Once more we find ourselves returning to Arena with a new deck in tow.

This time, we’re packing one of my favorite builds yet. While it’s certainly powerful, probably one of the top decks around in the current meta, the reason I like it is that it allows for a bigger, higher costs cards to see play in Standard, all at the same time, without being too unwieldy.

Welcome to Jeskai Wishing Flames. The decklist can be found here, with the difference that I replaced Chance for Glory with Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God in the sideboard.

The two cards that form the backbone of the deck are Fires of Invention and Fae of Wishes. When you first read the restriction on Fires of Invention, it seems like it would be bad to only be allowed to cast two spells each turn, including the enchantment itself on the turn we cast it. But the second line effect, allowing us to play spells for free so long as their CMC is less than or equal to our total land count. So though we’re only allow two spells, we can use this to cheat our high cost cards and gain a net mana advantage.

More importantly, it allows us to take advantage of Fae of Wishes to greatest effect. While the card is a 1/4 Flyer that can bounce itself back to our hand, but we don’t necessarily care about that half. What we care about is the Adventure half, Granted, which allows us to retrieve a non-creature card from our sideboard, commonly referred to as a “Wish” effect. Since Fires of Innovation allows us to cast any card for free as long as we have enough lands, we can play cards that ordinarily aren’t in our colors, stashing them in the side board so that we can retrieve them if/when they are needed. Even better, this slots nicely into our two spell per turn limit, allowing us to use one spell to cast the wish itself, and the other to play the card we wished for. Without going into too much detail, our sideboard contains both potential win cons and utility cards that we can take full advantage of.

But we don’t need these cards to win, they are just added value we can take advantage of. The maindeck itself has its own share of win conditions, including Sarkhan the Masterless and Kenrith, the Returned King. Sarkhan would be a powerful card on his own, but we also run a few other Planeswalkers for their own utility, like Narset to fetch for the spells we need while cutting off our opponent’s card draw and Teferi to potentially bounce our Fae of Wishes, draw us cards, and stop our opponent from taking action on our turn. Sarkhan allows us both a create 4/4 dragons to defend ourselves and our Planeswalker allies, but transform those same allies into 4/4 dragons that can swing in for a swift kill. The fact that we run so many Planeswalkers also allows us to run Interplanar Beacon for its incidental lifegain.

What makes Kenrith special is that he gives us a place to spend all of the mana that we are not using, since Fires of Invention allows us to case spells for free. His first ability, especially when combined with Sarkhan, allows us to make big swings and ignore summoning sickness to dramatically, quickly swing the tide. His third ability also comes in handy by giving us another way to gain life that can help push us out of reach of other, more aggressive strategies.

The rest of the deck consists of utility pieces to help us get to our endgame safely. Deafening Clarion can be an effective board clear option for decks that like to place a ton of small creatures and swing in quickly, helping us remain stable until we can get online. Time Wipe servers a similar function, though the fact that it’s a 5-drop means that it’ll likely be used to reset a board that’s going south while letting us bounce a Fae of Wishes back to our hand. Prison Realm and Ugin act as spot removal, and Ugin can also be used both for card advantage and in combination with Sarkhan. Lastly, Drawn from Dreams, like Narset, can help us search for the cards we need when we need them, while dodging Narset’s passive since we don’t technically draw the cards.

As someone who loves Planeswalker cards, being able to transform them into dragons so that they can swing for lethal will always be very satisfying to me. But more than that, the wish effects give this deck such a high degree of resiliency and versatility, especially when combined with the life gain we already receive from Kenrith and our Beacons.

It’s that time of the year, where monsters, ghosts, and all forms of terrors begin to stalk the night and prey upon us mortals. And amidst all of that horror, some of us can undergo changes of our own.

Once upon a time, we were considered heroes. They called us “The Marvelous Duo”. But that don’t think we’re so Marvelous anymore. We’ve seen things that have changed us, made us rethink our way of life.

The Marvelous Duo is dead: Long live the Dark Duo. Such is our fate, to lead five unsuspecting rubes in a game of life and death. We, along with the Curator of Stories, will be telling the tale of the Man of Medan, the first part of The Dark Pictures Anthology.

Those of you who played Until Dawn, as I have, will no doubt find themselves right at home here. Man of Medan, like its predecessor, is a loving homage to the horror genre in video game form. Further, it is the first game in a planned series of short-form games of a similar nature, that together form an anthology series.

As Chris noted in the session, this game is based on the story of an alleged shipwreck known as the Qurang Medan. While there’s scant little evidence to suggest it’s true, the tale persists of a World War 2-era ship whose crew had been discovered all dead, faces contorted in fear.

Guiding us though both this story, and presumably the rest of the anthology, is the Curator. The actor who plays him, Pip Torrens, turns in a phenomenal performance that honestly rivals that of Peter Stormare’s role in Until Dawn. He sets the tone of the game with a commanding presence. Even more than that, his role is important because his scenes give the player some breathing room while still reminding them that they are an active participant whose decisions have a very real impact on proceedings.

