Many people have undoubtedly seen the cards spoiled this morning and have already formed their opinions of the cards especially of the new planeswalker. I will try to view it as an uninformed observer and try to find a home for our new pretty. For those who haven't seen feast your eyes on Liliana of the Veil
3 mana... She is only the second 3 mana planewalker printed, the other one being the original flavour Jace. Now, Jace Beleren was originally dismissed as a planeswalker but later saw some serious action in all manner of controlling deck from Faeries to 5CC colour control. His play dropped off after Big Jace was printed but more and more, he snuck his way back into the metagame because he was able to off big daddy Jace but I digress.
Liliana abilites are interesting. Her +1 ability is the one most people have been talking about. Looking at it purely as a loyalty ability, I think it is an inherently bad ability because of the card disadvantage it gives you if you activate it when Liliana enters play. You are down 2 cards to you opponents 1. You need to view this card in terms of the set she is in. In a set which is going to use the graveyard as an additional resource, making yourself discard cards to set a combo up is not so bad really. The presence of flashback cards really reduces the impact Liliana's first ability has on your card advantage over the course of the game.
Liliana second ability is more of what we expect from our planeswalkers. A repeatable cruel edict is a fantastic ability, and one I am sure will be used over and over again. In order to get 2 edict you must first +1 but that is a small price to pay for what is a strong ability. I do not think any more needs to said about her second ability.
Her "ultimate" is an expanded Do or Die. On a big bored you either Plague Wind, or Armageddon you opponent. A fair trade if you ask me. Even better if you consider black has both Life's Finale and Black Sun's Zenith as sweepers, plus whatever Innistrad hold in the way of mass creature removal. Remove all of their creatures first then use the ultimate to destroy half of your opponents lands. Either way, her last ability is very powerful and well worth discarding some cards for.
Time. Time will only tell if Liliana is good enough. She needs cards to help support her first ability, but I think with some help she can be very very good, and a major player in the upcoming standard format.
Another card I want to talk about today is Fiend Hunter. Again if you have not seen it, see below
This is a fantastic card. A journey to nowhere on a creature. A newer lower costed, slightly more resilient faceless butcher, if white is good, then this will be an integral part of it. It removes problem creatures, at the end of the game such as Titans (although that is not such a good idea if you opponent has a removal spell). I think where it will be most effective is in white weenie. Removing blocking creatures so you are forcing through extra damage is want to be doing, and this achieves this most admirably. Limited wise, unless white is absolute gash in Innistrad limited, this will be a high pick and rivalling most rares as first pick material.
Till Next Time...
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