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Halana and Alena have been names in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic the Gathering's Innistrad sets for a long time. Thought they first appeared in flavour text in the third Innistrad set, Avacyn Restored, they didn't get their own cards until 2020's Commander legends. Finally, with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Innistrad: Crimson Vow, they finally appear on a card together.
Working in the dark region of Ulvenwald, Halana and Alena are trackers and hunters who serve to protect humanity from the many werewolves, vampires, zombies, and more roaming the land. They're described as partners in "both work and life", meaning they're two of a handful of characters confirmed to not only be queer but also appear alongside their partner in the game. The only other characters to get this are Kyn⛦aois and Tiro of Meletis from Commande✱r 2016.
They've not had a massive role in the story, simply doing their bit to defend Ulvenwald from both the normal monsters they're used to and eventually the Eldrazi invasion in the Shadows Over Innistrad block. It was their love that saved Halana from being taken over by the Eldrazi Emrakul in Eldritch Moon, and the t🙈wo survived to see the coming endless night in Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. At the time of writing, we don't know how they fit into the ongoing story of Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, but they're sure to appear somewhere eventually.
This week, we're using 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Raw Gay Power itself to smash our enemies in the face with .
Halana and Alena, Partners is a 2/3 Human Ranger that costs two generic, one red, and✨ one green mana. It has first strike and reach, and at the start of combat on your turn, it can put +1/+1 counters equal to its power onto any other creature, giving it haste 💝until the end of the turn. With that in mind, the goal is simple: make Halana and Alena, Partners big, let them make our other creatures big, and then beat our opponents away in a relentless onslaught of Love-buffed creatures.
Ramp
After a few weeks away, we're finally back in green and can make use of its excellent ramp cap♏abilities.
Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Migration Path, and Beanstalk Giant all help get extra lands out onto the battlefield and should make up the core of your ramp package. A few artifacts are also useful🃏, like the good old-fashioned Arcane Signet and Sol Ring.
We're also going to use a few new cards from Innistrad: Crimson Vow. Honored Heirloom is a new mana rock that, while more expensive than an Arcane Signet, double up as a fantastic bit of graveyard hate if needed. At Common rarity, this is an incredibly cheap card to pick up and there's a good chance it's going to join the likes of Replicating Ring as a great second-tier mana rock for Commander.
We're in green, and it's Innistrad: Crimson Vow, so it's a good opportunity to run one of the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:funniest combos found from the set so far. When Cultivator Colossus enters the battlefield, you can put a land from your hand onto the battlefield. If you do, you draw a card and repeat the process. Combine that with Abundance, which lets you replace your card draw with revealing cards off of the library until you find a land, and the end result is you can dump every single one of your lands out onto the battlefield incredibly easily. Why both with ramping when you could♑ just pluck every land out of your deck at the same time?
We've also got Gyre Sage, a mana dork who can tap to make man🌳a equal to the number of +1/+1 counters on it. Considering we're going to be making our creatures big with Halana and Alena, Partners, Gyre Sage co🍃uld wind up tapping for a huge amount of mana pretty quickly.
Draw
Draw is a little more tricky in Gruul (r🍰ed and green) than ram♍p is, but we've still got lots of ways to get the cards we need.
Harmonize is a green staple to draw three cards for only four mana, and we've also got Garruk's Uprising, an enchantment that gives us a card if we control a creature with power four or greater when it enters t๊he battlefield, and an additional draw whenever a creature with power four or great enters after it.
One of the sneakiest card draw tools we have on hand, though, is Mindless Automaton. It enters the battlefield with two +1/+1 counters on it, and you can pay one mana and discard a card to put another on it. More importantly, you can remove two +1/+1 counters from it to draw a card. If Halana and Alena, Partners can put 20+ counters on it each turn, that's a lot of card draw.
It isn't draw, but it's worth mentioning another impact of the Cultivator Colossus and Abundance combo. If you've got no lands in your library anymore, that knocks over a third of your deck out in one fell swoop. You'll only be drawing cards you can use from then on, as the 𝓀chance of drawing an unnecessar🐟y land falls to zero.
Make Halana And Alena, Partners Very, Very Big
For the rest of this deck's shenanigans, we need our ✤Commander to be as big as possible.
First, we'll start small. Bard Class is an enchantment that gives any Legendary you control a +1/+1 counter when it enters the battlefield, and can be levelled up to reduce the cost of them by one red and one green mana for extra value. There's also Hall of Oracles, which can be tapped to put a counter on a creature if you've cast an Instant or Sorcery this turn, and Oran-Rief, the Vastwood, that can be tapped to put +1/+1 counters 𒆙on each green creature that entered the battlefield this turn.
Going a bit bigger, Inscription of Abundance can put two counters on a target creature, and can be kicked for two generic and one green to do lots of other stuff at the same time. Ranger Class is a repeatable effect that puts a +1/+1 on one attacking cr🌞eature each 👍combat, although that does require you put Halana and Alena, Partners in danger's way to benefit from it.
