Pattern Recognition #371 - Eshki DragonBrawler -
Features Pattern Recognition
berryjon
19 June 2025
91 views
19 June 2025
91 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 everyone! Well, Final Fantasy has been released (and no, I'm not going to Capitalize that as is required by the contract between Square-Enix and Wizards/Hasboro - best you're going to get is an FF from me), that means we are on the countdown to Standard Rotation in.... Let's see, Edge of Eternities is releasing on 01 Aug this year, which is in a mere 6 weeks!
So that means it's time for my annual building of a New Brawl Deck!
Uh, spoilers, but I've already had this deck for, like, two months now, and I'm basically going back over it and explaining what I did and why.
But for those of you who are new to this little annual trip of mine, every year before Standard rotation, I build a Brawl deck. 60 Cards, Paper-Standard legal (so you can build it for yourselves). But it is built on Arena, because that's about the only place you can play Brawl decently. Then, next week, I'll showcase a video of me actually playing the deck and then the week after, I will take that 60 card Brawl deck and add 40 cards without removing anything (because every year, people tell me to remove some of the Standard legal cards for better cards outside of Standard) to make a Commander Deck.
I like doing this as it's my way to contribute to the Brawl format after Wizards dropped it like a hot potatoe for not instantly murdering Commander like Modern killed Extended. And to prove that it can be done. Build a Brawl deck, then add 40 cards to make a Commander deck, and Wizards could sell two formats at once!
Anyway, last year I did Kambal, Profiteering Mayor as my Brawl/Commander deck, and over the course of the year, I quickly lost out on the fun I was having with it, eventually deleting it as it wasn't doing what I wanted it to do.
Seriously people. Having fun is the key to the game. If you're not having fun, don't play!
So let's move forward, shall we?
This year's Brawl/Commander is one that I almost didn't take a look at during the reveal season for Tarkir: Dragonstorm and it wasn't until I pulled it during my pre-release that I actually looked at it and saw it for what it was when surrounded by other cards from the pile I pulled. Not that I played with it, but it was a close call.
Now, this color set is not normally my personal wheelhouse. The Temur colors of are combinations I have played in the past as pairs (note to self: Prep for Kavu in 6 weeks, and look into building a deck soon-ish) but as a cohesive whole, it's mostly uncharted territory.
Eshki is a base 4/4 with a casting cost of . She has a small degree of Keyword Soup, coming in with Trample, Vigilance and Ward , all of which are core to her colours. It's her larger paragraph of text that is what really drew my attention to her though. At the beginning of combat on each of my turns, if I have cast a Creature and a non-Creature spell that turn, put 2 +1/+1 counters on her, and draw a card.
This, as it turns out, is utterly ridiculous, but I'll get back to that in a moment.
On the surface, this ability rewards the player for double-casting spells each turn, making Eshki a little bigger in the process and by helping to refill your hand. You cast two spells, draw one in the draw step, then a second at the start of combat. Seems fair!
Of course, Spellslinging is nothing new, and is one of the fun aspects of that gets to see plenty of play and support, so there's no real need to expound on that right now. But if you're not aware, then these colors are the colors that love to cast spells and fast and as often as possible to generate value, and Eshki's helps make it all the more worthwhile.
You see, Eshki is built around slinging spells, including creatures, and getting big to swing in. She, in my experience, first hits out as a 6/6 Vigilance, Trample creature. And that's nothing to scoff at. And if I can trigger her a couple of turns in a row, she's a collossal threat to any boardstate.
The problem is her Ward ability. To be blunt, it isn't enough. At no point in any of my games with her has this ever been relevant as either the opponent will just pay the for the Ward, or whip out a boardwipe. It just doesn't do enough to really matter in my experience and opinion.
But if it was Ward , I do think it would be a tad too much as well. There's no real easy way to resolve this, except to shrug my shoulders and make plans around it.
And with that out of the way, what was it about Eshki that really drew my attention? Well, for most people, they would see her real ability as a means to draw-even with the spells they cast each turn, a creature and a non-creature.
Yet I looked at the cards in my pile and saw one that wouldn't be played at all in my Sealed prerelease, but it clicked how Eshki was supposed to work. The card?
Eshki, I realized, was intended to work with Omens, and then from there, a half step to Adventures from Wilds of Eldraine. Because these cards where both a Creature and a Non-Creature spell, meaning that I could get away with casting the same card twice to help trigger Eshki's effects more reliably, and to do so without reducing my hand size too dangerously because I would have spells in Exile that are available to cast later on!
So I set down to create a deck I call "Eshki Goes On An Adventure". Because I'll be silly if I can't get away with that!
