This week was the last week before our odd little Commander Tournament we're calling "Yarglefest". For me it was a chance to drop down the power level of the decks I'm playing and get in a few more casual games. Even for our EDH League I've pulled a wincon out of my Ramos deck, moving Enchanted Evening, Aura Thief and Vedalken Orrery over to a new deck I've been working on.
Casual Night
I went into our Tuesday night planning to play more casual decks. It's tempting to keep trotting out the combo decks and the decks that are more of a sure thing, but I'm OK with having weeks where I drop things down a notch. This was one of those weeks.
GAME ONE
We have a month of EDH League coming up where the theme is going to be commanders with "Graveyard" in the text box. I'm torn between being a stinker and playing my anti-recursion deck, Anafenza, the Foremost, and playing on the edge of cEDH with my combo deck led by The Mimeoplasm. I suppose I could also play my Lazav deck and take advantage of a having a target-rich environment, but I'm really tempted to be "that guy" and play the commander most likely to shut down a graveyard deck. It wouldn't win the month but it would sure present an interesting (or annoying) challenge to overcome.
For our first casual game I decided to pull out Anafenza and "stretch her legs". I hadn't played her in months. The deck is an Abzan vampire tribal deck with a recursion theme. It's decidedly midrange with lots of sweepers but not enough solid win conditions and no combos.
The rest of the table was comprised of a Marwyn, the Nurturer deck, a Thalia deck, my Yargle deck (being borrowed for the game) and a Narset deck.
The Marwyn player assembled their deck after seeing my Marwyn deck and wanting to explore it as well. I kidded that he was again trying to show me how he could do anything I tried to do, but better. There may be a little truth in that, but he's also trying to help me become a better deckbuilder. He also tells us after nearly every game what we could have done better and of course, we make fun of him for that. It's done with good intentions though, and our jibes are sent back at him in the same spirit. The Thalia deck is good but not overwhelmingly staxy or overwhelmingly powerful. The Yargle deck is my voltron build, designed to do well in a mono-black environment. The Narset player insisted their deck wasn't an optimized Narset turns build but nobody got a chance to see whether that was true or not. I suspect it was pretty janky.
The game started with Marwyn quickly getting onto their game plan of assembling combos to make infinite mana and win. Surprisingly, the Yargle deck did most of the heavy lifting to try to keep Marwyn off their combo. They simply had the most removal. I suspended a Living End and was able to sacrifice my meager board so all my creatures came back, but the Thalia player was also able to do that and had a better board. The Yargle player had a Royal Assassin on board for a while, and I made the mistake of playing creatures into that a few times.
Marwyn got Staff of Domination out and nobody pulled into any artifact removal, though they also had other combos in the deck so if we had removed Staff we still would have had our hands full. They eventually went infinite and won in some manner - I don't even remember how. I think it was elves. Narset never even saw the field. I never got enough mana to wipe the board when I needed to. We shuffled up and prepared for game 2.
GAME TWO
Our friend with the Marwyn deck wasn't satisfied just winning one game, so he kept with Marwyn. The Thalia player switched to his Merfolk partners deck, led by Thrasios and Sidar Kondo. The Yargle player left and was replaced by a guy on a Rakdos deck. Narset stayed with the same deck and I switched to my shiny new Raff Capashen deck.
My Raff deck is a rebuild of my Padeem deck, and is the subject of my article this week for GatheringMagic.com. It's currently in a "first draft" stage with the goal of flashing stuff in and helping me work on learning how to better play a draw-land-go style of game. Eventually it may house a more artifact-centric Helix combo deck but for now I think of it as much more casual than combo.
I was able to get out a turn one Sol Ring into Phyrexian Revoker, naming Marwyn. That kept him off his combo for most of the game. The Merfolk player built up a decent board. The Rakdos player got a much stronger battlefield presence and quickly became the main threat. The Narset player, as is their way sometimes, never got any creatures out and died first for the sin of playing a Narset deck.
