Casual Night
Tuesday night we gather at our LGS to play more casual games of Commander. There's usually only a handful of us and we tend to favor more midrange decks. This Tuesday I wound up playing only a couple of games and they weren't particularly memorable. Both games included a player who was playing their Titania deck for the first time. Game one they just blew up, amassing a sizable army of 5/3 Elementals and I was on a deck that just wasn't keeping up. I think I was playing Rashmi. In game two I resolved to not let Titania go 2-0 in the deck's first two games and burned through a bunch of removal in the early game, blowing up a Birthing Pod and countering Titania once. Another player ran away with that game, but neither was particularly fulfilling. I was playing decks that needed more time to establish a boardstate and unfortunately we didn't get in a third game that night.
The only major takeaway from the night is that I'm more and more thinking about taking apart Rashmi rather than giving her a chance to complete for a month of League play. The deck is trying to do two things - make tokens and exile them to cheat big creatures into play. The basic problem with the deck seems to be that the commander doesn't actually do anything at all to help with either part of the plan. Being in green means I have access to ramp to be able to try to get enough mana to hardcast some of my bombs, but that's a pretty slow game plan. I'm still somewhat tempted to stick with it and maybe pick up a Mana Crypt and some other cards that might give the deck a little more power and speed, but I'm torn.
My strategy for Rashmi could be brought over to another deck, but I would want that deck to be able to help with the gameplan. I own a foil Oona, and I'm more and more thinking that she might be the best fit for this plan. Black would give me access to removal that's lacking in Simic colors and I could throw in my Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth to give me a chance at casting some of the bigger bombs in the deck. Having a commander that can create tokens on her own will open up my list to be able to run more tutors to get out my Synthetic Destiny or Mass Polymorph. I'm probably going to think about it for a few more days, as I'm quite fond of Rashmi, but the deck just isn't showing me any consistency when I play it.
EDH League
I've been feeling rather pessimistic about my Rhys the Redeemed deck lately. In its first two weeks of play, it went 0-4 and never really felt like it had a real chance at winning any games. In one game it got a board of 22 creatures, but a Marath player went infinite, so I didn't even get a "biggest army" point from that game. I went into Saturday still not feeling great about Rhys, but I'm playing him all month for our league games and yesterday he was finally able to rack up a win.
In round one I played against an Odric, Lunarch Marshal deck, an Arcum Dagsson deck and an Ashling the Pilgrim deck. That last one was a deck I had loaned out for the day, so I knew it pretty well and knew it had the capacity to blow up but wasn't necessarily a huge threat. I have had bad experiences with Arcum Dagsson so I was very wary of letting it get out of hand, but the Arcum player insisted that it wasn't a broken and horrible build. The Odric deck was a wildcard. I knew if it was running the right stuff and was left alone, it could get out of hand, but my experince with Odric was that it doesn't have a "high ceiling". If it wins it probably will win through combat, not from some gross infinite combo or lockdown strategy.
The Ashling deck got a slow start and got targeted early by the Odric player, who was worried about losing his board to Ashling's ability to boardwipe. Ashling had Braid of Fire out, so they were going to be able to put counters on Ashling at a pretty fast clip if left alone. I might have saved him if I could have, but as it turned out I was struggling to get going myself and was just happy to not be threatening enough to draw anyone's attention. The Arcum Dagsson player wasn't lying - they spent most of their effort getting out silly stuff like Darksteel Reactor... OK. That's not silly, but the vehicles I think I remember them tutoring up felt a little silly. I was just happy to not be dealing with a filthy gross Arcum build, so I focused on trying to get my battlefield in order.
At one point I made a deal with the Odric player, who had a few points of commander damage on me, for us to take care of the Arcum player and then duke it out. Ashling was already out, they had been brought to 1 life and then blew up Ashling to keep anyone from killing them. Arcum was quietly assembling an indestructible army and neither of us had any real answers for that yet, but on my turn it became clear that I had lethal on both of them. The Odric player understood and I proceeded to set myself to figuring out whether or not I could indeed kill them both on my turn. I wasn't sure.
I was tapping attackers and talking through the logic of how I could split it up to seal the deal. I had Beastmaster Ascension out so I had gone from a less-than-threatening board to a real threat pretty quickly. I had eight token elves, Rhys and maybe another creature tapped and I was trying to figure out if I needed to throw Wellwisher and Seeker of Skybreak into the fray as well. Those last two were not yet tapped, and I literally said "If I add these two into the battle..." when the Odric player jumped the gun and cast a spell to exile (or destroy) all attacking creatures. I had very clearly said "IF..." but I didn't want to be a jerk so I left the creatures I had tapped in combat but pointed out that the Wellwisher and Seeker of Skybreak weren't tapped yet and shouldn't be considered attacking. Words matter and they had jumped the gun. I probably had an argument that I could have pulled all of my creatures out of combat, but I'd rather take a setback and not be a jerk. Wellwisher taps to gain 1 life per elf on the battlefield and Seeker taps to untap target creature, so I responded to their answer by tapping wellwisher to gain 11 life, untapping him with Seeker and tapping him again to gain another 11 life. Then I lost all my attackers, which kind of a bummer, as they now got +5/+5 from Beastmaster Ascension.
