After wrapping up a month of playing Narset, Enlightened Master for EDH League last week, I was able to get a couple of games in this past Tuesday and then three more games yesterday. Out of all five games I was able to pick up a win, learn a little more about my Rhys the Redeemed deck and get reminded of things I already knew about learning to play more complicated and powerful strategies. Let's start with last week's Casual Commander night.
Casual Night
Tuesday night I dragged myself out to our LGS for some casual (i.e. non-league) Commander games. I wound up playing two games that night, one with my Karona, The False God deck and one with The Mimeoplasm.
The Karona deck is built as a pillowfort deck with the main goal of playing my commander and not dying from people trying to hit me with her. Karona is a 5/c legendary Avatar that costs 1WUBRG and has two abilities. One is that she lets you name a creature type and those creatures get +3/+3 until end of turn. The other is that on each upkeep the active player gets control of her. That means they can kill you with your own commander, and if they have any sense of humor at all, probably will. To avoid this, the deck is built with tons of pillowfort enchantments. It also has the cycle of Vow auras and Assault Suit, all of which prevent the enchanted/equipped creature from attacking you.
The game was a five player Planechase EDH game and the only contribution I made was to hit a player for 13 commander damage. The next player could have finished the job but chose to send Karona into a big blocker instead, killing her. The problem with Karona isn't just that players might try to kill you with her. It's also that they'll just send her into a deathtouch or lethally huge blocker, figuring it's safer to make her dead than let someone else have the chance to use her against them. I think eventually someone won via combo and we got on to the next game.
In game two I decided to play my new, super amazing The Mimeoplasm deck. I'm being a little facetious - it's a combo deck with Hermit Druid and Flash Hulk built into it, but the manabase is slow and so far I'm not convinced it's really a true cEDH powerhouse. Our five player game became a six player game with the addition of a store manager and one of the best players in the store, who chose to play his Marath deck. Any deck trying to pull off a combo win with Laboratory Maniac or Protean Hulk is going to have a hard time with strong control Marath deck at the table and I basically didn't have much of a shot. It didn't help that Marath got Tormod's Crypt out really early, so any graveyard shenanigans I tried to pull off weren't going to get me very far.
I was able to cast Splendid Reclamation with a pretty sizable graveyard so that made me happy. For some reason the Tormod's Crypt wasn't used - probably because I wasn't actually doing anything that would directly give me a win. I don't remember but maybe it had already been used on someone else.
Sometimes you have to learn to find comfort in some minor things going right even if you can't actually win the game. It wasn't a bad game, and the Marath player didn't wind up winning. Neither did I, but I also wasn't out until the end, so that's something. I'd rather be in a game for the whole time and lose than get killed ten or fifteen minutes into a two hour game.
I only got two games in on Tuesday night, but was reminded that Planechase takes forever. I was also reminded that playing a deck with nasty combos doesn't mean you're going to win lots of games. You have to learn a lot to pilot a combo deck against a table of quality players with strong decks.
Reworking Karona
After having such a bad game with Karona, I was tempted to take the deck apart. I had been thinking about building a Myr deck with Ramos as the general, but I was given the brilliant suggestion of rebuilding Karona as a Myr tribal deck. Karona will never be a powerhouse, but with enough Myr on the battlefield her +3/+3 pump for your creatures could be enough for a decent alpha strike. Having that always available is actually pretty nice.
Saturday morning I pulled Karona apart, took a big pile of Myr creatures and rebuilt Karona. In one of my first times goldfishing the deck I was able to play and then pop Myr Incubator to put over thirty 1/1 Myr artifact creature tokens onto the field and then play a Coat of Arms. Again, nothing replaces real game action, but it was an optimistic start and I'm hopeful that with a little work I'll be able to turn it into a decent, fun, midrange deck with the ability to occasionally steal a game or two.
When I opened up a box of Unstable I set aside 36 beautiful full art lands. I was lucky enough to get seven of each and an extra swamp. I had wanted to play them all in one deck, and I threw them into this Karona build, but I also threw in all six artifact lands, Command Tower and Buried Ruin. Unfortunately, 44 lands is way, way too many for this deck and my next draft may involve finding another of my 5/c decks (either Ramos or Ur Dragon) and finding a way to split them up between two of those decks. I don't want to split them up willy-nilly.
