Harry Potter and the Chamber of Mandrakes

Are you tired of watching your Praxis opponents get endless value off of Wasp, or Recruit half their deck? Choose violence! Choose Deans' Chamber.

On Pens' Marvelous Imperion stream, we were trying to find ways to make a card that gives your opponent an Unblockable Deadly unit work. One approach was to simply shut the Summon effect off with Chamber. That didn't really work, but it got me thinking. I had always thought of Chamber and Grand Suppressor as good for cheating big cards into play for Sling, and as tech for unitless decks. However, as we tried to put them into a Wisps and Radiants shell, I realized that they could be more: the ultimate enabler for tribal decks.

Tribal decks play a bunch of cards that build each other up, but for Mandrakes those effects are very slow. Every Ultimate ability you play can improve the whole board, all while letting let you build card advantage with the newly reverted The Merriest Mandrake. But how is a deck like that, which builds value from small units very slowly, supposed to compete with lightning-fast cards that get huge value from a Summon or Contract ability?

So, I figured I'd just try to turn off the Summon effects and see if I could let Ultimates shine! As fortune would have it, not only are Mandrakes unaffected by the effect suppressors, they also have Snapping Hydrangea, who packs a ton of value as a 2-drop but has a bad Summon effect just like his cousin Belax, the Ravenous. If your opponent manages to kill him, he makes an excellent target for Murgo the Bone Guy's Ultimate! In fact, any of the buffed Mandrakes make good targets, especially if all you need is to kill one huge unit or to swing at face.

In addition to all the fun synergies that come naturally in a tribal deck, Mandrakes have some of the best cards with Fate in the game! This gives Skullmarket Delivery even more power than it would usually have. Invasive Creeper gives you extra draws in addition to giving your whole board Lifesteal, Shoal Stirrings buffs your whole void before reanimating 2 Mandrakes, and of course we have Krull, Xumuc Occultist to quickly grab any single unit.

When Mandrakes first came out, Expedition got their key players nerfed into the ground because they were so strong in a slower format. With Chamber and Suppressor, we can try to bring the slow format to them!