My favorite parts of both this game and Until Dawn are how they play with horror tropes, and allow players the freedom to subvert or play straight those same tropes. In a normal horror story, the escape attempt by the brash idiot would go wrong or be sabotaged by ineptitude. While that can certainly happen, as it did in my original run, it doesn’t have to. And players can certainly screw up without dooming themselves in the long run. There’s a lot of room for the game to adjust to different world states, and explore the consequences of them, especially since it’s not as long as a typical game.

I look forward both to seeing how Chris and I created the rest of this story, and in the next entry of this anthology.

With another Saturday night, my Commander playgroup go together to run another play session, and this time we managed to get in two really solid games out of the three we played that night.

It seems like going tutorless has actually been a boon for our group, because we are starting to see a lot the play-space open a bit in a way we didn’t really get with the $300 budget idea. If this week’s matches were anything to go by, we’re closing in on the right track.

Thankfully, the first match was the one that was the least interesting, so we can quickly get it out of the way. I had run a new tutorless version of one of my favorite commanders: Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow. Across the table from me were Ghalta, Primal Hunger, a Karametra, God of Harvests deck, and The First Sliver.

It was a quick game on account of my extremely fortunate opening hand. On the first turn, I had managed to play a Sol Ring and used extra mana to play Fellwar Stone, which I could use to cast Slither Blade thanks to First Sliver’s Volcanic Island.

This meant the I was swinging in with Yuriko on turn 2. And as the turns progressed, my lead was only extending. The First Sliver was the only one who was able to mount much of a counterattack thanks to Sentinel Sliver keeping their defenses up, but Throatseeker was giving me enough life back that I could mostly ignore it.

What ultimately sealed the deal was a turn 5 Cyclonic Rift that I was able to cast thanks to my early mana acceleration. Combined with Spark Double on turn 6 and Sakashima the Imposter on Turn 7, both copying Yuriko with their abilities, the number of Yuriko triggers was overwhelming, and the table just never had an opportunity to catch up. It was a fairly swift win.

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Since Yuriko came out far stronger than I had expected her to, and the resulting game was a bit poor, I decided to switch it up and play another old favorite of mine. As a man with a healthy adoration of Aristocrats decks, I brought out Teysa, Orzhov Scion. Ghalta and The First Sliver didn’t change, but Karametra was swapped out for their new Neheb, the Worthy build.

For the early game, both Neheb and I were struggling to really make a presence on the board, both The First Silver and Ghalta really pulled ahead. Ghalta had a couple of decent sized creatures and a Beast Whisper keeping them topped off with extra cards while The First Silver was able to mount a sizeable counter offensive with Shifting Sliver, Sentinel Sliver, and Brood Sliver along with their commander. On one hand, this was fortunate for me, since the two of them were so preoccupied with killing each other that they were ignoring me and allowing me to bide me time.

At the same time, it also meant that I had to play very carefully. While I’m not one to sing my own praises, my playgroup would probably agree that I’m the one that most frequently becomes the table’s Archenemy. So while I was behind with naught but a Grim Haruspex, my commander, and a Skullclamp on board, I knew that if I made big moves there was a good chance the table could turn their aggression towards me before they went back to killing each other. In hindsight, I probably should have just played the Necropotence I had and used it to replenish my dwindling hand, since nobody was going to swing into a clamped Grim Haruspex, but at the time I was afraid of the potential threat that could instill in my adversaries.

Especially since afterwards, the Ghalta player displayed a very crafty and effective synergy, which they had the mana for after a Traverse the Outlands on the previous turn. After Ghalta was killed when swinging into The First Sliver’s board, she kept it in the graveyard and used Praetor’s Council to return it to her hand and remove her maximum hand size limit. Then, she followed it up by recasting Ghalta and playing Return of the Wildspeaker to draw 12 additional cards. With all the excess mana, she had set herself up nicely for the following turn, ending with a Lighting Greaves on her commander. It made my use of a Skullclamped Reassembling Skeleton for card draw feel impotent in comparison.

Just as I was about to come online, Ghalta commenced her endgame by playing Craterhoof Behemoth… followed by an Overwhelming Stampede. Before the resulting attack, Neheb threw in a Terminate and a Hero’s Downfall to destroy 2 creatures, but for my game the damage had was already too great to staunch. Out of the remaining 3 attackers, 2 of them came after me, and Ghalta went for The First Sliver. Through commander damage, The First Sliver was dead. By blocking with every token I had managed to accumulate the earlier turn, I had survived with a single point of life.

Unfortunately for the Ghalta player, the sheer aggression of their move proved to be their undoing as all they just played unwitting kingmaker to Neheb. They had falsely believed that they could survive the turn afterwards, but none of us saw what the Felhide Spiritbinder could do if it untapped, since it managed to swing in at The First Sliver a turn earlier. Using its ability, Neheb copied Craterhoof Behemoth and mopped up the rest, snatching up the victory. Admittedly, I was a bit sore about this suicidal charge at the time, but in fairness no one else saw or called out the Spiritbinder ability. If we had, then the game might have gone differently.

