#BEFORE they accidentally get invested in Chaos Sorcery

[mathlann]

A Thousand Sons completed! Magnus' rights removed for being lame!

[housebeleren]

Random Commander Challenge: Arjun, the Shifting Flame

The last monthly deck I built before the pandemic, Arjun the Shifting Flame is one I had considered many times. It’s an interesting design in a vacuum, putting Mindmoil on a creature, but Red/Blue decks so often go in a wheels direction, it didn’t feel all that innovative to do exactly that. That said, it is effective, and it’s an archetype that has continued to get support in recent years, as more cantrips, card draw spells, and wheels are printed in nearly every set. So, with that in mind, I decided to go for it.

Art: Willian Murai

Theme

As mentioned, Red/Blue wheels isn’t exactly innovative, but it’s a strong archetype with tons of support, and Arjun undeniably pushes that direction. For this deck, in trying to build something flavorful and in a 75% power range, the trick wouldn’t be what cards to include, since there are so many. The real challenge would be what cards not to include. So to do that, I put a couple of guardrails on myself.

First, I wanted the deck to really feel “sphinxlike”. By that, I mean I wanted the cards to evoke the theme. So, if I can include a cantrip like Omen, I’m going to do so over a card like Shimmer of Possibility. Both are two mana Blue cantrips, but Omen is so flavorful that it makes the cut where the other doesn’t. 

Second, I decided to make this a “wheels for me” deck, and explicitly not a “wheels for everyone” deck. And the main reason to do that was that I didn’t want to make this a deck that ran lines of play like “Narset, Parter of Veils. Wheel of Fortune. Pass.” That’s such a miserable way to win with this type of deck that I just didn’t want to go there. So, with just a couple exceptions, I kept the wheels to myself, which meant mostly sticking to cantrips, and letting Arjun do the heavy lifting for me.

Card Groups

Cantrips & Draw - This is the big one. This deck wants a pile of cheap cantrips and card draw spells. I included such 24 Instants & Sorceries in my build, the vast majority being one and two drops. And that’s on top of other, more expensive card draw options. You really want to churn through this deck rapidly, and cantrips are the best way to do this. Pick your favorites, but a few noteworthy inclusions I like are Faithless Looting, Desperate Ravings, and Radical Idea (since they all work twice), Fists of Flame (since it’s also a potential win-con), Obsessive Search (since you can discard it to some of your other spells & cast it off Madness), and Gitaxian Probe (since it’s free).

Enablers - These are cards that help you out with your theme, and there are three categories in this build. One are effects that make casting Instants & Sorceries cheaper, which allows you to cast more in one turn. Baral, Chief of Compliance & Goblin Electromancer are good examples here. The second are triggered effects that help you draw extra cards, which is helpful since several of the cantrips don’t actually leave you up a card, but just break even. Alhammarret’s Archive & Jorin En, Ruin Diver are two of my favorites for this group. And the third category are copy effects, that let you double up your spells, such as Expansion/Explosion and Increasing Vengeance. These are useful if you need an extra boost, and can also be combined for an unexpected tertiary win condition with Ral, Storm Conduit.

Ramp - Arjun is a 6 drop who doesn’t do anything until you can drop more mana, and this deck wants to win by casting a large number of spells in one turn (usually after you untap with Arjun). So you need a lot of ramp. Mana rocks are your general best bet, and you’ll want a few that can tap for double mana, as well as some that can be traded in for cards later, like Mind Stone & Commander’s Sphere. A few rituals are also helpful for the endgame, so pick your favorites and add them in.

Disruption - You’ll want a touch of disruption to ensure your win isn’t shut down. Mainly, this will be in the form of counterspells. Given the mana hungry nature of the deck, “free” counters like Force of Will, Force of Negation, Pact of Negation, and Fierce Guardianship are all good choices, but they’re not exactly budget. Replace them with cheap counters like Swan Song, Negate, & Arcane Denial as needed. Chaos Warp, Cyclonic Rift, and other ways to turn off hate cards are essential as well. Finally, my other favorite card for this deck is Possibility Storm, which works a lot as proactive disruption. Arjun doesn’t really care what he’s casting, just that something gets cast so he can keep on wheeling. But it’ll disrupt most of your opponent’s carefully laid plans, thwarting their wins and their removal, while letting your plans run unaffected. All you need is Arjun and one win condition out, and Possibility Storm will do work.

Win Conditions - This is the fun part. There are so many ways to win with an Arjun deck. The best and most obvious are cards like Niv-Mizzet, Parun, The Locust God, and Psychosis Crawler, all of which trigger on card draws, and can win in a single turn if given a chance. All of them go in the deck. Niv-Mizzet, Parun is a particular fun combo with Curiosity or Ophidian Eye, letting you burn your opponents directly or allowing you to draw your entire deck, setting you up for a win using Laboratory Maniac, Thassa’s Oracle, or Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, so throw whichever of those three you have into the pile as well. I also included two milling win conditions with Psychic Corrosion & Sphinx’s Tutelage, which feel appropriate given the theme, but be sure to use them judiciously so you don’t accidentally give more gas to graveyard decks.

