Nicol Bolas and the Amazing Shrinking Hand

I splurged a fair amount this month on MTGA (I blame severe pandemic-induced boredom and WoW being in the very nadir of the between-expansions doldrums) and I'm definitely going to budget how much I'm spending on digital cards, I have been very hesitant to burn wildcards, but I realized I had luckily gotten a few key cards already for what appears to be a popular deck.

It's also built around Nicol Bolas, who has been in my collection (in its far less valuable Chronicles edition) since 1997, though this, of course, is a new incarnation of him: Nicol Bolas, Dragon God.

The big bad of the War of the Spark and the entire arc leading up to it (making him basically the biggest villain in MTG since Yawgmoth - though get back to me on Emrakul) is a beast of a Planeswalker.

For UBBBR (cheaper than his original incarnation!) Bolas starts with 4 loyalty and has a passive that lets you use the planeswalker abilities of any other planeswalker on the board. His +1 lets you draw a card and then forces the opponent to exile either a card in hand or a permanent they control. For -3, you can destroy a target creature or planeswalker (which admittedly was probably a bigger deal in the planeswalker-heavy meta when War of the Spark came out, but still!) and for -8, any opponent who doesn't have a legendary creature or a planeswalker loses the game, and that's opponent, not player, so no worries if someone Bedevils in response.

So, the deck that I'm playing is, unlike most of mine, pretty close to an established deck build. It's a nasty control deck that is all about wiping out enemy creatures and shrinking the opponent's hand while forcing them to discard.

It runs three different planeswalkers, typically, with Nicol Bolas, as well as Liliana, Waker of the Dead, whose +1 requires both players to discard a card, and then if an opponent can't, they lose 3 life. Coupled with Bolas' exiling ability and four Thought Erasures, not to mention Narset, Parter of Veils, whose passive prevents opponents from drawing more than a card per turn, so you can prevent draw-heavy decks from getting around the hand-shrinkage.

I tossed in a Liliana, Dreadhorde General just because I have one, and it's a nice card to have in any deck that focuses on Black - though its "draw a card when your creature dies" passive can make the other Liliana's ability hurt you a bit more (though, you know, card advantage.)

Shark Tornado can give you a win condition, as you'll be playing tons of cards to pump out sharks (I was cheap and only burned a single wildcard - the official list puts 4 in.) And then two Extinction Events can sweep the board pretty amazingly.

Anyway, it feels mean sometimes, but that's control, baby!

With Theros and Ravnica Both Now Official D&D Settings, We Should Have Official Rulings on Planar Travel

A few weeks ago, one of the players in my Ravnica game told me they were still trying to figure out the bonus spell they'd be getting for taking the planeswalker feat. When I heard this, I was confused. Other than Plane Shift (unlocked only at 13th level or higher, to put it on par with other 7th level spells for pure casters) the special feat I'd designed said nothing about getting things like Bless or Burning Hands.

What had happened is that the player in question had googled the feat, and I think (not unreasonably) assumed that I was using what they had found: another homebrew Planeswalker feat for D&D games set in Ravnica (or, now, Theros.)

I reminded them to look at the google doc I had provided with the text of the feat, but it did make me think that it'd be nice to get an official answer.

While both are set in magical fantasy multiverses, the truth is that Traditional D&D and Magic the Gathering treat planar travel in quite different ways.

In D&D, first off, you can go to other worlds while still on the same Plane. Every mundane world (mundane if you don't count all the wizards and monsters, but like... places where normal people live that aren't entirely made of magic) exists within the Prime Material Plane. While the "inner planes" are focused more on things like the elements and the kind of mania of the fey and the depressive shadowfell, the outer planes of the multiverse, where the gods tend to come from, is built along solid lines of good and evil, law and chaos.

Traveling between these planes isn't easy, but it's the sort of thing that students of magic can accomplish with enough diligence - spells like Plane Shift, Etherealness, and Astral Projection all allow for travel between any of the planes for groups of people. They're high-level spells (7th or higher, I believe) but not unattainable.

In Magic, planes are a different concept. Each individual world in Magic is its own plane, and some places that even might have a large human/humanoid population are still quite otherworldly from our perspectives. While within one of these planes, there can be subdivisions (like Nyx and the Underworld for Theros,) actual travel between the planes themselves is limited only to individuals with what is called a Planeswalker Spark (this wasn't always the case, but has been since the "Mending" at the end of the Time Spiral arc, with the Dreadhorde invasion in Ravnica a notable and kludgy exception.) (Also the cosmic horror monsters known as the Eldrazi, but in true eldritch fashion, these things break all the rules.)

Being a planeswalker is a sort of mix between being a Jedi and a Mutant from X-Men. Only a rare number of people actually have a spark (I believe it's about one in a million) and only a small number of those people ever see that spark ignite (again, one in a million, meaning that among the entire multiverse population, there's a 1 in 1,000,000,000,000, or one in a trillion, chance that you'll actually be a planeswalker - which actually makes it shocking when you get more than one person from any given world. Maybe Dominaria's just special.

Anyway, while in the earlier history of Magic you could build things like interplanar airships (the Weatherlight being the famous example,) these days with the exception of the Kaladesh-built Planar Bridge and an army of zombies encased in magical "Lazotep" coating to survive the journey using it, you just have to be a planeswalker to go elsewhere.

Which poses a challenge for DMs who want to take advantage of the multiple settings. Especially given that we now have two books, I can't imagine there are many DMs who don't want to have their Ravnican characters go to Theros or their Theran characters go to Ravnica at high levels.

But we don't have any official word on this.

As written, neither book talks at all about the multiverse, which would seem to allow people to run these settings as if they're just in the prime material plane of the main D&D multiverse. I could imagine, for example, just throwing in the towel and ignoring concepts like Planeswalkers and saying that Rakdos is just another demon lord from the Abyss.

But I find that deeply unsatisfying.

So as I see it, there are a few options:

Break the Mending:

In the "Break the Mending" option, you basically roll things back. Planeswalkers are once again figures of profound and godlike power, and while they can zip from world to world with a thought, a dedicated-enough wizard could also summon creatures from other planes and travel between them through relatively ordinary magic.

In a lot of ways, I like this version (perhaps dropping the "Jace is a God now" concept, but keeping the "planar travel isn't all that unique") because it lets players use all the spells in the D&D books without any weird restrictions.

The only downside I see to this is that it either dilutes what it means to be a planeswalker (if Jace is a wizard who can travel the planes, how is that different from Joe Izzet who just hit level 13 and got Plane Shift?) and also suggests that the players should only have access to planar travel if they go with a Wizard, Sorcerer, or Warlock (maybe Druid? Druids get Plane Shift too, right?) It's pretty clear to me that Garruk and Vivian Reed are Rangers (if Garruk isn't a straight-up Barbarian, that is). The new planeswalker Basri Ket is either a Fighter or Paladin, and Gideon Jura is clearly a Paladin. So I think there needs to be a way for non-casters and half-casters to get access to planar travel. Hell, the Ur-Planeswalker himself, Urza, was an Artificer!

Make Planeswalkers a Greater Feat:

In Mythic Odysseys of Theros, the concept of "supernatural gifts" allows players to make mythic characters from level 1 onward. These work a bit like feats you take at 1st level (they also describe how a player could just literally take a level 1 feat and flavor it as a supernatural gift) that can have various big implications for the character over time.

One such feat you could provide is allowing player characters to choose to be a planeswalker - or at least to have a planeswalker spark.

I've got something along those lines in my game, though I've made it its own feat, which is a design concept I'm still thinking of iterating on.

The problem I see with this is that, under post-Mending lore, you can't take anyone along with you when you planeswalk (though I think you can take objects - obviously you bring your clothes along, and Gideon brought the Blackblade from Dominaria to Ravnica, for all the good it did him). So if one or two party members take this feat and the others don't, you either force any planar travel to split the party or you need to come up with some lore-breaking exemption that allows them to bring friends along (which is how I'm currently doing it.)

Everyone's a Planeswalker!:

This might be the most elegant solution, though not without its flaws. I've found that Magic's story has tended to focus far more on Planeswalkers as the central figures, instead of, as they used to, on Legendary creatures. It makes sense, given that a planeswalker is much easier to make a recurring character when you're changing settings every set. But it does feel to me that there's a lot more personality afforded to these figures than the individuals who are bound to their home planes.

Still, this solves a lot of problems. Essentially, rather than making a feat players choose, they'll simply all get the ability to planeswalk at a certain level - or better yet, after a certain in-game event.

This allows you not to worry about explaining the lore reasons why certain characters are able to show up in other planes, and it keeps the planeswalker characters from feeling like they've given up something to provide planar travel for the group.

Ultimately, though, given WotC has published multiple setting books in the Magic multiverse, it'd be nice to get some official word on how they'd recommend handling this.

Garruk, Cursed Huntsman is a Planeswalker I Love to Use the Few Times it Works

One of the mythic rare planeswalkers from Throne of Eldraine, Garruk, Cursed Huntsman is an odd but really exciting card.

It's 6 mana, 4BG, which means it's a bit difficult to get out on the board. And one of the really weird things about it is that it has non + Loyalty ability... sort of. It does start with 5 Loyalty, though, which is pretty nice.

No, it's not like one of the War of the Spark planeswalkers that you just use a few times and then chuck (or keep around for its passive ability.) Instead, its first ability is +0: Create two 2/2 black and green wolf tokens that have "When this creature dies, put a loyalty counter on each Garruk planeswalker you control."

So ultimately, you're pumping out two 2/2s every turn for no charge, and then they recharge Garruk when they die. A constant stream of creatures is never a bad thing, and they make the perfect chump blockers, as you'll be able to punish the opponent for attacking with anything that can kill them by powering up Garruk's other abilities.

His second is -3: Destroy target creature. Draw a card.

Given that you start with 5 Loyalty, if you have a problematic enemy creature (like a pumped-up Ajani's Pridesmate, for example) you can toss this at them. Garruk will still be alive, so if you want to keep him for his other uses, you're ok as long as you can keep him up through the next turn.