Or maybe they wouldn’t have. It’s hard to say.

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Still, one can’t entirely begrudge a player for going out on a high note by swinging in with a bunch of big, tramply creatures with large numbers attached to them. And Ghalta left on a high note to play Dungeons and Dragons with her other group.

This left the rest of us to engage in one more 3-player EDH round before we all called it a night. I decided to give Teysa one more chance, and The First Sliver did the same with their deck. Meanwhile, Neheb swapped out for a deck with Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer at the helm.

The first few turns went by with each of us setting up in our own boards. I was a bit behind on creatures, with only a Solemn Simulacrum, but between it’s extra land and my Ancient Tomb, have 5 mana on turn 3 isn’t the worst thing in the world even if The First Sliver had a Scroll Rack and Necropotence on their board and Brudiclad had a ton of mana from other Arcane Signet and Gilded Lotus.

The following turn allowed me to cast a Dictate of Erebos, and between the three slivers that The First Sliver had out, and the Brudiclad, token Myr, and Dockside Extortionist, I was falling a bit behind. Luckily, Brudiclad had opted not to transform their treasures into Myrs. This allowed me to summon Liliana, Dreadhorde General and use her to wipe the board clean, even if she fell in the following turn.

The First Silver finally took the stage that turn, and it’s 7/7 body dissuade Brudiclad from attacking. So to speed the process along, I used Ravenous Chupacabra to open them up, since I had managed to get a decent engine going with Ayara, First of Locthwain, my commander, and Sengir Autocrat.

Sadly, or not so sadly for me, I ended up needed all of those tokens, because in the following turn Brudiclad used all of their mana to make a big play, using Beetleback Chief and Maverick Thopterist to make a mess of tokens, then casting Shared Animosity. Turning all of their tokens, including their two remaining treasures from Dockside Extortionist into Myrs, they created nine 11/1 Myr tokens with haste. The resulting swing took The First Silver out, but I was able to block with my tokens since Myrs don’t have Trample.

Luckily for me, I had been sitting on a Kaya’s Wrath just in case The First Sliver was starting to creep too far out of hand. That never happened, but this was close enough that I still hit that reset button. To establish, I played creature and them Victimized it to resurrect Ayara and my Autocrat.

Battered, but not beaten, Brudiclad started to establish themselves with Saheeli, Sublime Artificer and casted their general once more, this time attaching Lightning Greaves to it for extra protection. With very few options, I played Teysa one more time and brought out Zulaport Cutthroat and Viscera Seer with the hope of getting back life while churning through the top of my deck until I got to some good cards to play. And that’s when I hit my hopes and dreams: Austere Command. In exchange for my paltry mana rocks, I was able to complete destroy all the artifacts and enchantments on their board, which just happened to include all over their creatures. They overloaded a Cyclonic Rift in response to set me back, but I already done what I had hoped to do.

In my following turn, when I played Ayara once more, she was exiled by a Reality Shift. Fortunately, this too turned in my favor because the manifested card turned out to be… Teysa Karlov. And so, with my Cutthroat, Viscera Seer, two Teysa cards, and a Sengir Autocrat, I mopped up the game in due time, taking the win.

The Yuriko game ended a bit too quickly, but the other two were well-fought matches. On one hand, I do feel a bit bad for The First Sliver deck because it never got a chance to show off the way it wanted to. Even in the match where it had Scroll Rack and Necropotence, it got mana screwed and stuck at five lands.

On the other hand, I can understand the apprehension to give Slivers any quarter, because once the table does it’s easy for them to quickly snowball into a win. And it was also kind cool, upon reflection, to see a mono-green strategy finally take off in our pod. I look forward to seeing what else springs up in this group while we go without tutors.

Eldraine, combined with the rotation, has done a lot to inject new blood into Standard. However, despite losing Scapeshift, one of the top decks is still going strong.

I never piloted in during the last season, but this season I figured it would be worth it to give Bant Lands a shot. So here we are, returning once more to the Arena to pilot a deck that I’m still very mixed on in terms of my opinion of it.

The key to making this deck function is a new land from Core Set 2020: Field of the Dead. Ordinarily, a land that taps for colorless mana and comes out tapped would be absolutely terrible, but its triggered ability more than makes up for it. If it, or another land, enters the battlefield and we have 7 or more lands with different names, it creates a 2/2 Zombie.

Obviously, with 4 copies of this card in the deck, we have a very simple game plan. Our goal is to flood the board with land drops as fast as we can so that we can quickly overwhelm our opponent with a army of zombies. If possible, we also want to get out all of our Fields of the Dead so that a single land can generate 4 zombies at once. To help us acquire the lands we need, even our coveted Field, we also include 4 copies of Golos, Tireless Pilgrim. In a pinch, we also include a couple of Red and Black sources so that we can use Golos’s Activate Ability.

Arboreal Grazer not only acts as an early game blocker, but gives us an extra land drop so that we can play more lands quickly. Growth Spiral and Circuitous Route exist for a similar purpose, to give help us play extra cards lands either from our hand or directly from the deck.

