Sir Daniel, why are you turning all of your enemies into Roast Chicken!? Oh wait, it’s because you’re all bones!

Today, in our journey across Gallowmere, we encounter several powerful foes on our way through some of the best and worst Zarok has to offer.

Believe it or not, the Ant Caves were actually noticeably different when compared to the original version. As you see below in YouTuber “i CABAL i”‘s footage, the original PlayStation version was difficult to navigate due to a pitifully low draw distance combined with very samey looking textures and environments. Given what was on screen, it could be hard to determine what the player’s rough position was on the map.

Compared to the original level, the newer version’s background details and draw distance are much easier to read and navigate. Looking back at my run, I actually little to no trouble navigating the area. However, there were issues that the new version had that the old one, oddly enough didn’t.

While the new details make navigation less of a hassle, it makes it harder to locate the 6 fairies the player needs to obtain a free trip to the Hall of Heroes. The barriers keeping the fairies trapped contrast more clearly to the lower detail, lower resolution background on the original PlayStation version. In the end, my difficulty with the last few faeries in this PS4 version came from them blending in just a bit too well. That said, the whole area didn’t take as long as I was afraid it might be.

On the other hand, The Sleeping Village is one of my favorite areas in the game. It’s not a particularly easy or difficult level, but it provides an interesting twist on the usual mechanics in the same with the innocent villagers whose death will extract energy from the Chalice.

It also does a fair bit of world building in terms of the society of Gallowmere and how it developed over the course of a hundred years. We learn about the mayor, and how he took steps to prevent Zarok from summoning the Shadow Demons, even if we still had to free them to continue our own quest.

Shame I had to cut my stream a bit short, but hopefully that won’t become a pattern. I’m still having a blast coming back to this game after so long.

For this week, one of our playgroup couldn’t attend due to personal business that needed tending to. When factored in with the schedules of a few of our other members, it was a night of tons of 3-player games.

It was an interesting change of pace, quite literally. The accelerated speed of our games meant we got more rounds in than usual. And also, by sheer coincidence, the two decks that I bought to bear this session also happened to be in Esper colors.

The first match of the evening had my dust off an Aminatou, the Fateshifter deck that I had built a while back, but never played. My opponent’s were Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder and Surrak Dragonclaw with their army of big boys.

The problem I experienced in this match, which became a recurring pattern with my Aminatou deck, was that I was accruing a ton of value by blinking cards like Disinformation Campaign and Agent of Treachery, but I lacked in ways to cash out on the value because my opponents would build up board states that I could not swing into.

This also meant that I was drawing the ire of the rest of the table without mounting a sizeable enough defense to protect myself from the retribution. So when Surrak untapped with Ilharg, the Raze Boar, Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle, and a Genesis Hydra, they weren’t going anywhere else but towards me. I was quickly overwhelmed and defeated.

This left Endrek Sahr to basically clean up after me using a combination of Dictate of Erebos and Yahenni, Undying Partisan combined with their thrull army, to remove all of the threats mounting again them and quickly takeover the game, winning in no time once I was dealt with.

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In the next round, I didn’t feel like playing Aminatou a second time, so instead I ran one of the new Brawl commanders, just not the overpowered ones. No, rather than build a Chulane or Korvold deck, I opted to create a big ol’ horde of artifacts and enchantments for Alela, Artful Provocateur.

Facing me in battle were Obzedat, Ghost Council and Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons and her withering forces.

Luckily for me, Alela wasn’t running into the same problems that Aminatou was. In fact, I more or less had the game on lock when I saw my opening hand. As the other two players were setting up, I used a turn two Arcane Signet to play Smothering Tithe or turn three, and Alela on turn four. Since we were still so early in the game, nobody was going to pay the mana to prevent me from accumulating treasure.

Oddly fitting, I played All The Glitters on Alela. While this did put both of my opponents in severe danger, the truth was that I merely wanted to keep my life total as high as I could for fear of a massive swing out of nowhere. Using my remaining mana for the turn, I played Mirrormade as a copy of Smothering Tithe to keep the money flowing.

It was the next turn where I revealed my turn plan by casting Revel in Riches. By this time, I was swimming in treasure, so unless my opponents could destroy my enchantments or myself in the next table rotation, victory was mine.

While they didn’t succeed, Hapatra had an excellent play with Grismold, the Dreadsower combined with Harbinger of Night and Hapatra to swing in for a good chunk of damage. A good effort, but not enough to stop me, and once my turn came around I won through the power of wealth and capitalism.

