Welcome back to my weekly posts about how my games are going. I write about Commander over on GatheringMagic.com and now use this site to share how my games are going. I may wax philosophical or talk about EDH tech but mostly it's a look at my past week of EDH. It's basically navel-gazing.
Tuesday Night
After a somewhat unimpressive start to my month of EDH League games (I went 0-2), I took our casual Tuesday night Commander games as a chance to try out my new Karona, Myr Queen deck. When I showed up at the LGS, a game had already started, but I was lucky and it wasn't long before they were done and I got the chance to jump in. Everyone pulled out good decks and I wanted to see if I could get my Mimeoplasm deck to actually combo off, so I went with that rather than my janky pile of Myr for my first game. As luck would have it, I barely managed to get even a modest number of lands out and didn't draw into anything helpful before someone comboed off. I had created a bunch of 1/1 Elementals from another player's Tempt with Vengeance but chose to keep them as blockers rather than work with the table to swing on the tempter, who wound up with well over 100 of the 1/1's because everyone was tempted. For game two I decided to give my Karona, False God deck a try. The other three players were playing Edgar Markov, Rosheen Meanderer and a simic Merfolk deck led by one of the new Merfolk legendaries. My Karona deck used to be a pillowfort deck but now boasts a ton of Myr creatures and a few other artifact-related cards. I may write about the build soon for one of my main Commanderruminations articles over on GatheringMagic.com, as it's a fairly interesting deck. I started out with a lot of lands and was able to drop and pop an Origin Spellbomb to make a Myr and draw a card on my second turn. I was able to drop a Door of Destinies and a Herald's Horn early in the game, naming Myr for both of them. That Myr token was the last Myr that would enter the battlefield for this Myr-themed deck in this game. The top quarter of my library contained not a single other Myr card. I think one of my opponents copied my Door of Destinies and got more benefit out of their Door than I got out mine. The distinct lack of Myr on my Myr deck's battlefield didn't mean the game was a loss.
I was lucky enough to play Mirage Mirror and was also lucky enough to have lots of lands and a Sol Ring, fetched up by a Trinket Mage. That Mirage Mirror wound up making the difference in the end. The player who had amassed a huge army in the previous game had a Tilonalli's Summoner on their battlefield. I was not only able to use my Mirage Mirror to become a copy of it, but I got a player to let me hit them so I could make some Elementals. I had a Stoneforge Masterwork on the field and after pumping 4 mana into the Summoner, I was able to equip it to one of the four 1/1 Elementals I had just made so that I'd have a 4/4 and three 1/1's. It wasn't much, but at least I had blockers. As the game progressed, I just kept topdecking lands. I had two of the Vow cards in my hand, but an opponent had a sacrifice outlet so I wasn't going to cast Karona just to see her sent back to my command zone on the next player's turn. One of the funny things about EDH is that sometimes having an unimpressive boardstate that presents a few blockers but doesn't scare anyone is exactly the best place to be in the mid-game. Nobody bothers to kill you, but when they are trying to figure out who to focus on, you're not even on their radar. The game wound down with one of the players getting knocked out, another player having a sizable army of 1/1 Elementals and a third player having an army of vampires that was bigger than I could deal with. I still just had my Myr token, a Trinket Mage and four 1/1 Elementals, one of which was equipped with Stoneforge Masterwork so it was a 4/4. The opponent with Tilonalli's Summoner had a sac outlet so when I went to target it with Mirage Mirror I realized (and reminded him) that he could sac it to his Ashnod's Altar. He went to do that, but I was able to change his mind by promising not to swing at him. He was at 5 life, so he was OK with that and let me use my Mirage Mirror. I was able to swing with all of my elementals at the Edgar Markov player, paying 14 mana into Tilonalli's Summoner to make my attacking army 18 strong. They were only 1/1 Elementals, but that Stoneforge Masterwork meant that one of them was an 18/18, so I knocked the Edgar player from over 40 to under 10 life. I was at 17. It was all I could do. I passed the turn and the Edgar player killed the Rosheen player but left enough blockers up to survive my next attack.
