Should I do a whole rework for this deck to include Sissay? I feel like a lot has come out over the past few weeks that is making me reconsider how the whole deck is approached.
It’s a little early to tell, but Sisay does change the game because she’s a tutoring commander. If she sticks as a commander or even the 99, we’ll probably want more legendary lands, I’m not sure how this will effect our ramp plan, and Ajani… like any of them… just got better.
I’m a little worried that her restrictions may be a little more convoluted than they initially seem, but the floor is land tutoring at instant speed. The ceiling... I’m not sure.
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~~~~~
I think it’ll make the cut. Between fetchlands and getting this out post Obliterate in those builds, this seems like a nice recovery card. Also it’s a two drop legend that gives Sisay, Weatherlight Captain +2/+2.
Also, while not the main focus of the deck, some of the cards we run are worth randomly retracing from time to time.
Tutoring planeswalkers to the field is great. Tutoring Planeswalkers to the field with strings attached... is going to need testing and work. I think she'll do fine for the archetype, but there will be some redoing the archetype to accommodate her strange restrictions.
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~~~~~
Yeah, I'm debating here. Possibly considering Sphinx's Revelation as well. But I do run Austere Command, so mass artifact/enchantment removal is covered.
Also, opinions on Aminatou, the Fateshifter? Taking another look at it, as it's plus is alright, and it's minus (not ult) seems really good as it allows us to renew other planeswalkers and activate their abilities twice a turn. 3 CMC is also appealing, but the ultimate is fairly mediocre.
Animatou is fine. She works best in her own deck, but she's not a detriment to the deck. Her plus is useful if you can start shuffling your deck to get rid of dead cards (and if money isn't an issue, that's easy with fetchlands). Her small minus is excellent, and fun fact, is another way to get the Chain Veil + Teferi Temporal Archmage combo going. So, if you find room for her, go for it. I will say though I generally play her in Atraxa because there's extra space from dropping red or her own deck.
I agree. But it’s litterally a two card win the game combo. Her narrowness does not matter when you win the game every time you resolve both.
The problem with Samut + Doubling Season is that Doubling Season is a one card combo that does not need Samut to win the game on the spot. The situation you're describing with Doubling Season works with almost any other planeswalker, so why not use them instead of Samut? Samut should really go into superfriends decks that rely on their general or just in heavier creature decks instead.
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~~~~~
What else do you have in the deck that can do Cleansing Nova's job?
I generally prioritize mass destruction over recursion because in my experience, blowing out a board has more of an impact than recursion with a restriction on top of it. HOWEVER, if you feel you have your destruction bases covered (with Cleansing Nova, I'm specifically referring to the destroy all artifacts and enchantments part), then yes, go ahead. Even though I'm playing skeptic here, it is an excellent recursion card for the deck.
Also, since Cleansing Nova has flexibility, you may want to consider a less flexible mass destruction card in the deck as well.
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~~~~~
Other decent five color generals for Superfriends include Niv-Mizzet Reborn because we run a lot of cards with color pairs and The Ur-Dragon because he's an advantage engine that also cheats cards into play, albeit a less effective one outside his home. I've also had some success with Progenitus in the past as a late game "well, I guess I'm just going to hit your face now." He also makes planeswalkers with global pumps better, i.e Ajani Steadfast. The only legal five color legendary creature that I think actively work against our deck is Child of Alara because that hits our board presence where it hurts. Everything else has pros, cons, quirks, and/or is a placeholder. Good luck sending a message with Atogatog I suppose.
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~~~~~
Karn, the Great Creator - Shuts down mana rocks and equipments, which is interesting to think of. Unfortunately, his plus is too artifact centric. On top of that, the effectiveness of his minus working in EDH depends on your playgroup, according to the rules (tutoring outside of the game).
Ugin, the Ineffable – I was really hoping for Ugin to be good, because I love his 8 version. That said, this one just doesn’t fit this deck. This is mainly because his static ability doesn’t work all that well with our deck. His plus is okay, as it provides a little chump blocker that becomes a draw, and his minus isn’t terrible. He’s also 6, which isn’t particularly cheap.
The Wanderer – This card could be relevant if you have a lot of burn in your meta, but that isn’t much of a thing in EDH. The minus is pretty strong, as well. But overall, this card isn’t strong enough to fit in the 99.
Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor – The passive ability isn’t terrible, but isn’t amazing either. The same goes for the minus. Another uncommon that just can’t justify itself in the 99.
Narset, Parter of Veils – Ah, finally a good uncommon planeswalker. Converted mana cost is three, passive ability is very relevant in the format, and the minus is alright. I wish this card had a super simple plus, like “Scry 1.” as it would make the card much justified in the 99. Even as the best uncommon planesewalker (in my opinion) it still has a hard time justifying itself against other cards.
Liliana, Dreadhorde General – Liliana’s beefiest form, and justifiably. Her passive ability is strong, just not that strong in this deck unfortunately. That being said, it works well with her plus as well as the many other forms of generating tokens in this deck. Her minus is almost a board wipe, and handles indestructible and hexproof, which is a plus. Her ultimate probably is going to win you the game. Overall, I like her a lot and I’m considering finding her a spot in the deck. That being said, I’m trying to avoid stacking up high cmc in this deck.
Sarkhan the Masterless – The static ability is not very effective, that being said, his plus is a possible win condition, and could add some needed pressure to our opponents. That being said, it also turns paints a big Doom Blade target and your planeswalkers’s heads.
Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God – Grand daddy planeswalker. I’ll wait until testing, but I can almost confirm this is the strongest planeswalker card for a superfriends deck, bar none. His static ability is going to be insane for this deck. This means he can come down with a Doubling Season and either activate his ultimate, OR activate an ultimate of another planeswalker on the battlefield with a cost of 8 loyalty. His plus is nothing to scoff at, his minus is just good removal and his ultimate can literally win the game on the spot. I can’t wait to run this card.
Tamiyo, Colllector of Tales – This card isn’t bad, but it’s tough to evaluate otherwise. Her static ability is good, as it protects us from eldrazi and other sacrifice/discard effects, and her minus is a Regrowth, which I get a lot of mileage out of. That being said, her plus is pretty iffy, even with her minus working alongside it. Since commnader is a singleton format, you literally can’t draw more than one card, and you have to hope that you either guess correctly or have a Sensei's Divining Top.
Teferi, Time Raveler – I do love me some 3 converted mana cost planeswalkers, but I’m not sure if Teferi is powerful enough to warrant a spot in the deck. His static ability isn’t bad, his plus can give us some instant speed wraths, which isn’t bad. I think his minus just costs a little too much, and overall I would rather be drawing something else than Teferi.
Ashiok, Dream Render – Shutting off tutors/fetchlands is probably one of, if not the best static ability of all these planeswalkers. And she’s only three mana. Her minus really isn’t that valuable, so I’m not sure if she warrants a spot.
Dovin, Hand of Control – This is another good static ability, and his minus isn’t bad. I would say I’ll keep an eye on this card, as his 3 converted mana cost is appealing. Just not sure where he would fit exactly.
Saheeli, Sublime Artificer – If we had more powerful artifacts, this card might be good. Generating chump blockers for each planeswalker you cast is pretty good, especially at 3 mana.
Ignite the Beacon – Similar to Call the Gatewatch, just a little more expensive and two planeswalkers. Overall, I don’t think this is worth it compared to running another black, catch-all tutor. That being said, I think this is better than Call the Gatewatch. EDIT: Just realized this is an instant. That may change things. I'm keeping an eye on this and will consider it for the list.
The Elderspell – Well this is problematic for this deck, right? One reason we might want to run this is because we can pick off our own planeswalkers (and a few of our opponents) and just ult on the spot. This is a dangerous approach. I would rather leave this card out of my graveyard, as I don’t want it to be the target of an opponent’s Spelltwine or something similar.
Interplanar Beacon – The lifegain on this card isn’t crazy, but could possibly add up over the game. I’m not sure if this is worth a spot or not, though. Filtering mana for planeswalkers is good, but is it worth replacing any of our current lands?
Karn's Bastion – So this card I think we should run. I think it pushes our planeswalkers enough to make them that much more likely to ultimate, and make the overall flow of the deck much better. This works very well with something like Ral Zarek as well.
These are the ones that I'm currently looking at, and I've already started adding a few.
The one's I'm trying:
Karn's Bastion is basically any card. Having a Contagion Clasp in our lands lets us get an effect we want in our mana base, which opens up our non-lands for either another card or proliferation redundancy.
