Five Color Beacon Control

I've been fine tuning this Beacon Control gauntlet grinder for years. It's not a particularly efficient deck for grinding wins since individual game length is rather long, but it will consistently win and it is a genuinely entertaining deck that will really test your skill as a TCG player.

I basically only play single player on Eternal, so apologies in advance if any terminology is incorrect but since I rarely see long descriptions for gauntlet decks, I'll go through all my card choices and explain my reasoning behind them and give a brief primer on how to effectively play this deck. I will say that I find most gauntlet grinding decks painfully boring to play and usually switch back to this deck immediately after a run with any other deck, so if you have a similar attitude, spend some time with this deck and tell me what you think.

Calibrate Great all around card to fill out the lower end. Helps smooth out your curve and hit power early on, and mid to late game it helps you hit your card advantage engines or relic based removal like Mystical Shackles

Infinite Hourglass One of a small number of tool box cards for Display of Knowledge you usually don't want to see this in your opening hand unless you know your opponents deck will have numerous stun effect.

Pause for Reflection Extremely versatile card that is hardly ever a dead draw. Helps with tempo against quicker decks, a lot of times you can put your opponent an entire turn behind with just one of these. Mid game this has a lot of synergy with your relic removal cards like Mystical Shackles and Krogar's Grave. This can help dodge removal and silence effects for your more important creature, or retrigger summon effects on Desert Alchemist or Great Valley Smuggler or even Beacon of the Reach if you are stuck with a hard to play card.

Desert Alchemist Another extremely versatile card that shines early and late game. Helps hit power drops or specific influence requirements or secure an undepleted power for a turn five Harsh Rule. Effective removal against larger threats or aegis. And plunder is extremely helpful when hitting a awkward card with Beacon of Reach

Master Archivist another extremely powerful card that goes a long way into making this deck viable. Your manabase is nearly all crests, this means you are always going to be a turn behind but Master Archivist on turn two is an extremely powerful defensive play that the AI will usually either have to take a turn off to deal with, or simply not attack leaving you more time to build up towards board wipe effect. Additional giving all your units Inscribe means you are more likely to hit your critical drops and turns over more cards from Beacon of Reach. Additional this allows you to go on the offensive early either if your opponent stumbles or if Master Archivist survived a good Hailstorm

Beacon of the Reach The entire deck is built around this card advantage engine, though you can easily win without utilizing it. Rarely do you drop this on turn 3 and more often its used after stabilizing the board. Knowing when to scout this to the top or bottom is pretty key to success. I went with three instead of four because Eternal has a habit of giving you multiples of these in opening hands or as early draws. You want one or two per game, but you want them when you are ready to play them, not sitting in your hand while you struggle to survive. Very rarely do you want to discard or market the card you get from Beacon of the Reach. Always having the option to play a card to draw another is vital to this deck's success. You will still run into times when you have no other choice, but fortunately you can always get it back from the market or reset it with Pause for Reflection.

Celestial Discovery Effective card draw especially once you have relics. Usually you are using this to hit land drops but rarely do you play this on turn 3-4 so mulliganing hands with this or scouting them to the bottom is usually preferred to drawing them early without having the capability to cast them.

Display of Knowledge Another versatile removal spell that facilitates a small toolbox or relic inclusions. I would only use this for offense if you are sure it will result in card advantage or close out a game.

Display of Vision This card does a lot of work in this deck. Most of the time you are using this to hit the right influence to cast your spells or hit that critical turn 5 power on turn 4 so you can cast a turn 5 Harsh Rule. Its extremely effective against deck with relic weapons but rarely are their other relics you are worried about. The -1/-1 mode ends up being extremely useful with how many decks run 1 toughness creatures or clearing out aegis for future removal. Mid to late game keeping one in your hand can be valuable but if you have a Beacon of the Reach going, using this to hit land drops and scout the top of your deck can be a more effective use.

Great Valley Smuggler The only market card the deck runs but it does a lot work. A lot of the time the card will sit in your hand as you play out your other three power spells, waiting for the right card choice to be more clear, but if you turn 3-4 play was a relic, a 4/4 can go a long way to shutting down your opponent. The market for this deck has gone through a lot of changes. Core card like Shen-Ra Speaks, Sword of Unity and Ice Bolt are included but I decided to include Lumen Reclaimer for the powerful Hunt/Devour deck and Haven Augur is my newest anti Aegis inclusion. Knowing the opponents deck and how the AI likes to play it goes a long way in choosing which card is relevant but a lot of time you will play this and just grab a removal spell.