Indeed, the lesson here is that just having a large amount of money is a victory in and of itself. Jeff Bezos would be proud.

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Game three has Alela reprised her starring role on my side of the field. Facing me down was Zada, Hedron Grinder and their goblin pals and Titania, Protector of Argoth.

While I didn’t realize it when I put her onto the battlefield, Hushbringer ended up being one of, if not the most important card on the board. As it turns out, both of my opponents were relying heavily on creatures with effects that trigger upon entering the battlefield. The fact that Hushbringer remained on the board for the duration of the game actively prevented them from leaning into both of their decks core strategies as much as they wished. In addition, the lifelink from both her and Alela allowed me to staunch the bleeding from Titania’s and Zada’s massive swing into my face.

As Titania was producing Elementals and Zada was trying to generate a board state, I was flying over them with my Faeries, enhanced by cards like Ethereal Absolution and The Immortal Sun. In addition, I was able to use Bolas’s Citadel to gain extra value through both free land drops and a couple of choice top decks at the cost of a bit of life. Once Titania was knocked about, cleaning up Zada didn’t take much longer.

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Since we were all still keen on playing some more, we just kept rolling with it. I kept playing Alela, and the Titania player wanted to give their deck another shot, but Zada switched out so that they could start slinging spells with Vial Smasher, the Fierce and Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix.

This one wasn’t so lucky for me. Titania got an early start with a turn two Burgeoning, which they took advantage of for early ramp since with I nor the partners could just stop playing lands. In the next couple of turns, as the rest of us deployed all of our commanders, Titania dropped an early Nissa, Vital Force, which they promptly ult’ed the next turn to draw cards for each land drop.

Combined with Burgeoning and Titania herself, they kept them flush with lands, card draw, and Elementals. Meanwhile, using Kydele and her god, Kruphix, God of Horizons, the pair her accumulating a ton of stored mana. When Titania finally played their Craterhoof Behemoth, they didn’t have enough power to knock both of us out, so they directed just enough ire at me to defeat me since they couldn’t handle my flying Faeries.

Sadly for them, this proved to be a fatal mistake, because this was when Vial Smasher and Kydele combined to great effect. Using the extra mana at their disposal, they played Torment of Hailfire, where X was equal to 20. Since there was only one opponent, Vial Smasher did 22 damage to Titania, and then they didn’t have enough permanents and cards in hand to survive both the damage from Torment and the inevitable attack. Just like that, the victory that was all but assured had turned into a spectacular, glorious defeat.

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Having stated by desire to give Alela a chance, I switch back to my Aminatou deck for this next round. Vial Smasher and Kydele were swapped out for another partner pair of Tana, the Bloodsower and Ravos, Soultender, backed by a legion of powerful creatures. While Titania didn’t win, they made a strong enough splash that they wanted to switch off to play Oona, Queen of the Fae.

Though I once again wasn’t able to deliver a victory with Aminatou, there’s no denying that my presence significantly warped the board. Using Disinformation Campaign, I significantly hampered both players by forcing them to discard several cards out of their hands. The partners were able to handle that well enough, but it crippled Oona severely.

My other big play was Ixidron when both Ravos and Oona were on board, turning them into 2/2s with no name and no text. That said, this created the same problem it did last time where I was drawing so much ire without a board state to defend myself with.

Once I fell, Oona went down in short order since they lacked the cards required to fight back when the partners were swinging in with Tana and Elenda, the Dusk Rose. It was a quick match.

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The final match was between my Aminatou, Gishath, Sun’s Avatar along with their extinct buddies, and Yarok, the Desecrated.

What I learned in this match is that Yarok is truly terrifying. The creature a powerful engine using The Great Henge, Deadeye Navigator, Gonti, Lord of Luxury, and Gary Asphodel to draw cards, take out cards, gain life, and ultimate finish us off.

While I tried my best to disrupt it using cards like Merciless Eviction, Duplicant, and Disinformation Campaign, the fact that I was an easier target for Gishath through most of the game, combined with the sheer overwhelming resiliency of Yarok, proved to once again be Aminatou’s undoing.

Alela performed even better than I hoped she would, and I can’t deny that the Revel in Riches win still makes me smile. However, I cannot help but be disappointed in how Aminatou did. She generated value, but lacks the defense and resiliency that I like from my value decks like Muldrotha, the Gravetide or Teysa, Orzhov Scion. Maybe a miracles build would work better, but that’s not the kind of deck I want to run.

