Recently, League of Legends implemented a new feature called “The Lab”, where it will introduce experimental modes of play that are unique from the others.

For our first round in the Lab, we play a classic mode from League of Legends: ASMR… I mean ARAM, short for “All Random All Mid”. Four random champions are selected, and after a mulligan the deck is built based on those champions.

Which means that there’s no need for us to build anything for it. Let’s just dive in and see what happens.

Sometimes, it’s fun just to let loose and embrace the chaos, and this mode is absolutely perfect for that. It’s highly likely that even if one plays it a lot, they’ll only have a rough idea of what cards are in their deck after their champion picks are wrapped up.

It also means that while luck is a significant factor in how well one might do, the other factor is how one can improvise with the cards they’re given to outwit their opponent. In the footage, you’ll see us on both ends of the divide, threading the needle perfect in one match and yet failing to arrange our attacks perfectly to close out another when we probably could have.

The high degree of variance in ARAM also means that it’s pretty much impossible to be too mad about losing. The stakes are incredibly low and it’s a good way to just chill and relax while not completely shutting off one’s brain.

Sadly, by the time you read this, the mode will no longer be available, but we can hope that it eventually comes back from another shot. I’ll gladly take another crack at it. 🙂

Statistically speaking, if a 4-player pod are building and playing decks are similar power levels, any one player should win roughly 25% of the time. This means that players should expect to lose the vast majority of their matches.

While this week’s matches fall into that other 75%, I still managed to get in my licks and make an impact on the board.

Almost on accident, our first match went in a tribal direction. One of my friends ran Goblin-tribal with Muxus, Goblin Grandee. Another ran Morophon, the Boundless as a God-tribal deck, and the third player ran a Gishath, Sun’s Avatar deck with dinosaurs.

So what tribe did I go with: Human Advisor, of course! And thanks to Bruvac, the Grandiloquent, I have the perfect commander for my Advisor-tribal deck. (wink wink)

The match wasn’t long, but it was a killer. I feel a little bad for Morophon, since they never really got the chance to go anything, but it was still a pretty good meme match.

I managed to get a nice early start by playing a Mana Crypt to get Bruvac out on Turn 1. And by Turn 3 I had enough Persistent Petitioners on board to start dumping 24 cards from one of opponents’ decks into the graveyard every turn. For reasons that’ll become clear in a second, my original plan was to eat away at Muxus’s deck first. However, since Gishath was the first player to aggressively come after me with a Marauding Raptor I couldn’t comfortably block, they became the new target.

The first card Muxus placed on the board was Quest for the Goblin Lord, which set the tone for the rest of their strategy. Goblins are creatures that don’t usually have much power on their own, so they’d be easy for me to block, but once that +2/+0 boost came online, that would no longer be the case. While they didn’t have any token generators, cards like Goblin Ringleader and Goblin Lackey allowed them to quickly amass an army, despite not having enough lands to play their commander.

The coup-de-grace was Shared Animosity, which nobody could defend against because I had pretty much milled Gishath to extinction, and Morophon had only one blocker to defend themselves against the onslaught.

————————————————-

After that last match, one of us had to bow out to head to their D&D campaign, so the rest of us settled in for a 3 player game. Gishath decided to stay on dinosaurs, but the rest of us switched to new builds. The other player’s build was helmed by Lurrus of the Dream Den.

My deck was lead by Vela the Night-Clad. Inspired by this old article on EDHREC, I decided to build around the theme of colorless/artifact creatures.

I managed to get an early lead thanks to Mishra’s Workshop, which allowed me to get a 4/4 Stonecoil Serpent on Turn 2. And from there, I managed to maintain a strong position for the majority of the match, despite not getting any of my card draw spells online.

What helped me was an amazing synergy between Steel Overseer, Unwinding Clock, and my other artifact creatures like Foundry Inspector. Not only does this give me a form of pseudo-Vigilance, because my creatures will untap before anyone has the opportunity to attack me, but I could also tap my Steel Overseer every turn to continually pump up my team of machines. Once Vela graced the board with her presence, my attacks were even more secure because none of the other players could block.

