Today’s weekly event at my LGS ended up being just me and one other person, so we decided to crack open some packs and play a few games of sealed as a send-off to Beyond the Gates. The pool Here are the first things I noticed about the pool I opened: Kojo & Booda are the strongest hero I have access to. Bravos offers a ton of strong 2 and 3-drops. Any deck I build will include Bravos. Muna offers some boost and anchor synergies, but no Teija or Arjun meant most of the cards wouldn’t be at their best. Yzmir has a couple of solid characters, but I need to work make the most of the Flamels: A Cappella Training (C) in Lyra and Beauty Sleep (C) in Muna motivate these two as support factions. (Also, four Kuwats is wild!) Ordis provides strong permanents but is lacking in characters. Sierra & Oddball could be viable thanks to the two Brassbug Hub (C)s and three Ordis Carrier (C)s. Her hero ability helps make up for the fact that Axiom and Ordis are light on characters. Brassbug Hive (C) and The Monolith, Ordis Bastion (C) are two strong 5-mana permanents. I saw two reasonable routes: ...

I brought a mostly unchanged version of my Fen spells list to the A.W.O.L. Season 1 Invitational. It’s my favorite deck to play and the one I’m most comfortable with, but I also think it’s well-suited against most of the decks I expected to see: Treyst & Rossum: An early A Cappella Training (C) can grind scrap counter progress to a halt, and Cloth Cocoon (C) can shut down the late-game Haven plan. Afanas & Senka: Fen’s spells can pass priority as well as Afanas, and sabotage and removal can prevent him from chaining spells with boost targets. Off You Go! (F) is especially helpful here. Teija & Nauraa: Fen’s best matchup. Cloth Cocoon (C) and Off You Go! (F) make it very hard for them to anchor characters. Waru & Mack: Your removal can make it a difficult for them to safely sleep characters as long they can’t stick a Quetzalcóatl before you draw into an answer for it. Unfortunately, the deck’s worst matchup is against Sigismar & Wingspan, who were unsurprisingly the most represented hero: ...

The deck Putting this deck together was an exercise in reverse-engineering. To start, Sierra needs three copies of Brassbug Hive (R) as her win-condition. She wants to run three copies of Mechanical Training (C) to close out the game with Brassbug Hive, but they also need to not be dead cards before a Brassbug Hive is online. This means including some combination of Armored Jammer, Haven, Bravos Bastion (R), The Foundry, Axiom Bastion (R), Axiom Reprocessor (R), and The Ouroboros, Lyra Bastion (F). ...

This week, I brought Atsadi & Surge to the ACE Week 5 tournament, where the deck went 4-1 in single-elimination for 2nd place out of 22. The deck The last time I played this deck. The deck has the same philosophy as last time: you can afford to play fast and loose with your resources since Atsadi’s hero ability will help you recoup the cards and then some. If you’re able to ramp enough, you can use your mana advantage to pass priority and play your large characters once your opponent is unable to react. ...

Today I participated in a 6-player Beyond the Gates draft. I witnessed some pretty wild things, including a player who was virtually mono-Ordis, a Treyst with every from-reserve ability under the sun, and an honest-to-goodness Lyra Festival win. The draft I didn’t have flashy options for my P1p1, but I was happy to start with a Paper Herald (F) as a strong, cheap play that gets better out of Fen. The Sandman (R) was an easy choice as the strongest card in P1p2 that shared a faction with my P1p1. I continued taking the strongest card in P1p3, dipping into Yzmir with a Tooth Fairy (R). ...

I’ve been gradually tweaking my spell-centric Fen list, but it received a massive upgrade when I took notes from some of ElWiwi’s innovations. I took this list to the Monday A.W.O.L. weekly where it went 5-1 for 3rd out of 60. It was especially exciting to practice the Lyra mirror in the semifinals against Gamanight’s Nevenka & Blotch, which went on to win the entire event! The deck One of the most attractive things about Lyra is how versatile the faction is. Since they have access to efficient answers for just about every situation, what they need most is card draw so that they can piece together those answers more reliably. This makes Magical Training (F), Ouroboros Inkcaster (R), and card advantage uniques invaluable. ...

At the end of my last outing with Gulrang & Tocsin, I speculated that some of the hero’s fundamental issues could be solved by thinking of them not as a defensive late-game hero, but as a tempo hero whose finishers come online at 8 mana. I took the end-result of that experiment to the Wednesday A.W.O.L. tournament on 2025-01-08, where the deck went 3-3 to finish 18th out of 36. Disclaimer: I’ve lost a ton on BGA - and I mean a ton - while playing this deck. I’m happier with it than the previous iteration, but I think Sigismar and Waru are both better able to make use of Ordis’s current toolset. ...

I brought Akesha & Taru to the Monday A.W.O.L. weekly where I went 1-4 (after a first-round bye) for 30th out of 46. The deck feels solid despite today’s disappointing performance, which I attribute to playing against strong players and getting a couple of tough matchups. The deck This an attrition-style control deck that plays for the long game by gradually running your opponent out of resources. Large 3-drops alongside Akesha’s after-you ensure that you can trade in the early-game at worst, threatening to go 1-0 if your opponent can’t contest both expeditions. ...

It’s been a while since I’ve played Bravos, so a new Dracaena (U) seemed a great excuse to bring Basira to the Monday A.W.O.L. weekly. I ended up finishing 3-3 for 18th of 47. The deck The last time I played this deck. This build is very similar to my last one. I haven’t been playing the deck much, so I can’t vouch for all of the cards I’m running. ...

Over the holidays, I ran a private sealed event with five other players, each of whom had somewhere between zero and five prior games of Altered under their belt. All of them have experience with light/medium eurogames, but Altered is their first trading card game. As refreshingly simple as Altered’s core mechanics are, I knew deckbuilding would be a step up in complexity, so I did my best to prepare so that the event would run as smoothly as possible. ...