Though the spooky season has wound down, there’s still plenty of time for Fall Frights. In that spirit, I feel it is appropriate to play a game that Sony has opted to resurrect from my childhood. While not the best, it was a franchise that heavily appealed to me in many ways.

Let us join my friend, Sir Daniel Fortesque on his quest to save Gallowmere in the 2019 remake of MediEvil.

(This is a remake of a game I wrote about years ago, in case you were interested.)

Something I said early on in this video is that I think something was lost in the translation from PS1 to PS4, but I don’t entirely fault the team responsible for the remake for that.

To better illustrate that point, I want to embed the original opening here, courtesy of YouTube user Sergi Medina. The equivalent scene in the remake occurs in 3:11 in my video.

On some level, that loss was inevitable, simply due to the nature of bringing the PS1 models and animations onto the PS4. The original version has a stiffness and awkwardness to it, in the movements of Zarok, the Mad Family, and even the way the water parts when Zarok is leaving his tower. Those qualities are just uncanny enough to be unsettling, introducing an element of horror and creepiness to the scene as a whole. Just by transitioning to a platform where more fluid animation, higher resolution, and better modeling is possibly, some of that is undone.

Having said that, another aspect that might have preserved an bits of that undercurrent of unease is the lighting. I’ve noticed this with more than a few of the PS1 to PS4 remakes like Crash and Spyro, but here it’s even more noticeable due to the tone of the game. There’s a brightness to the scene in the PS4 version that wasn’t there in the original, which was much dimmer in terms of literal stage lighting. The Scarecrow Fields opening comparison makes this a little more noticeable. (For comparison’s sake, the same begins at 1:15:28 on my video.)

Making the scene physically brighter changes the overall mood, from one of subtle discomfort to one closer to a Saturday morning cartoon with a “Gothic Horror” aesthetic. It’s a subtle difference that I couldn’t really articulate until I saw them back to back. One is not inherently better than the other, but it does change the context to the proceedings ever so slightly.

It’s another weekend, and another exciting session of commander with my table. Going with neither tutors nor budget has been working wonders for the table, with everyone having a noticeably better time than they were previously. Without the added consistency of tutors, the threat level has evened out.

This week, we managed to get a solid 4 rounds at the table, with a healthy mix of colors in each matchup.

Our first match was a 3-player setup, while we waited for the other 2 players to arrive. I piloted an Elsha of the Infinite build, and my opponents were Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder and Uril, the Miststalker.

The match was pretty quick, with each of us taking our first few turns to accelerate our mana since our commanders were all five-drops. Fortunately for me, I also managed to eek out a turn three Rhystic Study to get a lot of early game card draw. Unfortunately for both myself and Uril, Endrek Sahr managed a turn four Grave Pact, which hurt since both of us were creature-light decks that focused on our commanders.

I managed to turn this unfortunate circumstance to my favor by playing a Time Wipe to save Elsha and kill the other creatures… which ultimately didn’t work since Endrek Sahr sacrificed a creature in response, but their Grave Pact did kill Uril, who was indestructible thanks to their enchantments. They tried to save them with Remove Enchantment, but I managed to Mana Drain it with the excess mana I had from my mana rocks.

In the next few turns, I had managed to recast Elsha and get a few planeswalkers on board in the form of Narset, Parter of Veils and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries. Uril also managed to reestablish their side by recasting Uril and Retethering all of their destroyed Aura to them. Thanks to the ever present threat of Grave Pact, which was still on the board, I managed to convince Uril to direct their aggression to Endrek Sahr to buy some myself some extra time. Poor Endrek Sahr didn’t survive, but that wasn’t my problem.

The next turned was all I needed to change my fortune. I had Foundry Inspector in hand, but I was still waiting for the remaining piece of my combo. Thankfully, I had just managed to obtain a Cyclonic Rift, which would be able to save me and set Uril back significantly. Using Narset, I was able to get the last piece of my combo: Sensei’s Divining Top. However, Uril had enough mana open that if they had a removal spell, my combo would be stopped in it’s tracks. With that in mind, I waited one more turn to see if I could guarantee my victory.

This ended up going exactly as planned. Uril was hurting for cards, and tried to cast Rishkar’s Expertise until I reminded them that Narset politely locks them out of extra card draw. Once they swung in, I played my Cyclonic Rift and they tapped out to replay Uril. Without enough mana to do anything, I told them the game was over.