Interplanar Beacon is a lot more flexible than it looks at first glance. The life gain looks nice, but the important thing is the color filtering ability has a generic cost attached to it. The fact it's not any two color combination is a bit of a drawback, but getting colors off of Reliquary Tower seems tempting enough to me to give it a shot.
Ignite the Beacon is an instant. I'm testing it because it looks like it can help assemble a new infinite combo with Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God (will go into that will Nicol Bolas).
Ashiok, Dream Render is probably the best hate card we got in this set. Killing their search effects is powerful. And as someone who's played their fair share of Muldrotha, you can never hate on their graveyards hard enough. Being stuck on sorcery speed is a drawback, but it's leagues better than nothing. My dream is to ult Teferi, Temporal Archmage someday and use this card's minus after a Vampiric Tutor resolves on someone that doesn't know how much trouble they're in.
Nicol Bolas, the Dragon-God is going to be a lynch-pin in the future. Rather than go through all the different abilities he could use, I'm going to focus on there's already a degenerate combo with him that OTK's the entire table. If you have him out with Jace, Cunning Castaway and use Jace's -5 ability to make the non-legendary clones through Bolas instead, those clones come out as Nicol Bolas, Dragon-Gods. So if you combine these two walkers with The Chain Veil, Oath of Gideon, Pir, Imaginative Rascal, or Doubling Season you can -5 Nicol Bolas Dragon indefinitely through one turn. Then after you flood the board with an arbitrary large number of Dragon-Gods, all the ones you haven't activated can exile all opposing hands and permanents. If you have Double Season, you can follow up with his own ult. to win the game on the spot (although anyone that doesn't scoop to being hardlocked by a flood of Dragon-Gods is only kidding themselves). Even without that combo, this Bolas is already in my 99... but so is cunning Castaway.
Liliana, Dreadhorde General made the cut in my 99 when I realized that her static ability triggers off creature tokens, including her own. The rest of her abilities are things we look for in a planeswalker (defense, creature removal, mass destruction). So, she's in.
Narset, Parter of Veils has an ability that got banned from commander awhile ago, so sticking it with Azcanta's digging is something that I'm at least testing at the moment. In a more dedicated deck, she can wreck a table's hand. I'm not against looking into splashing Draw 7 cards because even without her Timetwister effects are good in a deck like ours.
Ugin, the Ineffable is something I'm testing because he's spot removal and an advantage engine. Granted his Static ability isn't good for this deck, but I want to see how the mechanics of the tokens work.
The rest in the quote I haven't mentioned aren't in my deck currently, but could be tested in the future. I'm not against them at the moment.
I recently found out about Lightmine Field . I've been having trouble dealing with tokens between boardwipes, and I thought this might be a cool tech. Another option is Pendrell Mists, which seems pretty cool (and because I could never afford the real Tabernacle). Any thoughts?
Peacekeeper is probably a broader solution because while Lightmine Field and Pendrell cards don't stop people who swing with few creatures (I say that because one of my other EDH decks is Kozilek Voltron.) If you find the room though, I could see potential for the Pendrell Mists because it synergizes with Sphere of Safety.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
I like Planar Bridge more than Oath of Ajani. On the one hand, I like instant speed deck to field tutor and we run a lot of permanents. On the other hand... it's really expensive. Test worthy in my opinion.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
And to be clear, I do not think Oath of Ajani is a good fit to 5cc Superfriends as a first impression, but I'm not going to say something definite until it's been tested because it doesn't look bad either.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
Thoughts on Oath of Ajani? The Counter boost probably is irrelevant in this build (better in Atraxa), does the cost reduction sound good to anyone? I would have a hard time finding a slot, probably passing though I'll purchase if cheap.
The problem with Oath of Ajani is the ETB Trigger doesn't generate an advantage, even disregarding that we're generally creature lite. The original five Oaths all have an ETB trigger that in some way generates an advantage. What that means is that if we're going for the ETB trigger, we're holding Ajani's Oath back to play it along the lines of Overrun surprise, which we don't want to do because the other ability is more useful... sort of. All our Planeswalkers costing 1 less is something I'm not sure we really need. We're generally not holding mana up for Instant speed shenanigans sans Cyclonic Rift or a Vampiric Tutor (or Co.) type effect, which is like 3 or 4 cards max. To be honest, my first thought is that I'd rather up my Nature's Lore-type or mana rock count. That being said, if word starts going around that this Oath is great, I'd make room for it because even though I personally don't see the potential off the bat does not mean that I do not think it will be a bad card. I just don't know if it's a good fit for this deck.
