One of the planeswalkers that participated in the War of the Spark storyline during the conflict & battle against Nicol Bolas was the identity that we only knew as The Wanderer. It turns out that this is a relevant character in the upcoming Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty set. She was then identified as The Wandering Emperor, and head of the kingdom. In today’s Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty online previews, her planeswalker card is revealed below.
Her variance of being a planeswalker card is quite new and is my first time seeing a Flash Planeswalker. Before, you’d need cards like Leyline of Anticipation to be able to Flash them in through the activation of the abilities would still need to be done on a Sorcery speed. The Wandering Emperor acts like a four-mana Instant that does a lot of things, especially combat tricks. The +1 ability gets one of your dudes a +1/+1 counter and first strike until the end of turn. Pretty much a good idea to kill an opponent’s attacking creature. In a worse combat scenario, you can just Exile one of their best attackers. A two-for-one scenario would always likely happen. If you have not yet added a creature on your board, having a 2/2 White Samurai token at end of the turn is a start.
The starting 3 loyalty might be easy to pick off with the current burn spells that can deal damage to planeswalkers, but given that the card has Flash means that not all the time they have the mana to answer it after you’ve cast it.
The current Mono-White Aggro deck is already good enough to include one more new component, but having at least two copies in the main list would not hurt the curve. Given that you have an option in cases of the late-game setting.
That is a wrap for this card preview, until the next blog post.