Liliana, Heretical Healer

All the other flip-walkers are seeing play. Nissa and Jace are strong enough I consider them as reasons to play their respective colours. Kytheon is a solid (albeit very aggressive) white creature and an auto-include in all white aggro decks. Chandra is the weakest of the lot, yet she still sees play in mono red decks. Liliana is the odd one out. Why?

1BB for a 2/3 lifelinker is obviously weak, but the flip side isn't bad. She ticks up at +2, which is very uncommon (only Ajani & Nahiri tick up at the same rate). The +2 effect is symmetric, but not necessarily bad - the more well-known Liliana, Liliana of the Veil, has the same +mode. That Liliana is a mainstay in Modern. Granted, her -2 effect beats out Liliana, Defiant Necromancer's -X effect, but that's OK since we're not in the high-powered world of modern, and Liliana of the Veil is one of the best planeswalkers ever printed anyway. This Liliana's ultimate is also game-winning.

The obvious reason for not playing Liliana, Heretical Healer is that she's hard to flip. But not THAT hard. In addition to Fleshbag Marauder, we now have Walking Ballista (*cough*) as well. Black isn't short of self-sacrifice effects either, as well as cards that do something when they die (e.g. Deadbridge Shaman). You don't even have to build a deck around a card we only have one copy of, since a creature dying also triggers revolt and two of the biggest revolt payoffs are also black: Fatal Push and Vengeful Rebel.

So why does nobody run this card?

Because I don't want to discard my cards.. and she's slow. We can win games faster now. She also doesn't defend herself very well with her dead brother token. I'd run her in a madness deck of some kind, or a graveyard manipulation/sacrifice deck.. bug that's about it. She's narrow.

We don't have much in the way of hand control go to support her strategy.

She's a product of a bygone age. Cards like Fleshbag Marauder, Deadbridge Shaman...sod it...Crats as an archetype in general, have/has seen better days in Duels. During Origins Golgari Control was all the rage, with Lili being a key player along with Evolutionary Leap to engine out Gaea's Revenge as a finisher. But we forget how long these games took, and we're no longer in an environment where you expect to realistically ult her AND gain value off of it. She is just too narrow to fit in most decks, and the archetype wanting her isn't in that good a shape.

I will take a crack at this... I think it's hard finding the right shell for her. She fits right in with a zombie deck but zombies are kind of mediocre at the moment. Once she is flipped you can use her on some interesting strategies like reanninamation or madness but those shells don't really lend themselves to flipping her if you want to focus strictly on reanimation or madness. Unless you blowup your own creature opponents can play around to not let it flip, at least not until they have an answer and she is not that impressive as a creature. It's possible that a lot of players just see her as a straight disadvantage because of the way she has to flip and the +2.

Pretty much this. Origins had multiple archetypes she fit into (Golgari Crats/Control, Rakdos SacSteal and more), BfZ at least still had Crats.

Her problem is her really difficult flip condition. There are very few viable cards that can flip her - cards like Fleshbag Marauder, Nantuko Husk, Bone Splinters and Evolutionary Leap have lost a lot of their appeal as the game has gotten a lot faster than them.

If you want to put her to use, I'd recommend Orzhov Crats. Hidden Stockpile gives you a decent sac outlet (though you need a nontoken creature to sac to it), the deck wants to be heavy black anyways and most of her abilities are wanted in that deck. It's not a top-tier strategy, but it's probably the best deck for Liliana atm.

Hmmm... walking ballista, scrapheap scrounger, felshbags, and lili. Stockpiles deck... emerge/delirium deck...

I think we really needed myr back. That's the card lili needed and lost.

Right now there aren't enough playable 2 drops for her, nor support for the rest of her deck if you don't draw her.

You might be able to put her in snake.dec. I wonder. Or really build around her and try call the gatewatch as lili 2 and 3.

Here's a point, what viable ways are there to flip her on T3 when she hits? Walking Ballista and Neonate spring to mind. The question then is, why bother? R/B Vamps doesn't want her, even if most of her modes offer some kind of synergy.

BR Artifacts could do it a few ways. Any self sacrificing 1 or 2 drops (obviously WB, but others)? I forget.

Neonate isn't exactly a bad fit btw, they want to be in the same kind of deck. Lili in a madness deck is pretty damn good, IMO. You just have to find a way to make the mana work.

Maybe if there was a B/R madness deck that didn't just turn into a slower version of B/R vampires, I could see her fitting the bill more often.

i haven't used her since Crats decks.

