After a few years of complaints of a growing lack of planeswalkers in Magic, Mark Rosewater recently announced that they are moving to a new system where all in-universe, non-Universes Beyond expansion will have two or more.
Earlier this month, Rosewater was asked on his blog "With half the sets being Universes Beyond and not having Planeswalkers on them, will the new default be two planeswalkers per in-universe set (so the average is still one per set)?"
His response? "We are moving to that, yes."
Ever since UB's have been more integral into Magic: The Gathering, this has been a problem, as no non-original Magic characters have been the card type. So no UB sets and many in-universe expansions having either a lack of planeswalkers, or simply a reskinned one. This was one of the few complaints of Bloomburrow, for example, where the only planeswalker included was the otterfied Ral Zarek, despite there being many scenarios to potentially include more.
But, as Rosewater has said, Magic has been shifting back to making planeswalker cards a bit more in number. Response to this has been very mixed. Some fans responded very positively, wanting new planeswalkers in-game.
Tumblr user whith14 stated: "Thank goodness for this change! And yes my guess is the Bloomburrow complaints from last year helped a lot(tons of people complained that we didn’t get a new planeswalker, it would have been an ideal set for two."
There were others, though, who absolutely hated it, fearing that it would bring in more forced planeswalkers, would lead to less exciting play, and would hurt standard play:
Ichorfrankenmime on Reddit: "The issue with planeswalkers is that it's hard to fit them into standard when most sets can't be designed to interact with them well, seeing as they are universes within only."
theclockworkkiwi on Tumblr: "Not loving this. I’ve always felt like cramming planeswalkers everywhere made the designs feel more forced and less exciting (see 500 iterations of Chandra). I also maintain my view (that I’ve held since Lorwyn) that this permanent type is difficult to interact with and leads to unfun board states."
But, in general, Magic players simply want want what is best for the game, and for the makers to put in how many per expansion they see fit and o make them impactful, with many players pointing out that the number in recent expansions has been perfect to play and to the story:
Quadraxis66 on Reddit: "I get why people didn't like planeswalkers, but I really just wish the number was "whatever we feel is appropriate" and not some hard-set defined value."
Xahhfink6 on Reddit: "Yeah they've recently done a great job at making them impactful (and valuable) mythics for standard and outside of it. So I'm excited to see more, but I also understand that maybe these ones have been better if they aren't compelled to make 3-4 every new set."
At the end of the day, this is another tweak that Magic is trying to make, with only time to see if it is successful. As long-time players know, good changes are kept, with bad changes being corrected pretty quickly - fans and players are very vocal after all.