Fortunately, every Karona deck has an anthem in my Command Zone. I cast Karona, fully intending to swing with her and give my Elementals +3/+3.
Unfortunately, I forgot that my opponent had Blind Obedience out, so Karona entered tapped and couldn't attack. Without that pump I had no way to kill him and win the game that turn.
Remember that Mirage Mirror?
I wound up using it to become a copy of Karona, sending the real Karona back to the Command Zone (legend rule) and attacking with 17 Elementals that were now 4/4 thanks to the Mirror version of my Karona, False God. It was a win, but not anything like what I had hoped or expected to get out of my Myr deck's first real game. Afterwards I went through the game store's rare artifacts bin and picked up a Shimmer Myr, Propagator Myr, Myr Turbine and Myr Superion. I like to win, but more than anything else I want to actually have and play a Myr deck. It's not strictly tribal, but it should be able to establish a better board full of Myr artifact creatures than I saw in that game.
Thursday Night
Our Thursday night EDH games, which for a while we've been holding once a month at my house, are going to be ending. We're changing up our schedule so my kid can play Modern at our LGS on Thursdays and we're going to be trying to play at Merrymac Games on Sundays instead. NexGen Comics is my "home store" but I've wanted to check out the EDH scene at Merrymac for a while now.
We wound up with five players and got in a few games. In one of them I played my The Mimeoplasm deck and in another I played my Nazahn deck.
The Mimeoplasm game was meant to be a quickie. I wanted to finally land an early win at a good table with that deck.
The table had been struggling to keep a Sasaya deck from winning and I had to cast my only counterspell (a Spell Pierce) to stop Sasaya from doing an enormous Genesis Wave that would have won the game for them.
If I had that Spell Pierce, I would have been able to go off and protect the win, but I went for it anyways. Hermit Druid tapped to mill my whole deck and when I went to cast Dread Return someone cast a Negate. It was worth trying, but clearly I need more practice with the deck, and possibly more counterspells.
The deck still lacks a number of pretty important cEDH spells, like Force of Will and Mana Drain. My latest set of upgrades hadn't arrived in the mail yet, so the deck is now better than it was Thursday night, but still needs work.
My last game of the night was with my Nazahn deck. The other decks at the table were Mikaeus the Unhallowed (combo), Animar and Child of Alara. I had reworked the deck to run a bunch of anti-black tech like Drought and Lifeforce, specifically to try to deal with the threat of quick Mikaeus combo wins.
The game went OK. There were multiple boardwipes. The Animar player was able to blow up and knock out MIkaeus without any help from anyone else. The Child of Alara player got Possibility Storm out and from that point it was anyone's game. The Animar player had bad luck and multiple times in a row managed to cast creatures that wound up being hydras that just went straight to the graveyard. My efforts to find any answers at all were mostly unsuccessful until I cast a creature that wound up, thanks to Possibility Storm, being a Novablast Wurm.
I equipped Lightning Greaves to the wurm and already had a Stonehewer Giant equipped with Shield of Kaldra so it was indestructible. I attacked, destroying all creatures that weren't indestructible, and before long had killed the Animar player and the Child of Alara player conceded the game. I don't know for sure that I would have gotten them, but my board was really strong and I was able to pull out equipment with Stonehewer Giant so a Fireshrieker was about to give it double-strike.
It was a win and again, it was the result of having a slow start and basically flying under the radar until I got lucky. I actually don't enjoy those games as much but it seems like when I have too fast a start it never really works out well.
Saturday EDH League
I'm playing Rhys the Redeemed for our EDH League games this month and going into Saturday I was 0-2. I had built the deck as a relatively fair deck designed to amass a huge army without going infinite. The goal is to win by combat - always fun but not the optimal strategy in a competitive Commander game.
