Wowee, yesterday’s Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty preview show sure was exciting. It showcased brand-new mechanics, new variants on so many beloved legendary creatures, and even put Phyrexian mana on a planeswalker!
What excited me the most though was The Wandering Emperor. Now my track record of gushing over the new white planeswalker with each new set has been bad, but I’m pretty sure my luck’s turning around with this one!
The Wanderer sure did pick the perfect time to planeswalk back into Standard. Without the recent Banned and Restricted announcement, we’d see this beauty go up against the Izzet Epiphany end boss and most likely lose. Since that’s not the case, today I can explore a fresh Standard through the lens of an even fresher planeswalker! Let’s find out if The Wandering Emperor has what it takes in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Standard!
Flash and Her Static Ability
A planeswalker having flash would normally not be all that exciting, but The Wandering Emperor’s static ability gets around the whole “I still can’t activate its abilities” frustration. Being able to cast a planeswalker at any time, while still being able to use its ability at any time, opens a whole new world of play patterns that the card type has never really had before. This just adds so much more depth to deck construction and technical gameplay decisions that it’s getting my juices flowing!
So we know The Wandering Emperor wants to be cast at instant speed. What we need to figure out is what situations we should be looking for to maximize the effectiveness. This will help lead us closer to finding the perfect home(s) for the card. Let’s start with her +1.
[+1]: Put a +1/+1 counter on up to one target creature. It gains first strike until end of turn.
This ability clearly functions best in combat. It lets us attack with creatures slightly smaller than opposing blockers. If they take the bait, we flash in The Wandering Emperor to pump our creature and give it first strike to keep it from dying in combat. What if they chose to not block and attack instead? Well, we’ve got that covered as well!
-2: Exile target tapped creature. You gain 2 life.
To me this is the most interesting ability. We’ve always known great planeswalkers could also protect themselves, but The Wandering Emperor takes that to a whole new level. For starters, flash allows us to not even have her on the battlefield until after attacks are assigned. That means an opponent won’t even get an opportunity to attack it down before you get to untap with it.
Now we get to the good part, which is casting her after attacks are declared. Here we have the option to exile a larger creature before it deals us damage, or even do the same [+1] trick but on defense instead. This flexibility is going to lead to many “rock and a hard place” decisions for opponents who may choose to decline blocking or attacking, instead just electing to tap some mana and cast more creatures. When this happens, we have a third option for the planeswalker!
-1: Create a 2/2 white Samurai creature token with vigilance.
When we find ourselves at the end of our opponent’s turn with open mana, we can simply cast our planeswalker and put a creature token onto the battlefield. Not the most exciting of plays, but it will leave us untapping with a planeswalker, which isn’t too shabby. Then we’ll have the option of creating another Samurai creature token or starting to pump our team up with +1/+1 counters. If we decide on the latter, then we’ll be leaving The Wandering Emperor on three loyalty, which again will threaten to exile opposing creatures if they try to attack her. I mean, talk about poetry in motion!
So what does this tell us about the card? We’ll obviously want to play it alongside some creatures, that’s for sure. It’ll also be wise to throw in some instant-speed spells or more flash threats. That way, when we hold up mana to cast it on our opponent’s turn, they won’t always know it’s going to be The Wandering Emperor. So what this sounds like is we have the starting ingredients for a pretty sweet midrange recipe!
Creatures (14)
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (25)
Spells (16)
So here we have a pretty basic version of the Orzhov Control deck we’ve all grown to love. The Wandering Emperor slots nicely into a shell like this. While we won’t be leaning on her more aggressive [+1] ability, her other two will mesh very well with this “tokens + removal” gameplan. We’ll be able to disguise her in our hand when we hold up mana thanks to spells like Deadly Dispute and Vanishing Verse.
She’ll also play really nicely with Lolth, Spider Queen as we slow the game down a bit by threatening her [-2] for a turn. This will most likely keep an opponent from attacking for the turn, and then we make a Samurai token at the end of the turn. After that, we slam Lolth and busy up the battlefield with some Spider tokens.
While we’re on the Orzhov Midrange topic, I have to highlight Spirited Companion for a second. Most lists in this archetype play Eyetwitch and Professor of Symbology plus a Lesson package in the sideboard. This is mostly because these are the best options for a deck like this, but I’ve always found them to be lackluster. Spirited Companion now gives a deck like this access to an early creature that’ll draw us an actual card, usually better than a Lesson, and then get sacrificed to something.
Now if you’re looking for something a bit more aggressive to do with The Wandering Emperor, I’m pretty sure Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty will have you covered!
The preview of Goro-Goro, Disciple of Ryusei revealed a new mechanic yesterday in “modified.” I absolutely love modified because it’s such a clean way to introduce new abilities through things that already exist in Magic. Now the old man in me is already cringing at the idea of sitting across from a Bogles opponent who keeps saying, “I’ll modify my Slippery Bogle. I’ll modify my Slipper Bogle. I’ll modify my Slippery Bogle.” True torture, that would be.
Besides that worst-case-scenario, I’m really hoping for modify to be a competitive mechanic. If it is, then The Wandering Emperor may be one of the best ways to modify creatures in a competitive setting. Equipment and Auras are rarely good enough in competitive Magic, as they rarely create velocity or card advantage, two of the most important aspects of the game. It’s also not that easy to find great ways to get +1/+1 counters on your creatures, which The Wandering Emperor can do easily, repeatedly, and even in combat as well!
Now I’m not going to attempt to build a deck around modified just yet. There just aren’t enough cards previewed with the mechanic yet, but I wanted to highlight the interaction so you’ll know to look for it as more cards get previewed!
At the end of the day, The Wandering Emperor is merely a role-player. It’s very good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s never going to be in discussion for a ban. That’s a good thing too, because I’m getting sick of them! The Wandering Emperor looks like a well-balanced planeswalker whose value will ebb and flow based on what cards/decks are in the metagame. I’ll close today’s article by going over a couple of those cases I feel confident about.
When Goldspan Dragon is good, The Wandering Emperor will be too.
I honestly can’t think of a better card to combat Goldspan Dragon. This is the type of card that can win games the moment it’s cast, so you never want to tap out against the threat of it. Then it becomes the card you’re holding mana up for each turn, but the opponent is causing you to waste it by playing around the removal. Such an annoying position to be in, and it comes up over and over again!
Well, not anymore!
Now you can hold up a planeswalker of all things in anticipation for their Dragon. If they end up casting it and attacking, you can flash in The Wandering Emperor and exile it with the Treasure token trigger on the stack. If they don’t, you don’t have to waste your mana and just slam it on the end step and get aggressive with Samurai tokens.
When control is popular, The Wandering Emperor may be best in sideboards.
The biggest weakness The Wandering Emperor has is that it’s not very aggressive and doesn’t have an ultimate you can work towards. This means it’ll provide marginal value, but that will only be relevant if the cards you’re drawing towards have a high impact on the game. Hell, it can’t even put counters on Faceless Haven anymore thanks to the ban!
The Wandering Emperor thrives in a highly combative matchup. It wants both players having creatures and removal so you can create situations where it can shine. There may only be three abilities to choose from, but having flash and its static creates many profitable situations you can navigate towards.
