The only thing about the story that didn't click quite right for me was Nahiri's sudden mood swing. It is understandable that she was angry that Sorin broke his vow and then once confronted about it, rather than being apologetic, he was quite the ass, but that alone isn't really enough to make a good hearted person turn on a friend the way she did. When Nahiri put on her display of strength I don't think her intent was to actually harm Sorin but rather to make it clear she was willing to force him to keep his end of the bargain if it came down to it. Still, how quickly she resorted to trying to strong arm him definitely seemed like a bit too much of a mood whiplash for an inherently good hearted individual specifically when dealing with one they consider their friend and mentor.
I think things really went south when Avacyn decided to jump in and legitimately tried to kill Nahiri. My guess is Sorin is going to make the mistake of escalating things further by taking care of Nahiri in some manner, most likely by imprisoning her in the Helvault since the setting of their battle seems too much of a coincidence for it not to play into the story at this point. It also solves the problem of why Nahiri vanishes for so long and is still alive despite being a mortal now. It also provides her with the sort of motivation required for a good person to truly twist into an agent of vengeance. If she was trapped in the Helvault due to Sorin, while in her absence her home plane was all but completely destroyed by the Eldrazi, that is reason enough to truly go berserk. Nothing like being locked in a prison with a load of demon lords for a thousand years while your home world is utterly laid to waste to turn a good girl into a mean *****.
This is an interesting removal card. It's usefulness varies greatly depending on your match up and the deck you are running it in. In an aggro build where you are trying to kill your opponent quickly and need what little removal you run to be extremely mana efficient and versatile this is a pretty great card, particularly if you get matched up against a token deck or a deck with dangerous recursive creatures. On the other hand if you are running a slower deck your opponent is quite likely to get a card draw out of it which is much less attractive. It's also considerably worse against aggro builds that don't play tokens since you are going to end up killing little 2cc critters and giving them more ammo when they empty their hand on round 4 or 5. This really is a cool little removal spell. I imagine it will find a home in a sideboard somewhere although sorcery speed hurts it considerably.
The -2 is very very good. While some decks won't care about it too much exiling is a very important key word not only because of the last set but the new set also has ways to interact with the graveyard. Even if it is played as spot removal it can exile a card and eat an attack. It should always at least be a 1 for 1 or better.
The tapped targeting clause on her second ability is a very serious draw back. It means in order to guarantee a 1 for 1 or better as creature or artifact removal you have to wait for your opponent to already tap and use these things against you before you cast her. That is a massive drawback compared to a card like Ob Nixillis Reignited where the moment he comes down he can destroy any normally target-able creature. You don't have to wait for your opponent to beat your face in with that dragon before you are able kill it with him. You can play Ob Nixillis proactively rather than reactively. You really want to be able to kill a creature right off the bat when Nahiri drops since she is taking the place of your big bad 4 drop critter. Your opponent will very likely have a serious creature advantage the turn after you cast her unless she takes out his biggest creature that same round she lands. Her tapped targeting clause will often make this impossible.
She seems pretty good. Not an auto-include in WR decks, but if at the very worst she's exiling a decent slew of permanents, she'll se some degree of play in Standard IMO.
Her +2 is alright-ish, and to me it seems like it was something else in development that kinda broke something out and they decided to swap it for something "safer". Its playability will rely on Madness, but honestly I'm not too hot about it. Looting effects, however, are the perfect complement to Nahiri's main use: pressure. The real gem here is that the ability is a +2, and that's awesome.
Her -2 is pretty good. "But it only exiles tapped creatures!", you might say, and yeah, that's kind of a bummer. But she's still the 4-mana Planeswalker that answers the most permanents. Her minus effect is like half of Karn Liberated's effect, with the drawbacks being not hitting lands, untapped creatures and Planeswalkers, but that's still pretty good, because Karn is pretty good! But her minus ability is awesome by the sheer pressure it puts into your opponent. Think about it for a sec: Once you drop her, she's a 6 loyalty Planeswalker threatening into a 8 mana Ultimate next turn that will kill anything that swings at her and doesn't drops her at below 1 Loyalty. Once she hits the table, she'll pressure your opponent into action, and then she will punish him for it. That's why I think Nahiri is pretty good. She's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of girl.
