Anje Falkenrath is a Fail as Commander

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3drinks
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Post by 3drinks » 4 years ago

I saw this thread over on @mtgsally, was an interesting read. I thought on it awhile, and yeah I found I agree with it. Of course you could choose to build your deck any way you want, but by doing so you play a much more inefficient version of the deck than otherwise. So much so that you're just actively gimping yourself. Now, I don't have a bias against that, if that's what you want, then go nuts. But I just find it irritating that they've done this now with Edgar, Derevi, Edric, and now Anje that they've created this powerful commanders but they exploit the situation in a singular way that's far and away more potent than anything else you could do.
Carthage wrote:When you play anje in commander, optimal, winning deck construction and play patterns involve completely ignoring the text on all your madness cards. They are just blank, 0 mana redraws. You don't care what text is on them. They could read lose the game and you are still running every copy to get down to the tiny number of cards you care about.

It is a madness based general that makes you ignore what your madness cards do.

It encourages playing the exact same way every single game, cycle through every madness card you draw until you can't anymore and hope you drew your win.

Get to three mana → cast anje → cycle every card until you can't anymore → hope you have your win in the top ~50 cards of your deck

The card does not encourage decision making, it does not encourage clever deck construction. It does not encourage interactive game. In fact, you might not run any interaction at all in an anje deck because you know you are going to hit your winning combo so consistently that you won't have mana to spare on bothering to disrupt anything your opponents do.
Yeah, you could choose not to. But then you're just playing a Bonded Fetch. Nobody is clamouring for a legendary looter.

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Post by bobthefunny » 4 years ago

Plenty of Commanders have broken interactions or infinite combos with them. Playing them differently is sub-optimal. Yet you'll still find Prosh decks without food chain, because some people want to have fun.

I'm sure people will build "sub optimal" Anje decks built around madness cards, just because they want to cast a lot of madness stuff to get sweet discounts on cards while still cantripping, because that's just good value. I'm sure others will build a madness loot CEDH deck that combos on turn 2. To each their own.

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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

I mean even with the all Madness cards, it still has a massive fail rate. Any land for example is going to stop the train, and so you only get to go through so much of your deck through the course of turns.
I designed a Vampire tribal deck viewtopic.php?f=35&t=9224 so there is fun to be had with her.

But it was a poor design overall and VERY limited in decks you can build around it.

I think it should have had a cost reduction element rather than encourage jam as many Madness cards but don't care if the are %$#% or not.

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Post by 3drinks » 4 years ago

[mention]darrenhabib[/mention] with ~50 madness cards in total, it's unlikely given other typically played tutours and usual draw smoother cards. The fact that you've only got room for ~12-15 non madness cards is telling.

I think this is more detrimental to the format than not. How long before the fair decks realize they can make their deck infinitely stronger but going this route? Once they figure it out, 90% of the time there's no going back because it will become obvious your deck took a huge step down. And the fact that this was in a commander set, that is makes this so dangerous to the format.

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Post by Mookie » 4 years ago

I played against a slightly modified Anje precon a few weeks ago - the owner was playing in a league, and had swapped out ten cards.
Four of those cards? Doomsday, Worldgorger Dragon, Animate Dead, and Comet Storm. You're welcome to infer what their entire strategy was.

It's not hard to make a broken deck. I do think that it is a bit unfortunate that it is so easy to do so for Anje. I do think this is why I don't really have an interest in building Anje myself - whether you're playing Living Death, Songs of the Damned + Torment of Hailfire, or something else, most of the games you play are going to play out exactly the same way.

Still, this isn't anything new - some commanders have a fairly obvious optimal way to build them (ex: Tatyova, Benthic Druid + ramp spells), while others are more open-ended (ex: O-Kagachi, Vengeful Kami).

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Post by BounceBurnBuff » 4 years ago

I think the big shame in Anje is really that it doesn't remotely attempt to reward you for playing fair. Compare her to a recent case of the opposite issue, Urza. Urza can be built as casually as you like, but making your Myr Tribal deck suddenly ramp ahead of even the Green players for 4 mana in the command zone will still make the deck seem horrendously powerful in comparison.

