Ill never forget my first few times visiting MTG salvation, it was shortly after Flip-jace was revealed, and he too was one of the worst walkers people had ever seen. In this thread alone Nahiri has gone from "awesome" to "one of the worst walkers ever". I will hold my breathe and see what cards are printed before giving into extremes like that.
To be fair, flip-walkers were much harder to evaluate than normal walkers, and flip jace is certainly popular... in standard. It was doing good things in grixis modern until the eldrazi ended the party. Jace is definitely good, that is clear now, but at first it was very hard to say that.
Nahiri, on the other hand, has many other walkers that we can compare her to: we have Ajani's Vengeance, Daretti, Narset Transcedent (mana cost in the same color, loot ability, high loyalty). She just isn't shocking, just that. She might see play, she might be good when coupled with madness, but 4-CMC is the cap for your playable planeswalker, above that you start to get into midrange/control walkers that are really advantage engines (Ajani, Mentor of Heroes, Jace, Memory Adept, Elspeth, Sun's Champion). She is in that line where you can look and see 'is she good enough?', and the answer appears to be 'no'. At 3 she would be, no question, ridiculously good, but at 4... meh. Maybe there is a house for her in a boros/mardu deck exploring goblins dark dwellers. Not sure.
I understand your position, flip-walkers were difficult to compare and assess. But it was the extreme's people were willing to write down on day one that makes me always take a step back and think before proclaiming they are either the best or the worst. I guess that is what i'm getting at, that even in this set alone i watched new-avacyn go from being called amazing to "pretty bad". And you are taking a very logical stance on her, and that you're asking "is she good enough" and then saying "probably not is a great thing, because its a big maybe for her.
Again, im not a great judge on power level, and it also depends on where we think she will slot in. But at the end of the day, a card would have to be almost universally panned for me to even fathom calling them "the worst PW card i have seen in a while" before the day is even up.
I hate to say it, but I don't like her. I was excited to finally see a RW Planeswalker again and I've wanted to see another Nahiri Planeswalker card since she got one in the Commander precon. I never judge Planeswalkers by their ultimates unless it's an ultimate that's super easy to activate, so I'll discard hers when evaluating. She comes down with a good amount of loyalty, but her -2 ability feels like it's restrictions are very unnecessary. I don't get why the "tapped" clause was needed for artifacts. Both white and red have multiple cards that exile artifacts, most being at instant speed. It is a nice bonus, however, that she can hit enchantments. I wouldn't have expected that.
I think people are missing the point of Nahiri. She would go great in a super friends deck and great in a midrange deck and finally great in a control deck. Playing her on turn 4 and going +2 to bring her to six loyalty.. making them swing all out at her (probably survives).. then you wrath the board and +2 again and they have to still find a way to kill her. There is no hero's downfall in this set and ruinous path rarely sees play. And besides, if your playing a deck running ruinous path I'd rather them hit nahiri then hit my 6 mana chandra.
Her -8 is Sneak Attack with the Unsummon clause because they don't want Sneak Attack in standard. Being able to fetch and dump a creature into your yard is a stupid high power level. Keeping it on the battlefield is even more so. So they went with the last option, which was to bounce it, despite that not being super red. I agree with Wizards on that cause tossing an Eldrazi into your yard only to reanimate it next turn is bad for everyone.
A moon is a place; if anything it's closer to a land than an artifact.
Under most circumstances, yes. However, this is a moon made mostly out of silver that we're talking about. Perhaps its metallic quality trumps it being a vast expanse of area.
She tutors up target Kiki Jiki or Restoration Angel. Or target Archangel of Thune or Spike Feeder. Feels pretty good. Also looting is good with Courser of Kruphix.
Isn't the downside with her ultimate fixed with Eerie Interlude? I mean, that's not saying a lot that you need an additional card to get rid of her ultimate's downside, but it is possible with an on-color card in the same set.
She seems pretty good. Not an auto-include in WR decks, but if at the very worst she's exiling a decent slew of permanents, she'll se some degree of play in Standard IMO.
