Niko Aris

Legendary Planeswalker — Niko

When Niko Aris enters the battlefield, create X Shard tokens. (They're enchantment with "{2}, Sacrifice this: Scry 1 and draw a card.")

+1: Up to one target creature you control can't be blocked this turn. Whenever that creature deals damage this turn, return it to its owner's hand.

-1: Niko Aris deals 2 damage to target tapped creature for each card you've drawn this turn.

-1: Create a Shard token.

Tokens

• Shard

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Alchemy	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Brawl	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Pre-release	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Standard	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (9)

TypicalTimmy on Card creation challenge

1 year ago

Sorry, ran out of time to edit. I had forgotten Shard exists as a token.

So your Human creature named Glassblower Prodigy is required to make Shard tokens; See Niko Aris.

Bonus points for finding a new utility for these Shard tokens with Glassblower.

Icbrgr on Censorship

2 years ago

Following this thread the best way I can summarize what's happened so far is there is an angle stating that writing is shallow when a characters emotional problems, sexual orientation, physical attributes define a character/becomes their personality. Another angle stating inclusiveness is important for opening a bridge for more consumers/readers of Magic the gathering to relate to.

I think both angles are correct especially from a capitalism angle.... increasing/growing or targeting specific audiences can generate more interest and sales. WOTC is pretty good at making money; and knows when and where said demographics can be targeted I.E. China vs USA.... I think this is why Chandra and Nissa are a contentious topic because rumor has is that lore was retconned for the sake of marketability in various regions.

Lilliana Vess is a character who has been around for many years and has been in many adventures throughout magic the gatherings lore/history. Niko Aris is very new and hasnt had time/attenton to realy prove "thyself" (idk how to use the right pronoun forgive me) however has lots of potential to develop into a more beloved character. The same is true for any of the other new planswalkers we will meet in the infinite planes of the multiverse.

Icbrgr on Censorship

2 years ago

Times are just different now... even in the history of magic cards/art there are now forbidden Crusade, Invoke Prejudice, Jihad, Cleanse, Stone-Throwing Devils, Imprison ect ect...

This hasnt happened to me personally no....but iv'e seen wild threads in the blind eternities that went on that had less to do with magic/the game than Oof_Magic's original/copied posts.

If someone where to make a post saying that they were upset with the author of the war of the sparks decision to undo Nissa and Chandras relationship/sexual preferences that would be allowed to let the conversation develop..... I cant say the same would be allowed/tolerated if it went the other direction. If someone were to make a post/thread about Niko Aris and their opinions surrounding the planswalkers lore and creation I could also only assume the conversation would be allowed to go one way as well.

Necrosis24 on Keeping Magic magical

2 years ago

I do think representation is important as it influences our biases when we ourselves are uneducated about certain groups.

As legendofa said the problem arises when their sole identity is that they have such a characteristic or there is a misrepresentation of the culture/struggles.

It is important for these characters to have their own defining beliefs and personality traits that influence their decisions beyond belonging to a minority/marginalized group.

I am all for representation the only issue I see is when people push for it and it does not come from the company itself the character we end up getting is just a token to say “Look we are Inclusive”. I feel like the recent planeswalker Niko Aris is such a case where the backstory is not well written or thought out just very basic and bland. Niko Aris is just a token character to appeal to the LGBTQ+ community and tries to use the “Decide my own fate” as relation to the struggles of the LGBTQ+ community but doesn’t do it justice. Not to mention the character design for Niko Aris is what I feel media uses as the stereotypical and easily recognizable “queer” character. This design is just used as a cop-out so the audience knows they are nonbinary instead of building a relatable personality, beliefs, and struggles for the character.

To be fair I also hate the art style used for their card so I am more bias towards WOTC’s incompetence on Niko Aris.

Noire_Samhain on LGBTQ+ in the multiverse

2 years ago

They basically went "No homo" with Chandra and Nissa in the War of the Spark novels, in a turn that peeved off the chunk of the fanbase that is LGBT+. Chandra is still canonically omni/pansexual. They screwed the pooch badly.

Niko Aris is nonbinary, going by they/them. They had a big part in the Kaldheim stories. Yahenni, Undying Partisan is nonbinary, from Kaladesh. And its not just because of their race being aether-elementals, Gonti uses he/him. Phenax, God of Deception is an example of a villainous LGBT+ character. He's attracted to men, though not sure whether he's ONLY attracted to them. But he will curse women he feels are taking "his" object of affection away from him.

MagicMarc on Cast Your Deck In 1 Turn in Kaldheim Standard!

3 years ago

I am not sure there is any way to make it fast enough for competitive play. It's pretty janky. To get it more reliable we could adjust the list for some draw however.

We could cut some slots and add some card advantage; -1 Volcanic Geyser , -1 Niko Aris , -1 Leafkin Avenger , -1 Stonework Packbeast .
Then go +4 Omen of the Sea or +4 The Raven's Warning .

That might make it more consistant. The saga is slower to the payoff but you can put key pieces in your sideboard.

MagicMarc on Cast Your Deck In 1 Turn in Kaldheim Standard!

3 years ago

It is pretty disgusting, huh? The really odd part is that I stumbled across the combo in a weird way.

I have seen some decks online that use the Mystic Reflection + Nyxbloom Ancient + Phylath, World Sculptor combo to make a lot of copies of the Nyxbloom Ancient . And then the decks just use it to make big shark tokens or to play out what they have in hand. Or to instantly resolve a Midnight Clock or similar.

So I decided to put the decks I saw online together and found out I only have one copy of Midnight Clock and 1 copy of the Nyxbloom Ancient . So I proxied the elemental because it's so expensive to get and I wanted to playtest for a while and decide if I wanted to invest in more copies of it. And I had to figure out another way in standard to dig into my library and fill my hand as good as the Midnight Clock or as close as I could get.

So I did a scryfall search for draw cards and found Niko Aris . The Shard tokens you create when you play Niko let you scry and draw. And I had gotten a playset of them for collecting reasons. So I put 1 Midnight Clock and 3 copies of Niko Aris in the deck. They were going to be placeholders until I got more copies of the clock! I still had not figured out what I had on my hands.

Then I started playtesting the deck and realized I can make an insane amount of Shard tokens that will let you scry and draw through your whole deck with the psycho mana this deck can produce.

I had already known the Epitaph Golem was in standard because I am a fan of using Reito Lantern with Sunforger as a kind of recursion engine in decks and had marked it as useful before. I found the Stonework Packbeast when looking for a way to funnel the mana the deck produces into for the Tergrid's Lantern before I decided that was an mean way to win.

Then I added the Archon of Sun's Grace when I realized the Nyxbloom Ancient and the Shard tokens were enchantments.

So the whole deck sort of developed just because I was playtesting a janky deck idea I did not have all the cardboard for.

rdean14 on Card creation challenge

3 years ago

Mcat1999, White has long been able to deal damage to tapped creatures. And blue has long had Prodigal Sorcerer . Niko Aris doesn't deal direct damage, yes it's noncombat, but still not direct. They're completely within the color pie. Although it seems like the color pie only applies to white anymore. I just don't get the constant hate on white from R&D, just why? Anyways.

Bright & Happy card:

Full Moon Festivities

Sorcery

Destroy all non-Human, non-Angel creatures.

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Make a card named "Minna of Selhoff", she's a former cathar and Midnight Duelist who was a hometown hero in Nephalia.