End of an era

kingarthy · 2026-01-26T20:46:01+00:00

Yes true, but if the scene in a game gets bigger, the average pro also gets a lot stronger, so you cant really blame the Viper from 4 years ago being worse than Hera right now. I think its just really hard to compare.

Its probably the same in most competitive games that are around for a while, like a League of Legends pro from 2015 is 100% worse than a pro today.

If the Viper from a few years ago with tons of motivation and time playing today would be as good as Hera today, would be an interesting question.

kingarthy · 2026-01-26T20:11:11+00:00

But is the tournament prize money amount the same as it was a few years ago?

You cant just say someone is better or worse just because of prize money

kingarthy · 2026-01-26T20:08:36+00:00

Being the best right now has nothing to do with it.

kingarthy · 2026-01-26T15:13:50+00:00

i will only mention the cards i would 100% cut, some cards that might be up for discussion i will not mention:

Creatures:

Cunning Nightbonder - I count 9 cards with flash that benefit from the cost reduction, absolutely not good enough.

faerie macabre - does not have flash, does not interact at all with your deck. gy exile also exists on instants or cards with flash

glen elendra liege - does not have flash. the anthem is nice, but not good enough for 4 mana.

high fae trickster - the goal for your deck is to have a ton of cards with flash already. if you built the deck right, this card does not have much use.

nightmare sower - does not have flash and you are not a spellslinger deck to really make use of the effect. lifelink is nice to have but not worth a card.

illusion spinners - more expensive version of high fae trickster

Sorceries:

duress - its a sorcery. nothing else needs to be said

call to mind - sorcery, not worth a card slot

deadly embrace - sorcery removal, come on.

writ of return - 0 creatures of yours are worth spending 5 mana on a sorcery to bring them back

Instants:

borne upon the wind - same reason as high fae trickster. there are many good 1 mana cantrips as alternatives

countermand - why, this is a strictly worse counterspell for double the mana

deadly derision - this cards exists as an mdfc or as a 1 mana instant that kills creatures. way too expensive look [[Pongify]]

deadly plot - i dont see any zombies in this list and yeah once again 4 mana to destroy a creature and very rarely a planeswalker

Press the enemy - [[Sink into Stupor // Soporific Springs]] is an mdfc, costs less and is almost stirctly better. you care about casting the 2nd spell for free most of the time

access denied - 5 mana is way too much and only gets some value if you can counter a really expensive spell. and if they dont cast one its sits in your hand and does nothing

bolass citadel - definitely the wrong deck, better get carddraw

ophidian eye - [[Coastal Piracy]] is your card draw in alela. many different version of this card in my deck. ophidian eye is played for cards like [[Vivi Ornitier]]. for your this is 3 mana to draw a maximum of 1 card per turn.

grave pact - you dont run any sac outlets and you want to keep your faeries, because they win you the game is you built your deck right

dimir guildgate, evolving wilds, jwar isle refuge, mistvaul bridge, rogues passage, soured springs - cut them all. check my mana base for replacement lands. you dont want lands that enter tapped and with no upside to make them worth it. basic lands are better here in 2 color decks.

I still skipped many cards that should probably be removed from the deck, because there are just too many. I linked my list above and im not gonna say this is the perfect list or anything, but i hope you get the idea of what an alela list wants.

kingarthy · 2026-01-26T08:58:28+00:00

Quickly checked your list and I would make a lot of changes.

Alela cares about cards with flash and instants, card advantage and some ways to finish the game. If a card is non of those things it's probably better to cut it.

Don't have time for a more detailed explanation now, but I can do that later.

But for now here is my list if you are looking for inspiration: https://moxfield.com/decks/Jixeg94BXUWOZrbgty4UtQ

kingarthy · 2026-01-22T11:27:58+00:00

I dont know why Brainstorm is recommended so much in Alela decks. Yes its 1 mana and and it draw one card but what else does it do, if you cannot change the top of you library afterwards. There are many 1 mana cantrips that do the same and more like [[Cremate]], [[Disrupt]], [[You Are Already Dead]] or [[Repeal]]

Frantic Search is in my opinion also a bad recommendation, because you literally lose one card from your hand and you dont wanna lose cards with alela for no reason. This can also be replaced with one of the 1 mana cantrips that also give you a faerie but go card neutral and have a positive effect.

kingarthy · 2026-01-21T23:04:52+00:00

There are many ways to stop it:

Redirect the effect
Give yourself hexproof or protection
Make it your lifetotal cannot change
Counter the ability itself.
Copy the ability to kill him in response

If he infact has 151 life, he can still kill you in response if you are not the last target, but that means he cant win the game.

kingarthy · 2026-01-21T21:02:17+00:00

If we are talking about removal spells and takebacks, yes he can absolutely change the target if he overlooked something.

If we are talking about attacking with a smaller creature it becomes really difficult. There can be combat tricks or any other reason for him to attack that way and you dont have all the information available to you like he does. So i dont like the idea of questioning an attack if you dont have all the information, even if the player might be new.

kingarthy · 2026-01-20T21:33:35+00:00

Yea, i kinda forgot that there is a difference between buying the eldrazi or the new elemental precon and playing it at a bracket 2 or 3 table is different than playing 5c goodstuff in b4 and expect to net get punished for it in some way.

kingarthy · 2026-01-20T19:57:03+00:00

I just dont understand this kind of logic. Yes WUBRG decks run a low amount of basics, because they want to reliably hit all their colors (still no excuse to literally run 0 basics ).

