Karn, The (not yet) Released

 Hi everyone! Its time for another unnecessarily long Andy article full of nothing that you didn’t already know- enjoy anyway ^^

So originally I was going to write an article about all the rares and mythics we’ve seen previewed in New Phyrexia so far, but after thinking about it I decided that Karn as this sets (only?) planes walker probably warranted enough attention to have an article all to himself.

I'm pretty sure that a couple of months ago i read an article somewhere that specifically said karn would not be released as a planes walkers in the next set, never the less it is now clear we are just a few short weeks away from having the new father

of machines stomping around the standard metagame.

Karn, the Released (Oh Hai!)                        7

Planeswalker - Karn              Mythic Rare

+4 Target player exiles a card from his or her hand.

-3 Exile target permanent

-14: Set aside all non-Aura permanents exiled with Karn. the restart the game.

The put all cards set aside this way onto the battlefield under your control.

Loyalty 6

So. planes walkers are good right? - nuff said - but seriously, for those of you that didn’t know: I. Freakin. Love. Planes walkers! so there is a chance that this article might turn out slightly biased, but I’ll do my best to keep it to a minimum :-)

NB: it’s worth noting at this point that when I’m talking about Karn in this article I’m talking about playing him in standard unless it specifically says otherwise.

Karn is the first colourless planes walker we've seen, although his price tag of

7 mana may seem a little high; he can actually go into any deck with his casting cost and has the ability to vindicate something or discard and go to 10 loyalty off the bat making him a pretty tough guy to deal with.

That said there are some decks that are going to want him more than others. A cost of 7 is pretty high whichever way you look at it, having said that Nicol Bolas was 8 total and in 3 colours and still saw some play in Grixis control. It’s pretty clear that this guy is too expensive for most aggro decks. their plan of simply ripping your face off and running away laughing is exciting to them. Getting to 7 mana is not.

He seems to most naturally go into control decks (who knew?), where getting to 7 mana is just eventually going to happen naturally, and finding your copies of him in a pile of 60 cards isn’t a big deal. (I mean- your gonna draw all your cards in your deck eventually anyway… right?)

He could also fit happily into mid range decks and ramp decks quite easily. Ramp decks would have no problem landing him on turn 4-5 (even 3 if they have tasty nuts) but I’m not sure that Karn is what they would want to spend their mana on, mostly they just want to cast instantly game breaking spells// creatures (Emrakul anyone?) and whilst Karn is sweet, he doesn’t actually win the game on his own on the turn you cast him.

I could see some midrange decks playing a couple of him, just as a powerfull high end card, mostly used for his vindicate//discard abilities rather than doing broken things with his ultimate.

Let’s take a closer look at some of his abilities: because it’s Sunday morning and I feel like laying in bed writing about planes walkers :-D

The +4 ability here is pretty sweet, gaining that loyalty is gonna keep himself around without you having to put much else into it, the decks that are capable of dealing this much damage in one shot would probably just rather swing at your face and hope to kill you. This ability is never bad when taking a card out of someone else’s hand, Liliana only got +1 for doing this, and Karn doesn’t have the disadvantage of accidently putting their Vengvines into the bin. Another thing to keep in mind is that this ability also combos with his ultimate, so a sweet thing to do is target yourself in order to exile the cards you want in the next game then ultimate to restart the game with yourself waaay ahead. (Seems fair?)

His -3 is also sweet, exiling any permanent is just awesome, this effect is reminiscent of Nicol Bolas type abilities, except that, again like his +4 ability, these poor exiled cards have no chance of coming back from the yard. I also like the fact that he can come into play and immediately deal with any opposing walkers that are causing you problems, not matter what loyalty they happen to be on. (Also seems fair?)

Currently in std it seems to be the case that your planes walkers tend to get very grumpy when you pass priority with them on 3 loyalty, because for some inexplicable reason, this turns them into lightning rods and shortly thereafter they'll be winging their way off your plane of existence and onwards through the multi-verse onto less lightning filled pastures. But to be fair, all you have to do to avoid this is keep your Karn above 3 against decks that run lightning bolt. And, if rumour is to be believed, we wont have to worry about it at all if bolt isn’t reprinted in M12.

-14 eh? seems like a lot, but then again starting on 6 and having +4 means its only going to be a couple of turns until your starting game 2... or 3... or 4... or... well you get the idea.

So restarting the game, don’t think I’ve ever been able to do that before. Lets see if I get this right:

First you set aside all (non-aura) cards exiled specifically with Karn (I think this only counts the ones exiled by your current incarnation on Karn, not any other previous versions that have since died) then to restart the game, each player shuffles all their other cards, including normally exiled cards, (so that’s: hand, board, graveyard, exiled zone, and library...yes, yes, and suspended cards etc...) into their library, life totals become 20, poison counters become 0, each player draws 7 cards. I guess you get to mulligan as normal?

Now what I’m not sure about is who gets the first turn. when this ability resolves does it end the turn? Or when the game restarts does the player who started the last game start this one as well? Or do you simply continue playing from the turn you were on when you ultimated Karn. At first I thought this last option seemed the most logical, but restarting the game must include resetting the turn clock as well since there are some cards that care what turn it is (Serra Avenger), so now I’m not so sure. If anyone has any insight into this please feel free to share it with the class.

Moving on. Once the game has restarted you put all the cards that were set aside into play under your control. Pretty broken. Basically this means once you ultimate Karn, you shouldn’t have any problem locking down// wining the next game (kinda) due to the advantage you've built up in the first. One of the more fun (/un fun) things to do is to have 2 Karns in your deck, and use one to exile the other from your hand before you ultimate, thus letting you start the next game with Karn in play. This process can then be repeated until your opponent gets bored and scoops. (After the first time this happens it shouldn't take too long in future.)

So yea, seems pretty good, I’m not sure how he's going to impact older formats like extended and legacy but i get the feeling he's gonna be a bit too expensive for them.

Not really too much to say about him in limited either. You opened Karn, well done, play with him, win with him, be happy about it.

Overall I think Karn is a pretty solid card, he's going on eBay at the moment for around $170/£110 for 4. This is a little higher than I would have predicted, but its understandable due to him being awesome and colourless.

I’ve invested in these at this price for a couple of reasons, firstly, it's certainly a card that I will want to play, so I’m gonna have to get them eventually at whatever price. I’m also not sure weather the price is going to go up or down, my instinct is to say it might drop slightly some time after release, as not many people will want more than 1-2 in a deck,

but I don’t think he'll drop that much as he is clearly very playable, he might even go up- who knows. if the worst come to the worst and he turns out to be terrible I can always trade him away or use him in EDH.

Another reason I’m buying him on pre order is that the prices of mythics tend to rise slightly just after there release then settle back down to an overall lower price a couple of months down the line, this is fine if your willing to wait that long to get your 10% discount but I personally feel I’ll want to be using him right from the release day, so getting him asap is important for me to get most value from him.

My advice to people thinking of purchasing him would be, if your gonna want to play with him a lot. Get a couple now as he's not that much, and your almost certainly not going to lose out that much in the long run, if your not that bothered, wait a couple of months and see what price he stabilises at.

Well that’s about all I have to rant about for today. Hopefully this article will have provided some insight into the latest addition to the planes walker family, and spark some interesting ideas for future use, and has not just been a complete waste of time and space. (Dr who would get grumpy with me for that)

Hope you all have fun casting your Karns in the near future ^^ and as always feel free to post your comments (helpful or otherwise :p) below

Thanks for reading.

Andy Mather