I was able to get out some decent creatures. I got a Proteus Staff out and used it to cheat in an Akroma, Angel of Wrath. I was also able to use it to cheat out a Silver Myr, so I was clearly having a hit-or-miss kind of game. I got an As Foretold up to five or six time counters, so I was able to use it to cast Raff for just his commander tax, giving me a convenient target for Proteus Staff.
The Rakdos player really didn't like me having an Akroma, but I wound up dying for the sin of swinging at the Marwyn player for 6 damage. These things happen in our games. There are a few of us who are more than capable of just killing you for swinging at us for even a small amount They died the turn after to the Rakdos player's strong board and Rakdos won the game fairly easily.
GAME THREE
In our third game the Marwyn player finally switched, pulling out a pretty midrange Atraxa deck. Thalia switched to a Rosheen Meanderer deck that used to be pretty bad but has been tuned up and is now starting to win the occasional game. The Rakdos player stuck with Rakdos. The Narset player decided to try to take the target off their back by switching to a Zur, the Enchanter deck. Yes, you read that correctly. No, I can't explain what he was thinking. I pulled out the Yargle deck that someone had borrowed for round one, figuring I should get in at least one game with it before our Yarglefest.
This game was largely characterized by some early poor choices. Rosheen played Collective Voyage and everyone just poured mana into it so we all got over 10 lands onto the field. Rosheen then played a Boundless Realms. They wound up with a truly ridiculous number of lands, to the point that I pretty much assumed they would win the game eventually.
The Atraxa player had killed me in the previous game so I had every intention of trying to kill them if I could. I didn't have much expectation of winning the table, though obviously I would try to do so. Despite our early ramp, nobody played into any quick early wincons. Zur got out a Circle of Protection - Black. Rakdos got out Butcher of Malakir. I was pretty despondent, as Rosheen had no creatures and hadn't done anything to me to deserve to die, but I had a Yargle on the field and Phyresis in my hand, so I was in the position to be able to seriously threaten somebody. I was in the mood to scoop but was convinced to stick it out.
Rakdos played a Havoc Festival, which halves each player's life total. That sped up the game quite a bit. I was able to play a bit of removal and get myself into a slightly better, but still pretty terrible position.
I wound up convincing the Rakdos player to get rid of Atraxa and another blocker with the implication that I would then swing for lethal on the Atraxa player. In truth, I was hoping to draw into something to let me pump Yargle up enough to deal 13 infect damage, but I currently only had the ability to do 9. Our EDH League works on 13 infect to kill a player, and that's what we use for casual night as well. I didn't draw into anything that would let me pump Yargle, but the Atraxa player scooped anyways, rather than get Yargled.
Don't scoop.
I was able to eliminate one player just by bluffing and having him really not want to die at the hands of a Yargle.
Rosheen Meanderer had built up a decent board and proceeded to play enough stuff to have lethal on a few of us, if not the whole table. I was able to convince Rosheen to kill the Zur player and let me kill the Rakdos player, whose life total was still fairly high. I had a pump spell - Endless Scream - in hand and a ton of mana thanks to the earlier Collective Voyage. Yargle wasn't out, but I had a Grey Merchant of Asphodel which I had played into an empty board a few turns earlier. Yeah - it was that kind of game.
Rosheen played ball, though they could have just killed both of us. I was then able to kill Rakdos. Somehow I had convinced Rosheen to give me one last turn. I don't even remember how. I guess I can politic well when I need to. I drew into a Skithyrix, which I played, gave haste and used to give Rosheen 4 poison counters, but they killed me easily on their next turn.
All in all, casual night was fun even if I didn't seriously threaten to win any games.
EDH League
Week three of our EDH League for May began with myself in third place by enough points that I was unlikely to catch up. The points leader didn't show up. I think he might have been up at the GP in Montreal, but that's just speculation. He's a judge so sometimes he's off at more important things than playing in our casual little Commander league.