Later this year it looks like we're going to have an EDH league month where the theme is "Creatures with God in their type or False God in their name", so Karona, the False God may get her chance to see some EDH League action. It won't be soon, but it will happen and hopefully she'll be good enough to steal a game or two over the course of the month.
Saturday EDH League
I've spent a few weeks working up a Rhys the Redeemed deck and dedicated tomorrow's Commanderruminations article over on GatheringMagic.com to talking about it. Yesterday I got my first chance to play it also got in a pickup game after round two.
Round one went fairly well. I was playing with three of my favorite players, including Jared, the Bruna player who I'd been trading off wins with for weeks. He was still on Bruna, and we also had a Rosheen Meanderer and a Tasigur, the Golden Fang deck in the game. I was on Rhys, and will be for the entire month. We don't have to stay with the same deck but I always do and now that we have themes I have an extra reason to stick with it.
I had no real way to deal with Bruna so I spent most of my early game trying to get my board set up. When Bruna eventually hit the table I was able to play Slaughter the Strong and force Jared to sacrifice Bruna, who at that point had Eldrazi Conscription attached. I didn't know if I had enough ways to stop her or even slow her down but fortunately I wasn't the only one worried about Bruna. The Tasigur player also helped keep her off the field. I got out a Sandwurm Convergence. Other players had been chipping away at him and eventually I was able to send two 5/5 wurms at him when he had gotten down to 9 life.
I had a pretty decent board and Tasigur had a ton of mana and had been tutoring and drawing spells so instead of inviting a Cyclonic Rift I was able to knock out the Rosheen player. The Tasigur then comboed off to win the game. The Tasigur player is a judge and a great guy, and I didn't have any way to deal with what he had going on. He confirmed that he had Rift in hand, so if I had gone after him I wouldn't have gotten that second kill.
In the second round of league games I was at a five player table, but had the misfortune of sitting to the left of a really good player who was on blue, playing Oona, Queen of the Fae. I got a decent start but every single time I tried to play a game-changing spell it got countered. Beastmaster Ascension? Nope. Sandwurm Convergence? No thanks. Tooth and Nail (entwined)? Nope. Craterhoof Behemoth? Don't even think about it. My only other option was to sit there and wait for the blue player to win without even trying to do anything, so of course I kept casting stuff and drawing out the counterspells. Unfortunately nobody else was able to recognize that Oona was close to the win, so she didn't get much attention until it was all over.
Selesnya is honestly just a pretty crappy color combination when faced with blue control. Sitting to the left of the Oona player I was pretty much fucked. It was exceedingly frustrating, and my 22 creature army wasn't even enough to net "biggest army" as the Oona combo also spat out a ton of fairies in the process of comboing off. I was pretty annoyed but what can you do? Sometimes a game just doesn't go your way and you're just not going to have much of a chance at winning. Of course, now that we know how this particular build of Oona works (well, and with heavy counter support) we'll be better prepared for it next time.
Ending on a High Note
My high point of the week wound up coming in our pick-up game after round two was over. I decided to play The Mimeoplasm, figuring I could combo off, get a quick win and play a second casual game with a weaker deck before I had to tally up points for the league. Boy was I wrong.
I started with an early Hermit Druid but one of the new players (who had driven nearly an hour to come play with us) knew what was up and killed it. I then cast Mimeoplasm as a copy of Hermit Druid but that got killed, again before I could tap Jethro Tull to mill my whole library to go for the win. He probably should have let me dump my library and killed Lab Man, as I would have been out of the game entirely, but I'm not complaining. I was still in it, but now my Hermit Druid was exiled (by Mim) so I had to dig for another win con.
I drew into Splendid Reclamation and then tutored for my Traumatize. Traumatize puts half of your library into your graveyard and Splendid Reclamation returns all lands from your graveyard to the field. To my astonishment, I was able to pull that off, dropping a big pile of lands onto my battlefield. It may be my new favorite thing, and even if I lose the game I never feel bad having pulled that off.
