Planeswalkers play a role in the Magic: the Gathering Standard format metagame in sustaining your main objective of winning against an opponent. Their various loyalty abilities can suffice to their high-mana cost, and as seen in the recent sets, the average casting cost of a planeswalker is five.
Today we rank the top seven Planeswalkers in the Standard format. I have based this ranking from the recent Standard tournament results submitted to the MTGTop8 website. We start with Temur’s favorite, Lukka.
1. Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast – The star planeswalker of the Temur Lukka decks, performs to cheat the late game bomb Koma, Cosmos Serpent while providing gas of “drawing” creatures from the top cards of your deck with its +1 Loyalty. What benefits because each most of the creatures can be played for its Adventure ability which makes it a utility card and a creature spell at the same time. Lukka is an automatic playset in this deck.
2. Professor Onyx – Blue-Black and Mono-Black Control’s muse planeswalker in their list, which gives the worth of its six-mana cost: creature kill, and late-game card draws. It can kill off a big threat by getting the opponent to sacrifice it, and by that time you are casting her, you have probably played a sweep spell already by turns four or five. Prof. Onyx kills off their follow-up creature after that sweep. These decks have at least two copies on their mainboard.
3. Ashiok, Nightmare Muse – He acts as a utility creature in Dimir and Esper decks when it was printed in Theros back in 2020, up until the recent deck builds of Dimir Control decks. He has two ability options: firstly, producing 2/3s on an empty opponent board after dealing with their threats, and the second is “recoiling” a nonland permanent which you can counter later on.
4. Vivien, Monsters’ Advocate – Mono-Green and Gruul Aggro deck’s support planeswalker in the late game, providing 3/3s if left unchecked. A plus is its passive ability letting you cast creatures from the top card of your library which is just gas when you have enough mana to cast them.
5. Garruk, Unleashed – Another Green planeswalker mainly for Mono-Green Aggro decks, pushing Trample damage on your biggest threat across the opponents’ board is its specialty. Its minus loyalty ability is sub-par as compared to that of Vivien, but then, of course, having only one copy in the mainboard would only have this relevant when drawn in the late game.
6. Ugin, the Spirit Dragon – By the term “late-game bomb”, this is your go-to guy. I was shocked when Wizards decided to reprint this in M21 as I’ve seen how devastating it is when it resolves and its loyalty ability activated. You just basically slam it on the board and see your opponents’ reaction. Control decks and maybe some rogue ramp builds in the current metagame uses this card to solely act as their win condition. It is still highly valued as of this posting to at least 20usd each.
7.
Lolth, Spider Queen – The newest Black planeswalker from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms set has become a major component of Orzhov and
Mono-Black control decks. It checks on the two roles of card draws and having threats of its own. While it only can minus loyalty for ability activations, the rest of the list on its deck build is composed of creatures with trigger abilities when they die such as Eyetwitch.
The ranks may change within the next two weeks but given the impending Standard rotation in September 2021, most of these planeswalkers will be out of the format. That said, I might have another batch of Top seven or Top Ten planeswalkers after the Innistrad set becomes legal to play.
That is a wrap for now, until the next blog post.
