No, this is not a mid-week Bible lesson. That's three doors down the hall on your left. We've discussed card drawing and how it fortifies decks and how free spells can be abused to turn the game of Magic from an interactive battle between Planeswalkers into a game of Solitaire. Today, we discuss a mechanic that we see today in Planeswalker cards that never quite made a splash during its appearance: Fading/Vanish.
Fading and Vanishing is a mechanic that allowed cards to be placed on the battlefield, last a little while, and then vanish. With the sole exception of Blastoderm, this mechanic would be known only to real Magic geeks as it was a very unimpressive ability.
Why is that? The thought was that you could drag a stronger creature from the future, and have it for a couple of turns before it had to go back whence it came. It was an interesting idea. But the creatures it pulled were unimpressive. Even Blastoderm was unimpressive. An Untargetable 5/5 for 4 mana should be normal for green. Having it last for three (3) turns just makes it that much less effective. Now remember, Blastoderm was the best card to come out of this.
I mention this because Planewalker cards have an element of Vanishing on them: If you utilize the minor loyalty ability, it acts exactly as Vanishing. Although not a creature, but a permanent which last for a fixed amount of turns.
This vanishing ability, while not exploited when it was the main mechanic, does play a role in how one approaches using Planeswalkers and how they are utilized. Next time we'll go over another cycle of cards that never really quite made it, and why it contributes to the Planeswalkers success.
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