Most of the original five planeswalker cards had their ups and downs in standard. There were times when they were really good, and times when they were terrible. Only Garruk Wildspeaker was consistant. Never amazing, but never bad, just always good. It says a lot that he is the only planeswalker ever reprinted in a Commander set.
Of course, he's not the only walker found in a Commander set. Commander 2014 feaured five new planeswalkers, specially designed for the format. But they messed up a bit with their announcement. Revealing Teferi without further comment created the expectation that it would be a whole cycle of pre-Time spiral walkers (known as 'Oldwalkers'). I certainly, was very excited at the possibility of Freyalise in green, and to a lesser extent, Leshrac for black.
I was not the only one disappointed to see Ob Nixilis instead.
I understand the choice a lot more now that Battle for Zendikar has explained his story in greater detail. And it is nice to finally have a powerful villanous planeswalker who isn't secretly working for Nicol Bolas.
It turns out that Ob is actually an oldwalker too, just one we hadn't met before. He was a nasty piece of work from the start, having obliterated every living thing on his home plane. When he ran out of stuff to kill there, he moved on to razing other planes. And then he found the Chain Veil.
We're not sure if he stumbled across it, or purposely sought it out (I would suspect the latter). The Veil is an immensely powerful, but cursed, artifact. It was created by the despicable ogre civilization known as the Onakke, natives of Shandalar (that place again!) The Onakke, suspecting that they would be deservedly wiped out, made it as a sort of...escape plan. I guess the best way to think of it is as a phylactery, but of an entire civilization of dead ogres.
The Veil affected Ob differently to Liliana - probably because he was not the 'chosen vessel'. Rather than giving him power, it cursed him. He was subsequently able to relinquish the Veil (Liliana has so far found it impossible to drop or return to the catacombs) but the curse remained, causing him to slowly transform into a demon. Ob may have been rather far gone, but this was a bit too far for him, and so, in a desperate attempt to get rid of the curse he traveled to the most dangerous plane in the multiverse - Zendikar. His hope was that he could the plane's rich but unstable mana to cure himself. Instead, Zendikar ate his spark. Because...apparently that's something Zendikar can do.
Not very happy about a the presence on Zendikar of a demonic ex-planeswalker known for genocide, Nahiri embedded a suppression hedron in Ob's forehead. The hedron stopped the curse from progressing further, but also severely limited Ob's remaining power, which he was none too happy about.
Flash forward a thousand years or so. The Kamigawa oni known as Kothophed sent Liliana Vess to recover the Veil from Shandalar for him. It happened that Garruk Wildspeaker was there hunting baloths at the time. Realising the danger of allowing Liliana access to the terrible power of the Veil, he tried to stop her. He failed, and Liliana used the veil to curse him.
It's never been completely explained how Garruk knew so much about the Veil. In fact, Garruk knows a lot of stuff that you wouldn't expect from the wild savage he appears to be, to the point that many theorise that he's actually an oldwalker, made immortal by being green. (If you've played any of the d20 style rpgs, you may know that level 20 druids just become immortal because nature.)
It is important to realise that the curse suffered by Garruk is the exact same one that transformed Ob. He is slowly turning into a demon bent on killing everyone. If you want to see what Garruk's future holds, you have a chilling illustration in the from of Ob. The only difference between Garruk and Ob is that Ob was already bent on killing everyone, so the curse didn't affect his mind anywhere near as badly it has Garruk.
And so Garruk was twisted into a semi-insane killer. Even his mana bonds were twisted so that he became green-black. It is a bit odd that, after constantly telling us that black does not equal evil, they turned Garruk evil by...making him part black. As he slowly went mad, he desperately tried to track down Liliana to force her to remove the curse. He caught up to her on Innistrad, but was again defeated by her. And while the archangel Avacyn temporarily muted the curse, she couldn't cure him, and he could feel the madness slowly creeping back in.
Enter Duels of the Planeswalkers, a pc game deisgned to introduce Magic to wilder player base, and hopefully a bridge into . In the first few games of the series, you played as this dude:
Known as 'the Grey Fencer', this was a nameless, storyless avatar intended to represent whoever happened to be playing the game. But in Duels 2015 he was given a name - Vronos - and a background - a powerful cathar from Innistrad whose spark ignited after being badly mauled by a werewolf, ending up on Esper where his injuries were repaired with etherium. Oh, and then Garruk killed him in the trailer of Duels 2015.
Garrak had finally lost his mind. While he was not completely transformed yet, he was actively hunting down and killing planewalkers. And he was bloody good at it too, having spent all his life hunting animals. Fortunately, there was a planeswalker who cared enough to try and save him - Jace.
In a storyline you will have completely missed unless you played Duels 2015, Jace came across information about Ob Nixilis' curse and the suppression hedron. Realising he could help Garruk, and stop the rising death count, Jace went to Zendikar, beat up Ob, extracted the Hedron, and then tracked down Garruk and implanted it in him. Though it did not completely cure Garruk, it has apparently stopped him transforming any further, and mostly restored his mind.
Unfortunately, Garruk has decided he kind of likes killing planeswalkers. Though he promised Jace he would stop tracking down planeswalkers, he also warned the mind mage that everyone better stay out of his way, and that if anyone tries to track him down, they will die.
As for Ob Nixilis? Everything went exactly as planned. The info Jace got was purposely spread by Ob in the hopes someone would come and pull out the hedron.
Now all he needs is to get his spark back. Oh, right, that has actually happened during the Battle for Zendikar storyline. It seems Ob no longer cares about the being a demon thing - and to be fair, losing your spark makes everything else that could happen to you pale in comparison. And it is pretty cool to have a powerful planeswalker villain who is not secretly working for Nicol Bolas.
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