A Look at Dominaria United
This week we got to take a look at Dominaria United. There are lots of interesting cards, so let’s dive right in!
Karn, Living Legacy
Karn Living Legacy is a big miss. Its abilities require it to sit in play quite awhile. Its +1 will give you an artifact that produces colorless, which can only be used to cast artifact spells, but it can also be used to do things like pay for activated abilities or even something like a Mana Leak.
Obviously, this design was so that the artifacts can be used to use the card’s -1 ability to dig deep for something else.
Karn’s ultimate is pretty powerful. Keep in mind that in most cases to get to that ultimate you’ll have at least three Powerstone tokens in play, so you’ll be able to pick things off. I find it difficult to find a shell for Karn in competitive constructed environments, as it’s too slow to get going.
Ajani, Sleeper Agent
This is another tough-to-evaluate planeswalker because its flexibility in cost can be solid, but the context is everything for this card. I could see a deck with a high creature count, similar to a Collected Company deck, utilizing this card because it’s quite good at playing from ahead.
Its ultimate is game over against a pure control deck, but unfortunately those kinds of decks don’t really exist. It’s going to be hard to play a 20-turn game when most decks will have an over-the-top finisher when they establish control, which is similar to a Hullbreaker Horror or Shark Typhoon.
Ajani is also a miss, but I could see it finding a home in aggressive Selesnya Aggro decks that rarely end up competitive in Standard formats.
Liliana of the Veil
The speculation was true! Many people guessed this would be the Liliana planeswalker we got, and while I love to see it reprinted, I think a lot of people are giving wildly polarized opinions on the card. I’m going to be neutral.
I think Liliana of the Veil is okay but not broken. It’s likely not a format staple. Basically, Liliana has always been good against certain kinds of decks, but it’s rarely been just a good card in your deck. A deck like Modern Jund was the perfect home for it, as that deck played tons of one-mana hand disruption and would play a low-resource battle while being disruptive. Without Thoughtseize, I’m less impressed with Liliana in every black deck. It’s more difficult to play a low-resource game without having Inquisition and Thoughtseize to back it up.
Liliana isn’t necessarily bad against aggro, but it’s not great either because it’s inefficient. Liliana also struggles against decks with recurring threats. Tenacious Underdog will play well both with and against Liliana. How will that tandem shake out? We’ll have to see.
Now if there are control decks that play expensive creatures, like a Hinata deck from last season, Liliana would be quite the all-star. Liliana absolutely punishes expensive creatures that provide no immediate value.
Many people won’t accept a middling response on a polarizing card like Liliana, but if you’re going to force me to choose good or bad, I’m going to lean toward good. This is only because I think it will seem extremely good when the format lines up with it, but only okay when it doesn’t. I don’t think you can ever say it’s bad, though. It’s just a card that requires specific contexts to succeed, and when it does, it’s one of the most powerful cards you can play.
Cut Down
This is no fatal push, but it’s a great Disfigure. Cut Down will see tons of play and be a pillar removal spell of the format. Cards like this tend to shape the format more than they dominate. You’ll be seeing more 3/3s than normal because of it, and a card like Reckless Stormseeker that may have been fantastic will now have a lot of strikes against it.
Cut Down is also a huge boon to Liliana of the Veil, as it’s a cheap way to protect it or make sure you’re able to cast it on a clean battlefield. I love Cut Down and expect to see a lot of it.
Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
This is a commander card disguised to look playable in other formats, but it’s not. It’s a normal-rate creature with normal abilities. Yes, it can be combined with something like Liliana’s Mastery to combo off, and while that’s cool in some kind of black devotion deck, it’s likely not a competitive combo deck in a format like Pioneer.
Rona’s Vortex
The best Unsummon ever? Yes. I don’t care you can’t save your own creatures with this, its job is to protect you and your planeswalkers, and it’s incredibly good at doing just that. The flexibility this card provides is amazing, and keep in mind this will handedly deal with threats that come back from the graveyard, as well. I expect this card to see play in every deck that can reliably include it in some numbers in Standard, and it may see some additional play in low numbers in a format like Pioneer.
Pilfer
This is a card that will be played sometimes and is unlikely to be very good. I want to say that I’m proud this card was finally printed in a simple way. Usually, there’s random extra text like Transgress the Mind and Check for Traps. As long as Duress is still in Standard, which is hopefully forever, this kind of card will only see play in niche situations and almost exclusively out of sideboards in small numbers.
The World Spell
This is Tooth and Nail on an enchantment. The World Spell is the new take on Sagas with the read ahead mechanic where you’re able to choose to open the book and start on any chapter. I love this evolution of Sagas, but The World Spell is probably more for Commander or formats with cards like Cloudpost where your lands can produce tons of mana because the card wants you to play a bunch of expensive cards to take advantage.
This card could be quite powerful in a world where it’s midrange against midrange and no one is playing blue to interact with it while it’s on the stack. As is, I’m not too high on the card, but I’d love a format where it’s actually playable.
Archangel of Wrath
I love this card. This card will punish aggressive decks that can’t interact with it favorably, and even if they do, this card’s lifelink will give you immediate life gain to pad that life total.
This is literally my favorite card design in many years. It’s beatable, it’s fun to build with, and it has optionality in game. This card is strong in a way that doesn’t snowball. It gives incremental advantages that when added up with additional copies or other cards that provide favorable exchanges will make decisions matter and make games of Magic fun.
Unfortunately, this card wouldn’t have been much but a sideboard option in most of the recent Standard formats because its power level is fairly tame. It requires a format that affords small gains in exchanges rather than one where everything is a card engine.
I won’t write this creature off yet since it has contexts in which it will be strong, but my best guess is we don’t see too much of it because for four, five, or six mana, you can generally find something more powerful that will snowball.
Last but not least for this week:
Squee, Dubious Monarch
This is actually a bit weird to evaluate because it feels like a more tame version of previous Goblin Rabblemaster variants when it’s in play. It has haste, so it hits harder the turn it’s cast, but it doesn’t snowball as fast as Legion Warboss or Goblin Rabblemaster. However, it does come back from the graveyard and gives red decks a last threat that needs to be managed.
It’s Legendary, so playing four copies comes with a cost. Typically, this is the type of card you’d want to play four of because it doesn’t scale super well later in the game. You really want to draw it early for it to start snowballing.
Squee is for sure going to see play in Standard and potentially other formats. It’s the best version of Rabblemaster at punishing a planeswalker the turn its cast, and like Tenacious Underdog, it will play well both with and against Liliana.
That’s it for this week! I’ll be back next week to look at more previews.
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