The deck's alternate commanders are Klauth, Unrivaled Ancient and Wulfgar of Icewind Dale. It's also a 'may' ability, so they don't have to worry about accidentally killing him. He can also trigger his own ability whenever his controller rolls dice. It creates 5/4 Dragon Spirit tokens, which pack a punch but vanish after a single hit. This is represented on his card by the Enrage mechanic, which triggers every time he takes damage. He's a dragonborn Ancestral Guardian barbarian, going into a rage and summoning the ghostly forms of his dragonborn ancestors to aid him in battle. It's at its best when stacking buffs onto an individual creature but can leave itself open to retaliation if those creatures are removed.ĭraconic Rage is helmed by Vrondiss, Rage of Ancients. Overall, Aura of Courage is a powerful but fragile deck. Storvald is a frost giant from Storm King's Thunder and makes other creatures harder to target while also altering their base power/toughness. She gets stronger for each arrow in her quiver (mechanically represented here as Equipment) and can remove them to 'shoot' at another creature in combat. Catti-brie is the wife of Drizzt Do'Urden in the world of the Forgotten Realms and synergizes with Galea's Equipment subtheme. The deck's alternate commanders are Storvald, Frost Giant Jarl and Catti-brie of Mithral Hall. All of this adds up to a 'Voltron' deck, stacking a boatload of Auras and Equipment onto Galea in the hopes of knocking opponents out with commander damage. It also incentivizes playing Equipment with high equip costs since Equipment played from Galea's effect doesn't need to be equipped. Her color identity gives the deck access to green, white and blue, alongside an effect that synergizes with Aura and Equipment. What do you think about these decks? Are they to your liking? We sure like them.Aura of Courage is helmed by Galea, Kindler of Hope. She's an elven Oath of Ancients paladin dedicated to protecting the natural world and the joy and wonder within it. However, this deck is perfectly capable of running well right out of the box. We have already discussed the best way to utilize Prosper, Tome-Bound in an abridged deck tech written up and published only yesterday. An array of the contents of 'Planar Portal', the Commander deck coinciding with Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, an expansion set for Magic: The Gathering. This is something they likely need to do, to be frank. The strategy guide insert would have been a perfect way to link players to a dice roller app, be it third-party or included on a Wizards of the Coast- sanctioned application such as Magic: The Gathering's Companion app, which at present does not utilize a dice roller function.

The only gripe we have about this setup is that many of the cards in this deck reference rolling dice from out of a polyhedral dice set, and none are included. This is quite helpful.Īs to the other contents of the box, they include the 100-card deck (with tokens and a thicker stand-in of the main commander Prosper, Tome-Bound included), a deck box, a cardboard life-counter, and a small strategy guide on how to play 'Planar Portal' directly out of the box. As such, when we open the box, using the easy-open tab on the bottom, inside is a fair amount of cardboard but with perforations with which to remove circular counters and a deck divider for ease of differentiation in your deck. Wizards of the Coast has clearly been making a push to use more eco-friendly packaging with these precons, as since Strixhaven this has been the form of packaging they have their hearts set on using. Here's what we think of the deck in just a bit more detail! The front of the box containing 'Planar Portal', the Commander deck coinciding with Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, an expansion set for Magic: The Gathering.

So, having gotten ahold of the 'Planar Portal' preconstructed deck from the Commander decks coinciding with the Adventures in the Forgotten Realms expansion set, we can safely say that this is one of the most coherent decks they've made for the format. We've ultimately been playing this format for even longer than its official recognition by Wizards of the Coast. Anyone who has read our articles knows that Commander is our favorite format by miles. Wizards of the Coast has made something quite special, but, with some degree of collaboration with its player base, they've made something even better in the form of the Commander format. Magic: The Gathering is a wonderful card game.

Mtg forgotten realms review