Just like the Golgari Midrange deck, Once Upon a Time helps us keep more risky hands with relative safety. And since this deck is also flush with creatures and lands, the idea that we’ll miss in almost unthinkable. Even late game, since we’ll likely have so much mana, spending 2 to dig for the card we want is trivial.

As far as board clears go, Realm-Cloaked Giant may miss the occasional creature, but we can also retrieve it with Once Upon a Time, so it can hopefully be fetched more easily when the situation calls for it. We’ll almost never cast the creature half of this, but I suppose we could.

The 1 copy of Agent of Treachery exists to turn a stalled board in our favor. In the mirror match, it can steal an opposing Field of the Dead, and in all other matches it can steal our opponent’s most valuable piece.

Hydroid Krasis, as always, serves as both a way to acquire the cards and life we need to close out the game, but also throw a large body on the board with flying and trample that can act as an alternate win condition in a stalled game.

Lastly, Teferi exists to aggravate decks that rely on instant speed removal and counterspells. We can also use him to bounce a troublesome creature and/or draw the extra card is we need to.

While the deck is undoubtedly strong, my biggest complaint is the fact that it can feel a bit too passive. This is best exemplified in the mirror matchup, which we didn’t see during the stream, but can result in a stalemate where one player is just stalling until the other runs out of cards in their deck. I’ve had single games that take a whole 30 minutes in Arena thanks to this, and it can begin to take its toll on my patience. But as I said, the power is there, and there are ways to build this theme that are more interactive.

What? Just because the game is over doesn’t mean that we have to be done with it. And as long as new content continues to get added to Ultimate Alliance 3, The Marvelous Duo will perform our duty in playing it live on stream, to later be uploaded to YouTube.

Though marketed as a new campaign, in truth the Curse of the Vampire expansion is more like a series of challenge rooms that remix content from that base game, along with several new boss fights, to tell a mini-story of sorts. Just in time for Halloween, it’s up to us to find and neutralize the source of the titular curse.

I confess that while I am somewhat disappointed it’s not a new campaign complete with new areas, cutscenes, et cetera, this was also a fairly unrealistic expectation. For someone like me who hasn’t spent much time in the Infinity Trials, these challenges inject some variety into the game by forcing players to use different strategies than the ones that carries them through the base game. And even for people who have, there are a few new conditions and enemies to spice things up.

Acharky and I had a great time running through these Gauntlets and unlocking the new character, even if they weren’t at a high enough level to use. It’s good that the challenges range from level 5 to level 30, because players can still take on a few of them no matter where they are in the game’s main story.

I look forward to seeing what else they add in the coming months, and to have excuses to resurrect The Marvelous Duo.

In my playgroup, we’ve been trying and failing to reduce our overall power level to promote more diverse decks and playstyles. For the reason, when Bennie Smith, the guy who literally wrote the book on Commander, opened up for questions on the format, I asked him for advice on how a group and lower their power level.

On his advice, I proposed a change in our rules, doubly so since some players were growing annoyed at the $300 budget limitations. And so, we began another experiment. This time, we moved backed to an unlimited budget, but banning any cards that let players search their libraries for cards, except those cards like Cultivate and Rampant Growth that let players accelerate their land drops.

While I’d say the experiment is still being conducted, as one night isn’t enough to give a definitive result, I learned some things in these games.

Our first match had me using a revamped, tutorless version of my Syr Konrad deck. The rest of the table was running Sheoldred, Whispering One, a land/aristocrats hybrid deck helmed by Korvold, Fae-Cursed King, and a big-value deck with Golos, Tireless Pilgrim as its general.

Unfortunately, this match wasn’t very interesting because the game was over before any cards had hit the table. In my opening hand, I had Mindcrank, Liliana Death’s Majesty, and a nice helping on lands. In a next few turns, I drew into Morality Shift, though the Syr Konrad and Mindcrank combo went off before I ever got to 7 mana.

The fact that Sheoldred and Korvold were my opponents only accelerated my plans. Sheoldred had to avoid playing their commander because I would like get several triggers and win before their next return would crop up. However, because Korvold was missing land drops, they sacrificed a Reassembling Skeleton with a Journey to Eternity attached. With 3 decks packed with creatures all caught in Konrad’s Mindcrank chain, that was enough to end the game.

That said, the resulting bad feels due to how hard it was to keep track of it all in Cockatrice made realize that the deck isn’t a healthy one for our group. Were we playing in Magic Online, and a system was doing all of that work for us, then it probably would have been fine. In a rough facsimile of paper magic we use to play together on the cheap, it’s not a deck I’m comfortable bringing back anytime soon.

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The next match was a 5-player game, as our last group member had gotten home from their new job just as we were wrapping up. In the interesting of not becoming the absolute monster of the playgroup, I swapped out Syr Konrad for my Estrid, the Masked deck. Sheoldred and Korvold stuck to their guns, but Golos was swapped out for an Alesha, Who Smiles at Death build. Our final player entered with Yarok, the Desecrated sitting in the command zone.

