an advantage and more options, and as such the player who gets to choose between and play the most cards is heavily advantaged in a long game. Similarly, mana advantage is another, less talked about concept. The most mana you use to play cards and activate abilities, the more you do and the more advantaged you are. Planeswalkers, by allowing you to activate abilities that have spell-like effects for free, generate virtual card AND mana advantage with each activation. If you get to activate a planeswalker twice before they die, it’s as if you cast two spells in one, for the cost of a single spell. As such, abilities that generate further mana advantage or card advantage by their effect are valued even higher on planeswalkers. You can add another one or two mana to their worth if you use the shorthands from a couple paragraphs ago.
On card advantage specifically.
A three-mana planeswalker should avoid generating unconditional card advantage outside of an ult, and should not under any condition generate card advantage as a plus. Of course, there’s example of printed cards that do both of those things and I can’t stop you, but I would recommend avoiding it, or restricting it heavily if you do. One can argue Liliana, the Last Hope is a good example of how to do it if you want to do it, having card advantage both on her plus (in the form of removal) and minus (see also, domri rade), but both being restricted in what they can target or when they can be activated safely, while Teferi, Time Raveler is a bad example, having a minus that’s unconditional card draw AND half a removal, and the right choice to pick in 95% of situations. And a static to top it off.
A four-mana planeswalker can generate card advantage with a minus, and conditionally with a plus. A five mana planeswalker can generate unconditional (singular) card advantage on a plus. Generating two or more cards worth of advantage on a plus doesn’t happen until you get to the seven or eight-mana planeswalkers.
There’s two important subset of card advantage that need to be expanded upon: tokens and removal. Both of those have the potential to protect your planeswalker from attacks and give you an immediate and lingering advantage by ensuring you keep your planeswalker around for further activations. Different colors have access to different forms of removal and tokens both. Green and white will have the best tokens while red and black will have the best removals, and blue will have middling of both but the best raw card advantage.
Removals generally stick to minuses. The more expensive the planeswalker, the less conditional they get. Plusses can occasionally have removal, particularly on higher-costed planeswalkers, but almost always conditional.
Tokens come in varying numbers and sizes. Creating more tokens is more powerful than creating bigger tokens because they’re more effective at protecting your planeswalker. Similarly, creating tokens with defensive abilities, such as reach or vigilance, is stronger than creating ones with offensive abilites, like haste or trample. Abilities that can do both, like first strike and flying, are at a premium.
Plusses and zeroes are where you’ll see most tokens, because it’s where they’re at their most powerful, protecting your planeswalker while you tick it up to its ult or minus. Here’s a quick list of what kind of tokens have been generated on printed cards for different mana costs.
+: One 0/1 (Nissa, Voice of Zendikar), one 1/1 with defender (Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast. Not from a standard set)
0: Two 1/1s you sacrifice at end of turn (Chandra, acolyte of flame, not actually protective tokens)
-1: One 1/1 with flying (Dovin, Grand Arbiter. Being a -1 here doesn’t allow to hold forever, which is the one difference between 0s and 1s)
+: One 1/1 (Elspeth, Knight-Errant, Saheeli, the Gifted (not a standard set)) with lifelink (Sorin, Lord of Innistrad)
0: One 2/2 (Arlinn Kord, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Garruk Relentless) with haste (Xenagos, the Reveler)
-1: One 3/3 (Garruk Wildspeaker)
+1: One 2/3 with minor upside (Ashiok, Nightmare Muse), one 1/1 with major upside (Freyalise, Llanowar’s Fury, Tezzeret, Artifice Master, Nahiri the Lithomancer), one 3/3 (Garruk, Primal Hunter, Vivien, Monsters’ Advocate, Nissa Who Shakes the World), one 2/2 (Liliana, Death’s Majesty)
0: One 3/3 (Huatli, Warrior Poet)
+1: One 2/2 with major upside (Vraska, Relic Seeker, Ugin, the Ineffable, Liliana, Dreadhorde general), three 1/1s (Elspeth, Sun’s Champion), two non-defensive 3/1s (Chandra, Flamecaller)
0: Two 2/2s with minor upside.
It should be a good basis as to what can generate what kind of tokens on plusses and zeroes, which are very commonly something a design calls for. The last thing I’ll add for tokens is to try to avoid mixing and matching many different tokens on the same planeswalker. If an ult and a plus or minus generate different emblems/tokens it’s fine (particularly if the smaller ones are very generic), but having different tokens on different or the same plus or minus can become annoying and confusing.
