MaximumCDawg
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« Reply #8 on: September 05, 2012, 11:00:12 am » |
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This is a Lux Cannon.
This card is sort of like the anti-Lily 3.0. Lily 3.0 appeared rather weak on her face, but the more you think about it, the more different things she does and the more hooks she has to be pulled into a winning 75 some day (landtutoring, shuffle effect, removal, win con, etc). Vraska is totally the other way around. She is powerful on her face, but has the depth of a kiddie pool.
On entering play, she's most of a Maelstrom Pulse. The only choice you have is whether you want to choose what gets destroyed (her - ability) or whether you want to give that choice to the opponent (her + ability). If you give your opponent the choice twice in a row, then congratulations, you got some dudes on the third turn and can swing with them for the win on the fourth turn.
How is this going to play out? I think this is the best case scenario: enemy has a single large threat that you need to deal with. Mama Gorgon emerges and turns it to stone. Then, likely whatever threat they play next has summoning sickness, allowing her to tick up using her other ability. The opponent now has basically no choice but to attack her to finish her off (unless they can kill you right there) because otherwise she'll tick up and blow up the threat again. In these situations, Viskra is an easy two-for-one. On the flip side, the worst situation for Viskra is where you have a weenie token swarm coming at you. She can either nail one, which isn't very helpful, or she can duck and cover herself, and the swarm will ignore her for two turns while they continue to beat your face in. In between, she may or may not end up being 2 for 1 depending on how diverse the opponent's threats are.
I think that's kind of it. The ultimate is nice and all, but like all planeswalker ults, if you get there you're firmly in the driver seat anyway. Most of the time Viskra will either be a Malestrom Pulse, maybe two Pulses, and rarely more. Sometimes, though, the effect will be delayed until the opponent feels it necessary to deal with her. Is this sort of effect vintage playable?
Questionable. We already have it in Lux Cannon. Every fourth turn, each of these cards can blow something up in perpetuity. Viskra is obviously better than Cannon in the sense that she can shoot immediately upon entering the battlefield, and you can sac her to fire on her third turn instead of keeping her around. Plus, if she does her job, she is a win con. But, she also has a harder to cast mana cost.
Still, she is repeatable removal that does win the game if stabilized; decks could run her as their only win con. But, the same is true of Jace. Heck, the same is probably true of Ajani Vengant! So, call me a doubter on this one.
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