With Jace already on board, Sensei’s Diving Top, Elsha, and Foundry Inspector go infinite, allowing me to draw through my whole deck. With Foundry Inspector on board, I can cast Sensei’s Divining Top for free, and use it’s tap effect to draw the top card of my deck and put it back on top instead. Since Elsha lets me cast it from top, this results in drawing through my whole deck and using Jace’s effect to win instead of lose. Tapped out, and hurting for cards, Uril could do nothing but surrender.

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Our fourth member joined in as we were finished up the first match, and we reshuffled for another round at the table. This time, I deployed a new tutorless brew of Marisi, Breaker of the Coil. Endrek Sahr and Uril reprised their roles while our friend brought in a deck based on a new commander: Sedris, the Traitor King.

This game was a difficult one for me. I don’t remember a lot of it, but the finale sticks out because it dramatically tilted the game in Sedris’s favor. When the rest of us had established a decent board, and after throwing a ton of creatures into the graveyard with Windfall, Faithless Looting, and similar effects, Sedris played a Living Death that set the rest of us so far back that it was impossible to recover.

That didn’t stop us from trying, but our efforts seemed to only make the situation worse. I had to write down the exact chain of events because otherwise I would have forgotten. After Sedris was replayed from the Living Death, Uril tried to set them back by casting Beast Within. Once Sedris said that their commander would stay in the grave, we all knew we were in trouble. On their turn, they used Animate Dead to bring them back, then used Victimize on the Beast to resurrect Chainer, Nightmare Adept and Sepulchral Primordial.

Using their Primordial, they resurrected my Gisela, Blade of Goldnight, in the grave due to the previous Windfall. Since everyone else was already hurting for resources we were all in a bad spot. After they played Feldon of the Third Path to start tokenizing their It That Betrays in the grave, the remaining players quickly surrendered.

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At this point, the Endrek player wasn’t able to continue due to time constraints, so while they bowed out, our other player who just arrived took their place. I held onto Marisi for one more game, while our new playing brought in Saskia the Unyielding. Sedris switched over to their Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion deck, and Uril was traded in for Korvold, Fae-Cursed King.

And once again, I was barely in the running for most of this match as was Saskia. Arguably, Saskia was in a worse position than I was because they had managed to draw aggro from Korvold by targeting them when the Neheb player was ahead on board with their commander equipped with Sword of the Animist and Hammer of Nazahn, with Combat Celebrant and Tyrant’s Familiar alongside it.

With Neheb with such a strong position, and all of us taking on a ton of commander damage to them, it looked like they were going to take the lead. That changed once Korvold, after deploying their commander, played Wave of Vitriol. The resulting sacrifices increased their power up to 21, and with the extra cards that came with this boost, Korvold swung straight into Neheb and killed them instantly. Unfortunately, that same play absolutely crippled the rest of us to the point where we couldn’t mount a defense, and the table fell shortly thereafter.

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As the night drew late, the Korvold player had to withdraw since they needed to get ready for work. Since the remaining three players were in the mood for one more round, we just had a three player game where I went back to Elsha after being resoundingly crushed as Marisi twice. Saskia moved onto Chulane, Teller of Tales and Neheb moved onto a deck based on the Gitrog Monster.

What actually ended up happening for most of the game was Chulane and I double teaming the Gitrog Monster. On the very first turn, the played Field of the Dead, which set the tone for the rest of the match. Using the Gitrog Monster and Oracle of Mul Daya, they managed to play a massive number of lands. The resulting army of tokens was creating a massive threat for the both of us. That’s when  I managed to arrive at an Austere Command on top of my deck to clear board. Sadly, it also destroyed their World Shaper, which brought a ton of lands out of their graveyard.

This was especially bad because we knew Gitrog had a Torment of Hailfire in hand thanks to Oracle of Mul Daya showing it to us before they drew it. Our only fortune was that we had counterspells in hand and Gitrog knew it, so they couldn’t commit to it. In order to properly set up for this eventuality, they played Boseiju, Who Shelters All.

Knowing we were basically in it together, Chulane and I got to work. At the end of turn, I had a Mana Drain at the top of my deck, which I could play with Elsha, but I had nothing that could take care of Boseiju. That’s when Chulane, after cycling through their deck with their commander’s ability and an army of little creatures, finally arrived at a Beast Within. After confirming I had a counterspell, which was true at the time, they destroyed Boseiju and once again stopped Torment of Hailfire from taking effect. However, at the end of their turn, Gitrog Putrefied my Elsha.

