Card Highlight: Liliana of the Veil on Pioneer & Standard

It's official: Liliana of the Veil will be reprinted in Dominaria United, making it the first reprint of a Planeswalker in Standard outside a Core Set.

For those who don't know, this Liliana was for many years one of the best Planeswalkers in the game, as a Modern staple for a long time and even appeared regularly in Legacy - but with the Power Creep caused by the F.I.R.E. philosophy, she saw less play after the release of Modern Horizons, and today sees occasional play on archetypes like Rakdos Midrange and Jund, where this card appears on approximately 50-60% of lists for the past few months.

In this article, where we will understand how exactly her card works and in what ways we can take advantage of it.

I'm sure you can read the card, so I'm not going to explain exactly how each of the abilities works, but rather the practical aspect of where they fit, how to take advantage of them, and under what circumstances the Planeswalker really goes well with certain strategies.

Liliana of the Veil has a symmetrical and recurring resource reduction (discard), coupled with an asymmetrical board reduction (sacrifice) and a very punishing ultimate in long games where opponents don't apply pressure — this makes her pretty decent against almost any kind of strategy, but she excels at Midrange mirrors, is great against Control, and less useful against "go-wide" Aggro like Humans, while decent against "go big" Aggro like Bogles — and as far as Metagame characteristics are concerned, Liliana shines in attrition-oriented formats, while also working well in a combo-focused Metagame when accompanied by other disruptions such as discard spells.

In every way, Liliana is a Midrange card because it demands you to be proactive while punishing your opponents by reducing their resources, pulling them into topdeck mode where normally your cards will be better and/or you will have the ideal mechanisms to draw more cards than your opponent, or if you have an effect that takes advantage of cards in your graveyard, such as Flashback, Escape, or creatures like Tenacious Underdog and Scrapheap Scrounger.

She also offers the inevitability of keeping the board clean if you manage to remove all creatures from the battlefield, further punishing topdeck by ensuring that whatever they draw, it's either discarded the next turn, or if it's a creature without immediate impact, will be killed by the sacrifice.

Finally, Liliana's ultimate can be extremely punishing, or completely irrelevant, depending on how the game plays out: she usually excels in Control games or against Midrange matchups that stretch too far, where you have to force your opponent to choose between their lands and bombs, or if they run too many utility permanents, and you have to force them to make difficult decisions between maintaining the viability of cards like Manlands or preserving their manabase — it's a real puzzle, but one that's only relevant when you have already reduced the resources of your opponent's hand to the maximum, which allows you to make a more conscious strategic decision and with fewer variance factors.

This combination and the way her abilities interact with each other make Liliana of the Veil an extremely solid Planeswalker. Not specifically broken or overwhelming, just solid. And to take advantage of it, our deck needs to make its pros outweigh its cons.

If we look at a classic Jund list, we see that there are several ways to do this — through more impactful 2-for-1 effects like Kolaghan's Command and Bloodbraid Elf, or with creatures that provide a very fast clock like Tarmogoyf, or with a constant flow card advantage like Dark Confidant, or with means of mitigating the damage like Seasoned Pyromancer, where all of them guarantee that you have more resources or better cards than your opponent in a war of attrition — because, at the end of the day, Liliana of the Veil is a grinding machine that pressures the opponent to be faster or accumulate more value before their resources are exhausted.

I would like to point out that I don't believe Liliana of the Veil is so much above the current Power Level of a Standard where other staples like The Wandering Emperor and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker are present. It fits well into that category and just demonstrates on what basis we can measure next season's power creep.

In her previous Standard era (Innistrad / Ravnica), Liliana didn't see much play due to a small combination of Metagame factors, as even with Jund being the best deck in the format, there were compelling interactions for each of her abilities: Loxodon Smiter was strong enough as a Maindeck creature while being extremely punishing against discard, Voice of Resurgence and Thragtusk were staples, and you didn't want your opponents sacrificing them as it generated a positive 2-for-1 on their battlefield, Unburial Rites was an essential part of an archetype that consisted of reanimating Angel of Serenity, etc.

That is, despite Liliana being an excellent card, her surroundings were extremely hostile for her to be good against a variety of strategies - even against Control she wasn't that useful as it was easy for the opponent to outnumber you in number of cards in hand with Sphinx's Revelation, and that made it just a complementary piece in the maindeck and sideboard of some archetypes.

Without broad knowledge of what awaits us at Dominaria United, it's difficult to assess whether the same will happen to her this season, or whether she will have more potential because the format will not be as responsive to her abilities.

There are some interesting ways to take advantage of Liliana's symmetrical discard, but what really matters is not whether you can reuse what you put in the graveyard, but whether you can accumulate more value than your opponent while forcing both players to enter topdeck mode.

In that sense, yes, Standard has the necessary tools to take advantage of Liliana — cards like The Meathook Massacre keep the board clean, Sorin the Mirthless guarantee bodies on the battlefield and cards in hand, and Invoke Despair grants a topdeck bomb that can instantly win games.

If we look at two or three color combinations, things look even more promising for her, as there are plenty of other ways to create highly impactful threats and add card advantage to your combination.

Speaking of which, a very interesting point for both Standard and Pioneer is how Liliana of the Veil and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker are the antithesis of each other: while Liliana wants fewer resources in your hand, Fable prefers a full hand where you have something to discard.

