Greetings! This is the old blog site where in 2017 I started my Commanderruminations column, writing about the Magic the Gathering format, Commander. In 2018 my work was brought over to GatheringMagic.com and now I post here about my casual and EDH League games.
Sometimes they go well.
Sometimes they feel like something of a train wreck.
Sometimes it's a bit of both.
Casual Night
Some Tuesdays I head out to our casual night with a 6-pack of pretty bad decks and every intention of just enjoying the chance to play Commander with whoever shows up. I've got low expectations and have no concerns about trying to get a win.
This past Tuesday I didn't bring bad decks, but I certainly didn't think I was bringing amazing decks. We wound up playing three rounds of Commander. I played three games, piloting my rebuilt Ramos, Dragon Engine deck, Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord and Ruric Thar, the Unbowed.
The first game was with Ramos. Last year my Ramos build was able to line up a combo that involved giving Ramos infect and hitting it with Chandra's Ignition to kill entire tables in one shot. It was very effective and very fun, for a while. I've now come to the conclusion that I'm probably going to rebuild my Ramos deck every year with a new and interesting wincon. Today was the first time I got to play my 2018 Ramos build.
I got off to a decent start, playing an early Hardened Scales and dropping a few borderposts. Having zero lands and two borderposts on turn two gave me a weird feeling, but I soon started dropping lands and was able to get Ramos out. The other decks at the table were a Titania deck, another Ramos deck that seemed to be running slivers, a Narset deck and a Drainu deck. Titania was blowing up already, Drainu and the other Ramos were going nowhere, and Narset was more concerned with Titania than with me. I was able to fly under the radar and get ready to try to "go off".
I had Hardened Scales on the field, a Rune Scarred Demon in hand and I drew Congregation at Dawn. I was able to play Rune Scarred Demon, put two +1/+1 counters on Ramos and tutor for Maelstrom Wanderer. On my next turn I played Congregation at Dawn, putting three +1/+1 counters on Ramos and putting Tandem Lookout, Etherium-Horn Sorcerer and Niv-Mizzet on top of my library. I then pulled five +1/+1 counters off of Ramos to make WWUUBBRRGG mana.
That's where the fun began.
I cast Maelstrom Wanderer, cascading into Tandem Lookout and Etherium-Horn Sorcerer, which in turn cascaded into Niv-Mizzet. I soulbonded Niv-Mizzet with Tandem Lookout, allowing me to draw my deck and start pinging my opponents with each card draw. The goal was not to ping them to death. I had better ideas. I started to draw cards until I had what I wanted in hand.
I then cast Cloudshift to flicker Ramos, cast Aura Thief and Enchanted Evening and then hit Aura Thief with Grapeshot, killing him and giving me control of all permanents on the field. At that point my opponents conceded the game.
While that's not the only way to get to that wincon, the deck is designed to be able to win like that. In a league game, gaining control of all permanents will be worth a ton of points in our point system.
The other combo I've built into the deck is to cast Fire Servant, hit it with a kicked Rite of Replication so I have six of the little damage doublers, and then use Grapeshot to hit each opponent for 1 damage.
1 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 64 damage.
This is hilarious to me and I plan to try to win a game this year with Grapeshot.
With a win under my belt for the night we switched up pods and in my second game I played Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord. I mostly worked on developing my boardstate and I was starting to get to a point where I might be able to play Jarad and threaten to win when a player who was playing Feldon nailed down the win. They had gotten an early Chandra emblem and pretty much rode it to victory over myself, a Meren deck and an Atraxa deck. It wasn't a bad game at all, but I didn't really do much of anything.
In the third game I played Ruric Thar and I started with Primal Surge in my opening hand.
Normally when you play Primal Surge you don't have any other instants or sorceries in your deck, so you plop your whole deck onto the battlefield and swing for the win. My build also runs Treacherous Terrain. I'd rather be surprised by what I get off the top of my deck with a Primal Surge than play it and know exactly how many permanents I'm about to get (all of them). To me, the suspense of not knowing how many permanents I'm going to get is really fun, even if it means I'm not playing as optimal a build.
