Kaya, Orzhov Usurper: Official Thread

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ Deck Strategy & Planeswalker Discussion Planeswalker Details
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Kaya, Orzhov Usurper manawhite.png
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(At Level 60)
+5 manawhite.png
| +0 manablue.png
| +5 manablack.png
| +0 manared.png
| -2 managreen.png
113 HP
Creatures: 6 | Supports: 6 | Spells: 7

“The rogue duelist Kaya travels between planes making a living as a ghost assassin for a fee. Her skills attracted the attention of Bolas, who promised to help her troubled family if she were to kill the Obzedat, the undying ghost leaders of the Orzhov - which she was easily able to do, along with her new ally, Teysa Karlov, amid the growing turmoil on Ravnica.”

AbilitiesBurial Rites - Cost 6

Level 1 - Create a Minor Burial Rites Token
Level 2 - Create a Burial Rites Token. Destroy the top 2 cards of your opponent’s library.
Level 3 - Create a Burial Rites Token. Destroy the top 4 cards of your opponent’s library.
Level 4 - Create a Improved Burial Rites Token. Destroy the top 6 cards of your opponent’s library.

Entomb Contract - Cost 9
Level 1 - Exile an opposing non-land support that costs 8 or less.
Level 2 - Exile an opposing non-land support that costs 12 or less. Create 2 Orzhov Spirit Tokens.
Level 3 - Exile the first opposing creature that costs 9 or less. If you can’t, exile an opposing non-land support that costs 13 or less. Create 3 Orzhov Spirit Tokens."
Level 4 - …opposing creature that costs 13 or less. …non-land support that costs 13 or less. Create 4 Orzhov Spirit Tokens."

Ruinous Wake - Cost 15
Level 1 - Move the first 8 cards from each graveyard to your opponent’s exile. Deal damage to your opponent’s Planeswalker equal to the number of cards in their exile. Then, gain that much life.
Level 2 - Move the first 16 cards from each graveyard to your opponent’s exile. Deal damage to your opponent’s Planeswalker…
Level 3 - Move the first 24 cards from each graveyard to your opponent’s exile. Deal damage to your opponent’s Planeswalker…
Level 4 - Move all graveyards to your opponent’s exile. Deal damage to your opponent’s Planeswalker…

TokensBurial Rites

Minor Token - Whenever a card enters your opponent’s graveyard from anywhere, it is exiled instead.
Token - …opponent’s graveyard from anywhere, it is exiled instead. If that card is a Creature card, you gain 1 life.
Improved Token - …it is exiled instead. If that card is a Creature card, you gain 1 life. Then, your opponent loses 1 life.

Orzhov Spirit
1/1 Creature with Flying
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Old Abilities and Stats

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| +1 manablue.png
| +3 manablack.png
| +1 manared.png
| +0 managreen.png
101 HP

Burial Rites - Cost 6
Level 1 - Exile the first 2 cards from your opponent’s graveyard. Gain 2 life.
Level 2 - Exile the first 3 cards…Gain 3 life.
Level 3 - Exile the first 4 cards…Gain 4 life.
Level 4 - Exile the first 5 cards…Gain 5 life.

Entomb Contract - Cost 9
Level 1 - Exile an opposing non-land support that costs 8 or less.
Level 2 - …non-land support that costs 12 or less.
Level 3 - Exile the first opposing creature that costs 9 or less. If you can’t, exile an…that costs 13 or less.
Level 4 - …creature that costs 13 or less…

Ruinous Wake - Cost 15
Level 1 - Move the first 6 cards from each graveyard to your opponent’s exile. Deal damage to your opponent’s Planeswalker equal to the number of cards in their exile. Then, move all exiles in their owner’s libraries.
Level 2 - Move the first 12 cards from each graveyard to your opponent’s exile. Deal damage…
Level 3 - Move the first 19 cards from each graveyard to your opponent’s exile. Deal damage…
Level 4 - Move all graveyards from each graveyard to your opponent’s exile. Deal damage…

2

What does “Then, move all exiles in their owner’s libraries.” mean exactly? Use her ultimate once and then the exile stacks are moved back into their owner’s libraries? This sounds absolutely horrible. Sorin’s starting to look better than ever. And her ult doesn’t even have the “gain life” clause of her paper version…

3

I agree she sounds a little underwhelming. Granted her ultimate could just win you the game with the right deck. But her first two abilities seem pretty limited.

To be fair though, her Paper version didn’t do much for me either.

4

It looks like they increased the damage aspect of her ultimate by including the player’s graveyard as well as the opponent’s rather than just the opponent’s. The balance for this appears to be the removal of the lifegain aspect.

Seems a fair trade.

5

I’m a little bit underwhelmed… It seems like the best use of her is building around her ultimate. Might be good, but it seems kind of boring. I guess I’ll be sticking with Sorin for White/Black.

'Course, that could change after I see some of the Orzhov cards. Might be worthwhile to come at your opponent two ways. Fill your deck with Afterlife cards, kill 'em off and attack with your Spirits. Then use the ultimate to use the dead Afterlife creatures to kill off your opponent.

Suppose it might be fun, but I’ll wait 'til she rotates around into the Vault for crystals.

