I had a deck planned to run for this latest Magic the Gathering: Arena, but on the day of recording there was an announcement that caused me to amend my plans. Although the next set, Throne of Eldraine, won’t be released for another few weeks, the new Brawl Pre-constructed decks, and the Brawl format itself, would be playable in Arena as part of a special event.

And so, I decided to give these decks and format a try. Out of the 4 possible deck lists available for this event, I gave two of them a shot: The Wild Bounty deck helmed by Chulane, Teller of Tales and the Savage Hunter deck with Korvold, Fae-Cursed King leading it.

Before I get into my thoughts, I should explain the Brawl format, and how it differs from Commander. Here are the rules:

• The format utilizes the same pool as the Standard rotation. Only cards that are Standard legal may be used in a Brawl deck, distinguishing it from non-rotating formats.
• One Legendary Creature OR Planeswalker is chosen to helm the deck, that exists in the Commander Zone as it would in an EDH game. Standard Commander tax applies in the same way as EDH players are used to.
• The normal color identity rules apply when building a deck, just as they would in Commander. However, instead of a 100-card singleton deck, it is only 60-cards (but still singleton).
• Players start with 25 life, and there is no concept of Commander damage, but aside from that it’s all the same.

For me, this will serve as an adequate substitute for Commander while playing on Arena specifically, but it also makes me sad that the Arena UI can’t reasonably support 3 or 4-player games. I am aware that Brawl is supposed to be a 1v1 format, but what I enjoy most about formats like this are playing with groups of people. In it’s current state, Arena can’t be expected to support that.

As far as the pre-con decks themselves are concerned, I think they show off a lot of the potential that their commanders possess, but they’re still pre-cons, much like Commander pre-cons. They play well against each other, but they’re lacking in ways that I started to feel while I was playing the decks.

There’s also the problem I was on both the giving and receiving end of where because these particular decks are so heavily reliant on their commanders, if they die then the decks are largely dead in the water. While removal is limited, there’s enough of it where a few lucky draws and easily hose an opponent, and there wasn’t enough adequate board clear to catch up when they pulled too far ahead.

Still, the new cards from Eldraine were a treat to play, and make me even more excited to get my hands on this set. Further, I am looking forward to building my own Brawl brews. Even if the format probably won’t see much play outside of Arena, it does have its appeal.

Our adventures in the world of Marvel media continue, pushing through the worlds of the MCU, including the Netflix shows and the films that have become more popular than God.

Join us, The Marvelous Duo, consisting of Acharky and myself, as we fight the forces of evil with our favorite superheroes(?) from comic book canon.

Something I want to touch on, which I didn’t in the last post, was the problems we faced with the online play. The first was simply not being able to play online until both parties have completed the opening chapter. This is one of those things that is more of a minor irritation than a genuine issue, but I enjoy running through a campaign with my friends from start to finish. When it’s time for game night, this can serve as one more in the line of issues setting up.

But more importantly, there’s the issue of how characters and experience are handled in network games. In previous Marvel Ultimate Alliance games, although I was hosting and largely in control of the party structure, Acharky was able to hot swap to any of the characters in the party as if they were his own. Additionally, his characters earned experience, even if the game was using my versions of them.

Here, he is limited to using a single slot, unable to swap to any of the other two since they are technically owned by me. And since they are mine, I am able to swap freely between them. The game treats him as less of a partner and more of a guest inhabiting my world. Even when he dies, he can’t swap to one of my crew on a temporary basis to revive himself. As far as experience goes, no one else of his roster is gaining experience. Likewise, I’m not getting experience for Captain America even though he’s in the party, because he’s not “mine”.

Thankfully, the ability to dump XP cores into underleveled characters to catch them up, but it’s another one of the minor irritations, and still doesn’t solve the inability to hot swap between characters.

For this weekend’s Commander night at my playgroup, we decided to lift the restriction on budget so that we could play whatever cards we wanted to in our decks.

And in doing so, I was able to play a very special deck, and another one that I had been thinking about for quite some time. As a whole, the table had a blast and we may consider going budgetless more regularly again.

