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.

———————————————————————-

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.

———————————————————————-

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.

———————————————————————

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.

———————————————————————

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.

After having to cancel our Commander night for 2 weeks now due to scheduling conflicts, my playgroup was finally able to get together for a night of Magic: The Gathering.

But before we get to the EDH games, we started by doing an event that we had been planning for a while: Gatewatch Oathbreaker. For those unaware, Oathbreaker is a relatively new format where players build a singleton deck using a Planeswalker as a commander, and a signature spell for the Planeswalker.

The idea was simple, take all current and former members of the Gatewatch, and assign one at random to be the build-around for each player. Then, we’d just play an Oathbreaker game with the decks we built.

The Oathbreaker I was given was Liliana, and I built a deck the uses Liliana, Untouched by Death to recur zombies out of my graveyard in a pseudo-Aristocrats type of build. The other players in attendance used Gideon of the Trials, with Gideon’s Triumph as the signature spell, and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, with Paradigm Shift in the signature spell slot.

Unfortunately, much of my strategy with Liliana went out the window the moment Rest in Peace his board since I didn’t have a way of dealing with it and so many cards in my deck hinge on the premise that I can recur cards from my graveyard. The opening from Rest in Peace was enough to give the Gideon player the win in one game, but the fact that Jace didn’t have a graveyard made it easy for him to clean up the second of our 2 rounds, both of which had a Turn 2 Rest in Peace.

————————————————————————–

To help me alleviate some of the salt from my ignoble defeat, we transitioned to playing our usual $300 Budget Commander games. This time, I had brought a deck built around one of my old favorites from the days of the Magic Arena closed beta: The Scarab God. As one might expect, it was a Zombie Tribal deck, that aimed to take advantage of my commander by creating a token of tokens and eternalizing choice cards from every players’ graveyard. My opponents ran Rankle, Master of Prankles, and Roon of the Hidden Realm as their generals respectively.

And as far as starts go, I had one of the best starts I’ve ever had in a Commander game. On my first turn, I played a Swamp into a Sol Ring into a Talisman of Dominance, putting me miles ahead of the other players.

Low on land drops, the Rankle player opened with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. This was something I was able to take advantage of quickly, because when I played Liliana, Death’s Majesty on Turn 2, I manage to use her +1 to dump my Crypt Ghast from my deck to my graveyard, which I resurrected on Turn 3.

Liliana later ate a removal spell, but by that time she had already gone more than enough work. Rankle was never able to properly setup and by the time Roon hit the board, I had a Shriekmaw waiting to send it back to the Command Zone. And with my mana acceleration, I was able to combine Scarab God’s upkeep trigger with Endless Ranks of the Dead to lock the game down.

There are few experiences in Magic that compare to generating a mass of tokens, and then Scrying 9 cards deep before drawing for turn. The life loss combined with my ability to so finely tune the top of my deck made it no contest.

————————————————————————–

I kept on Scarab God and the Roon player stayed consistent for the next match, but the Rankle player swapped out for Chulane, Teller of Tales. Though my opening was less explosive than the last round, I was able to still put up a strong start, getting consistent land drops and casting Scarab God on time.

That said, it was clear that I was about to start running out of cards in hand. Fortunately, I had lucked into a Necropotence that I was able to force onto the top of my deck with Scarab God’s trigger ability. Unfortunately, Roon has a counter spell waiting in the wings that denied me my card advantage.

It was then that I realized that the nature of both of my opponent’s decks could be turned to my favor. Both Roon and Chulane are Bant commanders than rely on easy to recur ETB effects. Using my general’s activated ability, I could exile creatures for their graveyards (or my own) to create copies of them and gain those powerful ETBs for myself. For example, creating a 4/4 copy of Roon’s Eternal Witness, which I used to reclaim my Necropotence. Even if Chulane was able to destroy it immediately afterwards with a Reclamation Sage he tutored for using Eladamri’s Call, I was still able to pay enough life and acquire enough cards to get a second wind.

Combined with the host of lords I had out, my horde was able to quickly overwhelm the board and win me the game, both with Scarab God’s ability and with combat.

————————————————————————–

It was getting late, but we decided we had time for one more round. This time, Chulane and Roon decided to keep consistent, but since Scarab God had already proven itself a bit stronger than I wanted it to be, I decided to use that as an excuse to try a quirky deck I had been tinkering with, in a color combination I usually don’t play.

Despite how much he let me down during out Pre-Con night, I decided that Sevinne, the Chronoclasm deserved a second chance, in a deck that could hopefully take better advantage of him.

Sadly, by the time I was ready to start playing the game with my God-Eternal Kefnet, Sevinne, and an Approach of the Second Sun sitting on top of my deck thanks to an earlier Brainstorm, Roon had already lucked into an Avenger of Zendikar and Craterhoof Behemoth combo that won them the game. I feel like there’s something to Sevinne, but I’ll need to experiment further with him.

