Post by Sigarda on Feb 28, 2015 23:20:30 GMT
It's strange but she's kind of an enigma to me. I've never actually played with her and haven't actually felt the need to build a deck around her in anything. Strangely enough I was looking at a foil copy of her earlier today (I visited a store that I haven't been to for some months and they had a copy in their folders) and I considered buying her for a moment but - having already got a reasonably powerful Vorel of the Hull Clade Tiny Leader deck - I couldn't actually think of anything I especially wanted to do with her.
Which is a shame as she has the potential to be absurdly powerful in the right build.
Lets take it from the top though - At the very worst she is 6 mana for a 1/1 and draw a card, which is a little expensive. On the other hand there is potentially no practical upper limit in formats that include things like Primordial Hydra (Zegana enters as a 260/260 and you mill yourself out ).
So - in the pre-release / draft was she a bomb? Well kind of - her mana cost is quite specific so you really had to want to play Simic colors. Fortunately in those colors there tend to be some reasonably big creatures and with evolve as the Simic mechanic if you are allowed time to develop your board - even in sealed pool - you can usually expect her to come in somewhere between 3/3 and 5/5 which is reasonable. Of course if your opponent had a Supreme Verdict then you get to watch as they wipe your board 2 turns before you can bring her out...
So she was relevant in sealed and draft. I'd always have drafted her but she wouldn't have necessarily been enough to push me into Simic on her own. Almost but not quite.
Constructed? Not so much. As we've mentioned already RtR standard was aggressive and quite fast. Even with green's ramp the color requirements of casting her meant that she could never come out too early and even if she did you wouldn't have a board state developed enough to bring her out at a reasonable size by then. (Were she in the current standard where there are nice big creatures and Chord of Calling to negate her color requirement she would be a lot more useful in a mono-green ramp deck as a big beater / card draw)
Modern? No - for the same reasons as standard. At the moment the format is too aggressive to sustain her. If birthing Pod was still around then potentially she could have been used but there are still better options. I'm not saying you couldn't build a modern deck around her - I'm sure people have - just that the way I tend to play I wouldn't build one.
So is she useful? Oh yes...
EDH is full of ways to flicker your permanents. Deadeye Navigator and Conjurers Closet being two that spring to mind quite quickly.
EDH is full of big creatures, especially in Green. Too many to mention spring to mind.
EDH decks like to draw lots of cards and have things like Venser's Journal, Reliquary Tower etc to let you keep them.
Can you see where this is going?
Bring her in, draw some cards, flicker her in and out and draw a whole hell of a lot more. In a combo deck she can help you find your win condition or in a normal deck she can simply draw enough cards to let you protect her and yourself whilst you kill everyone else with commander damage... or creatures... or whatever.
She is actually incredibly versatile as a commander and because you can use her as everything from a card draw engine to a big beatstick she is - in my not so humble opinion - a really good prospect for anyone looking to graduate from the pre-constructed decks and make their own deck with a commander who will be sympathetic to several different play styles (and / or decks that maybe aren't as sharp as they could be)
...or you could build something really focused and spike like with her very easily indeed.
Will I use her as a commander one day? Possibly. I kind of like the idea of trying to build some kind of U/G control deck (yeah, good luck with that...) and have recently picked up a Kiora so.. maybe.
She's an excellent card though - just wasn't all that relevant in standard.