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Two Jesses’ Flavor Reviews: Oath of the Gatewatch
Posted on February 2, 2016 by Two Jesses
Two Jesses Jesse K (IAnonymous on MTGO) is a Bay Area, California wizard who's been playing and complaining about Magic: the Gathering since 1995. In his free time he enjoys building Commander decks that he rarely gets to play, gardening, and bird watching. Jesse T is an improviser, educator, and level 30 flavor judge. When he's not crusading for justice in the streets of Boston, he can be found on MTGO as gob of spit.
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I don’t think Chandra is as out of continuity as you do – The elementals are weird and wrong, but dealing damage and drawing cards are things she’s done in the past.
Jesse T here.
I agree about the damage and card drawing. She’s had those abilities plenty of times before. I think the issue is the lack of connection between them. Making elementals, drawing cards, and burning the opponent out don’t really tell me a story, unless that story is about winning a game of Magic: The Gathering.
I agree landfall, ingest, the ability that relied on it, and awaken were more interesting than support etc.
And this is Jesse K. I’ve warned up (GET IT?) somewhat on Chandra as well. Rather than feeling like most planeswalkers whose abilities have some kind of synergy with one another, she’s more like a tool box, which I think is actually fine as a concept too. The elementals still make zero sense (especially given the gameplay implications of them not having trample when pretty much every other 3/1 haste does, AND the tokens not even having haste written on them).
It feels like they were trying to make a “red Elspeth, Sun’s Champion” for constructed, and it happened to be a Chandra because she was on Zendikar and not because all of the abilities are necessarily in Chandra’s slice of the ability pie. I don’t think the 3/1 elementals are really Tibalty either, though – maybe they could have saved them for a new character, or a second Koth?