Ixalan pre-con battle! EP: 24 Pantlaza v Admiral Brass v Hakbal v Carmen

Deck Strategies

• 

  Pantlaza, Sun-Favored

  Ramp into big dinosaurs and use Pantlaza’s discover ability triggered by toughness to find and cast impactful spells, leveraging tribal dinosaur synergy for board dominance.

• 

  Admiral Brass, Unsinkable

  Utilize graveyard recursion to bring back pirate creatures with haste and pressure opponents aggressively, creating a resilient pirate swarm.

• 

  Hakbal of the Surging Soul

  Focus on merfolk tribal synergies with exploring to generate card advantage and +1/+1 counters, building a board of synergistic creatures to control the game.

• 

  Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher

  Build a vampire army that grows with each sacrifice and uses Carmen’s ability to recur permanents from the graveyard, gaining life and sustaining pressure.

Gameplay Insights

• 1

  Pantlaza's discover mechanic, triggered by dinosaur toughness, provided a powerful way to cheat big creatures or spells into play, giving the dinosaur deck significant momentum.

• 2

  Admiral Brass’s ability to return pirate creatures with haste from the graveyard kept the pirate player aggressive and resilient against removal.

• 3

  Hakbal’s exploring mechanic allowed the merfolk deck to maintain a steady flow of resources and grow creatures with +1/+1 counters, increasing board presence sustainably.

• 4

  Carmen’s synergy with sacrifice and graveyard recursion created incremental advantage through life gain and recurring permanents, making the vampire deck tough to deal with over time.

• 5

  Early mana ramp and efficient land drops were critical to enabling each deck to deploy their key tribal threats quickly and maintain pressure.

Notable Cards

• 

  Pantlaza, Sun-Favored

• 

  Admiral Brass, Unsinkable

• 

  Hakbal of the Surging Soul

• 

  Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher

Summary

The game unfolded with each player developing their board around their respective tribal themes from the Ixalan pre-constructed decks: dinosaurs, pirates, merfolk, and vampires. Early turns saw players efficiently ramping mana and establishing their tribal synergies, such as Pantlaza's ability to discover cards when a dinosaur enters the battlefield and Admiral Brass's capacity to revive pirates from the graveyard with haste. Hakbal of the Surging Soul set up a merfolk tribal strategy focused on exploring and card advantage, while Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher, leveraged vampire synergies with life gain and recurring permanents from the graveyard. Key turning points included Pantlaza deploying multiple dinosaurs and using Sunfill Imitator to copy threats, which pressured opponents with increasing board presence. Admiral Brass’s ability to bring back powerful pirate creatures created continual combat threats. Carmen's ability to grow in power through opponents sacrificing permanents and returning cards from the graveyard created a resilient vampire army. Hakbal’s merfolk explored the top of the library to maintain card flow and played aggressively with +1/+1 counters. The game featured some intense trading of attacks and strategic use of tribal abilities, with players trying to outpace each other with tribal synergies and battlefield dominance. The game likely ended with one of the tribal decks leveraging their synergy and resilience to secure victory, though the exact winner was not specified.