While I was in a strong position and probably could have won the game if I was playing just a bit more attention to my own hand, I can’t help but be proud of the situation I had set up for myself. That said, I wasn’t the only one taking advantage of powerful synergies. Lurrus manage to partake a 4-card combo consisting on their commander, Ravenous Chupacabra, Kaya’s Ghostform, and Phyrexian Altar. They weren’t make much progress building up their board, but with that synergy that could sacrifice the Chupacabra to the Phyrexian Altar for black mana, and use Lurrus to recast Ghostform from the grave on the newly revived Chupacabra, getting that ETB trigger every time they do it.

Fortunately for me, that was mostly being directed at Gishath since they were growing into a threat. Thanks to Smothering Tithe, they managed to gain enough treasure before I could raise my defenses and block, getting a few powerful dinos in the process. This wouldn’t have been threatening on it’s own, but then they played Rishkar’s Expertise on the following turn getting an explosive refresh. By the time I realized I could counter with Pact of Negation, it was far too late.

Two of the cards draw in that combo were Apex Altisaur and Flawless Maneuver. Sadly, I had used my Pact to counter a Sun Titan from Lurrus at that point, which you could argue was the second mistake on my part. Aided by indestructibility, the Altisaur fought can killed every creature on the board, leaving both of us open to a resounding defeat.

I may not have won, but I can’t complain about the results of either match. In both of them, but especially the second one, I became a big enough threat that I both couldn’t be ignored and couldn’t be touched. And more importantly, I can see where I went wrong and learn from it, which is really what this article series is all about.

This episode has been a long time coming. Since we began our adventures with the remade PS1 games back in November or December, depending on how you’re counting, we’ve had many incredible journeys across fantastical worlds.

But all good things must come to an end. And this series is no different. Today, we collect the remaining gems and relics and place the finishing touches on our adventures. Afterwards, one last confrontation with the good doctor is all we needed to end this story… until next time of course.

I came into this series thinking that I liked Cortex Strikes Back more than I did Warped, but having played them like this, back-to-back and with a more critical eye, I found myself having much more enjoyable experience using the Time Twisted machine than I did the Warp Room back in that series.

Of course, even the best games always have their problem spots, and this one is no different. Though it doesn’t do it quite as excessively as Cortex Strikes Back, there are still a few levels in Warped that require players to backtrack through significant sections of it in order to obtain the gem, like Future Frenzy in this recording. Whenever the player has to move towards the camera, that will almost always be one of the weaker areas in the game because the reaction time required to avoid those obstacles, especially on the first try, can be quick. This goes doubly so for when part of a Time Trial, since failure means players have to restart the whole level from the beginning.

And on the subject, the Time Trials are probably the most interesting feature of the whole game. They give us a reason to master the upgrades we’ve been gathering from the bosses. Using them, we can bypass obstacles and shave tons of time off of our runs to make it that much easier to obtain the relics we need. In particular, the Slide-Double Jump-Death Tornado Spin combo is perfect for cross over pits and dangerous enemies when this version of the game decides to cooperate with my button inputs.

All and all, it was a fun nostalgic trip back to a series that got me into gaming, and I look forward to the newest entry coming out this year. I couldn’t have timed this Let’s Play any better in that sense.

Speaking of Let’s Plays, our next one is going to Arkane Studio’s Prey, from 2017. Look forward to it! 😀

Especially after that last MTG Arena stream with the Esper/Sultai Control decks, I’ve found myself growing somewhat disinterested in the current standard environment. For that reason, it was important to give something else a try in order to keep me going.

That’s when I remembered that time I played Brawl using Nethroi as my Commander. Those matches were some of the best I’ve had in Arena for a good long while, and maybe continuing down that path would rekindle the spark I have for the game.
Naturally, when picking a Commander, the first one that comes to mind is good ol’ Tricky Nicky. After doing a bit of research into Brawl deckbuilding, I found a good-looking decklist that I wanted to try out. The only change I had was replacing the Rakdos Guildgate with a Temple of Malice.
Let the games begins!
The fact that Brawl is a singleton format actually serves to our advantage here, because Grixis is filled to the brim with tons of great cards that serve as standalone win conditions if we can get them to stick on the board.

While we technically aren’t a Superfriends deck, once we get to the mid/late point in the game we have access to so many powerful Planeswalkers that it can certainly seem like it. Many of them are their own can easily turn the tide, and overwhelm our adversary of they can’t adequately answer them. Since our commander is also a Planeswalker, we get a lot of strong fixing and incidental lifegain from Interplanar Beacon. In a pinch, we can also sacrifice them to The Elderspell to activate a game-winning ultimate.

