Unhinged Manchild
Active member
Guess who’s back? Back again? This guy's back. With Arlinn. (M&M likely in tears somewhere around the world...)
Army card rankings – How useful are AotP’s figures?
Well, I’m here with Arlinn and all of the rest of the army cards in AotP. Welcome to my GLORIOUS army card tier list! If you haven’t seen my GLORIOUS spell tier list yet, go check it out! Since there are far fewer army cards compared to spell cards and IMO Planeswalker should arguably be graded a bit differently than of the rest of the creatures, I am going to use a scale of 1-5 (5 being most valuable) to rank the figures within their colors. I also list an Activation Frequency score which is how often I generally choose the army card to take a turn during my action 2 if the army card’s figures are on the battlefield, but I will sometimes add either a “descending” or a “ascending” tag to give you an idea of their general activation curve over a game. Often, squads will be tagged with descending due to their nature of reduced efficiency and reduced damage output when even 1 of them dies. Planeswalkers will generally be tagged with ascending because in most games you want them to be the last figure standing, and most Planeswalkers can have reasonably efficient turns, although rarely on the level of a fully healthy and enchanted squad. Despite whatever I may put for a Planeswalker’s activation frequency – understand that they are almost always much higher in activation frequency for the first 1-3 turns while they move and summon other creatures! My activation frequency rating is going to generally allude to how often I think they should be activated when the attack dice start rolling, but always with a caveat that a Planeswalker activation should be axiomatic when a nearly certain doom awaits them if you DON’T activate them.
Planeswalkers are always listed under the beginning of the color categories first, followed by the creatures. For entries in a given color which are consecutively listed AND they score the same, I placed ones that I believe are slightly more powerful above the entries below it. For example, Liliana Vess and Sorin each score a rank 4, but I think Liliana is slightly better than Sorin, so I put Liliana’s entry above Sorin’s. Just as with my spell tier list, the army card tier list is simply my personal opinion and based on my VAST experience with the game, and may or may not be the objective truth. Additionally, I’m mostly considering the same scope (as I did in my spell list) of general battles: 500-600 point armies on tournament-style Heroscape maps in a 1v1 (or rarely, a 2v2) battle, generally not considering wincons outside of either kill the enemy Planeswalker and/or kill the entire enemy army. A point worth reinforcing; I believe that most games, regardless of their actual wincon, are effectively won by killing the enemy Planeswalker due to how the Planeswalker is basically the “home base/command” unit. If the Planeswalker dies, the player may no longer draw in action 1, cannot play spells at all, and the player cannot summon figures from their reserve. This is very debilitating in nearly every situation, barring a really late game where players no longer have spells to play or creatures to summon. Ok, no more insistent ravings of a madman – onward with the tiers!
Black:
Liliana Vess (325, AoP) – Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium, ascending. Quite the savage when AoP was the only set, she and black in general have certainly felt a loss in power as BfZ and SoI sets came out. In games with lots of enemy squads, she should see more general use due to Snuff Out. Enemy hero creatures present some unique issues to black and therefore Liliana, because many of black’s spells and her Snuff Out ability are completely useless against heroes. Luckily, Liliana is the lowest costing Planeswalker, but far and away from being the weakest! She should have points available for her army to purchase good/more creatures to help her destroy heroes. As the only black figure with range greater than 1, she brings unique pressure to the table with range 6, especially for a color that utterly lacks move speed and range when compared to the other colors.
Sorin (350, SoI) – Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium, ascending especially in ratio with the amount of damage on him and/or the number of weak figures remaining in his threat range. IMO 6 life is poor for a Planeswalker, and is a scary proposition for a melee-oriented one. Like the other black Planeswalkers, he is typically much better at slaying squads than heroes, especially because of his Blade Master – he likes fighting many weak figures instead of a single beefy one. Let's face it, black bends squads over with ease while folding in the face of strong heroes; this is basically black’s theme in AotP, lol. As long as he isn’t instantly bursted down in a single turn, Sorin is annoying to remove from the board because he has access to Corrupt, Near Death Experience, and Altar’s Reap for even more healing on top of his Vampiric Thirst. He can often carry the late game to a win when enemy squads and heroes are weakened and ripe to meet their demise at the end of his blade. For his mix of colors, I’m quite split - white and black actually feel way too at odds with one another. Black stuff is hilariously powerful in damaging or destroying squads (their own and their opponents’,) and black heavily prefers to be in close combat to really lay the smackdown. White generally likes homogeneous armies (read: total white domination,) healing (especially for their heroes,) but they also like being in close quarters, both with the enemy figures and with their own white clan. The overlap in preference for close quarters combat is about the only thing that makes sense for the unification of these colors, but you have conflicts between things like all non-white figures and Fell the Mighty + Honor of the Pure + Gideon’s Phalanx, or all non-zombie figures and Killing Wave + Reavers' Necrotic Stench... Anyway, without being able to come to a solid conclusion about if white/black is a good combination in general, I will say that Sorin + Avacyn + Ruiner is a savage all-hero army at 600 points with tons of white healing spells, even if black’s spells seem to have little use in that army due to black’s squad-oriented nature.
Ob Nixilis (385, BfZ) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high. Scoring just below Sorin mostly due to being mono-black, Ob Nixilis is a very sturdy and speedy figure thanks to 8 life, 4 toughness, and flying which should also help him hold high ground. High ground combined with his base 5 power makes him a fearsome attacker when those conditions are met. Altar’s Reap and Corrupt make it that much more annoying to whittle him down. However, he is VERY expensive, his cost of 385 restricts his creature selection at 500- and 600-point army values. Black’s curse of struggling against heroes afflicts Ob, but he is fantastic at mimicking Hillary Clinton in that he can make squad figures disappear with ease with At Any Price. The ability to use At Any Price against Ob’s own Restless Zombies to fuel Ob’s card draw is a very nice perk, since the zombies can respawn with a D20 roll while we continue to take turns with Ob.
Restless Zombies (60, AoP) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Low. Just looking at their stats, these guys are quite weak even at the relatively low cost of 60. Having these guys in your army actually encourages further activations of your Planeswalker, so you can take more rolls for Darkness Arises. I think the bulk of their price and utility comes from Darkness Arises, which can see them returning to the battlefield repeatedly with a bit of luck. The zombies feel very crucial for both Ob and Liliana – Ob for At Any Price self-draw fuel and for extra bodies in the melee fight, and Liliana appreciates them as respawning roadblocks to keep enemy melee figures off of her. I typically do not enchant these guys with black’s offensive buffs (Dark Harvest, Duress) unless I am VERY desperate to generate offense. 1 life and 1 toughness will not do your enchantments any favors in getting value & longevity; when their army card goes to the graveyard, all enchantments are removed and remain removed even when/if zombies respawn via Darkness Arises. Still, excellent squad for long attrition games.
Blighted Reavers (115, AoP) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high, descending. Average stats make them decent frontline fighters. Their utility and combat prowess is further elevated due to Necrotic Stench, which effectively creates auras where your figures should be dominating and destroying enemies quickly. Their cost is quite high; they are the most expensive squad army card in AotP, yet still vulnerable to basically all of the squad instakill/debilitation shenanigans of blue, white, and black. They have some particularly nice synergy with Ghoul Vanguard – not only do they get to “bond” with him, but their Necrotic Stench seriously enhances his ability to murder squad figures and trigger his Wake the Dead.
Ghoul Vanguard (100, SoI) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: High, but descending if no zombies remain on the battlefield for Shambling Ranks of the Dead. GV seems particularly average for a hero figure. His primary uses consist of bonding with a figure from the Reavers/Restless Zombies and generating more zombies via Wake the Dead. He has great synergy in using Shambling Ranks of the Dead to move one of the Blighted Reavers first, especially because their Necrotic Stench boosts Vanguard’s chances of slaying enemy squaddies for Wake the Dead. Sadly, he does not create zombies when he destroys squad figures via leaving engagement attacks. It’s unfortunate that “squad characteristics” has no explained definition... it is such a point of contention with this guy.
Malakir Bloodchasers (100, BfZ) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: High, descending. These guys are somewhat like red’s Blazing Firecats – consider their similar move, life, power, and toughness. They both even have an ability which can boost the strength of their attacks. I feel that lifelink is mostly wasted on a figure with only 2 life and 3 toughness (which I find to be on the frail side,) although this makes the Bloodchasers good recipients of Virulent Swipe, which deals one damage to each of them and then allows them to instakill any squaddies to whom they deal even 1 combat damage. These guys are highly threatening, especially if they get their grubby blades on a wounded figure – 1 auto hit and 4 attack dice will make any Planeswalker scream like a schoolgirl in complete terror.
Skirsdag Cultists (50, SoI) - Rank 2 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high, ascending. I'm not sold that these guys are better at 50 points than the Zombies are at 60. The cards are quite similar – IMO both of these are expendable pawns to be used as cannon fodder and/or fuel for other holy black activities. The primary difference is that Zombies will likely be more passive than Cultists; Zombies as a group will come back on a D20 check as long as you take some turns with your black Planeswalker, where Cultists require that you use them on your turns because they only come back if they are actively murdering squad figures in combat. When the last Cultist is destroyed, they lose the ability to bring their members back onto the field, where the zombies can only roll their ability to come back on the field after all of the restless members are destroyed. Like the zombies, I’m hesitant to enchant these guys due to their weak 2 life and 1 toughness. I’ve yet to try Dark Harvest on them – that might be quite devastating, however you still look to your opponent having squads for Indoctrination to bring the sacrificed Cultist back. Speaking of that – Cultists seem likely to be much worse in the matchups against the uncivilized heroes-only armies because they will have mostly lost their ability to Indoctrinate anything... for what the option is worth, there’s nothing noted on Indoctrination that prevents you from slaying YOUR OWN squad figures in combat to trigger it, so uhhhh, Indoctrinate your own Restless Zombies and have the zombies raise back up via the D20 later on?
Blue:
Jace Beleren (340, AoP) – Rank 5 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high. Jace is a Planeswalker that can be defined in a single word - asufutimaehuhfutehfut. In case you live under a rock, I have a video that explains how to pronounce this word, watch the first 10 seconds:
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Translated from Biden-speak into the human language, this means “perfecto.” 7 life, 7 range, and 5 power gives him as much range as the green viet cong sniper Nissa, but with as much base power as the strongest melee Planeswalkers (Sorin, Ob Nixilis,) and he scores second in total life only to Ob Nixilis. His 3 toughness is perhaps the only remotely glaring flaw. His abilities are very useful, although Mind Stealer is definitely a gamble and requires 4 spaces of social distancing – I don’t typically go out of my way to try and use it, but it is often proper devastation when I nail the roll. Combining his great stats with the sly shenanigans of blue spells and figures, OG Jace armies seem very consistent, if a bit light on brute force. I think Jace + Lantern Geists are the epitome of control in AotP.