Hailstorm Fair amount of opponents can swarm the board pretty quickly and make 5 power board wipes too slow. Three damage seemed like the sweet spot for this effect. Heavy Hail was a consideration but in the end 3 damage on turn 3 does more work. Late game this becomes pretty mediocre and you will often plunger it away, but it still has its uses clearing aegis or taking out small annoying threats. Turn 3 Master Archivist in turn 4 Hailstorm is an extremely effective sequence that will usually put you far ahead.

Insatiable Bug Another deadly creature that I feel has enough upside to replace Scorpion Wasp though I can see an argument for swapping this slot. Simply put the entomb effect ends up being extremely valuable when trying to stabilize the board with the added effect combating the Hunt based decks that give Beacon Control the most trouble. Trading then gaining a small amount of life and making Devour harder to trigger is significant and having the ability to redraw your 1 power spells has a lot of value in the mid to late game

Krogar's Grave, The True-Sight Map and Poacher's Menagerie round out our relic "toolbox". All of these cards are powerful on their own but present answers to a lot of situations you are likely to run into. If you are slightly ahead or near parity against a creature deck, Poacher's Menagerie can quickly stem the tide, first providing chump blockers then eventually threats too big for your opponent to handle. The True-Sight Map shines against non creature deck and can provide an option if you aren't set up for Beacon of the Reach. Krogar's Grave is usually going to take the place of a Mystical Shackles if the target is smaller, thus giving you a small upside. These slots have changes a lot over the years, feel free to swap your own preferred relics in.

Meditative Trance I was initially very reluctant to include this card in the list because it had very little effect on the game state initially, but time and time again it proves vital to securing victory in close match ups against opponents decks that have any amount of reach. Every card you create with Beacon counts as a draw, and having this in play before your start exploiting beacon can quickly lead to substantial life gain. Knowing which opponents you will need this option against goes a long way. Scouting this to the bottom will happen a lot, but when you need it, their are very few replacements for this effect.

Mystical Shackles Extremely effective removal that ends up being even more powerful thanks to Pause for Reflection. I have never had any AI opponent trigger the entomb on this card, and often it just sits on the board making late game Pauses extra valuable. Just be mindful of opponents with Aegis, since we have effectively zero ways of clearing the way until beacon starts working.

Harsh Rule Finale Harsh Rule is my board wipe of choice, plenty of replacements are possible but I like the consistency of this one best. Its not uncommon for beacon to give you void interacting cards but Nothing Remains being 4 power might make up for that short coming, though getting double shadow isn't always easy.

The manabase has gone through a lot of iterations, ultimately the sequence of influence combinations you want to hit is pretty clear. There is little you can do in the early game if you don't have access to time mana so make sure your opening hand has it or can quickly get it. You always want to start the game with a Time power if you can manage it, the odds of wanting to play Calibrate turn 2 are extremely high and often times you will draw it and want to dig 5 THEN play your next crest to scout. After that you want to hit double Justice and Double Primal so you can cast Hail storm and Harsh Rule depending on your hand and the board state but this can get complicated at times depending on how reliant you are on Display of Vision which needs shadow. Usually you can be extremely comfortable and stabilize with only Time, Primal and Justice, leaving Shadow and fire to the end, but once you start having option on which influence to get, keep in mind that beacon will give you extremely random cards, and some colors end up having stricter influence requirement for their more useful cards. I usually try to get Justice and Time to 2 and then focus on the other colors more so I am able to cast the odd dragon or removal spell that has an awkward power cost.

Against aggressive decks first and foremost you want to gain control of the board. Insuring your opponent isn't attack you is 75% of the way towards victory. Keeping hands with removal and creatures will help slow the game down until you can hit your board wipes. But keep in mind that you need resources to achieve this, so scouting power to the top is likely what you will be doing in the early game even if this means bottoming Beacon or other win conditions. You should aim to hit a land every turn for the first 6-8 turns and have access to every color by turn 5. Focus on finding the removal synergies that work best against your opponent, weather it be Master Archivist and Hailstorm, or Pause for Reflections and Mystical Shackles, or ensuring you have ways of clearing aegis before you cast Harsh Rule. Tailor your defense to what your opponent is immediately, then make sure to have contingencies for when they repeatedly top deck (they always do) then worry about offense. Your absolute worst match up are the Hunt based decks, they have an insanely good curve and use tons of aegis creatures to make controlling the board impossible at times. Do you best to go card for card and try to shut down their creatures before they have a chance to attack.

Against any none aggressive deck you have two options, land and protect an early Master Archivist, and close the game out fast, or just have more resources then they can deal with. A few of the AI decks have a lot of access to burn, which means cards like Pause for Reflection, Insatiable Bug and Meditative Trance are vital to getting yourself out of reach. But in the end, this deck is built around a random card drawing engine, and you will at times get utterly screwed by beacon, so don't make it your primary game plan if you can help it. GLHF, let me know if you have any card suggestions.