With so little content to play I spend alot of time just fiddling with decks and PW combos. And play story/TG to test them.
I like to try cards and ideas that are seemingly useless (and many times they are) and mono pws are in that category for me.
I never play them in PvP since all colors have their restrictions in what cards are available. And in PvE I use some just as alternate deckslots for some objectives.
It seems many think the same since you rarely play against one. Ob Nix and Koth are the ones I see in PvP regularly.
I would like to see more creative events/nodes/objectives making these PWs more attractive.
Why not have a short event (2-3 charges total with five color nodes) where you can use any PW that has one of the colors but limited to cards only from that one.
Example to clarify:
Bolas is chosen in the red node and can therefore only use red/colorless cards.
Or do I undervalue the monos too much?
How do you use them?
Personally, I love Elspeth. I think her abilities are insanely good. I am in the minority, though.
I know a lot of people really love Liliana 3 and Gideon 3, but I don’t have either so I can’t really say.
Koth and Ob (and Jace 2) are just insanely good.
I do wish there was more incentive for using the mono-colors, though, since their color restriction is really what makes them so hard to use competitively. Every color has its weaknesses, and not having another color to help offset that really hurts. With the cool new objectives lately, maybe they could run an event with “use a mono-colored planeswalker” as one of the objectives? That would be fun.
I think stylistically, Mono-colored walkers should have superior abilities to multicolored. Ideally these abilities will also define a niche for them. Something they excel at that other walkers do not.
This is why Ob is still relevant, for example.
Ideally, a mono-colored walker will have superior on-color matches to a multi-colored one. (Koth, Elspeth, etc)
However, that does not seem to be the case across the board, currently. And it’s a little too hard to rein it in now.
Generally, dual colors will be superior simply due to card access and more expensive as a result. The challenge is in making mono-colors attractive with specific use cases, like Ob.
I pretty heavily play Jace2, Lili3, Ob, and Koth. Don’t have the runes to start working on Jaya yet, but I’m excited to play her in the new year. I would likely play Elspeth and Garruk, but I don’t have either of them. Some of the mono walkers have abilities that just work really, really well. I worry less about the card pool available, because every color has enough really good cards at this point to make a strong deck.
Koth and Elspeth are worth using because of mana gains, though I feel Elspeth is stronger because she has good blue/green gains to go along with her white, along with greater versatility in deck design.
Ob still has the best creatureless win condition in the game and almost never loses.
The rest, however, I prefer other options, particularly for low spell or creature objectives. If you want to have some fun, though, run Garruk with Path of Discovery.
oh yeah he has some snazzy abilities for sure, but the mana gains are so Origins PW horrible that I get impatient pretty quickly. He got a bit better with Gilded Lotus though
Mono colored pws are fine , they’re just more limited for obvious reasons.
Red is is a rough spot in standard atm, so I tend to shy away from mono r . I’m in the elspeth is overrated camp , but I will use her occasionally in events. Her main weakness right now is card draw. But with the free dragons hoard we all got, problem solved . White has always had strange removal options, but it has a lot of them and it can deal with supports.
I run garruk a fair amount. People talk about green being weak right now, but I disagree . it has big scary monsters that are quite a beating and a good amount of ways to cheat them into play . Also , lots of recursion. Any deck that can flop a 12/12 every turn , indefinitely, is a solid choice .
I run tezz1 a fair amount, too . He’s possibly the most fun pw I have, and he can draw a new grip and dump it every turn . My most unpopular opinion , however, is L3. I thoroughly enjoy her . Especially now that we have a colorless support removal.
Essentially, I think that if you think that mono pws are bad, you might need to lighten up a little. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to do the strongest things you can do, but mono pws are mostly quite fun and really challenge your deck building. Except koth. JamabunchobigthingsJamabunchobigthings.Dec is sort of a no brainer .
I’ll play Jace2 in PvP now that River’s Rebuke has solved his problem with dealing with supports.
I’m not quite ready to consider Ob mothballed, but the dude really can’t cope with a Lich’s Mastery, so right now he’s on the back burner.
As far as PvE goes, all my monos that I levelled in the past are extra deck slots. It saves me time and effort rebuilding decks here and there, but I’d rather be able to reclaim all those old, wasted runes to feed into Nicol Bolas 2.
I was intrigued when, in the last update, they said something about rebalancing some older planeswalkers. I’d like to see that happen. And not just the older monos, in fact, I can think of a certain vampiric gentleman who could use a tweak or two.
In general, I think planeswalkers should be balanced overall, not by their cost.
For instance, I think mono-planeswalkers should have the best mana gains in their color. If Nissa1 had +6 in green, I think she’d see some more play, for instance.
Putting the manabonus of the basic walkers to +4 +2 +2 would increase their usabilty a lot already. Still hoping for an event with restrictions to the 5 basic walkers or just monowalkers.
We’ve been asking for something like that for ages. I get that the Origins walkers are supposed to be just a basic learning point for new players, but they should be at least somewhat competitive (especially since the cost increase).
I’d say do the same thing to the Zendikar walkers as well too (Ob, Ally Gideon, Tezzeret 1, Garruk, Redjani, and Sarkhan 1). Just +1 to all of their current bonuses. It won’t make them overpowered in the slightest, but would definitely make them more usable in events.
And it’s only a matter of time before people realize how awesome the new Sarkhan is…
At 60, his mana gains are +5R and +4G.
He is FAR more superior than his predecessor. His abilities are actually very well thought through and with the new leader dragon (rare), his 3rd ability is a force to recon with…
There are many PWs who would benefit from a rebalancing of mana gains to what seems to be the current standard for the past year: total of 10 - # of colors they can access.
Monos are +9, duals are +8, triples are +7, and Karn is +5.
The only ones who lose out are Saheeli (+11 now) and Tezzeret2 (+9).
If they were all standardized to this formula it would make some of the older ones that much more attractive. Though I would like to see some compensation if Saheeli gets hit, maybe make her 3rd ability not be tied to Vehicles. Either fetch the next 4 creatures in library to the field, or pick one of the next 4 creatures in library to field and reinforce it 3 times.
The other scary thing about this idea, Koth is currently only a +7 total, so he would get another +2 mana gains somewhere
I must say he looks interesting to play with, first and third abilities are good enough, but his 2nd really looks full of promises if you have the cards to build around it.