In addition to these main groups, there are some staple cards for the archetype that are worth including. Talrand is always good in a spell heavy deck and can lead to a slower win. Thousand-Year Storm is costly, but will definitely win you the game if you untap with it and Arjun both on board. Ral, Storm Conduit is all-around useful and can unexpectedly win with two copy spells in hand. And one or two ways to retrieve Instants & Sorceries from your graveyard can also be useful, so pick your favorite staples and go to town. You might opt for some Boots/Greaves style protection for Arjun if that appeals to you, or you can just stick with counterspells.

Play Style

This deck is pretty linear, but isn’t necessarily simple to pilot. Your goal is to untap with Arjun plus one of your main win conditions on board, then rip through your deck as much as you can using cheap cantrips & letting Arjun’s ability just sprint through as many cards as possible.

The first few turns, you’ll just want to ramp as much as you can. Play some mana rocks and keep a low profile. This deck wants to not be perceived as a threat for as long as possible. Cards like Goblin Electromancer are great here, because they’re good setup but are non-threatening.

Once you get to the 6+ mana range, start looking for opportunities to resolve your a win condition (Niv-Mizzet, The Locust God, Psychosis Crawler, etc) or Arjun, ensuring you can protect your investment once it’s down. Maybe this means getting to 8 mana so you can hold up a counterspell, maybe it means digging for Lightning Greaves first, or maybe it means stalling as your enemies use their disruption on each other. This is where it’s critically important to read the table and try to anticipate disruption your opponents may throw at you.

Hopefully your enemies have spent their removal & disruption on other players coming out the gate faster than you, so you can safely land a win con or two and get Arjun on the table. Once you’re there, go to town with cantrips and cheap spells, and watch your opponents cry. Hopefully. That’s the goal.

Conclusion

All told, I had a blast with Arjun. The thing that will almost certainly frustrate you is not having enough mana to do what you need, given how expensive of a commander it is, plus the fact that most of your best win conditions are equally as expensive. But, with enough mana rocks in the build, it should be doable. And when it goes off, it goes off with a bang.

As for budget, there are a few pieces you definitely need to make it work, but the good news is most of them are replaceable and only a few of them are in the $10-$20 range. (The Locust God & Alhammaret’s Archive come to mind.) Of course, you can trick it out with the super expensive free counterspells, which are excellent here, but you can also make do with the cheaper counterspells and a little patience. On my build, I only spent a little over $10 on cards I didn’t already have spare copies of, which is about the best I’ve ever done in this series. Overall, I think it’s definitely possible to make a very fun Arjun deck at a reasonable price.

Of course, you can always go the way of Arjun wheels for the whole table, in which case you’re looking at a much more expensive build. For that much meaner build, you’ll want Narset, Parter of Veils & numerous other cards in the $5-$20 range like Teferi’s Puzzle Box, Echo of Eons, Reforge the Soul, Day’s Undoing, etc, so it’ll be harder to assemble that build on a budget. And of course, you could always add extra turn spells to the mix just to jack the price up even higher.

But on the whole, no matter what your budget, I think there’s an Arjun deck out there for every price point, and I love that. I won 1 out of 4 games played with the deck, so it’s about in-line with most of these builds I’ve done so far. In other words, a pretty good success in my book.

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep

Science Fiction (Kairos): Congratulations to Analog for coming up with a more concise and even lamer award name than the Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. Then again, that award was created because Burns accidentally emasculated someone. The Astounding Award specifically recognizes emasculation.

Cinema (Walker’s Retreat): This is not just corporate fan fiction. This is everything that fan fiction routinely gets shat upon put forth front and center, and passed off as “original”. Yes, right down to all sorts of contradictory narrative incompetence and Very SMRT Boy signalling. Yes, we get exactly what Rey Sue was going to get at the end: a galaxy where she’s the only Force User, making The Force Is Female a literal fact. We get the last of the Original Trilogy notables dredged up and abused in service to Rey Sue before being removed from the stage.

Gaming (Niche Gamer): Frozenbyte has released another new trailer for their upcoming space sandbox game,  Starbase. The new trailer, which you can find above, shows off the physics and mechanics involved in creating your own starships in the game.

Here’s a rundown of the game.

Fiction (Jon Mollison): As part of the on-going effort to challenge indy writers to do better, let’s take a look at two of the most popular guidelines: “Avoid passive voice,” and, “Show don’t tell.”  To do so, check out the masterful opening to The Scarlet Citadel, by the king of sword and sorcery, Robert E. Howard.

Television (Wasteland and Sky): Now, am I arguing sitcoms are on the level of high art that have been usurped by pretenders looking for its glorious crown? Hardly. What I’m arguing is that it’s another medium that was usurped and replaced by those who wanted to use it as a weapon, and then destroyed.

Sword and Sorcery (DMR Books): When “The Shadow Kingdom” by Robert E. Howard appeared in the pages of Weird Tales, no one would have guessed that it would continue to provide inspiration for fantasy authors for ninety years and counting. This remarkable story is often pointed to as the beginning of the sword and sorcery genre, although this opinion is not unanimous.

