Since Shadowclash of Blinding Night first hit, DM gamers have been acquainted with the two most powerful evolutions in the game. Alcadeis Lord of Spirits evolves from Angel Commands and gives your opponent a difficult stipulation on winning the game, that being they can’t use any Non-Light Spells as long as this guy remains on the field. And he won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Alcadeis has the largest base attack of any Light Creature, at a whopping 12500. To top it all off, it ousts two shields at a time thanks to the now standard for fatties double-breaker ability.

Ballom, Master of Death is much like Alcadeis in that it has double breaker and a massive attack strength (12000) but his special effect activates only once. When it comes into the battle zone, it immediately destroys all non-Darkness creatures. This insures you’re going to have a clean shot at their shields, but also comes with the risk of running into triggers your opponent is patiently waiting on.

These two behemoths squared of in the most recent Tournament of the 5 Civilizations at our shop. Although Survivors was out, very few of the powerhouse bombs of that set actually surfaced in the finals. The finals featured a Mono-Darkness Ballom Deck, an Alcadeis deck with the inclusion of some tricky shield triggers, a fairly cheap build of an all Darkness deck (Without Terror Pits!) and the Light Nature deck which put in a nice performance at our last 5 Civilizations Tournament. Here’s the lists.

Addam Tofil / Ballom Deck (D/50 Cards)
1^st Place - Fredonia NY - 2/12

2 Ballom Master of Death
3 Trox General of Destruction
3 Vashuna Sword Dancer
2 Photocide Lord of Wastes
2 Sinister General Damudo
2 Vampire Silphy
4 Chaos Worm
4 Horrid Worm
3 Gregorian Worm
4 Locomotiver
2 Mongrel Man
2 Shadow Moon Cursed Shade
3 Bloody Squito
3 Grey Balloon Shadow of Greed
3 Marrow Ooze the Twister
4 Death Smoke
4 Terror Pit

Eric Herdzik / Alcadeis Deck (Ldn/42 Cards)
2^nd Place - Fredonia NY - 2/12

3 Alcadeis Lord of Spirits
4 Aeris Flight Elemental
2 Urth Purifying Elemental
4 Mist Rias Sonic Guardian
4 Sarius Vizier of Suppression
4 La Ura Giga Sky Guardian
3 Senatine Jade Tree
4 Holy Awe
4 Screaming Sunburst
4 Natural Snare
4 Terror Pit
2 Diamond Cutter

Zach Crandall / LAN (LN/40 Cards)
3^rd Place - Fredonia NY - 2/12

4 Emerald Grass
4 La Ura Giga Sky Guardian
4 Amber Grass
4 Kolon the Oracle
4 Bronze Arm Tribe
4 Senatine Jade Tree
3 Exploding Cactus
2 Cannon Shell
2 Sarius Vizier of Suppression
1 Szubs Kin Twilight Guardian
1 Sword Butterfly
1 Aeris Flight Elemental
1 Magris Vizier of Magnetism
2 Holy Awe
2 Dimension Gate
1 Sword of Benevolent Life

Michael Waclawski / Deathliger Deck (D/45 Cards)
4^th Place - Fredonia NY - 2/12

4 Chaos Worm
4 Gregorian Worm
4 Horrid Worm
4 Purple Piercer
4 Locomotiver
4 Shadow Moon Cursed Shade
4 Wailing Shadow Belbetphlo
4 Bloody Squito
4 Marrow Ooze the Twister
3 Wandering Brain Eater
2 Deathliger Lion of Chaos
4 Death Smoke

In the End, these decks ended up doing the best. LAN (Light and Nature) made a return appearance from it’s second place performance at the last Five Civilization Tournament. You’ll also notice that the third and fourth place decks were both budget decks, neither using that many rares, the latter using only 2 Deathligers. Obviously, these decks could be tweaked using more rares, but as they are now, they still matched the rest of the competition well enough to win prizes.

The 2^nd Place Alcadeis Deck also used Natural Snare and Terror Pits, which did prove useless while Alcadeis was on the field, but also proved to do well in stalling for time while the pieces of the Angel Command puzzle fell into place for his appearance.

The Darkness deck that one also looks fairly random on paper, but the fact that it had access to all those tools allowed it to go undefeated throughout the entire tournament. Maybe this showing will allow for more diverse deck builds in the future.

Among the deck that didn’t make the cut was a Survivors deck, a Snake Attack deck, a Water-Nature nearly carbon copied from Gen Con So Cal’s finals, Merfolk Control, and a Jack Viper Ghost deck.

Hopefully these lists will give you some ideas in your deck building. Until next time.

Ronald (Hydromorph) Waclawski