Kiora (345, BfZ) - Rank 5 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low, ascending. I would likely score Kiora a 3 if she was mono-blue, because her stats and abilities don’t seem to be anything special. Her access to powerful green spells and the Kessig Rangers definitely put her up a notch. Yeah, I’m that biased toward the Kessig Rangers and green’s power stims. Kiora is certainly going to rely on her creatures for damage output compared to OG Jace due to her weaker base stats and more support-oriented abilities. I’m not a massive fan of any of her three abilities (Sea Born, Bident of Thassa, Carry by Waves,) but Carry should easily get value each game – the ability to move any one of your creatures (including heroes!) up to 4 spaces at the start of Kiora’s turn is a great way to coordinate army movement and remain flexible in positioning. However, it is at odds with Kiora’s seemingly more passive leaning – why do I want to take a turn with Kiora after I have summoned squads, when I could just take a turn with those squads to move and slay things with them? It might be a better mid-late game power when squad numbers have been dwindled. Notably, Carry occurs at the same time as the Illusionary Projections’ Illusionary Deception (start of blue Planeswalker’s turn,) so when activating Kiora, use Carry by Waves to move a Projection, and then immediately teleport swap Kiora with that Projection via Deception for an... interesting maneuver. You haven’t seen all of the wonders of the world until you’ve endowed Titanic Growth + Roilmage’s Trick buffs unto your Hunt at Dawn/Dusk Kessig figure at least once in your Planeswalking adventures. Your ego will be enormous while you stroll around the map with the ability to make two attacks with ten dice each. Oh, and one more suggestion, try using the Eldrazi Ruiner with Essence Flux, Titanic Growth, and Roilmage’s trick for some surprise Planeswalker one hit KOs via 13 attack dice, as well. MAKE YOUR OPPONENTS GROVEL! I have to quit gushing at some point, so suffice it to say that the beastly burst offense of green loves to use the insane mobility and spell trickery that is provided by blue. There are so many wonderful creature and spell combinations to be found in this color duo. Due to this, Kiora is a top tier Planeswalker IMO.
Jace, Investigator (345, SoI) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low, ascending. Knockoff Jace. This guy is carried by the rest of blue, IMO. Compared to OG Jace, Investigator costs 5 points more and trades down 1 life, 1 range, 1 power, and 1 move all in exchange for just +1 toughness. Oof. Seems like a relatively poor tradeoff to me, and Investigator's abilities seem less powerful/useful than OG Jace. Knockoff Jace is by no means terrible, he’s just average and totally eclipsed by the other blue Planeswalkers; IMO he was dead on arrival. The choice is as simple as one between pink slime and prime tenderloin.
Lantern Geists (30, SoI) - Rank 5 – Activation Frequency: Almost never. I bet these go into 90% of competitive blue armies. Similar to black’s Restless Zombies, the Geists also tend to encourage the number of times that you take a turn with your blue Planeswalker, as most of the Geists’ value comes from flicker/resummon for basically free heals, free repositioning, and peeking at that forbidden item called your opponent's library. I’m not sure if/how the devs playtested these guys... because these feel as if they should cost 50-60 points. Having 4 life and 4 toughness makes them UTTERLY ANNOYING to destroy, especially because they can be unsummoned by choice, which fully heals the Geists. Eerie Observation could completely disappear off of their card and they would still be more than worth it, but it is so perfectly packed together with Flicker to give blue a good amount of knowledge and/or manipulation of the opponent’s deck. It goes well with the MTG theme of blue, too! It should be an EXTREMELY RARE occasion that you choose to actually take a turn with these guys – their attack is so low and blue does not bring many power buffs to make Geists consistently efficient at being the active army card for your turn, but let’s also take into account that there are only 2 figures here instead of 3 like most other squads. IMO Geists are primarily used as self-healing, teleporting guards that tie opposing figures up in engagement and/or block those figures’ approach to your blue Planeswalker. A perfect complement to OG Jace in that you can continuously look at both your own deck (Focused Thoughts) and your opponent’s deck (Eerie Observation) for maximum nerd control, planning, and spiking your anxiety when you repeatedly see the powerful cards in your opponent's library.
Illusionary Projections (65, AoP) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high, descending. When I play blue, I typically use these guys and my Planeswalker as my primary offensive forces. These guys are nearly Rank 5 material. 3 attack and 6 range is quite reliable at getting shots at a target, although the Projections themselves aren’t eager to defend at 2 life and 2 toughness. The Projections’ two abilities are wonderful and useful; Illusionary Deception can make it damn near impossible for your blue Planeswalker to feel particularly threatened by a horde of melee figures, and it can be hard to apply a great deal of pressure even with ranged figures on a blue Planeswalker while even one Projection remains a distance across the battlefield as an escape option. Illusionary Deception is one of the few ways that a Planeswalker can reposition AND THEN summon on the same turn; powerful when we still have creatures in reserve, and it has some synergy with the flickering geists. IMO as an opponent to the Projections, you need to consider killing them before you attempt to geek the Planeswalker.
Leyline Phantoms (95, AoP) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low, descending. Bulky frontliners with the ability to walk toward whatever target/hex they want. If for some reason you aren’t using Lantern Geists, you’d better bring these guys. I mean, for 95 points you get 12 hands, and the enemy Planeswalker don’t want these hands. Twisted Image was specifically crafted by some legend at Hasbro/WotC just to give these guys 5 power for one turn – I do not use Twisted Image in my blue decks unless I bring the Phantoms. I fail to see how the Rhox Veterans should be 90 points when the Phantoms literally have a higher defense than the Rhox could ever hope to achieve with their Battle Formation, and the Phantoms have 1 greater move as well as Phantom Walk to boot! For 5 points more and trading Trample away, Leyline Phantoms are a solid buy.
Necro-Alchemist (125, SoI) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium. NA and the Roilmage seem to be so similar, I feel as if they may substitute for one another in general. For the most part, I treat NA as a 5 power, 5 range, 7 life figure with no abilities - like a gimped copy of OG Jace. Alchemist is perhaps a hair better than average. I do think he is worth the extra 25 points every time instead of taking the Roilmage, but I often don’t find the Alchemist to be a particularly massive part of my offense or defense plan; he’s mostly there as a backup if I need a meat shield or if the Illusions aren’t up to the task for some reason. In my mind, NA and the Roilmage are playing second fiddle to the Eldrazi Ruiner anyway.
Merfolk Roilmage (100, BfZ) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low. If you don’t have the extra 25 points for Necro-Alchemist, the Roilmage is a fine choice for a ranged hero. Even though MR is cheaper than the Alchemist, MR brings 1 more base power and 1 more base range, although it’s a shame he doesn’t have range 7 so he could be outside of the range of single-spaced summon engagements, that might’ve legitimately made him much better. I don’t find either of his abilities very useful. All in all, my opinion is that he is mediocre.
Green:
Arlinn (340, SoI) – Rank 5 – Activation Frequency: Low, ascending. The offensively destructive potential of green/red is insane, and that color combination almost entirely puts Arlinn in rank 5. Arlinn is not particularly strong as a standalone army card. She is utterly frail at base 6 life and 3 toughness, and her base move is weak, at 5. This is all slightly mitigated by what is available to her in builds; Bountiful Harvest, Arlinn-wolf form having 4 toughness and 7 move, and access to two haste army cards in Firecats and Mad Prophet which can help clear out nearby threats in a pickle, or apply instant additional offensive pressure in situations where she is aggressing. Speaking of her transform ability, it is very fun & unique; you can play at 7 range with her Archmage Assault power to potentially deal true damage at the end of her turn, or you can play as Arlinn-wolf in melee range with her 5 power and Howl, which grants a +1 power token to one of her unique squads every turn where she dealt combat damage! With her access to creatures like Pummelroots, Firecats, Elf Rangers, and the mighty Kessigs, no opponent (perhaps bar blue) wants Howl triggering multiple times. Titanic Growth + Twinflame + Kessig Ranger double attack = you will hear your opponent’s tears and drink the lamentations of their birthing persons. I think her builds primarily lie in a mix of two playstyles – a “true damage spam” build with things like Archmage Assault, Elvish Blade Finesse, Circle of Flame, Pyroclasm, Rolling Tremblor, Incinerate, Infernal Plunge, etc. Or, a “buckets of attack dice” build with things like Howl, Overrun, Twinflame, Firebreathing, Power of Fire, Senseless Rage, and Titanic Growth, all permitting tons of attack dice to be tossed.
Kiora (345, BfZ) - Rank 5 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low, ascending. I would likely score Kiora a 3 if she was mono-blue, because her stats and abilities don’t seem to be anything special. Her access to powerful green spells and the Kessig Rangers definitely put her up a notch. Yeah, I’m that biased toward the Kessig Rangers and green’s power stims. Kiora is certainly going to rely on her creatures for damage output compared to OG Jace due to her weaker base stats and more support-oriented abilities. I’m not a massive fan of any of her three abilities (Sea Born, Bident of Thassa, Carry by Waves,) but Carry should easily get value each game – the ability to move any one of your creatures (including heroes!) up to 4 spaces at the start of Kiora’s turn is a great way to coordinate army movement and remain flexible in positioning. However, it is at odds with Kiora’s seemingly more passive leaning – why do I want to take a turn with Kiora after I have summoned squads, when I could just take a turn with those squads to move and slay things with them? It might be a better mid-late game power when squad numbers have been dwindled. Notably, Carry occurs at the same time as the Illusionary Projections’ Illusionary Deception (start of blue Planeswalker’s turn,) so when activating Kiora, use Carry by Waves to move a Projection, and then immediately teleport swap Kiora with that Projection via Deception for an... interesting maneuver. You haven’t seen all of the wonders of the world until you’ve endowed Titanic Growth + Roilmage’s Trick buffs unto your Hunt at Dawn/Dusk Kessig figure at least once in your Planeswalking adventures. Your ego will be enormous while you stroll around the map with the ability to make two attacks with ten dice each. Oh, and one more suggestion, try using the Eldrazi Ruiner with Essence Flux, Titanic Growth, and Roilmage’s trick for some surprise Planeswalker one hit KOs via 13 attack dice, as well. MAKE YOUR OPPONENTS GROVEL! I have to quit gushing at some point, so suffice it to say that the beastly burst offense of green loves to use the insane mobility and spell trickery that is provided by blue. There are so many wonderful creature and spell combinations to be found in this color duo. Due to this, Kiora is a top tier Planeswalker IMO.
Nissa Revane (330, AoP) – Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: High, descending and then ascending. If it weren’t for her unfortunate base power of 3, Nissa would be an easy rank 5, IMO. Luckily, Nissa’s offense can be supplemented with Leaf Arrow, Predatory Strike, and Groundswell. Base 7 life and 4 toughness make Nissa a bit tankier than most Planeswalkers, Sprint makes it such that she will more easily achieve high ground while defending or even that she might not have to defend at all if she manages to skirt her way out of threat range, and access to Bountiful Harvest extends the insanity even longer. Sprint, in tandem with her high range of 7, gives her unparalleled capacity in dictating where the general fighting will occur. In some cases, it can be optimal to run & gun with her by moving around the map and poking enemies until she is cornered; that is when you slow your activations with her and summon your damage-soaking green slaves to fend off the invaders. Pick a god and pray if ever you are found in an endgame situation where you must chase her around the map with range 1 figures. Mono-green is a nice color to be locked to, although they sadly lack a hero creature outside of the universally available Eldrazi Ruiner. As usual, access to Kessig Rangers and silly strong green spells like Titanic Growth, Groundswell, Snare the Skies, and Overrun all boost the expected strength of any green army.
Kessig Rangers/Ravagers (90, SoI) - Rank 5 – Activation Frequency: High, slightly descending. My vote for most influential and powerful creature card in the game. Although they are a 2-man squad, they offer a decent move 5 + range 5, and their Hunt at Dawn/Dusk ability makes it such that all buffs that you place on that chosen Kessig will get you a double dip effect. Case in point: Titanic Growth. When you select one Kessig for both Titanic Growth AND Hunt at Dawn/Dusk, that guy is at attacking TWICE with 6 dice, and we are still talking before other modifiers such as glyphs, height, and other spells, any of which will make him more astronomically powerful! Even better, Hunt at Dawn/Dusk ability takes effect at the start of their turn even if only one of the Kessigs remain, which means an opponent must slay both of the Kessigs to truly be safe from the Titanic Growth murder combo. I honestly do not often transform these guys unless I have no other able-bodied figures to fight or if the Eldrazi Ruiner is approaching (so I can get them into melee range in order to bypass his Otherworldly non-adjacent defense boost.) IMO the Kessigs elevate the threat of all green armies simply by existing in the army. Also, by the nature of hunt at Dawn/Dusk's "at start of turn" clause, a green player is given some slight relief in knowing that red and blue are COMPLETELY INCAPABLE of tapping into the sweet sauce of the Kessigs. Things like Mind Control, Welcome to the Fold, Malevolent Whispers, and Dissension in the Ranks do not enable anybody to take a turn; they simply allow a move and/or attack. Make serious-sounding threats about using your opponent's AotP set for firewood and using the Eldrazi Ruiner's arm to cook marshmallows over the fire if they try to attack twice under the guise of Hunt at Dawn/Dusk. It works, I may or may not have friends that know from experience.