Her +2 is alright-ish, and to me it seems like it was something else in development that kinda broke something out and they decided to swap it for something "safer". Its playability will rely on Madness, but honestly I'm not too hot about it. Looting effects, however, are the perfect complement to Nahiri's main use: pressure. The real gem here is that the ability is a +2, and that's awesome.
Her -2 is pretty good. "But it only exiles tapped creatures!", you might say, and yeah, that's kind of a bummer. But she's still the 4-mana Planeswalker that answers the most permanents. Her minus effect is like half of Karn Liberated's effect, with the drawbacks being not hitting lands, untapped creatures and Planeswalkers, but that's still pretty good, because Karn is pretty good! But her minus ability is awesome by the sheer pressure it puts into your opponent. Think about it for a sec: Once you drop her, she's a 6 loyalty Planeswalker threatening into a 8 mana Ultimate next turn that will kill anything that swings at her and doesn't drops her at below 1 Loyalty. Once she hits the table, she'll pressure your opponent into action, and then she will punish him for it. That's why I think Nahiri is pretty good. She's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of girl.
Her -8 is a massive threat. Honestly, one of the most threatening Ultimates I've ever seen. Not because it's extremely powerful - it's actually pretty tame as far as Ultimates goes, but as mentioned before because she is both very fast to get into Ultimate range and punishes your opponent when he tries to retaliate. Shame it's kind of a massive nonbo with her +2 ability. Would love to see her fetch from Grave as well. Now that would make her a powerhouse.
Doubt she'll make a splash in Modern or, heck, maybe she ends up without a deck and fails even in Standard. But I personally think she's great, and if we ever get a Madness or Delirium deck that has some massive beefy creature/artifact finisher for her Ultimate I'm confident she'll see play.
I think she's the harbinger of Emrakul. The titan cannot come to Innistrad alone without any help. Nahiri probably lured Emrakul to Innistrad to destroy the world of Sorin. That also explains her third ability.
this actually makes a lot of sense.
even if I don't think we're seeing Emrakul that soon.
You know what would make this card a little better in the function department, and a lot better flavor-wise? Removing the words 'If you do.' She's supposed to be off her rocker, and insanity is represented by having a an empty hand (like with Hellbent, Sarkhan Dragonspeaker's ultimate and Nicol Bolas making his opponent discard everything.) Since you must discard the card if you have one that would make this card function as card advantage if you're hyper aggressive to the point that you have no hand- but bad looting otherwise. I'm hoping that they at least tried it that way and had to nerf it into this...
That's actually quite beautiful and would've made her infinitely better in agressive decks. Jace and maybe Gideon aside, wizards has been super careful with planeswalkers for quite a while now.
I'm SO SICK of the "too strong for Standard" argument. It's the new "Dies to removal". We can have a two mana 4/4 with a zillion abilities, but we can't just have Accumulated Knowledge. Makes sense.
I don't see this pushing Ajani Vengeant out of my cube.
She's not bad, but I feel like she doesn't do enough with the first two abilities to be super good. I have the gut feeling it's going to be like Narset Transcendent, where there's tons of excitement early, but in the end not competitive enough.
I'm truly not sure what to make of this one. Her first ability is seriously weak for a 4 manna planeswalker. Even Tibalt's looting ability is stronger, but on the bright side she +2s with it. Her second ability isn't bad at all although the tapped targeting clause really hurts it since she can often only use it on creatures that have already taken a swing at her. Her ultimate is strongish, but you don't get to keep the creature. Is trading a fully powered up 4cc walker really worth getting to summon a big fatty with haste for a single round?
For her ultimate to really pay off it basically requires that you are already running a deck that has tricks for getting crazy big critters into play because if she just pulls your 4cc or 5cc curve topper onto the field for a single turn that's really not going to be worth all the crazy work it took to ultimate with her. Outside of Sneak Attack builds, are there Boris decks that are normally designed for this sort of thing?
