So when we transitioned into Karn, Legacy Reforged, the friendliness with artifacts was very easy to see as a throughline. As moved through Karn, the Great Creator and Karn, Living Legacy, Karn became a lot more tied to artifacts again, animating artifacts and later creating a lot of Powerstone tokens. They can remove things from existence by two different methods and if you gain enough loyalty, they can remake the world, akin to creating Mirrodin. Well I don’t believe this was the intention, Karn Liberated feels like they retain a lot of their “old walker” power retroactively. And as the planeswalker card type would not exist for another seven years, the chances that we would see Karn on a card were very slim. Coming out of Urza’s Saga, this is prior to the events of Invasion block, where Karn received a spark. The first time we see Karn, Silver Golem they are designed to embody their pacifist nature, while also having the ability to animate artifacts. Karn is an interesting subject matter, because we got to see the progression of this character from a legendary creature into a planeswalker a decade and a half later, only to see them return to a legendary creature that is not dissimilar, but functions differently. I see what Wizards is trying to do with these connections, even if they leave me wanting more. And through Roar of the Fifth People the theming is really doubled down on, creating dinosaur tokens and ramping you for the following three turns. As a two-sided card, Huatli, Poet of Unity may be a little more ambiguous when you look at Huatli as a Borderland Ranger, but that ramping is going to be beneficial to a dinosaur deck in the long run.

There is enough of loss of resonance that Huatli, Poet of Unity feels like an extension of Huatli, Warrior Poet, but not so much Radiant Champion or Sun’s Heart, beyond the name recognition. Problem as I see it is that Huatli, Radiant Champion or Huatli, the Sun’s Heart are just generically alright Selesnyna planeswalkers. If there’s one thing that they were known for right off the bat it was dinosaurs and while the dinosaur kindred themes can be uncovered in future interactions, the connection is a little too loose for me. I think we can all agree that people who are huge fans of dinosaurs are awesome, which is what really drew me to the character and made her relatable to me. Sure, she was never an active player in any of my Commander decks, but how can you not love someone with an epithet like “warrior poet”. I always had a soft spot for Huatli, Warrior Poet back in the day. So please be kind if I overlook some nuance that you have identified. Planeswalker design is something that I have a lot of interest in but also realize that every time I feel as if I have really taken a deep dive into the design space, I realized that I’ve only scratched the surface. It’s people I don’t understand.” On some level, the portrayal of these characters is not authentic until at least one expresses the crushing feeling of being a misunderstood loner, longing for that piece that is missing.īut that is not the commentary that I want to get wrapped up in this week, instead choosing to look at the different eras of several of these characters who no longer seemingly have access to their spark and discuss the mechanical continuity of their planeswalker counterpart versus the now-legendary creature. This isn’t really Thor no longer being worthy enough to lift his hammer, until he is.This is Hey Arnold’s Pigeon Man relenting, “Of course will come back, they’re birds. Because for the time being, I don’t foresee all these characters going on character arcs processing the five stages of grief over the loss of their interplanar powers before regaining them after determining that they were never defined solely by those abilities. That being the fundamental change to how Planeswalker sparks work, to the extent that many of the characters that we know and love have now lost their ability to planeswalk, circumvented by the use of omenpaths in the Magic multiverse.Īs I was reflecting on what has happened, I wanted to chalk this all up to the Depowered trope getting cast with a very wide net, but I might only really give that distinction to what happened to Nicol Bolas in 2019. March of the Machine was this pivotal moment in the year, but the rapid passage of time meant that I never got around to looking at a huge aftermath of the event, because I didn’t want to just cover with my immediate gun reactions. With the end of the year in sight, I found myself looking back at 2023, trying to grapple with any topics I never got to fully flesh out, when one huge one presented itself.

Happy little dinosaurs characters