Pummelroot Elementals (90, AoP) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high, descending. Reasonable frontline fighters for green, 4 power and Trample are certainly wonderful to have as a base. While they are quite similar to the Rhox, I think the Pummelroots have access to better spells and that their better base stats make up for the lack of Battle Formation. Pummelroots can put major hurt on almost anything within their threat range, be it an exposed hero/Planeswalker or a group of squad figures. Their threat range is disappointing at 5 move + 1 range = 6, though, putting them in league with many of black’s and white’s slowest and shortest threat ranges. In a pinch, their mobility can be significantly boosted by Paths Revealed and even disengage via Sheltering Word, and if you toss other buffs like Titanic Growth and/or Overrun in the stack, the Pummelroots DEMOLISH things.
Elf Rangers (80, AoP) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: High, descending. IMO the role of these guys nearly completely conflicts and overlaps with Nissa as ranged hit & run figures. If your Planeswalker is kept somewhere safe from enemy threats, I believe it is very reasonable to continuously use these guys to annoy the hell out of opponent figures. However, I think it is silly to attempt to alternate between using the Elf Rangers and any other army cards to poke the opponent. These rangers will likely need constant activation to remain out of combat via their sprint. To illustrate: if my opponent places their 3 Leyline Phantoms nearby to threaten both my Planeswalker AND my Elf Rangers (thus push comes to shove,) I’m taking my turn with my Planeswalker to get her out of that situation and leaving the sleeping elves to be feasted upon by the... whatever race those blue creatures are. Yes, the elves need to keep moving, but the situations where any Planeswalker should be handed over to nearly certain death should be EXTREMELY niche/calculated, even in “kill ‘em all” scenarios.
Path Wardens (100, BfZ) - Rank 2 – Activation Frequency: Low. Having never used them, jury is still out for these guys. To me, on paper they are somewhere between 2 and 3. I’m not really much a fan of defensive things in AotP, especially not an expensive two-man defensive squad (coming in at 50 POINTS PER FIGURE!) that is easily destroyed/disturbed by many anti-squad effects. However, granting full immunity to attacks from anything but adjacent enemy figures is nothing to scoff at, this even prevents non-adjacent Planeswalkers from attacking small or medium creatures under the protection of a Path Warden. Perhaps this is a good way to gain a foothold near an important piece of high ground with your Pummelroots. However, the problem afterward is spending your turns to reposition these elves instead of generating more offensive pressure with the other squads at your disposal.
Red:
Arlinn (340, SoI) – Rank 5 – Activation Frequency: Low, ascending. The offensively destructive potential of green/red is insane, and that color combination almost entirely puts Arlinn in rank 5. Arlinn is not particularly strong as a standalone army card. She is utterly frail at base 6 life and 3 toughness, and her base move is weak, at 5. This is all slightly mitigated by what is available to her in builds; Bountiful Harvest, Arlinn-wolf form having 4 toughness and 7 move, and access to two haste army cards in Firecats and Mad Prophet which can help clear out nearby threats in a pickle, or apply instant additional offensive pressure in situations where she is aggressing. Speaking of her transform ability, it is very fun & unique; you can play at 7 range with her Archmage Assault power to potentially deal true damage at the end of her turn, or you can play as Arlinn-wolf in melee range with her 5 power and Howl, which grants a +1 power token to one of her unique squads every turn where she dealt combat damage! With her access to creatures like Pummelroots, Firecats, Elf Rangers, and the mighty Kessigs, no opponent (perhaps bar blue) wants Howl triggering multiple times. Titanic Growth + Twinflame + Kessig Ranger double attack = you will hear your opponent’s tears and drink the lamentations of their birthing persons. I think her builds primarily lie in a mix of two playstyles – a “true damage spam” build with things like Archmage Assault, Elvish Blade Finesse, Circle of Flame, Pyroclasm, Rolling Tremblor, Incinerate, Infernal Plunge, etc. Or, a “buckets of attack dice” build with things like Howl, Overrun, Twinflame, Firebreathing, Power of Fire, Senseless Rage, and Titanic Growth, all permitting tons of attack dice to be tossed.
Nahiri (345, SoI) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low, ascending. Nahiri is a Planeswalker that seemingly wins or loses based on her ability to maintain height advantage. Bulwark, 7 life, 4 toughness, and Near Death Experience all ensure that she is often one of the toughest Planeswalkers to destroy. Her low-ish range of 4 and poor power of 3 aren’t doing her many favors if she can’t maintain high ground. On a hilly map with tons of elevation changes, I feel that she may struggle to maneuver with her Pass Through Stone. Lithomancy can help reduce the chances that Nahiri experiences too much of either of those issues, though. I find red/white a very odd combination to use; red is about high-octane destruction, while white seems more content with slow rolling, buffing, and healing. Luckily, the slow and low range white creatures can appreciate the extra move provided by red spells like Adrenaline Rush, Sure Strike, and Goblin War Paint, while red ought to be excited for access to even higher destruction potential via spells like Inspired Charge, Divine Favor, and Skillful Lunge. I personally prefer to play Nahiri by being aggressive and leaning toward red’s strengths in murdering EVERYTHING with sheer power, with those destruction-enabling white spells tossed into the deck. If you think white supremacists are scary IRL, wait until you see my firebreathing, pro-human, white inquisitors. They’d probably cause a tear to fall from Donald Trump’s eye.
Chandra Nalaar (365, AoP) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium, ascending. Chandra, while somewhat unique, feels pretty average when it comes to the capacity to build winning armies with her. Dual-color Planeswalkers are cheaper than she is, and they effectively have twice as many ways to build their decks and armies. Her range of 5 is unfortunate if only because of how easily it is for an enemy Planeswalker to instantly place her in engagement with summoned creatures if Chandra decides to move in and attack the enemy Planeswalker directly. Chandra’s Fury and high ground = lots of destruction with her double attack, although red creatures generally lack the ability to hold ground, and red’s spells certainly aren’t helping in that category – nearly everything red wants to just be killing stuff, but we can’t move them all at once! Her ability to attack twice and also deal 1 more point of creature damage via Super Heated is all quite potent, however I’d imagine a player would want to actually use red spells for their effect instead of discarding them to deal 1 damage to a creature. When Chandra has the Firecats and/or the Mad Prophet in her summoning reserves, it’s quite dangerous for enemy Planeswalkers to end their turn near her. This is magnified if she is enchanted by Stoke the Flames, which buffs haste attacks if the hasting figures are within 4 sight spaces of her! Seize the Day + Twinflame are approximately as game-warping as Titanic Growth + Kessig double attack.
Blazing Firecats (100, AoP) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: High, descending. Burny Kitties are hard for me to pass up when it comes to making any red builds. Haste and Intense Strike are nearly always threatening, if a bit swingy due to the reliance on attack dice for both of these skills. 7 move is damn good, 2 life and 4 toughness feels slightly fragile, but tends to hold up well enough for them to get their work done, in my experience. When the kitties get high ground and/or any kind of boost in power, everything they touch will likely spontaneously combust especially because Intense Strike’s roll two get one free is more likely to kick in as the kitties roll more attack dice. Being double-spaced is a double-edged sword; a burny kitty can be summoned to engage/attack a figure that is up to 7 spaces away from your red Planeswalker (where a single-spaced figure would only engage a figure up to 6 spaces away,) but the kitties can also be denied position/engagement/high ground by an opponent that positions carefully, because the cats need to be on 2 same-level hexes in order to launch an attack.
Goblin Javelineers (100, BfZ) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high, descending. For being red creatures and size “small 3,” these guys are astonishingly slow, 5 move. I think they are nearly completely outclassed by the Firecats as a primary fighting force, although the Goblins are certainly passable. At the same 100-point cost, goblins bring 1 more base power, 1 more base life, and the creature-poking Volatile Hedron Javelin (capability to hit creatures but not Planeswalkers knocks it down a bit IMO,) but they lack haste, Intense strike, 2 extra toughness, and 2 move which the kitties have. One final point – the goblins’ size 3 can be an unforeseen detriment on Heroscape maps because they cannot climb elevation that is more than 2 spaces higher than their current elevation; this occasionally does bite them in the ass.
Mad Prophet (70, SoI) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Low, ascending somewhat in ratio with the number of enemy heroes and Planeswalkers on the battlefield. The prophet is a hero/Planeswalker fighter in a decent 70-point package. Honestly, from a development perspective, I think he is very well designed, even if his niche can feel weak in squad-heavy games. Haste + Insistent Ravings makes this surprise beast from the east ready to put some hurt on bulky enemy figures that attempt to approach your Planeswalker, while 6 life and 4 toughness nearly guarantees that he will hold his position for a reasonable amount of time. He is usually just an afterthought in most of my red builds, but he earns much more value if you happen upon one of those morally devoid heroes-only armies.
Flamewing Phoenixes (35, AoP) - Rank 2 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low. Flamewing Phoenixes have always been a sort of “fan favorite” of mine, although my love for them wanes over time. They are pretty similar to the Restless Zombies in that they have 1 life and 1 toughness, and they can return to the battlefield from the graveyard. However, I’m more inclined to enchant the Phoenixes due to their higher movement and their ability to (mostly passively) respawn WHILE they are still on the battlefield, thus maintaining their enchantments. But, that line of play feels very in conflict with their ****ty life and toughness values; if I want to make use of power buffing enchantments with the phoenixes’ range 1, they are going to often be in situations where they will have a high probability of dying on the opponent’s turn if I ever want to actually make use of the phoenixes’ newfound power. Their toughness can be upgraded via Stubborn Resilience when only one of them remains (and so you rebirth the others back in some turns,) and also in a Nahiri build, where white provides tons of toughness enchantments. However, this again feels somewhat in conflict with the Rebirth power itself – they only respawn on a turn where a red sorcery was played. By stuffing red and white enchants in your deck, you have less space for red sorceries, which means less rebirths over the course of the game. Anyway, all this to say that at 35 points, IMO their best use seems to lie in either holding a glyph in a far-off location (using their 6 move and flying,) or to summon them directly into engagement with threatening enemy figures in a moment of dire need. A particular thing you should consider: Rebirth wants you to place a phoenix adjacent to your Planeswalker; this is detrimental when there are threats with TRAMPLE in the game, which IIRC boils down to green’s Overrun spell, green’s Pummelroot Elementals, and white’s Rhox Veterans. Still, this causes red armies’ (containing the phoenixes) matchups to be trickier to manage.
Bloodline Nobles (70, SoI) - Rank 1 – Activation Frequency: Medium, descending. The arrogant silver spoon vampires are below average in my opinion, I just don’t find anything compelling about these guys. 2 life and 2 toughness is pretty frail, they will likely be removed from the board after facing somewhere between 1-2 attacks. Their Arrogant Strike is an... ability. It certainly feels red-ish in that you buff their power and they have a chance to get some more immediate power, but the nature of heroes and Planeswalkers having higher base power than squads make it such that the Nobles will need to be buffed with an additional 3-4 power before Arrogant Strike can work against many of those big figures (and this is one squad that legitimately hates Gideon’s Avatar of Justice due to how it helps Gideon to turn off Arrogant Strike, lol.) The Nobles’ very questionable survivability IMO does not make them very good candidates for enchantments, although I’ll freely admit that sometimes enchantments (especially red’s) get all the value they need from just one turn of launching attacks against key figures. In general, I would tend to buy the Eldrazi Scions over these guys – the Scions are cheaper at 55 points, have 1 greater base move, and 1 greater base toughness over the Nobles.
