MTG Salvation

Emiel the Blessed (mythic rare)
2WW
Legendary Creature - Unicorn
4/4
3: Exile another target creature you control, then return it to the battlefield under its owner's control.
Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may pay {G/W}. If you do, put a +1/+1 counter on it. If it's a Unicorn, put two +1/+1 counters on it instead.

Emiel the Blessed offers repeatable blink on a body like Eldrazi Displacer, Angel of Condemnation, or Mistmeadow Witch. The creature comes back right away and doesn’t require the Unicorn to tap, so you can immediately retrigger any ETB effect as many times as you can pay 3. Arguably the best repeatable blink after Soulherder and Thassa, Deep-Dwelling?

Emiel can also spread counters around to support a +1/+1 counters matter theme. It costs mana so it won’t go infinite with persist creatures and sac outlets, but you can still get as many Redcap triggers as you have W or G sources.

White 4s are stacked, but this seems great to me... I like blink when it’s on an otherwise solid card. For that reason this card seems better than Thassa.

Yeah, I genuinely like this. It's not cheap, but I think there are plenty of cases where I'd gladly pay 3 mana to blink dudes for disenchants etc.

I'm not sure this is a card I would ever want if I wasn't in a blink deck. 4 mana 4/4 with no abilities except the add a counter ability is pretty meh when there are much better ways to recur persist creatures or pump your team (and I don't think most cubes support unicorn tribal, so you aren't getting 2).

So I think you'd need to be real heavy in blink for this to be something you want.

I'm having a hard time evaluating this one. It wasn't too long ago that I was running Crystal Shard, and this is much more efficient than Crystal Shard. But I think all the Blink I'm currently running is better than this. I don't think I have room for this, but I wouldn't be surprised if this plays better than it looks.

The thing is, what defines a "blink deck?" How many hits do you need, and how much would you need to prioritize those picks in a draft vs typical ETB density?

It depends on how good the payoffs are, but I think for me 2-3 great ETB creatures would be the bare minimum to make me want to include Emiel in a deck just for the blink ability, and 5+ ETB creatures for Emiel to be excellent. The thing is, with Emiel specifically you only need one payoff in play because the creature comes back immediately instead of at the end of your turn, with no need for colorless lands like Eldrazi Displacer, so you can just keep blinking the same ETB creature over and over. I would also happily run Emiel in the +1/+1 counters matter or the persist combo deck, which often blur together.

To support the blink archetype, I currently run Soulherder, Brago, King Eternal, Yorion, Sky Nomad, Thassa, Deep-Dwelling, Flickerwisp, Charming Prince, Angel of Condemnation (although this is likely to be the cut for Emiel), Panharmonicon, and around 80/540 ETB-matters creatures. Most blink decks are in Azorius but they often go into three colors for powerful payoff ETB creatures. Bant gives access to value ETB creatures like Acidic Slime, Verdurous Gearhulk, and Jadelight Ranger while Esper has various Ravenous Chupacabras, Brain Maggot, Sling-Gang Lieutenant, and Gary. Any of the Titans are fantastic targets and Venser, Shaper Savant or Mystic Snake can create a soft lock.

If you aren't repeating ETB effects, Emiel is much worse, but it still has the ability to put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you cast and there are lots of other sneaky use cases created by instant speed blink:
- Emiel's two abilities work together to put a +1/+1 counter on any nontoken creatures you played before her, although it maxes out at one counter per creature.
- Counter a removal spell that targets another nontoken creature you control.
- Save another nontoken chump blocker.
- Untap another nontoken creature to block.
- Remove all -1/-1 counters from another nontoken creature you control.
- On a stalled board, you can attack your team into their team, then after blocks save whichever nontoken creatures would die to their blockers.

If the +1/+1 counter trigger was free, and the blink ability was 2 , I'd be all over this card.

Super fun card (all blink cards are haha), but too expensive to set up considering it's vulnerability to removal and requirement of another creature in play to be good.

Seems like a card that owners of lower powered cubes should be all over

Quote from jamis »

I'm having a hard time evaluating this one. It wasn't too long ago that I was running Crystal Shard, and this is much more efficient than Crystal Shard. But I think all the Blink I'm currently running is better than this. I don't think I have room for this, but I wouldn't be surprised if this plays better than it looks.

Is it though? The beauty of shard was that on 4 you could bounce an opponent's creature when they didn't leave mana up, and they had to leave 1 mana up for the rest of the game. Also, you could save your guys from removal for a single mana which was great. Finally, as an artifact, the cards that killed shard were much more limited. This card can't save itself so if it's actually important to your deck it will just eat removal a fair amount of the time, and if it's not doing that much it's pretty easy to ignore.