CUT #13 - Roll for CUT!

Lae'zel, Vlaakith's Champion

| Illustrated by John Stanko

After a tiresome journey, you and your party find yourselves in the local tavern

Let's venture back into the dungeon and explore what decks our deck builders made this time in this Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate edition of CUT!

Before we get to that though, we have to check in on our Street of New Capenna finals; who's left standing after the dust and smoke has cleared?

Congratulations, Jack! You proved your worth by toughing it out through two rounds and came up victorious! I tried to put up a good fight, but sometimes it's just not meant to be. A big "thank you" to all of the participants of the last round, and I truly do hope we see them again!

Back to the adventure at hand. Here are the challenges our dungeoneering deckbuilders had to work with:

• Must use a commander from Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate
• Can only use cards released in Commander Legends or CLB
• You must include a Background, at least 5 legendary creatures (other than your commander(s)), and 5 Equipment cards

Leading the party is Alec!

Hello, and welcome to my deck write-up for Sarevok, Deathbringer

Battle for Baldur's Gate has introduced an enormous number of new commander options for our format, and the Backgrounds are a spicy new iteration on the Partner mechanic. It is super flavorful, and I love the idea that you can choose the backstory for your commander. It feels like building your own character, which is always the best part of a D&D campaign! That made it difficult to decide on a new commander, until I read the effect on the uncommon legend Sarevok: "At the beginning of each player's end step, if no permanents left the battlefield this turn, that player loses X life, where X is Sarevok's power." WOW! That is a sweet ability. It's giving group slug vibes, similar to Mogis, God of Slaughter

Now, as for the backstory of this Sarevok character we are building, there are a ton of sweet Backgrounds to choose from, but two in particular stick out to me: Cloakwood Hermit

The overall goal of the deck is pretty straightforward: boost up Sarevok's power and avoid taking damage from it. Luckily, both Commander Legends sets included a ton of ways for us to get creatures, sacrifice them, then reanimate them! If all goes well, we will have an engine running where we can safely remove a permanent on each of our turns while our opponents are powerless to stop the life loss. Some exciting new cards that fit perfectly into this strategy are Altar of Bhaal

The restrictions for this article imply that Sarevok won't be going into battle alone, but will bring some friends with weapons! There are more than enough black or green legends to choose from to help with Sarevok's strategy, so we will take the following legends into battle with us:

And they will be wielding the following weapons:

These cards all fit wonderfully into our deck's strategy, especially the ones that help protect Sarevok. Our opponents will definitely be sending removal spells our way because of Sarevok's ability!

This commander/Background pairing is an exciting combination and I can't wait to try it out! Hopefully you're inspired to create a new commander character of your own as well. See you next time!

Thanks, Alec, that was fantastic, may Sarevok be a win-bringer for you! Make sure you check out the Faerie Conclave Podcast here,  you can also check out their twitter and instagram @TFC_MTG!

Next in the party train is Kenneth!

The restrictions for this deck were definitely something that piqued my interest in the deck building process. Being able only to use cards from Commander Legends sets made this an interesting build design. The first thing I did was to take a look at the different archetypes available in the selected card pool. This brought my attention to elves, which were a large part of the original Commander Legends set. With elves in mind I chose Jaheira, Friend of the Forest

For the restrictions, I was given the task of building a deck using only cards from the Commander Legends products, and to include both a minimum of five legendary creatures and five Equipment. For the Equipment, I ended up going with the Skullclamp

I've included Maskwood Nexus

The initial wincon for the deck will be a go wide strategy, making many smaller creatures and pumping them up with cards like End-Raze Forerunners

Thanks so much Kenneth! Hopefully your elvish value army can get you to the finals! Finally, rounding out the party we have Andrew!

For this challenge I had originally wanted to do a Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy

Shadowheart (SDJ for short) is a pretty nuts card advantage engine in the command zone, and after a quick browse I landed on Master Chef

I initially wanted to run cheap creatures with big toughness in order to draw through my deck quickly, but this challenge's card pool did not incorporate much there and had exactly 0 payoffs for drawing cards. There was one notable exception, however: Abomination of Llanowar

I ended up using most of the available Elves from both sets, only leaving out the absolute worst. Luckily for me, most aren't terrible, and there are plenty of Elf legends to satisfy the five legendary creatures requirement. Plus, all of their flavors pair nicely! Miara, Thorn of the Glade

The real shining stars of the creature base are Immaculate Magistrate

It's hard to eat all this Elven Cuisine (and satisfy the challenge) without some Equipment! Commander's Plate

If you're still hungry after eating all that Elf, this deck is equipped with a recursion package so we can dig in for seconds! Besides Ancient Brass Dragon

SDJ wants to ensure her restaurant is operating even if she is not around to supervise, so some value has been snuck in to do just that. Hunter's Insight

Lastly, the deck needs miscellaneous value to keep the wheels spinning and customers happy. Haunted One

That should cover most of the deck. There are a bunch of cards I would add if it were not for the tight card pool, but overall I am very pleased with the outcome and really enjoyed the challenge!

Great job Andrew! Boy am I full after reading all of it, it was a delicious decklist!

You pull up a seat across from this robed stranger. He holds out a withered hand clutching a piece of rolled parchment. His fingers creak as he releases it to the floor. His sunken eyes stare back at you expectantly. With a gulp, you grab the paper and unfurl it and start reading, hoping that this isn't a trick. As you start to parse the words that are written in front of you, you read, "Please, my throat is very dry, could you buy me a drink? I have been sitting here for 4 hours and no one has come over". With a small chuckle, you place the paper back on the table and with a smirk go buy this person the thing they desire most: company and a nice beverage.

What a fantastic showing of deckbuilding prowess and senses of adventure! Honestly, I was not expecting all three decks to be Golgari! The coolest thing about it is that they all had different commanders AND different Backgrounds, which just shows the flexibility of the Choose a Background commanders along with the Backgrounds themselves. There are so many new cards and new legends to build around in Battle for Baldur's Gate. I know I'm thinking of fun things to do with the Choose a Background mechanic and how it would change the shape of an otherwise mono-colored deck. Enough about me, you know what to do at this point, vote down below on which deck you think scored a critical hit, and the top two will duke it out next time to see who conquered this quest! Thanks for reading and remember if you don't love it, CUT it!

If you or a friend would like to participate in a future CUT article, feel free to email the.only.travis.stanley@gmail.com or @ me on twitter @chipman007!

Poll Closes: June 22/2022