White:
Sorin (350, SoI) – Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium, ascending especially in ratio with the amount of damage on him and/or the number of weak figures remaining in his threat range. IMO 6 life is poor for a Planeswalker, and is a scary proposition for a melee-oriented one. Like the other black Planeswalkers, he is typically much better at slaying squads than heroes, especially because of his Blade Master – he likes fighting many weak figures instead of a single beefy one. Let's face it, black bends squads over with ease while folding in the face of strong heroes; this is basically black’s theme in AotP, lol. As long as he isn’t instantly bursted down in a single turn, Sorin is annoying to remove from the board because he has access to Corrupt, Near Death Experience, and Altar’s Reap for even more healing on top of his Vampiric Thirst. He can often carry the late game to a win when enemy squads and heroes are weakened and ripe to meet their demise at the end of his blade. For his mix of colors, I’m quite split - white and black actually feel way too at odds with one another. Black stuff is hilariously powerful in damaging or destroying squads (their own and their opponents’,) and black heavily prefers to be in close combat to really lay the smackdown. White generally likes homogeneous armies (read: total white domination,) healing (especially for their heroes,) but they also like being in close quarters, both with the enemy figures and with their own white clan. The overlap in preference for close quarters combat is about the only thing that makes sense for the unification of these colors, but you have conflicts between things like all non-white figures and Fell the Mighty + Honor of the Pure + Gideon’s Phalanx, or all non-zombie figures and Killing Wave... Anyway, without being able to come to a solid conclusion about if white/black is a good combination in general, I will say that Sorin + Avacyn + Ruiner is a savage all-hero army at 600 points with tons of white healing spells, even if black’s spells seem to have little use in that army due to black’s squad-oriented nature.
Nahiri (345, SoI) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low, ascending. Nahiri is a Planeswalker that seemingly wins or loses based on her ability to maintain height advantage. Bulwark, 7 life, 4 toughness, and Near Death Experience all ensure that she is often one of the toughest Planeswalkers to destroy. Her low-ish range of 4 and poor power of 3 aren’t doing her many favors if she can’t maintain high ground. On a hilly map with tons of elevation changes, I feel that she may struggle to maneuver with her Pass Through Stone. Lithomancy can help reduce the chances that Nahiri experiences too much of either of those issues, though. I find red/white a very odd combination to use; red is about high-octane destruction, while white seems more content with slow rolling, buffing, and healing. Luckily, the slow and low range white creatures can appreciate the extra move provided by red spells like Adrenaline Rush, Sure Strike, and Goblin War Paint, while red ought to be excited for access to even higher destruction potential via spells like Inspired Charge, Divine Favor, and Skillful Lunge. I personally prefer to play Nahiri by being aggressive and leaning toward red’s strengths in murdering EVERYTHING with sheer power, with those destruction-enabling white spells tossed into the deck. If you think white supremacists are scary IRL, wait until you see my firebreathing, pro-human, white inquisitors. They’d probably cause a tear to fall from Donald Trump’s eye.
Gideon Jura (350, AoP) - Rank 2 – Activation Frequency: Low, ascending. Gideon wins the “Wannabe Planeswalker” award. I squarely place him below all other Planeswalkers due to his life of 6, his lack of range, white’s lack of range + lack of mobility in general, and white’s relative lack of ability to put great pressure on with their few aggressive spells. At least Gideon has the highest toughness of all Planeswalkers! If Gideon is on high ground, his Counterstrike is fearsome, and his increased toughness will hopefully help him to survive while his creatures deploy white supremacist terrorisms against his enemies. I’m not much a fan of playing slow and defensively in AotP. Blue is somewhat similar in the “slow” regard, but blue has range, plenty of spells for denial, also Jace’s base range, power, and abilities are quite impressive. White’s enchantments get totally demolished by unsummons, true damage, and outright creature destruction, one or more of which is available in spades to nearly every color. Luckily, Avacyn, Kor Aeronaut Captain, and Eldrazi Ruiner are not "unsummonable" and can’t be 1HKO’d by a spell, so burning through their life is very annoying, and that is exacerbated when white can prop them up with consistent healing. It’s a shame that there aren’t more hero specific enchantments, though.
Avacyn, on Bloodied Wings (100, SoI) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: High. Avacyn feels like a keystone piece for white, and I nearly gave her a 5 rating. Similar to red’s firecats, I’m nearly always looking to add her into my armies. She is adept in killing both heroes and squads especially due to Madness of Angels, but this makes her a bit less capable in earning her value when she is fighting an enemy Planeswalker solo, because Madness does nothing to Planeswalkers. However, value can still be found if the situation lines up where she can pound a Planeswalker with her attack and then Madness 1-2 wounds on surrounding enemy creatures. She earns tons of GUARANTEED value just by being adjacent to tons of enemy creatures so she can dole out auto-damage in a fashion similar to how the Biden administration doles out crack pipes. This requires her to be activated for multiple instances of turns, but she needs to survive enemy turns in order to do this! Her 6 life and 3 toughness cause her to be flimsier than nearly every other hero creature in AotP. It is, perhaps, a sort of delicate balance; figures embroiled in tons of engagements don’t tend to remain on the board for very long, but this applies to both her and the creatures she fights. Flying (height advantage,) Gideon’s Phalanx, Survive the Night, and Honor of the Pure can all increase her poor-ish survivability to help ensure that the opportunity to actually heal her will present itself. In my experience, Avacyn is a rock-solid MVP in games where she isn’t bursted down quickly.
Kor Hookmasters (60, AoP) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high, descending. Hookers. I like to consider them for any white build that plans on using squads, if only because they offer extended threat range and a very unique ability in preventing an opponent’s squad from taking a turn, although unfortunately that is useless against heroes. I think Nahiri would typically prefer red squads over the hookers, though. Keep in mind that Detain does NOT prevent things such as red’s Seize the Day or blue’s Welcome to the Fold from operating correctly; those cards do not enable players to take a turn, they permit a move + attack, which is not the same as taking a turn (activating an army card in action 2.) I find the Hookers to be a little vanilla, yet they score this highly in white because of the flexibility offered in their range 3 combined with the generally poor quality of white army cards and spells.
Kor Aeronaut Captain (100, AoP) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high. KAC is extremely similar to Avacyn, but he has +2 power in trade for not dealing an automatic wound to all adjacent creatures at the end of each of his moves. IMO this lessens his ability to fight masses of squads and puts him more in a role similar to that of the red Mad Prophet; tackling heroes and Planeswalkers. I think he is very close to being a rank 4, but I haven’t used him enough to feel confident in more than a 3. He has the same low survivability as Avacyn, but it is patched up in the same exact way - Flying (height advantage,) Gideon’s Phalanx (although this arguably may be less useful if using KAC as a Planeswalker assassin,) Survive the Night, and Honor of the Pure. 2-3 turns of rolling 6-8 attack dice might be enough to kill most Planeswalkers, but KAC has to deal with potential haste attacks and tons of engagement summons as he gets near enemy Planeswalkers, at least if you want to use him as a kamikaze sort of cruise missile in the early-mid game. Perhaps his better role is mid-late game cleanup? Hmm...
Rhox Veterans (90, AoP) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low, descending. These guys seem tough to justify for Nahiri and/or Sorin. I feel as though red and black melee squads are just... better... and at similar enough cost. Rhox are not terrible, I think they are reasonable as meat shields and frontline fighters for a pure white build, but in builds where white homogony is not critical, they are overshadowed. I’m sure many people have already drawn the comparison to Pummelroots: The Rhox are 1 base power and 1 base toughness lower, are tribe to a ****tier color, and gain Battle Formation. Altogether, the Pummelroots are a rank 4 because IMO they are just better out of the... summoning portal(?) and green offers disengage + movement buffs where white has none of that mobility stuff. However, it is really fun to buff the Rhox with truckloads of enchantments and roll 7+ defense dice with them!
Avacynian Inquisitors (85, SoI) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high, descending. Another squad that I find to be quite mediocre. To an extent, I like their 2 abilities; due to the low-ish number of human army cards in AotP, Avacynian Inquisitors’ Righteous Purge should be active quite often while they are initiating combat. IIRC the only human creatures are Avacynian Inquisitors, Necro-Alchemist, Mad Prophet, and Skirsdag Cultists? Their 2 life and 3 defense puts them on a frailty level equivalent to the Malakir Bloodchasers; it lies somewhere between poor and almost reliable. They certainly bring more offense to white, but at the cost of their own survivability, and the issue isn’t helped by their slow move 5 and range 1...
Colorless:
Eldrazi Ruiner (150, BfZ) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: High. The universal hero available to every Planeswalker, I tend to think of him as a slower but bulkier version of white’s Avacyn. The Ruiner wants to be activated often in order to deal out his automatic wounds to creatures, where he gets guaranteed value. He certainly brings pain & intimidation to the table, and he is a standout huge figure where AotP nearly completely lacks in that category. It is nearly impossible to hide him from sight of spells or enemy ranged attacks, although Otherworldly gives him a respectable boost in toughness when ranged creatures attack him (keep in mind that he does NOT get this bonus while non-adjacent Planeswalkers attack him!) However, his massive size can also be a boon because of how easy it is to establish line of sight to him when summoning him or targeting him with your own clear sight spells. The double-spaced figure pros and cons: he can be summoned to engage a figure that is up to 7 spaces away from your Planeswalker (where a single-spaced figure would only engage a figure up to 6 spaces away,) but the Ruiner can also be denied position/engagement/high ground by an opponent that positions carefully, because he needs to be on 2 same-level hexes in order to end his move and launch an attack. At the end of the day, I think he gets the most value in blue or white builds, two colors that appreciate the bulky hero offense he brings. (Blue's Essence Flux in particular has great synergy: Cast EF before action 2 to move the Eldrazi, potentially even adjacent to a bunch of enemy figures. When you select the Ruiner in action 2, his Lash of Tentacles will deal damage to creatures adjacent to him! Similarly, you can use red's Rush of Adrenline, although RoA is far weaker then EF, IMO.) Green is a distant next pick due to things like Earthen Arms and Titanic Growth, while red and black would probably prefer their squads and squad buffs in particular, and they don’t seem to be able to incorporate the Ruiner into their game plan a very synergistic way.
Eldrazi Scions (55, BfZ) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium, descending. Even when considering the uselessness of their abilities if you haven’t conscripted the Ruiner into your army, the Scions are still a speedy move 7 squad with stats that are passable at this price point. 2 life and 3 toughness is not the kind of stamina where they would consistently live to see the other side of more than maybe 1 attack, but they are probably best used as extra meat on the battlefield and/or glyph grabbers in any army without the Ruiner anyway. When they are used with the Ruiner, you can consider two lines of thought; do you buff the scions with a bunch of your enchantments (red and white are the best candidates for this strat) and use the Ruiner to replenish their ranks via Shephard of Scions as they slowly snowball their power and toughness into the ranges of 5-7, or do you primarily feed the Scions into the Ruiner to temporarily increase his move and/or attack? I’ve never actually used the Scions and the Ruiner in the same army, but I have used the Ruiner in a blue army and the scions in a black army.
I welcome conversation and dissenting opinion! What do you think? Do I favor the Kessigs too much, do I rightfully hate low survivability figures? Thanks for reading my thoughts, as always!
Army card rankings – How useful are AotP’s figures?