Her -8 is a massive threat. Honestly, one of the most threatening Ultimates I've ever seen. Not because it's extremely powerful - it's actually pretty tame as far as Ultimates goes, but as mentioned before because she is both very fast to get into Ultimate range and punishes your opponent when he tries to retaliate. Shame it's kind of a massive nonbo with her +2 ability. Would love to see her fetch from Grave as well. Now that would make her a powerhouse.
Doubt she'll make a splash in Modern or, heck, maybe she ends up without a deck and fails even in Standard. But I personally think she's great, and if we ever get a Madness or Delirium deck that has some massive beefy creature/artifact finisher for her Ultimate I'm confident she'll see play.
The biggest problem I think she will have is that she will have trouble protecting herself. More often than not the only way she can target and remove a creature is after the thing has gotten to take a swing at her and if they manage to damage her badly she won't have the counters left to get rid of them. Remember you just spent your 4 drop slot on bringing her to the field so your opponent is more likely than not going to have a pretty serious creature advantage over you at this point. You are quite likely going to be forced into blocking unfavorably for at least one round to keep her healthy.
I think the best play with her will be waiting to play her until you see a tapped creature you want to kill and then using her removal ability immediately. The problem with this is it leaves her with just 2 counters which puts her into shock range or just within the killing range of even a small unblocked creature. It also means you will likely have to play her reactively rather than proactively a lot of the time. I think she is a neat planeswalker, but I do see some potential issues with playing her in more aggressive builds. I think she belongs in a more defensive deck that utilizes a lot of tapping lock down.
I'm truly not sure what to make of this one. Her first ability is seriously weak for a 4 manna planeswalker. Even Tibalt's looting ability is stronger, but on the bright side she +2s with it. Her second ability isn't bad at all although the tapped targeting clause really hurts it since she can often only use it on creatures that have already taken a swing at her. Her ultimate is strongish, but you don't get to keep the creature. Is trading a fully powered up 4cc walker really worth getting to summon a big fatty with haste for a single round?
For her ultimate to really pay off it basically requires that you are already running a deck that has tricks for getting crazy big critters into play because if she just pulls your 4cc or 5cc curve topper onto the field for a single turn that's really not going to be worth all the crazy work it took to ultimate with her. Outside of Sneak Attack builds, are there Boris decks that are normally designed for this sort of thing?
People are underestimating this card. You can't just dump it into some aggro white deck and expect it to do much work, but this card is extremely powerful in a deck built with delirium in mind.
All you people out there who are hyped about this card, I suggest you proxy it for a bit before deciding to buy or not. I immediately fell in love with this card when I saw it, but after mulling it over for a bit, I realized it's recursion ability is both extremely expensive, tricky to execute and narrow in scope. After testing it a bit in an aggro zombie build I realized this card wasn't even close to being as good as classic zombie cards like gravecrawler and bloodghast for aggro applications. Bloodghast and Gravecrawler both can return directly from the graveyard rather than just when they get killed. Bloodghast does it for zero mana and gravecrawler does it for one black compared to the BBB it costs to do it with Relentless Dead. It also forces you to leave one black mana open at the end of your turn if you want to be able to make sure you can keep it from dying permanently from removal.
Since it's recursion only works upon death you are pretty much forced to run this in an aristocrats style deck with consistent and very cheap sacrifice outlets otherwise it will be your opponent that always gets to decide when you can use it's abilities. On top of this you need to run it along side a lot of other value zombies that can't bring themselves back from the dead for it's main ability to be useful. This card also needs lots of mana to shine so you have to run it in a mid-range grindy sort of deck to really get value out of it.
My suggestion is that before pulling the trigger and buying this card you try running it in a few different builds. This is a good card but it's not nearly as amazing or versatile as I first thought. Proxying with it a bit was a real eye opener. This card only really shines in a very specific kind of deck rather than just any old zombie build. In standard it will definitely see play along side cards like Nantuko Husk, Fleshbag Marauder, shambling goblin and Kalitas, but I'm not sure those decks will be top tier. The current aristocrats decks don't have that many zombies in them and this guy needs to have other zombies to interact with in order to shine. We will have to wait and see if we get enough great zombies to make a top tier zombie tribal. If those cards don't materialize then Relentless Dead isn't going to have enough partners to tango with.
