It’s been a while since we’ve found ourselves back in the Arena, because I’ve had such mixed feelings about it. When talking about how issues with the client with friends of mine, one of them mentioned Historic Brawl as a possible solution. For those familiar with Commander, Historic Brawl is basically their attempt to put 1v1 commander on the client, except that Planeswalkers are also legal commanders.
With that in mind, I could think of no one better suited to lead my deck than my favorite planeswalker: Ajani Goldmane. He’s one of the most virtuous, valiant protectors in all of the multiverse, throwing himself into the fray to keep his friends and allies safe from villains like Phyrexia.
Wait… Ajani? What’s going on? What is that black stuff coming out of your wound? Why does your ultimate give out poison counters!?
Oh…. Oh no.
I wish I could say that this deck had a ton of clever thought and planning that went into it, but I have no interest in lying to you. Basically, I looked through every card in this format in Ajani’s colors that either had Toxic as a mechanic, allow me to Proliferate, or otherwise put poison counters directly onto my opponents, and filter out all the ones I felt didn’t make the cut, and patch it together with a few high-value cards that either destroyed key problems or drew me into the key pieces I needed to keep flying through my deck.
And yet despite this, the deck doesn’t perform terribly. I don’t know if I would call it good, but since so many other decks in the format and looking to stall until they can build up to their 7-10 drop commander, it can snipe people down before they’ve had the chance to come online if we can a good opener.
Unfortunately, as you can see in the examples on display, it also folds almost immediately to anything looking to play at a similar pace. If they can get a few early blockers up, we’re in deep trouble. Hopefully, in the next episode, we’ll get some better luck.
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