Is Ob Nixilis, the Adversary Broken?

Hello everyone! I already covered Elspeth Resplendent and how good she is now that she’s escaped Theros’s underworld! However, Elspeth isn’t the only planeswalker to re-emerge in New Capenna! Ob Nixilis, the Adversary has been trying to take over the underground of New Capenna and he’s going to use any means possible to do so.

How Good Is Elspeth Resplendent?

Not only is it exciting to get multiple characters coming back to continue their story line, Ob Nixilis in particular has generated a lot of buzz as people fear that it is broken in half. Let’s take a look.

To start off, a 3 mana planeswalker with 3 loyatly, similar to Elspeth, is the going rate nowadays. If your planeswalker has as at least the same loyalty to it’s CMV (converted mana value), you’re generally in good shape. Before we can even get to the abilities though, we have to talk about it’s Casualty X ability.

Casualty is a new keyword from Streets of New Capenna that allows you to sacrifice a creature, and when you do, you get to copy a spell. Some Casualty cards just require a creature to be sacrificed where some demand a minimum amount of power, but all of them follow the same basic formula. Generally, sacrificing one card for another isn’t broken as it’s a one to one exchange, however, if the card you’re getting out of the deal is better than the one sacrificed, clearly you’re coming out ahead. What makes Ob Nixilis so scary is that as long as you sacrifice any creature with power, you’re getting a second Planeswalker out the deal.

As many players know, planeswalkers can get out of hand very quickly if they aren’t killed as they can keep being ticked up, making them harder and harder to kill and creeping towards an ultimate. For Ob Nixilis, you can do this twice and on turn 3 which can potentially make this one of the most snowballing planeswalkers ever. However, a planeswalker is of course only as good as it’s abilities.

Ob Nixilis’s +1 is an innocuous, but very powerful attrition ability. The opponent will have to choose between losing 2 life and discarding a card, and with either option, it can add up fast. The main worry with a +1 like this is that they can just take 2 damage and kill your planeswalker and you didn’t gain too much from the planeswalker, but there’s two things to consider. One, then Ob Nixilis functioned as a 3 mana deal 2 damage and gain 4 life or the opponent discards a card and taps X mana. Either way, you should be coming out ahead in that resource exchange. The second thing to consider is how punishing this ability is when you get your Ob Nixilis copy into the mix! On turn 3 the opponent has to face down two planeswalkers and then have to discard a card and lose two life, discard two cards, or lose 4 life! That is tremendous pressure. We can’t forget that Ob Nixilis has the final line of text where you can gain 2 life if you control a Demon or Devil. Initially it didn’t make sense to see life gain on a Rakdos card, but thematically I guess the Demon or Devil is eating up the opponent’s life so who am I to judge?

Speaking of Demon or Devil, Ob Nixilis’s second ability is also pretty understated, yet powerful. Creating a 1/1 Devil token that deals 1 damage on death is a common token in Red and can be surprisingly annoying despite the low stats. It can block really well and generally trade up or even threaten a double kill against decks with a lot of 1 toughness creatures. Most importantly, this Devil can help protect Ob Nixilis making it even more challenging to kill.

Finally, Ob Nixilis has a very solid ultimate ability where a player can lose 7 life and draw 7 cards, reminiscent of the famous Griselbrand activated ability. While you would typically want to target yourself with this ability as exchanging life for cards has historically been an obscenely powerful ability, this can also make a great finishing move by dealing 7 damage to the opponent as well!

So what deck would this slot into? There are plenty of shells, but since the Casualty ability wants you to sacrifice creatures, you can pretty easily build your deck around that!

Verdict

Ob Nixilis is the complete package. Cheap, powerful +1, minus ability the defends itself, game winning ultimate, and if you sacrifice a creature you can do all this twice! I expect Ob Nixilis to make a huge splash in Standard, this is likely the best card coming out of Streets of New Capenna, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being one of the best cards in Standard.

So is Ob Nixilis broken? I’d say so! If you agree or disagree, feel free to join our Discord community, discuss the new spoilers, and more.