But alas, this game ended in the same landslide the first one did, except this time I wasn’t the victor. Korvold had a strong opening statement and used that opening to create a board state no one else was prepared to content with.

Using Azuza, Lost But Seeking and Ramunap Excavator (and later Crucible of Worlds) to accelerate the lands rapidly with one of the Zendikar fetch lands. Using Lightning Greaves to protect Korvold, and a combo of Dockside Extortionist, Cauldron of Souls, to create vast amounts of treasures to sacrifice for card draw and Korvold boosts that it was scary. Once Destructive Flow was in play, and it was clear none of us were going to ramp up any further, we all began to fold quickly.

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After a brief post-game talk, Korvold agreed to remove Destructive Flow from the deck since, like Syr Konrad and Mindcrank, it wasn’t conducive to a fun environment for our playgroup (which is why you don’t see it in the updated decklist), and Sheoldred had to withdraw for prior obligations.

Korvold kept on it, but Alesha swapped out for a spell-slinging Mizzix of the Izmagnus deck, Yarok moved to Chulane, Teller of Tales, and I brought out a one of the first commanders I ever fell in love with, before I even started played Commander: Muldrotha, the Gravetide, with a deck focused on reusable permanents. This would end up being the big game of the night.

Mizzix took a very early start. Although they kept a one-land hand, it was also a hand with Sol Ring and an Izzet Signet, so that had a decent amount of mana to start our with, casting their commander on turn 2. In the next few turns, one they acquired some cards and Experience Counters, they established themselves as the game’s archenemy thanks to their suite of counter magic.

Tellingly enough, despite that fact that both my own Phyrexian Scriptures and Pernicious Deed were countered by their Forbid and Whispers of the Muse synergy, which only protected the rest of the board’s army of creatures, the table chose to keep ignoring me and focus them down for fear of more counter magic. They even managed to have enough resources to counter Chulane’s Aluren immediately afterwards.

Ironically, the fact that they countered by board clear ended up being their undoing, and Chulane and Korvold’s combined forces brought them to a point they knew they wouldn’t be able to crawl out from. Rather than bow out gracefully, them decided to go out with style by casting a Rolling Earthquake with enough mana to kill everything on the board and bring their life total down to 1. Korvold sacrificed one of their lands to their Sylvan Safekeeper to give it the extra power it needed to survive, but everything else was dead.

For Chulane, this was devastating because they were a single turn away from using Shaman of the Forgotten Ways to end the game, since neither Mizzix nor I had a board and there was enough power left to swing at Korvold for game. For me, having no creatures on the board at this point meant that this was just the opening I needed.

At this point in the game, I had enough mana to summon Muldrotha and then recast Pernicious Deed. The following turn, I cracked it to kill Korvold and most of the enchantments and artifacts my opponents were using to reestablish. This did have the side effect of accidentally killing Mizzix with an accidental Syr Konrad trigger, but by that point I was quickly growing to the point where I was the next archenemy.

I had managed to use Ashiok, Dream Render to both fill my graveyard with potential assets firmly established my hold on the game, and then something expected happened. Chulane, that tricky devil, managed to cast Agent of Treachery. I expect him, in one feel swoop, to take control of the Commander and end this silly little engine of mine. But he was even more clever than that. Instead, he could control of my Ashiok, and used it to erased by hard-earned graveyard. It was, admittedly, an insidious and ingenious play, but not one I couldn’t recover from.

That’s when I looked at my hand and got… inspired. Using both the Clever Impersonator and Spark Double in my hand, I played them as copies of Agent of Treachery and took control both of Chulane and Korvold. I lost Korvold to a bounce spell, but I did managed to take Chulane and eventually kill Ashiok so I could recast them.

The board eventually reset again after an Austere Command, but I was able to use Muldrotha to reestablish. Then, Chulane top-decked and casted an Approach of the Second Sun, and the truce they had with Korvold had been broken. They attempted to draw enough card with Chulane, Mulldrifter, and The Great Henge. Unfortunately for them, it wasn’t enough. Since I had been counting their draws, I had Ashiok mill and then exile Approach of the Second Sun.

At this point, the game had been doing on for a while, and Chulane had played 8 times, and Korvold about 5 or 6, meaning that command tax had started adding up. I had only played Muldrotha about 3 times, since she only enables combos without needed to be a key piece of them. This meant that I was still in a better position to establish a board than everyone else. Using Phyrexian Altar and Liliana, Death’s Majesty, I was able to recur Ravenous Chupacabra to keep their commanders off the board.

With no real gas left in the tank, I had knocked out Korvold. However, since Chulane had been a bit too far out of my reach in terms of life, and both of our decks were running low, I had adjusted to using Ashiok to mill him out as my win condition. I normally wouldn’t care and just keep milling myself, but at this point my Jace, Wielder of Mysteries was in exile thanks to an earlier Void Shatter. (Laboratory Maniac wasn’t the version I was playing that night, I have switched it in to take Mindslaver out on request of my playgroup.)

