Ixalan

This collection of decks is based on Ixalan, which a plane of existence in Magic: the Gathering, by Wizards of the Coast.

Heroes

The Brazen Coalition

The Brazen Coalition are primarily damage-dealers with a smattering of utility. The cards use 💰 to represent loot, treasure, and the need to pay your pirate crew. The deck has a large number of Crew targets. Each Crew has an 💰 effect, which is an active ability at approximately the same power level as an innate power on a hero card. The deck has several ways to activate 💰 effects, though the most common way is with the innate power of two of the three hero variants. A few ships and a fun collection of one-shots round out the deck.

Huatli

Huatli is a hero who summons dinosaurs and rides them into battle. There are three types of dinosaurs in her deck: normal dinosaurs, "loyal" dinosaurs, and Elder dinosaurs. Normal dinosaurs automatically attack each turn with text like "the non-hero target with the lowest HP" instead of giving you full control of their damage. When they take damage, you must discard a card or return them to your hand, representing how hard it is to control the dinosaurs in battle. This allows the dinosaurs to have unusually high HP for hero targets. The two "loyal" dinosaurs are creatures that Huatli has a particularly strong bond with. They do not require discarding to keep in play and have more reasonable HP for hero targets, but have less powerful effects.

Finally, there are six Elder dinosaurs. Five of them share the same basic pattern of dealing each target 2 damage at the end of your turn, giving you some powerful additional effect, and requiring a two-card discard upkeep to keep in play. They have massive hit points for a target in a hero deck, but the damage they deal to hero targets combined with their upkeep cost makes them unsustainable to keep control of for long. Finally, the last Elder dinosaur has an even more powerful effect that is pure upside, but it requires you to sacrifice one Elder dinosaur each turn, so you will not realistically be able to keep it in play for more than a turn or two.

Other than dinosaurs, there are a variety of one-shots in the deck that generally help you get dinosaurs in play or reward you for having dinosaurs in play, plus an ongoing card and an equipment card to make your dinosaurs stronger and to make it easier to keep them in play.

The River Heralds

The River Heralds are usually a utility-heavy damage-dealer, with the ratio changing depending on your hero variant. The cards use 🌊 to represent the strength of their connection to water and nature. 🌊 abilities are passive, like The Naturalist, and most cards increase their power if you are able to activate 🌊 effects. The ability to activate 🌊 effects is controlled by ongoings that either have heavy activation requirements or a limited time frame, so your power ebbs and flows in relatively predictable ways. The deck has a variety of Merfolk targets and an Ongoing subtheme. To avoid making the deck too buildup-heavy like Benchmark, many of the ongoings are inherently temporary and function like one-shots.

Villain

Vona

Vona is a leader in the Legion of Dusk, which is a group of vampire conquistadors who relentlessly conquer other nations so they can drink the blood of their enemies. The vampires of the Legion of Dusk often go through a "blood fast", where they avoid drinking blood and let their hunger build. Eventually, they give into temptation and enter "the rapture", a state where they relentlessly destroy everything around them.

Vona's deck is full of vampires, befitting her status as a leader of a legion. Every vampire in Vona's deck has a 🩸 effect, and she activates 🩸 effects at the start of her turn. This gives the heroes some time to deal with new vampires as they arrive, and represents them not immediately giving into their hunger and partaking of blood. Vampires heal when they activate 🩸 effects, which is a significant part of the H-scaling. They can also heal over their starting HP, ensuring that the heroes don't end up in awkward "my damage is pointless because they'll heal it anyway" situations.

Vona's personal 🩸 effect builds her up towards her flip condition. On her flip side, she is consumed by the rapture, increasing her damage and increasing the number of 🩸 triggers that happen to vampires. When she drinks enough blood, she flips back and begins her blood fast again.

The non-vampire cards in the deck are either ongoings with on-destruction or on-play effects to encourage good play patterns, or one-shots that resurrect or search out more vampires. The one-shots that find and resurrect vampires are another key piece of the H-scaling, and should in theory mean that individual vampires don't need to reference H in their card text. One of the goals of this deck is to minimize the frequency that H is referenced during a game, since I've noticed it slow down play and contribute to player confusion.

Environment

Ixalan

Ixalan is a fairly easy environment featuring a number of key landmarks around the plane of Ixalan. One of its core themes is the search for the Immortal Sun, which is a powerful artifact that significantly helps the heroes, but which can't enter play early in the game.