Now, at this moment, I had a choice. I could play the Mana Drain to save Elsha, but that was the counterspell I told Chulane I had open and it Gitrog would logically conclude that I could no longer stop their Torment of Hailfire.  Since I otherwise had a full hand, and I never said the counterspell was on top of my deck, the only real answer was to bluff my way out of this and let Elsha die knowing that it would open up Gitrog to a win if they called me on it.

Fortunately for Chulane, they didn’t. Unfortunately for me, they instead dumped the rest of their mana into building up an army and swinging at me for lethal. Once my deception no longer mattered, I revealed the truth and gracefully bowed out. This left Chulane to fend for himself against Gitrog’s army of zombies. Since he had a Frilled Mystic, he had to keep enough mana open to use it against Torment of Hailfire, but luckily for him Chulane and Lotus Cobra were keeping him rich in mana, and Panharmonicon and Guardian Project were filling his hand with cards.

Surprising enough, despite having an army against them, they managed to keep just enough mana open to stop themselves from dying, and won by casting Approach of the Second Sun twice, winning the game and snatching victory from the jaw of defeat.

I’m happy with Elsha’s overall performance, but I’m disappointed that Marisi got overwhelmed both matches. I want to keep giving my kitty a shot, but I’m not sure what I can do to the deck to make it more effective. Of course, it could also just be a function of the meta.

After our rounds of Commander a few weeks back, where one of friends brought in a Locust God deck, I was hit by a bolt of inspiration. I thought to myself, “Why should only one person draw all of those cards? It’s only fair that everyone draws all of those extra cards.” And as a good friend to the people of my table, I took the only logical course of action: Building a deck based on Nekusar, the Mindrazer.

What follows is a chronicle of friendship and camaraderie that Nekusar was happy to facilitate.

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Our first match had my Nekusar go up against Krenko, Mob Boss, Korvold, Fae-Cursed King, and Grumgully, the Generous and their horde of creatures.

I had a fairly slow start, as did Korvold, not getting much in terms of board presence. Krenko, on the other hand, enjoyed a very early lead thanks to a turn one Sol Ring into Lightning Greaves, with Krenko on turn 2. They were able to use that to start their goblin production, and with Quest for the Goblin Lord and Bloodmark Mentor, their board was looking mighty.

Grumgully was also starting to come online, with both their commander and a Krenko of their own, and a Doubling Season to go with it. On the other hand, Korvold was like me, in that they weren’t doing much at this point. They did have a Necropotence out, but the Krenko player was throwing much at their aggression towards Korvold so it was eating away at their ability to draw cards. On the other hand, skipping their draw phase was shielding them from my Nekusar when I had him deployed.

Partly in retaliation, and partly to finally get their own foothold, they used 4 of their remaining five life to Toxic Deluge, performing the double duty of killing off Nekusar and the Goblin hordes. When they finally played Korvold, they used his ability to sacrifice Necropotence so that they had a draw step again.

This position allowed to table to largely ignore me for a long time, but that finally turned to my advantage. At this moment, I had enough mana where I could cast Nekusar again, and I knew nobody had a way to deal with him anymore. Doing so would absolutely kill Korvold, but the question was whether or not it my best interest to knock them out, especially since the other boards were on their way to reestablishing.

As I was thinking out loud, the Korvold player decided to parlay. Without giving details, they said to me, “I can deal with everyone’s enchantments, if you spare me, I think you’ll like the result”. Listening to their argument, and looking at the boards between me, I opted to pass my turn and hope that this deal would work out. While Krenko was summoned once more, they were unable to attack into Korvold to deal that final point of damage. Taking the opening I had afforded them, Korvold played Wave of Vitriol after casting a Mayhem Devil. Though I had a mana rock that was lost, there were enough basic lands left in my deck to cover for my losses.

The resulting board state was one that gave Korvold an interesting decision, in light of the Mayhem Devil triggers. If they chose to, they could be a greedy capitalist, renege on our agreement, and kill me, giving them to opening they needed to hop up the other players. On the other hand, honoring our deal would leave them at a single life. With no mana or removal, my only logical move would be to summon Nekusar and let the card draw take care of the remaining life.

Knowing that killing me would likely kill the possibility of future deals, Korvold valiantly fell on their own sword, and the power of friendship prevailed.