His ultimate is -6: You get an emblem that says "Creatures you control get +3/+3 and have trample."

Given that he starts at 5, you can get this ultimate pretty easily. Indeed, if you can out two wolves and have them die before your next turn, you can get it out and keep him around to start pumping out 5/5 tramplers every turn.

Currently I'm running him in a deck that's all green except for a dip for his one skull in the mana cost (I've actually managed to find a balance of lands where I'm not finding myself color-screwed in any typical game.) Now that I think of it, though, it might be better to go the other way, in a mostly-black deck with lots of sacrifice mechanics so that you can always use those wolves to pump him up. On the other hand, ramping up to six mana might be harder in a black deck, though black has much better control capabilities than green, so you could kill creatures and delay the opponent until you can get him out (I suspect that I'll be tinkering with that next.)

Anyway, it's a fun flavor and a fun card. It's very weak against flyers, and I'll admit that the one time the card really shone (in the game I just finished that inspired me to write this post) I think my opponent's reckless attacking was the only reason I actually got to use all his abilities (he had a standard Ajani's Pridemate lifegain deck and had a 3/3 Inspiring Orator and a 3/3 Charmed Stray that he attacked with despite my having two wolves out already.

Now, having just gotten another Liliana planeswalker card in a recent pack, I'm thinking about building something around her...

Dimir Flash Nightmare

Ah, Blue-Black, my favorite color combination in Magic.

While certainly not as powerful as the mostly-green deck I've put together with stuff like Wicked Wolves and Questing Beasts, I burned just a couple of wildcards to put together an U/B flash deck that, while not always effective (certainly still working out some kinks) is pretty fun.

The premise of the deck is that everything in it other than lands is either an instant or has flash. As a result, you only really play anything on the opponent's turn.

Some core cards:

Brineborn Cutthroat - these guys are cheap, have flash, and any time you cast a spell on an opponent's turn, they get a +1/+1 counter. Given that you're going to be doing that with just about every spell, they're going to pump up almost as fast as an Ajani's Pridemate.

Slitherwisp - this is the one I burned two rare wildcards on. While the deck probably wants a full 4 (they're cheap and the effect both stacks and is very good) I always try to keep a reserve of wildcards just in case - psychologically, so I'll know that if I discover some insanely powerful new card I can always get it. This is an Elemental Nightmare (fitting with Ikoria's color-themed creature types) for UBB with a 3/2 body and flash. Whenever you cast something with flash, you get to draw a card and your opponent loses 1 life. I think the card is the real advantage here, though the little life drain is certainly not bad. Granted, the more instants you toss in (I just moved in a few Eliminates, Tyrannical Scorns, and Drown in the Lochs, which we'll see about) the less valuable this card is, but it's still pretty nice to have. It is, however, the big rare card of the deck.

Cunning Nightbonder is one of the hybrid-mana human bonder cycle. This one's a 2/2 for U/B U/B, and reduces the cost of spells you have with flash as well as preventing them from being countered.

I've found Pouncing Shoreshark to be quite useful - I'm used to using it in pure mutate decks, where I'm really just building up a giant monstrosity, and in those cases I get the use the effect over and over, but a single bounce and bumping one of the Brineborn Cutthroats permanently up by +2/+2 is not terrible.

A lot of the deck, then, is just about all the flash nonsense I can toss in.

EDIT:

So it's funny, because the deck doesn't actually have a ton of U/B cards from the Guilds of Ravnica block, but I realized that the whole vibe of the deck is, in fact, very House Dimir. You almost never cast spells on your own turn, and that means that the other player never knows what the board looks like. They can attack, and by the time you're ready to declare blockers, there might be multiple new creatures on the board and your 2/1 merfolk pirate is all of a sudden a 5/4 shark beast.

The deck, or at least decks like it, isn't unheard of in the metagame, so against experienced players you're not going to utterly shock them, but one element of the deck is that you really heighten the unknowns for the other player. When playing against a green deck in which they've suspiciously left some lands untapped, you tend to know that there could be a combat trick of some sort lurking there. But generally speaking, you can usually trust that if there aren't any creatures on the battlefield, you're safe to attack.

The lore of House Dimir is all about how secretive and subtle they work - they went for 10,000 years without anyone knowing that there even was a tenth guild in Ravnica. So even if the showcase cards here are from Ikoria and, I believe originally Ixalan (could be wrong,) Szadek would be proud.

Did I Miss How Powerful Eldraine Green Cards Were?

I decided to invest a bit in Eldraine, having gotten a fair amount of Ikoria cards and then working on Theros ones. Getting a couple of Wicked Wolves, a Garruk (the one that lets him make 2 wolf tokens) I decided to make a... Sultai? Is that W/B/G? I think of it as Indatha thanks to Ikoria. Anyway, I made a vaguely wolf-themed deck that I populated with basically all the rare or mythic rare green (or adjacent) Eldraine cards I had.

The deck is cobbled together with cards I have - I haven't spent any wildcards on it yet, though given the early successes, I might be tempted to do just that, once I figure out what the really strongest pieces would be.

It's got a wolf theme, thanks to Garruk and the Wicked Wolves, but I also have some long-running strong cards like Gilded Goose and a pair of Lovestruck Beasts (I'd always figured the fragility of the 1/1 token would be a real downside, but in practice it seems that having a 5/5 for 3 that effectively gets Defender if your opponent has spot removal is still really, really good.

I also happened to have 3 Scavenging Oozes, which are proving to be decent utility and a nice 2-drop (my opponent recklessly chump-blocked with his Thief of Sanity, trying to get it back with a Call of the Death Dweller, not realizing, perhaps, that I could exile it in response.)

Wicked Wolf is proving to be a stand-out, especially as I have a lot of Food-generation in the deck. Being able to take down an 8/8 Ajani's Pridemate with my indestructible wolf (I'm not super concerned that it's coming into play tapped when I'm able to take down my opponent's biggest threat.)

The deck focuses on green as its primary color, splashing in black for Garruk and several Savvy Hunters to keep the food flowing, and then splashing in white for Tolsmir, Friend of Wolves, which might not be worth it, to be honest (again, this is a cobbled deck, and that's just one copy.)

The obvious creature that I don't have a single copy of is Questing Beast, which might be worth splurging some wildcards on given how useful it would be for both this deck and any of my green mutate decks, but I always have a little anxiety about that sort of thing, especially when I haven't filled out my collection of Shocklands (in fact, I don't think I have more than 2 of any of them.)

Thankfully, mana-wise I already have 4 copies of Indatha Triome, which is great for this, not to mention two Overgrown Tombs. For green/white I have a single Temple Garden but I also have a Temple of Plenty, so I've got pretty decent coverage on lands. I don't have any W/B lands because the deck is really primarily green.

I have a couple Arboreal Grazers and Paradise Druids to help ramp things up. The one game in which I actually drew Garruk I was playing against an opponent who made me discard it, so I have yet to get a feel for him (I'm still new to planeswalkers. The only one I use very frequently is Teferi, Master of Time, which I kind of fell backward into three copies of, and he's a key component to my blue Ominous Depths deck, as well as a mill deck that never seems to work as well as my other mill deck.) Conceptually, I find the idea of making two 2/2 wolves per turn pretty nice, even if they have to die for him to actually gain loyalty, and having a -3 to kill a creature off the bat is not bad.

There are still way more Rare and Mythic Rare cards that I'd want to build some super-powerful decks, though I think, as usual, my gamer personality types are clashing with one another. On one hand, I really do like winning, and while I always feel a little cheap when I win due to some silly thing like mana screw or color screw (or flood) I do really enjoy seeing the victory sign at the end. But I also want to make oddball, unusual decks. Admittedly, when I see a new deck type that beats me, I'll often see if I can build something similar (I made a Selesnya counter-based deck using Conclave Mentor, some Hydras, and that insane Aura that doubles a creature's +1/+1 counters every turn after getting trounced by one) but I do love it when I can build something that isn't like what I'm seeing others play, but still actually functions.

Anyway, I'm going to definitely be futzing with this deck for a bit. I can definitely imagine burning at least a couple wildcards for Questing Beast, but we'll see what else we need for it to really shine.

Finding Depth in the Gruul Clans

I'll confess, the Gruul are not my favorite Ravnica guild. Actually, to be frank, they're probably my least favorite (this is a D&D post, not a Magic one. I've been having some fun playing my Klothys-based Gruul deck - I'm here to talk about story.)

Ravnica's guilds are these very odd things within a fantasy universe. Admittedly, something like the Boros Legion is not that far outside the standard fantasy setting - a big, righteous army that worships/is led by angels is not all that different from the various righteous knights in other Magic, or even other D&D settings.

But there's a fun twist on them - which is that they're the cops (ok, so are the Azorius).

The Gruul Clans basically look at what is unique about Ravnica as a setting - its unrelentingly urban nature - and want to get rid of that.

The Gruul can often be dismissed as the dumb brutes of the setting, and not without reason - after all, as the Red/Green guild, they're fully opposed to Blue, which is the color of intellectualism and reason.

But despite my entire upbringing (and a healthy disdain for anti-intellectualism,) just because someone isn't well-educated and assimilated into modern society does not mean they aren't smart.

While the Cult of Rakdos and the Orzhov Syndicate are the most explicitly religious guilds (though the Selesnya and Boros are not far behind) the Gruul are deeply spiritual, and they're the only guild, as far as I know, that really trades in prophecies and omens. While the Azorius are obsessed with locking down any criminal behavior with precognition, they're looking at it from a very intellectual (blue) point of view - it's all about logic and logistics. The Dimir are also very curious to know the future, but much like the other blue guilds, they're more about making their own than letting fate have its way.

One of the ironies of Green and Red as allies is that Green is arguably the most passive color, while Red is by far the most proactive. As a result, you have to consider: why are the Gruul Clans not just Red?

And I think that that is because, for all of their chaotic actions, the Gruul are waiting. They're waiting for their moment, for this urban nightmare that is what Ravnica has been for 10,000 years to finally come to an end. And they have built up this moment - the End-Raze - with prophecy and signs, and even gods - which isn't really something the other guilds get into (though you could certainly argue Mat'Selesnya is something of a monotheistic deity for the Selesnya.)

