Is Nahiri, the Unforgiving Good Enough For Standard Play?

Hello everyone!

So we’ve been able to review Lukka, Bound to Ruin as a Compleated Planeswalker and Kaya, Intangible Slayer as one of our heroes, but we have yet another compleated planeswalker to analyze – Nahiri, the Unforgiving!

Like the other compleated walkers, we have to analyze Nahiri through the lens of both a three mana three loyalty planeswalker and a four mana five loyalty walker!

So the first +1 is extremely weird, forcing a creature to attack is a new one for a planeswalker, but if you have a good block, this is kind of like removal!

The second +1 is a very simple rummage, just like Nahiri, the Harbinger could do, just a little bit smaller.

Finally, Nahiri doesn’t have an ultimate, but instead you get a graveyard Sneak Attack of sorts for 0 where you can exile something, and get the hasty token for a turn.

So this is definitely one of the weirdest walkers I’ve seen in awhile, but lets talk about the positives. Nahiri is going to be a real pain to kill. Whether you’re going up to four loyalty on turn three or six loyalty on turn four, that’s a lot to attack down naturally so you’re likely to get multiple turns with Nahiri. The issue I have with Nahiri is that’s where the positives presumably end.

First off, Nahiri has literally no means to defend itself. Not even something that could tangentially defend as none of the abilities work defensively. Second, the abilities are just very weak overall. Forcing an attack is only good if you can capitalize on that, looting can be decent, but the 0 seems hard to set up and pretty antithetical to what a Boros deck is likely to be doing.

Where does that leave us?

VERDICT

Unfortunately for Nahiri, I’m really not feeling it. The abilities don’t form a cohesive whole beyond the second +1 and the zero, and maybe this would be acceptable in some sort of Invoke Justice deck, but looting was never really an issue for the deck. Furthermore, this contests the extremely powerful three and four drops in Boros and I can’t see how this could possibly compete in the same league as Fable of the Mirror-Breaker or The Wandering Emperor. The only redeeming quality about Nahiri is the zero, so maybe you could get something going with that, but that’s a lot of hoops to jump through. I like cards that are strong by themselves and in concert with others, not ones that are entirely reliant on other cards to be even remotely playable.

Thank you for reading! Agree or disagree? Come join our Discord community, discuss the new spoilers, and more.