Tibalt, the Playable

card design



Ah Tibalt, the much forgotten Planeswalker. I remember cracking the Fiend-Blooded at my Avacyn Restored pre-release event. Sweet! Planeswalkers are total bombs in limited right? Red was also the strongest color in the pool, so everything was going my way. I lost EVERY SINGLE GAME where I resolved Tibalt. He was so bad. He was worse than a mulligan because not only do you have a useless card, you spend an entire turn casting him! I remember playing him Turn 2 on the play onto an empty board, and he still did nothing!

Well things are going to change. Today we're going to design a new Tibalt, one that is actually playable. And we're going to design a Tibalt with a deck in mind: Mono Red Aggro! Mono Red Aggro, RDW, Sligh, whatever you want to call it, this deck has been a staple of Magic for a long time. However, it has never gotten any Planeswalker support (Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded doesn't count as playable, and there's no 3CC mono-red Planeswalker!)! With Tibalt being RR, he fits right in!

Here's my first try:

Tibalt, the Playable

Inspired by red staples Goblin Guide and Lightning Bolt, this guy slots into any aggressive deck. Let's break down his abilities:

+1, 2/2 Haste

Typically when Planeswalkers become creatures they become indestructable or have some kind of protection (Gideon Jura and Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker). However, giving your RR Planeswalker indestructable might be a tad bit too powerful. Having him be killable allows your opponent to hold up mana for a removal spell and interact with him. It creates the tension of "Should I play it safe, or risk losing my Tibalt in an attack?" It's possible that we want to give him a second modifier on attack, such as Flying, First Strike, or "When this creature attacks, target creature cannot block", but this may prove to be too powerful given that this is a Planeswalker that dodges sorcery removal, has a minus ability, and an ultimate.

2/2 haste seems to be a sweet spot as it does serviceable damage while still being blockable in standard (Fleecemane Lion, Sylvan Caryatid).



- 2 Lightning Bolt

We need to make him even more red by giving him some burn! 3 damage is fair, as you can cast him, -2 and use him as a sorcery speed Lightning Strike. If you manage to get an attack in, you can deal 5 damage to your opponent. Another thought is to make his minus a -1 and give him Chandra, Pyromaster's ability of pinging a creature and preventing a block. I feel this is a bit too conditional for RR and we would have to up the power level of his +1. Given that, let's just stick with Lightning Bolt

-6 Fireblast-pocalypse

Ultimate abilities don't matter too much as you're probably going to win anyway if you managed to activate your Planeswalker multiple times unimpeded (well, except for Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded). But we might as well do something fun. What's the most iconic way to win with a red deck? Sac lands to Fireblast your opponent away! Here we do some mini-Fireblasts with each Mountain dealing 2 damage.



So our Tibalt is playable, but is he too good? Probably. We've left ways for opponents to deal with him (Path to Exile poor Tibalt when he becomes a creature), but we're probably going to jam 4x of him into any aggro deck / burn deck. Even when you can't attack due to an opponent having a blocker or representing a removal spell, RR for 3 damage is not bad. Plus, if you get to attack once, he represents 5 damage with one card (2 attack, 3 burn). If you get to attack twice, he represents 10 damage (4 attack, 6 burn). 10 damage on 1 card? This is almost as broken as Treasure Cruise! We don't want to make him an auto-include into every red aggressive deck, so we need to lower his power level a bit.

I like the burn aspect of him and I don't want to downgrade him to a Shock. So we'll tune his plus ability. Making a 1/1 seems really wrong, so we'll have to give his 2/2 body a drawback. So let's turn our Goblin Guide into the far inferior Mogg Flunkies.

+1 Mogg Flunkies

Now we're basically forced to have a second creature on the board to get our attack in. This forces us to make some deck design choices: how many creatures do I need to run to make Tibalt reliable? Are haste creatures are more valuable for activating Tibalt, etc. He doesn't automatically slot into every red deck; a pure burn deck won't work anymore and he's not as good in aggressive mirrors. But he still does good work if you play a Sligh deck. He's "easier" to stop from getting into the red zone as you can kill his partner in combat. I haven't tested him (the mark of a good designer!), but if he's too strong we can bring his -2 to a Shock. However, overall I like this. I'm sure I'm committing some kind of flavor-sin here by having a "coward" Planeswalker, but meh, whatever. We'll just touch up the card name a bit:

Tibalt, the Careful Combatant

So that's my attempt at a RR RDW planeswalker. Let me know what you think in the comments below and post your own versions of Tibalt, the Playable!