When making a Gruul D&D character, the really obvious choice for a class would be Barbarian, and you wouldn't be wrong to do so. The two subclasses in the Player's Handbook both feel like perfect fits for the Gruul, with Berserker leaning toward its red side and Totem Warrior a bit more into green.

But the Gruul aren't just Barbarians. I think another really core, key component is their Druids (and you could make arguments for many classes - even Paladins, for example, could work in the Gruul if they go Oath of the Ancients, or arguably Conquest.)

So, none of the players in my rather extended party are in the Gruul. While our lone Simic member hasn't played since the first session and the one actually Azorius character (not counting the Dimir one who's sort of in the Golgari and the Azorius) hasn't played a single session, we don't have anyone who has even expressed interested in the Gruul.

Being the DM who wants his players to let him indulge in every completionist altoholic (see the name of the blog) impulse, I thus wanted to think about what makes the Gruul compelling.

And I think it's the spiritual side. Yes, aesthetically they got a really good upgrade in the Guilds of Ravnica block, basically making them the punks of Ravnica, with a little Mad Max thrown in. But I think that, of all the guilds, the Gruul are the ones who are going to have people going on vision quests and probably taking very questionable herbs and mushrooms in order to glimpse the future.

Druids, and possibly clerics (likely War, Nature, or Tempest domain) can fit as the spiritual leaders - revered within the Clans both for the straightforward power of their magic and also their insight.

So I'd suggest that if you're going to do Gruul content in a Ravnica campaign - whether having the players fight them, a PC be a member, or having a quest where they need to interact with them in some non-confrontational way - it would behoove you to lean into this mystical, spiritual side of things.

Much as they disdain the skylines of nothing built artificial buildings and the lack of open wilderness, the Gruul also disdain the way that people have allowed the world to become so mundane. Going into Gruul territories should feel like stepping not just into a land of danger, but one of mystical secrets.

Theros Brings New Bard and Paladin Subclasses

In Mythic Odysseys of Theros, the Bard and the Paladin each get new subclass options that reflect aspects of Ancient Greek culture, both mythological and historical.

The Bard College of Eloquence reimagines the Bard not as a weaver of fanciful tales and music, but as a great orator, using rhetoric and logic to persuade others. Basically, if you want to be Socrates, this is your subclass.

At level 3, when you get the subclass, you gain two benefits: Silver Tongue and Unsettling Words.

Silver Tongue is phenomenal for level 3, allowing any Charisma Persuasion or Deception check where you roll 9 or less on the die to be treated as a 10 (meaning, even at level 5, if you have expertise in one of these skills and +4 to Charisma, you'll be getting a minimum of 20 on your checks.) Rogues get a similar thing with Reliable Talent, but not until they're much higher level.

Unsettling Words allows you, as a bonus action, to spend a bardic inspiration die to give a target within 60 feet a negative to their next saving throw equal to the number rolled. So if you really want a spell to go off, you can juice it (effectively making your DC, or the DC of the next person who's going to force it to make a save, that much higher.)

Already, this subclass is strong. But wait.

At level 6, you get Unfailing Inspiration and Universal Speech.

Universal Speech is solid but not crazy, as you can just spend an action to let people up to your Cha modifier you want within 60 feet understand you for an hour (though it doesn't seem to let you understand them,) and like some of the artificer abilities, you get one of these per long rest, but can also expend a spell slot to do it again.

Unfailing Inspiration is the much more exciting thing - basically, your allies only use up their inspiration die if they succeed. Giving it to an ally is never a waste, as they can keep using it (for the ten minutes or however long it lasts) until they actually succeed on their check.

Finally, at level 14, you get Infectious Inspiration. When someone uses one of your Bardic Inspiration dice, you can use a reaction to then give someone else a die, without using up one of your reserves. Like your normal BI dice, you have as many as your Charisma modifier, though these only recharge on a long rest. Still, that can mean potentially twice as many Inspirations on a day without a short rest, and just a bunch more on days with them.

I really like this subclass, despite not being a huge fan of bards in general. While very clearly linked to the Helenistic world of Theros, it'd be very easy to introduce this to any setting with philosophers or orators. Indeed, College of Eloquence would fit in perfectly with the Azorius Senate in Ravnica, or even the Orzhov Syndicate's team of corporate lawyers known as Advokists. This is a Bard College perfect for any courtroom drama, but with broadly applicable abilities that would be good in any situation.

Paladins get the Oath of Glory. I'd argue this isn't quite as powerful as Eloquence, but it has some interesting ideas. Oath of Glory is all about a Paladin who is committed to excellence - as in excelling past ordinary mortal limitations to become something extraordinary. It's the oath to be amazing and inspiring, and to become a hero of legend.

For Oath spells, Glory Paladins get Guiding Bolt and Heroism at 3rd level, Enhance Ability and Magic Weapon at 5th, Haste and Protection from Energy at 9th, Compulsion and Freedom of Movement at 13th, and Commune and Flame Strike at 17th.

For their 3rd level channel divinity options, they get Peerless Athlete and Inspiring Smite.

Peerless Athlete is a bonus action that gives you 10 minutes of advantage on Strength Athletics and Dexterity Acrobatics checks, as well as doubling your carrying capacity and extending long and high jumps by 10 feet.

Inspiring Smite lets you, as a bonus action after using Divine Smite, grant temporary hit points to creatures of your choice within 30 feet (including you) equal to 2d8 plus your paladin level, divided however you like.

At 7th level, you gain Aura of Alacrity, which gives anyone who starts your turn within 5 feet of you (if you're not incapacitated) 10 feet of extra movement, expanding to an aura of 10 feet at level 18. Frankly, this is a bit weird, especially because it forces people to really group up with you to benefit, even at high levels, and also penalizes anyone who doesn't roll higher in initiative (though it could also be a way to save others by running up to them if they need to run away from something.)

At 15th level, you get Glorious Defense. When you or another creature within 10 feet of you that you can see gets hit with an attack, you can use your reaction to grant a bonus to their AC equal to your Charisma modifier. If the attack then misses as a result, you can make one weapon attack against the attacker if you're in range. You can do this a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier per long rest.

Finally, at 20th level, you get your major paladin cooldown. As a bonus action, for 1 minute, you become a Living Legend: You gain advantage on all charisma checks, once per turn, you can turn any miss with a weapon attack you make into a hit, and if you fail a saving throw, you can use your reaction to reroll it (but must take the new result.) You can do this once per long rest, but you can expend a 5th level spell slot to do it again before you rest.

There are some good things here, though I find it a little less exciting than the College of Eloquence, which is flirting with brokenly good.

What both do is really focus in on a classic element of Ancient Greek culture, and I really like the idea of a paladin oath that more or less binds you to reckless acts of over-the-top heroism. Outside of Theros, I could see any Paladin character who really wants to play up recklessness as a personality trait. These would fit in Norse-style settings with paladins who wish to gain the glory that will get them into Valhalla, and certainly would work for the Boros Legion in Ravnica, or even potentially the Gruul Clans.

Because the Gods of Theros are a Big Deal

Gods play a huge role in Theros - not only are they regularly visible in the sky (like, literally, you can just see your gods frequently out and about,) but they're also very active in their intervention (or meddling, if you will) in the mortal world. So who are these gods? What's their general deal?

For D&D players who don't know Magic, I'll mention mana colors only briefly. The Gods are built out of the five colors of Magic - there are 15 of them, with 5 representing each color, and the other ten representing each combination thereof. We'll start with the monochromatic ones, but all these Gods have their own important roles to play.

Also, to note: the book uses god as a gender-neutral term, as I will here. In Theros, the Gods are what the mortals have dreamt them to be, and so their gender identity, such as they have one, is really up to the peoples' beliefs.

The Gods of Theros are not a 1:1 translation of the Olympian Pantheon, but there are some obvious parallels, which I'll try to note.

Heliod: The Sun-God, Heliod is the self-proclaimed patriarch of the Theran pantheon. While he does stand for righteousness, justice, and honesty, he's also 100% full of himself and capricious (ok, as are they all.) It's here where D&D's alignment system lacks some of the subtlety and nuance of Magic's color wheel, but while Heliod represents Lawful Good, his actual behavior might not always swing that way. Heliod is similar to Zeus in personality, though associated more with sunlight than lightning.

Thassa: God of the Sea, Thassa takes the form of a Triton, and is strongly associated with the deep mysteries of the ocean depths. Slow to anger but not to be trifled with, Thassa has a hidden strength that lurks beneath the tides. Something of an equivalent to Poseidon, though firmly linked to the sea, and not to things like earthquakes.

Erebos: God of Death, Erebos resides within the deepest realm of the Underworld, and rules over the dead, ensuring that mortals do not escape their fate, but also helping them cope with loss and sorrow - again, while he's listed as "evil," Erebos is a bit more nuanced than that - he's implacable and cannot be reasoned with, but he's not malicious either. Erebos is a rather straightforward analogue for Hades, especially his dispassion.

Purphoros: God of the Forge, Purphoros is prone to bouts of passion. He is a creator and a destroyer, associated with fire and metal. As a Theran character, you might be Anvilwrought - a metallic construct built in Purphoros' forge, rather than born like a normal person. Purphoros is very clearly Hephaestus, though without the busted leg.

Nylea: God of the Hunt, Nylea protects nature, preserving the balance of natural life cycles and punishing those who would defile nature, such as by hunting only for sport or despoiling natural lands. Nylea is more or less Artemis.

Ephara: God of the Polis, Ephara is the patron of cities and civilization, blessing peaceful cooperation between peoples and the learning and philosophy that cities can provide. Ephara has some elements of Athena, especially being the primary patron of Meletis, which is Theros' Athens equivalent, though without the emphasis on warfare. She could also potentially be associated with Hera, if we were to follow the historical affiliation between civilization and femininity.

