Spoils of Victory #1: Liliana

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, yet another time!

It have been dire times, I haven't had the inspiration to write something on here, neither magic-related nor anything regarding veganism. But I'm back again, emerging from the darkness to bring you my take on one of the two cards that have been spoiled from the upcoming set Magic Origins so far:

Quite the start I'd say, so let's start with our new black commander option:

Liliana, Heretical Healer

Exciting things first: She is the first of the Innistrad-style flip-cards that you can play as a commander if I recall correctly! There were some Kamigawa ones that you can play, and some of them are quite playable but correct me if I'm wrong the only card that was legendary on both sides from Innistrad-block was Elbrus, the Binding Blade which isn't a creature on the front unfortunately. In addition to that she also is the first Planeswalker that can be played as a commander that wasn't printed in a commander-specific set. So you can say she's quite the pioneer in necroman... ehhh special card types as a commander. But enough of interesting facts and magic-card-history, we're here to pose a simple question: "Can one break Liliana, and if so how?"

While I can't think of a way to completely go nuts with her, the value she has to offer is quite huge. The thing is: To make her flip consitently you need to somehow incorporate a sacrifice theme into your deck, but to use the planeswalker-side effectively a reanimator style of deck would suit best. On a sidenote, as long as you have a way to sacrifice a creature at instantspeed, you'll have a way to dodge almost every removal-spell since she blinks herself while flipping which can come in very handy. 

So let's look at some of the cards one could run with her at the helm, that fit both of her sides:

Imagine a line as follows: You have a nice reanimation target in hand and Liliana in play. Play Sidisi, exploit herself, search your library for a reanimation spell, flip Liliana, +2-Ability and discard said reanimate-target, play reanimation spell. And the funpart is: If you sacrificed Sidisi for her own Exploit-Trigger, she will be sitting in your graveyard waiting for you to reanimate her, which should not be too unrealistic since the deck is built for reanimating things. The only thing that would be even nicer is her not being legendary since that would mean you can reanimate her with Liliana, but hey... can't have it all.

Basically Shriekmaw, and Vulturous Aven work the same way, you play them to die immediately making your Liliana flip while also providing a neat effect. And the upside over Sidisi is, that they'll sit in the graveyard waiting to get revived by Liliana herself someday, providing another trigger.
And if you ever manage to hit her Ultimate, all these creatures get so insanely good, I can't even put it into words. Especially Sidisi, which turns into a "At the beginning of each end step, Demonic Tutor". 

Moving on. Since Liliana offers a nice 2/2 Zombie when flipping, why not fully take advantage of that:

A really impactful reanimation spell, some card draw to counteract the discard ability, or a free creature when discarding it (that you might use then to draw even more cards with Carnage Altar). Speaking of Greavecrawler, I can see incorporating a Zombie-subtheme into the deck since they have the tendency to come back from the graveyard which works really well with both the needed dying for Liliana to flip and the discard ability of her planeswalker form.

Speaking of her discard ability. Since this is focused towards multiplayer, the ability is already better than normal because even though you loose a card to it, ALL your opponents do aswell. Of course that is by no means comparable to a 1 for 4/5/6/... in 1v1 but still it is better than a 1 for 1 for sure. But why not take it to the extremes, not only using it as a discard outlet for reanimation targets but other means to cheat in cards and gain card advantage aswell:

All the keywords you'd ever want: Madness, Flashback, Unearth. I admit, playing Increasing Ambition for 5 first and then for 8 is the better line in the long run, but let's say you draw the card late and need excactly two specific cards right now... A quick +2 later and you're ready to flashback it for 2 cards not having to cast it normally first while also making your opponents loose a card. Oh and Corpse Connoisseur is basically a placeholder for any reanimation target you'd like... Discard like you would do with your target, unearth and here we go, the desired card is waiting in your graveyard to get put into play. And yeah, your opponents lost a card as well...

There are many other cards out there that will work really well with more than one aspect of Liliana, but let's not forget how well EDH-All-Stars work:

Sacrifice Solemn to trigger her flip, draw a card, and the next turn revive it with -4 to gain yet another land and most likely another draw at some point. Play Fleshbag to flip and revive if you need a second creature gone immediately by -3ing, which does kill Liliana, but hey desperate times and stuff. And to be honest I can imagine letting her go to the graveyard isn't that uncommon in the deck as well. And then there is Disciple of Bolas. Triggers her flip while probably drawing 3 cards or more which will help finding cards to discard later on. And after a while he will probably hit the bin and sit there until you feel the need for cards and lifepoints again.

Now everytime you build a deck around a versitile card like Liliana you should check if the cards will also work together if you - for some reason - have no access to your commander for some amount of turns (due to the table realizing how broken your deck is if you untap with it for example).
What you will see is that the cards synergize really, really well! Solemn Simulacrum is quite the card with Carnage Altar, Fleshbag Marauder and Sidisi love Gravecrawler, Sidisi tutoring for Disciple then playing said Disciple sacrificing Sidisi is a respectable line and Corpse Connoisseur has been the businesspartner of various reanimation spells for decades. And Increasing Ambition or Shriekmaw are pretty much standalone cards anyway.

Bottom line: If you're looking for an opportunity to build a mono-black EDH but don't know what commander to choose, wait a few weeks and preorder a copy of Liliana because the deck matches the three Vs of important deck criterias:

1. Variety in playstyle and gameplan
2. Value as a playstyle and gameplan
3. Vun because of Variety and Value

That's it for the first card of the current Magic Origins Spoiler, I hope you enjoyed it aaaaand...

See y'all 'round!