That’s when he pulled a daring, and desperate gambit. With only 5 cards left in the deck, and knowing that he had his own Clever Impersonator, he had exactly one hope left to win. On his turn, he played his own Jace, Wielder of Mysteries. Unfortunately for him, when he activated Jace, he milled instead of drawing his Clever Impersonator. If he had hit, it would have been over.

Instead, I swung in at Jace, killing him. And used Ashiok both to finish off Chulane’s deck and exiling away his last hope. After a long and challenging game, I had finally emerged victorious.

The game took about an hour and a half to finish up, and it did devolve into a bit of a grind, but it was also a very interesting match when I look back on it. I don’t know if my playgroup would agree, but that conversation is always happening as we learn more about each other and get better at building decks so that we’re all having a good time. Such is, after all, the essence of the game.

A set has been unveiled: Throne of Eldraine had finally made it’s way into the Arena. And with these new cards come new decks, and new strategies.

We’re back in the Arena. This time, I have a deck built around two of the most obviously powerful cards that exist in Eldraine. A slight modification of an existing deck on MTGGoldfish, moving several sideboard cards in the main board to better survive the best-of-one queue.

This is Golgari Midrange.

The two obvious stars of the deck are The Great Henge, and Questing Beast. At first glance, the idea that a card with a CMC of 9 being Standard playable, let alone a key card, seems ludicrous. The key comes from it’s first line of text, which gives it a discount equal to the greatest power among creatures we control. This means we’re likely to actually cast it for 4 or 5 mana. Best case, it gets played for GG.

And if it even resolves, than it’ll give us almost everything we could ever hope for in a mono-green artifact. By tapping it, we get extra mana to bring out our army of beaters and valuable life to start stabilizing against aggressive decks. On top of that, all of our creatures gain extra power when we summon them with this in play, while simultaneously drawing cards so that we can either catch up or boost our lead. Because it does so much, getting to it is a major goal of the deck.

Like the Henge, Questing Beast is a powerhouse of a card. Just to start with, it’s a 4/4 for 2GG, with Deathtouch, Haste, and Vigilance. Just this, by itself, would have players breaking their backs to try to hit it into their decks because it gets to safely attack at almost no risk, usually taking out either one big bodies or a ton of smaller ones on it’s way out. But it doesn’t end there, because creatures with power 2 or less cannot block it. If an opponent wants to take it out, a 1/1 with Deathtouch isn’t going to cut it. They’ll need to commit their stronger creatures to the fight. And since combat damage it and other creatures you can’t be prevented, protection is almost completely nullified for blockers.

Even that wasn’t enough though, because its last bit of text ups the power level even more. Whenever it successfully connect to an opponent during combat, it scratches a Planeswalker they control for that much damage. Not only does this function as valuable removal for Planeswalkers in a post War of the Spark world, but it also negates one of their best features. In high-level play, a Planeswalker’s loyalty can be thought of an “extra life”, because the opponent needs to deal with them before they can effectively swing in for the kill. With Questing Beast, this is no longer true, because it can effectively attack a player and a Planeswalker they control at the same time.

The rest of the deck is hopes to either enable or take advantage of these two cards in some way. Rotting Regisaur is this deck for basically one reason: Its power of 7. This, coincidentally, is the exact power necessary to get the full discount for The Great Henge. Since it only costs 2B, this means we can possibly play it on turn 3 to get the Henge on turn 4. On top of that, the opponent will eventually need to deal with the large body swinging in every single turn. Even if we’re discarding each turn to this, we’ll be drawing more than enough off The Great Henge to offset that.

Knight of the Ebon Legion and Growth-Chamber Guardian are also some of the best 1 and 2-drop creatures this deck could hope for. Knight of the Ebon Legion’s stats are excellent for a 1-drop, and if we miss our turn 3 or 4 drops, we can still sink that mana into his for an effective attacker or blocker as the situation warrants, potentially making it even stronger if it connects. A similar, but less trick comes attached to Growth-Chamber Guardian, but it’s permanent and allows us to fetch another copy from our deck. Should The Great Henge already be in play, its a good late game draw too. It’ll come out, get a counter, and trigger so we can fetch another while drawing us an additional card.

Once Upon a Time is another extremely valuable card, which will likely see play in green decks in other formats long after Eldraine rotates out. It more or less allows us to keep other sketchy hands by letting us dig 5 cards deep for a land or creature we need. There are few cards in this deck that don’t fit that condition that our odds of failing to find something are almost 0%. Even late game, this is an excellent draw that can help us get to whatever we need to solve the problem at hand.

Rankle, Master of Prankles and Spawn of Mayhem serve as additional powerful bodies that can close out a game. Rankle’s abilities allow us to strategically choose which of them will be most effective in the current board state, and the fact that he’s a 3/3 with Flying and Haste makes it very likely he’ll be able to connect the turn he comes out. Spawn of Mayhem may be slower, but a 4/4 with Flying and Trample that pings every turn is a large that must be dealt with.

The only noteworthy addition to our mana base is Castle Locthwain, and it exists purely to give us another potential card draw outlet/mana sink if things so south. The opportunity cost for doing so is low because we’re only in a 2 colors.