I was able to get up to 10 mana, though I wound up taking 18 commander damage from an opponent's Zacama along the way. My hope was that Primal Surge would land me enough of a boardstate that I'd be able to survive past Zacama's next turn and maybe threaten to win the game, but my Spore Frog was already in my graveyard.
I cast my Primal Surge and started flipping cards off the top of my deck
Sadly, I only got maybe 10 or 12 cards down before I hit Treacherous Terrain, ending the process. I netted maybe five lands, three of which entered untapped, and a handful of creatures none of which would be enough to let me survive.
I was killed soon after that. I'm tempted now to remove Treacherous Terrain, but to be honest - I enjoy not knowing what's going to happen when I go into casting a spell like Primal Surge. The surprise is a big part of the fun, and someday I'm sure I will cast it and get 50 or more permanents onto the field. It didn't happen this time, but someday it will and it will be all the more fun because I'll have no idea how well it will go.
I had wanted to play my Ruric Thar Primal Surge deck for a while, so that was nice, and it was great to see Ramos work the way it's supposed to work.
EDH League
I went into Saturday with one goal - to beat out the second place player for the top spot for the month.
The highest point total doesn't win anything except bragging rights, and few of us actually "brag" about our EDH League success. We play for free. We play for fun. We generally have fun, and while the decks aren't cEDH-level, we have a lot of strong players and a lot of pretty good decks. We also have a lot of variety, which is something I personally love about both our casual night and our league. Playing against the same decks again and again is tiresome.
I've been playing Ashling the Pilgrim mono-red goodstuff. It's a minor miracle that I've been able to do as well as I've done with a mono-colored deck, and mono-red no less. It's not terrible, but it's hard to complete against so many other color combinations that I've felt like I've been fighting uphill all the way.
The other reason I really wanted to finish the month with the top point total is that the number two player had a game thrown for them. Earlier in the month they had MIke & Trike about to resolve and another player could have countered it, but that other player had to leave and didn't want to just leave in the middle of the game. Rather than make the correct play and counter the wincon, they let it resolve and "player number 2" won the game. There was nothing at all technically wrong, illegal or against league rules about what either player did. It was totally fine, except that it was absolutely, completely against what I think of as the spirit of competitive play. When you have a correct play, you make it. I don't think you should throw games for people in the context of an EDH league.
So I entered into Saturday ahead by 8 points and I really wanted to seal the deal and finish with the top point total.
Round one was pretty rough. It was a 5 player game with "player number 2" playing Karrthus and three other players paying Titania, The Locust God and Kaalia. I was able to play Ashling three times but was never able to "pop" her. I had just added a Thran Turbine to the deck and it actually did a lot of work, paying for half the cost of putting two counters on Ashling during my upkeep. That was about the only good thing that happened for me during that game.
The biggest reason I had such a bad first round is that the Kaalia player cast Iona, Shield of Emeria naming red, and had her out for what felt like a long time. I actually think I did a decent job keeping my sense of humor about the entire situation but it was a really shitty position to be in on the last week of the month with the top point total on the line. As it turned out, I wasn't the first player to be killed, and I netted an OK number of points from the game.
Eventually the Locust God player won. Kaalia got killed first. Then I was killed. Then Titania killed the Karrthus player and Locust God was able to seal the win. It wasn't a terrible game but it was a particularly rough one for me. Some games this month have reminded me of how limited playing mono-red can be, and this was definitely one of those games.
In round two I was at a table with the winner of my round one game, this time on his very strong Roon deck. It was a four player game and I was also faced with an Animar deck, a Gonti deck, both built and piloted by very capable deckbuilders and players. I was on mono-red and facing off against three blue decks, all piloted by really good players.