In other news, Tezzeret the Schemer has been spoiled, and to not my surprise, it looks to be too parasitic to be a good Superfriends fit.
To be honest, I run Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury and would likely add Sarkhan Unbroken or Xenagos, the Reveler back to the deck before going to Tezzeret. There's some cute artifact matters interactions this plus has, but generally Lotus Petal is only used in decks like storm that need speed and mana for a fast kill, which Superfriends does not generally do.
-2: Target creature gets +x/-x, where x is the number of artifacts you control.
Like Tezzeret, Master of Metal's first minus, our focus is not high enough on artifacts to properly take advantage of this. All we can do is get lucky. To be Honest, Master of Metal's small minus is better in our deck as well.
-7: An emblem makes us turn an artifact we control into a 5/5 creature at the start of combat, permanently.
Nope. We run enough token generators to not need to make our artifacts our frontline and open to Damnation. I'll be honest, if it also untapped the artifact, I'd be willing to give it a closer look.
In summary, the only Aether Revolt card I'm considering for Superfriends right now is Tezzeret, Master of Metal. The Dark Intimations has my eye as well, and who knows, there could be others or I could be wrong about one of the cards I'm currently panning.
I can see that because of the art style, but even if that's the case, this Tezzeret is one of the better start Planeswalkers. I really wish it cost five to cast is my biggest beef, which is also why I eventually decided to not try the starter Nissa, which I do think is a bit underrated. Cost is the number one prohibitor for a card.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
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~~~~~
I think Ob is a perfect comparison, and makes me rethink the card in that way. If anything I could see him replacing Ob.
Eh... I wouldn't go that far without testing. Ajani can whiff quite easily since he skips lands on the plus and costs 6 instead of 5 to cast. Also, I'm all about redundancy in abilities. Since both of their pluses are similar and good, I'd rather use both to either swamp when together or work as backup for each other. That said, if Ajani proves leagues better than Ob, I'd be willing to cut him.
Tezzeret has always been a rough fit for Superfriends because he leans heavy on artifacts. This one is actually the most flexible to date (although the Seeker really only ever needed two to get going). The fact that this Tezz digs until an artifact shows up means that we're not bending deck construction to the point of building around him to work. We have a modest suite of artifacts we want.
So that makes the plus worthwhile. Sol Ring, Sensei's Divining Top, Mana Crypt (for the rich), Rings of Brighthearth, Contagion Engine, The Chain Veil, and anything else we tech we can all dig out while growing a planeswalker. Tezz is in the latest tradition of the Planeswalker plus being a gain in card advantage wrapped around their character's flavor.
The -3 is almost useless. I could see it being useful in KO'ing an opponent that's teetering on 1-3 life, although at that point Sorin, Grim Nemesis, Venser, the Sojourner, Ral Zarek, or even Sliver Queen with adequate Sliver/other tokens should be able to do the job as well.
The ultimate... people like Insurrection. An ability that picks up artifacts instead of haste and is a permanent steal is not something to scoff. It also happens immediately off Doubling Season. Now, it's a terrible idea to confirm or dismiss a planeswalker solely on its ultimate.
UGx Superfriends or Atraxa superfriends should already be testing this. We should give also this Tezz its due diligence because there's potential because the artifact theme is not as strict as the other Tezzerets.
New Ajani spoiled, I think this is a solid planeswalker, +2 is great card advantage which is going to draw you on average probably 2 cards a turn and even if you hit lands, without this card you would be drawing those lands on your next draws so it really is a win-win type of ability so to speak, -2 is Swords to Plowshares so a decent option to have, -9 is a bonkers effect for this deck, especially the tokens version. I think this card is very playable, maybe even just for the +2...
New Ajani specifies nonland permanent.
The most analogous card in terms of function is Ob Nixilis Reignited. If you like Ob Nixilis, then this new Ajani is going to be just as a good fit.
