As we start to face the Dragonstorm here in Gladiator, we’ll be soon joined by Alchemy: Tarkir, and for our 5th year celebration of Gladiator as a format (the day this preview is posted is our 5th birthday to the date, in fact!), we have two preview cards to bolster your decks mobilize into our format! Courtesy of Wizards of the Coast, here’s our two free preview cards!
Jeskai monks who are tasked with tending to the clan dragons can also learn from them in kind.
First, we’ve got a creature with Double team for you for the second set in a row! For those needing a refresher, that means when it attacks, it conjures a duplicate of itself into your hand, then both it and the duplicate perpetually lose double team. This one has some potential to grow to a huge size for a 2 drop if you can get your second spell cast, and the duplicate double team makes will ease the difficulty in casting your second spell, and later on, both of these attacking means 8 damage swings in turns where you can cast a flurry of spells. In tempo decks and aggro decks, you’ll be able to give your twins flying pretty reliably, which makes it very well-positioned to jump over a stalled board on the ground and force awkward blocks or push a lot of damage through. That said, it’s still a 2/2 for 2 that requires some extra work, so it’ll take some certainty that you’ll be able to have the twins flying more than not to earn its slot.
We’re good for one more preview card for you, though, so take a look at Thunderbond Vanguard:
“My dalkovan are those who ran before me, those who fight beside me, and those who bear my banner after me.”
If you’re into Mobilizing some 1/1 Warrior tokens, this is an include you’ll want to think about sleeving up, because not only does it grow with every creature you control, it also makes it so that every creature token that enters under your control is entering as another Vanguard. This will make your token creation pretty huge, and keep it pretty hard to get rid of the effect unless an opponent wants to destroy the whole board, since each token copy of Thunderbond Vanguard has the text making each token enter as a copy of itself. Plus, for all of my combo gremlins out there, I’ve already got you covered: if you have an Encroaching Mycosynth and a Simulacrum Synthesizer in play, playing the Vanguard will create a Construct token that instead enters as an artifact version of the Vanguard, and since the tokens mana value is still 3, it’ll trigger the Synthesizer again, repeating this process! Do make sure to have a way to kill your opponent with this out already, though, as you can’t exit the loop without removing a combo piece or taking your opponent out of the game. I am a huge fan of this guy in tokens decks that want to be able to go tall as well as wide, and it’s a neat include for players that want to break stretch the bounds of Arena.
A big thanks to Wizards of the Coast for both of these preview cards, and make sure to check out the whole Alchemy release (along with the commanders from the commander decks) when Alchemy: Tarkir releases on April 29th. See you all in the Arena, and let’s keep playing Gladiator for another five great years!