MTG Chandra Ablaze: Good Planeswalker or Bad Planeswalker?
With another of the Zendikar planeswalkers revealed, it comes time to discuss if this card will be good or bad. Check out the pros and cons and make your own decision!
Chandra Nalaar is one of the weakest planeswalkers of the few created so far. Her final ability takes a little too long to get used and her mana cost is too high for what she does. The most popular of her abilities is the second one, which can take out most creatures. It’s nice, but it’s a bit of a waste.
Luckily, Chandra Nalaar has a second chance! In Zendikar Chandra will have a new card called Chandra Ablaze. Sounds pretty intimidating, right? Well, let’s see how good this card is.
(I apologize for the small image size. I’ll try to get a larger one uploaded eventually.)
The Good
This ability is cool because it turns every red card in your hand into a Lightning Bolt. Wait a minute… four damage? That’s better than a Lightning Bolt! Chuck those crummy Lightning Bolt cards into the graveyard with her ability and get more bang for your buck. This ability also works toward the final ability which is a pretty impressive one.
The second ability presents some problems, but I’ll get into those in the next portion of this article. The good part is that you can put all the cards in your hand into your graveyard and get new cards. This is a good ability to use when you have only one card left or none at all. Of course, it does this for all players, so be careful! It could work to ruin someone’s hand full of Counterspells. Also, this ability can give some power to the next ability…
This can be used the third turn this card is out. That’s about standard for the speed of a planeswalker’s final ability. What’s nice is the other two abilities will hopefully be increasing the effectiveness of this final ability. When you’re discarding red cards, discard all those big expensive (or even cheap) spells. They have to be red, but that’s not too difficult.
This is a good loyalty. If a planeswalker is going to cost more than four mana it needs to have five loyalty.
The Bad
Yeah, six mana is a lot. The planeswalkers that have been labeled bad or weak are traditionally higher costing ones. The speed of a planeswalker is part of its power. If you can’t use it quickly it isn’t worth it. This card feels a little slow.
This ability is counter productive. It puts cards into your graveyard to use for the final ability but it also takes counters off the card… which makes the final ability take longer to use. It doesn’t make sense.
This card’s final ability doesn’t do enough for the amount of time it takes to play it. You opponent will most keep it below seven counters, making this card only useful for drawing cards and dealing four damage (maybe). So, does the bad outweigh the good? Does the good outweigh the bad? Well, in this case…
The Decision
An improvement over the last version of Chandra, but this card just falls short when compared to the other planeswalkers. There’s great potential, but I feel this card won’t be able to deliver. When you look at it you envision an amazing blaze of instants and sorceries dealing mass damage to an opponent, but things don’t always go as the planned in MTG. Compared to the other planeswalkers this card is near the bottom of the barrel. As Mike1229 put it to me when we first discussed this card, “It’s just like the first Chandra, only more chaotic.” Thanks for the fun Chandra, but we need some new planeswalkers in the red department. You had your chance.
Of course, this is not a bad card. It just falls short compared to other planeswalkers. Please keep this in mind when commenting. Anyway, thanks for reading and tell me what you think!
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5 Comments
Drakdrium13, posted this comment on Sep 9th, 2009
You may be right. I think this card may turn out to be much better once I see it used. The Ultimatums with this card would be awesome (Cruel, Violent, and Titanic). Thanks for bringing your opinion to the table. A great contribution.
James, posted this comment on Sep 10th, 2009
I disagree as well. I think this is a strong planeswalker. The ability to do 4 damage to any target is amazing! And what will you be discarding? Lightning bolts and other burn spells that will hurt your opponent more in just a couple of turns. The second ability probably won’t see much play. As for the casting cost, I think it’s high, but any lower and this card would just be too good. Can a red deck survive until turn six to get this cast? If you use burn spells on the opponent’s creatures, yes. And then, those spells are in your graveyard to be cast again for free. -James
Drakdrium13, posted this comment on Sep 10th, 2009
i see your point. although this is not my favorite planeswalker by far, perhaps it does derserve a little more credit. i still want to see how it works in actual games though
Ummon, posted this comment on Oct 1st, 2009
This is interesting. You could use burn spells to control your opponents creatures rather than aiming for the head. Than on turn 6-7, play Chandra and then keep using burn ability. Then own your opponent completely.
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elpfan18, posted this comment on Sep 9th, 2009
I think I disagree with you on this one. True, six mana is a bit hefty as far as planeswalkers are concerned, but that seems to be becoming the trend for planeswalkers with massively good ultimate abilities (such as Chandra’s, or Sorin Markov’s). As far as the card being “slow,” I feel that it actually comes into play right when you would want it to. After all, by turn 6 you should have more red instants and / or sorceries in your graveyard than you would at, say, turn 4. I really think that Chandra’s purpose here is to put two more red cards in your graveyard and then blow herself up, allowing you to recast all of them at once. This could take place 2 turns after you play her, as opposed to 3. She’d definitely have enough loyalty to survive any sort of offensive in that amount of time, I think, especially if you’ve been controlling the board with burn up to that point anyways. Plus, that fact does give you the option of waiting an extra turn to use her ultimate, if you want her to survive it. The only two things that seem to really hurt this card are, as you mentioned, her second ability (which I think will see little to no use at all, unless you run out of red cards in your hand to discard) and the fact that her ultimate won’t help you out if you’ve got Fireballs or the like in your graveyard. However, if you’re playing a multicolored deck which, say, includes red on every card, you should have enough options in the instant and sorcery department that you shouldn’t need to use Fireballs or Blazes anyhow. Good article, though… I’d like to know how you’re able to isolate the ability images off of her card.