Oath of Nissa Bonus Episode!
Sure, we had the opportunity to introduce the Magic community to Warping Wail yesterday…
… But Top Level Podcast is still Still STILL here for our regularly-scheduled Thursday episode!
What do you think about Oath of Nissa?
Oath of Nissa is at least “two different cards” … It incorporates both a card selection ability and a longer-term mana fixing one.
Most of the value of Oath of Nissa is bound in the first ability:
“When Oath of Nissa enters the battlefield, look at the top three cards of your library. You may reveal a creature, land, or planeswalker card from among them and put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.”
First and foremost, this is a card that will affect deck design and mulligan decisions. Playing with Oath of Nissa may impact how many lands you play in your deck; certainly it will increase your chances of hitting your second land when you keep a one-land hand featuring Oath of Nissa.
Note: Oath of Nissa actually digs you four cards deep for purposes of drawing a second land. Not only do you get to look at the top three cards of your library (where you are a favorite to see a land), your actual next draw is the fourth card (not the first, which you’ve already seen), dramatically increasing your chances.
When you just put Oath of Nissa in your Abzan deck, you are just going to draw so many more Siege Rhinos and Den Protectors! And because Oath of Nissa is a Legendary Enchantment (meaning if you play a second one, one of them will go to the graveyard) it makes it easier to re-buy with Den Protector!
The second ability on Oath of Nissa isn’t as important as the card-replacing first… But it can still be relevant.
“You may spend mana as though it were mana of any color to cast planeswalker spells.”
Oath of Nissa can help your green deck hit the WW on Gideon more quickly and consistently, or make Sarkhan, Unbroken more palatable.
Tons of chats on Oath of Nissa, the idea of playing as many as eight Nissa planeswalkers, and a wee bit about Oath of Jace at the end; all in our “Oath of Nissa Bonus Episode!”