Athreos: God of the Passage, Athreos is the ferryman who takes the spirits of the dead from the mortal realm to the Underworld. He tasks himself and his followers with maintaining balance between the Mortal world, the Underworld, and Nyx, the realm of the Gods. Athreos is very clearly based on Charon, though upgraded to a full-on god, instead of a sort of important spirit.

Iroas: God of Victory, Iroas takes the form of an armored Centaur, and is the patron god of heroic warriors and heroes, using martial strength to protect the innocent and defeat evil. Iroas could be seen as either a male version of Athena in her more warfare-oriented aspects, or as the Roman god Mars (in contrast with the Greek Ares, who is his equivalent but with a very different personality.)

Karametra: God of the Harvest, Karametra blesses farmers and those who cultivate life to live in harmony and provide for one another. Karametra is more or less Demeter.

Phenax: God of Lies, Phenax was originally a mortal who escaped the Underworld and thus established the Path of Phenax, where the dead could return to the world of the living, though the process of becoming a Returned robs one of their identity and explicit memories. Phenax is a god of liars, thieves, tricksters, and actors, and like the Returned, he wears a golden funerary mask at all times. Phenax could be considered a more sinister version of Hermes, being a trickster god.

Keranos: God of Storms, Keranos is the patron not only of inclement weather, but also of inspiration and genius. While he might threaten sailors at sea, he can also inspire inventors, philosophers, and other great thinkers with new ideas. Keranos, I think, shares a bit with Zeus in his association with storms, but he doesn't have the other elements that Heliod embodies - basically, Heliod plus Keranos equals Zeus.

Kruphix: God of Horizons, Kruphix is one of the oldest gods, and is essentially the god of the unknown. While the other gods take on largely humanoid (or in the case of Iroas and maybe Klothys, fey) appearances, Kruphix is a negative space in the shape of some sort of four-armed giant, the starry expanse of Nyx shining through where for other gods the Nyx shines only where they are in shadow. Nyx is a patron to secret-keepers and also those who seek out the most esoteric mysteries. Kruphix, I'll confess, is one for whom I can't really think of an obvious Olympian equivalent, unless we get into the more obscure and elemental gods like Hypnos or Morpheus.

Mogis: God of Slaughter, Mogis takes the form of a Minotaur, and represents bloodlust, cruelty, and rage. For a long time, worshippers of Mogis dominated Minotaur culture, though more recently, many Minotaurs have come to reject his ways. Mogis is very clearly the equivalent of Ares, which makes his conflicts with Iroas kind of interesting, as two battling sides of the same coin - Iroas versus Mogis being kind of like Mars versus Ares.

Pharika: God of Affliction, Pharika takes the form of a Gorgon (...sigh, Medusa in D&D parlance, though just for the record, Medusa was a specific gorgon in the actual myth, and unlike the other ones, she was originally a human) who is the god of disease and poisons, though also a god of medicine and cures. Pharika's whole aesthetic is very different, but being a god of disease and medicine actually makes her quite similar to Apollo (though with none of his solar imagery.)

Klothys: God of Destiny. Klothys, like Kruphix, is one of the oldest gods, and she is dedicated to maintaining the course of destiny, keeping things on their proper path. She appears as a human woman with six curling horns and a blindfold draped across her eyes. In Greek myth, as far as I remember, Destiny isn't anthropomorphized as much (though I'm sure it is sometimes,) so I don't know that there's an obvious Klothys equivalent, but nevertheless, her divine portfolio is super-crucial to Greek-style mythological thought.

So, there you have it: the Gods of Theros. There's no Xenagos (the satyr-turned Dionysus-like god who was the villain of the original Theros block) because, well, he ain't a god or alive any longer.

There are plenty of decisions to make when creating a Theros character, but association with a particular god (technically, I believe the worship of a particular god in a pantheon is a cult) is an important first step in defining your character's values. Remember that you can go the Iconoclast route, but I'd really consider picking a god instead, as you'd be ignoring one of the things that makes this setting so cool.

Mythic Odysseys of Theros

Ok, I finally got my hand on a copy of the book from my friendly local game store.

The Theros sourcebook introduces the second Magic: the Gathering plane as a D&D campaign setting, with its adaptation borrowing ideas from D&D's trip to Ravnica.

While Ravnica is a very odd, very weird setting (being a world that's just one huge city with ten guilds that are all after very different goals) Theros is a somewhat more familiar type of setting. Inspired by (but not entirely based on, exactly) classical Greek mythology, Theros is a world of myths, legends, gods, monsters, and heroes. If Ravnica skews toward a more steampunk or even modern kind of feeling amidst its gothic Central European architecture, Theros is emphatically old-school, looking not only like Ancient Greece, but specifically the "Age of Heroes" as the Greeks understood their own myths - a period that isn't exactly historical, but part of a sort of mythic time that exists beyond any real, literal past.

You won't find Zeus or Hera here, but the Gods of Theros are built along similar archetypes - Heliod, the Sun God, despite being more sunlight and daytime-themed (for MTG players, he's the White-mana God) plays a similar role to Zeus, though his status as head of the pantheon is one that he claims for himself, rather than an irrefutable fact. There are some clear parallels - Nylea is much like Artemis, Athreon is basically Charon, Erebos is essentially Hades, Purphoros is Hephaestus, etc. - but in some ways the roles are flipped around a bit, and we have a world that doesn't just have white people as gods or humans.

Many human-like races from Greek mythology show up as well - in addition to Centaurs and Minotaurs (unchanged, I believe, from their Ravnica incarnations) we also get Tritons (from Volo's, but now with Darkvision, which they should have always had) and Satyrs. We also get the MTG-original (as far as I know) Leonin, which are Lion-people who are tankier than Tabaxi. While these creatures are sort of tied to the color-philosophies that they tend to have in Magic (as typically Red creatures, Minotaurs tend toward chaotic alignments) they also get to participate in the overall civilization of Theros.

It should also be noted that Theros' version of Greek myth is not just based on the ancient myths, but also the more recent, modern re-tellings of that myth. Clash of the Titans, the 1981 movie (and I suppose its 2010 remake) leave a mark here, such as the "Anvilwrought Raptor" (read: clockwork robot owl) and the prevalence of Kraken, which are actually a Norse myth, not a Greek one (not to say the Greeks, and especially the nautical Athenians, didn't have plenty of sea monster myths.)

Feature-wise, there are a few things to really note as novel - beyond new races, subclasses, or monsters (though we will touch on Mythic monsters.)

One of the cleverest aspects of the book is its exploration of Gods. Most players will have a particular god that their character is devoted to - this can range from the benign Karametra, Goddess of the Harvest, to the cruel Mogis, the God of Violence, or any among the 15-member pantheon. Using a score called Piety (which is rather similar to Renown as found in Ravnica) you can earn greater favor with your patron deity, and there are examples for each God as to what you can do to earn that Piety, or what you should avoid if you don't want to lose it. While the more good-aligned gods might be easier to please while playing a heroic character, you might find yourself having to be pretty tricky to make sure you keep Phenax, the God of Lies, happy while also helping save the world.

The benefits of piety range from being able to cast certain spells once a day to eventually gaining a +2 bonus to one of two affiliated ability scores - including a +2 bonus to its maximum, so you can get beyond +5 (a level 20 Barbarian with 50 piety to, say, Iroas, the God of Victory, could have a 26 Constitution).

This expands the importance of the Gods to characters who aren't Paladins or Clerics, which is pretty cool. But if you really don't like the idea of being beholden to Gods, there's even an option for that:

The idea behind Theros characters is that they are heroes of legend and myth. There are even tables to roll on for omens that occur at your birth. And with that, there's also a concept called Supernatural Gifts - each player character starts with one of these gifts, which is a bit like a feat (you can also take a level 1 feat and flavor it as a gift of this sort.) These can range from subtle - like "Heroic Destiny" that, among other things, makes it harder for you to die (because you've got important things to do!) to really crazy, like Anvilwrought, which means that you were literally built out of metal in Purphoros' forge, and as such you have traits that are similar to a Warforged. There are also options that open up different progression paths from the typical ones for piety. Oracles are mediums that can interface with all the gods, and as such gain different benefits for their pantheistic piety. Iconoclasts (which is the default culture for the lion-like Leonin) forsake the gods, believing them to be capricious and vain and not worthy of worship, and as such, rather than piety, Iconoclasts simply get a new bonus at each tier of play.

Finally, the other huge and unique thing that the book introduces is Mythic monsters. There are only three of these options available, though anyone with any experience homebrewing monsters could easily take inspiration. Essentially, these are boss monsters that, when they get reduced to 0 hit points, rather than dying or going unconscious, they go into a harder phase 2, with new legendary actions and a new health bar to deplete. For instance, there is a serpentine gorgon who, upon her "defeat" merely sheds her old skin an emerges faster and deadlier than before.

Given that I'm planning on planes-hopping adventures in my Ravnica campaign, I'll certainly be using a lot of this stuff, but I think you can loot a lot from this book for your own homebrew settings. The Piety mechanic feels like a rather obvious choice, but I also think that Supernatural Gifts feels similar to a concept I'd been working on called "Greater Feats" (the main one I had designed was if you want to play a "blind master" character like Zatoichi or Illidan Stormrage, starting with blindsight and then eventually gaining the ability to use truesight.)

There's stuff I haven't even gotten into here - like how the Underworld is its own whole thing (a character that dies isn't necessarily out of the game) or the various realms of Theros.

While I find Ravnica to be a more original setting, I think you might have an easier time crafting a basic adventure in Theros, given how the stories in this setting are inspired by some of the oldest myths in our culture. It's built around the idea of epic heroes fighting monsters, which D&D is pretty well-set-up to handle.

I do hope that, should they keep making these MTG-based sourcebooks, that we'll eventually get rules on Planeswalking. I could imagine them eventually doing a Dominaria, Innistrad, or Zendikar book, but we'll see. (Actually, I'm really excited to have my players go to Ikoria and fight basically nothing that isn't at least Large in size.)

