Ryan Smith
says... 
Venser is a bit of an oddball planeswalker; he makes stuff go away and he forces through lethal damage - remarkably useful abilities, both.
He resets tired planeswalkers, he protects your threats from sweeper effects, he remove those insidious -1/-1 counters, he gives you untold, free card advantage, he makes your guys bigger, he can make the humblest of your permanents lethal. Venser is an animal of a card.
He can't do it all alone, though; Venser is begging to be in a deck with permanents that have EtB effects, and we've got a veritable pick'n'mix to choose from. M11 gave us the Titan cycle (obviously Sun Titan and Frost Titan are on-colour here), but there's also the allies from Zendikar block not to mention the Contagion artifacts - the Clasp and the Engine both shut down your opponent's defenses and cripple their attacks. On the subject of Contagion Engine, for 6 mana Venser makes sure your opponent's creatures each get -2/-2; for 10 mana they get -6/-6 - whilst your own survive and your 'walkers, level up guys and Everflowing Chalices get more counters - did I forget to mention? Venser ramps your mana.
These are the splashy cards that Venser likes to play with but there's also the little guys: Wall of Omens, Aether Adept, Sea Gate Oracle - cards that have already featured in blue-white control lists. Venser screams card advantage.
So it looks like we have a combo planeswalker. True, he doesn't stand alone and win games (Jace, the Mind Sculptor), he does protect himself (Elspeth, Garruk) but what he does is use the cards you already control to give you whatever you want. MORE of whatever you want.
Once he gets into his stride your best answers and threats do what they do repeatedly for no cost. But there's a but. Once this guy is doing what he does best you've probably already won as every action you take with him gets increasingly win-more.
Winning more feels pretty good, though.
|