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During the first game, I ran a deck that I had actually won in a raffle hosted by Dan Krause on Twitter. He participated in a Rotisserie Commander Draft at Magic Fest Vegas 2019 and held a charity raffle where the winner received the deck. I won, and promised to play at least one match with it completed unaltered, and this was that match.

My commander was Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons. My opponents were running Emrakul, the Promised End, Zedruu the Greathearted, and Azusa, Lost but Seeking.

As far as starts go, mine was fairly rough. For the longest time, I was flooded with forests but no swamps. Although I had my Golgari Signet in play for black, it was never safe to play Hapatra because I had no one that I would be able to swing into to trigger her ability. The situation only grew more dire when Emrakul’s player managed to cast Geode Golem and swing in the following turn at my empty board, since no one had the ability to kill it off, allowing her to cast Emrakul for free. Even worse, she had managed to put Akroma’s Memorial out on the table a few turns after Geode Golem.

What an adorable little *problem*!

Fortunately, my dire situation had turned to my favor because nobody saw me as a threat (and, in fairness, I wasn’t). Due to past experience, the Emrakul player took control of the Zedruu player and sought to sabotage them. It didn’t work, because Azusa’s Hall of Gemstone, which had been adversely affecting Zedruu’s playability, also interfered with that plan.

We all thought the Azusa player was basically out of the game once Emrakul directly her 13/13 Flampling might towards them, but they managed to set up a strong defense with an Emrakul of their own, along with a Vorinclex to hamper our ability to cast spells. In an act of petty revenge, a concept that I am strongly in favor of, they opted to control the Zedruu player instead of the Emrakul player, because Zedruu had used Vedalken Plotter to take their Gaea’s Cradle and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. In all likelihood, this cost him the game, because he was unable to stop Emrakul’s Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, which destroyed his Emrakul and fulfilled the promise spoken of in their commander’s name.

Pictured: The reason people dislike Eldrazi

While all this was going on, I was mostly a passive observer, but I had finally dropped enough lands and acquired the right cards to make my move. The Zedruu player went before me though, using Gilded Drake to take control of Ulamog. She was going to take control of Emrakul, but I had chosen to forewarn her that my plan was to clear the board. Following through on that promise, I enacted my Decree of Pain.

Reciprocating my earlier forewarning, Zedruu opted to swing in at the Emrakul player with “their” Ulamog the next turn. This freed me up to finally start taking control. Using Demonic Tutor, I searched for and summoned Liliana, Dreadhorde General, using her -4 to deal with Ulamog and the other creatures that had hit the board in the time since the last turn. Although Zedruu was able to keep the aggression off of her thanks to Island Sanctuary, I was able to stay a float with a synergy between Tendershoot Dryad, Yawgmoth, and Dictate of Erebos. With the aid of Gary Asphodel, I was even able to gain back much of my lost life and kill the Zedruu player.

It was close, with Emrakul having only 3 life remaining at the end. However, the aid of Akroma’s Memorial and the ability to take control of my turns was too much for me to bounce back from. I was a single turn away from victory, but alas. Still, it was a well-played match and I have no regrets. I’m proud that I was able to make a strong impact despite being out of it for most of the game.

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The Emrakul player had to withdraw from the second match due to other obligations, but we were able to bring in a new challenger who had shown up too late to join the first match, who brought with them a Golos, Tireless Pilgrim deck. The Zedruu player decided to replay their deck, and the Azusa player swapped over to their Kambal, Consul of Allocation deck.

As for me, I played a commander that I don’t bring out often because it tends to generate a lot of hate, and rightfully so: Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire. The deck is designed to take advantage of both the sacrifice mandate and the ability to cheat out the top card of the deck while including cards that protect Vaevictis and give him haste to swing in as much as possible.

I had a decent, if not great start by playing a Lantern of Insight on the first turn. My plan was to it use to pseudo-control what everyone else was getting out of my future Vaevictis swings, keeping them from accidentally playing their win-cons for free. However, as the turns went on I found myself again not playing much of anything. My field consisted of Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, Vaevictis, my Lantern, and land.

