Greetings! This is the old site where I posted Commanderruminations articles in 2017. Now that my work is being posted on GatheringMagic.com I have started writing about my casual and EDH league games here. My recaps may require a certain level of familiarity with cards and strategies in Commander. I don't generally post card pics, and I certainly don't go over every turn and every play, but if you've enjoyed my writing I hope you'll find some entertainment in following the ups and downs of both my causal games and my EDH League games.
Casual Night
I was slightly more eager than usual to head off to our weekly casual Commander night this past week. The previous Tuesday night had been snowed out, so I had gone two weeks without playing anything but Ashling the Pilgrim. Ashling had been doing surprisingly well, but I've always got new decks I want to play. It felt like a particularly long fortnight. We wound up having nine players, so we split into two pods and I got a couple of four player games in.
In game one I played Multani, Maro-Sorcerer. The other players were playing Derevi, Nekusar and... I don't even remember what the last player was playing. I mulled my first hand, which had five lands and some big creatures, and kept a hand with two lands and a Spore Frog. It seemed like a good idea at the time and it kept me from getting attacked for a while, but I was stuck on two lands for what felt like forever.
The Derevi player blew up and was looking to run away with the game. When I finally got Multani out and I was planning to cast Traverse the Outlands to put every basic land from my deck onto the battlefield, the Nekusar player played Teferi's Puzzle Box and I had to put Traverse on the bottom of my library. The next turn I got rid of Puzzle Box, but my best plan had been foiled.
I made an attempt to solve the problem of the out-of-control Derevi player by swinging with Multani after casting Triumph of the Hordes, which would have killed him, but his open mana wasn't a bluff. He had a fog and he cast it. In my second main phase I cast Life's Legacy to draw 30 cards (Multani was a 30/30 at the time). I drew into a Spellbook, so I didn't have to discard, but I didn't draw into anything particularly helpful.
Derevi had a dude out that let him steal your creatures and I wound up popping my Spore Frog in response to him trying to steal it. Our last chance was to hope my opponents could clear out his blockers before my turn came around. I had a Concordant Crossroads in hand and could have cast and swung with Multani, but I had no trample enabler on the field so I needed a clear shot for it to work. As it turned out none of us had answers and Derevi won round one.
For game two I pulled out my shiny new Oona deck for its first game ever. This was originally a Rashmi deck, and was briefly a Taigam deck before its most recent Dimir rebuild. It's still designed around trying to use Synthetic Destiny or other Polymorph effects to cheat big creatures (mostly Eldrazi) into play. We kept the same pod and the other players switched to Edgar Markov, Narset, Enlightened Master and Savra, Golgari Queen.
Edgar is a beast. He's so strong he's been banned in 1v1 Commander. Narset is Narset. I love Narset. I didn't know what to expect from Savra. I mostly wanted to play Oona and see how well the deck would do in a real game.
The Edgar Markov player got out to a fast start, as expected. Narset played a Mystic Barrier, forcing us all to attack to the right. That meant Edgar was coming at me, but my previous game had been so rough that I think he felt bad for me. I played a mess of artifacts and eventually got Oona out. I took a bit of damage, and eventually cast an overloaded Cyclonic Rift in response to a pretty big (but not lethal) attack from the Edgar player. Not only did that keep me from taking a big chunk of damage, it also let the Edgar player direct his attention elsewhere now that Mystic Barrier was off the field.
Narset had a slow start, but the midgame was all about Savra, Golgari Queen. I was picking the Savra player for Oona's exile ability, figuring that a two color deck was the best choice for her ability. Picking either of the other decks made no sense, as they were three colors and I had to guess a color and hope the player I targeted would exile cards with the chosen color in their casting cost. I would create a 1/1 faerie rogue for each card exiled of the chosen color. Savra quickly got tired of that and went to great efforts to sacrifice creatures, pay 2 life, and force everyone else to also sacrifice creatures. I mostly kept ahead of that, but the Edgar Markov player was having a rough time and the Narset player was utterly screwed.
I have a soft spot for Narset decks, being a Narset player myself. Also, I was getting sick of not being able to keep creatures on the field. I had Cultural Exchange in my hand, and had planned to use it to steal Narset. She's hexproof, but it works just fine for stealing hexproof creatures. The Narset player was so screwed that I wound up trading two faerie rogues for Savra and for a 6/6 trampler that the Savra player also had out. I got the Narset player to agree that if they played Narset and started to run away with the game, they would leave me to last. I was the reason they were back in the game, so it seemed like a reasonable request.
Narset had a Lightmine Field out, so nobody could swing with little creatures. I had finally gotten luck and had used Oona to make 8 faerie rogues. I had Oona, Savra and the other creature I had stolen from the Savra player and used Mass Polymorph to exile them all and cheat in 11 creatures from my deck. I may have lost Oona, but I wound up with something like Silver Myr, Leaden Myr, Alloy Myr, Archetype of Finality, Consecrated Sphinx, It That Betrays, Pathrazer of Ulamog, Void Winnower, Tidehollow Strix, Vampire Nighthawk and Crypt Ghast. I think I had Archetype of Imagination in my hand as well.