Anje's design is honestly boring, with Chainer and Greven at least offering some interesting options to build (even if Chainer comes off as a bad Meren). If you aren't going for combo with Anje, honestly, what are you doing that isn't facilitated better by other Commanders in Rakdos? Olivia and Chainer are both better for more fair reanimation strategies, Greven offers better card draw and quality with fewer limitations. I've yet to see a non-Worldgorger list in the wild that wasn't just the precon +5 swaps, even then most of those tend to be Worldgorger + Animate Dead and an outlet.

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Post by Sinis » 4 years ago

3drinks wrote:
4 years ago
Yeah, you could choose not to. But then you're just playing a Bonded Fetch. Nobody is clamouring for a legendary looter.
I mostly agree, but, Bonded Fetch doesn't get a free untap for some large proportion of your deck.

I do agree that Anje is boring and a lost opportunity. Far more interesting is Chainer, Nightmare Adept who rewards Madness by having an ability that discards as a cost. I also agree with the idea that it encourages you to not cast madness cards; they're just free cycles.

Every Anje deck I've played against at my LGS is the same; they all live at some street corner described as 'find my combo'.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

I played a guy who just made discarding for value stuff, and it was really neat. He had the animate/worldg combo but not critical mass of madness, just good ones and one he could reanimate, then a lot of waste not type effects. He mostly leveraged Anje as a value engine for putting fatties in the yard and sometimes casting madness stuff, and discarding flashback cards, etc. (e.g. looting, increasing ambition).

It was fine, and very fun and challenging to play against -- demanded quite a bit of yard hate to keep down.

I think people are missing the boat on how good a guaranteed hasted looter is as a card in a color set full of ways to abuse the heck out of the graveyard. If you just play all the marginal to good madness cards (the removal, discard, asylum visitor type stuff) that's quite a strong engine for a midrange rakdos shell.

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Post by 3drinks » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
I played a guy who just made discarding for value stuff, and it was really neat. He had the animate/worldg combo but not critical mass of madness, just good ones and one he could reanimate, then a lot of waste not type effects. He mostly leveraged Anje as a value engine for putting fatties in the yard and sometimes casting madness stuff, and discarding flashback cards, etc. (e.g. looting, increasing ambition).

It was fine, and very fun and challenging to play against -- demanded quite a bit of yard hate to keep down.

I think people are missing the boat on how good a guaranteed hasted looter is as a card in a color set full of ways to abuse the heck out of the graveyard. If you just play all the marginal to good madness cards (the removal, discard, asylum visitor type stuff) that's quite a strong engine for a midrange rakdos shell.
Then they were playing far below the deck's power ceiling. Discarding for value is never going to be as strong as the ability to draw 50 cards for 0. That's the inherent problem with Anje as a commander. One strategy is just so far head and shoulders above the rest. It's Edgar all over again.

And that's fine. Every year the commander set has one. We all thought it was K'rrik. And he is, but the real offender is Anje.

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Post by DirkGently » 4 years ago

Idk if I can get behind this "Anje is best as a hyper-linear WGD combo engine" view. Having not played against it, so my opinion is mostly from ignorance, but:

-you need sufficient mana to cast Anje, which means (assuming you want to cast her t3) roughly 30%. That's a lot of slots that are "bricks" for your chaining through your deck.

-if you're going bare minimum on mana sources, then one counter or removal on Anje and you could be sitting on your thumbs for quite a few turns before you can recast her and vacate your hand of its madness cards.

-WGD combo is inherently very fragile. Grave-hate? Wrecked. Enchantment hate? wrecked. Creature removal? wrecked. counterspell? wrecked. And you're playing RB, so unless you wanna thoughtseize everyone, there's not a ton of interaction to be had. And if the combo is broken, in most cases, that's not just a busted combo, that's exiling your entire board, lands and all. So GL recovering from that one.

I'm sure that, if you wanna sit down against normal or casual decks and win exactly one game, then WGD combo is probably aces, but idk that it's actually anywhere near great. It seems far less robust than other cEDH combo decks, especially if people know what you're doing.

For my money, I'd build Anje with many madness cards, but WGD as a potential wincon rather than my only game plan, and with intent to cast the madness cards for value if I don't think WGD is going to go off, and probably some mass-reanimation for all the madness cards as another potential wincon, if my goal was to make a competitive anje that doesn't roll over and die to a single interactive spell.
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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

3drinks wrote:
4 years ago
Then they were playing far below the deck's power ceiling. Discarding for value is never going to be as strong as the ability to draw 50 cards for 0. That's the inherent problem with Anje as a commander. One strategy is just so far head and shoulders above the rest. It's Edgar all over again.