No Beta So Far, Thinking About BFA Yet-To-Dos

Despite the fact that I've leveled up one of every class except Monk, and it's not as if I haven't played at all during BFA, I've felt remarkably unengaged in the game. For a while I was doing Horrific Visions, but I think I'm stuck on three masks, and I don't really see myself beating the 5-mask solo run to get the title and mount.

I actually did most of Ny'alotha, though I never did the final wing where one actually fights N'zoth.

Sadly, I've felt sort of uncompelled to do much in WoW for a while. It is, after all, the late-expansion doldrum period, certainly, and even in Wrath of the Lich King I remember having a similar experience (Legion... I feel like I was re-energized by the introduction of allied races, and my guild was also fairly actively raiding, getting about halfway through Antorus.)

So I am anticipating the release of Shadowlands, which is an expansion I am excited for, but the current state of the game is pretty... well, as you can tell by my posts, I've been playing way more MTG.

Even leveling up allied races has lost a bit of its excitement given that the 9.0 revamp to leveling will make that go ludicrously faster even than a 100% XP buff.

I'm nowhere near the 5 million gold I'd need to get the Caravan Brutosaur, and so I've sort of resigned myself to never getting it (the Grand Expedition Yak is still pretty damn good.)

It's too bad that I've come off of BFA with a sort of unsatisfied feeling. I don't know if it's really just Azerite Armor, or what. There have been some great stories, but at the same time I also feel like the expansion has felt like a lot of underserved elements.

It's ironic, because Legion had a similar approach - we had multiple elements of that expansion that we previously might have thought of as their own expansion-spanning ideas - the Emerald Nightmare, the Broken Isles, and Argus. Hell, I literally had a concept years before Warlords of Draenor introduced the idea of an alternate Gul'dan of having some expansion built around the Tomb of Sargeras where we fought a resurrected Gul'dan... not quite how it happened, but not that far off.

But while Legion seemed to nail its various exciting bits (ok, I might have liked to have a little more to do on Argus, though visually the place was phenomenal) and even introduce a super-compelling new element in Helya and her Helarjar (and I'm so glad to hear that she'll be an element in Shadowlands) somehow BFA's similar approach - giving us Kul Tiras, Zandalar, Nazjatar, and the ultimate confrontation against N'zoth - left each feeling somewhat underserved.

Ok, maybe not the first two - I only ever expected Kul Tiras and Zandalar to be individual zones in the "South Seas" expansion (and by the way, if you're still holding out hope for some future nautical, south seas expansion... fellas, this was it) - but Azshara always seemed like a potentially expansion-headlining villain and N'zoth...

Ok, I think I understand the issue with N'zoth.

Of all the Old Gods, N'zoth's power has always been in subtlety. He was physically weaker than the other three, and he had fewer forces. So he always had to outwit them to get ahead, and often acted as if he had lost when in fact he had furthered his goals. So it makes sense that we'd spend most of the expansion not knowing that N'zoth was behind it all.

The problem, though, is that that doesn't even seem to be the case. If anything, the Jailer appears to be the one that has actually been manipulating things behind the scenes, and N'zoth wasn't so much a clever schemer as, at best, a rash opportunist, which sort of downgrades him as a character.

Anyway, I'm hoping that Shadowlands will be a more compelling experience, in the vein of Legion.

Ominous Seas and a Draw-Based Deck

One of the things that is funny about Blue as a color in Magic is that, while it's the least creature-friendly color, it also loves big creatures. I think the basis of this is that Blue has tended to be the most control-oriented color, and control decks ultimately want a big win condition - a massive sea monster makes for a good option there.

When I first started playing, the biggest creature in Magic was Leviathan, the 10/10 Trample monstrosity that forced you to basically sacrifice all your islands to actually use it - but I guess the idea was that you only needed two turns or so to actually do so. The thing cost 9 mana (5UUUU,) came into play tapped, and only untapped if you sacrificed two islands, then could only attack if you sacrificed two more.

So you really wanted to make sure you had total control of the board and with islands to spare if you wanted to actually hit with it.

Two and a half (and change) decades later, a 10/10, while still certainly big, isn't really anything to write home about. But I've built a deck that seeks to emulate the idea of just bringing the wrath of the sea to one's enemies.

First off, the key win condition here is Ominous Seas, an Ikoria enchantment that costs 1U, and can cycle for 2 mana (though unless you're in the home stretch, I'd say it's better to just play it in this deck.) Each time you draw a card, you put a foreshadowing counter on the enchantment. You can then remove ten of these to create an 8/8 blue kraken token.

I have four of these in the deck, and then much of the rest of the deck is built around drawing cards as quickly as possible, plus a little counterspell and control to slow down the opponent and keep my assets protected.

There are two Teferi, Master of Time in there, which is a pretty great utility planeswalker. On top of that are two copies of Teferi's Ageless Insight, which lets you draw an extra card any time you draw that isn't just your draw step (which also makes Looting effects like Teferi's +1 more attractive, as you're still getting more cards in hand.) A couple of Cloudkin Seers give you a card and a little flying body, and some Dungeon Geists are great for locking down scary creatures. I think I have a couple Frogifies as well. Keep Safe is also in there to both protect valuable assets as well as give me an extra card draw.

Then it's card-draw, card-draw, card-draw, with Opts, Radical Ideas, Chemister's Insights, Winged Words (which the Geists and Seers help with) plus some Contentious Plans to keep Teferi operating (and making it easier to use his -3 phasing ability) as well as effectively giving any Ominous Seas 2 counters (or 3 if Ageless Insight is up.)

The goal of the deck is to pump out 8/8 krakens quickly enough that the opponent can't keep up, and you wind up just pummeling them with sea monsters.

And there's something I find kind of amusing about that. It's an extremely blue deck for the most part - just generating card advantage and cycling through the deck while locking everything down, but in the end it's just about these gigantic dumb octopodi smashing the opponent into the next century.

Death Knights and the Player's Capacity for Villainy

I like Death Knights. Sure, mechanically they sometimes don't totally vibe for me - I really like the Legion-onward design for Unholy, but I've always preferred the aesthetics of Frost, except for the forced dual-wielding that we've had since also Legion (and I really dislike Breath of Sindragosa). And while I never feel quite as comfortable tanking as Blood as I do with a Protection Paladin, I really like that spec as well.

It's pretty crazy to think that DKs are now 12 years old, having been first released in Wrath of the Lich King, which came out in November of 2008 (this happened just two months after I moved to Los Angeles, staying in my sister's apartment while my best friend and I looked for our own place. Despite the whole financial crisis - which of course looks like nothing compared to what we're dealing with now, it's an era I feel nostalgic for.) But I remember there were players who objected to the class in large part because of quests in the starting experience.

The DK starting experience was unlike anything they'd done in-game before. With the first hero class (to be fair, first of two so far) giving you a giant head start leveling, we got a unique quest chain that began with us as full-fledged members of the Scourge, on a mission to spread the Lich King's death and destruction.

While our primary antagonists in that chain (up until the end of it) were the fanatical Scarlet Crusade, and thus sort of "morally acceptable victims" the fight was only mostly against the Crusade's fighting forces - in one quest, you kill fleeing civilians. Notably, while players were level 55 (or possibly 56 by this point in the chain,) the civilians tended to be level 15, 20, or maybe 30 at most, and none fought back against you. So you were totally slaughtering people who, while potentially not innocent, were nonetheless certainly not a threat to you (and frankly, as horrible as the Crusade was, the people who joined it might have been doing so just to survive an apocalyptic threat.)

WoW is not without its morally grey content. The entire quest chain about trying to bully the centaurs in Thousand Needles into letting your faction pump oil there is all kinds of messed up, and generally when the faction conflict comes into play, things get uglier (while I think the Horde is far, far more likely to engage in villainous skullduggery, there were moments in the BFA War Campaign on the Alliance side that gave me pause - particularly using Magister Umbric's Void Portals to send Horde emissaries in Zuldazar... somewhere else.)

Class-specific content is a great opportunity to play with morality. In the Warlock green fire quest chain, there's a moment after beating the mid-way boss in the Black Temple scenario where Akama asks you to aid him in dealing with some of the chaotic demons that have been unleashed in the basement of the temple. However, rather than actually doing that, your Imp summons themselves and then suggests you instead go upstairs and loot the place. It was a fantastic moment that really felt true to the opportunistic and self-centered warlock you're playing.

DKs found themselves attacking Light's Hope Chapel once again in Legion, as well as potentially devastating the Red Dragonflight.

So what's interesting here is that the new Death Knights are profoundly different.

If you start a DK that is a member of an allied race or a Pandaren (I think the old experience is preserved for older races... maybe) you just start at level 58 (presumably 10 once 9.0 hits) and have a brief intro cutscene at Icecrown Citadel before Bolvar sends you out to be a hero.

It really creates a very different vibe. Essentially, if you're a Vulpera Death Knight, you may never have done anything particularly immoral or atrocious. You might not really have anything to atone for - your status as a Death Knight is simply that you have certain admittedly creepy powers.

Given that Shadowlands seems like it will be expanding the conception of death and death magic, Death Knights are in a place to have a very different sort of moral tone to them.

I Sold Out and Made a Heliod Deck

There's a deck I see a million times while playing MTGA - it's built around healing and things that benefit from healing, particularly White's Theran God and Demigod, as well as the usual Ajani's Pridemate.

I sort of feel bad playing this deck, as it's such a common thing, but I was on a hell of a losing streak earlier today and decided I'd like to win for once, thank you very much.

I did have a frustrating match against a deathtouch-based deck that managed to buy enough time to get out Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and wipe the board, leaving me little chance to rebuild and just endure a slow march to death while they blasted me with Ugin for 3 a round (I was at 103 life at this point, so it wasn't going to be quick.)

But overall, the deck is usually pretty fast, and the healing helps you survive rushes by more aggressive decks.

So, I have:

4 copies of Ajani's Pridemate and Healer Hawk, and maybe Inspired Orator (can't remember if that's 3 or 4 copies.)

3 copies of Daxos, Blessed by the Sun or whatever his epithet is. Daxos is a Legendary Enchantment Creature, a Demigod, whose toughness is your devotion to white (he costs WW, so it's always at least 2) and every time a creature comes into play or leaves play on your side of the board, you get 1 life.