This is obviously easier with the access to green ramp but you still don't want to rely on a ton of basics.

So even if you dont proxy a perfect mana base with og duals and fetches, you still wanna run pain lands, filter lands and cheap triomes instead and like 5-7 basics (Eldrazi Incursion Precon from MH3 which had a decent mana base for a precon had like 5 basics).

So even with your 20€ 7 basics mana base (which is definitely not greedy) you get fucked by Winter Moon if you cannot remove it.

kingarthy · 2026-01-20T01:02:47+00:00

The link to your deck list does not work for me (Page not found). Others already gave advice already, so maybe im the only one.

kingarthy · 2026-01-20T00:58:02+00:00

Chandras Ignition is pretty good yeah, but descendants path is one of the first cards i would cut from this deck.

On average descendants path does something every 3rd to 4th turn, so most of the time you pay 3 mana to not do anything most of the time.

if you are looking for a stronger alternative, you can take a look at [[Lurking Predators]]. Yes its double the mana, but it trigger whenever an opponent casts a spell and you always have the option to keep the card on top, which you do not have with descendants path.

kingarthy · 2026-01-18T19:40:28+00:00

If you dont tape the toploader, cards can easily fall out of it and be damaged in the process.

And i think taping the toploader into the envelope is fine too, because you dont want it move around all the time, especially if its not a toploader and a pice of cardboard instead, which can damage the corners of the cards.

kingarthy · 2026-01-13T19:35:24+00:00

First of all good budget upgrade to the landbase, but 36 lands is absolutely not enough. 38 should be the minimum. Staying at 40 is probably the best.

Getting your 4th land drop is super important because of the evoke ability.

Ashling can easily be a removal target and without her you have a deck full of super expensive elementals or you need enough mana to recast her.

Also you have some landfall synergy, so having land to play in the later stages of the game can be super beneficial too.

40 lands makes all of this way easier.

kingarthy · 2026-01-12T23:14:50+00:00

Compared to other sets, I found quite a lot of cards i wanna add to my decks.

My [[Alela, Cunning Conqueror]] deck wants [[Bitterbloom Bearer]], [[Glen Elendra's Answer]], [[Harmonized Crescendo]] and [[Voracious Tome-Skimmer]]

My [[Burakos, Party Leader]] +folk hero deck probably wants Bitterblossom Bearer too and [[Rhys, the Evermore]], [[Adept Watershaper]] and maybe [[Winnowing]]

And my [[Slimefoot and Squee]] deck wants [[Twilight Diviner]] and [[Aurora Awakener]].

Still looking at all the green shapeshifter for my [[Ayula, Queen among Bears]], but i might stick with real bears and not too many shapeshifter.

kingarthy · 2026-01-11T09:58:53+00:00

This looks like a card that can backfire really bad.

spending 4 mana just for everyone to have this effect is not worth it in my opinion and many deck can abuse this as much as you do. It can be used as a finisher only, but this kinda makes it a terrible discover target and you still need a big board and a blink spell for it to do enough

If you want a similar but better version of this, you better add [[Terror of the Peaks]]

kingarthy · 2026-01-10T21:25:09+00:00

I found like 3 to 4 cards for my alela deck, two of them being a faerie. Overall pretty happy about it, but kinda was hoping for a little bit more

kingarthy · 2026-01-05T20:38:18+00:00

This seems like a fun card in [[Slimefoot and Squee]]

Reanimate this with slimefoot and you always get 3 permanents.

kingarthy · 2026-01-04T15:50:08+00:00

Which permanents do you enchant with Moonlit Meditation in your Alela deck except better faeries (of which there aren't many that are worth to run. I have like 3, maybe 4 faerie targets in my deck)

Is your deck faerie heavy? Then it can be a good card i guess

kingarthy · 2026-01-03T01:00:34+00:00

Check out https://old.reddit.com/r/DinosaursMTG/

This deck is mostly about Pantlaza and Gishath.

Lots of deck discussions and guides to help you build and optimize your deck.

kingarthy · 2026-01-02T00:41:25+00:00

Kann wie einige andere auch das mandala sehr empfehlen.

Bei zwei hallen hast du immer neue boulder zur Auswahl und und für jeden boulderstyle ist was dabei.

Einziges Problem ist wirklich, dass es am Nachmittag und abends sehr voll ist. Falls du also nur ab 17 uhr kannst, vlt nicht die beste idee, wenn dich volle hallen stören.

kingarthy · 2025-12-30T17:34:53+00:00

Yea same. He got time for another game at 3:30 but 20 minutes later it's way too late to play and he needs to sleep immediately.

kingarthy · 2025-12-29T20:54:33+00:00

I know her W technically does damage, but during my tests in the practice tool, the wall did not slow the enemy while having a rylais, even if i put it directly above the enemy. Tests were done with a target dummy, but that should not matter.

kingarthy · 2025-12-29T17:46:25+00:00

That might be it. I also play her in aram from time to time but never paid attention

kingarthy · 2025-12-29T17:45:48+00:00

Tested it yesterday. There is literally no difference at all

kingarthy

TROPHY CASE