Art by Kekai Kotaki
A battlebox inspired by the Jeskai Control Mirror, especially Ben Stark vs. Shahar Shenhar from the 2013 World Championships. More resilient and disruptive control win conditions, such as planeswalkers, are eschewed for a small suite of Baneslayers, including the namesake. Other win conditions include beating down with Celestial Colonnade, which both players always have access to, incremental burn to your opponent's face, and resolving a huge sorcery.
The whole box is shuffled and split at random into two separate decks. Players play with a four-card opening hand, cannot mulligan, and have access to the following lands from outside the game:
Sorcery speed stuff is such a drag here. I think I’ll end up cutting Finale eventually because Thousand-Year Storm is kind of filling that role and doesn’t benefit from sorceries. A couple play testers requested more utility control creatures, hence Venser.