2 copies of Heliod, Sun-Crowned (3 might be nice, but I'm not made of Mythic Rare Wildcards.) Heliod is one of the Theros God cards, so it's just an enchantment until your devotion is 5 or more (the two-color ones require 7) and then becomes a creature. It's indestructible, which is why it's really nice to have them in creature form, and why your opponents really want to blast permanents to ensure that your devotion is low. He's got a 4/5 body, but the huge benefit is that every time you gain life (which is often in this deck) you can put a +1/+1 counter on any creature (or enchantment, which means you can put them on him even when he's not a creature.) Then, you can also grant another creature (not Heliod) Lifelink for 1W.

So the deck is fairly straightforward - you want to get someone like a Pridemate or really anything once you have Heliod out and keep smacking the opponent to stack up counters. And you can tend to let enemy creatures through when you're healing enough.

It's a deck that's pretty good at surviving fast-paced decks while tending to outpace long-term control decks. But it can get very tedious if you're against another slow-burn deck.

Anyway, the Theros gods are pretty fun to play with.

Companion Decks

I don't want to jinx it, but MTGA hasn't been crashing as much as it was before today - I think it's only crashed once today.

So, I've been playing around a bit.

At this point, I have mutate decks for each of Ikoria's Triomes, and so I went ahead and, in my typical OCD fashion, changed each so that their basic lands reflected the appropriate triome (while I don't know if there's any official word on it, it seems that each of the Ikoria basic land arts correspond to one triome or another, and I sorted them out that way.)

One of the signature features of that set was also a group of Companion creatures - I think one for each color pair, each using Hybrid mana. I realized I had a few in my collection, and decided to try building a deck around one.

Here's how Companions work - you can put a creature of this sort in your "Companion Zone" if you meet certain requirements. The one I went with, Gyruda, Doom of the Depths, requires you only use even-costed spells.

Then, while playing, at any time you can spend 3 mana to put the Companion into your hand.

I'll confess that I'm not sure these things are powerful enough to be worth the cost. You can always just toss them in your deck the normal way, with no deckbuilding requirements.

My one game with this deck was a bit cheesy I was playing against a Mutate deck and threw down Etrata the Silencer, the Ravnica-block vampire who is unblockabale and when you damage an opponent, you exile one of their creatures with a Hit counter on it, then shuffle her back into your deck. If the opponent has three creatures with hit counters on them, you win.

Now, because of the odd rules of Mutate, when you exile a mutate monster, you exile all the creatures attached to it. And each of them get a Hit counter. So I just swung in for the attack - they were playing G/W, and didn't happen to topdeck anything that could keep Etrata from attacking. With a creature that was already stacked to three by the time I played Etrata, I was able to wipe them out in a single swing.

So word of advice: it you're playing against a mutate deck, Etrata is a total hoser.

Still, I have yet to see how effective Gyruda itself is.

Sigh, MTGA Crashing Even More After Latest Update

MTG Arena looks great, feels slick, and when it plays, it streamlines Magic the Gathering into a wonderfully fast-paced and exciting game.

But the client crashes about 90% of the time I want to use it.

After (not exaggerating) 8 attempts to just get the game to run, I was finally able to play two games just now, only for it to crash when I tried to play a third. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the game, I've used the Epic Game Store's "Verify" feature...

It's a total mess.

And it's a shame, because when the game works as intended, it's wonderful. I love the way that card-crafting works (it's way better than spending "draft tickets" to purchase rares from bots like I did back in the MTGO days) and the little flourishes like special animations for particularly interesting cards (I love the little burst of a crystal shard whenever you play one of the Triome lands) is a cool thing you obviously can't get in paper Magic.

While I really hope this is just the early kinks of the Mac client, I'm a little worried to see similar complaints about the PC version.

If this game didn't crash and didn't have to check all its assets every time I booted it up, I'd be 100% on board with it (actually, my one UX suggestion would be a way to either choose your own default Basic Land art or to give you the option to randomize them when building a new deck. I don't need every island to be that Raugrin-themed beach from Ikoria.)

Anyway, it's frustrating because when it wasn't crashing so much MTGA was a real good activity for the quarantine doldrums. But now I feel like I can't even rely on it as a thing to do.

I sure hope we get a build that fixes these issues soon. I guess this is making me appreciate the level of communication we get from Blizzard all the more.

Jumpstart

MTG Arena (and also paper Magic) has a new format called Jumpstart, which I've been tooling around with.

As played in MTGA, you pay either like 2500 gold or 400 gems (which, I think, is about two or three bucks) and you'll get a selection of themed packs. You slap two of them together and you have a deck.

Thankfully, it looks as if you just get the cards for your collection, which include some very cool and unusual basic land art.

As a format... I'm not exactly sure I love it. You don't get to choose from all the different types of packs, so if you're gunning for anything in particular, you're a bit S.O.L.

The first deck I put together was a Card-Drawing blue set (with a very cool Island art that is basically an island made out of stacked books with waterfalls) and Minions, which is all about sacrificing your minions. And I've got to say, I was either unlucky in my opponents or both were really underpowered or possibly not synergistic at all with one another. I did eventually manage to squeeze out two wins, getting my rewards.

I then tossed in a bit more to play a new deck, though I was disappointed that once I had chosen Green Dinosaurs for my first set, I only had Blue and Black options, after having just done those colors. So I picked Vampires and this deck seemed to work a lot better, as I got my two wins in just three games, I believe.

Each time you buy in, your first two wins will get you a new rare card, so for example, I got two Carnifex Demons, which seem like they might fit well into my mono black deck.

Not sure I want to dump more of my gems into this instead of just regular packs, but it's an interesting twist to the format, and probably not a bad option for new players to get a sense of building decks around a theme.

Shadowlands Beta is Live

The Shadowlands test has officially graduated from Alpha to Beta, meaning that a much larger number of testers will be coming in to try out the systems.

Naturally, I don't have an invite. Superstitiously, I think not getting an invite might mean it'll be a better expansion - I got invites for Mists, Warlords, and then BFA, and of the four in that row, I really felt Legion was far and away the best expansion (I know there are a lot of Mists fans, and while I will not fault anyone who loved it, I had several issues with it, particularly the endless rep grinds - you even needed to get revered or exalted or something with one of them before you could even start on some others! But it was certainly better than what came before and after it.)

Anyway, I'm very eager (and a little anxious) to try out Shadowlands - the premise and overall aesthetic of the expansion is 100% my style, the stakes feel high, and I'm excited for different experiences for different characters based on the Covenants.

I'm anxious, though, about balance and systems. While I know Blizzard says they're trying to learn from the mistakes of BFA, I really want to feel that Soulbinds and Covenants are going to be more pre-7.3 artifact weapon-like and not BFA's garbled mess (seriously, azerite armor is the freaking worst.)

Anyway, I'd really love to try it out because I finally got burned out on Horrific Visions (never did manage a 5-mask run - I don't really understand how it's doable, but I also don't really care anymore) and I've really just been playing a crapton of MTGA for the past few weeks (as you might be able to tell by the blog posts.)

Once again, as a PSA: there aren't any "beta keys." If you're opted in for the beta and they choose your account, you'll get it as an option in the little menu for WoW versions in the Launcher (you might need to restart the launcher for it to show up.) You should also get an email from them if you get in, but don't click anything - just access it from the launcher.

Cycling/Zenith Flare

Ok, it's not a Theros deck (though a lucky second copy of Klothys, God of Destiny, has made my Gruul Aggro/Midrange deck better) but I decided to invest a couple wildcards in making a Cycling deck from Ikoria - I figure this represents the efforts of the humans on Ikoria to survive the monsters attacking them, so it seemed only fair.

I've got a... Mardu? Mardu, W/B/R deck, which I'm going to call Savai because I know Ikoria better than Tarkir. I burned one rare wildcard to get a second Savai Triome, so I now have at least two of each (I'm actually thinking it might be a good idea now to rip off the bandaid and get another copy of all the shocklands now, as I'm sure those will continue to be useful forever - they seem to reprint them just often enough to keep them in Standard) though having made the deck, I'm beginning to wonder if I should just go full Boros and drop the Black cards from the deck.

The basic way it works is this: you get out a few cheap creatures that have things that trigger when you cycle a card; Drannith Healer and Drannith Stinger are both good examples. Basically, there are a bunch of 1-2 cost creatures you can get out there to cause every time you cycle to do a bunch of useful effects.

The key is that you want to burn through as much of your deck as you can, dropping cycling cards in your graveyard. Then, you've got four copies of Zenith Flare in your deck. This does X damage and heals you for X, where X is the number of cycling cards in your graveyard.

So if you can get, say, ten of them in there, you can blast them for half their starting health and heal yourself up for a massive amount. I won recently by doing back-to-back Zenith Flares at X=10 when the opponent had 17 life.

It's definitely weak to graveyard removal (beware Ashiok) and while the Drannith Healers (and if you manage to give a Stinger Lifelink) can buy you time, you can get overwhelmed by aggressive decks. You'll also want to make sure you're getting land out consistently, as even with a cycling cost of 1, you'll want as much mana available to you as possible.

Moving on to Theros

Having invested heavily in Ikoria (which I read is pronounced "ick-or-i-a" instead of "eye-kor-i-a," as I'd assumed, which... feels wrong) I've been putting more of my gold (and actually splurged on some gems as well) to get packs of Theros Beyond Death stuff. I did manage to get two copies of Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, which was cool.

I've been trying to build decks around these cards, but I'm having a bit less luck landing on a really effective theme. Mutate decks from Ikoria are pretty idiot-proof - you just toss in every creature you have in the colors you're playing that has the word "mutate" in it and then add in some cards that will help your monster from dying and you're about 90% there.