Kambal and Zedruu were doing nothing more than building up their walls. Kambal had Hissing Miasma and Norn’s Annex to stop people from swinging at him directly, and Zedruu wasn’t performing anything aggressive enough to inspire ire from the table, mostly playing reactively since they lacked proactive plays and red mana.

However, with Azusa on the board, a fetch land in the grave, and Crucible of Worlds, the Golos player was very quickly accumulating large amounts of land, with incidentally card draw due to Tatyova, Benthic Druid. However, both her board and my own were destroyed by Zedruu’s Austere Command. To further complicate the matter, she also used her only her source to play Pramikon, Sky Rampart, making me the only possible target of the Golos player.

A very powerful way to control the flow of combat in a deck that needs it.

And of course, the Golos player also quickly recovered from their board wipe and played powerful creatures like Bringer of the Red Dawn. I could deal with it using my Decree of Pain… except I was stuck at 7-mana. Even if I had the 8 mana required to recast my commander, the threat would be the Golos would use Red Dawn to take control of it and swing in, further ruining the game.

The rest of us had tried to start mounting a defense, but by the time we were able to it was far too late. Using Craterhoof Behemoth, and effects like Aminatou‘s -1 that let her bounce it over and over again, Golos succeeded at knocking each one of us down one at a time, the Sky Ramparts and Kambal’s life total stopping her from doing it all at once. I was the first to fall, followed by Kambal, and Zedruu never arrived at the board clear she needed.

A popular win condition in many decks

And a good way to keep getting its benefits

I wonder how different that game would have played out if I had managed to convince Zedruu to counter Craterhoof when it first entered the board, but there’s no use crying over spilled milk. Overall, it was a solid match that I had a ton of fun with. I think Vaevictis isn’t going to draw as much ire as I was afraid it would it I play him correctly, something to keep in mind for next time.

Once more, we return to the Arena with a new deck and new playstyle in tow. This time, we’re rocking one of the best budget decks around: Mono-Blue Tempo.

Don’t underestimate this deck. Despite the low price point, it’s a machine that can really pack a punch in the hands of a skilled pilot.

The first thing you’ll probably notice is that this deck has exactly one Rare card in the main deck, though it runs a playset of that card: Tempest Djinn. It’s both a 3-drop, and the highest cost card in our deck, which gives you an indicator that the deck aims to be more aggressive than the usual deck you see on this channel.

Though while is a powerful way to wrap up the game, it is not the linchpin. That distinction belongs to Curious Obsession. To Magic players who aren’t into Standard, this may come as a surprise because Aura spells are usually seen as bad cards. The reason for that it because if the creature it’s attached to dies, then the Aura dies with it, making it a 2-for-1 trade in terms of card advantage.

Curious Obsession typically negates this otherwise obvious downside by drawing a card when the creature attached to it inflicts combat damage. If the pilot is playing correctly, they’ll drawing at least 2 or 3 cards off of it before the creature is destroyed, meaning that they’ll break even in the worst case and gain a net card advantage in a typical case. And for the strategy we’re aiming for, a 1-mana card draw engine is a valuable tool.

Aside from these two cards, our deck can be broadly classified into two components: Creatures that can reliably ping the opponent, and disruption. Cards like Siren Stormtamer and Spectral Sailor are excellent Turn 1 plays, which make for powerful Turn 2 targets for Curious Obsession to quickly swing in and start drawing cards. In addition, they have powerful activated abilities that can be used to counter spells and draw cards respectively. Along with Pteramander, these cards are valuable because our aim to swing in quickly and often. Despite the card draw, we don’t perform all that well if the game goes too long.

But more than swing, we also need to keep enough mana open to keep our disruption pieces online. Spell Pierce, along with many of the other counterspells in the deck, can be used to shut down powerful creatures and spells before that can wipe out our board and unduly strain our resources in hand. Spell Pierce in particular is deceptive strong because it forces the opponent to play off-curve. They can’t play a 5-drop like Teferi on Turn 5 because then they won’t be able to protect it.

