Liberator, Urza’s Battlethopter – The Brother’s War
Date Reviewed: January 2, 2023
Ratings:
Constructed: 4.00
Casual: 4.63
Limited: 4.25
Multiplayer: 3.75
Commander [EDH]: 4.25
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
It’s kind of funny that after all the time the designers spent establishing that artifacts can have colors, they went and made an actual factual tribal lord for colorless artifacts. I guess Liberator is more for the bigger formats: many of those old-style colorless artifacts are staples in larger card pools, not least Commander, and it obviously works well with Eldrazi too. Flash makes everything more versatile, more resilient, and even adds dimensions to how some cards play (consider the ones that can draw cards, like Jayemdae Tome). And speaking of Commander, you now have another option for a colorless deck leader, one whose abilities make it much easier to play with only colorless cards.
Constructed: 4
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4.5
Talk about thopping your way into the new year. Liberator, Urza’s Battlethopter is a pretty fun sort of threat, presenting both a Leyline of Anticipation-style effect for your colorless and artifact spells and a growing body as you play the game; since Liberator only starts with 1power. Flash is one of those deceptively useful abilities, and it’s especially potent here if you can pair the flash with unloading your entire hand when their shields are down, getting a large thopter and a bunch of friends. It being an artifact is also useful with all the Powerstones running around at the present time. This probably won’t warp any formats, but it’s both threat and threat enabler on its own, and being an evasive body is always a good place to start.
Constructed: 4 (flash makes this slip past removal a lot more readily, and it has a nice suite of abilities)
Casual: 4.75
Limited: 4.5
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 4 (it even works well in Eldrazi decks, by virtue of most of them being colorless)
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