There was a Jund midrange deck that ran her at some point, but that deck was awful

There could be a viable Grixis Madness Control deck that could use her as a control option, but it still runs into the issue of reliably flipping her.

I have an Azban Revolt deck that she does pretty well in; there are probably better choices but I'm still unlocking cards. Because I have plenty of Revolt triggers, I can usually flip her pretty easily, and I have a lot of cards that draw to replenish the discards. If I get into a stalemate long enough to use her ultimate, then I get to use my sac outlets to empty my side of the board every turn, and they all come back with Revolt effects.

Good or bad, I don't know. But she is definitely FUN.

The good flip walkers are the ones which the creature side is good, or at least decent. That's the case with Jace, Nissa, and, to a lesser extent, Kytheon. 2/3 Lifelink for 1BB is mediocre at best, and I'm actually surprised OP thinks Chandra is playable.

I'm probably one of the few that still like Origins Liliana. She's great in delerium and aristocratic decks, and once she flips she can become a huge threat.

The bigger problem with, as well as the other flip walkers besides Nissa, is actually flipping them without eating removal in the process.

Maybe amonkhet will give us some good cards that die for value when you want.

I played lilly in my orzov mid-range deck in kaladesh season and she was ok... Usually I wasn't too worried about flipping her and she was very expendable, but could put unexpected pressure on opponents who like to have lots of cards in hand. The lifelink was also sometimes useful for flipping Lone Rider. But she was mostly removal bait, because opponents do try and kill her asap when you play her. Did sometimes interfere with non-flip lilly which was sometimes annoying...

Her Coup de grace is probably having the same cc as the other lilly. 9/10 times if you have to pick between the 2, you would go for the newer one.

Btw, flip Chandra has been an all-star in my el loco Extreme deck. She usually drops after my opponent has blown all of his removal and since that deck has so many low-cost red spells, flipping her is easy.

I actually won by ultimating her the other day, something I hadn't done in ages (Probably since origins)...

Chandra is a bleh creature but she's easy to flip (provided she doesn't, you know, die immediately, which happens a lot) and she packs a mean punch as a PW. She does like 6 damage the turn she flips and continues to burn for 2 every turn. That's a lot of reach.

Old Lili costs double black in a cmc slot that has, frankly, much better value creatures than her that are also easier to cast. Having 3 toughness also isn't what it used to be back in the Origins days, when she could block small dorks all day long and force 2 for 1s while gaining you life. I like her but the benefits she gives aren't worth the hassle most of the time.

I love flip Lilly in a madness deck. The real problem is flipping her in a madness deck without her eating removal the moment her feet touch the ground.

I used to play a vamp madness deck that went heavy black but probably too much red for the sources I was running during EMN. She is an all star in that deck if she doesn't get zapped. You have to hold her in hand and play your threats and hopefully you could land her but I wasn't running sac stuff so it was tricky getting her to flip. Neonate is an obvious answer to that but turn 1 isn't something that deck wanted to do. That deck is also trying to end the game turn 5 so she wasn't ideal but I loved the anti-control factor she could bring but it's quite the small gap you have shooting for. Good vs Control that has to be out of spot removal when you play her.

Well even if she doesn't flip, she acts a bit like some pseudo-Archangel Avacyn, since suddenly all your other creatures are "invulnerable" and cannot be traded. If she eats removal and dies immediately, that's still not a bad outcome since chances are the opponent had to spend a premium removal spell on it. If she does flip the +2 mode is OK as an extra means of pressuring the opponent.

I didn't play during Origins outside of farming the AI, so I have no idea what it was like then. Still, I think there's a deck out there that incorporates Liliana, Heretical Healer. She won't be a star player but she could be a reasonable card in the deck. Some kind of B/R midrange deck with some madness cards, Vengeful Rebel & Fatal Push, and value creatures to trigger the sacrifice (Fleshbag Marauder, Deadbridge Shaman). Kinda sucks that she shares the same CMC as Liliana, the Last Hope though, as well as three of the four cards mentioned above. Or maybe some B/W deck with the revolt cards, Walking Ballista, Avacyn, a few angels or humans, and Bruna (Liliana, Heretical Healer is a human too!). Sounds a bit contrived but maaaaaybe. I might get to brewing it after I'm done with the B/R/C deck I'm currently working on.

On a side note sure Chandra is a bleh creature, but then so are Nissa and Jace. If they didn't have a flip side I'm pretty sure they would not see play.