Nahiri revisions

[Wokistan]

So, looking at her profile, it appears she's missing some things. Let's change that.


Abilities
Summoning: Depicted in her first planeswalker card, as well as how her summoning Emrakul was a pretty important part of Eldrich Moon. This is one of those things that any Planeswalker should have anyways.

Empowerment: Planeswalker card, Nahiri's Machinations, and Lithomancer's Focus all demonstrate this.

Spatial Manipulation: Structural Distortio is an example, as well as possibly Stonewing Antagonizer's flavor text, though that one can also be chalked up to her lithomancy.

Power Nullification: She already has this on her page, but it should be stated that her hedrons were able to succesfully nullify the Eldrazi titans. However, this alongside what she did to Ob Nixilis may better be attributed to type 2 sealing.

Attack Reflection: But the fingers never touched her. They suddenly broke apart, and flew in several directions, tracing contours in the air that were otherwise invisible. Sorin unleashed a second torrent of death magic just as the first errant bolts completed their tortuous paths back to their source, crashing into the vampire in a rapid sequence of high hisses. Sorin fell to one knee, biting his lip in anguish, and from between the plates of his armor, dark vapor rose from unseen wounds. -Campaign of Vengeance

Possible Existence Erasure: Her other planeswalker card has an exile ability, as well as Declaration in Stone. Exile is usually analagous to BFR or Existence Erasure, and considering how her planeswalker card allows her to do this to enchantments, it's likely the latter. However, I am not sure about this one myself. Nahiri has a history of overriding other people's magic, and Declaration in Stone has another perfectly valid state that could justifiy Exile as a keyword within the artwork itself. This is more of a reach addition than anything else.


Resistances
Nahiri should resist Existence Erasure due to every planeswalker having this as part of their nature as planeswalkers as well as fighting Eldrazi.

Due to being one of The Three who fought and sealed the Eldrazi, Nahiri should have a resistance to their abilities. These would entail the abiltiies on the pages of Emrakul, Kozilek and Ulamog.

As Nahiri fought Sorin twice, being stomped neither of the times and defeating him in the second, she should resist Blood Manipulation, Death Manipulation, and whatever abilities I can find for him that aren't covered by the Eldrazi already.


Her profile also has generally incorrect capitalization, among a few other things.

Accepted:

Rejected: Existence Erasure

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

Summoning seems fine, albeit not combat applicable as it took a great deal of prep for her to bring Emrakul over.

Empowerment doesn't make sense. The Hedron that Kor is using is just projecting energy, she isn't demonstrating any form of empowerment other than just rallying a mob, and her OG Planeswalker card is just making arms with her normal ability for her subordinates.

That's not spatial manipulation, that's a combination of her stone manipulation on a large scale coupled with gravity manip.

Her powernull is fine on that scale for pre-mending, post-mending she didn't demonstrate any feats like that. Sealing makes sense with prep.

Attack reflection is as obvious as possible, but again requires prep as she would need time to mess with the leylines on a plane.

Exile is not equivalent to EE, it's a game mechanic which is portrayed rather inconsistently. She's obviously not doing it to the vampires who were stated to still be alive and conscious in the stone she imprisoned them in.

Nah, she shouldn't resist the Eldrazi's abilities as they didn't really fight the Eldrazi as much as they lured them on the plane and nearly immediately sealed them. Even then if she didn't demonstrate the resistances themselves, it is incorrect to assume she has them. It would be like saying someone has resistance to Mind Manip because they decked Xavier in the face.

 

[Wokistan]

Well yeah summoning Emrakul needs prep, but I don't see why summoning more reasonable stuff would.

Making arms that bestow a state of indestructibility seems like there would still need to be some degree of empowerment. Giving +2/+2 and no damage from colorless sounds a lot like empowerment too.

It being stated to have twisted parts of Sorin's manor into "impossible shapes" would point to that, though gravity manip would be sensible as well.

Type 2 sealing is basically power null but worded differently. Given how she did it to Ob Nixilis, it fits the description there. She can't use it on the Eldrazi post mending without reusing hedrons she created premending though.