Edit: Looks like I'm an imbecile. Bloodghast is a vampire. My bad.
Mm.. 1 second, I was impressed with the card. Next second, I was like 'this is a demanding card' in Standard.
Menace : One of the worst mechanics ever.
1st ability : BBB commitment seems heavy B
2nd ability : Powerful!
My thoughts:
1) Not for aggro cos no way I am leaving mana open for his 2 abilities.
2) Maybe for control cos its persistent but why will I use a 2/2 wincon and why will I use his 2nd ability for another better zombie when I can just cast that zombie?
3) Yes for midrange cos its persistent and has grinding value.
4) Maybe for combo / synergy cos 2nd ability but it needs another to tango.. re-casting is BBB ... demanding.
Overall, Yes I was hyped for this card. No I do not think its worth it unless it finds a tango partner. Although maybe a 3P will break it..?
I was thinking pretty much this exact same thing. At first glance I was blown away by this card and then I started to sit down and really think about it and the shear amount of mana this cards eats is it's downside. Individually the costs don't seem that high, but once you realize you are paying BBB to recurse him a single time and you must always leave B mana open at the end of every turn to keep him from dying permanently you start to see that he can't fit into a proper aggro deck. Bloodghast just completely outclasses him in this regard since it recurses for free and it can do so directly from the graveyard rather than only when it dies. I found Gravecrawler similarly superior for aggro zombie builds for similiar reasons.
Then I decided to try it as a proxy in my mid-range mardu aristocrats zombie deck since I figured he would shine in a more grindy deck where I could control when and how he died. This also did not work out nearly as well as I thought it would. I found the card generally needs way too much mana to use it's recursion as sacrifice fuel. For instance pumping Kalitas and recasting the restless dead just once eats 6 mana, four of it black. Once again I found the Gravecrawler and Bloodghast to generally work better in this roll since it costs either one black or zero mana to bring them back rather than the BBB required for Restless Dead. In it's defense the Restless dead has a better body than either of these zombies. It's second ability was also very useful on those occasions where I reached the late game with it still on the field and could afford to bring back some of the important zombies that lacked the ability to resurrect themselves. The one place it really shined was with sultai emissary and nantuko husk since each recursion cost 5 mana and netted me three creatures one of which was a fresh manifest. That wasn't bad at all, but still not as good in a mana pinch as gravecrawler where you can sac and resurrect it for a single black mana per iteration. All in all the experience taught me that this is not really an aggro card and that it only really shines in some niche mid-range zombie builds. You need to run it in a deck which is designed for the grindy long game with both a lot of cheap zombies and a reliable sacrifice outlet.
This is a beautiful card. Never underestimate cards that allow you to do things for zero mana at instant speed. I remember when nantuko husk first came out nobody seemed to think it was even playable. The moment I saw that card I liked it and the same is true of this one. The alternative costs on cards like these may seem really steep on paper, but in reality they are often well worth it. In this particular case I think the alternative cost is a real steal.
Free instant speed discard and sacrifice outlets are always welcome even if the additional upside of the effect they are paying for is lackluster. I can't even count how many times I've sacrificed a creature to something like the husk or phyrexian plague lord just to keep an opponent from stealing or exiling it even though I had no use for the actual effects sacrificing the creature granted me at the time. The same is true of how many times I've discarded a card for no other reason than to get it into the graveyard or activate madness. My only complaint about this card is you lose your discard outlet after it flips.
I really like how elegant the design of this card is. It's very simple, very effective and enables multiple strategies.
I think the pain text on this guy is just too nasty for him to shine outside of anything but the standard format he will be a part of. It's not so much that you couldn't build a deck around him that could ensure he would land safely on round 4, it's that all it would take to turn him into a 4 damage beat stick to your own face would be any sort of serious graveyard hate.
