Our long awaited new Duel Decks event starts tomorrow and it’s time to pick a side:
Will you be choosing Daxos, the Returned or Kalemne, Disciple of Iroas?
Check out @Nalthazar’s video on the new event and choose your side!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S10TY2OxB2w
If you would like to view before voting, choose the "view results option to the right of the submit button.
Currently Daxos is in the lead. I will try to keep this post updated.
I definitely was more excited about Kalemne, but I’ll have to try Daxos out and get a feel for him!
The fun part is, we can do this over and over!
Yeah I’m enjoying this! 
It’s a no brainer! Definitely Daxos. From now on, all my zombies will always have lifelink!!!
Kalemne is in the lead for me. It is easy to see why. All the deck has to do is put in a lot of cost 14+ creatures and pretty soon they are putting down a +20/20 haste creature every turn. And as far as I can tell the card pool for Daxos has no real answer to this.
Unless you have “Eat to Extinction” and “Disenchant”
I’ve easily won all my matches with objectives with Daxos. The key is having enough removal. I’m using the following deck:
While this deck does rely on some pretty shiny cards, the principles that make Daxos work are represented. The Mythics deny loyalty, remove creatures, push out the deck and provide lifelink for the objective. Cavalier is a bit tricky to play with him because it puts up a token, however I like it for removing reinforced creatures when I don’t have another option, and I can then cast Inevitable End.
I think Kalemne looks easier to deck build, but as @bken1234 has shown above, it is not that hard when everyone plays creature heavy with Kalemne.
I assume players are playing, why wouldn’t they?
How do you arrive at “a large swing to one side”? I’m not sure how to determine the size of the lead in Duel Dekpck matches.
During the Duel phase the Kalemne icon said “leading”. Now in the final phase the red bar representing her is significantly larger than the purple bar representing Daxos (roughly in the middle of the screen).
I don’t think there was much in the way of serious testing of the stages of this event not using the preconstructed decks, because it’s pretty swiftly apparent that Daxos is simply overmatched with the cardpool the event allows.
There’s two problems Daxos has in this event that don’t really have solutions:
Daxos has no way to deal with very large creatures with haste, like Gideon’s Defeat or Murder. Creatures with Defender help a bit, but cease to matter much when Greg drops Kalemne’s ultimate or plays Inferno Titan or does any number of other things to handle potential blockers before his very large hasted double-striker attacks.
Daxos has no reliable way to deal with untyped supports. Kalemne’s ultimate generates a very problematic untyped support, and Hixus also poses a very difficult problem. Almost every source of support destruction or removal in the card pool available to Daxos deals strictly with enchantment or artifact supports. Planar Cleansing and Ashiok, Nightmare Muse are the only possible responses and they both have significant downsides.
Potential solutions aren’t obvious here, because they’re based in just what cards are available. This can’t be fixed by changing the objectives a bit; it requires more radical action. Additional card sets would need to be allowed, but that breaks the flavor of the event somewhat. Unfortunately I don’t think anyone is ever going to get the Daxos victory exclusive.
Maybe people didn’t pick Daxos because of his sad-face artwork.
While I don’t disagree Kalemne is better, there are solutions to the two problems you cite.
I run Pacifism, Eternal Isolation, Inevitable End, and Eat to Extinction. This combination of removal/disable has kept Kalemne from mounting much of an offensive. This is buoyed by Daxos’s strong ultimate, and a second ability that can recur any removal you use in a pinch.
I haven’t seen Kalemne’s ultimate because he almost always prioritizes his first/second ability. Disenchant removes that token because it’s an enchantment (Greater Avatar of Iroas). His ultimate (Greater Giant’s Triumph) is also listed as an enchantment. You said it’s untyped..perhaps that’s a bug? Dealing with supports is an issue in all matches because of the ridiculous amount of type segregation, so that’s not just a Daxos issue; however, if you keep the board locked down/clear, Greater Giant’s Triumph shouldn’t be an issue anyway.
What I find the most egregious balance issue is that Kalemne gets an ongoing creature/mana pump from his board support, while Daxos gets a very weak resurrection effect that normally doesn’t fire because you don’t have enough experience points. Kalemne’s is vastly superior, whereas I’ve only had Daxos’s ability successfully fire twice, and every time it was after using his ultimate to generate enough xp.
Honestly, I feel Daxos’s first ability is pretty weak overall. Yes, you CAN eventually have an Eidolon worth using, but most of the time he’s just clogging up the board–and worst of all, his power/toughness resets at the end of the turn and negates the effects of any buffs you’ve applied to him (which is odd considering he’s clearly built to be used with Auras).
Thus you have a spammable first ability that puts a suboptimal creature in your first slot, which then makes you NOT want to spam it. It’s better to ignore the ability altogether. Weird design decision, Oktagon.
Didn’t we see landslide victories in the first couple of ZvE as well? When people were going for one objective, then the other? We can probably expect Daxos to be heavily favored next event when people want the reward they never got. After that it’s anyone’s guess, but Kal seems easier.
My experience having tested both planeswalkers out now:
Daxos seems built for mid-late game play, while Kalemne is set up with more synergy for a quick rush.
Your average player, that does not have access to the best rares and mythics, will find Kalemne a much friendlier planeswalker to lead them to victory.
I was expecting after looking at this poll, for a stronger Daxos lead. A humbling reminder that we are only a small portion of players in a much larger pool.
I ended up running this deck http://https//imgur.com/eforBVs for Daxos (which ironically has just commons/uncommons) and did not no lose with it – but came close. The key was the life gain to make up for the hasted damage that was so hard to avoid. Heliod’s Punishment helped somewhat but a lot of Kalemne players were running Colossal Hammer decks that somehow make Greg keep a lot of mana reserved in their hand so it fell off a lot.
I had a lot of opponents who hit the third abiltiy on Kalemne so don’t understand previous posts saying it never happens. RNG I guess.
Only had enough to but one pw. I went with Kalemn this time. As stated above, Kalemn is an easier build. Next time I’m going with Daxos. Just want to give him a equal chance. ThenI will decide which one I prefer.
The two sides are much more balanced. Let’s everyone jump on the Daxos train early, and encourage your coalitions to do the same!