Not as good as Gideon but still decent. Feels like she does what Ob Nixilis Reignited does in a less efficient way as to enable madness interactions.
You just know the hype is going to have the buy in high so it's important to be able to evaluate the card on merit in a dispassionate way.
If you take the removal spell part out of the equation you're looking at a 3 turn clock on dropping the biggest baddest thing out of your library. That's nice but it doesn't feel like a win on the spot.
Could be good without being very playable in standard.
SOI replaced BFZ third set. We have seen one Titan/set of BFZ. Nahiri is in Innistrad to make it suffer as Zendikar has. Emrakul has not been seen on a while on Zendikar. She was the most devastatating Titan. The hedrons hold the Titans in the plane and in physical form. She is related to making people crazy and mutate them into Eldrazi (Her Spawm)(What a odd race where male brew babies and famale transform things into babies). Nahiri created the Hedrons. The clue tokens looks like a giant octopus is in the moon....
She seems pretty good. Not an auto-include in WR decks, but if at the very worst she's exiling a decent slew of permanents, she'll se some degree of play in Standard IMO.
Her +2 is alright-ish, and to me it seems like it was something else in development that kinda broke something out and they decided to swap it for something "safer". Its playability will rely on Madness, but honestly I'm not too hot about it. Looting effects, however, are the perfect complement to Nahiri's main use: pressure. The real gem here is that the ability is a +2, and that's awesome.
Her -2 is pretty good. "But it only exiles tapped creatures!", you might say, and yeah, that's kind of a bummer. But she's still the 4-mana Planeswalker that answers the most permanents. Her minus effect is like half of Karn Liberated's effect, with the drawbacks being not hitting lands, untapped creatures and Planeswalkers, but that's still pretty good, because Karn is pretty good! But her minus ability is awesome by the sheer pressure it puts into your opponent. Think about it for a sec: Once you drop her, she's a 6 loyalty Planeswalker threatening into a 8 mana Ultimate next turn that will kill anything that swings at her and doesn't drops her at below 1 Loyalty. Once she hits the table, she'll pressure your opponent into action, and then she will punish him for it. That's why I think Nahiri is pretty good. She's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of girl.
Her -8 is a massive threat. Honestly, one of the most threatening Ultimates I've ever seen. Not because it's extremely powerful - it's actually pretty tame as far as Ultimates goes, but as mentioned before because she is both very fast to get into Ultimate range and punishes your opponent when he tries to retaliate. Shame it's kind of a massive nonbo with her +2 ability. Would love to see her fetch from Grave as well. Now that would make her a powerhouse.
Doubt she'll make a splash in Modern or, heck, maybe she ends up without a deck and fails even in Standard. But I personally think she's great, and if we ever get a Madness or Delirium deck that has some massive beefy creature/artifact finisher for her Ultimate I'm confident she'll see play.
The biggest problem I think she will have is that she will have trouble protecting herself. More often than not the only way she can target and remove a creature is after the thing has gotten to take a swing at her and if they manage to damage her badly she won't have the counters left to get rid of them. Remember you just spent your 4 drop slot on bringing her to the field so your opponent is more likely than not going to have a pretty serious creature advantage over you at this point. You are quite likely going to be forced into blocking unfavorably for at least one round to keep her healthy.
I think the best play with her will be waiting to play her until you see a tapped creature you want to kill and then using her removal ability immediately. The problem with this is it leaves her with just 2 counters which puts her into shock range or just within the killing range of even a small unblocked creature. It also means you will likely have to play her reactively rather than proactively a lot of the time. I think she is a neat planeswalker, but I do see some potential issues with playing her in more aggressive builds. I think she belongs in a more defensive deck that utilizes a lot of tapping lock down.
I'd actually rather something that's relevant in later turns. Blightsteel is a nice trick but if they have more than 2 toughness on board he's a dead card. Emrakul or something janky like inferno Titan would be better (emrakul would probably be dead in hand as well but annihilator 6 means it's already done its damage, inferno Titan basiclaly reads as wrath the board, swing for 6+fire breathing)
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Trolling can be defined as "A art, one specifically designed to misdirect, anger, or confuse others by reporting meaningful information in a clear, coherent way."