Our other forms of Disruption include pieces like Dive Down and Merfolk Trickster. Both of these cards accomplish that, but in different ways. Dive Down’s effect and instant speed give it several effective uses. The most common purpose is to give our creatures Hexproof in response to a removal spell being cast, protecting it reactively. However, it’s other purpose is to fool opponents into making unfavorable blocks again some of our bigger creatures, making a once favorable trade a losing one. In the footage, there were a few times where I used Dive Down to save one of my creatures from otherwise lethal damage.

The Trickster is another extremely valuable card. It’s a 2/2 for 2 mana that has Flash, which means even if our opponent doesn’t do anything we want to counter, we can at least use our free mana to play a creature and gain an advantage. In addition, it taps down a creature and removes its text, which can turn a difficult to block or kill creature into an easy one to take care of in the right situation. Alternatively, we can use it to tap down a blocker our opponent controls so that we can freely swing in on the next turn… while still putting another body onto the table.

As you can see, the deck requires experience to pilot it, and I make a number of fatal mistakes in several matches, but it’s also cheap to build and effective once the user masters it. It’s a shame that it basically won’t exist post-rotation, since almost every card the deck uses comes from either Dominaria or Ixalan.

A long time ago, in an age before THE QUIET MAN, Acharky and I used to stream together more frequently. Although the footage from those streams is long gone, we had a series we called “The Marvelous Duo”, where we played through the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance games together.

We thought after beating MUA2 that there would never be another game in the franchise. Much of both of our surprises and delights, a third game was announced, exclusive to the Nintendo Switch. Just as I was about to approach him to see if he had an interest in reviving our old series, he actually brought the subject up on his own.

Thus! THE MARVELOUS DUO HAS RETURNED!

For better or worse, this is exactly what I expected from an Ultimate Alliance game developed in the era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s so strange to go through a game like this now, because back when the originals were released, Marvel comics were big, but had yet to reach the broad, mainstream appeal that they do in today’s world. Before the movie, most people would be hard-pressed to identify the Guardians of the Galaxy, but now they’re household names.

And after going through levels themed on the Guardians/Captain Marvel, Spider-man, and Jessica Jones respective, combined with a plot to defeat Thanos and collect the Infinity Stone, it’s not hard to see the MCU influence, among others like Spider-Verse, Venom and the Netflix shows. That said, it’s also clear that the game is taking a more comic book inspiration when it comes to the cast’s personalities and designs. In addition, one should not overlook the inclusion of Wolverine from the X-Men, and Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel. While they aren’t popular movie picks, both of them are fan favorites from the comics.

Though I’ve never been much of a comic book reader, Marvel lore has always held my interest. As a longtime fan, it’s fun to playthrough all of these set pieces and explore them, seeing what references exist and where they choose to pull from. While I don’t expect the script to ever become a masterpiece, I look forward to seeing what else they pull from and how they tie it all together.

Magic players who know we personally know that I enjoy removing killing creatures and clearing boards of creatures. In my EDH playgroup, I’m known as the guy who tends to have the removal options needed to take out big threats.

But what I like even more than that is killing my own creatures and gaining benefits from their deaths. More commonly known as an Aristocrats strategy, it’s a deck type that I’ve always found interesting, and that I love trying to build and pilot.

My decklist is here.

However, I was also credit Strictly Better MTG for this deck, because the fundamental core of it comes from his YouTube video where he discusses his version of the build. This may be my own spin on it, but I’d be wrong not to attribute him credit where it is due.

There are 3 things that an Aristocrats deck needs in order to perform that way it is intended to:

• Either a swarm of cheap creatures that can replace themselves or be otherwise recurred.
• Cards that have triggered abilities that activate when the aforementioned fodder dies.
• Ways to sacrifice or kill off those creatures.

And this deck has all 3 of those. 10 of the cards in this deck costs 1 mana, and all of them are creatures. Hunted Witness is an obvious include, because it has a death trigger that produces token that we can also use as a sacrifice. And even though it doesn’t replace itself, Footlight Fiend‘s 1 damage on death can serve as that extra bit of reach we may need in a pinch.