For the big guns, we've got one of the Commander-exclusive cards from Crimson Vow, Thundering Mightmare. It has Soulbond, and whenever any opponent casts a spell, you can put a +1/+1 counter on both it and the creature it's bonded to (your Commander). We've also got Forgotten Ancient, which gets a +1/+1 counter whenever any player casts a spell, and can move its counters onto another creature. Hydra's Growth is another excellent card, doubling the num𓃲ber of +1/+1 counters on the enchanted creature each turn. Fractal Harness is an incredible piece that doubles the number of +1/+1 counters on the equipped creature whenever it attacks.
For all of these, run Branching Evolution, Hardened Scales, Doubling Season, and Vorinclex Monstrous Raider t𝔉o double the number of counters you produce each time.
The absolute king of +1/+1 counters in this deck, though, is Walking Ballista. It, Vigor, and a counter doubler like Hardened Scales or Branching Evolution make an 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:infinite combo that allows you to make Walking Ballista and any other creature💧s you want as big as you could possibly want (it can also be used to kill the table, but t🐲hat's not as funny).
Walking Ballista must have at least two counters on it, then remove one of the counters to deal one damage to any target – itself. The damage is turned into a +1/+1 counter by Vigor, and then doubled by Hardened Scales to give you two counters instead. Repeat the process as many times as you want to make Walking Ballista arbitrarily big, while using every other counter to deal damage to other creatures you want buffing at the same ti♌me.
Halana and Alena, Partners doesn't care about +1/+1 counters exclusively, though. Other kinds of buffs also work as far as we're concerned, and so running Colossus Hammer to give the equipped creature +10/+10 is a really good move. This deck has a fair few equipment pieces that will all go on our Commander (like Swiftfoot Boots and Darksteel Plate to keep them safe), which makes including Hammer of Nazahn a great way to avoid paying equip costs.
One of our game-winning cards is, of all things, Colossification. Halana and Alena, Partners doesn't have to attack to put counters on another creature, meaning you can play this, tapping Halana an♐d Alena, and still put 20 +1/+1 counters on another creature in the same turn.
Use The Counters
With Halana and Alena so big, our other creatures are going to be getting a lot of +1/+1 counters on them. While smashing is the end goa🐭l, there are more things we can use counters for before then.
Champion of Lambholt is a creature that prevents any creatures with power less than it from blocking creatures you control. If there's any creature you want to put counters on the most, this is probably it as it then means the rest of the table is completely helpless against your wave of attacking creatures, no matter h🐻ow big they are. It could also open people up to being taken out through Commander damage with a particularly beefy Hala♋na and Alena, Partners.
Less impressively, but still useful as a backup, is Battlefront Krushok. It makes any creature you control with a +1/+1 counter on it unable to be blocked by more than one creature. You could wipe out a few particularly useful creatures on the board with this, as opponents will be forced to throw them i🐽n the way of your big hitters.
For some go-wide strategies, Krenko, King Street Kingpin is a fun card. When it attacks, you put a +1/+1 counter on it and then make a number of Goblin tokens equal to its power. If you've buffed Krenko through your Commander already, you could be producing a lot of goblins each turn. Iridescent Hornbeetle is also a great choice, as you'll be putting so many +1/+1 counters on creatuꦦres each turn that will then be followed up by a wave of insect tokens to block with.
Time To Win
You have Halana and Alena, Partners out on the battlefield, and have managed to get them up to a +100 Trillion/+100 Trillion with the Walking Ballista combo. But how do you actually win?
A few cards have already been mentioned, like Champion of Lambholt making your Commander unblockable. But there are other ways of doing it too: Duskshell Crawler, Brawn, Garruk's Uprising, Craterhoof Behemoth, Triumph of the Hordes, and Overwhelming Stampede all give your creatures trample to jus🔴t barge through any potent🌳ial blockers and deal massive damage.
If you feel like taking all of your opponents out at once, use Chandra's Ignition. Target a creature who has higher power than the highest life total among your🍌 opponents, and it's an immediate win. While not really intended to be used this way, the Walking Ballista combo is also an guaranteed victory, as you can simply🍌 build up a trillion counters on it and then use them all to deal billions of damage to each opponent.
Tune The Deck Down
Combat is usually a pretty 'wholesome' win condition for Magic, and yet this deck is still evil in a✨ll the best ways. If you want to play it at a lower power table, there are some cuts that should be🐻 considered.
The most effective cut you can make is to remove Darksteel Plate, Swiftfoot Boot🤡🐷s, or both. Together they make your Commander almost impossible to remove through the usual methods and allow it to keep getting bigger. Giving your opponents a way to stop it will help bring it down a lot.
The inf𝓰🦂inite combo is the next obvious target. Of the three cards, Walking Ballista is the one to remove here. The other two play big roles elsewhere in the deck, while Walking Ballista is only there as a combo piece.
The Ozolith might be another reasonable cut. Being able to save your counters after a creature dies makes it very difficult for a lower-power table to deal with, as the threat is effectively back t🌠he very next turn with no time for them to build up a worthwhile response.
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To see the full Hala🥃na and Alena, Partners deck, check out the .
