In a lot of games, Sorin's new incarnation will
play very similarly to his previous two-color
card from Innistrad. This is good news for
Standard and other small formats, where those
abilities enable a certain set of attack-based
strategies, but not necessarily of interest to
people who already own and play with the
previous version. What is of interest, however,
is his ultimate. There's no way to deal with an
emblem other than to end the game, and one that
mimics The Abyss is all but impossible for some
kinds of decks to deal with.
Welcome back readers todays card of the day is
the new and improved, well slightly different
than his previous form, Sorin. In standard this
card is quite powerful and a role-player it
allows you to keep board presence or stabilize
life totals and in longer games the ultimate can
give you an advantage, this card is definitely a
powerful planeswalker and has already seen a
fair amount of play and it will continue to do
so. In other competitive formats the abilities
don’t really synergize with existing deck types
too highly outside of black/white token decks
which make good use of this card. In casual and
multiplayer it does tons of stuff gains life to
stabilize you in multiplayer games and provides
flying tokens for offensive and defensive
purposes. In limited it’s a huge bomb and
provides a powerful must deal with threat for
your opponents. Overall a powerful card in
standard and other formats as well as casual and
limited making it a solid if uncreative twist on
the previous incarnation of Sorin.
Today's card of the day is Sorin, Solemn
Visitor which is a four mana Black and White
planeswalker with four loyalty. The +1
gives creatures you control +1/+0 and Lifelink
until your next turn, which is particularly
useful combined with Vigilance and can be a
noticeable change in the game with even a small
number of creatures. The -2 adds a 2/2
Black vampire token with Flying which is strong
combined with the first effect and a decent
token, though situational as two loyalty is a
heavy price. The -6 gives an emblem that
has each opponent sacrifice a creature at the
beginning of their own upkeep is naturally
stronger in Multiplayer, yet still useful one on
one. Overall this is a decent if not
extremely impressive planeswalker that solidly
supports Black/White tokens and will see
frequent play in those decks, but probably not
make a major impact othwewise as the effects
aren't compelling enough to splash or design
around.
In Limited the first two effects and high value
are enough to make this a first pick in Booster
and barring very extreme circumstances this
should not be passed. Forcing a deck to be
built around this is probably for the best in
Sealed as just repeatedly using the first two
effects can almost win games by themselves and
it is notable faster with any battlefield
presence. The -6 is situational, but can
break a stalemate and put pressure on the
opponent to keep playing creatures or fall
behind.
As with most planeswalkers, there is a lot going
on. Giving your creatures +1/+0 and lifelink
will help you put your life total in a safe
place while dealing extra damage. This works
well with the -2 that gives you an evasive
creature to pump up. There are a lot of good
black/white strategies that would be glad to
have either one or both of these abilities.
Most of the time, people don't consider the
ultimates all that much, since they so rarely
happen. In this case, it only takes three turns
to get Sorin's emblem. While making an opponent
sacrifice a creature every upkeep is strong,
it's not backbreaking like many ultimate
abilities are, so you're not as likely to want
to sacrifice your planeswalker to do it, so it's
more often going to be 4 turns before you can
use it, and many times it will be more valuable
to use one of his other abilities, since black
and white are two of the strongest colors when
it comes to getting rid of creatures.