And that's fine. Every year the commander set has one. We all thought it was K'rrik. And he is, but the real offender is Anje.
The power ceiling for every commander in EDH is "hyper fast combo with sometimes stax and cheap control elements." So complaining that the power ceiling for a general is hyper fast combo is not really a new thing.

By not having her enable a combo they could have made her have some better casual appeal, surely. But since she does enable a combo she has a huge variety of approaches. Her power spectrum is very broad, like Derevi (and even Edric, though Edric is admittedly harder because his ideal mechanic is kinda made up of a narrow card pool).

Say her text was, instead of "if this card is a madness card, untap it" it was:

"If this card is the first madness card you discarded this turn, you may cast it without paying its cost," or "You may copy it if you cast it"

Now it's a grindy midrange card, but it's also very weak and the power ceiling is now lower.

I actually think that these designs are closer to the ideal than not -- cards like The Gitrog Monster who have very high power ceiling but also can be played a variety of ways. The problem with that design is that there's a lot of fails in trying to achieve that "best of both worlds" in a high power commander that can be built a lot of ways.

By contrast you get extremely bland designs like Kadena, slinking sorcerer -- forced into a narrow role that is very weak and boring. You have to play lots of morphs to enable her ability and oh look finding a way to play them with flash is pretty good. Hope you enjoy having your deck build itself. Unless you want to play competitive Kadena, in which case you have to ignore her rules text and play BUG consultation or BUG Scepter or whatever :P

If you give me the choice I'd much rather have a commander that builds itself for competitive but lends itself to different lower power approaches, than one who builds itself for a really mediocre strategy with a parasitic mechanic.

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Post by onering » 4 years ago

I think the problem with Anje is less that she enables a streamlined combo deck, but that she fails to enable a madness deck, and that if you try to push the madness deck you very quickly discover its better to use your mana on whatever you just drew rather than the madness cost, because most madness spells are crap and you need to run the crappy ones to make her untap ability relevant often enough. This quickly, again, leads you to cycling through your garbage madness spells to get to your best cards (the few good madness spells and whatever else you have). Now your sitting on a streamlined deck with limited wincons that you can hit very easily. If you go for good stuff, you risk running out of gas very easily, so going for combo is not only the best option, but the only non bad one. Thus, rather than just being a really good combo commander, she's a commander that actively pushes even new players into combo. You can cut Food Chain and have a strong Prossh deck. Anje is just laughably weak if you follow her signposts, unless you follow them to non interactive combo land. That's the problem.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

onering wrote:
4 years ago
You can cut Food Chain and have a strong Prossh deck. Anje is just laughably weak if you follow her signposts, unless you follow them to non interactive combo land. That's the problem.
I don't think I agree with this. I've seen a couple builds that used a mix of flashback, reanimation, fishing stuff out of the bin, and mostly decent madness cards (creatures, passable spells like increasing ambition), and discard payoffs.

Certainly capable of keeping pace with most of the 75% decks I see. Vulnerable to yard hate, but almost everything is these days.

I would say she is not particularly powerful but she's not laughably weak.

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Post by onering » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
onering wrote:
4 years ago
You can cut Food Chain and have a strong Prossh deck. Anje is just laughably weak if you follow her signposts, unless you follow them to non interactive combo land. That's the problem.
I don't think I agree with this. I've seen a couple builds that used a mix of flashback, reanimation, fishing stuff out of the bin, and mostly decent madness cards (creatures, passable spells like increasing ambition), and discard payoffs.

Certainly capable of keeping pace with most of the 75% decks I see. Vulnerable to yard hate, but almost everything is these days.

I would say she is not particularly powerful but she's not laughably weak.
Because that's a deck that doesn't follow her signposts. Her signposts are 1: play madness cards, because you need a critical mass of them for her to be any better than a simple looter, and 2: play things to draw into, because your going to cycle through those madness cards. You can build a decent guy based deck with her, sure, but its by ignoring the things about her that make her unique. The deck you described sounds like it would have been better with new Chainer at the helm, because at least he supports the reanimater angle while being a discard outlet for madness, and he comes in the same deck!

