Spoiler Highlight: Archangel Elspeth in Standard

March of the Machine's official preview season begins March 29, but Wizards has released episodic texts that tell its story during that week, and in the seventh chapter, Divine Intervention, a new spoiler was revealed to the public:

Archangel Elspeth is a crucial piece of the set's storyline, but when we put the story aside and consider her in-game potential, how effective is the new version of Elspeth in competitive formats?

In today's article, we will review her, focusing on the environment where it is most likely to be present, Standard.

The most interesting point of Archangel Elspeth is that it is actually a reference to the character's first appearance in the Magic: The Gathering universe, in Shards of Alara as Elspeth, Knight Errant.

Even more elegant is the fact that the new version is not an absolute improvement on the previous one in every way: while Archangel Elspeth has advantages such as its token having lifelink and its power increase buff is with counters at the instead of temporary, but costing two loyalty points to activate as a drawback.

On the other hand, Elspeth, Knight Errant activates both the token creation ability and the +3/+3 and flying buff when adding counters, so she grows faster. However, it takes more turns to get to the last ability, which is only useful if its controller has already established the board, while Archangel Elspeth lets you create an irreversible position in later stages of a game.

When she was released, Elspeth, Knight Errant was considered one of the best Planeswalkers alongside Garruk Wildspeaker and Jace Beleren because she was able to protect herself. As for Archangel Elspeth, which has the same qualities, we might brand her as a fair and efficient card, but she competes with a power level that doesn't compare to 2009.

In the white planeswalker category alone, the new Elspeth finds the challenge of competing with The Wandering Emperor for the same mana cost. The Wanderer is a multi-format staple and sees play even in Legacy, offers very similar qualities to Elspeth, and we can still cast it at Instant-Speed, while using it to exile a tapped creature.

If we raise the costs, Elspeth Resplendent, which has shown little results in recent tournaments, turns out to be more efficient than Archangel Elspeth, as she offers card advantage and protects the creature put into play with its second ability, plus her +1 is pretty flexible.

Archangel Elspeth excels when your board is already secured the moment she enters play, where she will then function as an evasive buff to one of your threats, or to put tokens in play and guarantee recursion in two or three turns if necessary, and there are strategies in competitive formats where her inclusion is beneficial.

We got used to super-efficient Planeswalkers, like Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, which dominate the game by themselves and force the opponent to deal with them or lose the game due to the card advantage or flexibility they provide, and this Elspeth's new version breaks this pattern and requires your deck to benefit from its inclusion through a concise strategy with its abilities, rather than just complementing its surroundings and acting on its own.

It's closer to the 2009 card design than the modern design, and if that's a trend in future Planeswalkers, we can expect fewer Planeswalkers and more of other cards in Standard and Pioneer, as the distribution of "high-value effects" among various categories of permanents, as in Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, has been a trend on the latest sets.

Archangel Elspeth, as mentioned above, is a Planeswalker who needs a concise strategy with her proposal to work in a list. Its best synergy will be with aggressive and creature-based strategies, as Midranges or Control decks benefit more from The Wandering Emperor, Serra Paragon or Elspeth Resplendent in that color.

The place where she seems almost made to fit on the list is in Azorius Soldiers, where her tokens share the deck's main creature type and all creatures on the list cost up to three mana, while their biggest weakness tends to be efficient removals and/or blockers - both issues addressed by Archangel Elspeth's abilities.

Elspeth also amplifies the opportunity to generate attrition in games where both boards tend to grow by making mutual trades less punishing for its controller due to the recursion she offers, or by delaying the opponent's clock with your tokens.

Soldiers lists average between two and four flex slots, and because of its low curve, it's likely that two to at most three copies of Elspeth would be run between the Maindeck and Sideboard.

As ironic and inconsistent to the game's lore, Archangel Elspeth offers resilience and evasion to Selesnya Toxic, both essential elements to the archetype.

A relevant combo on this list would be Planeswalker alongside Jawbone Duelist, where she could, on first activation, turn it into a 3/3 with Flying and Double Strike. On the next turn, using the same ability would turn Jawbone Duelist into a 5/5 that attacks for ten damage and two poison counters.

The advantage to this archetype is that, by dealing with two winconditions that work alongside each other, it's easy to make any Toxic creature a threat with little effort, and granting them another means of getting evasion without relying on Skrelv, Defector Mite manages to open space to make Elspeth a staple of this strategy.

The last archetype that exists today where Archangel Elspeth might have some presence is in Esper Legends, perhaps as a one-of or two-of in flex slots or on the Sideboard to improve the clock in attrition games. However, there is no shortage of options in Esper colors for high-quality cards for four or five mana, which might hurt the Planeswalker's space on the list.

Esper Legends has a small amount of evasive threats, and could make good use of ways to get past blockers and attack with more creatures to unleash a bigger Connive with Raffine, Scheming Seer. Also, Elspeth's interaction with Raffine, where discarded creatures can later be returned from the graveyard by her, cannot be ignored either.

Archangel Elspeth doesn't look like the best card of the upcoming preview season, and her potential is dwarfed by better options out there in the current season. However, with the rotation that will come with Wilds of Eldraine in the third quarter, she could gain more space in the competitive landscape.

We also need to consider that March of the Machine can change the Metagame to the point of making it more tangible for her. After all, we still don't know what the new card type of the set, Battle, does. And given the potential that creatures like Thalia and the Gitrog Monster and Faerie Mastermind have, it doesn't look like the new set's power level will be weak.

Thanks for reading!