And for the same reason it was banned in Standard, Fires of Invention is a phenomenal card for us, since we’re in the colors to run it. While we still have to pay our commander tax with it in play, we can ignore the rest of Nicol Bolas’s cost, which allows use to get way more use out of him than we otherwise would. Even aside from that, the mana advantage exceeds the penalty of not being able to cast spells on our opponent’s turn.

Aside from that, our biggest strength is our extremely powerful suit of removal spells, board clear, and a light dusting of theft to kill of steal whatever our opponent might have up their sleeve. We’re light on enchantment removal, with Ugin, the Ineffable being our only option, but that’s just the price of playing Grixis.

Seeing the variety of decks on display, even using the same commander, is extremely refreshing, reminding me why I’ve grown so fond of Commander as a format. I guess what I mean to say is…

…put Commander in Arena you cowards.

It is often said that green is the most powerful color in Commander, possessing a glut of useful tools that feel almost disproportionate to what other colors are capable of. Of course, I’ve played decks that use Green, like Muldrotha and Marisi, but I’ve never played a mono-Green deck…

…until now. One of the members of our playgroup handed me a decklist that he wanted me to play on his behalf if he wasn’t able to join us. When game time was upon us and he hadn’t show up, the very least I could do was honor his wishes.

So it came to pass that I ran Jolrael, Mwonvuli Recluse, with a deck designed around using both of her abilities to build an unstoppable board of powerhouse creatures. Standing in the other corners were Arcades, the Strategist, Sygg, River Cutthroat, and Sethron, Hurloon General.

Arcades and Sethron were able to get out to faster starts than I was. Though Arcades didn’t have any ramp, they played a turn three Wall of Denial into their commander on turn four, allowing them to swing in for 8 every turn. Meanwhile, General Sethron had ramped both with an Arcane Signet and a Ragemonger to get their bull man himself a turn early.

Sadly, Sygg was spinning his wheels, missing their land drops and falling behind. I couldn’t start ramping until turn 4, but once Oracle of Mul Daya hit my board my mana began to rapidly accelerate. With the extra land drops, I was able to cast Zendikar Resurgent on turn 5, which allowed me to begin setting up for my end game. And thanks to the tap ability of Sensei’s Diving Top, I was able to generate a few token off what was technically my second draw for a few early turns.

Since one of my earliest land drops was a Reliquary Tower, I was able to keep many more cards in my hand than normal. And on turn six I managed to play an Elder Gargaroth, using it’s power to get a discount off of The Great Henge.

Under the might of my army, combined with an overly full hand and Jolrael’s ability, Arcades was the first to fall, since they were the biggest threat. With them taken care of, I played Alhammarret’s Archive to further extend my lead, knowing the remaining contestants wouldn’t have as much in the artifact and enchantment removal. Sygg tried to set me back with a Damnation, but in response I used Return of the Wildspeaker to extend my hand and push myself to a point where the rest of the table wasn’t able to respond.

Even without Trample, there wasn’t much the board could do to stop me, and after several successive attacks Sygg, and then Sethron, quickly succumbed to my might. I wasn’t up to another match at that point, falling under fatigue, but I was extremely impressed at the power contained within this deck. I might even give more mono-colored commanders a try after this.

Now that Core Set 2021 has been given some opportunity to percolate in the wilds, it’s time to delve back into the Arena to see what we experience.

We played two decks today, both Control decks. Though one was in Esper colors and the other was in Sultai.

The thing this recording impressed upon me the most is just how important Green is to a control strategy in this current standard. Uro and Growth Spiral are such vital cards to the strategy, because they smooth out our progression in many important ways. Both of them help us sift through our deck faster, and accelerate our land drops so that we can play those cards early. Uro in particular also serves as a win condition if our opponent is unable to remove him once he escapes. The sheer value of a single attack, even if he’s blocked and dies in combat, can seriously keep us in the game when he’s otherwise run out of gas.

Nissa is also an extremely valuable piece that control decks lose out on if they don’t stay in Green. She increases our mana output, generates bodies we can both attack and block with, and if she ultimates our opponent will have a nearly impossible time trying to deal with the Elementals she created along the way.