They set out to make her a madness commander and made her a combo commander instead. She's ok as a self discard commander but she's not the only option there (and I'd argue that Chainer does a better job of filling that role), but having madness displayed prominently on her card and her upside coming from running madness cards, it's pretty clear that she was designed to fill that niche and support that mechanic (especially since this year's focus for each deck was on mechanics). There are many ways she could have been better designed to better support the madness mechanic without pushing directly to cycling through your deck to find your combo, without changing her current function as a generic self discard commander. Make the untap come off of actually casting a spell with madness, or instead of an untap when you discard a madness card have her let you reduce the madness cost to 0. That would have been a lot more interesting and actually supported the mechanic instead of pushing you to ignore the text on the cards and treat them as having cycling 0.

And that's why I feel she's a design failure. What you see in the box is a commander for a madness deck, but doesn't deliver on it, coming up as laughably weak at that. Instead she works as a generic (and not particularly innovative) self discard commander and as an all in combo commander.

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Post by bobthefunny » 4 years ago

3drinks wrote:
4 years ago
Then they were playing far below the deck's power ceiling. Discarding for value is never going to be as strong as the ability to draw 50 cards for 0. That's the inherent problem with Anje as a commander. One strategy is just so far head and shoulders above the rest. It's Edgar all over again.

And that's fine. Every year the commander set has one. We all thought it was K'rrik. And he is, but the real offender is Anje.
I waited a while to respond to this, because I wanted to sleep on it and really consider it.

I think this argument is disingenuous at best. In Commander, the power ceiling of every deck is "combo by turn 3," and by that metric every deck that doesn't play flash hulk, ad naus tendrils, storm, lark, etc... is playing "below the deck's power ceiling." In fact, most power ceilings in this format involves actively NOT playing your Commander at all.

I think that a Commander being viable to playing a strategy below it's theoretical 'cieling' is not only fine, but perfectly par for the course in Commander.

===

A 'new' player coming to Anje would naturally see "madness" and want to build a madness deck.
  • Does Anje support a madness deck? Yes.
  • Does Anje have synnergy with a madness deck? Yes.
  • Does Anje 'play fair' in a madness deck? Yes.
To this end, Anje actually succeeds. She draws/loots you closer to madness cards, enables you to play those cards for those madness discounts (which is already nice value), and cantrips them as well, essentially. Now, as players play the deck, there are situations in which as people play the deck, they will realize that they can discard situational cards to try and find another answer - that's just good play development - however it does start to eventually warp the mentality to "this card can be something better" which will eventually lead towards madness cards being discard for free 'cycling' - but even then, it's still quite a step to make to the "madness cards are only to cycle for the combo." Lets face it, even there, there's better ways to find a combo.

No one said that Riku of Two Reflections is a broken deck because of Palinchron or World Gorger possibilities, or Animar because of Cloudstone Curio. Broken stuff is possible with many Commanders. For a card to really be a failure of design, it's very design needs to warp how it interacts with its own design.

For that, I feel the poster child of failure of design is Gitrog Monster. It's very design makes you want to play fetch lands, and cycling lands, which leads you to playing Life from the loam. In fact, it's own design fundamentally breaks and causes awkward issues during a normal discard step. Life from the loam, with no other changes already fundamentally changes how the deck plays. Eventually adding Dakmor Salvage alone allows you to mill the entire deck.

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Post by DirkGently » 4 years ago

I think it's fair to say that anje's design should have done a better job of motivating the actual casting of madness cards. But I think it's nonsense to say that she'll inevitably create combo decks, or even really particularly push toward them for the vast majority of players. Players are going to want to play anje because they want to play madness because it's cool. Most LGS commander players aren't going to skip out on casting the madness cards even when it's correct to do so, and most players aren't going to iterate on their decks to the extent that it becomes a combo deck or anything close. I think more likely is that they cut the madness spells for other stuff and eventually switch commanders entirely.
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Post by 3drinks » 4 years ago

All it needed was a chunk of 20+ good madness cards that are actually built for the format, there's no incentive in casting fiery tempers and ichor slicks in this format but something like

2RB
Sorcery
Choose one;
- Exile all cards in target players graveyard
- Destroy all artifacts target player controls
Madness RB

And similar cards like that, that the format could benefit from.

