This site has turned into my weekly game log, where I talk about the casual and EDH League games I played over the previous week. For my Commanderruminations articles, check out my work over on GatheringMagic.com.
Tuesday Casual Night
This past Tuesday night I headed to our LGS for our weekly "casual" EDH night. Because it's "casual" I don't usually plan to play my better decks and this week was no different. I brought five, but mainly wanted to give my new Taigam deck a chance to stretch its legs. I also planned to get a game in with my Ashling the Pilgrim red goodstuff deck. I left Narset and The Mimeoplasm at home, but I did bring Multani.
The Losses
In game one I played my Taigam, Ojutai Master deck. It's a rebuild of Rashmi Box of Spaghetti and has a game plan of making creature tokens and exiling them to cheat big creatures into play. Rashmi was fun but she didn't bring much to help with the game plan. Taigam will let me rebound my card draw and token-generating instants and sorceries and will make my polymorph spells uncounterable. The evolution of this deck will be the subject of tomorrow's Commanderruminations article over on GatheringMagic.com, so I wanted to give it a try to see how it would do.
Unfortunately, the deck played somewhat slow. It was a 3 player game and while I did better than the Zacama player, who barely even got lands out, the third player ran away with the game early. They were playing Feldon and the game was completely unfun, uncompetitive and was over practically before it began.
The second game I played was another 3-player game. This time I played my mono-red Ashling the Pilgrim deck, and again one player ran away with it. I didn't draw into much of anything interesting and while the game was mostly an attempt to see how the deck would play out, I didn't really get the chance to see it do much of anything.
After that game some of the players went to play a Commander cube and I got to play some games with more than 3 players. That was something of a relief. I'm not a big fan of three player tables.
In the third game I again played Taigam. This time I was able to get out some token creatures and actually used Proteus Staff to exile a few and cheat creatures in before the game was over. I momentarily had a Consecrated Sphinx on the table, but it got killed and reanimated by an opponent, who got more draw off of it than I wound up getting (zero cards). I cheated out a Grand Abolisher at a point in time when I was looking for something a little more impressive, but that's about the most exciting thing that happened.
Eventually someone landed a combo and the game was over. My suspicion about this new version of my polymorph Eldrazi deck was that it again wouldn't have enough speed or consistency. So far it looks like I'm right, though I will definitely give it a few more games before I switch commanders again.
The Win
After three fairly miserable games I decided to switch to Multani, Maro Sorceror. We picked up a new player who we had never played with us before. He was on Daretti and the other two players were playing Anowon, the Ruin Sage and Edgar Markov. I had a feeling that the Daretti player might have been hoping to pubstomp us, but I wasn't sure. As it turned out, he definitely had serious cards and a good feel for the game, but he wasn't trying to play a cEDH build against a bunch of casuals.
I started out pretty well, but the Daretti player dropped a sol ring and ruby medallion right on turn one, so we were all wary of him just running away with the game. The vampire decks got creatures out, though Anowon was a little mana-screwed. Daretti played a Mindslaver and even though I knew he'd later on be able to recur it, I took one for the team and burned some removal on it immediately.
I focused on ramping during the early game and put off casting Multani for a while because Anowon forces opponents to sacrifice non-vampire creatures. I didn't want to get stuck in a cycle of having to sac my commander again and again. Mana dorks made more sense, as they would be relatively painless to sacrifice and Anowon being on the table would simply make me choose to kill its controller as my solution for how to keep from sacrificing Multani.
If it sounds like I'm talking about killing my opponents as if it's an easy thing, there's a reason. Multani has a power and toughness equal to the number of cards in all players' hands. This deck has proven to be remarkably good at killing a single opponent, and has a really good win/loss ratio so far. I'm going to devote a Commanderruminations article to it soon.
Eventually I was able to get both Prized Unicorn and Multani onto the table. Prized Unicorn is like Lure on a stick. All creatures have to block it, so if you've got a gigantic creature you want to hit an opponent, all you have to do is swing with both of them. We had well over 21 cards in all four of our hands, so I had lethal on someone on my turn.
The Edgar Markov player had a fantastic board and zero cards in hand, so they were my logical choice to kill. The Daretti player had Mindslaver out and had an Arcane Lighthouse, so they could remove my commander's shroud ability at any time. I think Daretti had considered Mindslavering me but didn't seriously think I would kill them on my turn.