Until War of the Spark rotates out in the fall, building a midrange or control deck with that basic shell just seems like asking for trouble.

That said, I’m impressed with some of what I’ve been seeing from M21 in this session. Though it was frustrating to go against, that final 4-color Superfriends deck was impressive in it’s staying power. Without the lifegain from their Interplanar Beacons, they would have definitely lost. And I also have a soft spot for mill. So while I crushed that mill deck, I can help but respect that game.

Hopefully, as the meta develops we’ll start to see more interesting decks develop. That said, it’s hard to debate Ugin, the Spirit Dragon. Seeing it go off like that was scary.

This promises to be an interesting time.

Black Lives Matter and All Cops Are Bastards

Well, this was supposed to be the week I went to Anthrocon. You might be surprised to know that there is some fierce competition in the intersection between furries and MTG players. I have a Kenrith and a Muldrotha deck that I’ve been prepared for the occasion, but obviously the quarantine rightfully cancelled those plans. Covid-19 just makes such travel unsafe.

But whenever one door closes, another one tends to open. One of the members of our playgroup has a friend that they’ve wanted to teach Magic to for a while, and so I joined the two of them for a more beginner-friendly, casual Commander match that we could use to teach the rules of the game.

This gave me an opportunity to play one of my more “for fun” decks, helmed by Queen Marchesa (long may she reign) because Monarchy is one of my favorite mechanics to introduce to a multiplayer game.

My play group member brought out their Sygg, River Cutthroat deck, and handed their friend a Gishath, Sun’s Avatar deck because everyone loves big stompy dinosaurs!

Sygg managed to take the early lead with the always impressive play line of turn 1 Island, to Sol Ring, into a Dimir Signet. While both Gishath and I were still building up our resources they took a few early card draws by using a Faerie Conclave and Sygg to get a combined 3 damage in, triggering their commander’s card draw ability.

They also managed to draw a ton of cards off their Coastal Piracy and Bident of Thassa, since they had a score of cards that couldn’t be blocked like Invisible Stalker and Marang River Prowler. With their Reliquary Tower, they managed to maintain a huge grip of cards.

That’s not to say that I wasn’t also getting my own board established. Thanks to a Fellwar Stone, I was able to deploy Queen Marchesa (long may she reign) one turn early. Since I wasn’t going to be able to keep the Monarch token, I just started swinging in for some quick licks before the other guys built up their board state.

Of course, losing Monarchy isn’t the worst case scenario for Queen Marchesa (long may she reign). Thanks to the fact the crown was constantly changing hands, I was able to create quite a few Assassin tokens that would, later on, become significant to my strategy. Thanks to the combined might of small pings and a Dire Fleet Ravager from Sygg, my life total was getting pretty low.

So to get back into something resembling a strong position, I used Teysa Karlov to give my Assassins lifelink and vigilance on top of their innate deathtouch and haste. By adding a Sanguine Bond to the mix the following turn, I was able to increase the damage I was dishing out. Thanks to my Grand Abolisher, nobody could even respond.

Of course, that meant that once my turn was over, Gishath was prepared to Generous Gift my Sanguine Bond, so I left open exactly enough mana to play one of the most well-timed Teferi’s Protections that I have ever played. Not only did it save my bond, but also my face. Sygg had attached a Quietus Spike to the River Prowler, and since I wasn’t a valid target they chose to swing at Gishath, who had been building up a board.

And since I wasn’t a valid target, their small army of dinosaurs, including Ripjaw Raptor and a Sun-Crowned Hunters, only had one valid target. Though they were blocked, the Sun-Crowned Hunters were able to get it for just a little more damage due to their Enrage ability.

When I phased back in for my turn, I took a moment to look at my board. That’s when I saw that Bolas’s Citadel, which I had played a few turns ago, had a second ability. By sacrificing ten permanents to it, I could hit all of my opponents for ten life, which was just enough to finish them off. Grand Abolisher still on board, so nobody was able to respond to the move either, netting me the win from out of nowhere.

It was a solid match, and everyone was taking and dishing out damage and the board state got scary more than once. Our new player also had a great time. Hopefully, we can get them playing additional matches with us in the future.