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Our 5th player had gotten back from work just as we were wrapping up, so we moved into our next match. I had stayed on Nekusar, but Korvold moved onto The First Sliver and Krenko moved onto Kambal, Council of Allocation. Our new player had brought in their build of Oona, Queen of the Fae and Grumgully moved onto Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig.

The game started off well for me. I had a few mana rocks and creatures to keep myself out of danger, but otherwise nothing impressive. The sliver deck managed to get out Sylvan Library and Scroll Rack, which gave then some leeway in manipulating their hand, which Kambal mostly just played their commander and used him to tax everyone for each non-creature spell they played.

Said tax really hindered Oona, whose strategy relied a lot of getting out mana artifacts so that they can set up an infinite mana combo. They had a Mana Vault, Rings of Brighthearth, Talisman of Dominance, and a Clock of Omens on board, along with their commander. This meant they were ramping well, but they didn’t quite have the combo they needed to win the game and they were running low on cards. I’d gladly “help” them with Nekusar, but for my plans I couldn’t make that commitment.

Such plans came to fruition once Yorvo finally started to come online. They had deployed a Mycoloth, which they pumped up with 4 +1/+1 counters takes to it’s Devour clause, Yorvo, and Oran-Rief. In the next round, Oona would use their ability to mill Yorvo and claim some 1/1 tokens out of it, and Mycoloth would create Saprolings for Yorvo, swinging their available forces and Kambal to try to dent their growing life total. And that was when, in the following turn, I finally pulled the trigger on the Massacre Girl I had been holding onto, following her up with Stormfist Crusader to get some Menace on the board while getting some card draw flowing, even if Nekusar had yet to be deployed.

With the board cleared, the First Sliver made their move by cascading their commander into a Shifting Sliver and so on. While I finally placed Nekusar on board in the following turn, they used their unblockable slivers to attack Oona, leaving her with a low enough life total that between Kambal and Nekusar, the passive damage meant their days were numbered. Since they and I both knew their days were numbered, I asked if they would be willing to keep mana open so that I could do something silly on my turn. Shockingly, they agreed to it.

So when my round came up, I had both Mind’s Aglow, Evacuation, and eight mana on board. Dumping two of my own mana, and 16 of Oona’s mana into it, the whole table was compelled to draw 18 cards, which was enough to kill Oona and bring The First Sliver to a point where they couldn’t continue between card draw and Kambal.

It was then very fortunate that I had saved up the mana required to cast Evacuation, because I ended up having an alternative use for it once I drew into my 18 cards. Specifically, I played Phyresis on Nekusar, and used Windfall to deal more than enough infect damage to win the game outright. Twice, in the same night, I had managed to secure a win through the power of friendship. Despite his fearsome appearance as a Zombie Wizard, it was clear to me that Nekusar was the perfect way to build up alliances and support my playgroup in the best way possible.

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That said, I couldn’t help but wonder about the deck I had built. Despite winning two games with it, the fact that both of them were due to the loving support of my competitors made me wonder if the deck was, well…. good.

And for that reason, I ran it for a third time that night, seeing as how I really haven’t had the kind of explosive, sudden victory that Nekusar is apparently know for. Oona had swapped off to play their deck based off Emry, Lurker of the Loch from Eldraine. While Yorvo swapped back onto Grumgully, The First Silver remained on that deck.

The match started well enough for me. Thanks to a turn 2 Arcane Signet, I was able to play Spiteful Visions on my third turn. With another land in hand, I was all set to play Nekusar on turn 4 and just watch the cards and damage flow.

Meanwhile, Emry has getting a decent synergy going by using their ability to recur Expedition Map for free with the discount from Etherium Scupltor. At the same time, Grumgully had been setting up as well with both their commander and some early pressure.

This left The First Sliver, who had another strong Sylvan Library/Scroll Rack opening. Luckily for me, using Sylvan Library constitutes drawing extra cards, even if they don’t keep them, so Spiteful Visions was disproportionately affecting them. Then, they played Pir’s Whim, they chose Foe for me hoping I would get rid of Spiteful Visions, but I instead chose the Arcane Signet, while Grumgully got a land and Emry had to sacrifice, and later reanimate their Sculptor.

