[POLL] "Best" Multi-Coloured Planeswalkers

Mainloop25

wereotter wrote:

Maybe? Though it's also planeswalker level. I just got Nahiri the last time she was in the store, so she's still pretty weak, whereas I got Arlinn a while ago and have her at 60. Plus Arlinn can tutor them up whereas Nahiri can't, and Arlinn get benefits from green mana ramping like Nissa's Pilgrimage or Fertile Thicket. So there are different strengths to each.

Definitely. I just think Nahiri has more variety in potential deck styles. You can either load her with fatties and deploy them and save for her 3rd ability, or fill your deck with fast weenies and grow them with her first. Or any combo of the two, which is what I normally do. I do like Arlinn, but she is a bit more specialized.

madwren

octal9 wrote:

madwren wrote:

Arlinn is useless.

your experience and mine differ and that's okay.

I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't quote something I didn't say. Faking quotes is pretty poor form, and I expect better from someone who's contributed to the community as strongly as you have. I would never falsify something another user said, and value the same courtesy.

If you disagree that "having useful abilities is certainly better than having useless abilities", you're more than welcome to debate that point. However, I was specifically comparing the abilities of two planeswalkers, and how Sarkhan's seeming similarity to Arlinn (as tribal-specific abilities) aren't nearly as limiting as Arlinn.

Run Sarkhan without dragons and you can make his abilities work. Run Arlinn without werewolves, and her abilities sit there, unusable--i.e. useless--except the first one. That's poor planeswalker design.

madwren

ZW2007- wrote:

madwren wrote:

Arlinn, by comparison, is useless. Her abilities just sit there.

Without WWs, that's almost true. Her first ability can still be pretty good no matter what is in your deck. A temporary berserker is basically a form of removal and compares to the green removal mechanic in paper - fight. You need to keep the AI's board cleared for it to be most effective but the fact that it also gives +4/+4 means that it soaks up some of the damage that would be dealt to your creature and anything with 4 power or less won't damage your creature at all. Plus the added trample means you are still getting some damage through to the AI itself. Scourge Wolf can really shine here with first strike.

Definitely, and I agree completely that her first ability has value. It's just a shame that 5 out of 6 of them are locked away behind werewolves. It's part of the trend of reducing planeswalker viability outside of specific sets that I'm not a big fan of.

wereotter

Mainloop25 wrote:

wereotter wrote:

Maybe? Though it's also planeswalker level. I just got Nahiri the last time she was in the store, so she's still pretty weak, whereas I got Arlinn a while ago and have her at 60. Plus Arlinn can tutor them up whereas Nahiri can't, and Arlinn get benefits from green mana ramping like Nissa's Pilgrimage or Fertile Thicket. So there are different strengths to each.

Definitely. I just think Nahiri has more variety in potential deck styles. You can either load her with fatties and deploy them and save for her 3rd ability, or fill your deck with fast weenies and grow them with her first. Or any combo of the two, which is what I normally do. I do like Arlinn, but she is a bit more specialized.

Assuming you have Deploy the Gatewatch, yes. I, however, do not. So for me Nahiri has no way to tutor up creatures whereas Arlinn does from her own planeswalker abilities.

Nahiri is hands-down more versatile, and I'd agree that is generally a better planeswalker, but if you're looking strictly at werewolves, I would say that Arlinn has a slight edge over Nahiri if for no reason other than being able to use any werewolf out there rather than just the red ones, and being able to fetch them from your library for free. From a general perspective it also comes down to your library of cards. If you don't have good white cards for Nahiri, and do have good red ones, then there may be other planeswalkers you can more effectively use.

octal9

madwren wrote:

I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't quote something I didn't say.

I promise I was not attempting to put words into your mouth here. Sorry.

Your original post states "Arlinn, by comparison, is useless." You then later clarified this to mean "Arlinn's abilities without werewolves, by comparison, are useless." I agree on the latter (they're literally useless without WWs) but I disagree heartily on the former, and that's all my post was trying to state. I snipped the rest because without the clarification, the post (to me) boiled down to "arlinn is poop".

I had a lot of other garbage written in that post but was all different ways of saying that "my experience and yours don't match and that's okay" so that's what I went with. I tend reduce stuff to the point because otherwise words get jumbled; writing & expression is not my strong point.

More verbosely: my experience with Arlinn says she's not useless. Even her baseline without werewolves puts her amongst my top three planeswalkers (all three of whom are Red+other color), all of whom are far more consistent than my Kiora. When I do throw Ulrich & GRB at her she just gets better.

Yeah, her abilities do sit there without a WW. But to me it's not about abilities - just like nearly every other dual-color, she offers something no other PW does: a unique color combo. Currently I _can't_ combine HtS with AA, Reclaim, and SP in literally any other deck. I can't utilize Phoenix with Mantle of Webs.

And if we're solely talking about abilities... honestly, her third should be castable regardless of WWs on the battlefield, but Hibernum seems to disagree. Que sera, sera. I still find her quite useful even without the full use of her abilities because my card collection puts her consistency well ahead of my Kiora.

in short: your experience and mine differ, and that's okay.

edit: words

buscemi

I don't have GRB, or Ulrich, or Olivia, or even The Great Aurora, and I find Arlinn rather underwhelming.

However, I'm willing to put money on the fact that when I do get some or all of these cards, my Arlinn still wouldn't be as powerful as my current Kiora, let alone what my Kiora would be like if I had Prism Array, or Drowner, or TSN.

Pestilence

I voted Kiora even though Nahiri is what I use most now. Kiora has my vote based on abilities each one is very useful and it's easy to make an extremely strong deck with lots of control.

