The end of Planeswalker Decks is in sight, with all of the entries that WotC ever released now being covered on Cubic Creativity. We sure had some ups and downs, as usual, but thankfully we go out with a bang with the Planeswalker Deck “Rowan, Fearless Sparkmage”, a White-Red Knight tribal that in my opinion is surprisingly well thought-out. Now, White-Red has a pretty solid track record as a powerful Aggro combination, but that has not stopped WotC from released absolute garbage filled with tons of vanilla creatures and bad spells before. Luckily for us, this is not such a deck and with a solid core of creatures and a planeswalker card that actually supports the overall strategy, we might have a winner on our hands here. Let’s take a closer look in the article below. Here is the decklist for the Planeswalker Deck featuring “Rowan, Fearless Sparkmage”: Creatures (27): 1x Giant Killer // Chop Down (W/2W) 2x Venerable Knight (W) 1x Weaselback Redcap (R) 2x Youthful Knight (1W) 3x Rimrock Knight // Boulder Rush (1R/R) 2x Inspiring Veteran (WR) 1x Acclaimed Contender (2W) 4x Garrison Griffin (2W) 2x Knight of the Keep (2W) 2x Ardenvale Tactician // Dizzying Swoop (1WW/1W) 3x Rowan’s Battleguard (3R) 2x Prized Griffin (4W) 2x Rowan’s Stalwarts (4R) Spells (8): 2x Joust (1R) 3x Scorching Dragonfire (1R) 2x Weapon Rack (4) 1x Rowan, Fearless Sparkmage (3RR) Lands (25): 4x Wind-Scarred Crag 11x Plains 10x Mountain As usual, I start by complaining about the lack of one-drops; and then realizing that there are multiple options for the first turn to choose from in the Planeswalker Deck “Rowan, Fearless Sparkmage”. The first Rare of the deck only costs one mana when played that way, which is “Giant Killer // Chop Down“. You can either play it as a creature for one mana providing a 1/2 that can actually tap itself for two mana to tap another creature, or go for the removal effect by paying two mana for the card and destroying one target creature with power four or more; which is honestly a pretty solid combination all things considered. “Venerable Knight” continues the trend of good cards, not only starting as a 2/1 for one mana but also giving a +1/+1 counter to a target Knight when dying; and this deck has tons of Knights to target. The last one-mana creature is “Weaselback Redcap“, a 1/1 that can be boosted by +2/+0 for two mana and is therefore rather mediocre but occasionally capable of taking out much bigger creatures than itself with some mana investment. This decks shapes up to be a pretty solid Knight tribal, with even the weaker options like “Youthful Knight“, a two-mana creature that is 2/1, being helpful due to having First Strike and therefore trading favorably in battles despite its low toughness. “Rimrock Knight // Boulder Rush” takes the opposite approach, pretty much running headlong into its death being a 3/1 that cannot block for two mana, but can also be used as a +2/+0 boost with its adventure side. “Inspiring Veteran” gives all of the aforementioned creature and many that follow a solid boost, being a 2/2 for two mana that simply gives other Knight creatures +1/+1 and therefore makes them much more deadly and threatening. And the deck even has some consistency apart from the usual planeswalker search: “Acclaimed Contender“, a three-mana creature with 3/3 as its stats, allows you to look at the top five cards of your library and pick a Knight, aura, equipment, or legendary artifact from them to put into your hand which is a pretty solid effect in my opinion. And even when I see a card being included as a playset and therefore expect the worst in terms of creatures, I get positively surprised by “Garrison Griffin“, a 2/2 Flying creature for three mana that also gives Flying to a Knight when it attacks and therefore provides your force with much appreciated evasion. Of course, WotC cannot help themselves but put gutter trash into these Preconstructed Deck anyway: “Knight of the Keep” is a 3/2 vanilla, which happens to be a Knight and has therefore synergy with some other cards in the deck, but should still be thrown out as quickly as possible. And thankfully, other cards can make up for that plunder: “Ardenvale Tactician // Dizzying Swoop” either provides a 2/3 Flying creature for three mana or a two mana spell tp tap two creatures with, both being useful in the