One day I will go infinate on a token combo then drop Scramble verse and watch as the trolling begins. That day will be a good day.
SOI replaced BFZ third set. We have seen one Titan/set of BFZ. Nahiri is in Innistrad to make it suffer as Zendikar has. Emrakul has not been seen on a while on Zendikar. She was the most devastatating Titan. The hedrons hold the Titans in the plane and in physical form. She is related to making people crazy and mutate them into Eldrazi (Her Spawm)(What a odd race where male brew babies and famale transform things into babies). Nahiri created the Hedrons. The clue tokens looks like a giant octopus is in the moon....
Yeah, Emrakul in Innistrad.
I definitely aggree, I think the "Harbinger" part refers to Emrakul, it's the most logical way to get back at Sorin for imprisoning the Eldrazi Titans in her home plane, briging the remaining titan to his home plane.
From other cards and teaser materials we know that Nahiri is creating these strange cryptoliths all over Innistrad, my theory is that they are meant to be some sort of antenna or conduit. Either she's using those to lure Emrakul to Innistrad, or Emrakul is already hiding in Innistrad's Moon, and the cryptoliths are meant to channel her energy to Innistrad, with the effect being the infectious madness we're seeing.
As for Nahiri's card...I'm not too excited, I think the looter effect is quite meh in a 4-drop that requires 2 colors, the -2 ability isn't so bad, but it requires the target creature to be tapped, so if you want to kill a big beater with it and don't have a means to tap it yourself, you'll have to deal with it for one turn at least.
The ultimate isn't so exciting either, it's much of a one-shot deal. But I can imagine it being used in Commander or at kitchen tables to bring an Emrakul, the Aeons Tornor Blightsteel Colossus out of nowhere to win the game right there.
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GalactusEmrakul confirmed.Gonna be fun with Doubling Season.
Modern - Cheeri0s (building), Belcher (building), Lantern (building), UW Control (building)
RIP Magic Duels. Wizards will regret what they did to you.
Again, im not a great judge on power level, and it also depends on where we think she will slot in. But at the end of the day, a card would have to be almost universally panned for me to even fathom calling them "the worst PW card i have seen in a while" before the day is even up.
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Under most circumstances, yes. However, this is a moon made mostly out of silver that we're talking about. Perhaps its metallic quality trumps it being a vast expanse of area.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
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Her +2 is alright-ish, and to me it seems like it was something else in development that kinda broke something out and they decided to swap it for something "safer". Its playability will rely on Madness, but honestly I'm not too hot about it. Looting effects, however, are the perfect complement to Nahiri's main use: pressure. The real gem here is that the ability is a +2, and that's awesome.
Her -2 is pretty good. "But it only exiles tapped creatures!", you might say, and yeah, that's kind of a bummer. But she's still the 4-mana Planeswalker that answers the most permanents. Her minus effect is like half of Karn Liberated's effect, with the drawbacks being not hitting lands, untapped creatures and Planeswalkers, but that's still pretty good, because Karn is pretty good! But her minus ability is awesome by the sheer pressure it puts into your opponent. Think about it for a sec: Once you drop her, she's a 6 loyalty Planeswalker threatening into a 8 mana Ultimate next turn that will kill anything that swings at her and doesn't drops her at below 1 Loyalty. Once she hits the table, she'll pressure your opponent into action, and then she will punish him for it. That's why I think Nahiri is pretty good. She's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of girl.
Her -8 is a massive threat. Honestly, one of the most threatening Ultimates I've ever seen. Not because it's extremely powerful - it's actually pretty tame as far as Ultimates goes, but as mentioned before because she is both very fast to get into Ultimate range and punishes your opponent when he tries to retaliate. Shame it's kind of a massive nonbo with her +2 ability. Would love to see her fetch from Grave as well. Now that would make her a powerhouse.