Well, I’m here with Arlinn and all of the rest of the army cards in AotP. Welcome to my GLORIOUS army card tier list! If you haven’t seen my GLORIOUS spell tier list yet, go check it out! Since there are far fewer army cards compared to spell cards and IMO Planeswalker should arguably be graded a bit differently than of the rest of the creatures, I am going to use a scale of 1-5 (5 being most valuable) to rank the figures within their colors. I also list an Activation Frequency score which is how often I generally choose the army card to take a turn during my action 2 if the army card’s figures are on the battlefield, but I will sometimes add either a “descending” or a “ascending” tag to give you an idea of their general activation curve over a game. Often, squads will be tagged with descending due to their nature of reduced efficiency and reduced damage output when even 1 of them dies. Planeswalkers will generally be tagged with ascending because in most games you want them to be the last figure standing, and most Planeswalkers can have reasonably efficient turns, although rarely on the level of a fully healthy and enchanted squad. Despite whatever I may put for a Planeswalker’s activation frequency – understand that they are almost always much higher in activation frequency for the first 1-3 turns while they move and summon other creatures! My activation frequency rating is going to generally allude to how often I think they should be activated when the attack dice start rolling, but always with a caveat that a Planeswalker activation should be axiomatic when a nearly certain doom awaits them if you DON’T activate them.
Planeswalkers are always listed under the beginning of the color categories first, followed by the creatures. For entries in a given color which are consecutively listed AND they score the same, I placed ones that I believe are slightly more powerful above the entries below it. For example, Liliana Vess and Sorin each score a rank 4, but I think Liliana is slightly better than Sorin, so I put Liliana’s entry above Sorin’s. Just as with my spell tier list, the army card tier list is simply my personal opinion and based on my VAST experience with the game, and may or may not be the objective truth. Additionally, I’m mostly considering the same scope (as I did in my spell list) of general battles: 500-600 point armies on tournament-style Heroscape maps in a 1v1 (or rarely, a 2v2) battle, generally not considering wincons outside of either kill the enemy Planeswalker and/or kill the entire enemy army. A point worth reinforcing; I believe that most games, regardless of their actual wincon, are effectively won by killing the enemy Planeswalker due to how the Planeswalker is basically the “home base/command” unit. If the Planeswalker dies, the player may no longer draw in action 1, cannot play spells at all, and the player cannot summon figures from their reserve. This is very debilitating in nearly every situation, barring a really late game where players no longer have spells to play or creatures to summon. Ok, no more insistent ravings of a madman – onward with the tiers!
Black:
Spoiler Alert!
Liliana Vess (325, AoP) – Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium, ascending. Quite the savage when AoP was the only set, she and black in general have certainly felt a loss in power as BfZ and SoI sets came out. In games with lots of enemy squads, she should see more general use due to Snuff Out. Enemy hero creatures present some unique issues to black and therefore Liliana, because many of black’s spells and her Snuff Out ability are completely useless against heroes. Luckily, Liliana is the lowest costing Planeswalker, but far and away from being the weakest! She should have points available for her army to purchase good/more creatures to help her destroy heroes. As the only black figure with range greater than 1, she brings unique pressure to the table with range 6, especially for a color that utterly lacks move speed and range when compared to the other colors.
Sorin (350, SoI) – Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium, ascending especially in ratio with the amount of damage on him and/or the number of weak figures remaining in his threat range. IMO 6 life is poor for a Planeswalker, and is a scary proposition for a melee-oriented one. Like the other black Planeswalkers, he is typically much better at slaying squads than heroes, especially because of his Blade Master – he likes fighting many weak figures instead of a single beefy one. Let's face it, black bends squads over with ease while folding in the face of strong heroes; this is basically black’s theme in AotP, lol. As long as he isn’t instantly bursted down in a single turn, Sorin is annoying to remove from the board because he has access to Corrupt, Near Death Experience, and Altar’s Reap for even more healing on top of his Vampiric Thirst. He can often carry the late game to a win when enemy squads and heroes are weakened and ripe to meet their demise at the end of his blade. For his mix of colors, I’m quite split - white and black actually feel way too at odds with one another. Black stuff is hilariously powerful in damaging or destroying squads (their own and their opponents’,) and black heavily prefers to be in close combat to really lay the smackdown. White generally likes homogeneous armies (read: total white domination,) healing (especially for their heroes,) but they also like being in close quarters, both with the enemy figures and with their own white clan. The overlap in preference for close quarters combat is about the only thing that makes sense for the unification of these colors, but you have conflicts between things like all non-white figures and Fell the Mighty + Honor of the Pure + Gideon’s Phalanx, or all non-zombie figures and Killing Wave + Reavers' Necrotic Stench... Anyway, without being able to come to a solid conclusion about if white/black is a good combination in general, I will say that Sorin + Avacyn + Ruiner is a savage all-hero army at 600 points with tons of white healing spells, even if black’s spells seem to have little use in that army due to black’s squad-oriented nature.
Ob Nixilis (385, BfZ) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high. Scoring just below Sorin mostly due to being mono-black, Ob Nixilis is a very sturdy and speedy figure thanks to 8 life, 4 toughness, and flying which should also help him hold high ground. High ground combined with his base 5 power makes him a fearsome attacker when those conditions are met. Altar’s Reap and Corrupt make it that much more annoying to whittle him down. However, he is VERY expensive, his cost of 385 restricts his creature selection at 500- and 600-point army values. Black’s curse of struggling against heroes afflicts Ob, but he is fantastic at mimicking Hillary Clinton in that he can make squad figures disappear with ease with At Any Price. The ability to use At Any Price against Ob’s own Restless Zombies to fuel Ob’s card draw is a very nice perk, since the zombies can respawn with a D20 roll while we continue to take turns with Ob.
Restless Zombies (60, AoP) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Low. Just looking at their stats, these guys are quite weak even at the relatively low cost of 60. Having these guys in your army actually encourages further activations of your Planeswalker, so you can take more rolls for Darkness Arises. I think the bulk of their price and utility comes from Darkness Arises, which can see them returning to the battlefield repeatedly with a bit of luck. The zombies feel very crucial for both Ob and Liliana – Ob for At Any Price self-draw fuel and for extra bodies in the melee fight, and Liliana appreciates them as respawning roadblocks to keep enemy melee figures off of her. I typically do not enchant these guys with black’s offensive buffs (Dark Harvest, Duress) unless I am VERY desperate to generate offense. 1 life and 1 toughness will not do your enchantments any favors in getting value & longevity; when their army card goes to the graveyard, all enchantments are removed and remain removed even when/if zombies respawn via Darkness Arises. Still, excellent squad for long attrition games.
Blighted Reavers (115, AoP) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high, descending. Average stats make them decent frontline fighters. Their utility and combat prowess is further elevated due to Necrotic Stench, which effectively creates auras where your figures should be dominating and destroying enemies quickly. Their cost is quite high; they are the most expensive squad army card in AotP, yet still vulnerable to basically all of the squad instakill/debilitation shenanigans of blue, white, and black. They have some particularly nice synergy with Ghoul Vanguard – not only do they get to “bond” with him, but their Necrotic Stench seriously enhances his ability to murder squad figures and trigger his Wake the Dead.
Ghoul Vanguard (100, SoI) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: High, but descending if no zombies remain on the battlefield for Shambling Ranks of the Dead. GV seems particularly average for a hero figure. His primary uses consist of bonding with a figure from the Reavers/Restless Zombies and generating more zombies via Wake the Dead. He has great synergy in using Shambling Ranks of the Dead to move one of the Blighted Reavers first, especially because their Necrotic Stench boosts Vanguard’s chances of slaying enemy squaddies for Wake the Dead. Sadly, he does not create zombies when he destroys squad figures via leaving engagement attacks. It’s unfortunate that “squad characteristics” has no explained definition... it is such a point of contention with this guy.
Malakir Bloodchasers (100, BfZ) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: High, descending. These guys are somewhat like red’s Blazing Firecats – consider their similar move, life, power, and toughness. They both even have an ability which can boost the strength of their attacks. I feel that lifelink is mostly wasted on a figure with only 2 life and 3 toughness (which I find to be on the frail side,) although this makes the Bloodchasers good recipients of Virulent Swipe, which deals one damage to each of them and then allows them to instakill any squaddies to whom they deal even 1 combat damage. These guys are highly threatening, especially if they get their grubby blades on a wounded figure – 1 auto hit and 4 attack dice will make any Planeswalker scream like a schoolgirl in complete terror.
Skirsdag Cultists (50, SoI) - Rank 2 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high, ascending. I'm not sold that these guys are better at 50 points than the Zombies are at 60. The cards are quite similar – IMO both of these are expendable pawns to be used as cannon fodder and/or fuel for other holy black activities. The primary difference is that Zombies will likely be more passive than Cultists; Zombies as a group will come back on a D20 check as long as you take some turns with your black Planeswalker, where Cultists require that you use them on your turns because they only come back if they are actively murdering squad figures in combat. When the last Cultist is destroyed, they lose the ability to bring their members back onto the field, where the zombies can only roll their ability to come back on the field after all of the restless members are destroyed. Like the zombies, I’m hesitant to enchant these guys due to their weak 2 life and 1 toughness. I’ve yet to try Dark Harvest on them – that might be quite devastating, however you still look to your opponent having squads for Indoctrination to bring the sacrificed Cultist back. Speaking of that – Cultists seem likely to be much worse in the matchups against the uncivilized heroes-only armies because they will have mostly lost their ability to Indoctrinate anything... for what the option is worth, there’s nothing noted on Indoctrination that prevents you from slaying YOUR OWN squad figures in combat to trigger it, so uhhhh, Indoctrinate your own Restless Zombies and have the zombies raise back up via the D20 later on?
Blue:
Spoiler Alert!
Jace Beleren (340, AoP) – Rank 5 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high. Jace is a Planeswalker that can be defined in a single word - asufutimaehuhfutehfut. In case you live under a rock, I have a video that explains how to pronounce this word, watch the first 10 seconds:
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvA-Vf0MomM&ab_channel=HindustanTimes"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvA-Vf0MomM&ab_channel=HindustanTimes[/ame]
Translated from Biden-speak into the human language, this means “perfecto.” 7 life, 7 range, and 5 power gives him as much range as the green viet cong sniper Nissa, but with as much base power as the strongest melee Planeswalkers (Sorin, Ob Nixilis,) and he scores second in total life only to Ob Nixilis. His 3 toughness is perhaps the only remotely glaring flaw. His abilities are very useful, although Mind Stealer is definitely a gamble and requires 4 spaces of social distancing – I don’t typically go out of my way to try and use it, but it is often proper devastation when I nail the roll. Combining his great stats with the sly shenanigans of blue spells and figures, OG Jace armies seem very consistent, if a bit light on brute force. I think Jace + Lantern Geists are the epitome of control in AotP.