While Liliana wants an empty board on the other side, Fable guarantees a token to be sacrificed in case the Planeswalker comes into play on turn 3 - this dynamic between them will be essential to understand while both are present in the Metagame, and I truly believe that the Neon Dynasty saga will be one of the most played cards of the next season.

Dominaria United is also bringing some good interactions with the Planeswalker, such as The Raven Man granting a token every turn you choose to have players discard cards, and Evolved Sleeper functioning as a powerful mana sink on late-game that also offers an extra draw each turn.

In the end, I consider that Liliana has a lot of potential in Standard and leaves a Black-Based or even Mono-Black Midrange even closer to reality, but we need to evaluate which other high-impact cards will be present in the new set and how they will change the Metagame to the point of making this Planeswalker good or bad depending on the general context.

At Pioneer, however, we have an amplified view of what we can expect from one of the former Modern pillars.

The first point we must consider is that Pioneer's Metagame is significantly more hostile to Liliana — archetypes like Izzet Phoenix, Greasefang, Boros Heroic, among others, are lists that actively interact with their graveyards and might even thank you if you force them to discard a card, and they all manage to play relatively well around the sacrifice ability as well.

Also, Liliana of the Veil isn't very useful against archetypes like Rakdos Sacrifice (since the -2 will always take away a token, or a Cauldron Familiar and the discard ability tends to be less relevant and more damaging to you in this game), and adds very little to one of the worst matchups for Midranges today — Mono Green Ramp.

I'm not saying she's bad, she just doesn't seem like the instant staple that some people are acting like she is — like every Magic card, Liliana requires a specific Metagame where she can shine, and I'm uncertain whether we're in that Metagame.

So, what archetypes can she step into?

The first conclusion would be in Rakdos Midrange, but... Does it have room in the Maindeck?

Rakdos Midrange is Pioneer and Explorer's most famous strategy today, and its three-drops slot is filled, with all these cards doing something incredibly relevant: Graveyard Trespasser offers lifegain and is a graveyard hate that also generates a clock, Bonecrusher Giant is a cheap removal and impactful threat, and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker is one of the most powerful cards of all time.

Moving up the curve, we have Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, a great anti-aggro tech and useful against Midranges that also works as a graveyard hate, and Chandra, Torch of Defiance is removal, card advantage and wincondition in a single slot — so where is there room for Liliana of the Veil in this list?

Also, in which matchups she improves your game? In the Mirrors? Against Control? It definitely helps against Combo and can prey on archetypes like Heroic, but doesn't Rakdos tend to have all the necessary elements to deal with them already? Does it do anything against decks that play over top, like Mono-Green or Niv-to-Light?

As far as Rakdos Midrange (and only Rakdos Midrange) is concerned, I think Liliana will be a good Sideboard piece that can be tried out in the Maindeck as the Metagame adapts, or if the format changes to the point where it's needed, and we'll probably see her in main of some lists as she looks spectacular on the Mirror Match, most likely replacing some number of Bonecrusher Giant or other flexible slots.

This in no way means that Liliana's reprint is bad: she just doesn't seem to add much to the archetype where everyone wants it.

For example, Rakdos Arcanist is an excellent strategy for Liliana as she kind of does everything you need to do: this is usually a great Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger deck, which usually looks to drain resources through cheap discards and removals, has a dozen ways to reuse its spells, and manages to accumulate card advantage every turn for a very low cost, in addition to being able to take full advantage of both of her effects.

However, Rakdos Arcanist is a bad strategy in the Metagame since Lurrus of the Dream-Den was banned, and there's a lot of incidental graveyard hate in the Metagame today, so I'm not so confident this is the best home for Liliana.

Of course, Liliana of the Veil is a great piece for Greasefang or any other archetype whose strategy involves having a long game and putting stuff in the graveyard itself, but I think the Planeswalker might be too slow for the current version's most successful version— Abzan — so we'll need to assess her possible space in the Mardu or Esper variants.

Also, the Planeswalker works well in strategies that repurpose the graveyard like Mono-Black Aggro and I can easily see its inclusion in the Maindeck of this list in place of something like Murderous Rider — and as the need for higher drops decreases and the clock becomes more aggressive, I can imagine a return of this strategy in the Metagame. Not to mention that making the perfect curve of Liliana of the Veil on turn 3 and Rankle, Master of Pranks on turn 4 can be devastating if left unchecked.

There are also a multitude of other options available in the format, such as the Doom Foretold lists, or those looking to repurpose ETBs with Yorion, Sky Nomad, or the more Late-Game version of Dimir Control that tries to constantly drain opponent's resources and reuse your graveyard with Dig Through Time, or Golgari Midrange, etc.

In other words, I think Liliana of the Veil's arrival on Pioneer is great, but doesn't seem like the big threat that she once was. She will be important, will most likely probably appear on the maindeck of some lists, but doesn't add so much to Rakdos Midrange today as to make it overwhelming.

That's all for today.

I would like to point out that this is an individual review, done on the same day the card was revealed and considering only my particular point of view on the matter, so please take these considerations with some caution and if there is anything I am forgetting or disregarding, feel free to leave it (respectfully) in the comments!

Thanks for reading!