This weeks reviews - the rest of our top ten
cards of the year - are heavy on characters
important to the storyline, but you'll find
there's a lot to look at gameplay-wise too.
Chandra, for example, is only the second
planeswalker with four loyalty abilities, and
she was clearly expected to be a red counterpart
to Jace the Mind Sculptor. She doesn't read
quite as ridiculous as he does, but every one of
her non-ultimate abilities is something that
will help a midrange deck at least some of the
time. It impresses me how many mid- and
high-cost red cards we've gotten recently that
are not only powerful but enable interesting
lines of play, and I welcome them - red was
definitely in danger of being pigeonholed as a
color of low-cost creatures that are worse than
white's plus burn spells. (Although the fact is,
her abilities are pretty good in a Sligh-style
deck, too!)
Despite being similar to a certain busted blue
planeswalker, Chandra's been pretty
underwhelming so far. The issue is that she's
good at a lot of things, but she's not "great"
at any one thing, which means that you can find
yourself wishing there had been something more
specialized at times.
Her two +1 abilities are similar in that they
help you get ahead, either one card deeper (with
it serving as a potential burn option if you
can't play it) or 2 mana further. Her -3 is good
removal (Flame Slash has been playable), even if
it's not quite there at times. 4 loyalty makes
her able to survive a couple of turns on her own
or get a couple of Flame Slashes out in time.
Again, the issue is that Chandra is good at a
lot of things but not great at anything in
particular. I had her on an early draft of this
list, but took her off in favor of Smuggler's
Copter. She's powerful, and she's probably the
most consistent of the Kaladesh planeswalkers,
but don't think she's as elite as we all
expected her to be.