6

Here’s the thing, how many cards do you expect to get into both players graveyard in a given game? Her level 1 ult and level 4 ult will likely be the same exact thing. There are corner cases where you can dump a lot of cards into your own graveyard but I can’t see designing a deck to do that when you need 15 loyalty each time and then need to start all over again. Her ult should def still give the lifegain because she’ll need it to continue surviving against any decent deck. Not to mention the wording is just a mess. She might be better than Sorin simply because she has 19 more health. Her mana gains are arguably worse and her abilities are infinitely worse.

I admit I am a little biased but I think the Kaya I designed is way better. Notice I nailed it with the deck slots and was pretty close to the life and mana totals.

7

I’d agree the one you came up with would have been better than this. I’m not opposed to her first or second ability. The cost limitation is also part of her paper counterpart on the second ability.

I’d gladly swap this ultimate for the one in your post though.

8

I was so excited about another black/white planeswalker.

After seeing these abilities, I am now…less excited. :confused:

9

A few questions to this PW.
Burial Rites - if the opponents graveyard is empty is this ability disabled?

Entomb Contract - I assume that this only works on supports on the battlefield, but it is not specifically stated. Can you verify?

Ruinous wake - can you firm up the wording to avoid misunderstandings?

@Brigby - I know you have been extremely busy but perhaps this could be addressed before Kaya hits the vault?

10

Burial Rites: When I tried to use the ability when the opponent’s graveyard was empty, nothing happened; no exile, no life gain, no lost Loyalty.

Entomb Contract: When I tried to use the ability with no Supports on the battlefield and a non-Land Support in the opponent’s hand, nothing happened; same thing happened with Creatures. Only when there was a non-Land Support / Creature on the battlefield did the ability successfully cast.

Ruinous Wake: Sure. I completed the full sentence, so it’s easier to understand what part of the ability specifically changed.

11

Hmm… at what level of planeswalker advancement does her Ruinous Wake ability develop to level 4?

12

For most (possibly all?) PWs, the 3rd ability only gets to level 4 at PW level 60. I’d be surprised if Kaya’s different.

13

So on a complete whim, I bought Kaya yesterday (and got Walking Archive in one of the packs she came with, so… nice) . She looks kinda meh on paper, but I’ve been having a lot of fun with her.

I’m still trying to figure out how to make her work, and I’m sure I’m not going to make anyone think she’s totally broken… Maybe not 30 dollars worth, but 650 when she’s in the vault, sure.

Currently, I’m running a bunch of various removal and cheap creatures. Kind of playing “keep away” with their creatures until I can whittle my opponent down.

14

So what’s your status report after a week @OmegaLolrus? I am still convinced she is terrible and really needs to be overhauled. I will by her for crystals just because I love all things Orzhov and because her deck restrictions are better than Sorin’s but her abilities will likely remain niche/worthless.

Good planeswalkers live and die by their abilities. Arlinn was the first RG walker and she was fine while she had werewolves to cast but now she’s mostly pointless outside of TitS and EC. Beyond the novelty of another BW walker, she isn’t a replacement for Sorin and a lot of players would consider him a far cry from being a good planeswalker. Pretty sad that a brand new planeswalker can’t compare to a mediocre one from nearly two years ago.

15

tinykitty = Terrors in the Shadows

What a lame swear filter to appease whiners.

16

I still like her, but I’m not going to pretend she doesn’t have serious problems.

First and foremost, it’s a pain to not be able to see how many cards your opponent has in graveyard/exile. Makes timing for the killstroke really annoying to figure out.

As much as I like her, she is a literal one-trick pony, and a really long, drawn-out, pony at that. I can win without too much trouble with her… because I have the exact set of cards that I would need to win with her, and I’m willing to be patient.

The one thing she can do that no other planeswalker can’t isn’t super fun.

I like her, I’ve had a bunch of fun with her, but she could definitely use some love.

17

Please consider buffing Kaya. Here is the one I created back in January, feel free to use it for inspiration or copy it 100%:

Kaya, Orzhov Usurper
Health: 107
Creatures: 6
Spells: 7
Supports: 6

5

White
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| 0
Blue
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| 4
Black
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| 0
Red
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Green
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  • Burial Rites - 6: Exile the top 4 cards of your opponent’s library. You gain 8 life if a creature was exiled.
  • Entomb Contract -15: Exile your opponent’s first creature. If you can’t, exile an opponent’s support. (This one could honestly cost 12. There are cards with the same effect that cost less mana and loyalty is way slower to accrue than mana.)
  • Ruinous Wake - 21: Create a Ruinous Wake token [White, Black] Support Card (4) with “At the end of your turn, your opponent loses life equal to the number of cards in each player’s Exile and you gain that much life.”
    Edited from my original post to match ability names and some formatting.

These new planeswalkers should be the ones you focus on buffing, not ones people already own. You should be making ones that people skipped purchasing more appealing. I would have bought her for $30 in a heartbeat if you made her good. I might pick her up for crystals in the hopes that she maybe gets buffed.

18

So, I now have Kaya. I thought she might be a good replacement for sorin.. Who turns out to be just way better than her. If you don’t play for completion, I would not recommend her at all, after one day I already lost interest. Even db2 at least kept me interested for three days

19

She is in the vault. Can anyone convince me to buy her, it is not a must for me to have all walkers!

20

Ive been asking around for the same advice, and getting crickets. She seems to be REALLY GOOD at what she does, and it’s a pretty unique and honestly pretty cool thing that she does, but is it really something that you want to do over and over and over? Not me. And she doesn’t do anything else. It’s exile-kill or bust.