Although it requires having a means to exile your opponents cards, blight herder is an excellent curve topper in this sort of deck. Drowner of Hope and Ruthless Deathfang can serve this same purpose in a deck that is running blue. The main problem with Drowner of Hope is that it is a rather late game card and its tap ability is a bit on the expensive side unless you are using it to make the final push and kill your opponent which doesn't always work out. Playing it with an abomination on the field ensures that even if you can't use it to make the final push right away or if it falls to removal, you will still get serious value out of it in the form of bonus card draw.
One problem I see with this deck is that it lacks enough big threats to bait your opponents removal early on so any finisher creatures you have should be able to provide value even if they are killed right away. Both the blight herder and drowner fit that bill since at the very least you are getting a bunch of scions with them which have the added bonus of feeding directly in the deck's preexisting engine. Although the Deathfang doesn't create scions to feed into the engine it provides a serious addition to that engine itself in the form of incidental creature removal anytime you sac something. Even if your opponent targets it for removal right away you will likely have the means to either sacrifice it or a couple of scions to get some removal value from it before it dies. It has the additional benefit of being a very solid flying threat. With all the scions this sort of deck produces there is a lot of incidental ramp so 5cc and 6cc creatures aren't nearly as late game as one might assume. All of these critters I mentioned will often be playable by round 4.
I also highly recommend chucking a couple of ghostfire blades into this deck. They are cheap and efficient and once they are on the field it ensures you can, for one mana, turn even your lowly scions into a decent sized threat for the rest of the game. Ghostfire blades can turn any of the larger utility eldrazi like the abomination or sifter into strait up beat sticks.
Elves are agro so you really can't hold back playing critters just because you know you could get board wiped. Having said this I think it's important to have answers to this problem that won't mess with your tempo much.
Although it's not an elf, Grim Haruspex might make a good side board card. It has a decent body for the price so it can serve as a combatant if need be but more importantly it grants absolutely massive card advantage if it remains on the board when you start losing elves and it will likely fill your entire hand if it's out when a board wipe lands. It's also round three so it lands in time for even early game sweepers. Another card worth considering is wisperwood elemental. The problem with this card it is late game so it might not land before the sweeper you have included it to deal with. At round 5 your opponent is likely going to be bleeding badly and they will want to play that sweeper as soon as possible.
Others have mentioned rally the ancestors. It's a tough card to splash for since it requires double white. This card is also a bit swingy but incredibly powerful. You should only consider running it if you have a load of elves with ebt effects. The plan is for a shaman to be in the graveyard or your hand for what will likely be the win when all your dead elves return to play, but if you don't have a shaman you will likely at least have a couple of dead elves with lesser ebt effects instead.
They are similiar spells both in power level and function, but both cards have their strengths and weaknesses and lend themselves to different situations and decks. Painful Truths has the considerable draw back of requiring three different colors of mana which precludes it from even being run at all in mono or dual color black decks. Even in decks that can run it, having three different colors on tap isn't always going to work out exactly the way you need it, when you need it. One extra life loss is a minor downside but a downside none-the-less.
On the plus side, it can net you an extra card. This is a pretty big plus.
The other plus read the bones has beyond it's easier casting cost is if you really need to dig for something specific, like threat removal, then it lets you dig 1 card deeper. If you need stasis snare right this second to kill Ulamog etc. then getting you to that removal spell one card sooner can very well be the difference between winning and losing the game. I know this is a pretty extreme example and in most cases drawing the extra card will win out over digging one card deeper, but it is still something to consider. Combo decks should weigh this minor advantage a little more heavily than generic brute force style decks that aren't ever going to be digging for specific key cards.
Both cards are strong. Both cards will see use. I think personally I would run painful truths over read the bones in a deck that has the mana flexibility to cast it consistently.
I think things really went south when Avacyn decided to jump in and legitimately tried to kill Nahiri. My guess is Sorin is going to make the mistake of escalating things further by taking care of Nahiri in some manner, most likely by imprisoning her in the Helvault since the setting of their battle seems too much of a coincidence for it not to play into the story at this point. It also solves the problem of why Nahiri vanishes for so long and is still alive despite being a mortal now. It also provides her with the sort of motivation required for a good person to truly twist into an agent of vengeance. If she was trapped in the Helvault due to Sorin, while in her absence her home plane was all but completely destroyed by the Eldrazi, that is reason enough to truly go berserk. Nothing like being locked in a prison with a load of demon lords for a thousand years while your home world is utterly laid to waste to turn a good girl into a mean *****.
