menu

MTG Origins: Liliana, Heretical Healer & Liliana, Defiant Necromancer

Are you a Quiet Speculation member?

If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.

Liliana, Heretical Healer - Magic Origins SpoilerLiliana, Defiant Necromancer - Magic Origins Spoiler

Being the first Flip Planeswalker spoiled, I may myself have been spoiled by Liliana, Defiant Necromancer Emblem. I was immediately struck by the elegance of the card's design, and the wonderful synergies she represents. In stark contrast to Jace, Vryn's Prodigy // Jace, Telepath Unbound, whom I've criticized as clunky and uninspiring, Liliana, Heretical Healer // Liliana, Defiant Necromancer is a card worth building around.

First, a 2/3 with lifelink for 3 mana is solid. Not "Mythic Rare" solid, but still a board presence that can build up an early advantage. Her flip-trigger is outstanding, but is somewhat limited because the opponent has a great deal of control over if and when she does a 180. Still, if she is preceded by 1- and 2-drop creatures, your opponent will be in a tough spot, deciding whether to block and activate your face-down card or just keep taking hits from your attackers.

She gets a lot scarier if you're running a deck with a lot of self-sacrifice and recursion engines. My current Commander deck is Teysa, Orzhov Scion, and it focuses on making tokens and using them to feed recursion engines on creatures with good ETB abilities. So, this Liliana will almost assuredly make the cut, as she produces a token, blocks well, triggers Teysa if she dies before flipping, recurs my Soul Wardens, and disrupts my opponent all in one. I can also be assured of flipping her the turn she enters the battlefield, as I have numerous non-token creatures like Viscera Seer that will trigger her "morbid" criteria.

The trouble continues once she becomes Liliana, Defiant Necromancer Emblem. First of all, I love the way her +2 and -X interact. It's easy to build around these two abilities if you don't want to just ride +2 up to the ultimate. Ā It's very easy to break the symmetry of her globalĀ discard, by pitching things with unearth, for example, but you can also just discard inexpensive creatures and alternate +2 and -X (for X=1,2 or 3) to build a board position while slowly draining the opponent's hand. Ā  Frankly, this might be my preferred method of using Liliana's Planeswalker form.

Her ultimate is not to be ignored, especially in long-form games like Commander. Ā Despite a low starting loyalty of 3, she ramps up to her ultimate with only 3 activations of +2 (and her ultimate is pretty good, to boot). Combined with the fact that she can, with proper planning, flip on her first turn in play, her ultimate ability is attainable much sooner than Jace's is. Ā It also creates a very powerful board state, helping to make your end game nigh-unbeatable in creature combat.

She's currently pre-selling for $20 on TCGPlayer, which feels appropriate. Ā As a rule, I don't pre-order, but I would consider doing so in this case if I had a clear and immediate need for Liliana's dark services. Ā I'll definitely try to trade for a playset at the pre-release, though I doubt many people will be willing to deal.

3 thoughts on “MTG Origins: Liliana, Heretical Healer & Liliana, Defiant Necromancer

  1. What I like most about her…is that thanks to the new legend rule you could play a second copy and when you sacrifice one (thanks to said rule) it will trigger her flip..

    1. The abilities would stack according to whose turn it is, so the active players ability would go on the stack first, therefore resvoling last and not be able to resolve. So the inactive player will always get the creature – that is at least how I understand it.

Leave a Reply to Cayd Biggs Cancel reply

Want Prices?

Browse thousands of prices with the first and most comprehensive MTG Finance tool around.


Trader Tools lists both buylist and retail prices for every MTG card, going back a decade.

Quiet Speculation