Over the past few months, the Historic metagame has experienced some enormous shifts due to the constant influx of powerful cards to MTG Arena. Eldrazi has skyrocketed in popularity thanks to the arrival of Eldrazi Temple to the client, while the release of Val, Marooned Surveyor in Alchemy: Edge of Eternities created a devastating combo deck.
After dealing with a broken format for a while, it seems as though players are starting to lose their patience. Some Historic enthusiasts are calling for a ban or nerf to the potent Val combo, a change that could open the door for more archetypes to succeed. This deck’s continued reign of terror signals bigger-picture problems with how Wizards oversees the format, and players are suffering the consequences.
Val and Trelassara Combo
At its core, the Historic combo deck centered around Val, Marooned Surveyor, and Trelasarra, Moon Dancer has a lot in common with the Abzan Amalia Pioneer deck that was banned a while back. In a similar fashion, this combo revolves around two creatures that each only cost two mana. While a third piece is needed to get things started, there are tons of cheap cards that can fill that void, making a turn-three kill very possible.
The goal is to get both Val and Trelasarra in play at the same time, then trigger either card’s ability. If you gain life, Trelasarra will grow and let you Scry 1. This causes Val to deal one damage to your opponent and gain one life, which in turn retriggers Trelasarra and creates a lethal loop. The most common way to get things started is with Prosperous Innkeeper, which, when cast on turn two, conveniently sets you up to cast both Val and Trelasarra the following turn and win immediately. Alternatively, you can resolve a cheap card like Rubblebelt Maverick after you jam both of your other combo pieces to trigger Val and close things out.
Naturally, one of the top complaints about this combo has to do with the sheer efficiency of the cards involved. After all, the threat of a turn three kill is frustrating and often forces the opponent to play scared. What puts this combo over the top, however, is its resiliency and consistency.
Both Chord of Calling and Green Sun’s Zenith function as efficient tutors for either piece of the puzzle, giving you maximum redundancy while helping you rebuild in grindy games. Furthermore, these search effects can grab Sylvan Safekeeper if you already have your combo rolled up, making it impossible for your opponent to break things up with single target removal. With all of these factors added together, it’s no wonder players are calling for Wizards to take action.
Fixing the Problem
In most cases when a combo archetype overstays its welcome, and players suggest that the issue isn’t a solvable one, Wizards is forced to decide what cards to ban. While not always possible, weakening an archetype instead of outright killing it is generally the better move. In the context of an Arena-exclusive format like Historic, however, Wizards can achieve the best of both worlds by just nerfing the most problematic card rather than banning it outright.
With this in mind, many players seem befuddled that Wizards hasn’t made any necessary adjustment to Val up to this point. Val has been dominating on the ladder for a while, and even just won a recent Historic tournament to boot. Some players have suggested that Wizards could either add a limiting clause that allows Val to trigger only once each turn or just remove the life gain clause altogether, thereby stopping Val’s combo potential while still keeping it legal.
Even changing Val’s mana value to three instead of two could have merit. That way, the combo stays intact but is slower, giving the opponent more time to disrupt it. A big part of the appeal to Alchemy cards in the first place was the ability to rebalance them. Now is the perfect opportunity to showcase this strength, but unfortunately, it looks like we have to keep waiting.
The Bigger Picture
On a grander scale, the lack of timeliness from Wizards when it comes to rebalances has become a major issue for Historic. After all, this is hardly the first time that Historic has suffered at the hands of a frustrating archetype for way too long. The combination of Sorin and Saint Elenda, for example, ran rampant in Historic for over a year before Sorin’s -3 ability was finally nerfed in August of 2025.
This doesn’t even take into account the growing frustration among the player base over how the actual ban list is being run in Historic. The irony of consistently pre-banning all forms of strong mana denial while Eldrazi Temple and Ugin’s Labyrinth provide Eldrazi decks with absurdly fast draws is awkward, to say the least. Ultimately, a lot of work needs to be done to get Historic into a more enjoyable position for many players, and hopefully, there are more changes on the horizon.
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