Some weeks things don't quite go as planned. This week I wrote up my games from our Tuesday causal Commander night at our LGS but I can't seem to find it. Unfortunately for me, I'm not willing to just leave out an evening of EDH games so I'll just write it up again. I'll probably skimp a little on the details this time around, but I'd rather post something than not mention it at all.
I'm genuinely unsure whether anyone's really reading this, but I do it as much for myself as for anyone. I'm far from a famous or well-known name in the Commander community but I figure if I'd enjoy reading about the games of "big name" community members, maybe someone out there will enjoy reading about my games. It's an opportunity to reflect on how things are going, think and write about my play and ruminate about the format in general. Also, if you want to be a good writer, it helps to write a lot. This is an excuse to do just that.
So with that slight digression, let's jump into my games this past week.
Casual Night
On Tuesday night we gather at 6pm at NexGen Comics in Pelham, New Hampshire to play some casual games of Commander. It's casual in that it isn't league and there's no pay-in or prizes. We can play whatever decks we like but we generally try to keep things on the more casual side.
This night I played three games. Technically I guess I played four but I "punted" the fourth game, so I am hesitant to even count it.
In game one I played my newly reworked Ezuri, Claw of Progress deck. It's a morph tribal deck with a few other creatures thrown in, but a lot of the old Ezuri cards removed. There's no Sage of Hours, no Fable of Wolf and Moon, it's pretty much just a bit pile of morphs. I was able to lay low in the early game, not really present much of a threat but also wasn't doing much. It was a 6 player table and I was able to play Tempt with Discovery and ramp by four lands. I promised everyone that I'd only get basic lands, in part because I thought it would make them more likely to go along and be tempted and it seemed to work. In the midgame I was able to play Ixidron and flip everyone's creatures, but neglected to swing a face-down Ezuri at someone in the hopes that he'd get killed so I could re-cast him. Not long after that there was a boardwipe and we all had to rebuild. At some point in that process I was able to play a face-down Hooded Hydra and flip it, giving me a bunch of experience counters.
I was mostly being ignored and not drawing too much attention. I didn't have a lot of ways to deal with flyers but not having too threatening a board often leaves the stronger players trying to deal with each other. I wound up getting Ezuri out again, playing a bunch of creatures and then playing a Cultivator of Blades and making two servos. At that point nobody realized I was soon going to be a big threat. I was up to 13 experience counters and on my next turn when I went to combat I put them on Cultivator of Blades and was able to swing and give my creatures +14/+14, taking a chunk of damage out of some of my opponents. I also had a Simic Manipulator out and was able to steal another player's commander. On my next turn I put another 13 +1/+1 counters and that was game. Swinging with even a modest army that all has +27/+27 is pretty hard to deal with. It was fun, it didn't feel like a cheap win and we were on to game two.
In game two we split into two groups and I was at a four player table. I played my Etali, Primal Storm deck. The deck has the red "goodstuff" from my old Ashling deck but with a bunch of more voltron-oriented stuff to try to let Etali get damage through. Also at the table was a Licia deck and a Saskia deck. We were also playing with someone borrowing an Odric deck who was playing their first game of EDH ever. Me and the Licia player basically agreed to not play any early combos and try to make for a more durdly, fun game. Early on he had a combo win in his hand and I drew into Kiki-Jiki and Zealous Conscripts. We shared this information with each other but didn't play them when we could have. As it turned out, the Licia player across from me got eliminated early by the Saskia player and I had no real way to deal with them. If the new player had anything going on at all, I might have let things go, but since I had an answer and neither of us had any other way to recover, I wound up playing and winning with the Kiki combo. It was a demonstration to the new player of the goofy, dumb crap we do in the format.
The four of us shuffled up and played another game. This time I played Freyalise. The Licia player who had been eliminated first switched to his best deck, Kaalia of the Vast. The new player stuck with the Odric deck she was borrowing and Saskia stuck with the same deck as well. The Kaalia player's deck is very strong and he's an excellent player. I pretty much figured he'd win but you never know. He was able to get revenge on the Saskia player, I think by using Master of Cruelties and Kaalia to one-shot them. I had gotten a big enough board of Druids out by then that I was able to kill the Kaalia player with a well-timed Craterhoof Behemoth. The Odric player hadn't done a lot in the game thus far, but they had flyers and they had a Mirror Entity. I was able to get out an Eldrazi Monument, but they were able to remove it and swing for massive damage by paying 8 mana into Mirror Entity's ability. I never expect my Freyalise deck to win, and was genuinely happy to see a new player pick up a win on her first night.
The fourth game of the night wound up being a 3-player affair, which I kind of hate, and one of the two decks I was playing against was a "Black Mike Combo" deck, which I also kind of hate. I have a certain distaste for decks whose sole function is to try to cheat out a winning combo as fast as possible. I get that it's a fair and legal way to approach the game but I really care more about having a fun and interesting game. This deck is pretty much the antithesis of my approach to the game. I "punted" the game, playing a deck - Multani, Maro Sorcerer - that is best at large tables. Predictably, the combo deck did its thing. The player seemed to have no clue that he was handed the win and seemed to be happy about it. When all you care about is winning, it's pretty easy to be clueless about lots of things, including how other players feel about playing with you and whether or not you were handed a win because your opponents didn't care enough to actually give you a real game. I didn't care, and he seemed to be happy about it. I should probably just decline to play those games, as I genuinely don't enjoy them.
So I guess I went two for four and to my astonishment I seem to be playing at a 50% winrate lately, across a variety of decks. Not long ago I had a 10 game losing streak, so I guess variance really is a thing. My lucky streak will end sooner or later.