I then proceeded to royally screw up a wincon that I should have been able to nail. With Walking Ballista, Mikaeus the Unhallowed and Ashnod's Altar in my hand, I had a huge brain fart and played Mikaeus first. An opponent then went to exile it with Path to Exile and I realized my mistake. Playing the sac outlet first lets you send the target to the graveyard so you can get it back again. I was so mad at myself I almost scooped, but eventually played out a few more cards from my hand, congratulated my opponents on stopping the combo and passed the turn. My exile pile now had both Hermit Druid AND Mikaeus, the Unhallowed. This was not how things were supposed to go.
On my next turn I tutored up Cyclonic Rift, overloaded it, and cast The Mimeoplasm as a copy of Blackcleave Goblin with 13 +1/+1 counters on it from Death's Shadow. I killed the player who had exiled Mikaeus and then I brought back Sylvan Safekeeper so I could protect my big beater. Both Blackcleave Goblin and Death's Shadow had been in my graveyard from my earlier Traumatize. On my next turn I got back Cyclonic Rift, killed the new player who had recognized what I was going after with my Hermit Druid and then got Cyclonic Rift back again. Playing with insane amounts of recursion is really powerful and really fun if you're lucky enough for your opponents to not luck into a Tormod's Crypt or Bojuka Bog.
I totally didn't expect to win that last game, and I'm pretty sure that any true cEDH player would look at my build and declare it slow, durdly and far from top-tier. They'd probably be right, but if I didn't have Blackcleave Goblin and Death's Shadow in the deck there's no way I could have won. I was lucky I didn't run into any graveyard hate, and I really need to get better at getting those combos to work, but I'll take the win. It was earned, even if some of the decks at the table probably weren't nearly strong enough for me to pull out The Mimeoplasm against them.
My goal had been to combo off and get another game in. Instead I screwed up my combos and still found a way to eventually win the game. No amount of goldfishing a deck can truly prepare you for a real game where you have to play attention to so many things to know when to try to go for the win. Maybe I should feel a little bad for springing that deck on that table, but they were up for the challenge and it wasn't a quick and easy win.
I don't need or even want to win every game, but I hadn't notched a win since the previous Saturday so it felt nice to get one. I then tallied up the league points. The Tasigur player from my round one game set a new record for points in a day and it seems the most resistance he was offered might have been the two kills I stole from him in our first game before he won. I'm comfortably in fifth place in our league rankings. Over the coming year I do hope to win a month. I got three month titles last year, and the previous year I got the year's top point total. I like to be competitive but also have an enormous advantage from being there every single week.
Final Thoughts
That wraps it up for today. Tomorrow I've got a writeup on how I built my Rhys the Redeemed deck over on GatheringMagic.com. After submitting my final draft to my editor I couldn't resist tweaking it a little more. I hadn't meant to start the month with an infinite combo, but Saturday morning I threw in Sword of the Paruns, Karametra's Acolyte, Green Sun's Zenith and Open the Armory. With enough devotion to green, Karametra's Acolyte and Sword of the Paruns will create infinite green mana and should let me create an infinitely wide board of 1/1 elf warriors. They won't have haste unless I drop my Concordant Crossroads, but it's a win if nobody board-wipes or casts Cyclonic Rift.
The bottom line is that nobody else holds back from running infinite combos in league play. I always hesitate on the first draft of a deck from "being too mean" and it takes me a while to get all the really nasty stuff into a deck. I still don't have Elesh Norn in the list, as it just feels too mean. As the league organizer I want to play well and competitively but I sometimes shy away from stuff that can really get folks mad. Elesh Norn is just a dirty, mean card and while I may still pick one up - I'm not in a rush to do so.
That's all I've got for you today. If you've been following my games, I hope you find something in here worth reading. It's a little window on what I go through each week and will help you understand the kind of EDH player I am. Hopefully that will help to explain how I approach my writing and why I have the views I have on Commander as a format.
Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!