I’m a little worried that her restrictions may be a little more convoluted than they initially seem, but the floor is land tutoring at instant speed. The ceiling... I’m not sure.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
Also, while not the main focus of the deck, some of the cards we run are worth randomly retracing from time to time.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
Animatou is fine. She works best in her own deck, but she's not a detriment to the deck. Her plus is useful if you can start shuffling your deck to get rid of dead cards (and if money isn't an issue, that's easy with fetchlands). Her small minus is excellent, and fun fact, is another way to get the Chain Veil + Teferi Temporal Archmage combo going. So, if you find room for her, go for it. I will say though I generally play her in Atraxa because there's extra space from dropping red or her own deck.
The problem with Samut + Doubling Season is that Doubling Season is a one card combo that does not need Samut to win the game on the spot. The situation you're describing with Doubling Season works with almost any other planeswalker, so why not use them instead of Samut? Samut should really go into superfriends decks that rely on their general or just in heavier creature decks instead.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
I generally prioritize mass destruction over recursion because in my experience, blowing out a board has more of an impact than recursion with a restriction on top of it. HOWEVER, if you feel you have your destruction bases covered (with Cleansing Nova, I'm specifically referring to the destroy all artifacts and enchantments part), then yes, go ahead. Even though I'm playing skeptic here, it is an excellent recursion card for the deck.
Also, since Cleansing Nova has flexibility, you may want to consider a less flexible mass destruction card in the deck as well.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
These are the ones that I'm currently looking at, and I've already started adding a few.
The one's I'm trying:
Karn's Bastion is basically any card. Having a Contagion Clasp in our lands lets us get an effect we want in our mana base, which opens up our non-lands for either another card or proliferation redundancy.
Interplanar Beacon is a lot more flexible than it looks at first glance. The life gain looks nice, but the important thing is the color filtering ability has a generic cost attached to it. The fact it's not any two color combination is a bit of a drawback, but getting colors off of Reliquary Tower seems tempting enough to me to give it a shot.
Ignite the Beacon is an instant. I'm testing it because it looks like it can help assemble a new infinite combo with Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God (will go into that will Nicol Bolas).
Ashiok, Dream Render is probably the best hate card we got in this set. Killing their search effects is powerful. And as someone who's played their fair share of Muldrotha, you can never hate on their graveyards hard enough. Being stuck on sorcery speed is a drawback, but it's leagues better than nothing. My dream is to ult Teferi, Temporal Archmage someday and use this card's minus after a Vampiric Tutor resolves on someone that doesn't know how much trouble they're in.
Nicol Bolas, the Dragon-God is going to be a lynch-pin in the future. Rather than go through all the different abilities he could use, I'm going to focus on there's already a degenerate combo with him that OTK's the entire table. If you have him out with Jace, Cunning Castaway and use Jace's -5 ability to make the non-legendary clones through Bolas instead, those clones come out as Nicol Bolas, Dragon-Gods. So if you combine these two walkers with The Chain Veil, Oath of Gideon, Pir, Imaginative Rascal, or Doubling Season you can -5 Nicol Bolas Dragon indefinitely through one turn. Then after you flood the board with an arbitrary large number of Dragon-Gods, all the ones you haven't activated can exile all opposing hands and permanents. If you have Double Season, you can follow up with his own ult. to win the game on the spot (although anyone that doesn't scoop to being hardlocked by a flood of Dragon-Gods is only kidding themselves). Even without that combo, this Bolas is already in my 99... but so is cunning Castaway.
Liliana, Dreadhorde General made the cut in my 99 when I realized that her static ability triggers off creature tokens, including her own. The rest of her abilities are things we look for in a planeswalker (defense, creature removal, mass destruction). So, she's in.
Narset, Parter of Veils has an ability that got banned from commander awhile ago, so sticking it with Azcanta's digging is something that I'm at least testing at the moment. In a more dedicated deck, she can wreck a table's hand. I'm not against looking into splashing Draw 7 cards because even without her Timetwister effects are good in a deck like ours.
Ugin, the Ineffable is something I'm testing because he's spot removal and an advantage engine. Granted his Static ability isn't good for this deck, but I want to see how the mechanics of the tokens work.