And lastly, 3 Assassin’s Trophies and 4 Murderous Riders should give us all of the removal we need to deal with powerful threats our opponents lay against us. The flexibility of Assassin’s Trophy lets us deal with basically any troublesome permanent, even Enchantments and Artifacts, even if it ramps our adversary. Murderous Rider gives us valuable Planeswalker removal that can be fetched with Once Upon A Time.

Overall, the performance shows with this deck, because our run with it was phenomenally successful. I look forward to seeing what else rears it’s head during Eldraine standard.

After spending the first 15 minutes of the stream downloading an update that had been pushed just moments before we began, Acharky and I were finally able to commence the endgame in Ultimate Alliance 3. To pass a bit more time, we even take a moment post-game to discuss the Infinity Trials.

What awaits The Marvelous Duo after this? It’s difficult to say, but don’t think that our adventures have ended just because the game has.

The biggest problem with this game is that it’s the latest entry in a franchise whose last game was released way back in 2009. And while there is a graphical upgrade, and a new roster to accompany this shift into a new generation of Marvel fans, it’s on par mechanically with it’s predecessors. In some ways, it’s even regressed.

As Acharky and I have both harped on, it’s a real shame that only the host of an online match can swap characters, since that ability is such a core feature to the series, and why making a team of superheroes is so much fun. Even in our previous runs of UA1 and UA2 on PS4, we never had this problem.

I’m also disappointed that they still make it so that only characters in the active party gain experience. With a cast as vast as the one in this game, it makes it impossible to swap out heroes without intentionally reducing the group’s combat effectiveness. Since many enemies already take longer than they should to keel over and die, and some stages in the mid to late game can be challenging even for a level-appropriate team, you’d likely need to go back and replay large sections of the game to train up a new character.

I wish level locked to the player/account, rather than each individual character. Infinity trails and XP cubes help by giving players alternative ways to “raise” heroes they want to play, but never leveled up. However, that feels like a band-aid to cover up the real issue that such grinding should not be necessary.

That said, I do appreciate the existence of the Infinity Trails. It provides both a way to level up the team if the player gets stuck on a certain boss and also a place to keep playing after beating the game, to unlock new characters and costumes.

With the promise of new characters, costumes, and story content on the way, I look forward to seeing what becomes of Ultimate Alliance 3 in the next few months. Complaints aside, I really enjoyed playing through one of these games again.

As we do most weeks, my pod got together for our regularly scheduled doses of EDH. Although we saw a few new cards from Eldraine make appearances last session with Rankle and Chulane, this week was where the new set started to make inroads and impacts on the game, with strategies that were enabled by some of the legendary creatures added to the set.

The first match was my Marisi deck up against The Locust God, Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion, and a Torbran deck I had loaned to the 4th player since they hadn’t the time to think up a new deck.

It was a slow start for me, as I wasn’t really able to play many cards early on. Torbran took a somewhat early lead with a turn 1 Sol Ring into a Ruby Medallion. Using the combined ramp and discount effects, they were able to play Syr Carah, the Bold on turn 2, and Torbran on turn 3.

While they realized how powerful it was that Syr Carah can tap to inflict a combined 3 damage to anything with Torbran’s effect, the skimmed over the first paragraph, which was the actual reason she’s in the deck. After 2 rounds had gone by without it going off once, I politely asked them to read through the paragraph one more time. Realizing their mistake, they begun directing their pings away from creatures and towards players, but it was too little too late. As The Locust God built up an army of insects, the board clear intended to clean them up also destroyed most of Torbran’s born and more or less kept knocked them out of the game since they weren’t drawing into any of the deck’s card advantage pieces.

This was when The Locust God began to get scary. In the same turn, they played Consecrated Sphinx and Jace’s Archivist. Fortunately, the cooperation of the table managed to take care of both of them before the next turn came up, but they had still managed to amass an army of insects in the intervening time.

In my card, I had Swords to Plowshares and Insurrection. Thinking I had one more turn, and seeing that the Torbran player placed their commander on the board. I decided to wait. Since the army wasn’t large enough to kill all players at once, I figured that with one more round of the table The Locust God would have enough insects for me to take control of all of them and end the game. Unfortunately for me, The Locust God was ready to win, and swung all out, killing everyone almost at once with Throne of the God-Pharaoh. I realize now that if I had acted sooner, I could have at least kill Locust God and possibly crippled the Neheb player enough that I could sweep up the game quickly, but alas.

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In the next round, all of us but Neheb player kept player the same decks. They swamped from WAR Neheb to Neheb, the Worthy instead.

They also had an early start, with their own turn 1 Sol Ring which they used to summon Neheb on turn 2. Thanks to my Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor, I was safe from their aggression, as was Torbran with a early Goblin Chainwhirler. Defenseless, The Locust God suffered from the brunt of Neheb’s early game aggression. The rest of us also had to discard cards to his triggered ability, but it was better than taking that hit.

