Mirror Mirror, Who is the Fairest of them all?

Magic's worst kept secret is out. R&D still loves Blue with a vengeance. True-Name Nemesis arrives on the scene this week. A 3 mana creature with a 3/1 body that looks rather draft material, but with a super unheard of "Protection" that even Durex cannot look to match.

Land Walk is bad? Why not Player Walk then? And I mean WALKING ALL OVER THEM!

Geist of Saint Traft cannot attack because of a pesky blocker? TNN does not even know the meaning of a blocking phase during his own turn.

Tarmogoyf bearing down on your life totals? "Tua Neh Neh" presses down on him and suffocates that line of play.

Try to kill him with non-targeted damage from a sideboard card perhaps? This nimble Rogue says no!

Fact! TNN was formerly from X-Men until his career switch.

TNN behaves like an overpowered bully in the Fair Play League of Legacy, attacking without needing to fear its demise while blocking like an exquisite beast. But one should not forget that Legacy is the format of broken combo decks like ANT, TES, Belcher, Oops Spells etc which goes off by Turn 4 at worst with no disruption, so can this bully actually dent the armor of those invincible non-interactive decks?

In that sort of bubble which Legacy is notorious for, Geist actually works better due to the combo decks not being able to put down a blocker anyway, so he hits for 7 per swing. TNN goes in for a paltry 3 which is not going to cut it.

This means that TNN might still need to be enhanced either by Lords, Exalted, Equipment or Enchantments to provide a better clock against a non-interactive deck. So fair to say, Geist looks to be better on Combo and TNN to excel against fair decks then? 

Geist does force you into a white splash, but no one forces anyone to put in a certain 2 mana squire armed with a Jitte and a Skull in his backpack. And I heard Sword to Plowshares is not too shabby either. TNN does allows one to go mono-blue (Fish?) and thus pack a nice counter suite with Force of Wills with a higher density of blue cards in a given decklist though.

Our playgroup has secured playsets of TNN and are looking to fit him into existing deck archetypes. Sliv is going for Bant Hexproof, which is incidentally my preferred shell for the TNN too; pumping the blue monstrosity with Exalted triggers. Andriy is going for him in Fish but not as a focal. I will be messing around with the TNN in my extreme version of Fish (with him as a focal) and also my Horsepposition pet deck, with him an important part of the "Devotion" mechanic due to his hardiness.

Time will tell if decks can be made viable with him against the unfair decks, while himself providing the unfairness when dealing with the fair ones. I will be trying that myself in the months ahead.

Meanwhile, I am waiting to see if my initial investment of getting this bad boy at 40USD per piece will pan out eventually in the long run.