Sadly, the printed Leshrac cards were not as good quality as I was hoping due to various circumstances. But hey, there's always next year.
Why Leshrac though? I wanted a planeswalker I could link to the Unseen Shop that made sense. Leshrac is the Nightwalker, the background unseen force behind Lim-Dûl's rise to power and has links to a sort of dimension called the Nether Void, which has associations with the shadow mechanic. I patterned him after Freyalise and company and tried to give him abilities that both worked well in commander and made sense based on his character. Thus, he will give everyone power (for a price), can make creatures 'unseen', and will unleash great destruction in the pursuit of power.
And on the subject of power - is he too powerful? It's possible, though I'm pretty sure I've managed to balance him pretty well. He is powerful, yes - drawing cards is always good, a shrouded general with menace is scary, and his ultimate is pretty bonkers. That said, I've never managed to pull off his ultimate. His +2 ability has a hidden weakness. It turns out giving your opponents cards is a very good way to give them answers to Leshrac. And he's no Jace Beleren - people don't really want him sticking around.
But who is Leshrac anyway? Unlike most of the other Oldwalkers, we know very little about his origins. We don't know his home plane (it's not Dominaria), we don't know what he was like before his ascension, and we don't even know much about his motivations.
Leshrac first showed up during Dominara's Ice Age, and was one of the planeswalkers sealed inside the Shard of Twelve Worlds. He had some sort of rivalry with Taysir and Kristina, which takes a lot of guts - Taysir, who hailed from the plane of Rabiah, was by far the most powerful planeswalker in existence at that time.
Leshrac was obsessed with escaping the Shard. After Faralyn revealed to him the existence of the rogue plane Shandalar, which weaved in and out of the Shard on it's travels through the multiverse, Leshrac recruited the necromacer Lim-Dûl to both research Shandalar, and create an undead army to invade it. At the Summit of thee Null Moon, Faralyn managed to escape to Shandalar by using the essence of a dead Elder Dragon to boost his planeswalking powers. Leshrac also attempted to kill Ravidel at the summit, but Ravidel survived.
Leshrac now had access to Shandalar, via Faralyn, and all he needed to do now was to transport Lim-Dûl's army there. Unfortunately, the necromancer had become embroiled in a war with a nearby kingdom, Kjeldor, which attracted Jodah, the Archmage of Dominaria. Jodah convinced Kjeldor to unite with the barbarian tribes that were traditionally their enemies. The unexpected alliance turned the tide of battle against Lim-Dûl.
When Leshrac showed up to find Lim-Dûl's army destroyed, he was furious. He ripped the necromancer apart, and took his essence with him to Shandalar, where he reformed him in a less powerful body. Leshrac attempted to conquer Shanadlar anyway, but things went from bad to worse - the Shandalarian planeswalker Kenan killed Faralyn with surprising ease, after which Lim-Dûl betrayed Leshrac. Out of allies, and with Kenan closing in on him, Leshrac was forced to flee back to Dominaria.
After this he decided he had had enough of attempted conquests, and made himself a home base in the obscure city of Estark on Dominara. Once the Shard fell, he traveled the planes again, but mostly kept to himself. That ended when Taysir tracked him down. Inspired by Faralyn's actions at the Summit of the Null Moon, Taysir wanted to use Leshrac's essence to pierce the magical barrier around Rabiah, which an enemy of Taysir had put in place to keep him out.
The next part of the story is uncertain, as the comics that would have told it were never published. It would seem that, outgunned by the Rabian, Leshrac enacted a contingency plan that scattered his essence across the city of Estark and left him trapped in the Nether Void, out of phase with the rest of Dominaria. Taysir then somehow imprisoned Leshrac on the plane of Phyrexia. Leshrac was trapped there for many years, until the power of the combined Moxen summoned him and many others back to Dominaria.
Ravidel had combined the Moxen in order to summon every planeswalker he felt had wronged him, sparking what is known as 'The Planeswalker War'. Little is known about the war, but it is known that it ended when Leshrac destroyed the city of Telemar with a powerful artifact known as the Grey Chime, which was some sort of relative of the more famous Apocalypse Chime. (It's about time he won something.)
Leshrac did not appear again for many years. Unlike Freyalise, Kristina and Tevish Szat, he was not involved in the Phyrexian invasion at all. But when the events of Time Spiral began, he reappeared, allied with the Myojin of Night's Reach. The Myojin needed all the help she could get, as the dragon planeswalker Nicol Bolas had taken exception to her links to the Umezawa family, and was hunting her down.
Using a copy of the Mask of Night's Reach, Leshrac manipulated Jeska (also known as Phage) into closing multiple time rifts. Why exactly he did this is unclear. Risking other people's sparks is smart, but on the whole, Leshrac is not exactly the 'save Dominaria' type, even if he is using other people to do it. Perhaps his links to the Nether Void gave him greater insight into the rifts, and he knew that if Dominaria was destroyed, the rest of the multiverse would follow.
At any rate, Leshrac confronted Nicol Bolas at the rift over Madara, the kingdom Bolas once ruled over as God-Emperor. Having stolen Jeska's dark consumption powers, Leshrac mortally wounded Nicol Bolas. But as he was about to finish the dragon off, Bolas produced the original Mask of Night's Reach. Claiming that he had already defeated the Myojin, Bolas used the mask to regenerate himself, and then trap Leshrac. He then used the Mask to seal the Madaran rift, destroying it and Leshrac in the process.
And so passed Leshrac, who always had big plans, but never managed to pull them off.
A bit more on the Nether Void - it seems to be linked with both Domniaria and Phyrexia somehow. It is thought that Yawgmoth, the leader of Phyrexia, obtained knowledge of it from Leshrac, and used it to construct the artificial plane of Rath. Rath was constructed either in the Nether Void itself, or a similar pocket dimension.
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