What I wound up doing was telling the Edgar Markov player that I was going to kill them unless they agreed to swing everything at the Anowon player on their next turn. They figured that was a deal worth making and I sent Multani and Prized Unicorn at Daretti. They were a little stunned, but I couldn't risk leaving that Arcane Lighthouse on the field or letting the Mindslaver get used and recurred. I then played a Pathbreaker Ibex and passed the turn.
On Edgar's turn they swung at Anowon but left them at 1 life. Anowon removed my Pathbreaker Ibex, but didn't have any other real solutions for my board. When they passed the turn, I was able to cast Lure on a mana dork, cast Triumph of the Hordes and swing for lethal on the Edgar Markov player. I then brought Triumph back to my hand with Revive, though it wasn't really needed, and a turn later I swung and killed the Anowon player to finish up the game.
What I'm loving about Multani is that he's got built-in protection from anyone messing with my commander short of using a boardwipe or something like Aetherize or Cultural Exchange. It's why I love Narset, and it's working pretty well for Multani as well. I'll write up the deck soon. It's giving me that wonderful feeling of having built something nobody else is playing that's both very powerful and fairly clever. It took some thought and planning to brew it up and so far it's been a straightforward but rewarding deck to play.
Saturday EDH League
March brought a new theme for our EDH league games. For the next five Saturdays if we play a commander with the words "each player" anywhere in its text box, we get double our "tubthumping" points, which are points we earn (up to 3 per game) for casting our commander from the command zone.
I decided to go with Mono-Red Goodstuff, led by Ashling the Pilgrim. It's rocking the usual lineup of red threats, including Purphoros, God of the Forge, Krenko, Mob Boss, Heartless Hidetsugu, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, and the new dinosaur, Etali, Primal Storm. Some of those guys (Hidetsugu & Etali) even have "each player" in their text box so if I get bored of my boardwipe-on-a-stick I can always switch up and try something different while still staying "on theme".
Game one was a four player affair with a hug deck (K & T), a Reaper King deck and a Jazal Goldmane deck. I figured I had a decent chance at the table and I wasn't wrong.
It was a good early game with the Reaper King player casting an early Approach of the Second Sun. A few turns later they wound up doing a land search rather than face the constant focus of the rest of the table. With a weak boardstate it's not fun having everyone openly talking about how to kill you first so they can get on with the rest of the game. The group hug player was giving everyone card draw, so we realistically only had a few turns before we were going to lose the game. We laid off when he shuffled his library after tutoring for a land, but we also all knew we could lose the game at any time if he topdecked it. None of us had much in the way of counterspells.
The game went on and I was able to kill the Reaper King player mid-game using Kiki-Jiki and Combat Celebrant. The Jazal player had a blocker with first strike and the K&T player used Beast Within on my Kiki-Jiki right after the Reaper King player was killed. Play continued and Jazal hit me for a bunch of damage. I could see I was in trouble if I didn't do something about his boardstate. Fortunately I was able to find an answer.
I had a turn where I had Ashling out and had just taken that hit from the Jazal player, blocking with and losing three creatures and also losing 12 life. The Jazal player had a bunch of 1/1 creatures and would have had an easy time killing me on their next turn. Instead of pumping my commander three times and wiping the board during my turn, I had the presence of mind to make a pretty sweet play.
I had Seething Song in hand. Seething Song is a 3 mana instant that generates 5 mana. I played Grinning Ignus, which is a 3 mana elemental that for 1 red mana can return to my hand and give me 3 mana. I played him and passed turn, leaving myself with only 2 mana showing and not enough blockers to take what was likely going to be a ton of damage if Jazal swung with the team and pumped them. Jazal then proceeded to blow up their board to something close to (but not quite) 40 creatures. Before they went to combat, I paid 1 mana, returned Grinning Ignus to my hand, giving myself 3 mana. I used that to cast Seething Song, tapped a mountain to make 6 mana and paid for Ashling's ability 3 times, wiping the field. That felt pretty good. I love presenting a boardstate that looks deceptively weak or unobtrusive and then making big plays that seem to come out of nowhere.
The Kyanios & Tiro group hug player had a fantastic pillow fort set up, with lots of propaganda effects and a Dissipation Field. My plan to win via Impact Tremors & Purphoros ETB damage wasn't going to work very well, as Dissipation Field was going to return both of them to my hand each time they did damage to the group hug player. I had no enchantment removal, so he had me over a barrel. Fortunately, I was able to at least find a way to kill the Jazal player, who was still working on rebuilding from my massive Ashilng boardwipe. This might seem odd, but the key was to make sure all the ETBs I needed happened at once. If I tried to do the damage with a trickle of creatures I'd be constantly bouncing my threats.