I basically gave up on any serious hope of winning the table and tried to play with what luck would give me. As it turned out, I drew first blood with a swing on the Roon player and then spent the rest of the game chipping away, eventually getting up to 14 commander damage. The Roon player was having pretty bad draws, as was the Gonti player.
I made the mistake of using Goblin Matron to tutor for Kiki-Jiki and using Gamble to grab Zealous Conscripts. I did try to get the combo off, but the Animar player had a morph counterspell creature and that cut off that line of attack pretty quickly. I wound up doing a ton of damage to the Roon player, and eventually got the kill the turn before the Aminar player won.
I basically had to focus on one opponent because I knew I had no way to compete against all three of them unless I had a ridiculous amount of luck, and the day was not feeling particularly lucky for me. That focus did work to let me get a kill, but I had no answers except by swinging for damage or blowing up Ashling and I was unable to stop Animar.
After the second game I sat down to total up the points. I was not optimistic about my chances because the player in second place had a pretty good second round.
As fate would have it, after initially totalling up the points I saw myself and player number two tied for first place. I updated the chalkboard that we use to post totals, but the guy I thought had tied me for the month's top spot had left for the day. I was in a sour mood, even though I know I shouldn't care. It's a free league with nothing on the line, but I've git a bit of a competitive streak and I really wanted that top spot to myself.
As it turns out, this story has a twist.
Lots of players screw up their point totals and when I "run the points" I doublecheck everyone's sheet to make sure their math was right.
Apparently, math is hard, because my math... was wrong.
As it turns out, my own sheet had an error. I gave myself a single point on the "First Blood" line, but I should have added two points - one for first combat damage and one point for first noncombat damage!
I won the month!
I really wish I hadn't let myself think for over an hour that I had only tied for the month, and I wish even more that the idea hadn't bugged me so much, but I did, and it did. I really wanted to win it clean and not blow an 8 point lead on the last day of the month. As it turned out, I didn't.
As a side note - I always keep the scoresheets and anyone in the league is welcome to doublecheck the math. I actually had someone do that in 2016 and they came away convinced everything was on the up and up. It is, of course, and that offer still stands. I correct players' math errors and that includes myself - though it is very rare that I screw up my own total.
I look forward to seeing "player number 2" win a month. He's a great guy and I've enjoyed having him play with us over the past few months both in league and on casual nights.
Final Thoughts
It bothers me that I screwed up my math and for a brief time had an inaccurate result up on our league scoreboard. It bothers me even more that the math error that got fixed wound up putting me in the top spot. It's a "bad look" but what matters more than anything is that the math is right, and it is. I actually went back over the past month's scoresheets for me and for the second place player and doublechecked them all. The results are correct - I managed to win a 5 week month of EDH league with a mono-red Ashling the Pilgrim deck. I guess miracles do happen...
I'll always maintain that I'm not the best player in the league I run, and my success this past month had a lot to do with not missing a single game. You also have to deckbuild and play at a reasonably high level to be able to make it into the top few spots of our league. The competition is strong. Everyone wants to win, though we do also seem to want to maintain a midrange meta. Nobody has yet played a true cEDH deck for an entire month, though I'm sure eventually it will happen.
We are done with April. I'm taking apart Ashling and am considering building Etali, Primal Storm. I like Narset so I think it's worth a try. I'll probably only play it for casual games, but I'm looking forward to having something new to play between now and when Dominaria drops.
April brings a three-week month for our EDH League, as the Dominaria prerelease will take up a Saturday at our LGS. I'm going to be playing the new Oona Eldrazi deck that I played last Tuesday. It should be an interesting change from five weeks of mono-red.
Tomorrow over on GatheringMagic.com I've got an article about why commander damage shouldn't be removed from our format. Why I would even need or want to write such an article is a bit of a surprise, but I'll leave those details for you to read about tomorrow. It was a surprise even to me, and you should check it out if you have any interest in voltron decks or the role they play in the format.
That's all I've got for you now. Happy Easter to all those who care about such things!