Alesha, Who Smiles at Death

[serracollector]

2R  3/2 first strike legendary human warrior When this attacks you may pay two mana (either white or black or one of each) return target creature with power two or less from your grave to play tapped and attacking.                                             Sorry for bad wording and no pic but im on a dinosaur phone. Anyways this is good for humans no? i think so. will edit later w pic if someone dont beat me to it. I love her already

[Saya]

at RW-Prophetic probably?Putting Flamespeaker back with haste sounds nice.

[serracollector]

This also plays very nicely with thalia and new monastary mentor and trinket mage and snapcaster and even salvagers or the red tutor guy or stoneforge. I think it has lots of applications.

[tito del monte]

Certainly a really cool and flavourful card that can provide some mid- to late-game card advantage in for example a humans shell or Mardu or RW hatebears style deck.

Is she strong enough to warrant building around more specifically? I dunno.... with a discard outlet, so she can bring back relative fatties (ie 2-power creatures with strong ETB effects like Hermit Druid or Hornet Queen or similar). Or do you run stuff that sacrifices/dies easily: Qasali Pridemage in some kind of Naya build. Or something like (off the top of my head) Mogg War Marshall for value.

Definitely a cool card, though whether she'll do anything in Vintage is pretty questionable. On a flavour side note, I'm really pleased to see the effort over the last couple of blocks that WOTC have made to include more female characters. Long overdue.

[StanleyAugust]

Flavor wise I would have liked her to have haste instead of first strike. Other than that, very interesting card. Compares to Propthetic Flamespeaker.

[wiley]

If it had haste instead of first strike I don't think it would ever be played in eternal formats.  As is it comes out on top against golem and delver, as well as creating redundancy for already played value creatures.  3 mana for 5 damage and blowing up an artifact/enchantment every turn with pridemage is actually pretty good.  The only real issue are the colors, but it seems like it is already in the normal Humans colors.

I can see this being played by Humans and UWr bomberman.

[fsecco]

I think you need a sacrifice outlet to let this "mini-Sun Titan" work the best. Having him only as a way to get back dead creatures can be nice, but I don't think that makes the cut. If you play him you probably need something to abuse him by putting things on the graveyard. What? I dunno.

[wiley]

I really don't think you do.  As long as you are only playing 1-2 of her she isn't likely to be seen before you have either lost some creatures to combat/discard/counters/kill spells or have used creatures with their own sac outlet like pridemage or hexmage.

Remember she is a moat against a large portion of played creatures even if she does enter play before her ability is relevant.

The only engine for abuse that I can see is lilliana of the veil, anything else I can think of is too cute to be competitive.

[enderfall]

I really like what he/she brings to the table. It's not a blunt force bear along the likes of Spirit of the Labyrinth and he/she actually adds diversity to the Humans deck. Even as a 3/2 first strike, Alesha isn't terrible, and bringing back just one creature (died through combat damage or a Bolt, etc.) over the course of a game should swing things fairly quickly.

I guess the question boils down to this: Would you rather have Alesha or Exava? They seem to compete in the same space; one has haste to fight planeswalkers, the other is a "mini-Sun Titan". It would seem difficult to play both in the same deck...

[Guli]

Oath of Ghouls on a Human. Interesting. Legendary first strike means tricks and some protection with Karakas.

For those who haven't tried yet, I suggest to try out Darkblast + Sense's Top. You can also add a Life from the loam if you like bringing back lands. Top activations trigger darkblast you dredge, then you put Top on topdeck and get back darkblast. I used this to a) remove creatures (my own or my opponents)  b) fill your grave for more Oath of Ghouls targets. I had 'cast time walk for enough turns until you win' combo with Eternal/Blast and Ghouls that randomly popped up once in a while (blast Eternal to Oath it back and regrowth walk). This was by no means a goal, just a convenient bonus from the already strong cards being used.

Alesha requires mana but does not care about having more creatures in the grave (in short does not need a trigger). Also, being Human makes it reliable against counter magic, and being a karakas target it enjoys some cover. I like it. Should be tested in 5C Humans.