Doubt she'll make a splash in Modern or, heck, maybe she ends up without a deck and fails even in Standard. But I personally think she's great, and if we ever get a Madness or Delirium deck that has some massive beefy creature/artifact finisher for her Ultimate I'm confident she'll see play.
this actually makes a lot of sense.
even if I don't think we're seeing Emrakul that soon.
That's actually quite beautiful and would've made her infinitely better in agressive decks. Jace and maybe Gideon aside, wizards has been super careful with planeswalkers for quite a while now.
She's not bad, but I feel like she doesn't do enough with the first two abilities to be super good. I have the gut feeling it's going to be like Narset Transcendent, where there's tons of excitement early, but in the end not competitive enough.
For her ultimate to really pay off it basically requires that you are already running a deck that has tricks for getting crazy big critters into play because if she just pulls your 4cc or 5cc curve topper onto the field for a single turn that's really not going to be worth all the crazy work it took to ultimate with her. Outside of Sneak Attack builds, are there Boris decks that are normally designed for this sort of thing?
You just know the hype is going to have the buy in high so it's important to be able to evaluate the card on merit in a dispassionate way.
If you take the removal spell part out of the equation you're looking at a 3 turn clock on dropping the biggest baddest thing out of your library. That's nice but it doesn't feel like a win on the spot.
Could be good without being very playable in standard.
Yeah, Emrakul in Innistrad.
The biggest problem I think she will have is that she will have trouble protecting herself. More often than not the only way she can target and remove a creature is after the thing has gotten to take a swing at her and if they manage to damage her badly she won't have the counters left to get rid of them. Remember you just spent your 4 drop slot on bringing her to the field so your opponent is more likely than not going to have a pretty serious creature advantage over you at this point. You are quite likely going to be forced into blocking unfavorably for at least one round to keep her healthy.
I think the best play with her will be waiting to play her until you see a tapped creature you want to kill and then using her removal ability immediately. The problem with this is it leaves her with just 2 counters which puts her into shock range or just within the killing range of even a small unblocked creature. It also means you will likely have to play her reactively rather than proactively a lot of the time. I think she is a neat planeswalker, but I do see some potential issues with playing her in more aggressive builds. I think she belongs in a more defensive deck that utilizes a lot of tapping lock down.
Standard
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Merfolk
Burn
Avacyn did nothing wrong!
Purify Innistrad!
#Purge
I'd actually rather something that's relevant in later turns. Blightsteel is a nice trick but if they have more than 2 toughness on board he's a dead card. Emrakul or something janky like inferno Titan would be better (emrakul would probably be dead in hand as well but annihilator 6 means it's already done its damage, inferno Titan basiclaly reads as wrath the board, swing for 6+fire breathing)
One day I will go infinate on a token combo then drop Scramble verse and watch as the trolling begins. That day will be a good day.
I definitely aggree, I think the "Harbinger" part refers to Emrakul, it's the most logical way to get back at Sorin for imprisoning the Eldrazi Titans in her home plane, briging the remaining titan to his home plane.
From other cards and teaser materials we know that Nahiri is creating these strange cryptoliths all over Innistrad, my theory is that they are meant to be some sort of antenna or conduit. Either she's using those to lure Emrakul to Innistrad, or Emrakul is already hiding in Innistrad's Moon, and the cryptoliths are meant to channel her energy to Innistrad, with the effect being the infectious madness we're seeing.
As for Nahiri's card...I'm not too excited, I think the looter effect is quite meh in a 4-drop that requires 2 colors, the -2 ability isn't so bad, but it requires the target creature to be tapped, so if you want to kill a big beater with it and don't have a means to tap it yourself, you'll have to deal with it for one turn at least.
The ultimate isn't so exciting either, it's much of a one-shot deal. But I can imagine it being used in Commander or at kitchen tables to bring an Emrakul, the Aeons Tornor Blightsteel Colossus out of nowhere to win the game right there.