Template talk:Planeswalker

Barinellos'

I'm having some trepidations about including Dack on this list, in part because that would mean we should add Sifa as well. If we do that, then Baltrice might as well come in as well. What I'm so laboriously getting around to, is posing the question of if we should only include walkers with actual cards or informed identity (IE the game characters) or should we further expand the neowalker list?Barinellos 21:48, 15 April 2012 (EDT)

Read. Don't know what to say. --Magic Mage (talk!) 00:55, 12 November 2012 (EST)

Font size: 95%

It was broken before. Kraken Chowder 101 (talk) 00:31, 12 November 2012 (EST)

Thanks. --Magic Mage (talk!) 00:55, 12 November 2012 (EST)

Length

This list is getting rather long and unwieldy. Can somebody try to make it mare compact or collapsable? Thx. --Hunter (talk) 18:02, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Did it myself --Hunter (talk) 09:31, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Template purpose

Looking at this, it looks like this template is listing not just neowalkers, but all planeswalkers who have received Planeswalker cards. Several member of the list were 'walkers before the Mending. At the very least, Freyalise is dead, and Teferi sacrificed his spark in the build-up to the Mending. I suggest that either this template remain as-is, listing card-holding planeswalkers, in which case it should be renamed ("Planeswalker_cards", or similar), or it should be trimmed appropriately to the set of post-Mending walkers. --Corveroth (talk) 22:07, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

I would like to update it to hold all planeswalker, also the ones without cards and dividing them into carded and not carded planeswalker. - Yandere Sliver 02:38, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Columns

While I agree that the list was a mess, I do not think columns have improved the situation in the slightest. This layout introduces more problems with the color icons, especially on smaller screens. The text wrapping becomes harder to read, and the column heights become inconsistent. I'm in favor of simply removing those mana icons from the navigation and incorporating it into the planeswalker's infobox (probably in the form of a list, cardlinking each variant with its colors). Commander info could either be removed, or used as a subgroup for the cards. While it would be nice to separate the walkers by color, I see no practical way to accommodate all color combinations within a reasonably-sized navbox without high-maintenance duplication. --Corveroth (talk) 04:52, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Well, the list had the advantage that I could properly view the thing on my tablet. Right now is doesn't even wrap properly. I think when we clean the colors and commander info from the nav it would be very helpful. - Yandere Sliver 21:04, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Hmmm... Well, I put the columns to help visualize each planeswalker by its colors. I think it's fine. But, if you remove the colors, then obviously there is no need to have columns. Should they have the colors or not? I don't know but somehow I like to see them by their colors.--Tuamir (talk) 23:36, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

I think there's definitely a place to have the planeswalkers sorted by their colors, but I'm increasingly thinking that the navbox is not that place. If we could trivially sort them into five color categories, perhaps, but the existence of multicolored cards and multiple printings complicates that. I'll propose that we move that information from the navbox out to the list of planeswalkers. --Corveroth (talk) 00:04, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Also this is how it looks on smaller screens: this. The standard nov box does not handle columns well, this is why template:Navbox with columns exists. But even if we update the logic I fear the nav box will still be overloaded. Yandere Sliver 00:59, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

I put the template:Navbox with columns. How it looks now on smaller screens? --Tuamir (talk) 02:31, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

At 720px width, and with my browser set to identify itself as an iPad, this is what it currently looks like. --Corveroth (talk) 03:18, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Maintenance template for QoL

Shout out to the folks who're more active on this template. I just created a demo over here showing off a {{PWL}} template designed to alleviate a lot of the boilerplate templating that gets reused a lot here. Thoughts? --Corveroth (talk) 02:02, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Test: Ajani ... That seems to work beautiful and would clean up the first section of the Nav a lot. So yes I am all in. - Yandere Sliver 08:42, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Regarding "previously"

What are the expectations for listing some of a planeswalker's colors as such? Does it change to match each new printing? Is it tracking the character's underlying identity? And what or who does it serve? --Corveroth (talk) 22:25, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

The most recent printing describes more or less the current standing of the character in terms of philosophy and story. The previous part is basically just lists what colors the character utilized before.

Ajani was always centered around white. In his Vengeant persona he utilized red mana, but abandoned that path and later incorporated green into his worldview after Elspeth death. There was however never a WGR version of Ajani. : Sarkan was always centered around red. He often utilized green as well. During the time of his madness he used black instead of green, but he obviously left that phase behind. Obviously he picked up some blue magic during his time travel stuff. I mean blue seems to be a very good color for time travel if you look at Tolaria and Teferi. But again no UBRG version was never printed, he never had those colors all at the same time.

Nissa is centered around green but dabbled into blue probably during the Trial of Knowledge she performed. So blue is not permanent part of her.

Does that make any sense? - Yandere Sliver 23:08, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

I understand the reasoning, but I have a few objections. First, I question the interpretation of the printings and their relationship to the characters. For Ajani and Sarkhan, the story provides adequate evidence that they have abandoned some of the colors they've previously used. However, Nissa has given no indication, in the story, of ceasing to embody blue. The only evidence is a planeswalker card in a Planeswalker Deck, and the decklists for those minimize multicolor for the sake of simplicity. Furthermore, Tamiyo's EMN card is only in those colors because it was required by development, and her character is still primarily blue and she could see a new printing in monoblue. That suggests that any transient addition to a planeswalker's color presentation may be the result of developmental demands, rather than any deeper statement about the character. Any expansion is likely constrained to additions which plausibly fit the character, but I do not think further inferences are warranted.

Second, I question whether it is our job on the wiki to infer the characters' identities on such meager evidence. For the reasons above, I do not believe that any particular printing is a definitive statement about the entirety of the character's current state. We might report the facts (that such-and-such are their most recent printed colors), but should not insert our own interpretations (such-and-such is the character's current identity).

Finally, even if we admit such opinions, and even if we accept that each printing is an exact representation of the character's color identity, why does the history lesson on their prior identity belong in a navbox? --Corveroth (talk) 00:27, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I actually agree with your points. Nissa's explanation is rather flimsy and Tamiyo is also an odd ball for the exact reason you named. The main point is that people wanted to include the color identity in the Nav which is understandable. However on Ajanni(WRG) and Sarkhan(URGB) are really weird color alignments, because they never had these colors. Well, not all at the same time. There was also a previous idea to have main and secondary colors: Sarkhan(R/UGB) for example. However that was removed from the Nav at some point, because it was rather clunky. The 'previous' connotation is basically a residual from that time. And it worked quite well until they printed Nissa in UG.

I am open for suggestions. - Yandere Sliver 06:52, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I recently created the page Igniting to group the igniting info about the Planeswalkers. The same way, I could also create a new page to group in a table the color identity history of the planeswalkers, and that page could be linked to the planeswalker navbox and to Color_identity. But I would do that with just one condition: removing the color identity from the planeswalkers in the navbox. If the color identity remains in the navbox, then I don't bother to create the page I mentioned. What do you choose? --Tuamir (talk) 20:06, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I apologize, I dropped this conversation in the midst of discussion. I am interested in experimenting with presentations for planeswalker identity histories. Does color evolution of planeswalkers sound like a good article name? Or do you have you own idea in mind? --Corveroth (talk) 05:13, 9 July 2017 (UTC)