Zuko's Conviction is taking over Zuko, Conflicted.

Seagull Flock

Creature - Bird

Flying

Seagull Flock gets +1/+1 and can't be blocked as long as defending player controls a Food.

2/2

Create a Giant Rogue creature.

Meant to add this to the last post. There's really no reason why Marvel and M:tG couldn't be part of the same greater or intersecting multiverse, aside from the boundaries that the authors put down. I personally wouldn't like an official story crossover, but in the realm of fanfiction, Doctor Who could definitely stop by New Capenna on his way to Latveria to help Doctor Doom fight off Tyranids. That has a lot of potential to be a fun story.

But in the official storyline, the M:tG is its own discrete thing, separate from other multiverses, and I prefer it that way.

The way I would explain cards like Gerrard's Battle Cry or Atraxa's Fall or Heartwarming Redemption or whatever is that you're tapping into the same energy, style, and motivations of the original event. You're not literally calling Gerrard over to inspire your troops, you're capturing the energy and righteousness he must have felt in the moment. You don't literally summon Atraxa just to be shot shot down, you're mimicking the strategy and mechanical action to bring down a big scary flying creature.

There's a reason why history classes often have people learn famous speeches and details of major events. I don't plan to ever be on a magical skyship being chased by another magical skyship and getting ready to fight to the death, but I can learn what inspirational words people say in that situation and apply it when I need to get my team ready and moving on a big challenge.

And in some cases, it might be literal. Dosan's Oldest Chant or Firemind's Research or Doomskar can easily be exactly that.

I don't know if this explanation fits every card that has a story moment attached, All Will Be One is pretty specific, but it works well enough for me.

Dreamscape Artist is a bit of Planar Chaos weirdness. Add in Freed from the Real + Illusionist's Bracers + Seer's Sundial and you can pull every basic land out of your deck. (Tatyova, Benthic Druid uses , so putting that one aside for now.)

Red just got Molten Man, Inferno Incarnate. Black has Korlash, Heir to Blackblade (but that takes some extra hoops to jump through in Commander).

Thanks for being a good sport about it. But now I'm thinking about what would happen if all artifact creatures got free haste...

I double checked to make sure, and the artifact part doesn't affect summoning sickness. SS is only relevant to creatures, and it applies to all creatures without haste. Artifact creatures, enchantment creatures, land creatures (thanks Dryad Arbor), all affected by summoning sickness.

In the description, you mention that Crashing Drawbridge can tap as soon as it enters play because it's an artifact. Unless I'm missing something, it still gets summoning sickness because it's a creature. The artifact part doesn't affect that. Unfortunately, I don't really see a good replacement without splashing into red.

That point aside, the deck looks really smooth and effective.

These are all interesting thoughts and concerns, so please don't take any of my thoughts as saying you're objectively wrong or anything. But I do want to make some points of my own.

1. The plane of Eldraine's the Arthurian/Matter of Britain/Grimm's Fairy Tales place right now. Throne of Eldraine was a pretty even mix, and Wilds of Eldraine was heavy on the fairy tales side, to the point where each color pair had an associated well-known fairy tale. I'd like to see an Arthurian-inspired Courts of Eldraine set. On a broader note, the design team has been open to making sets based on certain public domain properties, for pretty much the reasons you mention.

2. I've been having a lot of this kind of discussion recently, and I'm learning that I'm pretty permissive with what themes and styles I'm okay with. The way I see it, TMNT + Spider-Man New York is thematically one urbanization and industrialization away from Bloomburrow, with maybe an Omenpath for the humans, goblins, and random weirdness. If I went to Theros, made a tight roll of copper wire, and dropped a chunk of magnetite or lodestone through it, would it make an electric current? Or would I have to make an offering to Keranos for it to work? How about mashing up charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter, putting it in a tube with a lead ball, and lighting it on fire? Fantasy shouldn't preclude technology, in my not at all humble opinion. Also, again turning to the designers, there's a strict boundary between Universes Beyond and in-house story. Jace and Chandra won't be meeting Cloud and Aerith. And I completely agree with this--one of my hard lines is that UB stays its own thing and doesn't interact with in-house. If that happens, I'm done with the story.

