[WAR] Narset, Parter of Veils
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@chubbyrain
Agree that most of them will probably just slot into existing blue shells as anti-mirror cards.
Its definitely still going to be a puzzle as to how to build a planeswalker control list that works against all matchups, but its a puzzle with a lot more pieces now.
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I'm thinking this baby sits beside Ashiok, Dream Render and Ashiok 1.0 and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries and JtMS in my new UB consultation deck
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I've run into this a lot on MODO and this card is pretty broken. Might be the best of all of the new PWers.
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Yeah, she is great. I think almost every time I've resolved her so far my opponent has conceded shortly after.
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This is probably the best PW since Dack: shuts down PO, digs deeper than JtMS for 2 turns, FoW friendly, easy to cast with Black Lotus, slows down Bazaar and Xerox...
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She's been really impressive but the format has been very PO centric with the London mulligan.
I think we'll start to see more Snapcaster Mages, Pyroblasts, and Lightning Bolts as ways to combat her.
Shops has also been a nonfactor recently with the London mulligan...I think Brassman's Karn Combo list was the only Shops deck to top 8 in the past 3 challenges with the London mulligan active.
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I am really enjoying this new type of PW that cannot + in order to get out of dmg range. It adds a level of counter management the previous iterations did not.
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@nba84 yeah they are really well designed imo. Having only a -loyalty ability balances them perfectly.
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@fsecco @NBA84 I was just thinking that I would probably like PWs more overall if they'd been designed like this from the beginning.
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Honestly, my continued experience with the card have led me to feel that she might be the first planeswalker restricted. It seems like not having a plus ability caused Wizards to push the abilities on the card, producing a really impactful and swingy permanent. Narset feels closer to a Dig through Time or Treasure Cruise than a planeswalker, with the metagame impact of weakening Blue decks relative to the field.
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@chubbyrain She's really great, but restrictable? She's only really "broken" against other blue decks. If this opens up the meta by forcing people away from traditional blue lists, all the better.
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@dr-j she is also very good vs bazaar decks in the first ability, as well as in conjunction with dack
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@chubbyrain I think it's easy to miss how good a draw engine she is because the Leovold ability is such an attention-grabber. But once you posted the Dig comparison here it clicked for me. It's a little less good than that and has a different play pattern obviously, but Impulse with rebound is really strong at 1UU.
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Open up the format? The only deck really well positioned in a Narset heavy Blue format is Shops and it was well rewarded in the last Challenge with a pretty dominant performance (won the event, 3 out of top 4). Eldrazi suffers in a Shops metagame and more rogue decks actually don't have the speed and disruption to exploit Narset blue decks well. She's still really good, even if all she's doing is functioning as a Dig through Time, so you basically have to force Blue into a losing position immediately and Eldrazi/Shops are good at doing that.
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@blindtherapy I respectfully disagree that she's good against Bazaar decks, if you mean dredge. She doesn't come out very quickly, and I believe you can still replace draws with dredges and be unaffected by Narset's static ability.
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@chubbyrain She's not so good if she's functioning as a sorcery-speed impulse for UU1. Any deck that can swing with a 2+ power creature can convert her into this suboptimal role, so maybe we'll see a rise in creature-based strategies. Maybe something like Legacy Death & Taxes metagamed to have game against Shops as well.
It's conceivable this would have the speed & disruption necessary. -
@dr-j Only if you replace all the draws with dredges. If at any point in the turn you draw actually a card, Narset prevents subsequent draw events from happening, so you can’t replace those with dredges anymore.
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@dr-j She's very good against Dredge in post-board games as a way to shut down Bazaar of Baghdad after you've stopped their main dredge plan. Like Leovold, she was never a part of the "Dredge Hate", but once you Crypt their yard or land a Cage or Yixlid Jailer (or Leyline) and the Dredge player has to dig for answers, Narset shuts the door on their best means of doing so. The fact that Narset digs for additional hate or protection makes her even better than Leovold.
@Dr-J She's still good as a sorcery speed impulse for 1UU, gain 2+life and maybe stay on the table to combo with dack or a draw 7. Just not insane. But I mean, this is literally like arguing with myself from before the set was released and I played with/against the card and tried the countermeasures your recommended. The problem is that the scenario of landing a 2/1 doesn't make Narset that bad and a lot of the time they can answer your creature. Because they are Blue and run Force of Will or Swords/Bolt/whatever or won the die roll and this format has Moxen and Narset costs 3 for some reason so it can come down on turn 1/2 pretty frequently.
I also feel obligated to point out that all of these decks that you are likely to describe cannot be metagamed to have game against Shops. Like Eldrazi metagamed to have game against Shops, it just doesn't exist within the constraints of the format. Like a twitter poster literally said "I was running 12 SB cards against Shops and the matchup was still heavily unfavored"
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I think its too early to talk about restriction, but this card is format warpingly good. You certainly need a gameplan to beat it if you are a blue deck.
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If you use her once shes in bolt range, and bolt is the answer for just an awful lot right now. I also think she has something of her own restriction as is it, being a legendary in a very crowded slot. All things equal I would much rather have my first Ashiok or 3 mana Teferi than a second Narset sitting in hand.
I guess my question is if you never use her -2 to draw a card, how good in an enchantment that can be attacked by creatures or with incremental damage that prevents draws? Shops is well positioned against her obviously, but I have to believe most creature decks like humans/hatebears are as well, and the only reason those decks are not a larger part of the meta is the prominence of shops, which gets us back into the whole argument of why would you restrict this card when the card that is preventing format diversity as well as preventing answers to this one is shops itself?