I had gained a bunch of life, but on Odric's turn I took a bunch of damage, including more commander damage. On my next turn I thought I had found a nice little reset button. I cast Slaughter the Strong, again tapping and untapping my elves - this time only gaining a total of four life. I figured it was worth it if my opponents would also be set back, but the Odric player had a way to return all their creatures from their graveyard, leaving me in a pretty sad state. It was an excellent play on their part, but I had basically set them up to win the game. The Arcum player had out a Genesis Chamber, so when I played Rhys and Thousand Year Elixir and then tapped Rhys to make an Elf I also got a Myr token from playing Rhys. I also played a Rings of Brighthearth and passed the turn, expecting to die to commander damage from Odric.
As it turned out, Odric wasn't able to get to lethal and if I remember correctly, they chose to keep blockers in place. Odric was flying and I had no way to block him so it looked like on Odric's next turn I was toast. I think I had 2 elves and 2 myr on the field at that point in time.
I still had Beastmaster's Ascension out, but didn't have enough creatures on board to win. I was able to tap Rhys to double the number of tokens and pay an extra 2 for Rings of Brighthearth to double them again. I carefully put out two sets of token cards to track the ones that could attack (2 Myr and 2 Elves) and the ones that had summoning sickness (6 Myr and 6 Elves). I don't recall whether the Arcum player was still in the game or not, but I had one last trick up my sleeve. I had topdecked a Concordant Crossroads. With 1 forest left, I tapped for a green, dropped Concordant Crossroads to give my sixteen 6/6 creatures haste and swung in for the win.
It felt pretty good and my opponents put up a good fight, though I'll admit that I wasn't taking on the best decks in our league at that table.
In round 2 I was at a table with another Rhys player, but unfortunately I was also at a table with Jared, our local Bruna player. I did make it past the first player getting killed by Bruna. I played a Sandwurm Convergence and thought I was safe, but Bruna decided to overload a Cyclonic Rift and then kill me before I could get my safety blanket back down again. It was probably the right choice, but I really had no shot against that deck so I was going to die at some point. Bruna wound up winning the table fairly easily and we moved on to play a pickup game before we wrapped things up.
In our pickup game I played my new Multani, Maro-Sorceror deck. It was a lot of fun being able to knock out my first opponent quite easily. Multani gets power and toughness equal to the number of cards in all players' hands. At a six player table he was swinging for a ridiculous amount of damage and my first victim simply had no blockers. Another player scooped because it was a six player table and things were taking way too long. With only four players in the game I was able to swing a 66/66 trampling Multani at the player with the best boardstate thanks to my topdecking an Overwhelming Stampede. I wound up dying to a swarm of thopters, but it was a fantastic first game and leaves me feeling very optimistic that Multani will be a fun and enjoyable mono-green beatdown deck. I may even write about it someday for a Commanderruminations article over on GatheringMagic.com.
Final Thoughts
Hoping to win one of eight games over the course of a month isn't exactly hoping to dominate my opponents, but I generally try to set my sights relatively low each month. Now that I've notched my first win with Rhys, I'm definitely hoping to get another next week and wind up winning a quarter of my games. The deck isn't bad but it has significant weaknesses and for whatever reason, I'm just not that excited by it. I may even tweak it between now and next Saturday but I'm not sure yet. I'm currently in third place in our rankings behind a player who is just destroying all our records for points in a day, and Jared, who is safely in second place. I doubt I can catch him and will probably wind up the month in third or fourth depending on how next week goes.
As for other projects, I'm achingly close to tearing apart Rashmi and I'm looking forward to next week when I can free up a few cards from Rhys to put into Multani. I'm happiest when I'm working on a build or planning a new project so building Multani this past week was a lot of fun and I'm thinking that building Oona will be worth it just to have a new project to jump into.
Tomorrow you can look forward to an article from me on GatheringMagic.com about proxies. I won't be sharing the link in my usual Facebook EDH communities, as any discussion about proxies is generally avoided in those groups. They tend to get heated so this week I'll let the article find its own way out into the world rather than promoting it myself. I think it's a pretty good treatment of the subject, but folks have very strong opinions about proxies so I expect it will make more than a few people upset.
As always - thanks for reading and I'll see you here next week!