Making Magic in the Arena - Orzhov Aristocrats

Magic players who know we personally know that I enjoy removing killing creatures and clearing boards of creatures. In my EDH playgroup, I'm known as the guy who tends to have the removal options needed to take out big threats.

But what I like even more than that is killing my own creatures and gaining benefits from their deaths. More commonly known as an Aristocrats strategy, it's a deck type that I've always found interesting, and that I love trying to build and pilot.

My decklist is here.

However, I was also credit Strictly Better MTG for this deck, because the fundamental core of it comes from his YouTube video where he discusses his version of the build. This may be my own spin on it, but I'd be wrong not to attribute him credit where it is due.

Magic: The Gathering - Commander Night Playback - Werewolf Tribal and K'rrik in Style

Another Saturday night has passed, and that means my playgroup had another round of Commander together. This time, we managed to get in two games in. Though we probably could have gotten more in, had we not been too tired to continue, but it's pretty to go on a high note than force an exhausted person to keep playing.

Detective Work - LA Noire - Finale

At last, we arrived at the end of Cole Phelps's career as an LAPD detective and the game. With it, we fully uncover the extent of the conspiracy that's been unraveling ever since his fall from grace, into the cold, uncaring arms of the Arson desk.

Between him and his former comrade-in-arms, Jack Kelso, it seems all but assured that those responsible for the fires and murders will be brought to justice. How will they do it? With some good ol'-fashioned Detective Work, we'll find out.

Magic: The Gathering - Commander Night Playback - Marchesa the Black Rose Theft Deck ($300 Budget)

Usually, in my Cockatrice Commander/EDH playgroup, we have a series of matches in which we run any number of different decks and play test out the new decks we've built over the week.

Last night though, we only had a single match that lasted about 2 hours. There were multiple reasons for this, which largely come down to the decks that were being run. In particular, I wanted to talk about my own deck, which was based on Marchesa, the Black Rose.

3 lines of text that go great together

Making Magic in the Arena - Temur Elemental Ramp

It's no secret that ever since Risen Reef was revealed in the new Core Set 2020, players have had their eye on Elementals as a tribe. As a 1/1 that either adds a card to our hand when it comes out, it would have already been a decent card. But the fact that other Elementals, including other copies of Risen Reef, also trigger the effect again, the potential is too real to pass up.

And so, with Omnath, Locus of the Roil giving us an obvious direction to go, we'll give the Temur color combo a try with this Elemental Ramp deck.

Detective Work - LA Noire - Part 9

And so it has finally come to this: Cole Phelps, on the pursuit of a conspiracy involving Arson, Murder, and good ol'-fashioned Hollywood grift to the tune of billions, has been completely shut out by the LAPD itself, corrupt as it is.

If he wishes to finally get to the truth, and expose this plot for what it is, he needs to cast aside old grudges and seek out the help of his old rival, Jack Kelso. Aside from DLC cases, Jack will take his rightful place as primary protagonist for most of the game from here on out.

Magic: The Gathering - Commander Night Playback - Commander 2019 Precons

As many of you may know, every Saturday night I play Commander with a few of my friends on Cockatrice. Normally, I take to Twitter to go through the decks I played with and won with, talking about some of the combos and big plays I performed.

However, this week is a bit different. Instead of our own decks, we played with the recently releases decklists for the pre-constructed Commander 2019 decks. Normally, we get in several games on Commander in a night, but this night only had time for a single game, since the one match we played lasted 3.5 hours.

With this in mind, I'll be going over my thoughts on each of the decks, and what big plays each of them performed. Further, the thread will be posted here as a blog post, rather than a tweet thread. I might just do that for future posts as well, but I'm undecided as of now.

Making Magic in the Arena - Sultai Reanimator

One of the best parts about this new Core Set 2020 is the way that it's opened up a ton of new possibility space for deck building in standard, to the point where I get to try new strategies that I've always wanted to, but could never get to work quite right.

This reanimator deck is one example. There haven't been many of either good resurrection targets, or spells in Standard while I've been playing. With the introduction of Core Set (and War of the Spark), there are enough of each that a viable deck can be built.

The decklist can be found here.

Detective Work - LA Noire - Part 8

After a long and arduous journey, Cole Phelps finally arrives at the Arson deck: The final desk of his career as an LAPD detective.

And with some solid Detective Work, we'll be able to help him through it.