The tapped targeting clause on her second ability is a very serious draw back. It means in order to guarantee a 1 for 1 or better as creature or artifact removal you have to wait for your opponent to already tap and use these things against you before you cast her. That is a massive drawback compared to a card like Ob Nixillis Reignited where the moment he comes down he can destroy any normally target-able creature. You don't have to wait for your opponent to beat your face in with that dragon before you are able kill it with him. You can play Ob Nixillis proactively rather than reactively. You really want to be able to kill a creature right off the bat when Nahiri drops since she is taking the place of your big bad 4 drop critter. Your opponent will very likely have a serious creature advantage the turn after you cast her unless she takes out his biggest creature that same round she lands. Her tapped targeting clause will often make this impossible.
The biggest problem I think she will have is that she will have trouble protecting herself. More often than not the only way she can target and remove a creature is after the thing has gotten to take a swing at her and if they manage to damage her badly she won't have the counters left to get rid of them. Remember you just spent your 4 drop slot on bringing her to the field so your opponent is more likely than not going to have a pretty serious creature advantage over you at this point. You are quite likely going to be forced into blocking unfavorably for at least one round to keep her healthy.
I think the best play with her will be waiting to play her until you see a tapped creature you want to kill and then using her removal ability immediately. The problem with this is it leaves her with just 2 counters which puts her into shock range or just within the killing range of even a small unblocked creature. It also means you will likely have to play her reactively rather than proactively a lot of the time. I think she is a neat planeswalker, but I do see some potential issues with playing her in more aggressive builds. I think she belongs in a more defensive deck that utilizes a lot of tapping lock down.
For her ultimate to really pay off it basically requires that you are already running a deck that has tricks for getting crazy big critters into play because if she just pulls your 4cc or 5cc curve topper onto the field for a single turn that's really not going to be worth all the crazy work it took to ultimate with her. Outside of Sneak Attack builds, are there Boris decks that are normally designed for this sort of thing?
Since it's recursion only works upon death you are pretty much forced to run this in an aristocrats style deck with consistent and very cheap sacrifice outlets otherwise it will be your opponent that always gets to decide when you can use it's abilities. On top of this you need to run it along side a lot of other value zombies that can't bring themselves back from the dead for it's main ability to be useful. This card also needs lots of mana to shine so you have to run it in a mid-range grindy sort of deck to really get value out of it.
My suggestion is that before pulling the trigger and buying this card you try running it in a few different builds. This is a good card but it's not nearly as amazing or versatile as I first thought. Proxying with it a bit was a real eye opener. This card only really shines in a very specific kind of deck rather than just any old zombie build. In standard it will definitely see play along side cards like Nantuko Husk, Fleshbag Marauder, shambling goblin and Kalitas, but I'm not sure those decks will be top tier. The current aristocrats decks don't have that many zombies in them and this guy needs to have other zombies to interact with in order to shine. We will have to wait and see if we get enough great zombies to make a top tier zombie tribal. If those cards don't materialize then Relentless Dead isn't going to have enough partners to tango with.
Edit: Looks like I'm an imbecile. Bloodghast is a vampire. My bad.
I was thinking pretty much this exact same thing. At first glance I was blown away by this card and then I started to sit down and really think about it and the shear amount of mana this cards eats is it's downside. Individually the costs don't seem that high, but once you realize you are paying BBB to recurse him a single time and you must always leave B mana open at the end of every turn to keep him from dying permanently you start to see that he can't fit into a proper aggro deck. Bloodghast just completely outclasses him in this regard since it recurses for free and it can do so directly from the graveyard rather than only when it dies. I found Gravecrawler similarly superior for aggro zombie builds for similiar reasons.