Having opened a Purphoros and a Klothys on my packs, I decided to play a little with gods and demigods. I made a mono-red deck with Purphoros (just one copy - I'm hesitant to invest my wildcards just yet) with two copies of Anax (the mono-red demigod.) This deck... sometimes works, but it's a little rough around the edges. I suspect the reason I see more Heliod decks is that, with Ajani's Pridemate pretty easily attainable and quite powerful (and synergistic with Heliod) it makes for a decently effective archetype.

I think a Purphoros deck really needs to take advantage of expensive creatures that have a flashy ETB or Attack effect (I'm blanking on the name, but there's a legendary dragon that does 4 damage to one target and 2 damage to two other ones whenever it attacks, on top of being a 7/7 flyer, which seems perfect for this.)

The question, then, is how to build it the rest of the way. I've tried to make it an aggro deck, but I think that aggro red doesn't have the staying power to actually make use of those expensive creatures, forcing them to sit in hand if I don't have Purphoros. I'll need to look into a sort of Red midrange/control and possibly just load up on big creatures.

I've had a bit more luck with a Gruul Klothys deck (which happens to have a lot of the stuff from the red decks.) Klothys has a pretty useful once-a-turn trigger that not only hoses graveyard decks, but also gives you either extra mana for your big dudes or, ironically, a bit of Orzhov-style bleed (I guess the damage is from red and the healing is from green?)

Anyway, I'm trying to work on archetypes outside of Mutate after spending a week making nothing but that kind of deck.

Hearthstone: Scholomance Academy

The latest Hearthstone expansion has been announced: Scholomance Academy

Reimagining the evil school of necromancy founded by the Cult of the Damned (and based on an existing real-world legend) as a more classic American college, just with, you know, a secretly evil necromancer as the headmaster (which I'm pretty sure conflicts with the lore, but it's Hearthstone, which is canonically non-canon) the new expansion looks to be adding some exciting new mechanics.

Probably the most interesting of these is dual-class cards - I suspect these work like the three gangs from Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, but there's an emphasis on giving classes access to mechanics of the other class - for example, there's a creature with a Combo effect that grants you a random Mage card.

I don't think we're going to see anything as revolutionary as a whole new class like we got in Ashes of Outland, but as usual, the aesthetic and vibe looks fun (and also as usual, the Hearthstone team did a great job of showing the expansion off in a new video, even when they have to do so via video chat.)

Latest Unearthed Arcana Brings New Feats

The latest UA post has brought forth several new feats for players to take.

Thematically, there are a couple things going on:

A lot of them are a sort of "light multiclass" option. There's a feat to pick up a single Eldritch Invocation from Warlocks (you can also take this as a Warlock, increasing the number of invocations you can have,) as well as one that gives you an artificer spell and cantrip (and in true artificer fashion, allows you to swap cantrips when you level up.)

There are also a couple that seem tied to the Feywild and Shadowfell, allowing you to cast spells associated with those domains.

Overall, some pretty good stuff, nothing crazily overpowered.

I'm really curious to see if they release a new Xanathar's-style book. I was saying that a while ago, when we got a huge assortment of subclasses, but as of yet, nothing has materialized (though two of those subclasses showed up in Mythic Odysseys of Theros.)

I'm glad to see continued mentions of Artificers - I think it's been a pretty successful addition to the game, and I'm hoping that we can get it added to a setting-agnostic sourcebook.

Interestingly, there's also a feat called "Gunner" that gives you proficiency in firearms and basically works like Crossbow expert in terms of ignoring the loading property and being able to fire in melee range.

Help, I'm Addicted to Mutate Decks

Mutate decks all basically work the same way - you pile creature on top of creature, usually allowing to become an enormous monster, and do whatever you can to keep the ever-growing list of triggered abilities rolling.

So, I came of age in Magic when dual lands were rare, and so the Triomes - three-color lands (that actually count as their land types, which is extra special for me for some reason) that you can cycle for 3 - have been inspiring me to make a number of wedge-color decks that are built around mutating.

Right now I have Indatha/Abzan (W/B/G,) Ketria/Temur (U/R/G) and Zagoth/Sultai (U/B/G)... I think I've also got a Raugrin/Jeskai (W/U/R) one in there... I've kind of lost track.

Here's the dirty little secret, though: once you've got the cards to make one or two of them, you basically have them for all of them. Indeed, the only cards I'm really missing are full sets of the actual Triomes - I currently only have 8 rare wildcards and I'm being conservative, though I have at least one of each triome, and 4 of Indatha and Ketria (the latter I burned 4 wildcards on, as it was the only one I didn't have any from.)

Green is naturally a pretty good color for mutate decks, as it's creature friendly and boosts mana generation. If you toss in a few Seasons of Growth, you'll be very happy, as both of its effects will seriously help (as a deck that's entirely built around casting spells targeting your creatures, you have a huge card-draw engine.)

I also like using this instant... I'm blanking on the name and having issues with Gatherer at the moment - it costs G and gives the target hexproof and +1/+1 until end of turn. While I've gotten into the habit of using Keep Safe - 1U, counter target spell targeting a permanent you control. Draw a card - to protect my monsters from removal, this one I find is more versatile (as it helps with abilities as well as spells) and being cheaper also means you're more likely to be able to cast it when you need to.

While I've talked about Glowstone Recluse before, another exciting creature is Auspicious Starrix. This is basically a finisher - when you mutate it (also it's 6/6, so it's a good "top" creature) you exile the top X cards of your library, where X is the number of times the creature has mutated, and then you put all the permanent you exiled that way into play.

Now, on one hand, this does mean that you're putting a bunch of mutate creatures onto the battlefield as (*wrinkles nose in disgust*) normal creatures. But there are a ton of ways this becomes utterly insane. First off, having a wide board is a nice change of pace for a mutate deck. But also, lands get thrown out there as well, meaning if you've got a lot of basic lands (which, admittedly, I don't in any of my Triome decks, though spoiler alert, I also have a mono-green mutate deck) you suddenly have a crap ton more mana to work with.

Anyway, I've been trying to wean myself off of these decks by building a cycling deck (it doesn't work yet) and a mono-black deck that's all about killing my own creatures (it sort of works).

I'm curious about what other design space exists with the mutate mechanic - it feels potent - but I also think that this will likely be the defining mechanic for Ikoria as a setting, so they'll have to want to go back there.

My Indatha Mutate Deck Probably Has My Best Win Ratio

Having not totally gotten the concept initially, and figuring out which cards would fit best, I've realized that, when properly stacked up, and given enough time to grow, this mutate deck is nearly unstoppable.

Here's how it works:

Mutate encourages you to focus on making one enormous, nasty monster. Each time you mutate a new creature into it, various effects go off based on all the creatures that have mutated into it previously. For instance, Zargoth Mamba, which doesn't actually have the mutate ability itself (and thus needs to be a base you build onto) gives a creature an opponent controls -2/-2 until end of turn each time you mutate it.

So you're incentivized to keep building on that one creature, rather than spreading the love, because you basically get the same ETB effect each time, stacking up. When you have a Glowstone Recluse (that not only grants reach, but also adds two +1/+1 counters onto the creature each time it mutates) and a Vulpikeet (giving it flying - making the reach redundant, sure, but also giving a +1/+1 counter whenever it mutates) and keep building on that, it's getting a permanent +3/+3 every time you mutate.

I've found that it's good to have a couple of strong base creatures. My favorites are Crystalline Giant, an artifact creature that gets a new ability counter each turn (I think Flying, Vigilance, First Strike, Death Touch, Lifelink, and Hexproof, maybe also Menace?) and Paradise Druid, which helps you ramp up mana and has the massive benefit of being Hexproof while untapped (toss a mutate creature with Vigilance on there like Majestic Auricorn on there and you're untouchable.)

The Hexproof helps tremendously to protect your monster from black kill spells and blue control spells. Meanwhile, if you're stacking up all these +1/+1 counters, it makes any damage-based removal like red's burn or green's fighting ineffective. Frankly, if I have a hexproof monster with vigilance and a way to keep pumping up +1/+1 counters, I don't think I've ever lost.

For some reason, I seem to draw too few land very frequently, which might just mean I need to toss in more. I've got a ton of dual lands and four Indatha Triomes, which means mana issues typically don't become too bad, though it does make the deck a little slow out of the gate given that most of the lands come into play tapped (I do have two Overgrown Tombs, a Godless Shrine, and a Temple Garden to give me the option for fast mana, as well as some basic lands.)

If there's one real weakness to the deck, it's a lack of card draw. Eventually, the deck sort of devolves into a "draw, play, wait" playstyle. The hope, then, is that by this point you've created an unstoppable monster, and you can afford a lack of cards.

I'm really curious to see how this archetypes works with other Triomes. I want to experiment with blue, which I guess would mean U/G/R, U/W/R, or U/B/G. I'm a little hesitant to lost Green's color-fixing, but it's also possible card-draw could make up for that.

Indatha Mutate

As someone who did not play during the Tarkir years, I don't actually know off hand what the "wedges" are off the top of the head, despite knowing the Ravnica guilds in my sleep. I actually think I've figured out the Alara shards (center colors: Bant is White, Esper is Blue, Grixis is Black, Jund is Red, and Naya is Green, right?) but with Ikoria returning to the wedges, I couldn't really tell you a Jeskai from a Sultai.

So I'm calling this new deck Indatha, after the Indatha Triome that is the Black/Green/White wedge.

It's my first attempt at a mutate deck, and I've got to say, it's a lot of fun stacking up these crazy mutant creatures with all their various effects. That being said, I need to refine the deck significantly (I really only went with that color combination based on the cards I have.)

Still, the Mutate mechanic has proven pretty exciting to play with, and while I lost a lot of matches before I could get the engine running, so to speak, and I certainly burned through some of my wildcards building the deck (but if I ever want to make another B/G/W deck, I'm pretty set for lands) I think the deck has started to take shape now that I've shifted into a bit more ramp-up with the green. I think I'll probably be putting more life gain in it as well to buy me some time (probably with the Auricorn... thingie, a mutate creature that has vigilance and gives you 4 life each time you mutate.)