We also have a full set of Gutterbones. The reason I run this instead of Reassembling Skeleton is because it only costs 1-mana to play initially, even if it comes out tapped. Early on, when mana is hard to come by, that’s significant. And later on, when the need to recast Gutterbones will make it overall more expensive, I found that I had enough mana where it didn’t matter.

On top of all those 1-drops, we have Hero of Precinct One as a token generator. While it’s removal bait in the worse case, we have enough multicolored spells in the deck that there’s a potential to create a lot of tokens with her ability. And since they’re just 1/1 Humans with no abilities to speak of, we’ll feel nothing when they too die.

As for cards that have death triggers, we have Cruel Celebrant and Corpse Knight as our two key pieces, which will often be what close the game off. Of the two, the Knight seems less obvious because it’s technically not a death trigger, but rather an enter-the-battlefield effect. However, it still fits in this deck because our strategy necessitates summon a ton of smaller bodies, which will add up if Corpse Knight is allowed to survive. And when something like Hunted Witness dies, this effectively becomes a death trigger because a token will be generated.

Our other payoff creature is Midnight Reaper. The biggest problem a deck like this can have is that it can run out of cards quickly, and this will help us avoid that. While it doesn’t activate when a token dies, and it does cost us life, which can kill us since it’s not a “may” ability, it’s worth it to avoid burning out prematurely.

The sacrifice outlet we run is also there to help us in that respect, and a few others: Priest of Forgotten Gods. One of the best early play lines we can hope for it is to play her on Turn 2, and then play two of our fodder creatures on Turn 3 to immediate sacrifice them to her ability. The value of her ability cannot be overstated, because one we start activating it, our opponents often have difficulty keeping up. She does everything this deck could want by letting us sacrifice creatures will removing pieces from our opponent, scratching them a bit while drawing us cards and producing mana. Conveniently, the mana she generated is exactly enough to pay the cost of returning Gutterbones to our hand and the life loss is enough to allow us to activate it, making it easier to maintain our loop.

But despite not having another card to sacrifice creatures to, we have another obvious way of killing off our force: COMBAT! Once we’re online, opponents having extremely tough times breaking through our front line. This is depicted a couple of times in the games I recorded for this post. Our opponents had boards with big trampling bodies, but the moment they attacked I just blocked and let my horde die, ending the game with a stack of Cruel Celebrant triggers. Conversely, I had games where I managed to whittle my opponent to a point where I could swing in an kill them even if they block.

Lastly, there are a couple of cards that were include as part of a support package. Mortify and Despark exist purely for removal purposes. I include them because both because hit enchantments and that are multicolored, which triggers Hero of Precinct One.

The new Teysa Karlov card exists purely because it synergies well with our strategy, often making the difference in tight spots by doubling our death trigger output. And finally, we arrive at Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord. His +2 puts opponents one the clock, letting us close out the game in a stalled board. The passive ability synergies with Midnight Reaper, canceling out the damage it deals to us while encouraging us to make swings when we are able. And as a deck that sacrifices its creatures, the -X ability gives us a way to bring back either fodder or one of our key pieces like the Celebrant or the Priest.

There’s a lot of moving parts to this deck, but you can’t beat the feeling of a well-constructed machine coming together.

Another Saturday night has passed, and that means my playgroup had another round of Commander together. This time, we managed to get in two games in. Though we probably could have gotten more in, had we not been too tired to continue, but it’s pretty to go on a high note than force an exhausted person to keep playing.

For our first match, I tried a budget brew of a Werewolf Tribal deck. I had submitted a version of the brew to MagicalHacker to see if he had any ideas for improvements for it, and I ultimately took a number them to heart for the deck…

…but ultimately I don’t think the concept could be saved. I’ve run Werewolf Tribal several times, and the each time I’ve run into problems that stem from the concept alone. In his deck doctor video, MagicalHacker inadvertently points out how few Werewolves exist that actually have worthwhile abilities, making it difficult to extract the kind of value one might want in an EDH game.

