Ob vs Liliana Last Hope (in general: order to save up for other PWs)

wereotter

Lightcell said:

Ob is kind of broken right now with Cycle. There is a common or uncommon support that when you cycle a card your opponent loses 5 life and you gain 5 life. With his ultimate that does 13 damage, 26 if it is on 2x damage. Plus a lot of creatures and spells trigger from cycling.

This is true, however, Tezzeret runs this deck better since he can also run New Perspectives and make all the cycling costs free.

Stormcrow

If you're just starting out, Ob Nix hands down. In addition to the other points people have made here, Ob can win pretty reliably even if your collection is still pretty weak such that you have to run a couple of garbage cards in your deck; but he also scales up nicely once you get some of the fun mythics and rares to throw in there. (This versatility also makes him good for working on mastery, if you're into that sort of thing.) Lili 2 is cool and all, but nowhere near a must-have.

Personally I like Ob a lot just because a creatureless Ob Nix deck is the best/easiest way to deal with obnoxious Hixus/Starfield troll decks that were all the rage when I started playing and seem to be enjoying a bit of a renaissance lately. In the long run, Tezz 2 is probably superior, but also a lot more of an investment.

Stormcrow

Eyris6 said:

In general, it seems like the priority order for picking up new PWs should be: Black (Ob or a better Liliana), then Blue or Green (obviously Kiora is great and solves those 2 together, although both base Jace and Nissa seem OK-ish), then finally Red or White (Koth is tempting, for example, but base Chandra seems good enough to skip him for now, and base Gideon likewise). Is this roughly right?

To address this part of your post, yeah you've pretty much got a handle on it. Jace 2 and Nissa 2 are both very solid (Jace 2 is less block-dependent), but Kiora is....absolutely worth every bit of her cost, and you will not regret making her the second walker you get. For Red and White...well, Koth was a must-have back when speed-of-Quick-Battles was an important consideration, but I'd be probably recommend Nahiri for your red/white walker needs now. Base Gideon and Chandra still have solid, viable abilities, and I still get some use out of my Gideon 1 chasing some optional PvE objectives, but they're pretty badly surpassed in terms of mana generation these days.

morgue427

koth is really card dependent to get him to run well huge mana gains but going agaisnt another red **** you hard, fighting for the few reds on the board. all i use him for really is training grounds and the few low level legacy pve challenges

madwren

wereotter said:

babar3355 said:

100% buy Ob over L2... in fact you never have to buy L2... She is trumped by many other black and dual colored walkers.  She is gimmicky at best.

Ob on the other hand is a terrific walker that has 3 excellent skills.  A draw skill that is very useful, a kill spell that is very useful, and an ult that is one of the most fun and unique in the game.  It really allows you to try a different and fresh play style.  Go with Ob, you will be glad you did!

Ob Nixilis is really only great if you have the cards for him, as can be said for many planeswalkers. \

Including L2, of course.

All Ob needs is kill spells and then really whatever you want. Ob can run zombies. L2 can't, however, win low- or no-creature objectives.

I will agree, however, that Ob doesn't really start to shine until 50+. That's a very real concern in the rune-scarce environment, and something I definitely should have considered.

wereotter

madwren said:

wereotter said:

babar3355 said:

100% buy Ob over L2... in fact you never have to buy L2... She is trumped by many other black and dual colored walkers.  She is gimmicky at best.

Ob on the other hand is a terrific walker that has 3 excellent skills.  A draw skill that is very useful, a kill spell that is very useful, and an ult that is one of the most fun and unique in the game.  It really allows you to try a different and fresh play style.  Go with Ob, you will be glad you did!

Ob Nixilis is really only great if you have the cards for him, as can be said for many planeswalkers. \

Including L2, of course.

All Ob needs is kill spells and then really whatever you want. Ob can run zombies. L2 can't, however, win low- or no-creature objectives.

I will agree, however, that Ob doesn't really start to shine until 50+. That's a very real concern in the rune-scarce environment, and something I definitely should have considered.

True though Liliana is very good at the "lose x or more creatures" objectives, and has often been my go-to for "lose x or less life"

Sirchombli

From personal experience lili2 lost most of her juice with the rotation. She used to be borderline unfair. Now she's extra mediocre. On, on the other hand, is still a beast. The removal is worse, but his abilities are powerful. He draws cards, kills creatures and provides a win con. His mana isn't amazing, but he gets the job done. I'm a pretty religious ob nix player. 

mournfen

This really is your preference on what you want to do. IMO Ob is overall a top 3 planeswalker. As wren mentioned all low life total and low creatre objectives are easily attainable with Ob. 

Lately, I have seen black nodes have the lose 10 or less life objectives, this is far easier with L2 her initial mana gains and access to same spells makes her superior. 