EE and BFR are by far the most common applications of Exile ingame. However, as we both agree the second card already justifies Exile with its art, and this wasn't one I was a huge believer in myself, so consider this firmly rejected.

Mind hax is not the only passive of the Eldrazi. She also had to deal with lesser Eldrazi when her seal was waning, and dealt with that herself. Iirc they did have to hold off the Eldrazi for a little while, but that may have been more on the part of Sorin and Ugin.

 

[Wokistan]

Also, saying that her messing with leylines requires prep would be like saying she needs prep for her normal lithomancy. She says it herself. Magic flows through leylines, which flows through stone. Since she can manipulate stone, she can manipulate leylines. Doing it on a really wide scale may require prep, but a slight adjustment to flick away magic should not.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

Magic flows through the leylines into the pseudo hedrons she made with prep. She gained the ability by controlling Innistrad's leylines wholescale.

Nah, Exile is just as often portrayed as laying down arms, being imprisoned, among numerous other mundane things. It's inconsistent as all heck. One of he first exile cards was just retiring from combat.

Saying something had "impossible shapes" isn't justification for spatial manip. It's just as likely that Sorin was just awestruck by how messed up the castle was.

"Sounds like", "Seems like", you're not giving me solid evidence, just something that is only lightly implied. Indestructible is also massively inconsistent in Magic, especially with recent ties to just regenerating from damage.

Lesser Eldrazi obviously don't have the same hax as the titans. Again, you need to give me an example of her actually demonstrating this.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

I'm going to say this again as well, and we've had this discussion, using Magic's game mechanics is unreliable and doesn't make sense. Use the art, the lore, even the flavor of its describing the spell, but don't try and equate stuff like exile to EE/BFR when Nahiri is just sealing people halfway into stone walls.

 

[Wokistan]

"You must think very little of me if you thought that would work," Nahiri said as the second cluster of magic struck home just as the first had. "Magic flows through leylines. Leylines pass through stone. And, well, we both know what I can do with that.-Nahiri

No real implications that its due to her hedrons here, rather that due to the nature of leylines she can play around with them.

Play blue and black, the best colors. Nah, but I already conceded here, so no real need for further discussion.

Unsure. Gravity manip seems like it would work, I'll wait for more input.

With this, you're arguing over semantics. The phrase "sounds like" is identical in context to "is". That stone is clearly not summoning more dudes, and no amount of reinforcements bestows resistances upon people.

Iirc the titans had passive EE and void manip, I'll look into this.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

Ah. Still, that would only function in stone-like environment like Markov Mansion.

Other than that I agree with your points on the post above this, although I'd like to add that I wasn't arguing over semantics as much as I was pointing out how to come to the conclusion of stat amps via indestructible requires many layers of uncertainty unless it's obvious in the art and flavor.

That said, I wouldn't be against a blog post that goes over MTG mechanics and looks at how they are generally applied to help make confusions like this less of an issue. I might try doing that myself, actually.

 

[Wokistan]

Bump.

 

[Wokistan]

Bump. Also, looking back on it, I'm unsure about resistances for Nahiri to Sorin. The first time, Sorin was way weaker than usual and called in Avacyn to do most of the fighting, and the second time she didn't let Sorin's magic ever hit her. She got stabbed by him, which nearly killed her, but it still may count as death manip resistance as she only got a severe stab wound rather than death manip off his sword.

 

[Wokistan]

Bump.

 

[Azathoth_the_Abyssal_Idiot]

I think the conclusions you and Dargoo have come to seem to be pretty much fine.

 

[Wokistan]

So, to summarize:

• Summoning: Accepted, but Emrakul obviously needs prep.
• Empowerment: Accepted.
• Spatial Manipulation: Becomes "Possibly Gravity Manipulation".
• Attack Reflection: Accepted, with the stipulation that it doesn't work as well in less stony areas (basically the default weaknesses of lithomancy).
• Existence Erasure: Denied.

Now for resistances.

• Existence Erasure: Accepted.
• Other Eldrazi abilities: Denied.
• Sorin Resistances: Only Death Manipulation.

This seem good Dargoo? If so, one of us can ask an admin to unlock the page so these edits can be made.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

Looks good to me.

(If there's an admin on chat you or I can ask, whichever comes first)