Welcome to the Daily Dose of Eldritch Moon: Liliana edition! Since we started seeing a lot of the promotional material, including the first video for Eldritch Moon, we saw that Emrakul had risen and that Liliana was our last hope to defend against the Eldrazi. In Oath of the Gatewatch, Gideon, Chandra, Nissa, and Jace took an oath to defend the gatewatch against the Eldrazi. This fight continues in Eldritch Moon against the Eldrazi. With the fight continuing on Innistrad, another Planeswalker is needed for the fight, and Liliana is here to help! Let me present Oath of Liliana.
This to me is one of the stronger Oath cards of the five. Making your opponent sacrifice a creature is a very strong ability. Throw in the chance to get some 2/2 Zombies anytime a Planeswalker entered the battlefield and you got yourself a good looking card.
Some people are saying that this doesn’t fit in the Innistrad block, but I - for one - am glad to see that they are extending story lines between blocks. There was always a hole in Oath of Gatewatch having only four of the five colour Oath cards, and now the cycle is complete.
Check out the flavor text on Oath of Liliana! You can see the reluctance that Liliana has in helping the rest of the planeswalkers in stopping the Eldrazi, but she realized the importance of what needs to be done. Liliana, is the Last Hope. Speaking of that, here is Liliana, the Last Hope.
Welcome the return of the three-mana Liliana. For three-mana, she starts off with three loyalty counters which is common for three mana Planeswalkers. Let’s break down Liliana’s Planeswalker abilities.
[+1]: Up to one target creature gets -2/-1 until your next turn.
It’s rare for a Planeswalker at such a low mana cost to have a protect ability that increases their loyalty counters. Even though this won’t always kill the target creature it targets, it will prevent two damage either to yourself or Liliana, the Last Hope. You can also use before attacks to make sure your opponent doesn’t have any favourable trades either.
I’m really liking the fact that a lot of Planeswalker abilities lately are starting to add the words “until your next turn.” It makes these Planeswalker abilities much stronger than they would have been without them. Jace, Telepath Unbound and the new Tamiyo, Field Researcher show how powerful these few words can be.
[-2]: Put the top two cards of your library into your graveyard, then you may return a creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
This is the Planeswalker that Delirium decks have been waiting for. This not only allows you to fill up your graveyard, but you can also use it as card advantage as well. Using this will get your Delirium up to four in no time. I can see this fitting well in a Black/Green graveyard deck in the near future.
[-7]: You get an emblem with "At the beginning of your end step, put X 2/2 black Zombie creature tokens onto the battlefield, where X is two plus the number of Zombies you control."
This emblem is such a game changer that you don’t even need to be playing a Zombie deck for it to be great. Each turn, Zombies will start to litter your battlefield until there are too many for anyone to deal with! Zombies attack!
Thanks to all of the Zombies that Liliana is bringing to help fight the Eldrazi, it is clear that all of they will be making a huge impact. This is also one of the reasons that at the Eldritch Moon prerelease, every player is going to be receiving a Foil Premium Double-Sided Zombie token in their prerelease kit.
Thanks for reading a Liliana edition of the Daily Dose of Eldritch Moon where we’ve seen the return of Liliana. I look forward to seeing the fight against the Eldrazi continue! See tomorrow for some more sweet Eldritch Moon previews!
