Into the Arena: Bringing Gates Into the Battle

The release of Battle For Baldur’s Gate is getting everyone excited for all the amazing commanders, multiplayer cards, and D&D themes of the new set! I, however, have been getting excited for one of the less celebrated aspects of the set – the return of gates.

Gates are a type of land that was introduced in Return to Ravnica, and they originally represented the Guildgates of each faction within Ravnica. They entered the battlefield tapped, and although the gate type itself doesn’t do anything there were a bunch of other cards that cared about how many gates a player controlled. The most well-remembered example from those days is probably Maze’s End, which is a land that offers an alternate win condition if its controller had one gate from each guild on the battlefield. Guilds of Ravnica from 2018 brought back the gates, and the following set Ravnica Allegiance brought a number of powerful cards that synergized with them.

Now Baldur’s Gate is using the gate land type, and for the first time they are not representing the Guildgates. Instead, they are representing the various gates between the many neighborhoods, or wards, of Waterdeep (a city from Dungeons & Dragons). The new common gates are even better than the original Guildgates because they are only tied to one colour and allow you to choose the second colour they can tap for. Even more excitingly, there are some new gates that synergize very well with other gates. This inter-gate synergy hasn’t been seen before, and I think it could be very exciting.

Pretty much since they were first printed, players have tried to make decks that are centered around gates. Although they are less powerful than other dual lands, the other cards that synergize with them can make them worth it. Maze’s End, for example, is a tempting way to try and win the game without having to interact with the opponent. Some decks, such as Turbofog, used that strategy back when it was legal in Standard. After Ravnica Allegiance, gates had another stint in Standard thanks to payoffs like Gatebreaker Ram and Gates Ablaze. These cards synergized so well with gates that they were able to compete with all the top decks of the day, from Mono-Red Aggro to Esper Control. I played this deck a good amount back in the day, and I have to say it was very fun to play sweepers and massive creatures like Gate Colossus in the same deck. Drawing a million cards with Guild Summit was also nice!

This stint in Standard aside, for most of their history gates decks have been more of a meme than a reality. While it is fun to try using an entirely different land type, it is difficult to keep up with opponents who aren’t having their lands come in tapped every turn. This is where Battle for Baldur’s Gate comes in. With Gond Gate, this commander set is totally changing the future of gates decks.

Gond Gate makes it so that all of your gates come in untapped, which completely negates their downside. For the new cycle of common gates, this means they will be even better than original dual lands like Bayou if you have a Gond Gate on the battlefield. Battle for Baldur’s Gate isn’t a Standard-legal set, but with the release of Alchemy Horizons: Baldur’s Gate next month all of these gates should be legal in Alchemy and in Historic! Historic also happens to include all of the amazing gate payoffs from Ravnica Allegiance, so these new gates can be paired with the best gate cards from previous years. The icing on the cake is that Maze’s End is also legal in Historic, thanks to its inclusion in Historic Anthology 3!

Needless to say, I have already been brewing some decks to try as soon as these cards are available on Arena. Here’s an example of a more combo-based list I want to try that features Maze’s End.

This deck combines some strong gates payoffs, some card draw and ramp, and Maze’s End to make a cohesive control-leaning deck that focuses on winning through Maze’s End. Wrenn and Seven provides some acceleration and some defense, while Scapeshift can help set up Maze’s End even quicker! This definitely isn’t the only way to build gates in Historic though.

Below is a deck that is a bit midrangier and that focuses on winning by out-valuing opponents and overpowering them on the battlefield.

This deck takes advantage of Gatebreaker Ram, which I think will be a powerful creature even by Historic’s rising standards. Explore and Growth Spiral help this deck keep up with opponents, and Gates Ablaze and Deafening Clarion wipe out aggro opponents. I think a build like this should be able to take full advantage of the power of gates. It also gets to play Jegantha as a companion for free, since it doesn’t need any cards that would break its requirement.

While we still have to wait just a little longer to get access to the new gates on Arena, we can at least tide ourselves over for now with the actual release of Battle for Baldur’s Gate. While a set like this usually wouldn’t have ramifications beyond the EDH format, I think this one has a chance of creating a whole new archetype in Arena’s eternal format!