Even worse, most of these effects only come online if a player ends a turn without playing a spell (usually us), which is less unlikely if a multiplayer game just through running the odds. Likewise, the trigger to change back is too easy for your opponents to activate unless we pack in ways to slow down the rest of the table, and while this deck does have those I didn’t draw into them. I also didn’t draw anything that could help me play around this restriction, like Vedalken Orrery.

Each of these cards are supposed to slow down the board… if you draw into them.

In addition, there aren’t a lot of strong commanders for the tribe. This version uses Arlinn Kord, with permission from my group, but the only Legendary Werewolf, Ulric of the Krallenhorde, is merely okay. Previous versions of the deck used Samut, Voice of Dissent as the Commander, but I’d rather not need to splash White to make a Gruul-color tribe playable.

The deck barely made a splash against the Yawgmoth, Thran Physician deck running the table. With Dictate of Erebos out, nobody else was able to maintain a board presence for very long. Even with Vanquisher’s Banner keeping me stocked on cards, my board was empty almost every time we turn came up. Part of it was our fault by being blindly by the threat of the Marisi, Breaker of Coil player’s Goad effects, but the other point is the both myself and our 4th player were running under-powered decks, me with Werewolves and the other with a deck consisting of cards with “Herald” in the name.

A powerful, effective, and ultimately game winning combo.

In all likelihood, I’ll need to table the concept until it gets more solid support, but that’s no big deal when I have no many other concepts swimming in my head.

Like the other deck I brought to bear that night, a mono-black brew of my own with K’rrik, Son of Yawgmoth at the helm.

That is one beautiful combination of effects

To be absolutely blunt, I vastly underestimated the effectiveness of K’rrik’s ability to substitute B in any mana cost by paying 2 life instead. That enabled me to get a very explosive turn that quickly finished the game.

I managed to take the aggro my deck drew, with no small help from the Marisi deck Goading me and the rest of the table, and use it to my advantage. I only had three cards of my board: K’rrik, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, and Phyrexian Reclamation. However, thanks to K’rrik and Nykthos on my board helping my pay for me costs, I first played the Sanguine Bond I had in my hand. This left me with a low enough life total that I was able to cast Repay in Kind to drop everyone else to my pitifully low life total of 4, and swing into an unguarded board to deal enough Lifelink damage to knock out the rest of the table.

My table was shocked when the saw this hit the stack.

I was admittedly scared to bring my life total that low, but it worked out well since nobody was running blue and the removal necessary to stop me just wasn’t there. Plus, I was likely going to be knocked out if I didn’t at least make the attempt. Out of all the ways I planned to win with that deck, I was not expecting to pull that one off.

It was an exciting game, short as it was, and I look forward to further refining this deck to be less of a collection of cards and more of a coherent deck.

At last, we arrived at the end of Cole Phelps’s career as an LAPD detective and the game. With it, we fully uncover the extent of the conspiracy that’s been unraveling ever since his fall from grace, into the cold, uncaring arms of the Arson desk.

Between him and his former comrade-in-arms, Jack Kelso, it seems all but assured that those responsible for the fires and murders will be brought to justice. How will they do it? With some good ol’-fashioned Detective Work, we’ll find out.

As depressing as it is, and as sour as I was on it when I first beat the game, I think the way they chose to end it was fitting for the kind of story that was being told. Throughout the game, and especially towards the back half, we are confronted by corruption and manipulation from within the very institution that is designed to enforce those laws. No matter what happens, the system will do whatever it takes to protect itself.

So what would they do when they see that an Assistant DA, his investigator, and a rogue cop are about to nail them: They cut a deal to sell out their co-conspirators. It’s no coincidence that the game ends with Roy Earle conducting the eulogy at Cole’s funeral. He is the game’s greatest personification of the police’s corruption, indulgence, and violent tendencies. The choice was made to hammer in the fact that although Jack succeeded at uncovering the conspiracy, the world marches on largely unfettered.