My most recent game was against a mono green deck, and after swirling Vulpikeet, Paradise Druid, and that Auricorn thingie together, I created a monster that no massive hydra was capable of hurting - I could fly over the defenders, get big enough to block, and as long as I never tapped it for mana, the Vigilance kept it hexproof at all times, which I could tell the other player was very frustrated by, as they really, really wanted to use various "fight" spells and such to smack the thing out of the sky.

Having basically only made Ravnica decks so far (they're the archetypes I'm most familiar with) it's fun to use this crazy weird stuff.

I think any mutate deck is going to be weak to black's creature removal. Red is a bit of a threat, but if you can pump your dudes up fast enough, they'll be out of range of burn spells as long as you're careful about what creatures you're blocking.

And I suspect that that's why I'm seeing a lot of people playing black decks with tons of removal and deathtouch creatures.

I was able to make this deck by dumping most of my remaining gems into several Ikoria packs, which means I'm going to try to be disciplined and not drop any more money into the game at least until August. I recently discovered a long list of promo codes, however, that gave me several packs as well (even some that had theoretically expired, going all the way back to Guilds of Ravnica.)

Anyway, much as I've become somewhat anticipatory when thinking about taking my D&D campaign to explore the rest of the multiverse, it's also sort of fun to build a deck set in this very different setting. It's also giving me some ideas about what sort of monsters the party should be facing there (mid-fight mutations, I think, essentially giving every monster a second phase.)

Beta Incoming, Other News From This Morning's Livestream

The Shadowlands Beta is due to start next week, and while there's still "work to be done," the expansion should be in its "feature complete" state, meaning that we'll be able to mess around with soulbinds, the evolution of the mission table, and max-level content including the Maw zone and the various Covenant campaigns.

While we didn't get a Blizzcon's worth of news, it's good to hear that, despite the pandemic, Blizzard has been making good progress on the expansion, and it's still on schedule to release in the fall.

All in all, there wasn't anything super revelatory, though we did get a little info on how the different covenants are going to feel. For instance, those with the Venthyr will apparently need to be involved in courtly intrigue and politics, with mini-games based on, say, throwing an important party. Those with the Night Fae will have to manage farm reminiscent of the one in Pandaria, only this time you're basically farming up Wild Gods.

Details on the physical collector's edition were also previewed (something I've never gotten, physically or digitally) with the usual swag (including pins for each covenant, about which Ion Hazzikostas joked that choosing to wear one would cause the other three to self-destruct).

They've taken some time to remind people that the numbers fine-tuning is going to be one of the last things they do, though they will try to fix things that are so profoundly broken (either overpowered or underpowered) that it interferes with testing other systems.

Mythic plus and raid testing will, of course, be happening in the beta, and they want people running those a lot.

Anyway, not a ton to discuss here, but some welcome updates, and definitely exciting news about the beta opening up.

Shadowlands Stream Tomorrow

Originally scheduled for early June, Blizzard decided not to distract from the important issues we, as a country, were discussing at the time (not to say that that discussion has ended) and delayed a big infodump.

Well, that's coming tomorrow morning. They apparently have new information to reveal about Shadowlands.

What might be a big enough thing to make it a whole livestream? There are, I'd think, a couple possibilities, and we're likely to get some or all of them.

Expansion Release Date: This one's a pretty good bet. We're now in the second half of 2020 (sigh) and we're expecting the release of Shadowlands some time in the fall, which tends to be when WoW expansions drop. I don't know to what extent working from home has slowed progress on the expansion, but from the progress of the Alpha, I'd bet we're actually not that far off the schedule, so I'm throwing my dart at some time in November.

Beta Launch Date: While the Alpha has been going for quite some time, limited primarily to WoW community leaders and, I'd guess, friends and family as usual. The Beta, while not open, is thrown open to a much larger range of folks (I was in the Mists, Warlords, and BFA betas... superstitiously I think if I don't get into the Shadowlands one it'll mean good things for the expansion) and tends to come only when the expansion has progressed to a more complete state.

Showing Off More Stuff: There are a few major features for the 9.0 launch that remain to be added to the test, including, crucially, the Soulbind system - something that could go either the way of artifact weapons (good, except when they brought in the Netherlight Crucible) or azerite (bad from the get-go and never really got good). They have also not yet opened up the Maw except for the level 50 intro, so we have yet to see how that will work as outdoor content. Opening that up and giving us a big preview would be highly welcome.

A New Cinematic: BFA gave us a wonderful series of full-blown cinematics following Saurfang's journey to redemption, and while I don't know that Blizzard will just be repeating itself, I wouldn't be shocked if we had a similar series, perhaps focused on Bolvar or Sylvanas, each of whom are clearly going to be playing a major role in the expansion. I'd also hazard to guess that we'll get some new hybrid "still/animation" works like Lords of War, Harbingers, and Warbringers (also the... tests of Shaohao? That's when they first did that, I think).

Major Content Announcements: We know that there will be the five zones and a Castle Nathria raid in Revendreth, but given that that will be the Uldir/Emerald Nightmare/etc. of the expansion, I'm wondering if we'll also get a sense of what the first "tier" raid will be. And, hey, if it's going to be a "tier" raid, might we actually get class-based tier sets again? That's something that was sorely missed in BFA, and was always a great motivator to head into the raids to pick up full sets for the very important purpose of transmog.

Story Updates: BFA was heavy on faction politics, and while I think this expansion is set up to allow us to focus more on the figures we meet in the Shadowlands, every expansion has involved some stuff happening back home (well, maybe not Warlords). Already, I think there are hints that we'll be getting some more internal tension in the Alliance (finally!) but I suspect we might also get a run-down on how the expansion gets started and who is going to be playing a big role within it beyond the obvious Sylvanas and Bolvar.

In-Depth Systems Previews: Letting players understand the systems you're implementing in an expansion is a pretty important element in communication for the game. While I'm hoping Covenants and Soulbinds won't be the convoluted mess that was Azerite Armor (and I'm also thinking that, as cool as artifact weapons were, maybe we can cool it on this sort of thing and go back to gear as the main way you empower yourself?) it'll certainly help if they give us the total rundown. Clearly, things may have changed internally while they've been working on the expansion, and so some things we might think we understand might seem very different in tomorrow's announcement.

So those are my general thoughts. I'm avoiding any really specific predictions (Murlocs as an allied race. Make it happen, Blizzard!) but hey, it'll all be on the table tomorrow morning.

When You Have a Deck That's Amazing When It Works... About 10% of the Time

The free Izzet deck you can get in MTG Arena is generally themed as "instants and sorceries matter" and gives you a bunch of red burn spells and blue card-draw spells, and creatures like Wee Dragonauts and Crackling Drakes that get boosted as you cast those cards.

But there are two really exciting spells in the deck that, when they go off, are the exact sort of feedback loop combo the Izzet would be fascinated by.

One, the one that's more straightforward, is Niv-Mizzet, Parun, the legendary guildmaster. He's a 5/5 flyer that can't be countered - pretty good to start - and then he's got the following: each time you draw a card, he deals 1 damage to a target of your choice. And then, any time you cast an instant or sorcery spell, you draw a card (and thus proc that damage.)

With cards like Radical Idea and Chemister's Insight, you can draw several cards to ramp up and then Jump-Start them later in the game. So when you have enough mana, you're getting two cards (one for the card and one from Niv) for a single Radical Idea, and thus two damage, not to mention the chance to cast more spells that you've just drawn.

Now, let's talk Thousand-Year Storm.

TYS is trickier, but its eventual effect is astounding. Each instant or sorcery you cast, the enchantment will allow you to copy it for every other spell you've cast. So, let's say you hit a target with Lava Coil. Then you shock another one - you now get two Shocks. Then, if you have the mana, you cast Radical Idea - which is now 3 of them. And if you have Niv out, you're getting a card for each of these casts, not to mention all those cards from that triple radical idea, which is turning him into a machine gun.

The problem, of course, is actually surviving to the point where you can get this off.

While it's been glorious when I've actually managed to get to this point, it's pretty rare. Being red/blue, and without much in the way of bounce/counterspell, there's nothing you can really do about Enchantments (Underworld Dreams, which punishes you for each card you draw, is a real hoser.) Also, with red removal, unless you get Niv into his machine gun mode, it'll be hard to take down anything really big (like some Ikoria behemoth mutant.)

I'm tinkering with the deck (I added another TYS and Niv, for one thing) but while I'm worried the archetype isn't going to work all that well in this format, it's so fun when it actually goes off that I want to try to make it work.

Preparing for the Main Event

My players in my Ravnica D&D campaign have been building up to a big attack on a Simic laboratory that is being used by a rogue biomancer who is aligned with the Phyrexians in an attempt to infect the most populous plane in the multiverse.

I've been thinking, thus, a lot about climactic battles and encounter balancing.

There are, by my count, six combat encounters the party is likely to deal with over the course of the attack. They're level 10, so resources are rather plentiful and they're pretty tough.

I don't know to what extent the players are going to feel the need to push forward - I'm treating these labs like a dungeon, so while they do run the risk of being attacked should they take a rest, they will be able to complete at least a short rest once or twice during their push.

While this is certainly the main event of tier 2 for the party, it's actually not going to be the finale - they have to face off against my planeswalker villain. I think she's going to be more intent on escaping than fighting, so I might have her planeswalk out at half health or so, but I do think that she should be a tier-4-level bad guy.

But before we get to that, I want to make sure that the lab fight will be sufficiently exciting and challenging while remaining balanced.

I've been fairly religious with the Xanathar guidelines for encounter building, which has yielded some scary moments but hasn't actually killed anyone yet. While I'm not eager for anyone's character to die (though there is ample opportunity for resurrection - the Orzhov even have a whole payment plan structure your friends can get you indebted to) I do want to give the characters some pause. I think the slog of going through six different fights (potentially fewer, as two of them can be RP'd around) might be enough to make the final fight dicey by default.

In fact, as I write about this, I think the key is to make the actual tier 2 finale (after which they'll all hit level 11) the truly scary fight. A kind of wake-up call after the triumph of the big dungeon.

Essentially, I'm going to balance a fight for level 16 (maybe slightly lower) that they'll be fighting at 10.