Pattern Recognition #373 - Eshki goes on an Adventure

Features Pattern Recognition

berryjon

3 July 2025

89 views

Hello Everyone! My name is berryjon, and I welcome you all to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series. Also the only one. I am a well deserved Old Fogey having started the game back in 1996. My experience in both Magic and Gaming is quite extensive, and I use this series to try and bring some of that to you. I dabble in deck construction, mechanics design, Magic's story and characters, as well as more abstract concepts. Or whatever happens to catch my fancy that week. Please, feel free to talk about each week's subject in the comments section at the bottom of the page, from corrections to suggested improvements or your own anecdotes. I won't bite. :) Now, on with the show!

And welcome back! Today's article will finish off my usual yearly building of an Arena Brawl deck and then upgrading it into a Commander deck. I've covered my reasoning for doing this many times in the past, so I don't feel the need to belabor the point.

But if you don't know what I'm going on about, then a little explanation is in order. Two weeks ago, I developed a Brawl Deck for the upcoming Standard rotation, and then last week I played it on Arena. This week, I will take that Brawl Deck and add 40 cards, taking away nothing, to create a Commander deck.

Now, truth be told, I've already built a Commander deck for Eshki Dragonclaw, so what I'm going to be doing is going back over my deck and examining my deck choices and refining the paper deck to better match what I'm rolling with here.

Now, to refresh, here is the Brawl Deck as it stands:

Eshki, Adven-Brawler

Standard Brawl berryjon

SCORE: 1 | 21 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER

However, before I begin, I want to include one further caveat for this improved deck. I don't want to include any cards that will be in Standard after rotation in the additional 40. By choosing and creating a deck that is very focused on cards out of Standard already, I don't want to double-down on it and instead move to look at older cards. If I was Wizards, I could say that this would encourage players to buy Standard cards and packs to try and fill in the gaps that they want to fill in with sets that are more recent.

Which makes a certain degree of sense. I was running into a problem last time with too many good choices to have, and not enough space to put them all in. I've very certain I could balloon the deck to 100 cards with just the stuff in Standard without hesitation or remorse. I did during pre-building before I stopped myself.

Which leads to the idea of a Standard Commander deck, but that's something for a different day.

So I'm not using stuff from Standard, which is OK. That still leaves me plenty of room to to with. But with 40 cards, I want to start divvying them up a bit to try and have an idea of where I want to take this. At this point, I'm looking at dividing these up into four sections of 10 each. 10 lands to bring the total to 36. 10 Acceleration pieces because as I keep running into the same problem over and over again. I need mana, and lots of it. 10 more Adventures or cards like that, and 10 pieces of utility to help drive the deck forward. Simple, and hopefully very workable.

As usual, I will save the mana base for last. And also the Acceleration as that's the sort of thing that goes hand in hand with a good mana base to make things better. Which of course leads us to the Adventures first.

Now, you would be forgiven for thinking that I'm just going to toss in my choice of 10 from the 17 legal cards I could include from Throne of Eldraine, but I actually have three other mechanics I want to look at first.

The first is Rebound, a mechanic that automatically recasts a card for free on my next upkeep, which means that I can pay once to get two castings of a non-creature spell, which means that I can save mana for a creature on the second turn - or trigger it twice if I have enough mana.

Next is Foretell, which much like Plot, allows me to pay for a spell then cast it cheaper (mostly) from exile later. And like Plot, this option also includes creatures, so that's a bonus.

Lastly, I also want to look at Suspend as my third option in terms of 'pay now, cast later for free'. Some of these are just cards that benefit with Suspend, but others look to be very useful in general or specific.

Working backwards, the biggest problem I have with Suspend is that it takes too damned long. Seriously. Three turns? Four? Even more? That's an eternity in Commander, and there's no guarantee that the game will run that long or that I will be in a position to make the most of it when they do auto-cast. So with a heavy heart, I will stick to my theme and skip on Suspend for now unless my review comes up with something really good. Maybe Rift Sower or Search for Tomorrow? But other than that, there's not a lot to work with here.

Foretell is like Plot, but needs to wait until a later turn and you still have to pay money for it. However, interaction and removal can be one of those things where I double-dip cards into multiple sections. Saw it Coming is a counterspell, and honest, I should be running more of those. Ravenform is direct removal - something this deck sorely lacks - and to that I can add Struggle for Skemfar as a fight spell to also do some removal while making Eshki bigger in the process. And Behold the Multiverse is card draw.