Similarly, it makes sense to kill off Cole Phelps. In a metaphorical sense, he was already a dead man walking. For someone who wanted nothing more than to prove that they were worthy of the praise that had been heaped on to them in the war, there was nothing worse than to be paraded across the papers, charged with adultery, and transformed into a pariah. His life was already over, and the revelation that his order is what started the arsonist’s path to become the monster Doctor Fontaine turned him into, he was at an all time low. It is only in death that he was able to salvage what was left of his reputation.

Despite how terrible the working conditions were, and coming out well before the Telltale Adventure Game renaissance, LA Noire is a solid game and story. It was fun going back to it one more time.

Usually, in my Cockatrice Commander/EDH playgroup, we have a series of matches in which we run any number of different decks and play test out the new decks we’ve built over the week.

Last night though, we only had a single match that lasted about 2 hours. There were multiple reasons for this, which largely come down to the decks that were being run. In particular, I wanted to talk about my own deck, which was based on Marchesa, the Black Rose.

3 lines of text that go great together

Marchesa’s ability suite allows her to be played in many different ways, and I’ve built several decks with her at the helm. This particular formulation is based around the idea of taking the board’s best beaters and gaining permanent control of them.

The way I accomplish this is as follows:

1. With Marchesa already on the board, use an effect like Act of Aggression or Kari Zev’s Expertise to gain control of a creature on someone else’s side.
2. Use it to attack the life leader, which will trigger Dethrone and give the creature a +1/+1 counter.
3. If the creature wasn’t killed in the attack, use on the deck’s many sacrifice outlets like Viscera Seer or Phyrexian Tower to sacrifice it.
4. Marchesa will witness the sacrifice and place a trigger on the stack, since a creature died under our control with a +1/+1 counter on it. At the end of the turn, the creature will return to life under our control, and we’re no longer bound by the end of turn restriction we originally had on the first effect.

Take the opponent’s best toys.

And toss them aside so that we can revive them.

Along with the standard card draw, mana ramp, and removal packages, the deck also has cards like Thief of Sanity and Gonti, Lord of Luxury to lean into the theme of theft. With Marchesa out, they are relative protected, and in Gonti’s case it is possible for us to have it trigger several times in a single game.

Just 1 or 2 activations of this effect can be utterly backbreaking against the right opponents.

As for the match itself, although I didn’t win, I was proud of the way the deck performed. The beginning of the game was rough, since one of the other players was running Marisi, Breaker of the Coil. With Mirri in tow, they were able to reliably trigger Goad and force me both to open myself up and force the rest of the table to attack (usually me).

At first I tried to fix that problem by taking Mirri, but then I manage to use my Nicol Bolas to take control of Marisi permanently. Nicol Bolas died before my turn came back up, but at that point he had already served his purpose: Marisi became my best friend. Until another player (running Meren of Clan Nel Toth) used their Liliana, Dreadhorde General to force me to make some sacrifices, I was able to safely swing and have my opponents help me kill them.

*blows kiss* I want to love you, but our colors don’t work out.

When the player running Sai, Master Thopterist used the final verse of The Antiquities War to swing at me, with my board nearly wiped and my defenses at their worst, they would have killed me if I hadn’t managed to steal control of one of them. Still, they left me at 5 life, which I remained at until I eventually died.

Still, that didn’t come for another 5 to 6 rounds afterwards. Although I could barely get a force to stick, I managed to stay safe through smart use of Marchesa’s Dethrone, combined with board clears and spot removal. I eventually died, but I died fighting, so I can’t really complain.

That said, given how much ire I clearly caused at the table, it is unlikely I’ll pilot it again anytime soon. Maybe once the heat has died down, but not now. After a while, everyone was begging to be put out of their misery, and that’s not a feeling I want to engender in my playgroup. And if you have any suggestions for the deck, feel free to comment and I might consider it.

It’s no secret that ever since Risen Reef was revealed in the new Core Set 2020, players have had their eye on Elementals as a tribe. As a 1/1 that either adds a card to our hand when it comes out, it would have already been a decent card. But the fact that other Elementals, including other copies of Risen Reef, also trigger the effect again, the potential is too real to pass up.