Even though both have uses OB will almost certainly always be better, he has a built in kill spell. This is just my opinion and for a very long time I just thought OB was terrible.

Eyris6

Thanks for all the advice guys. Ended up getting Ob, and enjoying him already at level 36 or so. The enraged nodes make his ultimate hit pretty hard even with lower levels, which is nice, and indeed, cycling works quite nicely too.

Now time to try and save up for Nahiri when she rotates in soon (skipping Sorin since I just got Ob, clearly ).

morgue427

nahiri is a nice one rai is the bomb though but you do need some harder to get cards to make her work really well nahiri is more of a genralist though, she can work with most anything

Eyris6

Ugh, so exactly what I was afraid of happening, happened. I said "surely they won't just keep rotating dual color PWs into the vault, they'll stagger some single color ones in too". Nope. I've been saving up for Nahiri, which I think I could get by next week, possibly with a 100 crystal purchase (starter pack), but now I see Tezz2 and Kiora rotating in next week, which are the other 2 dual color PWs on my list to watch out for.

I feel like I can skip Sorin forever and Tezz2 for now since I have Ob now as a black PW (and Sorin seems only okay-ish anyway). But I suspect that rather than Nahiri, I should keep saving and get Kiora as the more powerful option. Thoughts? I was looking forward to Nahiri, but Kiora just seems better in general. Also I pulled my first Mythic, sadly from Kaladesh, and it's blue - Torrential Gearhulk - which points towards Kiora as well.

hawkyh1

Eyris6 said:

Ugh, so exactly what I was afraid of happening, happened. I said "surely they won't just keep rotating dual color PWs into the vault, they'll stagger some single color ones in too". Nope. I've been saving up for Nahiri, which I think I could get by next week, possibly with a 100 crystal purchase (starter pack), but now I see Tezz2 and Kiora rotating in next week, which are the other 2 dual color PWs on my list to watch out for.

I feel like I can skip Sorin forever and Tezz2 for now since I have Ob now as a black PW (and Sorin seems only okay-ish anyway). But I suspect that rather than Nahiri, I should keep saving and get Kiora as the more powerful option. Thoughts? I was looking forward to Nahiri, but Kiora just seems better in general. Also I pulled my first Mythic, sadly from Kaladesh, and it's blue - Torrential Gearhulk - which points towards Kiora as well.

kiora and nahiri cover different colours and have
different strengths and weaknesses. it should
roughly come down to who do you need most and
what cards you have. eg kiora is usually a good
choice for green/blue node toa event. nahiri
only covers the white node in the same event.
question would then be which substitute would
give you the biggest gains?

HH

stikxs

Eyris6 said:

Ugh, so exactly what I was afraid of happening, happened. I said "surely they won't just keep rotating dual color PWs into the vault, they'll stagger some single color ones in too". Nope. I've been saving up for Nahiri, which I think I could get by next week, possibly with a 100 crystal purchase (starter pack), but now I see Tezz2 and Kiora rotating in next week, which are the other 2 dual color PWs on my list to watch out for.

I feel like I can skip Sorin forever and Tezz2 for now since I have Ob now as a black PW (and Sorin seems only okay-ish anyway). But I suspect that rather than Nahiri, I should keep saving and get Kiora as the more powerful option. Thoughts? I was looking forward to Nahiri, but Kiora just seems better in general. Also I pulled my first Mythic, sadly from Kaladesh, and it's blue - Torrential Gearhulk - which points towards Kiora as well.

Kinda in the same boat. I had been planning on nahiri and was thinking sorin would be a nice-to-have to cover black (and I have a soft spot for lifelink types), but kiora is also the other one I wanted. I could make the crystals for N&K but I think if I really want sorin I'll need to find some dollars... And haven't even considered tezz, though he is pretty popular it seems.

wickedwitch74

In my opinion, Kiora is the more important option. Nahiri is very powerful, and allows for versatility in deckbuilding, but I would lean towards Kiora because she is Green.

Red & White have dual walkers in all the color combinations, as well as strong single-colored walkers.

Green lacks a G/B walker, and it is the weakest of all the colors, in my opinion. There is no removal in green, save for giving your creatures reach/berserk, and it's creatures aren't exactly the cream of the crop.

Using Kiora gives you access to some real monster decks, like cycling, baral tricks, zombie recursion, bounce, etc... or just throwing down a giant, fricking octopus for the win.

So, when I need to pick a walker for green nodes, I almost always will take Kiora.

wereotter

hawkyh1 said:

kiora is usually a good choice for green/blue node toa event.

I would note, now that blue/green Nissa is out, she will likely be a stronger choice for that node. She appears to get better mana gains, has access to the same cards, and can give cycling to cards in your hand, so even if you don't have great options to cycle, you can still fill event objectives.

ElfNeedsFood

Kiora first. Sorin is quite powerful though, especially with Splash white being so powerful in standard.