Hello everyone!
So we’ve been able to review Lukka, Bound to Ruin, and Nahiri, the Unforgiving as compleated walkers, and Kaya, Intangible Slayer and The Eternal Wanderer as one of our heroes, but we have yet another phyrexian to analyze – Vraska, Betrayal’s Sting!
So we have another six mana planeswalker to break down, but of course like the others, we have to analyze this in the context of the Compleated form as well! In that vein, we have a 5 mana planeswalker that starts at four loyalty or a six mana planeswalker that starts at six loyalty, both perfectly acceptable cost to loyalty ratios.
The “zero” is just a +1 in a trench coat as it lets you draw a card at the cost of a life, but you get to proliferate on top of it! A draw a card, lose a life +1 for Black planeswalkers is very typical, but since you get to proliferate as well, this is strictly better if you can make good use of it. Even if you can’t, just drawing a card on a plus ability is extremely powerful.
The -2 is solid protection for Vraska as turning their best creature into a Treasure isn’t as good as killing it outright, but ridding that creature of any death triggers is certainly nice.
Finally, we have an ultimate that doesn’t kill the opponent, but gets them real close! You can put them to nine poison counters, so if you have one more instance of poison or proliferate, that’ll end the game.
Seems like we have a pretty solid walker, but what’s the final verdict?
VERDICT
It may not seem like it, but this seems extremely strong to me. We haven’t had a classic Black planeswalker that kills creatures and draws a cards in awhile, and being able to do this for five or six mana, depending on how many activations you want or how fast you want to ultimate is really good utility. Furthermore, this is a really strong followup to a Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, whether it’s yours or the opponent’s. Putting cards into context is important, and since the main two abilities are quite powerful, and if the Proliferate can mean anything at all, this will be even better than it looks. Furthermore, as mentioned before, while turning something into a Treasure isn’t ideal as you’re giving the opponent a resource, denying a death trigger is quite powerful depending on the matchup. Overall, this seems like a solid planeswalker that has great abilities and should see a lot of play. Furthermore, this combos with Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider as a cute OTK in older formats as well, so for you Emergent Ultimatum enjoyers, this is another cool tool for that deck as well!
Thank you for reading! Agree or disagree? Come join our Discord community, discuss the new spoilers, and more.
