My Opinion on Planeswalkers

Shoot, I really wished I loved them, but I don’t. They seem like the ultimate casual card. Every kitchen table player will want one but everybody else will think they are just a novelty. Liliana Vess is both discard and graveyard recursion wrapped together, but she doesn’t win games. She can break stalemates and she is probably really good against a blue control deck, but she is painfully slow.

At best you will be using her discard ability on turn 5, but your opponent isn’t dumb, so he’ll probably just discard a land or something. She could go off on turn 7 with her super-duper return all creatures from all graveyards into play under your control, but that only matters if there are enough good creatures to make a difference. On the upside I did make a fun mono-black deck with Vess that had Damnation, Delirium Skeins (Each player discards 3 cards) and Royal Assassin that was pretty good.

I think Garruk Wildspeaker is a little bit better. For 2GG you can get a 3/3 now and two more 3/3 creatures later, not a bad deal at all. I guess he isn’t strictly card advantage, but at least he is creature advantage. If you don’t want to get more creatures, you can always untap two lands now, which is always a good thing, and then pump up all your creatures on your very next turn. Garruk is best in an aggressive swarm deck, because he is even a better pump than Tromp the Domains.

Garruk just seems more powerful because he pressures your opponent while Vess is some sort of crazy combo card that works sometimes. I could win with Vess but only if I was already winning and was just stalling in order to use her abilities. Even the computer never beat me with Vess because she is too slow. I would just ignore her and win anyways. Hopefully the other planeswalkers are a little bit better.