The first thing that I needed to do was check out just what cards were available to me to work with, and it turns out that I have about 40 cards to work with! Which is good as it means that I am not strapped for options and I can be a little picky about what I choose to work with.
Now normally, when I build a deck for you all, I tend to sort my choices out by how they work in the deck, but at this point, that's not going to work. The goal is to cast spells, and to reuse cards to the best of my ability. That means taking what I have and making it work as best I can, rather than cherrypicking things too much and hurting myself in the process.
So, starting with the Commander, and then as I am planning on casting multiple spells a turn, let's allocate 26 slots to lands for now. This is just tentative, but it's a good placeholder. This will leave me with 33 cards to put in the deck, and yet not all of them will be Adventures and Omens.
In a three colour deck, where I am running , I can utilize that color to help me with my color-fixing problems that I know will arise. I can do some of this with lands as well, but for now, I want to add Bramble Familiar, Bloomvine Regent, Beanstalk Wurm and Sagu Wildling. Also, Grabby Giant to make a Treasure.
Next, let's look at combat tricks. These are cards that when cast, make Eshki - or a contingency creature - bigger to try and finish the game off that way. While temporary effects, like on Intrepid Trufflesnout, are OK, I want to keep on to +1/+1 counters as much as I can. This will be mostly and at this point, but that's OK. There will be time for later.
Bellowing Bruiser prevents blocks, Elusive Otter has a scalable for the counters. Ferocious Werefox throws down a Monster Roll, Intrepid Trufflesnout, Minecart Daredevil, Picnic Ruiner and Two-Headed Hunter all add tricks - that Doublestrike for example, is an absolute monster when Eshki gets going.
But moving out of Adventures and Omens for a moment, Bulk Up is a great card as thanks to Flashback, i can cast it twice - something that I won't regret at all! I should add in Tifa's Limit Break, Dragonclaw Strike, Fireshrieker, Rover Blades and Leyline Axe. Genji Glove isn't in for it's cost.
And of course, protection is a concern. Alas, there's not a lot of ways to do that with Adventures (yet), so I'm going to have to roll with Dragonfire Blade (whose equip costs is a mere for Eshki, Swiftfoot Boots, Magic Damper, Shore Up, Defend the Rider, Royal Treatment and Snakeskin Veil. As I said earlier, Ward just doesn't cut it, so having backups never hurts.
That leaves me with 8 cards lest, and I want to see what I can get out of Card Draw here. Thankfully, there's lots of options here. Opt, Deduce, Dreams of Laguna, Think Twice, Galvanic Giant, Kellan, Inquisitive Prodigy, Tempest Hart and Hearth Elemental should all work.
And that gives me 60 cards! Now I just need to backtrack and figure out my land base.
With 26 lands, I'm looking at 8 sources of , 8 of and 10 of . This isn't bad, so let's start adding cards based on cycles. Temple of Epiphany, Thundering Falls, Commercial District, Temple of Abandon, Hedge Maze and Temple of Mystery all give me a solid base for Surveil and Scry effets. Frontier Bivouac, Command Tower and Edgewall Inn can all go in. As well as Evolving Wilds, Fabled Passage, and Terramorphic Expanse to help with searching out lands.
Actually, for some reason, Command Tower isn't available on Arena in this format. Curious. Oh well.
Let's toss in a Captivating Cave for the additional +1/+1 counters, just in case.
But this is 60 cards, and there's still a lot I want to include. I want to make room for Frolicking Familiar, Scalding Viper, Beluna Grandsquall, Stormkeld Vanguard, Chancellor of Tales, Storyteller Pixie, and Doc Aurlock, Grizzled Genius - this guy lets me cast cards from exile for cheaper -, Whirlwing Stormbrood, Basilisk Collar, Lavaspur Boots, AAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
OK, let's see what I can trim. Rover Blades is out, as it's 3 to cast, and 4 to Equip. Sure, I could crew it, but why? That will bring in the Dock. Same logic for Fireshrieker, but that will be the last I remove. In goes Beluna for that.
The Monster roll from the Ferocious Werefox is nice, but Eshki already has an innate Trample, so that's redundant. In goes... Storyteller Pixie for extra card draw. Hearth Elemental is narrow in use, so I'll toss that in favor of Scalding Viper for bounce and incidental damage. It's also hilarious against RDW.
OK, that's enough. There will be time for modifications later, as if I start tweaking it too much, it'll get out of hand. Let's just export from Arena, clean up the formatting and...
Eshki, Adven-Brawler
Standard Brawl
SCORE: 1 | 12 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER
Time to take this different version than I was playing privately out for a few spins, and I'll see you all next week with a video of it in action!
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!