centurion911 wrote:Delandel wrote:Aetherling is not comparable to Elspeth. Aetherling wins you the game but is very poor at stabilizing. The turn it comes out, it blocks one thing tops. Elspeth drops 3 blockers on the field. Or she wraths. That's a huge difference in terms of stabilizing the board. And then when you've stabilized she can also go ahead and win you the game just like Aetherling could.
But hey, if she's a sleeper hit then all the better for me.
On the other hand, Elspeth can be stopped. Aetherling can't.
Think of this realistically. Elspeth comes out on 6, Aetherling comes out on 7 unless you're POSITIVE your opponent has no removal, or even 8 if this is game 1 and your opponent hasn't had any targets yet to spend his removal on. Elspeth immediately drops 3 blockers to stabilize or wraths, Aetherling is 1 blocker to stabilize. Elspeth can be killed only if the opponent has some form of evasion, and only if that creature has 3 power or less, and if it's exactly 3 then it still takes at least 2 turns. The only thing Aetherling can block with "evasion" that Elspeth's tokens cannot is a fattie with trample + haste together, so.. actually nothing that exists yet.
So killing her with creatures is actually very difficult unless something pops up in the meta that changes that fact. Stormbreath Dragon will sometimes work if it even sees play, but if Elspeth was making tokens and doesn't have a followup wrath in hand then taking 8+ damage with the Aetherling scenerio is about as bad. Hero's Demise and Dreadbore are the only things Aetherling truly has over Elspeth.
So, slightly harder to kill, more expensive creature.. or something much, much better at stabilizing against aggro decks. Not a hard choice for me.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a comfy leather armchair to recline in and a wooden pipe to thoughtfully chew on.