While Spiteful Visions was still in play, I still couldn’t capitalize on it like I wanted to with my commander, which significantly derailed my plans. The middle of the match was a bit of a blur, as while not much of note was happening, Spiteful Visions served as the biggest source of damage to all players. Aside from Grumgully, not many people were able to swing in. The constant pings, and a couple of wheel effects, eventually knocked Emry out of the game and left myself, Grumgully, and The First Sliver in a fight for the finish.

I was in a bad spot. My attempt to knock The First Sliver out and cleanup Grumgully in one swoop with a Fell Specter and Dark Deal got countered by The First Sliver’s Force of Will. And with Spiteful Visions still in play, there was a strong chance I would die to my own damage source. Thinking I probably don’t have a chance, but still wanting to see how badly I can ruin the game, I played Teferi’s Puzzle Box. Between the Steel Hellkite and Tendershoot Dryad‘s army of Saprolings, Grumgully had enough of a force to kill both myself and The First Sliver. It seemed light’s out… except for one crucial detail.

The First Sliver had Quick Sliver out, along with a few others, and they had chosen not to make any moves and leave their mana untapped the turn prior. Grumgully needed to make a gamble on whether or not that could commit to enough of an attack to kill me, but still leave enough to take out The First Sliver. Ultimately, they chose to hit me for just enough to make my own Spiteful Visions hurt, but commit the rest of the board to swinging at our Sliver friend.

Immediately, they cast The First Sliver and used Scroll Rack to fix the top of the library to fix the cascade chain, ending in Living End. Not only did that bring back their Sliver Legion and a whole host of previously discarded and destroyed slivers. The army was a verifiable force with whole host of keywords that I can’t remember, let alone put down here. It would seem that the tides have turned and slivers were going to come out on top… except for two crucial details.

My earlier wheel effects hit everyone, and silvers weren’t the only deck with a host of creatures in the graveyard that everyone forgot about. For example, the Grumgully player had a Siege-Gang Commander in the grave. Fittingly enough, they had enough mana left open to pop a Goblin with it and deal the remaining 2 points of damage that, when combined with my Puzzle Box and Spiteful Visions, would finish off the Silver before they could swing.

Knowing that any act of aggression would force Grumgully to pull the trigger, The First Sliver begrudgingly ceased hostilities and passed their turn. With just enough life to survive a few Siege-Gang hits, I deployed Nekusar and hoped the passive damage would be enough. And I was all set to turn the tide and win the match… except for one crucial detail.

Way earlier, Grumgully had played a Mosswort Bridge, and while they had the mana to pop a Siege-Gang goblin, their actual reason for leaving it open was to crack open the Mosswort Bridge to play their Thorn Mammoth when I inevitably played my Nekusar as expected. If The First Sliver had attacked, then I would had the opening I needed to win the game. Because they chose restraint, Grumgully was free to completely negate my play. And ultimately, this won them the game. They finally threw that goblin at The First Sliver and their board overwhelming my own.

It was an absolutely wild game, and probably one of the best series of matches I have ever had. I’m not convinced that Nekusar is the most powerful deck I’ve ever run, but it created a hectic enough environment that the resulting games were really exciting. It’s a deck I’ll need to keep under my hat for when some of my other ones like Marchesa and Yuriko begin to draw too much heat. (Marchesa, in particular, has drawn so much heat that several people at the table have taken to putting Homeward Path in their deck so I would stop stealing their creatures.)

Our perils within the Qurang Medan conclude as Acharky and I guide these intrepid young souls along the path as best we can.

But were we able to keep all of them alive, or did tragedy strike as it does it so many adventures. Find out as The Dark Duo plays… Man of Medan!

One of the things that I find most astounding is that Acharky figured out the big secret with the Manchurian Gold also slightly before I did in the story. When I ran through the game, it wasn’t until Fliss recovered from her hallucination about the satanic dining room that I truly put the pieces together.

The writers do a great job of seeding that reveal well. Even if the player isn’t looking for clues and secrets, there is enough going on in the script itself that they should be able to piece it together on their own. I know that by the time the characters had made it explicit, I had already figured it out, but it felt really satisfying to have my theory confirmed. And in my solo run, my final scene tested my knowledge and recollection of the fact I was hallucinating to great effect.

Sadly for us though, Fliss died in an unfortunate accident because she, or rather Acharky, made a hasty decision in a panic. And Conrad came back far after his intervention was necessary. However, 4 people alive out of 5 is a very solid showing.

I’m looking forward to the next game in this Anthology. Not just to see the next story they cook up, but also to learn more about The Curator and what his role is in all of this.

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.