On that note, one thing you frequently run onto when trying to make plus and minus ability synergize is effects that last until after your next activation opportunity. Whenever possible, avoid those, even if it restricts design. It’s not worth the memory issues. You’re better off making the effect permanent with a reminder in that case, although prefer those when the cards are in exile and can be easily separated/attached/moved around instead of the battlefield.
The next detail I want to get to for abilities: “Up to”. “Up to [N] target [X]” is how most plus abilities (and some minuses) that have one or more target are formulated. It allows to activate the ability even when there is no target for it, be it to just add loyalty counters onto the planeswalker and not waste a turn doing nothing, or to get an extra effect out of the ability that doesn’t need the targeting part. If your planeswalker’s plus ability targets, use an “up to” wording.
Finally, to close out this very drawn out part on abilities, I’d like to talk about brevity and text size. The size of the text for all of a planeswalker’s abilities the largest size possible where every ability fits in its box. Generally, it means a planeswalker ability should be constrained to three lines or less if possible, with four being an upper limit. Wizards sometimes goes a little (or a lot) overboard, hence why you can find some five-line abilites, and even some six-lines abilities (although most of those are on planeswalkers with more room because only two abilities. Most. I’m looking at you Gideon, Champion of Justice.) Don’t feel constrained to hard numbers, but depending how or where you render your cards, you may not have the creative freedom to enlarge a text box just to fit more text, so it’s a good thing to stay aware of throughout the design.
So, that post ended up much longer than I initially intended it to be. Oops? There’s definitely much more to it than the little I summarized here, but it should already be a solid basis into understanding the card type and making great cards from it. In the end, you’ll take all the elements we talked about, and make a single card. So where to start?
Planeswalker designs generally start from an idea, either of flavor or mechanics. A specific ability, a name, a play pattern, an ult, a role… From that starting point, one of the first things you’ll want to determine is whether it will lead to a gimmicky planeswalker, or a generic planeswalker.
Gimmicky planeswalkers are ones that have a “twist” to them, only having negative abilities, maybe being an uncommon ‘walker, a nonlegendary one, one centered around only zeroes, one that transforms, one that has a plus that can get it to an ult directly by adding loyalty counters, etc… Gimmicky planeswalkers, once you’ve figured out the design, will be relatively straightforward to create, since you’ll have set restrictions to guide your creativity for the rest of the card. They’ll also look more unique, but will generally be one-note and weird, exploring a single concept in depth.
Generic planeswalkers are more traditional planeswalkers, with one or more plusses and one or more minuses, sometimes with a static or an ult on top. They will be more open, but once you get ideas, keep what you know in mind and you should arrive to a end result you like. If your original idea is an ability, try to figure out what loyalty costs it would have on planeswalkers with different converted mana costs. Or try to find another ability that would feel at home alongside it, and once you have a pair it is easier to figure out the converted mana cost of the card and their relative play pattern. If your original idea is a mana cost, look at what else Wizards has done in those colors, both on planeswalkers and outside of them. If one interests you, or feels like something the character could do, try to adapt it into a loyalty ability (or even a static!)
Don’t feel bad if you end up with a “classic” planeswalker design (5-mana, 4 or 5 starting loyalty, +1 card advantage, -2 to 3 removal, -7 or -8 ult that has the potential to win the game if you can back it up.) This design, and other often seen designs, are classics for a reason: They work! Is a 2/2 for 1W with a slightly taxing ability a bad design? Surely not! Is a pizza with just tomato sauce, ham, mushroom and cheese bad? I can assure you it isn’t. MaRo himself has recognized at multiple occasions that Planeswalkers had some of the smallest design space of all the card types (except maybe lands?) Due to how inherently powerful their concept is, providing mana and card advantage, and the fact they all have multiple abilities, and so many other restrictions, it is no wonder that many designs converge towards somewhat similar end results.
Finally, whether you intend to just make a singular card for your fanwalker or start a whole standard worth of sets, thank you for reading this until here, and be sure to have fun creating! It’s definitely a hard task, but it can be plenty rewarding. If you want feedback, don’t hesitate to show it off to others (if you feel comfortable doing it, of course). Getting feedback (and evaluating whether it’s worth something) is how you learn and get better! Feel free to reach out to me in my asks or in the comments of this post if you have any questions about specific or generic design or want to discuss this article!