Then I decided to try it as a proxy in my mid-range mardu aristocrats zombie deck since I figured he would shine in a more grindy deck where I could control when and how he died. This also did not work out nearly as well as I thought it would. I found the card generally needs way too much mana to use it's recursion as sacrifice fuel. For instance pumping Kalitas and recasting the restless dead just once eats 6 mana, four of it black. Once again I found the Gravecrawler and Bloodghast to generally work better in this roll since it costs either one black or zero mana to bring them back rather than the BBB required for Restless Dead. In it's defense the Restless dead has a better body than either of these zombies. It's second ability was also very useful on those occasions where I reached the late game with it still on the field and could afford to bring back some of the important zombies that lacked the ability to resurrect themselves. The one place it really shined was with sultai emissary and nantuko husk since each recursion cost 5 mana and netted me three creatures one of which was a fresh manifest. That wasn't bad at all, but still not as good in a mana pinch as gravecrawler where you can sac and resurrect it for a single black mana per iteration. All in all the experience taught me that this is not really an aggro card and that it only really shines in some niche mid-range zombie builds. You need to run it in a deck which is designed for the grindy long game with both a lot of cheap zombies and a reliable sacrifice outlet.
Free instant speed discard and sacrifice outlets are always welcome even if the additional upside of the effect they are paying for is lackluster. I can't even count how many times I've sacrificed a creature to something like the husk or phyrexian plague lord just to keep an opponent from stealing or exiling it even though I had no use for the actual effects sacrificing the creature granted me at the time. The same is true of how many times I've discarded a card for no other reason than to get it into the graveyard or activate madness. My only complaint about this card is you lose your discard outlet after it flips.
I really like how elegant the design of this card is. It's very simple, very effective and enables multiple strategies.
Reoccurring Nightmare
One problem I see with this deck is that it lacks enough big threats to bait your opponents removal early on so any finisher creatures you have should be able to provide value even if they are killed right away. Both the blight herder and drowner fit that bill since at the very least you are getting a bunch of scions with them which have the added bonus of feeding directly in the deck's preexisting engine. Although the Deathfang doesn't create scions to feed into the engine it provides a serious addition to that engine itself in the form of incidental creature removal anytime you sac something. Even if your opponent targets it for removal right away you will likely have the means to either sacrifice it or a couple of scions to get some removal value from it before it dies. It has the additional benefit of being a very solid flying threat. With all the scions this sort of deck produces there is a lot of incidental ramp so 5cc and 6cc creatures aren't nearly as late game as one might assume. All of these critters I mentioned will often be playable by round 4.
I also highly recommend chucking a couple of ghostfire blades into this deck. They are cheap and efficient and once they are on the field it ensures you can, for one mana, turn even your lowly scions into a decent sized threat for the rest of the game. Ghostfire blades can turn any of the larger utility eldrazi like the abomination or sifter into strait up beat sticks.
Although it's not an elf, Grim Haruspex might make a good side board card. It has a decent body for the price so it can serve as a combatant if need be but more importantly it grants absolutely massive card advantage if it remains on the board when you start losing elves and it will likely fill your entire hand if it's out when a board wipe lands. It's also round three so it lands in time for even early game sweepers. Another card worth considering is wisperwood elemental. The problem with this card it is late game so it might not land before the sweeper you have included it to deal with. At round 5 your opponent is likely going to be bleeding badly and they will want to play that sweeper as soon as possible.
Others have mentioned rally the ancestors. It's a tough card to splash for since it requires double white. This card is also a bit swingy but incredibly powerful. You should only consider running it if you have a load of elves with ebt effects. The plan is for a shaman to be in the graveyard or your hand for what will likely be the win when all your dead elves return to play, but if you don't have a shaman you will likely at least have a couple of dead elves with lesser ebt effects instead.
On the plus side, it can net you an extra card. This is a pretty big plus.
The other plus read the bones has beyond it's easier casting cost is if you really need to dig for something specific, like threat removal, then it lets you dig 1 card deeper. If you need stasis snare right this second to kill Ulamog etc. then getting you to that removal spell one card sooner can very well be the difference between winning and losing the game. I know this is a pretty extreme example and in most cases drawing the extra card will win out over digging one card deeper, but it is still something to consider. Combo decks should weigh this minor advantage a little more heavily than generic brute force style decks that aren't ever going to be digging for specific key cards.
Both cards are strong. Both cards will see use. I think personally I would run painful truths over read the bones in a deck that has the mana flexibility to cast it consistently.