The Narset player killed off Edgar and I was left with a quandary. Narset had Lightmine Field and Norn's Annex out and I could bounce one of them. I had Cryptic Command in my hand and wound up choosing to tap all my opponents' creatures and bounce Lightmine Field to the Narset player's hand. He had Norn's Annex out as well, so I wound up killing the Savra player. For some reason I kept up my deathtouch blockers, though Narset was unblockable so I think I just did it out of habit.
When there were just two of us left, I admitted that I had a tutor in hand and could have grabbed Rings of Brighthearth out of my library. I had Basalt Monolith on the field and with those two I could have made infinite mana and exiled the Narset player's library. I don't actually want to run combo Oona, so while I might do that to a final opponent in a Commander league game, I wanted to try to win or lose on the battlefield on casual night.
On Narset's turn they swung at me but didn't flop into any extra turns, combat phases or pump. I took 18 commander damage and was brought from 27 to 9 life. The Edgar player (now out of the game) was quick to point out that I now had lethal on the Narset player. Norn's Annex was going to force me to pay 2 life or 1 white mana for every attacking creature I sent at the Narset player. I could pay 1 white mana with Alloy Myr, pay 6 life and get 34 damage in - enough to win the game. I paid, I swung and that's how my Oona won her first game. If the Narset player had gotten one more swing in, they would have won.
I was so happy when I cheated 11 creatures onto the field that I didn't really care whether I wound up winning or not, but it was pretty sweet to give the Narset player a chance to have fun, and it was even sweeter to get the win.
The dream of getting Spawnsire of Ulamog out and paying 20 to cast my sideboard was on my mind in those final turns and I even tried twice to cheat creatures into play using Proteus Staff just to be able to find the big Eldrazi. I actually failed to realize that I could have just gotten him using Vampiric Tutor and Proteus Staff. We hadn't had a conversation about side/wishboards before the game and my oppponents were all new to the store, so it's probably just as well that I didn't pull that off. Next time I'm in the same position I'll definitely remember, and the 20 mana would have been easy to get thanks to an Energy Tap I had in my hand and the big creatures I had on the field.
After months and months of tweaking it looks like Oona might be the right choice for my Eldrazi Polymorph deck. She's loaded up with counterspells and artifact ramp and she has enough cheap deathtouch blockers to dissuade most opponents from getting in early hits on me. I'm probably going to play her for our EDH League games in April, so that should be at least 6 games, and maybe as many as 8. The Dominaria prerelease likely means that we'll be skipping a week in April.
EDH League
I went into Saturday 12 points in the lead in our monthly rankings. Ashling the Pilgrim never felt like the kind of deck that might compete for the top point total for the month, but somehow I find myself in the top spot.
Mono-red is a funny color for EDH. You can have explosive plays and strong games and you can have games where the color's weaknesses are just glaring and you pretty much have to sit on the sidelines and hope other players have answers. Today was one of those days for me.
Round one and round two were both fairly mediocre games. I was able to cast Ashling three times in each round, and I got first combat damage in game one and both first combat and first noncombat damage in game two. All in all, both games were pretty decent showings for the deck but I was unable to position myself to even threaten to win either game. I don't think I made any serious misplays, but the lack of draw and lack of ramp was noticeable. I was able to blow up the board with lifelink from Loxodon Warhammer in game one, but I'm already looking forward to April when we'll be on to our next theme.
The player in second place in our league had the good fortune to have a game basically thrown for them. They had Mike & Trike and an opponent with an answer in hand chose not to play it because they had to leave and were happy to just not have to scoop out of the game. As it turned out, I'm still in the top spot, but now only by 8 points. We've got one week left, so I'm hoping I don't wind up losing the month because of a thrown game. The player in second place hasn't won a month yet, and if they can beat me out next week I will be glad to see someone new win a month. I still don't like the idea of anyone throwing games, but it's a free league with no pay-in and no prizes, so in the grand scheme of things it's not that big a deal. We play for bragging rights and for fun, and that's about all.
Final Thoughts
We've got one week of league before we're on to April and a month with the theme of GLOW, or "Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling". If we play a commander who is a female humanoid we'll be able to earn extra points. It's why I've been playing Ashling this month, and next month I think I'll be playing Oona, Queen of the Fae. The temptation to get a Narset game in will definitely be there, and I'll probably bring her so I have that option available.
I may well tune Ashling up just a little bit before going into next week. I do want to try to win the month. I like to win a few months each year, and when going into the final week with a lead it seems silly not to go for it. I was going to play a game with Ashling and 99 mountains next week if I found myself in first place by enough of a margin, but with my lead narrowed I don't think that's going to happen. I'm not going crazy with the upgrades, but I've already pulled out Heartless Hidetsugu and put in Mana Crypt, and I may do a few more little changes between now and next Saturday.
That's all I've got for you today. In tomorrow's Commanderruminations article on GatheringMagic.com I'm writing about some ideas for how we as a community can move beyond Jason Alt's 75% theory of deckbuilding. He was gracious enough to read it prior to my sending it to our editor (we both write for GatheringMagic.com) and he told me he didn't have any issues with anything I wrote. I definitely didn't want it to come across as a "hit piece", but could have been taken as a overly critical. Check it out - I'll be eager to see what readers think of it.
Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!