Spaceboss has always been my Voidwalk Spirit combo project, and with Gothic, I may finally have enough choices to make this work. Unfortunately, Lord of the Void - Spaceboss himself - is still unplayable without maybe discarding him and summoning him cheap with Kythera & Raise Dead, which is already too many cards to justify his addition. Maybe Wards are the way to go for him, or in combination with Realmeater. In the past, I've tried to use Pathfinder to get this deck to ramp in time, but the Atlas restrictions make setting up a coherent strategy/threshold plan almost impossible, especially with the new deck sizes.

With Gothic, notably, swapping in Harbinger for Pathfinder adds a casting discount to void spaces right from setup, and remedies the contradiction inherent in filling voids to cast expensive minions with Voidwalk. Almost all of the cards in this deck should now always have utility, synergy, and combo capability. Pathfinder's limitations are not worth the extra turn when Harbinger basically has an extra turn baked into 15% of the board before you even mulligan.

Voidwalk and "cast anywhere" opens Harbinger up to huge minions mid-game, the selection now spoiling for choice in year 3. Ultimate Horror and Ghost Ship can combo late game to great effect, but an undeniable strength of the deck is to ramp early and attack all-out before your opponent can set up whatever crazy new deck they've devised.

Evil Presence and Kiss of Death seem like no-brainers here. There is some removal and control to maintain board domination, sticking to minions with abilities to take advantage of Harbinger's discount. Many minions heal you with their strikes on units, making double-blocking dangerous for clever opponents. Floodplain, still the best water site in the game, does double duty as a Root Spider washout and a toggle-on 2nd water affinity - flooded sites count as water and whatever else they are. With a little more water or flooding mechanics, Anui could fit in here, but she needs too many cards setup for too little payoff.

Spaceboss is of course a work-in-progress, like all of my decks, but I expect Harbinger to be avatar for over 50% of the decks in the upcoming OP season. His ability is like having a minion-only Philo stone from setup on 3/20 squares, and is handy almost every turn like all of the other competitive avatars. I expect Zalem will soon be making an Harbinger deck himself, which will be Spaceboss's real test.

Take him and I on at Games Ahoy in Colorado - perhaps the best places to play Sorcery weekly in-person in the USA.

12.19.25

James