After a short break, we’re ready to continue our adventures through time. We’re so close to our inevitable confrontation with Dr. Cortex and the evil Uka Uka that it won’t be much longer now.

But first, I lose my patience with bastard cops who keep ramming into me. All Cops Are Bastards.

Apologies for the audio in this one. I suspect I know why it’s such buggy, and I should be able to fix it next time.


In case anyone is curious, the reason why OBS was crashing so often was that I kept forgetting to turn off the desktop recording. I have multiple layers in my OBS setup, one of them is the PS4/Switch footage from my capture card. Another is the Desktop recording for when I stream games from my PC.

For my setup, the Desktop is “under” the PS4/Switch footage, so when I stream from my PC, I disable/hide the console footage. However, I didn’t think I needed to do the same for console games because they’re already on top. Unfortunately, that also mans OBS still has to take it both streams of footage, so it’s performing double duty when it doesn’t have to. So during this recording, I experimented by seeing if turning off the desktop footage improved performance, and it looks like the test is successful. We should see less OBS hiccups from now on as a result.

As for the game, we’re now at a point where we have all of the additional abilities granted to us by the bosses. While some of these late-game stages absolutely are designed around making use of them to cross gaps and distances that would be otherwise impossible, in many ways having access to them just feels like cheating. You see it a lot in the recording, but I’m frequently using the Slide -> Double-Jump -> Death Tornado Spin technique in order to bypass sections that I’d need to time correctly or avoid without it.

Having said that, I’m sure what they could really do to stop players from abusing that string short of making every jump one that requires it, which would be it’s own brand of tedious. An almost natural consequence of giving players access to all of these abilities and forcing them to master them for 100% completion is knowing that they can use them to trivialize large segments of the game. And this is all before we get into the Bazooka, which allows us to deal with pretty much any thread we see coming before it ever has a chance to get in our way.

Though considering that we don’t unlock it until right before the end, it can also serve as a good way to make the player feel like they’ve come a long way since the start of the game. There’s no denying that Crash is much more capable of dealing with threats towards the end than he was at the start.

Hopefully we’ll be completely finished with the trilogy at the end of the next recording. We may be able to start a new game, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Even with Crash Dash at our disposal, we still have our work cut out for us getting the rest of the gems and relics.

Remember that Black Lives Matter and All Cops Are Bastards:

Core Set 2021 is just coming out, and the meta for MTG Arena is going to be in flux because of it. So while we give things time to settle, let us return to Runeterra to see play a few matches with some new decks/strategies.

This time, we’ll be aiming to play the long game, with tactics intended to stall out and out value aggressive decks over time.

As always, thanks to MobaLytics for sourcing all of these excellent deck ideas.

Deck Lists:

  • Endure Spiders/Aristocrats:  
    •  CEBQCAQFAQBQCAIDCYRAMAIFDYUCWMBRGUBQCAQBA4AQEBIBAMAQKBYLDEAA
  • Heimer Control:
    • CECAKAIECANSONBYAIBAEAIJAQAQEAQMEY4QCAQEBAAQEAICEUYQA

As an Elenda, the Dusk Rose player, it feels really good to have an aristocrats-esque strategy to play in Runeterra. Sure, it might not be the most effective, but it can absolutely close games in the correct setup.

It helps that we have such excellent payoffs in They Who Endure and Neverglade Collector, which can turn the tide. Paired with strong sacrifice targets like Avarosan Sentry and Cursed Keeper, and ways to kill our creatures like Blighted Caretaker, Glimpse Beyond, and combat, everything we need is right there for us to use and abuse.

The Heimer Control deck is equally straightforward. Our goal to take advantage of either Heimerdinger or Vi‘s abilities by throwing as many spells around as we can in their presence, stalling the game until we can do so safely with powerful targeted damage spells.

If we can play even a couple of spells which Heimerdinger is out, the value we generate from his turrets and absolutely close a game on their own. And if we get either him or Vi to level up, the game is basically over.

Simple, powerful decks, but sometimes that’s all you want.

Black Lives Matter and All Cops Are Bastards

There’s nothing quite like a knock-down, drag out battle where every player gets the chance to take command of the game at least once. Three decks, all of the same relative power level, making strong plays, and sowing fear and excitement into their competitors.