EDH League
I went into the second week of our EDH League in third place. Last month's "player number two", who happened to be Tuesday night's Lucia / Kaalia player, was tied for first place in our league rankings. I'm still playing Oona, Queen of the Fae.
In game one I was really happy to be paired up with three of my favorite people in our league. One of them is relatively new to the league and was playing Edgar Markov. The player to his left was playing Samut and the player to my right was playing Thalia soldier tribal. The Samut player was our top player for 2017, but he hadn't played with us for a few months so it was nice to see him back.
I managed to get out to a really fast start with a bunch of rocks and some consistent land drops. The Edgar Markov player took a bunch of swings at me that I couldn't do much about, and I also wound up losing 9 life to my Mana Crypt. I was down to near 20 life in alarmingly short time, but I was able to Mass Polymorph a board of Oona, Crypt Ghast and three faerie rogues and cheat in some decent creatures including Void Winnower and Spawnsire of Ulamog. I again was able to draw into Energy Tap (or maybe I already had it in hand) and I paid the 20 mana to cheat in a ridiculous board of 10 Eldrazi. It was actually 11 Eldrazi, as Desolation Twin brings a friend. It was enough to pretty much scare the bejeezus out of my opponents except for one small problem - Thalia was out so my creatures all entered tapped. I had Archetype of Imagination and Archetype of Finality out, so my creatures had flying and deathtouch but without the ability to block I had to hope I could make it to my next turn. Energy Tap is a sorcery, so I didn't have much choice. I had to play it and hope for the best.
One of the things I like about Spawnsire's 20 mana "cast your entire sideboard of Eldrazi" ability is that if a table can overcome that, it's quite an achievement and will make for a great story. As it turns out, they were able to work together and find a way to take me down! The Thalia player was the one to do it, and it was a fairly close call. If I hadn't lost the life from Mana Crypt, or if the Edgar player hadn't swung at me early in the game, I might have pulled out the win. I was actually really happy for them and I netted a bunch of points from having such an overwhelming boardstate so I knew my game might have been a loss but it was fun, I got to do some dumb stuff, and I was glad for my buddies that they were able to get there.
If round one started out well, round two started out terribly. I screwed up my mulligans, starting with two lands, but with Cabal Coffers, so only one produced mana. I had a mind stone and an Azor's Gateway in my hand, but would have to topdeck a land to cast either one. I was up against three very good players, two of which were playing really strong decks. As soon as I realized my error I pretty much figured I was out of the game. One player was on Kess, Dissident Mage, one was playing a brutal Selvala, Heart of the Wilds deck and the third was the Saskia player from Tuesday night, again playing Saskia. If nothing else, I figured I'd be able to avoid getting named by Saskia, as that is usually reserved for the player who is out ahead.
Commander is an odd format. Often being the player out ahead is actually the best way to lose unless you're going to combo off or have a way to lock down (stax) or shut out (pillowfort) your opponents. Fortunately for me, the Kess and Selvala players were locked in a bit of a death struggle, each knowing how powerful the other's deck was and trying desperately to get the other one eliminated first. To give you an idea of the kind of decks I was playing against, the Kess player at one point had a Candelabra of Tawnos on the field, and I think he played a Force of Will during the game. These cards aren't unobtainable, but they're a big deal as we play in a no-proxy league. I'm pretty sure the Selvala player plays a Gaea's Cradle. Mostly I was sitting there happy to not be dead and slowly crawling back out of the hole my bad mulliganing put me in.
I was able to play a Rings of Brighthearth. The Kess player had a Grim Monolith out, so I was nervous about it but I also didn't want to discard. I had gotten my third land and while I never got enough swamps to make Cabal Coffers worth tapping. I did get out Mana Crypt, which I didn't lose much life to, but the key play for me was that after I had used Azor's Gateway once, on the Selvala's end step and then on my turn I was able to tap and activate Azor's Gateway and use Rings of Brighthearth to copy the activation. I got Sanctum of the Sun online! Sanctum taps to produce mana equal to your life total.
I was then able to use Oona to exile over 30 cards off the top of the mono-green Selvala player's library. Nobody had any answers for it. I wound up exiling Selvala's entire library with Oona's ability and attacking the Kess player, who was around 22 life, with 35 1/1 flying faerie rogues. The Saskia player had a boardwipe, saving Kess for the moment, but I was able to recast Oona and exile Kess' library and then exile Saskia's library to win the game with each opponent losing on their draw steps.
The amazing thing was that I had been on the verge of removing Azor's gateway from the deck. Seriously. I was going to take it out because it always felt like it wasn't pulling its weight, was too hard to flip and would just get removed.
Final Thoughts
So by some minor miracle I happen to still be playing at a 50% winrate over the past few weeks. It wasn't that long ago that I had a 10-loss streak, so I know full well that these things come and go. It's been fun and this coming Tuesday I'm looking forward to playing some more "bad" decks, possibly including Brion Stoutarm - who will probably get taken apart to build Firesong & Sunspeaker. Next weekend I'll be attending my local store's prerelease, so our league will be skipping a week.
Tomorrow on GatheringMagic.com I've got an article about one of the truly challenging Dominaria commanders - Hallar, the Firefletcher. It's an exploration of building kicker tribal and while it was fun to write, I'm a little skeptical that I'll actually build it even if I open Hallar in a booster pack.
I'm writing a little fast right now as I've got to log on for some work stuff this morning. I'll go back and check on typos later but I hope this blog post is fairly clean and readable.
Thanks for reading as always. See you next week!