ROUND ONE
The first game was against a Teysa deck piloted by "player number two", who has turned out to be one of the strongest players in our league. I think he might even be able to give me a run for the top point total of the year if he wants to. He could have played Karrthus again this week and in this game it would have been a pretty strong choice, but he went with Teysa. We were joined by a buddy of his, playing Garna, the Bloodflame, a Scion of the Ur-Dragon player and a Momir Vig player.
The game wasn't a complete shit-show but it sure wasn't a good game for me. I was able to get out an early Birds of Paradise and Utopia tree, but that's about all that went right. I had my Ramos stolen twice by the Teysa player, each time playing a creature that exiles target creature until it leaves the battlefield. I had removal in hand the first time, and I was able to kill the creature and get my commander back. The second time I put Ramos into the command zone, and I wasn't pulling into lands or ramp to speak of.
The Teysa player got a Blasting Station combo online and we were able to stop them. I was able to get out a Rune-Scarred Demon but instead of tutoring for something to pursue my own game plan, I wound up grabbing removal. I later blew a flicker spell to flicker RSD and tutor again but had to fetch up a Cyclonic Rift. I was able to save the table from a combo loss on that turn, but I wasn't able to ever present a threat.
The Scion player did put pressure on the Teysa player and make their own push to win the game with Saheeli Rai and Felidar Guardian, but the table was able to stop him from going infinite. The Momir Vig player very much pulled their weight at the table, providing counterspell support at key moments, but in the end Teysa got us.
ROUND TWO
I was optimistic going into round two. I was playing against a Nekusar player, a Thalia player and an Experiment Kraj player.
My optimism was not well placed.
I started the game with Curiosity and Niv-Mizzet in my hand. Before I was able to get much in the way of lands, the Nekusar player had out two cards that would cause us to take damage for each card we drew. Any ideas of drawing my deck and winning were immediately put on hold, but I was also having huge issues getting enough lands to do much of anything.
The Thalia player was causing all of our creatures to enter tapped, so my ability to play Ramos, find a way to make "Progenitus mana" and play my card draw combo was now also going to have to get past the fact that my creatures were entering tapped. I probably should have tried to work out a deal with the Kraj player, who had an untap dork on the field, but I didn't think to try that.
My game wound up being a long, frustrating experience of being achingly close to being able to do something useful but never really being able to do anything at all. The Thalia player had a Sunblast Angel that they used to wipe the field and that the Kraj player had bounced to their hand. I had a Bloodspore Thrinax and Fate Transfer and had all kinds of ideas on how I could play Ramos and generate 10 mana immediately to cast my draw-your-deck combo, but none of included a way to get around Thalia.
To make matters worse, the Nekusar player had been milling Thalia, culminating in a Traumatize before they got killed by commander damage from Thalia. The Thalia player was then able to play Emeria, Sky Ruin and return Avacyn, Angel of Hope to the battlefield, making all their permanents indestructible.
My last major attempt at doing much of anything was pretty sad. I could have cast my commander again just to probably lose him on the next turn to Sunblast Angel. Instead I cast a Maelstrom Wanderer, hoping to cascade into anything that could help our situation. What I cascaded into was a Sphinx's Revelation and Essence Flux. Both utterly useless, though in truth there were only one or two spells in the deck that might have helped at that point.
Unsurprisingly, the Thalia player was able to close out the game with little trouble.
It was a good day, playing Commander with a bunch of friends, and seeing "player number two" leap into first place in the league rankings. He's well-positioned to win and it will be his first month if he can close it out next week. If he sets his mind to it, I think he can win the year. I won our first year, and since I'm there every week I have a decided advantage and can get away with weeks or months of playing less competitive decks and still lead the league's point totals for the year.
Final Thoughts
In a few hours I'll be heading off to our LGS to run Yarglefest. I still have no idea what the attendance will be, but whether it's a huge success or a relatively small affair, or both at the same time, I'll be writing about it for my Commanderruminations article on May 28th. Tomorrow I've got a decklist for you built around Raff Capashen.
That's all I've got for you today. Wish us luck today and maybe just maybe I'll be able to Yargle somebody. May the best Yargle win!