Kiora (345, BfZ) - Rank 5 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low, ascending. I would likely score Kiora a 3 if she was mono-blue, because her stats and abilities don’t seem to be anything special. Her access to powerful green spells and the Kessig Rangers definitely put her up a notch. Yeah, I’m that biased toward the Kessig Rangers and green’s power stims. Kiora is certainly going to rely on her creatures for damage output compared to OG Jace due to her weaker base stats and more support-oriented abilities. I’m not a massive fan of any of her three abilities (Sea Born, Bident of Thassa, Carry by Waves,) but Carry should easily get value each game – the ability to move any one of your creatures (including heroes!) up to 4 spaces at the start of Kiora’s turn is a great way to coordinate army movement and remain flexible in positioning. However, it is at odds with Kiora’s seemingly more passive leaning – why do I want to take a turn with Kiora after I have summoned squads, when I could just take a turn with those squads to move and slay things with them? It might be a better mid-late game power when squad numbers have been dwindled. Notably, Carry occurs at the same time as the Illusionary Projections’ Illusionary Deception (start of blue Planeswalker’s turn,) so when activating Kiora, use Carry by Waves to move a Projection, and then immediately teleport swap Kiora with that Projection via Deception for an... interesting maneuver. You haven’t seen all of the wonders of the world until you’ve endowed Titanic Growth + Roilmage’s Trick buffs unto your Hunt at Dawn/Dusk Kessig figure at least once in your Planeswalking adventures. Your ego will be enormous while you stroll around the map with the ability to make two attacks with ten dice each. Oh, and one more suggestion, try using the Eldrazi Ruiner with Essence Flux, Titanic Growth, and Roilmage’s trick for some surprise Planeswalker one hit KOs via 13 attack dice, as well. MAKE YOUR OPPONENTS GROVEL! I have to quit gushing at some point, so suffice it to say that the beastly burst offense of green loves to use the insane mobility and spell trickery that is provided by blue. There are so many wonderful creature and spell combinations to be found in this color duo. Due to this, Kiora is a top tier Planeswalker IMO.
Jace, Investigator (345, SoI) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low, ascending. Knockoff Jace. This guy is carried by the rest of blue, IMO. Compared to OG Jace, Investigator costs 5 points more and trades down 1 life, 1 range, 1 power, and 1 move all in exchange for just +1 toughness. Oof. Seems like a relatively poor tradeoff to me, and Investigator's abilities seem less powerful/useful than OG Jace. Knockoff Jace is by no means terrible, he’s just average and totally eclipsed by the other blue Planeswalkers; IMO he was dead on arrival. The choice is as simple as one between pink slime and prime tenderloin.
Lantern Geists (30, SoI) - Rank 5 – Activation Frequency: Almost never. I bet these go into 90% of competitive blue armies. Similar to black’s Restless Zombies, the Geists also tend to encourage the number of times that you take a turn with your blue Planeswalker, as most of the Geists’ value comes from flicker/resummon for basically free heals, free repositioning, and peeking at that forbidden item called your opponent's library. I’m not sure if/how the devs playtested these guys... because these feel as if they should cost 50-60 points. Having 4 life and 4 toughness makes them UTTERLY ANNOYING to destroy, especially because they can be unsummoned by choice, which fully heals the Geists. Eerie Observation could completely disappear off of their card and they would still be more than worth it, but it is so perfectly packed together with Flicker to give blue a good amount of knowledge and/or manipulation of the opponent’s deck. It goes well with the MTG theme of blue, too! It should be an EXTREMELY RARE occasion that you choose to actually take a turn with these guys – their attack is so low and blue does not bring many power buffs to make Geists consistently efficient at being the active army card for your turn, but let’s also take into account that there are only 2 figures here instead of 3 like most other squads. IMO Geists are primarily used as self-healing, teleporting guards that tie opposing figures up in engagement and/or block those figures’ approach to your blue Planeswalker. A perfect complement to OG Jace in that you can continuously look at both your own deck (Focused Thoughts) and your opponent’s deck (Eerie Observation) for maximum nerd control, planning, and spiking your anxiety when you repeatedly see the powerful cards in your opponent's library.
Illusionary Projections (65, AoP) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high, descending. When I play blue, I typically use these guys and my Planeswalker as my primary offensive forces. These guys are nearly Rank 5 material. 3 attack and 6 range is quite reliable at getting shots at a target, although the Projections themselves aren’t eager to defend at 2 life and 2 toughness. The Projections’ two abilities are wonderful and useful; Illusionary Deception can make it damn near impossible for your blue Planeswalker to feel particularly threatened by a horde of melee figures, and it can be hard to apply a great deal of pressure even with ranged figures on a blue Planeswalker while even one Projection remains a distance across the battlefield as an escape option. Illusionary Deception is one of the few ways that a Planeswalker can reposition AND THEN summon on the same turn; powerful when we still have creatures in reserve, and it has some synergy with the flickering geists. IMO as an opponent to the Projections, you need to consider killing them before you attempt to geek the Planeswalker.
Leyline Phantoms (95, AoP) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low, descending. Bulky frontliners with the ability to walk toward whatever target/hex they want. If for some reason you aren’t using Lantern Geists, you’d better bring these guys. I mean, for 95 points you get 12 hands, and the enemy Planeswalker don’t want these hands. Twisted Image was specifically crafted by some legend at Hasbro/WotC just to give these guys 5 power for one turn – I do not use Twisted Image in my blue decks unless I bring the Phantoms. I fail to see how the Rhox Veterans should be 90 points when the Phantoms literally have a higher defense than the Rhox could ever hope to achieve with their Battle Formation, and the Phantoms have 1 greater move as well as Phantom Walk to boot! For 5 points more and trading Trample away, Leyline Phantoms are a solid buy.
Necro-Alchemist (125, SoI) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium. NA and the Roilmage seem to be so similar, I feel as if they may substitute for one another in general. For the most part, I treat NA as a 5 power, 5 range, 7 life figure with no abilities - like a gimped copy of OG Jace. Alchemist is perhaps a hair better than average. I do think he is worth the extra 25 points every time instead of taking the Roilmage, but I often don’t find the Alchemist to be a particularly massive part of my offense or defense plan; he’s mostly there as a backup if I need a meat shield or if the Illusions aren’t up to the task for some reason. In my mind, NA and the Roilmage are playing second fiddle to the Eldrazi Ruiner anyway.
Merfolk Roilmage (100, BfZ) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low. If you don’t have the extra 25 points for Necro-Alchemist, the Roilmage is a fine choice for a ranged hero. Even though MR is cheaper than the Alchemist, MR brings 1 more base power and 1 more base range, although it’s a shame he doesn’t have range 7 so he could be outside of the range of single-spaced summon engagements, that might’ve legitimately made him much better. I don’t find either of his abilities very useful. All in all, my opinion is that he is mediocre.
Green:
Spoiler Alert!
Arlinn (340, SoI) – Rank 5 – Activation Frequency: Low, ascending. The offensively destructive potential of green/red is insane, and that color combination almost entirely puts Arlinn in rank 5. Arlinn is not particularly strong as a standalone army card. She is utterly frail at base 6 life and 3 toughness, and her base move is weak, at 5. This is all slightly mitigated by what is available to her in builds; Bountiful Harvest, Arlinn-wolf form having 4 toughness and 7 move, and access to two haste army cards in Firecats and Mad Prophet which can help clear out nearby threats in a pickle, or apply instant additional offensive pressure in situations where she is aggressing. Speaking of her transform ability, it is very fun & unique; you can play at 7 range with her Archmage Assault power to potentially deal true damage at the end of her turn, or you can play as Arlinn-wolf in melee range with her 5 power and Howl, which grants a +1 power token to one of her unique squads every turn where she dealt combat damage! With her access to creatures like Pummelroots, Firecats, Elf Rangers, and the mighty Kessigs, no opponent (perhaps bar blue) wants Howl triggering multiple times. Titanic Growth + Twinflame + Kessig Ranger double attack = you will hear your opponent’s tears and drink the lamentations of their birthing persons. I think her builds primarily lie in a mix of two playstyles – a “true damage spam” build with things like Archmage Assault, Elvish Blade Finesse, Circle of Flame, Pyroclasm, Rolling Tremblor, Incinerate, Infernal Plunge, etc. Or, a “buckets of attack dice” build with things like Howl, Overrun, Twinflame, Firebreathing, Power of Fire, Senseless Rage, and Titanic Growth, all permitting tons of attack dice to be tossed.
Kiora (345, BfZ) - Rank 5 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low, ascending. I would likely score Kiora a 3 if she was mono-blue, because her stats and abilities don’t seem to be anything special. Her access to powerful green spells and the Kessig Rangers definitely put her up a notch. Yeah, I’m that biased toward the Kessig Rangers and green’s power stims. Kiora is certainly going to rely on her creatures for damage output compared to OG Jace due to her weaker base stats and more support-oriented abilities. I’m not a massive fan of any of her three abilities (Sea Born, Bident of Thassa, Carry by Waves,) but Carry should easily get value each game – the ability to move any one of your creatures (including heroes!) up to 4 spaces at the start of Kiora’s turn is a great way to coordinate army movement and remain flexible in positioning. However, it is at odds with Kiora’s seemingly more passive leaning – why do I want to take a turn with Kiora after I have summoned squads, when I could just take a turn with those squads to move and slay things with them? It might be a better mid-late game power when squad numbers have been dwindled. Notably, Carry occurs at the same time as the Illusionary Projections’ Illusionary Deception (start of blue Planeswalker’s turn,) so when activating Kiora, use Carry by Waves to move a Projection, and then immediately teleport swap Kiora with that Projection via Deception for an... interesting maneuver. You haven’t seen all of the wonders of the world until you’ve endowed Titanic Growth + Roilmage’s Trick buffs unto your Hunt at Dawn/Dusk Kessig figure at least once in your Planeswalking adventures. Your ego will be enormous while you stroll around the map with the ability to make two attacks with ten dice each. Oh, and one more suggestion, try using the Eldrazi Ruiner with Essence Flux, Titanic Growth, and Roilmage’s trick for some surprise Planeswalker one hit KOs via 13 attack dice, as well. MAKE YOUR OPPONENTS GROVEL! I have to quit gushing at some point, so suffice it to say that the beastly burst offense of green loves to use the insane mobility and spell trickery that is provided by blue. There are so many wonderful creature and spell combinations to be found in this color duo. Due to this, Kiora is a top tier Planeswalker IMO.
Nissa Revane (330, AoP) – Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: High, descending and then ascending. If it weren’t for her unfortunate base power of 3, Nissa would be an easy rank 5, IMO. Luckily, Nissa’s offense can be supplemented with Leaf Arrow, Predatory Strike, and Groundswell. Base 7 life and 4 toughness make Nissa a bit tankier than most Planeswalkers, Sprint makes it such that she will more easily achieve high ground while defending or even that she might not have to defend at all if she manages to skirt her way out of threat range, and access to Bountiful Harvest extends the insanity even longer. Sprint, in tandem with her high range of 7, gives her unparalleled capacity in dictating where the general fighting will occur. In some cases, it can be optimal to run & gun with her by moving around the map and poking enemies until she is cornered; that is when you slow your activations with her and summon your damage-soaking green slaves to fend off the invaders. Pick a god and pray if ever you are found in an endgame situation where you must chase her around the map with range 1 figures. Mono-green is a nice color to be locked to, although they sadly lack a hero creature outside of the universally available Eldrazi Ruiner. As usual, access to Kessig Rangers and silly strong green spells like Titanic Growth, Groundswell, Snare the Skies, and Overrun all boost the expected strength of any green army.
Kessig Rangers/Ravagers (90, SoI) - Rank 5 – Activation Frequency: High, slightly descending. My vote for most influential and powerful creature card in the game. Although they are a 2-man squad, they offer a decent move 5 + range 5, and their Hunt at Dawn/Dusk ability makes it such that all buffs that you place on that chosen Kessig will get you a double dip effect. Case in point: Titanic Growth. When you select one Kessig for both Titanic Growth AND Hunt at Dawn/Dusk, that guy is at attacking TWICE with 6 dice, and we are still talking before other modifiers such as glyphs, height, and other spells, any of which will make him more astronomically powerful! Even better, Hunt at Dawn/Dusk ability takes effect at the start of their turn even if only one of the Kessigs remain, which means an opponent must slay both of the Kessigs to truly be safe from the Titanic Growth murder combo. I honestly do not often transform these guys unless I have no other able-bodied figures to fight or if the Eldrazi Ruiner is approaching (so I can get them into melee range in order to bypass his Otherworldly non-adjacent defense boost.) IMO the Kessigs elevate the threat of all green armies simply by existing in the army. Also, by the nature of hunt at Dawn/Dusk's "at start of turn" clause, a green player is given some slight relief in knowing that red and blue are COMPLETELY INCAPABLE of tapping into the sweet sauce of the Kessigs. Things like Mind Control, Welcome to the Fold, Malevolent Whispers, and Dissension in the Ranks do not enable anybody to take a turn; they simply allow a move and/or attack. Make serious-sounding threats about using your opponent's AotP set for firewood and using the Eldrazi Ruiner's arm to cook marshmallows over the fire if they try to attack twice under the guise of Hunt at Dawn/Dusk. It works, I may or may not have friends that know from experience.
