Karn Liberated is a colourless planeswalker. What does this mean? Principally it means any Magic deck that wants to can run him. There are a lot of reasons to want to run this extremely powerful planeswalker too.
Created as a golem servant, Karn has since become a planeswalker and a creator in his own right. The metal plane of Mirrodin was Karn’s work, and during its takeover by the Phyrexians, Karn was held captive. Freed by fellow planeswalkers, Karn’s task is now to somehow restore his creation to its prior state.
Karn Liberated costs seven mana to cast. There are no colour restrictions, so any mana will do. He enters the battlefield with six loyalty counters and has three abilities. The first two abilities work around exiling cards and permanents, while the last provides for not so much a big finish as a big beginning.
The first ability adds four loyalty counters to Karn Liberated. For this price, you may have target player exile a card from his or her hand. You may target yourself with this ability, and there are plenty of reasons why you may want to. Otherwise, getting rid of that last card an opponent is holding is nice too.
The second ability costs three loyalty counters. This ability allows you to exile a target permanent. No other restrictions. As long as you can target it, it’s gone. Again, you may want to target your own permanents with this, but the best use is to pick apart the strengths in your opponents board.
The final ability costs fourteen loyalty counters. This sounds huge but in fact two activations of Karn’s first ability will get you there. This one is big. You restart the game. So each player returns everything to their deck, sets their life total to 20, and draws a new opening hand. You do this too, except that anything exiled by Karn Liberated starts this new game under your control. Usually, there is no coming back from this for your opponents. This ability alone makes Karn Liberated a card all players must pay attention to.
When you restart a multiplayer game, any players previously eliminated do not return to the table, you only start with those players alive when Karn’s ability resolves.
Verdict: Awesome. Karn Liberated is a card that will win any deck the game. It works best in decks that can get the mana to cast him as early as possible, exile some cards, and then activate the third ability. You need to be able to protect Karn for two turns and that’s it.
Connections: Like Karn Liberated? You may also like [Elspeth, Knight-Errant] [Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker] [Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded]
Don’t like Karn Liberated? You may prefer [Sorin Markov] [Gideon Jura] [Elspeth Tirel]
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