3. How do you feel about cards like Black Knight, or Fog, or Exile, or Festival? These are all simple, nonmagical, yet still evocative names from the early days. If every card is as parsimonious as you suggest, then that almost puts a hard cap on the number of unique and interesting effects that can be made. Complexity creep is definitely a concern, but each new ability or effect that gets made, or each ability or effect that gets interpreted in a new way, will bring additional rules along with it. If the keyword creature ability list was locked into something like flying, haste, trample, first strike, deathtouch, and vigilance, and each creature at most two abilities, you can get just 21 cards out of this list. After that each creature gets at most one of these plus a unique ability, and then you're locked into adjusting the P/T stats. Depending on what you're willing to do with unique abilities, you're going to stretch to get even a thousand creatures. That's about Alpha to Visions. Yeah, there's stuff like Questing Beast, Frenzied Baloth, and Magma Opus, but those come out like once every few years. And some people get excited by big splashy piles of words or weird rules edge cases and try to figure out how to maximize them. I'm still proud of finding (and putting off getting judge confirmation for) a way to use Obeka, Brute Chronologist to lock and take over the game. Weird rules interactions are fun places to explore for a lot of people, including me.

And to add my own thought, it really does break my immersion of a huge, potentially infinite multiverse full of potential and discovery, when it turns out everything is some version of swords and castles and looks like Middle Kingdom Egypt or Age of Exploration Mesoamerica or Jidaigeki Japan or some real-world history. Alara is my favorite plane because it avoids that so hard. Sure, there's some western European + Arabian influence in Bant, and some Mesoamerica in Naya, but Grixis and Esper are pure original fantasy with no real-world counterpart, or at least really worked to hide their sources.

Welcome to the club, Eruptor321!

Ornery Draquus

Creature - Dragon Horse Mount

Saddle 2

Whenever a red creature saddles this creature, it deals 1 damage to target creature.

3/2

Wild.

I don't know if Hivestone would really add anything extra for utility here, but it's a permanent effect that pumps all your creatures. for an anthem? There's also Kudo, King Among Bears, but that has timing issues with Figure of Fable and shrinks Tajuru Paragon, both of which are probably a little more valuable.

Minor, easy-to-fix typo: Teval, Arbiter of Virtue has a period instead of a comma.

Balaam__ This deck came together better than I expected thematically, and those counterspells slotted right in. A slight problem with Lofty Denial is that the dragons usually sit in hand until turn 5-ish, so the Dragon-specific counterspells are easier to get the most out of.

I keep trying to convince myself that set Commander decks are filling roughly the same role as second sets in a block, just released at the same time. They're kind of similar in expanding the mechanics and story of the set.

But yeah, I much preferred the once a year, non-connected Commander decks.

Geslek, Grave Desecrator

Legendary Creature - Lizard Druid Rogue

When this creature enters, exile up to three target creature cards from target opponent's graveyard, then create that many 1/1 black Elemental Skeleton tokens.

: Creatures you control gain haste and first strike until end of turn.

3/3

Create a mono-colored legendary creature with two activated abilities that use different colors, like the Mirage guildmages or Alara battlemages (except legendary).

Maralen of the Mornsong is about as close to this effect as you're going to get. Every draw step becomes a Grim Tutor, and it's got a killer hard lock combo with both Opposition AgentGC and Stranglehold. Ob Nixilis, Unshackled won't make you any friends, either.

Or you could just be friendly and use it as free tutors for everyone.

Craeter I do what I can. Happy to hear you're set to face with confidence!

Always happy to offer suggestions, even if they don't make the cut! And I missed the "crewed by Fran and Balthier" on my first read, so I just saw "Whenever a Vehicle attacks, you may pay..." do that's where that thought came from.

Would Radha, Heir to Keld, Kessig Naturalist  ^Flip, or some ATLA firebending cards fit in here to help pay for Balthier and Fran's extra combats? Savage Ventmaw can pay for two extra attacks by itself.