Courtesy of the Magic the Gathering Twitch stream, our favorite necromancer returns in Core Set 2021 — Liliana, Waker of the Dead!
For four mana, Liliana, Waker of the Dead starts with four loyalty, and pluses to five, but sadly she can’t defend herself without dropping down to one loyalty.
+1: Each player discards a card. Each opponent who can’t loses 3 life.
Loyalty abilities that tick up and force opponents to discard has a storied past (looking at you Liliana of the Veil ). Not saying this card is comparable, but discard is usually pretty good.
-3: Target creature gets -X/-X until end of turn, where X is the number of cards in your graveyard.
Planeswalkers that can defend themselves are often dangerous. This one however, requires having a graveyard filled with at least two or three cards to do much of anything early on. Late in the game however, this ability can kill just about anything, including indestructible creatures, such as Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger.
-7: You get an emblem with “At the beginning of combat on your turn, put target creature from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. It gains haste.”
Now we’re talking. The important thing to note here is this let’s you pull creatures from your opponent’s graveyard as well as your own. Additionally, creatures that die after being reanimated with the emblem go back to the graveyard, meaning you will almost always have a target.
