Ral Zarek…party of one?

Sitting at my coffee table opening booster packs from M-14, dragons maze, and gatecrash. I would’ve had theros but they didn’t have any more of them at the store. As I am opening these booster packs, I was getting ok to pretty cool cards and most of the cards are what I already had in my collection, which is no big deal, more the better right? Some of the rare cards in the booster packs were pretty good, until I got to the last booster pack to open which was the dragons maze pack.

I write down my booster pack cards in my notebook, which is like an O.C.D. thing I have. As I write down the cards one by one, from the top to the bottom, I like to be surprised with what rare or mythic rare was in the pack. Now I am at the 2nd to last card in the pack. When I reveal the last card after writing down the card before it in my notebook, my jaw and my pen fell to the ground. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I thought I was either day dreaming or hallucinating; I pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t sleeping and sure enough I was awake. I was hearing angel music in my head and the card seem like it had a nice glow of light animating from it. Then reality kicked in, there was no light or day dream or hallucinations. It was the real thing.

Ral Zarek, most people hate him and most people love him. Since the first time I’ve heard about the Planeswalker, I prayed to get him at some point in the future. Who knew that I would get him after theros came out, but since it’s still standard I can use him at a FNM event. Regardless of when I got the Planeswalker card, I was happy I didn’t have to spend over $10 for a single card and got him for the price of the booster pack.

What I like about Ral Zarek is that the mana cost to bring out isn’t high. It is two of anything and a blue and a red to bring out. It’s a great fourth turn card to bring out and start kicking it up with its abilities and hopefully don’t get killed in the time it is out on the battle field. To start right off the bat coming into the battlefield it gets a 4 loyalty counters and you can get started right away with the abilities listed on the card.

+1 on the loyalty counter gives him the ability to tap a target creature and untap a target creature.
-2 on the loyalty counter allows Ral Zarek to deal 3 damage to target creature or player
-7 on the royalty counter gives you extra turns for every 5 coins you flip that lands heads up.

For me I think the abilities are good to work with. The last ability on the card is what seems like what people really like. Let’s hope that you don’t have bad luck playing and get all tails, then you would not only lose your Planeswalker (if the loyalty counter was low enough to kill him) you lost your chance to do any extra damage. I think this Planeswalker would be good for a burn/control kind of deck, only because of the first two abilities listed on the card. It seems like the logical thing to do. As soon as I get a deck together I will post a deck list for it.

Aside from Chandra the firebrand and Ajani, caller of the pride Planeswalker cards, Ral Zarek is my favorite Planeswalker and now I own him.

Who is your favorite Planeswalker? Leave a comment with your thoughts.

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