Speculation: Sword of Order and Chaos & Sword of Life and Death and their abilities.

[Captain Hammer]

As you may recall, I lamented that green is the only color without a Sword equipment and speculated that Wizards will soon print a green/colorless sword to accompany the artifact block a little over an year ago, including the token generating green ability on that sword. I was wrong about the colorless part. But it does seem that Wizards is pairing up all the enemy colors with sword equipments.


As of now there are three Swords equipment of enemy pairs...

Also interesting is that the abilities on these swords are very similar to the ones found on the five iconic/original Planeswalkers (Ajani, Chandra, Garruk, Jace and Liliana)

Sword of Body and Mind (Green/Blue) - Abilities: Make 2/2 Token/Mill Opponent
* It's of note that the token creation is similar to Garruk's second ability and the milling is similar to Jace Beleren's final ability.

Sword of Fire and Ice (Red/Blue) - Abilities: Burn a Target/Draw Card
* It's of note that the card draw is identical to Jace's second ability and the burn is similar to both Chandra's first and second ability.

Sword of Light and Shadow (White/Black) - Abilities: Gain Life/Disentomb a creature
* It's of note that the life gain is similar to Ajani's first ability while the disentomb is somewhat similar to Liliana's final ability.


Two enemy pairs remain...

Sword of Life and Death (Green/Black)

Sword of Order and Chaos (White/Red)


Now lets use a little deductive reasoning to figure out what these abilities will be.

What abilities are left in the iconic Planeswalkers?

Liliana can make your opponent discard, and it can tutor up any card you want. The second ability is rather busted so I think the discard will find it's way onto the black sword.

Ajani can give all your creatures +1/+1 and it can create a massive avatar equal to your life total. The second ability is busted and too similar to green's token creation so giving all your creatures +1/+1 seems most likely.

Garruk can untap lands (indirectly generating mana) and it can give all your creatures +3/+3 and trample. The second ability is busted and similar to white's ability, so I think untapping your lands (or possibly tutoring up a land from your library) seems likely.

Chandra can burn creatures and players, and that's about it. So the ability would likely be some variation on that. To me, the two strongest possibilities are that the equipped creature may deal damage equal to it's power to target creature, or perhaps, it deals 1 damage to target player and all creatures he controls.

So here are in my opinion, the most probable abilities on the remaining two swords...



Sword of Life and Death

Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has protection from green and from black.
Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, target player discards a card from his hand and you may untap up to two lands.
Equip {2}

Thus it would have both Liliana's and Garruk's first ability.

Sword of Order and Chaos

Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has protection from white and from red.
Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, Sword of Order and Chaos deals 1 damage to target player and each creature he controls and you may put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control.
Equip {2}

Thus it would have Ajani's second ability and something similar to Chandra's final ability. And as a bonus, both abilities complement each other rather well.


Assuming that this pans out (it seems rather likely given how the previous Swords matched up so well with their respective planeswalkers), which Sword equipment will emerge as your personal favorite/most sought after?

[Humphrey]

I think they keep the orignal abilites which is Shock for Red, Healing Salve for White, Raise Dead for Black and the token for green.


Red and White would be obv the best equipment since the critter gains protection from the most common removal. Also its ability would crash aggro strategies.

[Aggro_zombies]

I think they keep the orignal abilites which is Shock for Red, Healing Salve for White, Raise Dead for Black and the token for green.


Red and White would be obv the best equipment since the critter gains protection from the most common removal. Also its ability would crash aggro strategies.
This does not necessarily work because blue now has both draw a card and mill ten.

I think they will be as follows:

Sword of Order and Chaos
Equipment
Equiped creature has protection from Swords and Gempalm Incinerator.
When equiped creature deals combat damage to a player, that player must be playing two of the worst colors in the format.

Sword of Life and Death
Equipment
Equiped creature has protection from Tarmogoyf and black.
When equiped creature deals combat damage to a player, do something worse than Raise Dead or putting a token into play. You may Cry 1 because this card is a mythic but is still a total letdown after the Darksteel swords (To Cry 1, shed a tear.).

Am I doin it rite?

Seriously though, in b4 this thread devolves into a card creation thread where all the cards are either meant to beat up specifically on the creator's least favorite decks, or the cards are broken in half because people don't know how to balance cards, and then we all end up being wrong because there's most likely months and months to go due to each Sword showing up in a separate set.

EDIT: @OP: the similarities to planeswalker abilities are only there because those abilities are iconic for their colors, not because planeswalkers and Swords are in any way related in design.

[Captain Hammer]

Even if it is a coincidence how closely the current six abilities on the Sword equipment matchup to the iconic Planeswalker abilities...

The fact that those abilities are iconic to their colors is a good enough reason to reuse those abilities/variations on those abilities. Especially as Wizards already set a precedent of reusing the iconic planeswalker abilities on the Sword equipments.


I think they keep the original abilites which is Shock for Red, Healing Salve for White, Raise Dead for Black and the token for green.


Red and White would be obv the best equipment since the critter gains protection from the most common removal. Also its ability would crash aggro strategies.

Why would they reuse abilities from previous Sword equipments when there are perfectly good abilities on the iconic planeswalkers that they haven't yet used.

And yes, the Red and White equipment would best protect your creature from removal but unless your opponent plays a bunch of 1/1 creatures, it wouldn't create any card advantage for you like Fire/Ice, Light/Shadow and Life/Death do.

