Courtesy of Wizards of the Coast (WotC) and the Magic: the Gathering Facebook page, take a look at one of the new planeswalkers from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms — Zariel, Archduke of Avernus!
Zariel is a new take on a red planeswalker, offering a four loyalty planeswalker at four mana that doesn’t do the usual stuff like killing a small creature or drawing a card through exiling a card from your library. Let’s look at the abilities.
+1: Creatures you control get +1+0 and gain haste until end of turn.
Zariel plays well with creatures already on the battlefield by giving them a buff to their power, but also is strong when you play a creature and allowing it to attack the turn it hits the battlefield.
0: Create a 1/1 red Devil creature token with “When this creature dies, it deals 1 damage to any target.”
We’ve seen the ability to make Devils that ping from Tibalt, Rakish Instigator and the tokens often overperformed. Unlike Tibalt, Zariel doesn’t lose loyalty to create the tokens. Now you can make blockers to protect Zariel and maintain its current loyalty. By also dealing damage when they die, the Devils can trade up to larger creatures and combine with other spells to take hard-to-kill threats.
-6: You get an emblem with “At the end of the first combat phase on your turn, untap target creature you control. After this phase, there is an additional combat phase.”
Extra combat phases are always fun and Zariel only has to plus twice to reach enough loyalty to use its ultimate. On top of getting another combat phase, one of your creatures gets to untap and crash into the red zone again.
So what do you think of Zariel, Archduke of Avernus? Can the new planeswalker cut it in a traditional red deck or will it create a new archetype?
Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms is scheduled for release on July 23. View our official preview gallery.