Pummelroot Elementals (90, AoP) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high, descending. Reasonable frontline fighters for green, 4 power and Trample are certainly wonderful to have as a base. While they are quite similar to the Rhox, I think the Pummelroots have access to better spells and that their better base stats make up for the lack of Battle Formation. Pummelroots can put major hurt on almost anything within their threat range, be it an exposed hero/Planeswalker or a group of squad figures. Their threat range is disappointing at 5 move + 1 range = 6, though, putting them in league with many of black’s and white’s slowest and shortest threat ranges. In a pinch, their mobility can be significantly boosted by Paths Revealed and even disengage via Sheltering Word, and if you toss other buffs like Titanic Growth and/or Overrun in the stack, the Pummelroots DEMOLISH things.
Elf Rangers (80, AoP) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: High, descending. IMO the role of these guys nearly completely conflicts and overlaps with Nissa as ranged hit & run figures. If your Planeswalker is kept somewhere safe from enemy threats, I believe it is very reasonable to continuously use these guys to annoy the hell out of opponent figures. However, I think it is silly to attempt to alternate between using the Elf Rangers and any other army cards to poke the opponent. These rangers will likely need constant activation to remain out of combat via their sprint. To illustrate: if my opponent places their 3 Leyline Phantoms nearby to threaten both my Planeswalker AND my Elf Rangers (thus push comes to shove,) I’m taking my turn with my Planeswalker to get her out of that situation and leaving the sleeping elves to be feasted upon by the... whatever race those blue creatures are. Yes, the elves need to keep moving, but the situations where any Planeswalker should be handed over to nearly certain death should be EXTREMELY niche/calculated, even in “kill ‘em all” scenarios.
Path Wardens (100, BfZ) - Rank 2 – Activation Frequency: Low. Having never used them, jury is still out for these guys. To me, on paper they are somewhere between 2 and 3. I’m not really much a fan of defensive things in AotP, especially not an expensive two-man defensive squad (coming in at 50 POINTS PER FIGURE!) that is easily destroyed/disturbed by many anti-squad effects. However, granting full immunity to attacks from anything but adjacent enemy figures is nothing to scoff at, this even prevents non-adjacent Planeswalkers from attacking small or medium creatures under the protection of a Path Warden. Perhaps this is a good way to gain a foothold near an important piece of high ground with your Pummelroots. However, the problem afterward is spending your turns to reposition these elves instead of generating more offensive pressure with the other squads at your disposal.
Red:
Spoiler Alert!
Arlinn (340, SoI) – Rank 5 – Activation Frequency: Low, ascending. The offensively destructive potential of green/red is insane, and that color combination almost entirely puts Arlinn in rank 5. Arlinn is not particularly strong as a standalone army card. She is utterly frail at base 6 life and 3 toughness, and her base move is weak, at 5. This is all slightly mitigated by what is available to her in builds; Bountiful Harvest, Arlinn-wolf form having 4 toughness and 7 move, and access to two haste army cards in Firecats and Mad Prophet which can help clear out nearby threats in a pickle, or apply instant additional offensive pressure in situations where she is aggressing. Speaking of her transform ability, it is very fun & unique; you can play at 7 range with her Archmage Assault power to potentially deal true damage at the end of her turn, or you can play as Arlinn-wolf in melee range with her 5 power and Howl, which grants a +1 power token to one of her unique squads every turn where she dealt combat damage! With her access to creatures like Pummelroots, Firecats, Elf Rangers, and the mighty Kessigs, no opponent (perhaps bar blue) wants Howl triggering multiple times. Titanic Growth + Twinflame + Kessig Ranger double attack = you will hear your opponent’s tears and drink the lamentations of their birthing persons. I think her builds primarily lie in a mix of two playstyles – a “true damage spam” build with things like Archmage Assault, Elvish Blade Finesse, Circle of Flame, Pyroclasm, Rolling Tremblor, Incinerate, Infernal Plunge, etc. Or, a “buckets of attack dice” build with things like Howl, Overrun, Twinflame, Firebreathing, Power of Fire, Senseless Rage, and Titanic Growth, all permitting tons of attack dice to be tossed.
Nahiri (345, SoI) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low, ascending. Nahiri is a Planeswalker that seemingly wins or loses based on her ability to maintain height advantage. Bulwark, 7 life, 4 toughness, and Near Death Experience all ensure that she is often one of the toughest Planeswalkers to destroy. Her low-ish range of 4 and poor power of 3 aren’t doing her many favors if she can’t maintain high ground. On a hilly map with tons of elevation changes, I feel that she may struggle to maneuver with her Pass Through Stone. Lithomancy can help reduce the chances that Nahiri experiences too much of either of those issues, though. I find red/white a very odd combination to use; red is about high-octane destruction, while white seems more content with slow rolling, buffing, and healing. Luckily, the slow and low range white creatures can appreciate the extra move provided by red spells like Adrenaline Rush, Sure Strike, and Goblin War Paint, while red ought to be excited for access to even higher destruction potential via spells like Inspired Charge, Divine Favor, and Skillful Lunge. I personally prefer to play Nahiri by being aggressive and leaning toward red’s strengths in murdering EVERYTHING with sheer power, with those destruction-enabling white spells tossed into the deck. If you think white supremacists are scary IRL, wait until you see my firebreathing, pro-human, white inquisitors. They’d probably cause a tear to fall from Donald Trump’s eye.
Chandra Nalaar (365, AoP) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium, ascending. Chandra, while somewhat unique, feels pretty average when it comes to the capacity to build winning armies with her. Dual-color Planeswalkers are cheaper than she is, and they effectively have twice as many ways to build their decks and armies. Her range of 5 is unfortunate if only because of how easily it is for an enemy Planeswalker to instantly place her in engagement with summoned creatures if Chandra decides to move in and attack the enemy Planeswalker directly. Chandra’s Fury and high ground = lots of destruction with her double attack, although red creatures generally lack the ability to hold ground, and red’s spells certainly aren’t helping in that category – nearly everything red wants to just be killing stuff, but we can’t move them all at once! Her ability to attack twice and also deal 1 more point of creature damage via Super Heated is all quite potent, however I’d imagine a player would want to actually use red spells for their effect instead of discarding them to deal 1 damage to a creature. When Chandra has the Firecats and/or the Mad Prophet in her summoning reserves, it’s quite dangerous for enemy Planeswalkers to end their turn near her. This is magnified if she is enchanted by Stoke the Flames, which buffs haste attacks if the hasting figures are within 4 sight spaces of her! Seize the Day + Twinflame are approximately as game-warping as Titanic Growth + Kessig double attack.
Blazing Firecats (100, AoP) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: High, descending. Burny Kitties are hard for me to pass up when it comes to making any red builds. Haste and Intense Strike are nearly always threatening, if a bit swingy due to the reliance on attack dice for both of these skills. 7 move is damn good, 2 life and 4 toughness feels slightly fragile, but tends to hold up well enough for them to get their work done, in my experience. When the kitties get high ground and/or any kind of boost in power, everything they touch will likely spontaneously combust especially because Intense Strike’s roll two get one free is more likely to kick in as the kitties roll more attack dice. Being double-spaced is a double-edged sword; a burny kitty can be summoned to engage/attack a figure that is up to 7 spaces away from your red Planeswalker (where a single-spaced figure would only engage a figure up to 6 spaces away,) but the kitties can also be denied position/engagement/high ground by an opponent that positions carefully, because the cats need to be on 2 same-level hexes in order to launch an attack.
Goblin Javelineers (100, BfZ) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high, descending. For being red creatures and size “small 3,” these guys are astonishingly slow, 5 move. I think they are nearly completely outclassed by the Firecats as a primary fighting force, although the Goblins are certainly passable. At the same 100-point cost, goblins bring 1 more base power, 1 more base life, and the creature-poking Volatile Hedron Javelin (capability to hit creatures but not Planeswalkers knocks it down a bit IMO,) but they lack haste, Intense strike, 2 extra toughness, and 2 move which the kitties have. One final point – the goblins’ size 3 can be an unforeseen detriment on Heroscape maps because they cannot climb elevation that is more than 2 spaces higher than their current elevation; this occasionally does bite them in the ass.
Mad Prophet (70, SoI) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Low, ascending somewhat in ratio with the number of enemy heroes and Planeswalkers on the battlefield. The prophet is a hero/Planeswalker fighter in a decent 70-point package. Honestly, from a development perspective, I think he is very well designed, even if his niche can feel weak in squad-heavy games. Haste + Insistent Ravings makes this surprise beast from the east ready to put some hurt on bulky enemy figures that attempt to approach your Planeswalker, while 6 life and 4 toughness nearly guarantees that he will hold his position for a reasonable amount of time. He is usually just an afterthought in most of my red builds, but he earns much more value if you happen upon one of those morally devoid heroes-only armies.
Flamewing Phoenixes (35, AoP) - Rank 2 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low. Flamewing Phoenixes have always been a sort of “fan favorite” of mine, although my love for them wanes over time. They are pretty similar to the Restless Zombies in that they have 1 life and 1 toughness, and they can return to the battlefield from the graveyard. However, I’m more inclined to enchant the Phoenixes due to their higher movement and their ability to (mostly passively) respawn WHILE they are still on the battlefield, thus maintaining their enchantments. But, that line of play feels very in conflict with their ****ty life and toughness values; if I want to make use of power buffing enchantments with the phoenixes’ range 1, they are going to often be in situations where they will have a high probability of dying on the opponent’s turn if I ever want to actually make use of the phoenixes’ newfound power. Their toughness can be upgraded via Stubborn Resilience when only one of them remains (and so you rebirth the others back in some turns,) and also in a Nahiri build, where white provides tons of toughness enchantments. However, this again feels somewhat in conflict with the Rebirth power itself – they only respawn on a turn where a red sorcery was played. By stuffing red and white enchants in your deck, you have less space for red sorceries, which means less rebirths over the course of the game. Anyway, all this to say that at 35 points, IMO their best use seems to lie in either holding a glyph in a far-off location (using their 6 move and flying,) or to summon them directly into engagement with threatening enemy figures in a moment of dire need. A particular thing you should consider: Rebirth wants you to place a phoenix adjacent to your Planeswalker; this is detrimental when there are threats with TRAMPLE in the game, which IIRC boils down to green’s Overrun spell, green’s Pummelroot Elementals, and white’s Rhox Veterans. Still, this causes red armies’ (containing the phoenixes) matchups to be trickier to manage.
Bloodline Nobles (70, SoI) - Rank 1 – Activation Frequency: Medium, descending. The arrogant silver spoon vampires are below average in my opinion, I just don’t find anything compelling about these guys. 2 life and 2 toughness is pretty frail, they will likely be removed from the board after facing somewhere between 1-2 attacks. Their Arrogant Strike is an... ability. It certainly feels red-ish in that you buff their power and they have a chance to get some more immediate power, but the nature of heroes and Planeswalkers having higher base power than squads make it such that the Nobles will need to be buffed with an additional 3-4 power before Arrogant Strike can work against many of those big figures (and this is one squad that legitimately hates Gideon’s Avatar of Justice due to how it helps Gideon to turn off Arrogant Strike, lol.) The Nobles’ very questionable survivability IMO does not make them very good candidates for enchantments, although I’ll freely admit that sometimes enchantments (especially red’s) get all the value they need from just one turn of launching attacks against key figures. In general, I would tend to buy the Eldrazi Scions over these guys – the Scions are cheaper at 55 points, have 1 greater base move, and 1 greater base toughness over the Nobles.