deck overall. There are multiple copies of “Rowan’s Battleguard“, which are kinda okayish as 3/3 creatures with First Strike for four mana but receive a respectable boost of +3/+0 when you control a Rowan planeswalker. “Prized Griffin” is a kinda odd inclusion, being a 3/4 Flying creature for five mana that neither happens to be a Knight nor support them in any way like “Garrison Griffin” and is therefore a contender to ditch. And then there are the usual planeswalker searchers in form of “Rowan’s Stalwarts“, 5/2 creature for five mana that fetch a copy of “Rowan, Fearless Sparkmage” from either your library or your graveyard. I have seen worse, but I am certainly not a fan of what is basically a 5/2 vanilla for that amount of mana as it will die way too easy. Overall, the deck looks promising so far, with the core of Knight creatures providing plenty of solid attackers with a nice array of bonus effects. They all seems to plead loyalty to “Rowan, Fearless Sparkmage“, a planeswalker card that is actually not only relatively cheap at only five mana but also happens to support the rest of the deck nicely. Starting with five loyalty, “Rowan, Fearless Sparkmage” can gain one loyalty by giving one of your creatures +3/+0 and First Strike for the turn, which is a great effect for anything ranging from the rather cheap “Rimrock Knight // Boulder Rush” to a delayed one-two punch with “Rowan’s Stalwarts” which definitely are more threatening as a 8/2 with First Strike. The -2 effect deals one damage to up to two target creatures, which isn’t much, but also disallows them from blocking for the turn and therefore giving your big Knights free reign to pillage and plunder the opposing life total. And depending on the board state, the -9 effect is just an instant victory, taking control of all creatures, untapping them, and giving them Haste so that you can attack immediately after resolving that effect. There have been Planeswalker Decks with random planeswalkers that do nothing for the rest of the deck, but “Rowan, Fearless Sparkmage” is a fine addition to an otherwise already solid-looking deck. The large amount of creatures leaves less room for spells; even though this is not nearly as much of a problem in the Planeswalker Deck “Rowan, Fearless Sparkmage” since you can cast some of your creatures as adventures if necessary. There are two copies of “Joust“, which allows you to take out opposing creatures via fighting them with your own and getting a solid +2/+1 boost on top of that for being Knights, a good deal for two mana. “Scorching Dragonfire” is basically “Incinerate” and therefore a perfectly solid burn spell to work with; with the only drawback being that you cannot target players, only creatures and planeswalkers. Still, the card works as removal, which this deck needs. And then there is “Weapon Rack“, an artifact for four mana that comes into play with three +1/+1 counters that you can slowly shove onto your creatures to give them more fighting power. Why the deckbuilders decided against using equipments as a faster and reusable source of fighting power is beyond me, but the deck definitely works in theory; which is more than I can say for some of the packages that WotC pushed onto the market. As far as Preconstructed Decks go, this is a pretty solid showing. Knights are a solid tribal to begin with that can be extended into playing Black for more options like “Haakon, Stromgald Scourge” and plenty of solid removal, while there are also plenty of options with Flanking that might actually be interesting to work with for somebody with this deck. This is one of the decks that I would suggest giving to someone starting the game, since it is straightforward enough in terms of strategy while also introducing plenty of synergies to work with. I would have liked to see equipments being used to push the Aggro route a bit further, and stuff like “Knight of the Keep” is bad regardless of how much the creature type fits in a tribal deck but this is definitely one of the better packages to get. This is also reflected in price, with seemingly nothing fetching so much money that the deck has to be sold for ridiculous prices. A starting price of 12€ seems a-okay and makes the Planeswalker Deck “Rowan, Fearless Sparkmage” one of the rare cases where I can give a buying recommendation.