As of the update tomorrow, the following changes are going to be made to the Planeswalker Saheeli Rai:
With the release of Kaladesh, we’ve tweaked Saheeli Rai a bit so that she has a bit more synergy with the card set.
Her abilities have been changed to the following:
Whirlermaker: Now costs 9 Loyalty, also Energizes 1/2/3/4 gems (per rank)
Construct Artistry: Now costs 12 Loyalty. Removes 2 Energy from the board (this is required for the ability to activate) and each Construct you control gets +3/+3, up to +6/+6 at rank 4
Artifacts Assemble has been renamed to Vehicular Assembly
The Loyalty cost remains the same
It now fetches the next 1 (up to 4) Vehicles in your Library and puts them on the battlefield
The rest of Saheeli Rai’s kit remains unchanged.
While it makes sense that you would want the new planeswalker to have abilities that derive synergy with the set they are from, most of these changes make very little to no sense in regards to flavour.
Take a look at Saheeli Rai’s description, taken from a Wizards of the Coast synopsis about her character.
On her home plane of Kaladesh, Saheeli is a famous inventor renowned as the most brilliant metalsmith of her time. She’s best known for the bewitchingly lifelike artifact constructs she crafts out of gleaming iridescent metal. From the smallest insect to the largest elephant, Saheeli has an uncanny ability to replicate any creature she sees, capturing the essence of its life in her metal creation. Admirers, collectors, and investors flock to see her designs, spending hours gazing, enraptured by her artistry.
Her innate, effortless talent has made her the envy of many fellow inventors, especially lifecrafters who look to her both for inspiration and as a formidable rival. Saheeli doesn’t shy away from competition; when it comes to defending her hard-earned reputation, she is fiercely cutthroat. But when not in contest, she’s wholly supportive of the efforts of other inventors, happy to share advice, a kind word, or an encouraging smile. She thrills at the prospect of innovation, and basks in the creative spirit that surrounds her in Ghirapur. Her bright, optimistic personality draws others to her, and her genuine, thoughtful nature resonates with her fans, who hail from all corners of Kaladesh.
Saheeli’s talents extend beyond what the people of Kaladesh realize or understand. She’s a Planeswalker with a powerful magical command over metal. She can access seemingly endless threads of metal, which she can then weave into one of her creations. And once created, Saheeli’s magic allows her to compel her metal constructs to do her bidding. Thanks to her abilities, she’s never at a loss for an artifact companion.
Notice that at nowhere in this entire article does it even MENTION the word Vehicle. Saheeli’s strengths come from her ability to make LIFE LIKE creations out of metal, not to make vehicles, - an entirely unrelated mechanic. Looking further with the source material, Saheeli’s name does not even appear in any of the magic story material with the word “vehicle” in it, except for a single chapter here, where her name is entirely unconnected from Vehicles.
Saheeli’s talents do not relate to vehicles, and further, ability to use magic without the need to harness aether - i.e. her metallurgy, which incidentally, is unrelated to energy, and likely far more similar to flowstone.*
The bottomline is that the changes to Saheeli are incomprehensible from a storyline point of view, especially the ones to her third ability. I hope that you at D3Go decide to rethink these changes to Saheeli, and further, when you do release the next Chandra (probably Torch of Defiance), that her abilities do not rely on energy.
Not only would this be an even worse application of the magic story, as she does not depend on aether to cast her spells, but her ability to ignore energy and make her own source of magic through pyromancy is actually the very reason her parents were persecuted by the High Consul, whose very control over the plane depends on its ability to regulate everyone’s control of aether, the only source of magic most beings on Kaladesh can use.
*Re: Flowstone
This is speculative, but Saheeli’s abilities to “access seemingly endless threads of metal” seem to be no coincidence, as Saheeli is the one who is able to help Rashmi make her matter transporter. The one instance “seemingly endless threads of thinning metal” has occurred in Magic, was when “Flowstone” was used to overlay “Rath” onto Dominaria, during the “Phyrexian Invasion” in order to transport the interplanar conquerers, the Phyrexians there, without the aid of planeswalkers. As Phyrexians have insufficient access to planeswalkers, being a primarily inorganic civilization, portals and the like were essential for them. Before Tezzeret came to Kaladesh, he was busy surveilling the Phyrexians, as their previously depleted civilization recreated itself on former Mirrodin, so it is highly likely that his goal is to use the transporter that Saheeli helped work on in order to transport armies of Phyrexians to do his bidding.
At any rate, creating and transporting artifacts from just her own magic, seemingly out of thin air, and without the use of aether, far better suits Saheeli’s character, and whether or not any magic lore buffs at D3Go agree with my speculation, the point above still stands, it’s absurd to give Saheeli vehicles - and I am very much hoping you do not give Chandra energizing abilities.