And so, with Omnath, Locus of the Roil giving us an obvious direction to go, we’ll give the Temur color combo a try with this Elemental Ramp deck.

Obviously, if we’re going to call ourselves a Ramp deck, we need ways to increase our mana output. Risen Reef is an obvious way to do that, and give us some extra cards, so we’re putting as many copies as we can into the deck.

Leafkin Druid is another obvious choice. No matter what stage of the game we’re in, this card is almost always welcome. Not only does it provide us with mana on its own, even more if we’re got a good board going already, but it’s an Elemental, so it’ll trigger Risen Reef when it comes in, potentially netting either another land on the board or card in hand. And although they don’t trigger our Elemental friend, Llanowar Elves and Paradise Druid round out our package so that we have a high chance of getting to our 4 and 5-drops earlier than we’re “supposed” to.

As for how we win, it’ll usually be either through Hydroid Krasis or Nissa, Who Shakes the World. Nissa has quickly become one of the most popular Planeswalkers in Standard at the moment, and for good reason. Not only does she double the mana output of every Forest, even non-basic Forests like the shock lands we’re running, but she also untaps them, turning them into 3/3s with Vigilance and Haste (but note that even though they become Elementals, they do not enter the battlefield and will not trigger Risen Reef). The combined value and versatility of both of these abilities is insane.

And as you can see in one of our games, just the threat of her -8 is enough to make a player surrender. I saw why in several matches I didn’t record. Not only does in filter out a large chunk of the lands left in the deck, making it easier to draw playable cards in the late game, but it gives all of the 3/3s she created indestructible. It’s not easy for an opponent to keep playing when so many creatures are swinging into them with no consequence.

In the case of Hydroid Krasis, it serves two incredible functions in this deck, and is the best or worst thing to ever happen to Simic depending on what your viewpoint is. Providing a sink for all the mana that we’re creating with our creatures and Nissa, it allows us to sustain well beyond where we normally should by giving us vital, card draw and lifegain even if it eats a removal or counter spell. And if it doesn’t, then it provides a massive body that will be swinging in with flying and trample. Just a few hits can turn around a completely losing game. This can be enough on its own to force opponents to surrender.

Getting to our other pieces, Omnath provides two useful functions. Its first ability gives us the reach to deal with small or large threats, depending on where we are in the game. If the opponent is at a low enough life total, we can even use it to finish them off. Since it scales to the number of Elementals in play, the lands the Nissa turns into Elementals also count for that.

The second ability is another valuable asset. Not only does it provide a valuable boost when a land comes into play, even as part of Risen Reef’s ability, but late game it can also provide us a way to keep drawing cards to push through that last bit of damage. The threat of this, combined with it’s stats is usually enough to make it a prime removal target, which can save our valuable pieces in the long run.

Though I don’t consider it a win condition, Cavalier of Thorns is another card that can neatly wrap up the game. The 5/6 stats, combined with innate Reach, make it a powerful blocker, and an equally powerful piece to swing in with. In addition, it’ll almost always hit a land with its enter the battlefield effect, and if it dies we can reclaim a card that hit the graveyard, likely a Risen Reef, Hydroid Krasis, or Nissa, which can disincentivize opponents from killing it.

Lastly, we run a few copies of Living Twister and a full set of Lava Coils. The Lava Coils provide cheap, exile based removal that can help us deal with early threats to our setup, but Living Twister is so much more than that. Not only is it an Elemental for Omnath and Risen Reef synergies, but it’s activated abilities give us a way to make use of our lands in the event we get mana flooded. We can bounce lands back to our hand either to replay them for Omnath triggers, or discard them to ping something on the board, including our opponent, for a few points of damage. Against more aggressive decks, it’s high toughness can make it very difficult for small creatures to get through.

Seeing the deck in action, it’s impressive watching the machine come together. It doesn’t always happen, but when it does it’s not too hard to close out the game. So many of the cards in this deck provide so much value that an opponent can and will get frequently overwhelmed.