Deck Strategies
Alela, Artful Provocateur
Alela’s deck plays a stax/control game plan, disrupting opponents’ combos and ramp with artifact and enchantment lock pieces while grinding out value and winning through flying fairy tokens or combat damage.
Kozilek, the Great Distortion
This colorless deck seeks to assemble artifact combos, generating large mana pools and comboing off with powerful colorless synergies to win quickly.
Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger
Kroxa’s deck uses discard, reanimation, and infinite mana combos involving Worldgorger Dragon to repeatedly cast Kroxa and drain opponents’ resources and life totals.
Edric, Spymaster of Trest
Edric’s deck aims to deploy evasive creatures and leverage Edric’s card draw ability to cycle through the deck quickly, ultimately winning through infinite turns with Nexus of Fate and repeated draws.
Gameplay Insights
- 1
Using Mental Misstep to counter Kozilek’s key mana source Manifold significantly hindered his early game power development.
- 2
Drain of Magistrate was a pivotal play to shut down Kroxa’s ability to cast from graveyard, slowing his combo execution.
- 3
Edric’s choice to keep a one-land hand with heavy control elements and draw engines like Sylvan Library and Snapcaster Mage allowed him to stabilize and transition into a strong midgame despite a slow start.
- 4
Allowing Sire of Insanity to resolve under Edric’s Sylvan Library created a unique advantage by drawing more cards and cycling through threats faster than opponents expected.
- 5
The interaction of artifact-based stax pieces from Alela and control elements from Edric helped slow down the more explosive combo decks, creating a tense, grindy midgame.
Notable Cards
Mental Misstep
Mana Drain
Orbs of Warding
Torpor Orb
Sylvan Library
Worldgorger Dragon
Faithless Looting
Sire of Insanity
Nexus of Fate
Snapcaster Mage
Summary
The game featured a competitive four-player Commander match with decks led by Alela, Kozilek, Kroxa, and Edric. Early on, Alela’s Esper Stax deck established control elements like Orbs and Torpor Orb to disrupt opposing strategies, particularly targeting Kroxa’s hand-grinding and reanimation lines. Kozilek’s artifact combo deck sought to leverage colorless mana and artifact synergies to execute explosive combos, but early counterspells and removal slowed his progress. Kroxa’s deck aimed to wear down opponents’ hands and generate infinite mana through Worldgorger Dragon combos to repeatedly cast Kroxa and close the game. Edric’s deck focused on deploying evasive creatures to draw cards from combat damage and eventually win through infinite turns generated by Nexus of Fate loops.