After losing twice last week I added in a few cards that could combo and go infinite, but the deck isn't fast and doesn't have enough tutors to be able to really get there unless I get lucky.
My first game this Saturday was a five-player game. One of the players was on Marath and wound up winning the game quite handily, but it wasn't a quick win. I was able to cast my commander three times, get the first combat damage of the game, and outlive one opponent. We all had to deal with a Sheoldred deck that was set up to troll the table as much as possible. He wound up casting his commander a whole bunch of times before getting killed, which was more mercy than we probably should have shown a Sheoldred troll deck. The player was also joining us for the first time so I think the table may not have been focusing on him as much as they should have.
I was able to amass an army of 22 creatures but when Marath blew up, he went infinite so I wasn't even able to get a point for having the biggest army. I didn't expect to win at that table but it would have been nice to have picked up that point.
In the second round of league play I was at a table with four much stronger decks - Marath (again), Selvala, Alesha and The Gitrog Monster. Every one of those decks was capable of a quick or convincing win and the Marath player wanted to try to set a new record for points in a single day after their own record had been broken the previous week. Unfortunately for Marath, Alesha had started with a "god hand" and was able to win the game on turn 5.
The one bright spot from that second round was that I had kept three mana up and used Teferi's Protection to dodge the initial win, outliving the players who were killed when Alesha comboed off. Of course, on my upkeep I was killed by the same combo that killed the other players but at least I had done something.
That puts me at 0-4 and while I'm still hoping to steal a win over the course of the month, I'm less optimistic now that I'll be able to pull that off. I'm starting to wonder if our "theme months" are going to occasionally function as something of a trap. Build around this theme, but doing so will probably make your deck less competitive and you won't win any games. It's a challenge, though, so I'll probably keep building around our monthly themes.
As it turned out, the player who set a new record the week before managed to do it again on Saturday. They not only set a new record for points in a day but beat their old record by 12 points. In two weeks they racked up more points than most of our past month winners amass in four weeks of play.
After that quick of a game, we had tons of time to play again before the other tables wound up their second rounds, so we shuffled up and played a pickup game.
For some reason I decided to play Karona again. I was completely outclassed but I wanted to see if I could get a decent board of Myr out. This game was slightly better in terms of putting Myr onto my battlefield, but I certainly didn't win the game. I think I need to look at how to take that deck and build some real wincons into it. Right now it's just a mess of Myr and some good intentions. That'll be fine and fun at a midrange table where everyone's doing that, but most of my games are with players who are really bringing it and present a threat that requires a more serious deck.
Final Thoughts
In tomorrow's Commanderruminations article over on GatheringMagic.com I've got my first treatment of how I would build a monocolored Ramos, Dragon Engine deck. It's a more interesting concept than you might think, as it gives you access to a wealth of spells that can be cast with white mana but that have hybrid mana in their casting costs. Ramos lets you build a deck with only plains for your land base but that runs both Elesh Norn and Dovescape, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. I hope you check it out - it turned out to be a pretty interesting piece.
I wound up getting a bunch of cards in the mail yesterday so I've been making more edits to decks over the past few days. My Mimeoplasm deck now runs Amulet of Vigor, and I'm more and more convinced that I should be trying to mill half of my deck so I can cast Splendid Reclamation. Any early-game wins that show up as a "god hand" are fine, but I think it'll be easy to have a strong game with Splendid Reclamation putting 10-15 nonbasic lands onto my battlefield.
For next month's EDH League themes we're going to be getting bonus points if we have a commander with the words "each player" somewhere on them. I had planned to run Karona, but her casting cost is high enough that I'm now considering Ashling the Pilgrim or maybe Etali, Primal Storm if I can pick up a copy somewhere.
That's all I've got for you today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!
Don't forget to skip on over to GatheringMagic.com to check out my mono-white Ramos article.