That's five in utility and adventures, so that leaves me room for a few more. Rebound is the last mechanic, and here the only two cards I am considering at this point are Faithless Salvaging and Quantum Misalignment. The first because card draw is good, and the second because making copies of Eshki is hilarious. But... if I'm not going to go all in on that, why bother?

Just the Salvaging it is.

Now, ten more Adventures. This is hard and easy at the same time. Easy in that I only have 17 to start with and a couple of those are obvious non-starters in the first place. Fae of Wishes looks at the sideboard, so No. And Animating Faerie needs artifacts, but I don't want to risk them. Merfolk Secretkeeper is also an easy cut as a single incidental Mill 4 doesn't really do anything, and the creature itself - while cheap - doesn't do anything either.

But that still leaves me with 14 options, so which to keep and which to not? Assuming I can't double-dip?

Well, double-dipping is easy for a couple choices. Merchant of the Vale is repeatable card draw when cast as a creature, but the Adventure is equally viable for its cost. Beanstalk Giant is another land fetch card, which I want for acceleration purposes. Brazen Borrower is a bounce spell, which is nice to use, that's for sure in terms of soft control. On the same point, Hypnotic Sprite is a low-level counterspell, and turns into a small flyer for combat.

Tuinvale Treefolk, Rimrock Knight, and Garenbrig Carver provide combat tricks, but I will have to use them before combat starts, taking the 'trick' out of them - unless I've already cast a non-creature spell.

Bonecrusher Giant is a removal option as well in the early game, and the 'Damage can't be prevented' doesn't just apply to the spell itself, but all damage - including combat. So if someone is throwing a Fog around, this might just save me. And I do need to be wary of the creature itself as I will take damage if I target it.

Queen of Ice has a good Adventure, and I can use her to block and lock down an opponent's creature if I have to, so she's in as well.

And did you know that Rosethorn Acolyte is a combo with Eshki? No? Well, if you sent them on their adventure, they replace the mana spent to cast the spell meaning you could give yourself or any other colour to cast Eshki that turn. And because you've cast a creature and a non-creature that turn, Eshki triggers right away! Why yes, I have done this.

And that's 10 more Adventures! Great, one thing checked off the list. Now to fill out the utility. 4 more spaces for stuff and I want card draw. I know that double-casting my cards really messes with my thought process, but there are a few options I can include here. To that end, Faithless Looting, Up the Beanstalk, Edgewall Innkeeper and non-card-draw directly, but Lucky Clover for when the Adventure draws cards. Or does anything, really.

Moving on, Mana Acceleration. This is a little different but as I'm in , the options are endless! Literally, so it's just me picking what I want. Like Arcane Signet, Chromatic Lantern, Birds of Paradise, Temur Banner, Alloy Myr, Bloom Tender, Ilysian Caryatid, Paradise Druid, Farseek and Cultivate. Everything here produces all types of mana, except the Farseek, which needs to pull one of the Shocklands or Surveil lands to hit . And it's a mix of creatures and non-creatures because that's what Eshki wants.

Which leads us to the lands. 10 more lands. Which is actually easy as I'll put in three of each dual land-cycle and Command Tower! So Breeding Pool, Steam Vents, Stomping Ground, Barkchannel Pathway  ^Flip, Cragcrown Pathway  ^Flip, Riverglide Pathway  ^Flip, Sheltered Thicket, Waterlogged Grove and finally Crackling Falls  ^Flip becuase the backside is also card draw.

Which leaves us with 100 cards total! Wow, that was easier than I had expected! In fact, here's the final deck now!

Eshki Goes on an Adventure

Commander / EDH berryjon

SCORE: 1 | 17 VIEWS

Now, some of you may have been questioning my design choices when there were other options that may have been better for myself to the deck.

Well, that's true. But you see, I was building this deck with a simple thought in mind. I'm already playing Brawl on Arena, so why not make the deck Historic Brawl legal as well? So I did!

And if you want to branch out into full Commander with cards that aren't on Arena, why not? There is plenty of room to do so and to customize this deck. In fact, I would love to see people's own takes on this idea!

Of course, if you want to see me run this deck out into the wild of Arena, and do another video for it, let me know in the comments below! I can do that right quick and have it ready for next week, no problem!

Otherwise, thank you all for reading!

Thank you all for watching and reading, and I'll see you all next week!

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job (now), but more income is always better, and I can use it to buy cards! I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!