So I think it's still open to debate which Sword is the best one. If Life/Death causes random discard, then four of the five Swords would be extremely close in terms of utility/power level. I actually don't know which would be better, though I'm leaning in favor of Sword of Fire/Ice.

And I think it's already a given that Sword of Body and Mind will be the worst.

[jrsthethird]

It's a shame that the worst Sword has the most relevant protection colors.

[Carabas]

White can have all sorts of interesting things, that slice of the color pie is wide open, so I won't speculate there.

Black is probably discard, although giving target creature -x/-x doesn't seem impossible.

Red doesn't have much going for it. Maybe some sort of wheel of fortune variant, maybe a stingscourger style 'return target creature you don't control', or 'target creature can't block during your next turn'. Most of red's other color pie slices are either too situational (artifact destruction, fork effects) or would be too unfun (land destruction) for wizards to print.

Green seems like it would have something to do with +1/+1 counters, or maybe just untapping lands, like Garruk or Bear Umbra. Getting a land (perhaps basic only) from your library is also another reasonable possiblity.



All in all though, guessing isn't going to do anyone any good, because we'll all be wrong.

[heroicraptor]

White could also have tap target permanent and it doesn't untap next untap step, a la the good Ajani.

[Captain Hammer]

Coincidence or not, now that Wizards already set a precedent of reusing the iconic planeswalker abilities on all the Sword equipments so far, if they can continue the trend for the remaining two sword equipments, why wouldn't they?

Those abilities are on the iconic planeswalkers for a reason, because they are so characteristic of their respective color's strengths. And that's precisely the same reason they can also be on the swords. It'll be too symmetric not to.

Discard and Rampant Growth make too much sense as Sword abilities not to use.

And for the red/white sword... pump + mini Volcanic Fallout/Earthquake make a lot of sense given how symmetric they are, and how white just got Honor of the Pure and red recently got Earthquake/Pyroclasm/Searing Blaze/Volcanic Fallout.

And I don't know why you think that would be the worst sword. In an aggressive creature packed deck, it would likely be the best sword, especially given the immunity to most removal in the format.

[Malchar]

Red could do artifact destruction. Not too sure about white, but I have my doubts about it tapping down creatures since that has been in blue a lot lately especially when it doesn't untap next turn. Maybe enchantment destruction, but that would be a really wacky combo with artifact destruction. Maybe they'll make it into a lightning helix sword since the white part would be a lot worse than the blue part in SoFI, but you get to do three damage instead of two.

For black, discard makes a lot of sense because it's straight up card advantage. The green ability is probably searching for a land, which is also weak card advantage. Untapping land is not a very common ability, and it's particularly unique to Garruk. It also has questionable strength because you'd have to use two mana before combat and then also do something after combat. With a land search on green, this combination of black and green seems good enough to match up with the other swords because you're getting almost two cards advantage per connection. Also, if green gets a land into the hand, it would be a nice symmetry with having the opponent discard, and it would combo with landfall.

[jrsthethird]

Untapping land is not a very common ability, and it's particularly unique to Garruk. It also has questionable strength because you'd have to use two mana before combat and then also do something after combat.

I think untapping two lands is perfect, since it creates an interesting symmetry with the equip cost. Drop Sword turn 3, equip Sword and swing, if your opponent lets you connect, then you get to untap the two lands and play your regular 4-drop. It would be an awesome tempo tool when curved out properly, since you force your opponent to choose between keeping their 3-drop or discarding a card and letting you make a 4-drop.

[Barook]

I don't think that the swords have to do something with Planeswalkers. They combine two simple, iconic in-color effects which both cost 1 mana, as Humphrey already pointed out. The new Blue/Green sword doesn't exactly follow that formula, though.

Every sword is bound to get you some way of card advantage. I wouldn't be suprised if the Order/Chaos sword featured some kind of StP/PtE exile effect. StP is THE white iconic one mana spell and Healing Salve is already covered. Red side, no idea, maybe some kind artifact destruction? :really:

Life/Death is most likely discard for the black side and something land-related for the green side, either (basic) land to hand or some kind of Rampant Growth effect.

[SpikeyMikey]

Maybe someone has mentioned this; I had to stop reading the thread because it was making my brain bleed. The original swords are not modeled after iconic PW abilities because they PREDATE THE CONCEPT OF PLANESWALKERS BY SEVERAL YEARS. Let that sink in. Then, by all means, continue with your speculation.

[Eddy Wally]

The green/black one may have a discard and naturalize effect combined. That would provide a double source of card advantage, not unlike sofi.

I doubt they'd put a plow/path effect on a sword. That would be insane.

[jrsthethird]

A blink effect, maybe. Nothing like Swords or Path.

Interesting aside: the first two Swords had effects that (roughly) correspond to a 1 mana spell for those particular colors:

SOFI:
Whispers of the Muse
Shock

SOLS:
Healing Salve
Raise Dead

SOBM has effects that outclass the respective 1 mana spells, giving you a two mana effect:

1 mana spells:
Norwood Ranger
Tome Scour

vs.

2 mana spells:
Bear Cub
Glimpse the Unthinkable

...and somehow SOBM is worse, even though you get more expensive cards out of it.

[Rizso]

Order and Chaos could probly be stopping creatures from block or attacking.

All the swords so far have created card advantech. So question is if rest of the swords will do so as well. Doubt any of the swords will make equiped or owners creatures to grow.

Life and death could be searching for creature cards, discard, -x/-x on a enemy creature/ creature kill.

[jrsthethird]

Death could assign poison counters.:cool: