Post 1
The first and second abilities of a planeswalker read a lot like the flavor text of many commons. Given that we are all stuck with boxes of commons, I have been thinking of how to make these common cards a lot more playable. Commander has already done that for many legendary creatures, but these were already playable enough in other formats. I took the first and second ability of the 34 planeswalkers that have been issued to RTR set and took out the name of the planeswalker and substituted it with the generic "this card."
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Post 2
After examining the planeswalker abilities that do not include the last, and usually game-ending, ability, I think a really cool band of commons would be composed of five cards, with the first card being the band leader and its converted mana cost equal to the big game ending -2*X ability as well to the loyalty points of the band at X=CMC. If use a multiplier of 2 I get some pretty big game ending negatives which are consistent with the planeswalker end-the-game ability. In order to make sure that bands have reasonably high loyalty points the band leader must be a creature. X cards are allowed because you will still be playing into a mana pool same as you do for any other format. For example, if I use Pathbreaker Wurm as the band leader, the band it creates has 6 loyalty points, green color identity, and a -12 ability that says "This band deals 10 damage to creature or player." To make this mechanic work, all of the flavor text of the band leader has to be ignored, it must always deal damage equal to the sum of its Power and Toughness, and it must deal such damage to either the player or a specific creature on the battlefield.
I call this version 0.1 for Band of Commons
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Post 3
In this post I show examples of Version 0.1 Band of Commons. I am still using bands with color identical to that of the band leader.
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Post 4
After some play testing, I have changed some of the basic rules. In this new version (0.2) I place no color constraints on the members of the band and come up with a limited environment that allows each player to have a deck as they would in Standard Constructed.
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