I had both Purphoros and Impact Tremors in my hand and I played out a bunch of spells to establish a decent board. Not 40 creatures, but with a few goblins, goblin token generators and a Chancellor of the Forge I was able to present a nice little army with 15 goblins in total. I passed the turn, hoping to have my board intact so I could kill Jazal. As fate would have it, I hadn't lost anything when my next turn came around and I proceeded to make a bunch of mana, in no small part thanks to a well-timed Battle Hymn. I actually screwed up my ordering and cast Impact Tremors and then cast Purphoros. He entered as a creature, triggered Impact Tremors and K&T's Dissipation FIeld sent Impact Tremors back to my hand. I felt kinda dumb, but proceeded to play Impact Tremors again and then cast Kindred Charge to make 15 more goblins and do 45 damage to each opponent. Jazal died, but K&T had a creature out that let him gain 1 life for each creature entering the battlefield. Purphoros and Impact Tremors were again bounced to my hand, but I had successfully killed my second opponent.
For the rest of the game, which lasted the full 2 hours, the group hug player and I struggled to find ways to do damage to each other. His saving grace was Purity, which turned all of my noncombat damage (spell or ability) into lifegain for him. In the end his pillow fort was too much and the game ended in a draw. I didn't mind. The young man is one of my favorite people to play with, even when he isn't playing his group hug deck. Fortunately for me, he was playing it for both rounds.
In round two I happened to draw two of the best players in the store. One of them was playing Kaalia and the other was the really strong Titania player from the week before. Myself and the group hug Kyanios and Tiro player rounded out the pod of four.
I foolishly kept a hand with only two lands, one of which was Maze of Ith. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I stayed on two lands for what felt like forever while the Titania player had an explosive early game and was threatening to run away with it. I had no blockers and no answers for anything. Titania had the chance to kill the Kaalia player but went easy on him. A turn or two later, the Kaalia player cast Insurrection and was able to kill the Titania player with his own creatures. Hopefully this will be a lesson learned for the Titania player. There are definitely guys in our league you should never go easy on.
Now that Titania was out of the game, we still had a major challenge but I was able to get back on track thanks to the group hug player having an enchantment that let players tutor up a land during their upkeep if they had fewer lands than another player. Once I had enough mana to present a boardstate I eventually got both Panharmonicon and Purphoros out.
I did have one of those amazing moments where I had Kiki-Jiki in hand, used Gamble to tutor for Zealous Conscripts and then the random card I discarded was of course Kiki-Jiki. Hilarious. Fortunately I also had Norin the Wary and between a constant drumbeat of ETB damage and a few other well-timed spells I was able to knock the Kaalia player out of the game. I don't often find myself lasting longer than this guy - he's one of the stronger players in our league - so I was pretty happy.
I still had to deal with the K&T player, but he didn't draw into Dissipation Field or Purity and I was eventually able to finish him off. His deck isn't actually built to win games. It's built to extend games and either make folks scoop or make games go to a draw if we're playing in league and have a 2 hour time limit to deal with.
I'm not sure why I wasn't more optimistic, but after one week of our EDH league I'm tied for second place in points and I've already achieved my "win a game this month" goal.
I had been considering playing Ashling the Pilgrim and 99 mountains at some point this month, but I think I'm going to wait until the end of the month before I engage in such silliness. The funny thing about my "99 mountains" build is that I actually run 99 different arts, so it is actually a singleton build of the well-known joke deck. The goal of course is to convince your opponents that you're playing a real deck and to just act more and more astonished each time you draw another land. Taking mulligans down to two or three cards is also good form. We'll see - maybe I'll do it if I'm in first place and far ahead in points when we're going into the last game of the month, or if I fall out of the running for the top spot by enough of a margin. For now I'm still very much in the mix, so it seems silly to basically throw away points by playing a joke deck.
That's all I've got for you today. I've noticed that I'm not putting images into these more personal "game log" posts over on this site. Part of the reason is that I'm basically writing twice as much each week (4-5k words per week) than I had been writing last year. That means that I'm basically setting a higher bar for you guys. I'm expecting a level of familiarity with the cards I'm playing and forcing you to look them up if I'm referencing cards you're not familiar with. Hopefully that's not too much of a problem, but please let me know in comments if it is. I can bring myself to add an hour of image work each week if it'll mean you'll enjoy these posts more.
Tomorrow over on GatheringMagic.com you can read about my Taigam deck and how it grew out of my old Rashmi deck.
Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!