White:
Spoiler Alert!
Sorin (350, SoI) – Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium, ascending especially in ratio with the amount of damage on him and/or the number of weak figures remaining in his threat range. IMO 6 life is poor for a Planeswalker, and is a scary proposition for a melee-oriented one. Like the other black Planeswalkers, he is typically much better at slaying squads than heroes, especially because of his Blade Master – he likes fighting many weak figures instead of a single beefy one. Let's face it, black bends squads over with ease while folding in the face of strong heroes; this is basically black’s theme in AotP, lol. As long as he isn’t instantly bursted down in a single turn, Sorin is annoying to remove from the board because he has access to Corrupt, Near Death Experience, and Altar’s Reap for even more healing on top of his Vampiric Thirst. He can often carry the late game to a win when enemy squads and heroes are weakened and ripe to meet their demise at the end of his blade. For his mix of colors, I’m quite split - white and black actually feel way too at odds with one another. Black stuff is hilariously powerful in damaging or destroying squads (their own and their opponents’,) and black heavily prefers to be in close combat to really lay the smackdown. White generally likes homogeneous armies (read: total white domination,) healing (especially for their heroes,) but they also like being in close quarters, both with the enemy figures and with their own white clan. The overlap in preference for close quarters combat is about the only thing that makes sense for the unification of these colors, but you have conflicts between things like all non-white figures and Fell the Mighty + Honor of the Pure + Gideon’s Phalanx, or all non-zombie figures and Killing Wave... Anyway, without being able to come to a solid conclusion about if white/black is a good combination in general, I will say that Sorin + Avacyn + Ruiner is a savage all-hero army at 600 points with tons of white healing spells, even if black’s spells seem to have little use in that army due to black’s squad-oriented nature.
Nahiri (345, SoI) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low, ascending. Nahiri is a Planeswalker that seemingly wins or loses based on her ability to maintain height advantage. Bulwark, 7 life, 4 toughness, and Near Death Experience all ensure that she is often one of the toughest Planeswalkers to destroy. Her low-ish range of 4 and poor power of 3 aren’t doing her many favors if she can’t maintain high ground. On a hilly map with tons of elevation changes, I feel that she may struggle to maneuver with her Pass Through Stone. Lithomancy can help reduce the chances that Nahiri experiences too much of either of those issues, though. I find red/white a very odd combination to use; red is about high-octane destruction, while white seems more content with slow rolling, buffing, and healing. Luckily, the slow and low range white creatures can appreciate the extra move provided by red spells like Adrenaline Rush, Sure Strike, and Goblin War Paint, while red ought to be excited for access to even higher destruction potential via spells like Inspired Charge, Divine Favor, and Skillful Lunge. I personally prefer to play Nahiri by being aggressive and leaning toward red’s strengths in murdering EVERYTHING with sheer power, with those destruction-enabling white spells tossed into the deck. If you think white supremacists are scary IRL, wait until you see my firebreathing, pro-human, white inquisitors. They’d probably cause a tear to fall from Donald Trump’s eye.
Gideon Jura (350, AoP) - Rank 2 – Activation Frequency: Low, ascending. Gideon wins the “Wannabe Planeswalker” award. I squarely place him below all other Planeswalkers due to his life of 6, his lack of range, white’s lack of range + lack of mobility in general, and white’s relative lack of ability to put great pressure on with their few aggressive spells. At least Gideon has the highest toughness of all Planeswalkers! If Gideon is on high ground, his Counterstrike is fearsome, and his increased toughness will hopefully help him to survive while his creatures deploy white supremacist terrorisms against his enemies. I’m not much a fan of playing slow and defensively in AotP. Blue is somewhat similar in the “slow” regard, but blue has range, plenty of spells for denial, also Jace’s base range, power, and abilities are quite impressive. White’s enchantments get totally demolished by unsummons, true damage, and outright creature destruction, one or more of which is available in spades to nearly every color. Luckily, Avacyn, Kor Aeronaut Captain, and Eldrazi Ruiner are not "unsummonable" and can’t be 1HKO’d by a spell, so burning through their life is very annoying, and that is exacerbated when white can prop them up with consistent healing. It’s a shame that there aren’t more hero specific enchantments, though.
Avacyn, on Bloodied Wings (100, SoI) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: High. Avacyn feels like a keystone piece for white, and I nearly gave her a 5 rating. Similar to red’s firecats, I’m nearly always looking to add her into my armies. She is adept in killing both heroes and squads especially due to Madness of Angels, but this makes her a bit less capable in earning her value when she is fighting an enemy Planeswalker solo, because Madness does nothing to Planeswalkers. However, value can still be found if the situation lines up where she can pound a Planeswalker with her attack and then Madness 1-2 wounds on surrounding enemy creatures. She earns tons of GUARANTEED value just by being adjacent to tons of enemy creatures so she can dole out auto-damage in a fashion similar to how the Biden administration doles out crack pipes. This requires her to be activated for multiple instances of turns, but she needs to survive enemy turns in order to do this! Her 6 life and 3 toughness cause her to be flimsier than nearly every other hero creature in AotP. It is, perhaps, a sort of delicate balance; figures embroiled in tons of engagements don’t tend to remain on the board for very long, but this applies to both her and the creatures she fights. Flying (height advantage,) Gideon’s Phalanx, Survive the Night, and Honor of the Pure can all increase her poor-ish survivability to help ensure that the opportunity to actually heal her will present itself. In my experience, Avacyn is a rock-solid MVP in games where she isn’t bursted down quickly.
Kor Hookmasters (60, AoP) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high, descending. Hookers. I like to consider them for any white build that plans on using squads, if only because they offer extended threat range and a very unique ability in preventing an opponent’s squad from taking a turn, although unfortunately that is useless against heroes. I think Nahiri would typically prefer red squads over the hookers, though. Keep in mind that Detain does NOT prevent things such as red’s Seize the Day or blue’s Welcome to the Fold from operating correctly; those cards do not enable players to take a turn, they permit a move + attack, which is not the same as taking a turn (activating an army card in action 2.) I find the Hookers to be a little vanilla, yet they score this highly in white because of the flexibility offered in their range 3 combined with the generally poor quality of white army cards and spells.
Kor Aeronaut Captain (100, AoP) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high. KAC is extremely similar to Avacyn, but he has +2 power in trade for not dealing an automatic wound to all adjacent creatures at the end of each of his moves. IMO this lessens his ability to fight masses of squads and puts him more in a role similar to that of the red Mad Prophet; tackling heroes and Planeswalkers. I think he is very close to being a rank 4, but I haven’t used him enough to feel confident in more than a 3. He has the same low survivability as Avacyn, but it is patched up in the same exact way - Flying (height advantage,) Gideon’s Phalanx (although this arguably may be less useful if using KAC as a Planeswalker assassin,) Survive the Night, and Honor of the Pure. 2-3 turns of rolling 6-8 attack dice might be enough to kill most Planeswalkers, but KAC has to deal with potential haste attacks and tons of engagement summons as he gets near enemy Planeswalkers, at least if you want to use him as a kamikaze sort of cruise missile in the early-mid game. Perhaps his better role is mid-late game cleanup? Hmm...
Rhox Veterans (90, AoP) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium-low, descending. These guys seem tough to justify for Nahiri and/or Sorin. I feel as though red and black melee squads are just... better... and at similar enough cost. Rhox are not terrible, I think they are reasonable as meat shields and frontline fighters for a pure white build, but in builds where white homogony is not critical, they are overshadowed. I’m sure many people have already drawn the comparison to Pummelroots: The Rhox are 1 base power and 1 base toughness lower, are tribe to a ****tier color, and gain Battle Formation. Altogether, the Pummelroots are a rank 4 because IMO they are just better out of the... summoning portal(?) and green offers disengage + movement buffs where white has none of that mobility stuff. However, it is really fun to buff the Rhox with truckloads of enchantments and roll 7+ defense dice with them!
Avacynian Inquisitors (85, SoI) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium-high, descending. Another squad that I find to be quite mediocre. To an extent, I like their 2 abilities; due to the low-ish number of human army cards in AotP, Avacynian Inquisitors’ Righteous Purge should be active quite often while they are initiating combat. IIRC the only human creatures are Avacynian Inquisitors, Necro-Alchemist, Mad Prophet, and Skirsdag Cultists? Their 2 life and 3 defense puts them on a frailty level equivalent to the Malakir Bloodchasers; it lies somewhere between poor and almost reliable. They certainly bring more offense to white, but at the cost of their own survivability, and the issue isn’t helped by their slow move 5 and range 1...
Colorless:
Spoiler Alert!
Eldrazi Ruiner (150, BfZ) - Rank 4 – Activation Frequency: High. The universal hero available to every Planeswalker, I tend to think of him as a slower but bulkier version of white’s Avacyn. The Ruiner wants to be activated often in order to deal out his automatic wounds to creatures, where he gets guaranteed value. He certainly brings pain & intimidation to the table, and he is a standout huge figure where AotP nearly completely lacks in that category. It is nearly impossible to hide him from sight of spells or enemy ranged attacks, although Otherworldly gives him a respectable boost in toughness when ranged creatures attack him (keep in mind that he does NOT get this bonus while non-adjacent Planeswalkers attack him!) However, his massive size can also be a boon because of how easy it is to establish line of sight to him when summoning him or targeting him with your own clear sight spells. The double-spaced figure pros and cons: he can be summoned to engage a figure that is up to 7 spaces away from your Planeswalker (where a single-spaced figure would only engage a figure up to 6 spaces away,) but the Ruiner can also be denied position/engagement/high ground by an opponent that positions carefully, because he needs to be on 2 same-level hexes in order to end his move and launch an attack. At the end of the day, I think he gets the most value in blue or white builds, two colors that appreciate the bulky hero offense he brings. (Blue's Essence Flux in particular has great synergy: Cast EF before action 2 to move the Eldrazi, potentially even adjacent to a bunch of enemy figures. When you select the Ruiner in action 2, his Lash of Tentacles will deal damage to creatures adjacent to him! Similarly, you can use red's Rush of Adrenline, although RoA is far weaker then EF, IMO.) Green is a distant next pick due to things like Earthen Arms and Titanic Growth, while red and black would probably prefer their squads and squad buffs in particular, and they don’t seem to be able to incorporate the Ruiner into their game plan a very synergistic way.
Eldrazi Scions (55, BfZ) - Rank 3 – Activation Frequency: Medium, descending. Even when considering the uselessness of their abilities if you haven’t conscripted the Ruiner into your army, the Scions are still a speedy move 7 squad with stats that are passable at this price point. 2 life and 3 toughness is not the kind of stamina where they would consistently live to see the other side of more than maybe 1 attack, but they are probably best used as extra meat on the battlefield and/or glyph grabbers in any army without the Ruiner anyway. When they are used with the Ruiner, you can consider two lines of thought; do you buff the scions with a bunch of your enchantments (red and white are the best candidates for this strat) and use the Ruiner to replenish their ranks via Shephard of Scions as they slowly snowball their power and toughness into the ranges of 5-7, or do you primarily feed the Scions into the Ruiner to temporarily increase his move and/or attack? I’ve never actually used the Scions and the Ruiner in the same army, but I have used the Ruiner in a blue army and the scions in a black army.
I welcome conversation and dissenting opinion! What do you think? Do I favor the Kessigs too much, do I rightfully hate low survivability figures? Thanks for reading my thoughts, as always!
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