Swinging in at Neheb with Varchild, I moved to force a more aggressive game from my table by deploying Fumiko the Lowblood. With the Survivor tokens Varchild created also swinging in, Fumiko proved by a adequate deterrent from Neheb’s aggressive swings. When Torbran played Manabarbs to try to slow down the game, all it accomplished was getting The Locust God to surrender because they had 18 life and nothing left and had just gotten to the 6 mana they needed to play their commander.

Of course, with The Locust God out of commission, and quickly surrendering under the pressure, Neheb just directed their aggression to Torbran, since my Fumiko was forcing them to attack still. With only 5 life left, Torbran’s own Manabarbs was what ultimately killed them.

Sadly, because Fell Specter had been forcing me (and everyone else) to discard so many cards, by the time it came to the 1v1 my only hope was drawing into a removal spell of a board clear. Neither or them materialized and I was quickly executed.

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The Locust God player had to withdraw from the last round due to some pending engagements, but that still left us with enough players to play one last match. Torbran decided to stay on his deck, while the Neheb player switching to Alesha, Who Smiles at Death. On the other hand, I had decided to run the new deck I built based on Syr Konrad, the Grim.

This time, it was my turn to start with a turn 1 Sol Ring, which I had used to play Expedition Map to ensure my 3rd land drop. With that I was able to set the stage with a Mindcrank on turn 2, and finally deploy Syr Konrad himself on turn 3.

The synergy between these two cards enabled much of my success in this match. To explain, Syr Konrad deals 1 damage to each opponent whenever a creature dies, or is put into the graveyard from anywhere other than the battlefield, but whenever my opponents take damage, Mindcrank forces them to mill the top card of their deck. Should that card be a creature, Syr Konrad deals 1 damage to each opponent, and the process repeats. The odds of a successful scale with the number of players in the game, but even with 3 players this synergy can pull a lot of weight.

In addition, Alesha, since she relies on ETBs, had Corpse Knight on the board. So whenever she played a creature, Torbran and I would take 1 damage. Since this had the potential to start other Mindcrank chain, I had deemed it an acceptable loss. However, when Alesha was deployed, I immediately Defiled her because with my mill strategy in place, it was far too risky to let her resurrect her minions.

Things were progressing smoothly. I had even managed to deploy an Altar of Dementia and a couple of other one-time mill effects like Sticher’s Supplier and Balustrade Spy.

Then, I made one crucial mistake that nearly knocked me out of the game, and gave Alesha the opportunity she needed to win. When Torbran swung at me with his forces, with only 7 life remaining, I had forgotten that Syr Konrad can force all players to mill the top card of their deck for 1B. If I had remembered that, then I would have still been at 25 life instead of 3. Fortunately, when they used the mana from Neheb, the Eternal to cast Chandra’s Ignition, I had finally wizened up. Activating Syr Konrad, I had initiated a Mindcrank chain large enough to kill Torbran before the Ignition could resolve, but the Alesha player survived, killing me with a few creature drops.

I blame myself for both that loss and the early one with Marisi. I must’ve been having an off night, because it both cases I would have been able to buy myself crucial time in I had been paying attention and not been so careless in my play. Oh well. It wouldn’t be the first time I died to player error, nor will it be the last.

Still, I’m proud of both decks I ran. Torbran is a strong commander, and the Stax strategy I build around him can work. I just think either I or its pilot this round need to tune it a bit so that it goes off the way I want it to.

This night may not have gone my way, but I can’t deny that I had a great time. Eldraine looks like it’s got some choice treats for us EDH players, and it’ll be exciting to see what else gets brewed up with them.

Since Wizards of the Coast had the sheer, brazen audacity to wait until the day after I stream to open up the Throne of Eldraine expansion on Arena, I had to find something else to fill the void. To that end, I decided it would be a good idea to run through another roguelike game that I’ve had a ton of fun with in my spare time: Dead Cells.

I can’t help but be amused by the fact that the only run I’ve ever recorded of Dead Cells just happened to be the one where I lucked into an awesome build that could carry me through to even the final boss. Then again, I haven’t been keeping up with the patch notes. For all I know, the game is just easier than it once was.

Speaking of, it’s also fun just to see how the game has changed over time, since I’ve been away from it for so long. Motion Twin has done a great job with post-release support for the game, and every time I come back it’s just better than it was before.

For example, in previous builds, the “speedrun” door, which gives the player bonus cells and gold if they can reach it before it closes, was located early on in the following area, after they turned in all of their cells. That meant that it was possible to get the bonus and then die before the option to cash in presented itself. By moving it to the hub world players find themselves between stages, the developers guarantee that if we’re not saving up our cells to pump up our drops after a boss, we at least have a chance to cash in on our reward immediately.

In addition, note that the route my run went through is only one path that can be taken through the game. There are alternate paths, bosses, and item drops, which make each run almost completely unique. A famous quite from Sid Meyer reads: “Games are a series of interesting choices”. And this game excels at forcing players to make choices that seem small, but in the aggregate allow them to define their playstyle and direction they wish to take their character.

Should I even play another run of Dead Cells on camera, I hope I better show off that aspect.