I have 3 Humans that I want to test from the new set, none of them are clear to me right now. This is exciting to be honest. The darkblast and top plan is also an engine that will trigger the monk generator. And the Eternal Witness plan is good with Soulfire/Time Walk. I am surprised about the degree in which these new prints are relevant for my rather unorthodox and unique designs.

I am not sure if Darkblast will beat Monastery Mentor. But it could help cleaning up tokens afterwards if you can snipe the Mentor, this while you fill grave for things like Alesha and Eternal Witness. Oh and by the way, Alesha requires less mana to make Eternal/Darkblast/Walk work compared to Oath of ghouls. Oath of ghouls is a trigger, but it takes the card back to your hand. It forces you to cast Eternal Witness & Walk & Darkblast. This is 6 mana. With Alesha it costs 5. Soulfire is still 6. Again, this s not a 'combo' in my eyes, more like an inevitable synergy that can not be ignored by your opponent. It is an additional 'clock'. So don't bring comments like 'that is a 4 card combo'.

I do have a bad feeling about this card being 3 mana. It might never get a chance to go online against MUD or Oath. I would have been all over this card if it would be 1R. We need to see if it is still strong enough at 2R.

[fsecco]

I'm still not sure. I mean, Alesha has to attack to activate her ability, which in most cases is fine. The problem is that whatever she brings back is also attacking. The chances that it survives combat too is slim in a lot of cases...

[Guli]

I'm still not sure. I mean, Alesha has to attack to activate her ability, which in most cases is fine. The problem is that whatever she brings back is also attacking. The chances that it survives combat too is slim in a lot of cases...

In the case of resurrecting time walk , you actually want Eternal (or any other utility bear with an etb ability) in the graveyard. You can reanimate it again later.

[tito del monte]

I'm still not sure. I mean, Alesha has to attack to activate her ability, which in most cases is fine. The problem is that whatever she brings back is also attacking. The chances that it survives combat too is slim in a lot of cases...

Might be a chance to try out High Priest of Penance? Admittedly cute....

[fsecco]

From my experience with Humans, it's not a good combo deck. It's incremental prison and beats. For this to work with Witness you need a very specific setting, almost a 3 card combo. You could build a 4 Imperial Recruiter version, but to me it seems way too slow.

That said, this will probably be an awesome Commander.

[Guli]

From my experience with Humans, it's not a good combo deck. It's incremental prison and beats. For this to work with Witness you need a very specific setting, almost a 3 card combo. You could build a 4 Imperial Recruiter version, but to me it seems way too slow.

That said, this will probably be an awesome Commander.

Again, this s not a 'combo' in my eyes, more like an inevitable synergy that can not be ignored by your opponent. It is an additional 'clock'. So don't bring comments like 'that is a 4 card combo'.

And Humans is a value deck that happens to use Thalia to keep the opponent in check. Brian's approach is actually Human Storm, which is a combo deck very similar to TPS. He dismisses Thalia and tries to be more broken than the opponent with Magus of the Future. My 4C or 5C version is about generating value and looks more like landstill when we analyze the strategic goals of the deck.

So I don't know what you guys mean when you use 'Humans' or 'Human Caverns'. But what I just wrote above, is what it is. Unless there is another approach out there that I am unfamiliar with.

[vaughnbros]

The heavy white/black comittment to this card's ability every turn seems like it's biggest hurdle.  It also still gets 1 for 1'ed by removal.  That being said the first strike P/T and effect all seem powerful enough for it to see some fringe play in humans and possibly bomberman.

[xouman]

Is there a possibility yo play the ability after declaring blockers, but before doing damage? If so, it's dar better.

As it is now, it looks nice with snapcaster,trinket or auriok. So a humanized version of bomberman feels a decent place. But i don't expect it to be played...

[enderfall]

Is there a possibility yo play the ability after declaring blockers, but before doing damage? If so, it's dar better.

As it is now, it looks nice with snapcaster,trinket or auriok. So a humanized version of bomberman feels a decent place. But i don't expect it to be played...

No. It's a "When" ability, so the trigger goes on the stack as you declare Alesa an attacker. Only while the ability is on the stack can you activate it.