Deck Strategies
Marina Vendrell
A five-color enchantment-focused build that uses her ability to tutor enchantments and manipulate 'rooms' enchantments to trigger various effects, aiming to control the board and gain incremental value through enchantments and enchantment creatures.
The Mindskinner
A mill-centric deck leveraging the commander’s damage prevention ability to mill opponents whenever damage is dealt, combined with forcing opponents to draw and discard cards to accelerate their library depletion.
Shilgengar, Sire of Famine
A sacrifice-themed deck that feeds Angels to Shilgengar to generate blood tokens, which are then used to reanimate creatures from the graveyard as vampires, creating a resilient and threatening board presence.
Gev, Scaled Scorch
A lizard tribal deck that punishes opponents with damage through casting lizard spells and accumulates 1/1 counters on creatures whenever opponents lose life, aiming for board control and incremental damage output.
Gameplay Insights
- 1
Grafdigger's Cage was played early to disrupt graveyard and library recursion, significantly impacting Shilgengar’s and others’ strategies relying on graveyard interactions.
- 2
Descent Into Avernus accelerated the game pace by providing treasure tokens and dealing incremental damage to all players each turn, influencing players' life totals and mana availability.
- 3
The Mindskinner’s damage prevention to mill conversion created a unique pressure point, forcing opponents to manage both damage and graveyard threats simultaneously.
- 4
Shilgengar’s ability to sacrifice Angels and generate blood tokens set up for a powerful reanimation combo that could swing the game by bringing back multiple creatures as vampires with finality counters.
- 5
Gev’s incremental damage and ward mechanic enabled consistent pressure and growth of his board, making it difficult for opponents to maintain a stable life total or board presence.
Notable Cards
Marina Vendrell
The Mindskinner
Shilgengar, Sire of Famine
Gev, Scaled Scorch
Grafdigger's Cage
Descent into Avernus
Command Tower
Lotus Petal
Mox Opal
Mox Amber
Summary
The game started with players establishing their mana bases and early board presence. Marina Vendrell focused on enchantments, aiming to leverage her ability to tutor and draw multiple enchantments to build a strong enchantment-centered board state. The Mindskinner deck adopted a mill-centric strategy, using its commander’s ability to convert damage prevention into milling opponents' libraries. Shilgengar, Sire of Famine’s player aimed to exploit creature sacrifice synergies, particularly sacrificing Angels to generate blood tokens and then using those tokens to reanimate creatures from the graveyard as vampires, creating a powerful undead army. Gev, Scaled Scorch’s deck utilized a lizard tribal theme with a focus on dealing incremental damage through lizard spells and accumulating 1/1 counters on creatures to control the board and chip away at opponents' life totals. Early plays included disruption and mana acceleration, such as casting Grafdigger's Cage to limit graveyard and library recursion, and Descent Into Avernus to speed up the game with treasure tokens and damage. The interaction between these strategies set up a dynamic board state where enchantments, sacrifice effects, and damage-based milling shaped the pace of the game. Key turning points involved players assembling their synergies: Marina aiming to lock or unlock rooms for benefit, Mindskinner leveraging damage prevention for massive milling, Shilgengar preparing to exploit blood tokens for a graveyard-based army, and Gev steadily increasing pressure with lizard tribal damage. The game’s outcome hinged on these synergies coming together, with each player trying to outmaneuver others through incremental advantage and powerful board states.
