Niambi, Esteemed Speaker – Core Set 2021 MTG Review

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

Niambi might look like she’s about Teferi’s age, but she is actually his daughter. It’s some kind of time-related fudging, and I wouldn’t recommend trying to puzzle out the how – it’s more confusing than keeping up with the various Doctor Who portrayals!

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried one of those white-blue flash-ish self-bounce-ish comes-into-play-ish decks. They have a lot of tricks, are hard to fight with removal, and can generate a lot of stuff to track and drop when you’re not careful and thus lose the game for yourself (though on the plus side, it can also confuse your opponent). I feel like Niambi fits very well in that deck, and might even resurrect it in Standard – remember yesterday’s card? Her last ability feels odd in that light, but it’s probably a callback to her father’s grand return in Dominaria. Raff Capashen was part of a casual deck that arose from that era, and that ability is probably designed to go with that type of gameplay (not to mention setting up a big turn reanimating something like Zetalpa, Primal Dawn!).

Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 3/5
Multiplayer: 3/5
Commander: 3/5

Two mana to pull a creature out of a sticky situation is nice, and Niambi even gives you a bit of extra life gain on top of it. Once she’s on board, she offers a bit of card filtering, letting you turn extra or uncastable legendary cards into extra cards. (Note that it’s any legendary card, so lands and planeswalkers and even sorceries are fair game.) It’s definitely not a flashy card; Niambi is fairly slow to fire and fairly slow to get rolling, but her colors are perfect for a deck that wants to do Nothing, and doing Nothing is something she helps with.

Constructed: 3.25
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 3 (likely going to be used to save a creature, but that might be enough)
Multiplayer: 3
Commander: 3.75