This was the exact kind of match that we had in our EDH game yesterday, and I’m still thinking about how incredible it was.
Instead of adhering to our usual Cockatrice budgetless deck construction, I made the choice to run the version of Kenrith that I had built for myself in real-life, with the intention of playing it at Anthrocon (RIP travel plans). While the deck’s paper variant does run a few tutors, I swapped them out for some cards in the maybeboard to adhere to our table’s rules.
The partners were the first to get on the board with a turn one Serra Ascendant. With it’s boosted stats, much of the early game had both Macar and myself on the back foot as we were unable to answer the threat as Tymna/Kraum flooded the board quickly and neither of us had good way to address the problem. And with cards like Watcher of the Spheres, Emeria Angel, and Shabraz, the Skyshark, their board was getting dicey.

Kraum was also performing work, dealing out a large amount of commander damage, but his innate haste made it difficult to stop him from swinging while Tymna kept her pilot aflush with cards. From the outset, Macar and I had to team up to avoid death. I managed to snag Serra Ascendant by using my Hostage Taker and casting it. 

When the partners sent a portion of their horde towards me, Kenrith’s ability, bolstered with the extra mana from Dictate of Karametra pushed my life back above 30 so I could use the Ascendant to block. They had a Jeskai Charm ready to bounce it back to their library, but at least I still took the moral victory by blindsiding them with that play.

Meanwhile, Macar was slowly chipping away at the flying army we were both up against. That all changed when the fire nation atta- I mean when they dropped Nevinyrral’s Disk. Thanks to their board state, they were able to use it skillfully. They were able to use Clock of Omens, and the gold they had build up with Macar, to untap the Disk immediate on the turn it was played. Additionally, they were able to crew enough vehicles to activate the Westvale Abbey on their board, transforming it into Ormendahl, Profane Prince before wiping the board. And as luck would have it, all of that commander damage made Kraum and Tymna the more tempting target for Ormendahl’s wrath.

This brought both of them in a stand-still, which allowed me enough time to regroup before I made my next move, replaying Kenrith, dropping a Smothering Tithe, and building up a stack of treasure. In order to further their dominant position, Macar summoned an Archfiend of Depravity. It was a mistake I would make them regret making.

With my newfound reserves, I deployed Syr Konrad, the Grim and resurrected my Hostage Taker using Kenrith’s ability. Apparently, an indestructible demon summoned through blood sacrifice is no match for a pirate with a cutlass. Sure, I would not be able to cast him because he turns back into Westvale Abbey, but that also means that when I had to sacrifice her to the Archfiend’s ability, it would come back as a land, instead of a 9/7 creature with a ton of powerful keywords.

Sadly, my little synergy wouldn’t last too long, since Macar had one last trick up their sleeve. Back when we were still united against the partners, I had allowed them to swing in with Conqueror’s Galleon to transform it into Conqueror’s Foothold, which they used to bring back their Clock of Omens. Additionally, they used brought back Macar and used Ashnod’s Transmogrant on it.
This allowed them to enter a loop. Since Macar was now an Artifact, Clock of Omens could tap him and another untapped artifact, targeting Macar with the untap effect. This would cause Macar to untap, which allows him to exile a creature and create a Gold token. Said token and Macar could then be tapped to untap Macar, allowing him to exile every creature on board.

One Time Wipe later, and we were good to be started once more. My first order of business after that was to use my Ashen Rider to exile the Clock of Omens. On the following turn, I managed to play my Deadeye Navigator and flicker my Ashen Rider enough times to take care of all the remain threats on board, including the Foothold and an Inspiring Statuary.

Through the two of them were able to use a Crackling Doom and a removal effect to kill both creatures, and Bojuka Bog away my grave, it was too late. Both of them were running on fumes, and thanks to Kenrith and my mana reserves, I was able to make up the difference and close out the game with a few final swings.

This is the kind of Commander game that I can’t get enough of. Everyone was having a great time, and we all had a chance to show off what our decks are capable of. Moreover, I am relieved to see that this deck I built in paper, although not fully optimized with the big budget staples and fetch lands, is more than capable of holding it’s own without while still being fun to play against. My fear was that it would either be so strong that no one would want to play against it, or so weak that it couldn’t compete, so seeing such an excellent match play out brings me no end of joy.
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