"Liliana Deathwielder: Ang Pricey mo Vess!"

"Liliana Deathwielder: Ang Pricey mo Vess!"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.MD

Liliana Deathwielder is the 7 mana version of Liliana Vess in this present plane. She is looking mighty fine now that her tattoos have faded into(I assume) the parts that are covered with that purple dress of hers. Why she wants to wear something that hot in a scorching plane like Amonkhet baffles me but then again she maybe cooler than I suspect her to be. 

Now that we have move past the daunting 7 mana that makes this card relegated to a dedicated Necromantic EDH somewhere , preferably Black Green or Blue Black so she is sure to fill up  your graveyard or your opponents.

This Liliana fills the graveyard differently than the normal the original Vess or Of the Veil that forces players to discard cards. Deathwielder's first ability is a +2 that puts a -1/-1 counter on up to one target creature. This means that a you have a mana dork killer on your hands but on the turn that you are able to cast her would it really matter if they have already used their mana dork several times? At least you can still kill something is what I say.

Her second ability allows you to take something more substantial. Let us say you po a -1/-1 counter on a 13/13 Korasan Cloudscraper. Of course it would not die. It is probably just annoyed that you now made it into a 12/12. Deathwielders -3 ability allows you to kill it no questions asked. The -1/-1 counter doesn't even need to come from you. I can feel a great synergy with Wither here. Coincidentally the same plane that Liliana and all the other planeswalkers started appearing on. The plane of Lorwyn. Oh and there are a lot of those creatures giving off -1/-1 counters in Amonkhet as well like the Archfiend of Ifnir that dishes them out like assists on your opponents creatures so that they can die when you cycle a card. Assist to death. Yeah. All the more to fill the graveyards. And speaking of graveyards.

Deathwielder's ultimate ability allows you return all of the creatures on your graveyard to the battlefield. While his feels ability feels really watered down since you cannot abuse all of the other graveyards that is right in front of you in EDH games it is still a good redundancy card albeit less better than Liliana Vess who has tons of talent. I guess this is what happens when she doesn't really choose to use the Chain Veil. 

In a world where you can cycle your creatures , kill you creatures , dump your creatures in your graveyard Deathwielder will fit right in and her necromantic gift though very slow in coming to you end(About 7 mana cost slow) might still save the day for you. 

Give Deathwielder a chance. She just might surprise you.