Nahiri would get my vote if not for her second ability. It's nearly useless 90%+ of the time. I have used it twice in the many matches i've played with her. It did come in handy both times for different reasons though. One for helping bury a suppression bonds and once to help get angels out with descend upon sinful.

Kiora even with the nerf has superior abilities. Stealing opponent mana slows then down speeds you up. Bringing out next creature? Kioras deck specs allow for so many possibilities my favorite being a single creature to summon like Gaeas revenge that only costs 7 to cast. Then there is third ability a 32/32 reach and trample.....amazing! Especially if you put in Nissas renewal with SP and AA. It's not that difficult to get a 96/96 on the board.

madwren

octal9 wrote:

madwren wrote:

I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't quote something I didn't say.

I promise I was not attempting to put words into your mouth here. Sorry.

Your original post states "Arlinn, by comparison, is useless." You then later clarified this to mean "Arlinn's abilities without werewolves, by comparison, are useless." I agree on the latter (they're literally useless without WWs) but I disagree heartily on the former, and that's all my post was trying to state. I snipped the rest because without the clarification, the post (to me) boiled down to "arlinn is poop".

Fair enough. I don't mind the misunderstanding as much as the removing of words from my quote, ironically the very ones ("by comparison") that provide the logical through line and indicate the contrast to the prior sentence talking about Sarkhan's ability.

Thanks for the clarification.

I certainly agree (and mentioned originally) that individual pw power usually boils down to what a person's collection consists of. My green lagged behind my other colors for a long time, which made my Kiora weaker than the ones I'd compete against in tournaments. In a vacuum, however, with a theoretical "I own every card" situation, I think Kiora remains the strongest because of her versatility and sheer raw power in terms of board control, creature power, mana generation, and draw effects.

madwren

Pestilence wrote:

I voted Kiora even though Nahiri is what I use most now. Kiora has my vote based on abilities each one is very useful and it's easy to make an extremely strong deck with lots of control.

Nahiri would get my vote if not for her second ability. It's nearly useless 90%+ of the time. I have used it twice in the many matches i've played with her. It did come in handy both times for different reasons though. One for helping bury a suppression bonds and once to help get angels out with descend upon sinful.

Kiora even with the nerf has superior abilities. Stealing opponent mana slows then down speeds you up. Bringing out next creature? Kioras deck specs allow for so many possibilities my favorite being a single creature to summon like Gaeas revenge that only costs 7 to cast. Then there is third ability a 32/32 reach and trample.....amazing! Especially if you put in Nissas renewal with SP and AA. It's not that difficult to get a 96/96 on the board.

I agree, the best use for Nahiri's second ability is trying to pop Hixus or Bonds. Generally, though, her other two abilities are so strong that it isn't necessary.

I mean, ability 3 is essentially a 15-loyalty win button. Running QBs with Metalwork Colossus is sort of funny. Drop it, swing for 60 or 120 (with Uncaged Fury), start next game.

span_argoman

I voted Kiora because she has the perfect combination of colours (for a dual-colour planeswalker). She also has three versatile and strong abilities which serve her well in varying situations and deck builds.

Green is the best colour for ramp, allowing you to cast out your cards in hand. Green also has a fairly strong suit of creatures and is good at boosting creatures, allowing you to dish out more damage. Its weaknesses are having a lack of good draw options and, particularly severe an issue in the current meta, having a lack of good creature removal options.

Blue is the best colour for draw. It's also the best colour for bouncing, creature removal, joint best colour for disabling with White, denial (mainly mana but now with Insidious Will too) and permanent creature stealing shenanigans. Its weaknesses are a lack of ramp (until Kiora, Jace 2.0 and Startled Awake came along), a ack of options to destroy opponent supports and a lack of strong creatures to finish off the match.

Combine these two colours together and you have the best options for draw, ramp, removal, and the shenanigans of your choice. Built right, Kiora can summon handfuls of cards out in the same turn. Coupled with the fact that these are the best cards picked from two colours which complement each other really well and it's easy to imagine the options that are at Kiora's disposal.

Adding on Kiora's abiities, where you have:
1) A first ability which gains you 6 mana and also denies your opponent 6 mana, gaining you significant tempo. Useful in just about any situation, with the only consideration being that you might want to save your loyalty for one of the other two abilities instead.
2) A second ability that fetches your next creature and gives it up to 16 mana making most creatures able to be summoned out in the same turn. The stronger the creatures you have, the more oppressive this will be.
3) A third ability that summons a giant Kraken that if it stays on the board will end the game quickly or at the very least clear your opponent's board (if not then most of it).

To me Nahiri is a strong planeswalker but speed aside (which Kiora lags quite a bit behind in due to animation speeds), she is really only comparable in performance when fighting against mid-range decks. She loses to Kiora on ramp and draw, and she can have a stronger and quicker start but will run out of steam more quickly. Great for QB but not so much overall imo.

Unless you have Starfield of Nyx and/or Hixus, it's hard to build a control deck with Nahiri (that doesn't end up bogging itself down and becoming too slow) which makes Nahiri relatively more vulnerable in stacked PvE matches as such opponents cannot be rushed to death before their cards come into play. The rest of the planeswalkers have their strengths but none have their weaknesses covered as well as Kiora has. So Kiora has my vote for best planeswalker.

buscemi

Nahiri's second ability is alright for finding Deploy, isn't it?

Nahiri is very well placed in the current meta... she does zoo decks better than almost anyone, and she's absolutely perfect for playing with Deploy.

Mainloop25

buscemi wrote:

Nahiri's second ability is alright for finding Deploy, isn't it?

Nahiri is very well placed in the current meta... she does zoo decks better than almost anyone, and she's absolutely perfect for playing with Deploy.

I never play it because I'm always scared of destroying my own suppression bond, which has happened before.