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Post by DirkGently » 4 years ago

Ichor slick kinda sucks but fiery temper is great. Cantrip lightning bolt? Hell yeah. There are lots of bad ones but fiery temper is almost certainly top 10 best. Might even be #1 tbh, it's just so cheap. Even a combo version would probably want to cast it.
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Gollum - Lobelia - Minthara - Plargg2 - Solphim - Otharri - Graaz - Ratchet - Soundwave - Slicer - Gale - Rootha - Kagemaro - Blorpityblorpboop - Kayla - SliverQueen - Ivy - Falco - Gluntch - Charlatan/Wilson - Garth - Kros - Anthousa - Shigeki - Light-Paws - Lukka - Sefris - Ebondeath - Rokiric - Garth - Nixilis - Grist - Mavinda - Kumano - Nezahal - Mavinda - Plargg - Plargg - Extus - Plargg - Oracle - Kardur - Halvar - Tergrid - Egon - Cosima - Halana+Livio - Jeska+Falthis+Obosh - Yeva - Akiri+Zirda - Lady Sun - Nahiri - Korlash - Overlord+Zirda - Chisei - Athreos2 - Akim - Cazur+Ukkima - Otrimi - Otrimi - Kalamax - Ayli+Lurrus - Clamilton - Gonti - Heliod2 - Ayula - Thassa2 - Gallia - Purphoros2 - Rankle - Uro - Rayami - Gargos - Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa - Ashling1 - Angus - Arcum - Talrand - Chainer - Higure - Kumano - Scion - Teferi1 - Uyo - Sisters
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote
Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena
Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6

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3drinks
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Post by 3drinks » 4 years ago

In a vacuum it's great yeah when things come together. But when it doesn't, and there are many times where it doesn't - then you're lookin awfully silly spending retail on that.

Which is kinda my point.

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Commander
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DirkGently
My wins are unconditional
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Post by DirkGently » 4 years ago

I mean all you need basically in Anje (a 3-drop) on the board, the card in hand, and R open. I've not played her yet but that doesn't seem hard to achieve. And honestly even a 3-mana bolt, if it's killing a combo piece or something, is not the worst. It's not worth the card, but as an effect it's reasonable.

I'm sure there are times in a cEDH situation where you don't have the mana to spare or whatever, but in anything shy of that I have a hard time believing you wouldn't want to cast it almost always.

Mostly it just seems like a weird choice if you're trying to pick examples of terrible madness cards. Ichor slick is p bad because it's overcosted since it's giving you a way to cycle it yourself, which anje doesn't need, so fair enough. And there are lots of other awful madness cards - brain gorgers, that +1/+0 fs combat trick, the +2/+2 aura, etc, so the point is easy to make that many madness cards frequently aren't worth casting. I'm just confused why you'd pick fiery temper of all cards as your example for BAD madness.

Based on previous precons, though, you couldn't seriously expect them to print 20 new madness cards though. Anyway that almost feels lamer, it's less "hey, we gave you a commander to make all these old cards playable" and more "hey, we made you a new commander AND all the cards that work with it." Doesn't seem like much fun to build when all the good cards already come with.
Perm Decks
Phelddagrif - Kaervek - Golos - Zirilan

Flux Decks
Gollum - Lobelia - Minthara - Plargg2 - Solphim - Otharri - Graaz - Ratchet - Soundwave - Slicer - Gale - Rootha - Kagemaro - Blorpityblorpboop - Kayla - SliverQueen - Ivy - Falco - Gluntch - Charlatan/Wilson - Garth - Kros - Anthousa - Shigeki - Light-Paws - Lukka - Sefris - Ebondeath - Rokiric - Garth - Nixilis - Grist - Mavinda - Kumano - Nezahal - Mavinda - Plargg - Plargg - Extus - Plargg - Oracle - Kardur - Halvar - Tergrid - Egon - Cosima - Halana+Livio - Jeska+Falthis+Obosh - Yeva - Akiri+Zirda - Lady Sun - Nahiri - Korlash - Overlord+Zirda - Chisei - Athreos2 - Akim - Cazur+Ukkima - Otrimi - Otrimi - Kalamax - Ayli+Lurrus - Clamilton - Gonti - Heliod2 - Ayula - Thassa2 - Gallia - Purphoros2 - Rankle - Uro - Rayami - Gargos - Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa - Ashling1 - Angus - Arcum - Talrand - Chainer - Higure - Kumano - Scion - Teferi1 - Uyo - Sisters
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote
Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena
Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6

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