D&D Gaming (Polygon): One of the most delightful surprises of E3 2019 was the announcement of Baldur’s Gate 3. Die-hard fans of Dungeons & Dragons and computer role-playing games in general were ecstatic to learn that Larian Studios, creators of the excellent Divinity: Original Sin franchise, will be handling the project. Those same fans were notably confused, however, by the in-fiction timeline of Baldur’s Gate 3.

H. P. Lovecraft (M.C. Tuggle): How is it possible that the feverish works of a writer who died in poverty and obscurity more than 80 years ago still matter?

And yet they do matter, and to a growing number of fans and admirers. Here are three recent takes on Lovecraft’s continuing popularity, all from vastly different points of view, though they agree Howard Phillips Lovecraft has something to say to modern audiences.

Biography (Gardnerffox.com): This book is far overdue! Why wasn’t this book written twenty years ago? The comic book and pulp paperback industries, primarily American, brought the majority of what the world consumes as entertainment, today. It should go without being said that most of the people creating for these two industries would not have known the impact their work would have on generation upon generation of creatives.

Fiction & RPG (Cirsova): In the past, I’ve made the dangerous claim that good short fiction, like the kind you read in the pulps or in Appendix N, poses a threat to a product-driven OSR whose focus has moved away from systems and into settings materials and modules. My reasoning is that a short story is far easier to digest and build a game around than your typical Gazetteer-style setting product with its oodles of townships, kingdoms, persons of personage, blah blah blah.

RPG (Rlyehreviews): One of the issues with RuneQuest—recently and beautifully republished as RuneQuest Classic by Chaosim, Inc.—was what it hinted at and did not provide. It hinted at a setting, that of Glorantha, which we know of today in all of its richness and detail through numerous roleplaying games and supplements.

Fiction (Adventures Fantastic): Jack Vance was born on this date, August 28, in 1916.  We lost him on May 26, 2013.  Vance was a master of both science fiction and fantasy.  He often wrote in a highly stylistic manner.  I first read Vance in The Hugo Winners, edited by Isaac Asimov, when I was a freshman in high school.  That volume contained “The Dragon Masters” and “The Last Castle”. 

D&D (Skulls in the Stars): As long as I’m still on an old school kick, let me try and catch up with all my posts from twitter! Part 1 of Old School Dungeons & Dragons on the blog can be read here.

Without further ado, here’s part 2! N4: Treasure Hunt (1986), by Aaron Allston. The first thing you may notice when looking at the cover is that this module is unusual in that it is for 0th level characters! What is the deal with that?

Gaming (Postmodern Pulps): Today I just wanted to highlight the wargame I am most invested in on an emotional level – Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000. For those who don’t know what it is – I’ll do this REAL QUICK – a bunch of British tabletop miniatures folks had a set of wargaming rules called Warhammer. It had armies of Elves and Dwarfs and guys with swords and pikes, and orcs and goblins, even skeletons and ghouls and “chaos” warriors and monsters.

D&D (Brain Leakage): Last week, I talked a little about the corporate same-y-ness that overtook later editions of D&D, and how it differed from the kitchen sink, anything goes weirdness of 1st Edition AD&D. That post was written largely in response to a recent episode of Geek Gab.

Macabre Science Fiction (Old Style Tales): After 1906 Wells’ speculative fiction output had rapidly dried, and was only sporadic (and never particularly effective, unique, or good) after that point. During the fifteen years that he did write speculative fiction (which, to clarify, includes sci-fi, weird tales, ghost stories, horror, mystery, fantasy, alternate history, apocalyptic fiction, utopian fiction, and paranormal: all genres which Wells contributed in sizeable ways), Wells wrote nearly two dozen short stories of horror and the supernatural, most of which were of high literary merit as well as being entertaining. fter 1906 Wells’ speculative fiction output had rapidly dried, and was only sporadic (and never particularly e, unique, after that point.

Science Fiction (Tellers of Weird Tales): As I have thought more on it, I see that a distinction can be made between two types of projection, speculation, or extrapolation in science fiction:

First are things that don’t change. These are easy to project into the future because what is true today will also be true tomorrow. I’m thinking specifically here of human nature. If you write convincingly about human nature, your story can never be obsolete. Witness the Iliad and the Odyssey, composed nearly three millennia ago and still comprehendible to us today because its people are real.  

Tolkien (Alas Not Me): If much of what we have seen in the first three chapters of Book Four traces a descent for Frodo, the next three chapters will show his path turn upward again. For the pity he showed Gollum is Frodo at his best, and confirms the good opinion Gandalf and Bilbo have of him. Soon, though, and in the name of his quest he uses the Ring to dominate a Gollum whom he would not kill and could not set loose. 

Fiction (Postmodern Pulps):  I wanted to highlight a series of fiction anthologies being put out by Wolfpack Publishing, and curated/edited by Paul Bishop, a retired LAPD detective and venerable novelist. The first anthology, Pattern of Behavior I read as soon as it was released, and while not every one of the stories was entirely my bag, so to speak, all of them were well-crafted tales from highly-talented authors.

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