All in all, it was a very fruitful night, and despite my earlier saltiness at the way our Oathbreaker games went down, I had a fun time. Everyone won at least one game and/or got to see their deck “do their thing” at least once, and that’s best a playgroup can ask for.

The Marvelous Duo finds ourselves in the jungles of Wakanda, on a hunt for the Winter Soldier and the Infinity Stone he took from MODOC. What perils await our two heroes, both Acharky and myself, and their Marvelous team!? Tune in and find out.

As absolutely dumb as Thane’s decision to hand over the Infinity Stones is, for a variety of reasons, it’s difficult to fault the game for choosing to take that route. After all, that kind of plot thread is fairly standard of a comic book story, and it serves as an adequate reason to teleport us off to Hel/Asgard while giving Thanos the Infinity Stones for our final confrontation.

And tempted as I am to fault the game for not teaching me how to order my teammates to combo attack with me… I don’t know how much I can blame it for that one. Acharky pointed out that the initial tutorial in the prison cell tells the player how to do it, and I had no trouble then, but it never occurred to me to do that at any other point. Perhaps the game could’ve hammered it in a bit more, or shown me in the context of those chests, but it’s difficult to say how much of that would have actually helped.

I’m torn about this section of the game, because while some of the mooks, like the Hel Guardians and the Snipers in Wakanda, are genuinely either threatening or troublesome. However, once Acharky and I adjusted our tactics, they didn’t pose too much of a threat. And likewise, only one of the bosses posed a genuine threat. To that end, it’s hard to call the game difficult. After that spike in the Dark Dimension, this is a welcome reprieve, but it’s also incredibly underwhelming…

Next time, we’ll finally finish this.

I haven’t thought up or seen any new deck tech in Magic Arena recently, so I’ve decided to take a break from it until Throne of Eldraine is released. The new set looks really interesting, and I’ve already started to get some ideas for directions I want to go.

With that in mind, I decided to play another card-based video game instead. As someone who plays a lot of roguelikes, I figured it was time to play Slay the Spire on camera.

Watch as I’m exposed as a fraud who can’t play video games!

Slay the Spire combines two of my favorite types of games: roguelikes and deckbuilders.

Essentially, the goal is to advance to the top of the spire, defeating the entity the serves as the source of all the dangers the player has to confront. They are given an initial deck of cards and a passive skill, depending on their choice of character, which they be able to modify and add to as the game progresses.

In fact, doing so is an important part of progressing through the game. Mark Brown over at Game Maker’s Toolkit talked about it in his episode on Synergy. Synergies are the key to staying ahead of the curve in Slay the Spire. A pile of good cards can only get you so far, and only a deck whose cards combine their effects in powerful ways can make it to the end.

For example, one of my best runs as The Silent, my preferred character, had me combine the twin powers of A Thousand Cuts and After Image, with many of the cards that generate 0-cost Shivs, to inflict a lot of damage and block incidentally as a result of just playing numerous tiny cards. All of these are good on their own, but together they create even stronger effects.

In addition, the developers realized the importance of removing cards from the deck, or being able to decline to take a card when the player is offered one. As any card game player will say, the smaller a deck can be, the more powerful and consistent it is likely to be as well. So being able to get rid of the cards from your starter that aren’t too effective, or don’t synergize with the rest of the deck, and go a long way to improving its combat ability.

If you liked what you saw here, or think you can play better, I encourage you to give Slay the Spire a shot. It’s a fun game that’s more than worth your time and money.

It’s another Marvelous recording session, as the Alliance grows stronger and stronger to stand against the impending threat of Thanos and his Black Order.

With Acharky by my side, there’s nothing the two of us can’t beat… as much as the game wants to beat us down.

One thing that I can’t help but notice with Ultimate Alliance 3 is that is does a terrible job at tutorializing itself. There are several mechanics that the game never makes mention of, but are vitally important to mastering the system in performing well in the tougher fights of the game, like the ones we faced in this episode.

Up until Acharky started exploring the menus in between recording sessions, neither one of us new about the web of upgrades in the Lab menu. In the previous recording, we both vocally wondered what we were supposed to spend all of that currency we had built up over the course of our run. As it turns out, that current is spent in that menu to permanently upgrade the whole team globally. Without those stat boosts, we likely would have had a significantly tougher time against Doctor Strange and Dormammu, and we barely survived those fights.

Additionally, I didn’t learn about how to perform those super moves, which grow stronger when activated in sync, until watching fellow streamers go through the game on a lark. It wasn’t until the spoke about the “supers being ready” and seeing them activate that I put it all together.

And when the difficulty spike in the Dark Dimension is factored in, I feel like this lack of information is important to bring up. If Acharky and I can miss elements like this, than less experienced players might also suffer the same.

The most common complaint with the game is how long it takes to defeat enemies, and I wonder how many people suffer that fate not knowing that they can use these upgrades and super moves to make their lives easier.