The rest in the quote I haven't mentioned aren't in my deck currently, but could be tested in the future. I'm not against them at the moment.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
Peacekeeper is probably a broader solution because while Lightmine Field and Pendrell cards don't stop people who swing with few creatures (I say that because one of my other EDH decks is Kozilek Voltron.) If you find the room though, I could see potential for the Pendrell Mists because it synergizes with Sphere of Safety.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
And to be clear, I do not think Oath of Ajani is a good fit to 5cc Superfriends as a first impression, but I'm not going to say something definite until it's been tested because it doesn't look bad either.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
The problem with Oath of Ajani is the ETB Trigger doesn't generate an advantage, even disregarding that we're generally creature lite. The original five Oaths all have an ETB trigger that in some way generates an advantage. What that means is that if we're going for the ETB trigger, we're holding Ajani's Oath back to play it along the lines of Overrun surprise, which we don't want to do because the other ability is more useful... sort of. All our Planeswalkers costing 1 less is something I'm not sure we really need. We're generally not holding mana up for Instant speed shenanigans sans Cyclonic Rift or a Vampiric Tutor (or Co.) type effect, which is like 3 or 4 cards max. To be honest, my first thought is that I'd rather up my Nature's Lore-type or mana rock count. That being said, if word starts going around that this Oath is great, I'd make room for it because even though I personally don't see the potential off the bat does not mean that I do not think it will be a bad card. I just don't know if it's a good fit for this deck.
In other news, Tezzeret the Schemer has been spoiled, and to not my surprise, it looks to be too parasitic to be a good Superfriends fit.
+1: Create a Lotus Petal token.
To be honest, I run Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury and would likely add Sarkhan Unbroken or Xenagos, the Reveler back to the deck before going to Tezzeret. There's some cute artifact matters interactions this plus has, but generally Lotus Petal is only used in decks like storm that need speed and mana for a fast kill, which Superfriends does not generally do.
-2: Target creature gets +x/-x, where x is the number of artifacts you control.
Like Tezzeret, Master of Metal's first minus, our focus is not high enough on artifacts to properly take advantage of this. All we can do is get lucky. To be Honest, Master of Metal's small minus is better in our deck as well.
-7: An emblem makes us turn an artifact we control into a 5/5 creature at the start of combat, permanently.
Nope. We run enough token generators to not need to make our artifacts our frontline and open to Damnation. I'll be honest, if it also untapped the artifact, I'd be willing to give it a closer look.
In summary, the only Aether Revolt card I'm considering for Superfriends right now is Tezzeret, Master of Metal. The Dark Intimations has my eye as well, and who knows, there could be others or I could be wrong about one of the cards I'm currently panning.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
I can see that because of the art style, but even if that's the case, this Tezzeret is one of the better start Planeswalkers. I really wish it cost five to cast is my biggest beef, which is also why I eventually decided to not try the starter Nissa, which I do think is a bit underrated. Cost is the number one prohibitor for a card.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
Eh... I wouldn't go that far without testing. Ajani can whiff quite easily since he skips lands on the plus and costs 6 instead of 5 to cast. Also, I'm all about redundancy in abilities. Since both of their pluses are similar and good, I'd rather use both to either swamp when together or work as backup for each other. That said, if Ajani proves leagues better than Ob, I'd be willing to cut him.
Tezzeret has always been a rough fit for Superfriends because he leans heavy on artifacts. This one is actually the most flexible to date (although the Seeker really only ever needed two to get going). The fact that this Tezz digs until an artifact shows up means that we're not bending deck construction to the point of building around him to work. We have a modest suite of artifacts we want.
So that makes the plus worthwhile. Sol Ring, Sensei's Divining Top, Mana Crypt (for the rich), Rings of Brighthearth, Contagion Engine, The Chain Veil, and anything else we tech we can all dig out while growing a planeswalker. Tezz is in the latest tradition of the Planeswalker plus being a gain in card advantage wrapped around their character's flavor.
The -3 is almost useless. I could see it being useful in KO'ing an opponent that's teetering on 1-3 life, although at that point Sorin, Grim Nemesis, Venser, the Sojourner, Ral Zarek, or even Sliver Queen with adequate Sliver/other tokens should be able to do the job as well.
The ultimate... people like Insurrection. An ability that picks up artifacts instead of haste and is a permanent steal is not something to scoff. It also happens immediately off Doubling Season. Now, it's a terrible idea to confirm or dismiss a planeswalker solely on its ultimate.
UGx Superfriends or Atraxa superfriends should already be testing this. We should give also this Tezz its due diligence because there's potential because the artifact theme is not as strict as the other Tezzerets.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
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New Ajani specifies nonland permanent.
The most analogous card in terms of function is Ob Nixilis Reignited. If you like Ob Nixilis, then this new Ajani is going to be just as a good fit.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~