It's been a few weeks since I've posted here but I wanted to get back into the swing of things. I took a weekend off on Memorial Day, and that weekend off turned into two weekends off, and now I'm finding myself thinking about the future of this site.
The first thing to know is that this site is changing URLs and will now be found at http://commanderruminations.wixsite.com/commanderruminations.
If you're getting emails when I post new blog entries, you'll be fine. The links on my older gatheringmagic.com posts do still bring you to the blog entries but I don't know how long that will work going forwards.
I'm also planning on cutting back at least for a while on how much time I commit to writing here. If you've been enjoying my game recaps, they will continue but I want to try to focus more of my time on my writing for my actual Commanderruminations articles. It means a lot to me to make sure those are as high quality as possible, and that takes time. Less time spent here should mean a little more time available for me to spend over there.
If you're interested in hearing how Yarglefest went, you can read about it here: http://www.gatheringmagic.com/stephenjohnson-05282018-much-ado-about-nothing/. It was underwhelming at best, and it was probably a factor in my lack of energy to devote to posting my blog posts here for the past few weeks. With that out of the way, let's get down to business.
Casual Night
This past Tuesday night I gathered up a bunch of decks and headed off to the LGS to play some Commander. I normally bring my weaker decks with the occasional good deck and this week was no exception.
In the first game I played Ruric Thar. My Ruric Thar deck is a Primal Surge, deck but it's a little out of the ordinary. Most Primal Surge decks only have one non-permanent spell - Primal Surge. Mine has two. For a long time the other sorcery was Treacherous Terrain but I switched that out for Warp World. The goal of the deck is to get Ruric Thar out as early as possible, keep him out, play other punishment-style effects and to win with creatures. There are no combos. It's a fairly casual deck that can pose real problems for certain types of decks, but isn't particularly easy to beat.
I wound up getting Ruric Thar out a little early but another player was able to force me to sacrifice him. I spent the rest of the game trying to make sure that player didn't win the game, swinging with a Deus of Calamity and blowing up his land a few turns in a row. I was the first player eliminated but the guy who got rid of my commander had been brought down so low by my attacks that he wasn't able to win.
The second game was one in which I played Slimefoot, the Stowaway. The other two players were also on fairly casual decks but the guy who I had been focusing on in the previous game switched to play Scion of the Ur-Dragon.
The Scion player played an Ophidian Eye which I didn't realize was on the field because the artwork and card name was covered up by Scion. He then used Scion to make it a copy of Niv-Mizzet and combo'ed off. He basically sat down on casual night against casual decks and played a top tier Scion combo deck. I wasn't pleased, but what can you do? Our "casual" nights have no rules, but we did have a conversation about his deck choice.
The irony of it all is that while my Slimefoot deck has yet to win a game, it does have some serious cards in it. It's currently running Doubling Season, which I had out, and at the time I had a Bloodspore Thrinax on the field with five +1/+1 counters on it. I had just played Bower Passage and my goal was absolutely to try to amass a modest little army of 11/11 saprolings which Scion woudn't have been able to block.
I still think Slimefoot is a midrange deck. As I said, it hasn't won a game yet, though I'm sure eventually it will. I also think Scion is a tier 1.5 deck and this build seemed to have what it needed to combo off when it wanted to. I'm not sure any of us ever stood a chance at that table, which is really the kind of game we try to avoid on Tuesday nights.
EDH League
Last week we skipped our league games for the Battlebond prerelease, which I was unable to attend. I am very happy to have another friend from league who has told me I may use their name in my posts. From here on out, "player number two" shall be know as Matt. Matt is the guy I was very lucky to have edged out in our rankings for two months in a row, each time by a single point. He has established himself as one of our league's best players, and he was able to quite convincingly win last month's league competition. I suspect he is the player most likely to be able to beat me out for the annual top point total.
Round One
This month our theme is commanders with attack or damage triggers. I was considering playing Narset all month, but I reworked a pretty bad Ikra Shidiqi deck into a Virtus the Veiled / Gorm the Great deck. These Golgari partners showed up out of a booster the night before and after I realized that Virtus has a damage trigger I decided to throw it together and see how it did.
The game featured one of the best players the league has seen, playing an Inalla deck, along with a number of other strong decks. Mine was probably the weakest by far, but I was hoping to hang around and maybe sneak in a kill along the way.
The Inalla deck may have been piloted by the player (also a judge) who set the league record for highest points in a single day, but he insisted that it wasn't an optimized Inalla deck. In the early game nobody really focused on anyone, and before long the Inalla player was off to the races, doing what appeared to be pretty broken stuff. In his defense, he did proceed to loop an opponent's Weathered Wayfarer in a way that resulted in everyone putting eight lands onto the battlefield. He also got eight lands, of course, but the bottom line was that he probably could have done something much meaner to us than give us all a bunch of lands.
It should go without saying that while this gentleman is a pleasure to play with, he is not shy about winning games. When his storm count was way up around 16 and his library was down to around forty cards, the Jeleva player decided to play a Brainfreeze. The rest of his library went into his graveyard and his incredibly boardstate was all for naught.
One of the more amusing interactions in the game is worth sharing. The Jeleva player managed to hit my copy of Hatred. Fortunately, I had a flying deathtouch blocker at that point, and he wound up swinging at the Savra player and paying 20 life to try to kill him for the sin of hesitating when asked if he was asked if he had any flying blockers. The Mirri player saved him, though I don't remember how he did it. Hatred only gives +X/+0 so it might have been something as simple as a small amount of damage. I was happy, because it put my Hatred back into my graveyard and I had a Seasons Past in my hand at the time.
Somewhere along the way I was able to kill somebody. My deck is built to be able to sneak in kills with infect and other shenanigans - the original build was called "Sneaky Shidiqi" after all - so I must have done something nasty to someone. I might have even killed the Savra player, but in the end Jeleva outvalued all of us and won the game.
Round Two
I had gone into the week with the intention of maybe playing my Narset deck. It's a nasty bit of work, capable of winning off of just a single attack if the fates are with me. I even wore a "Narset - It's always my turn" t-shirt for the day. In round one I chose not to play her, as I had a new deck and I also understand that folks don't really enjoy dealing with a decent Narset deck. I also sometimes have bad Narset games, where I die before I even get her on the field, and in round one I just had a feeling it might wind up being a bad match for Narset based upon the players I was up against.
The field was a strong one. The Marath deck wasn't much of a concern because Marath has to target to ping a creature or player. I would have been happy to see Kraj win, as the player piloting her doesn't win a lot of games in league. I had also killed him first in two straight games with Narset a few months back so I was going to go easy on him regardless of how things went. The Gonti deck was being piloted by the Inalla player from my round one, and it's one of his better decks. The Drana deck was being piloted by "player number two", now known to you as Matt - a great guy, great player and the winner of the previous month of league. I had my work cut out for me with those last two at the table.
I rarely start a game by telling my opponents to kill me first, and never in an EDH League game. Early on, the Gonti and Drana players were clearly collaborating on the matter at hand - how to keep Narset off the table. I started with a bounce land and a Dragon Wings in hand, so by turn two I had evasion ready to go in the graveyard. Dragon Wings attaches automatically to a creature with CMC 6 or more if it's in the yard when the creature enters the battlefield, so as soon as Narset came out she'd start off with Hexproof, First Strike and an aura that would give her flying.
As the game developed, the Marath player started blowing up, Gonti got an Arcane Lighthouse out and the Drana player got out a planeswalker capable of killing Narset if her hexproof was removed. I was clearly at their mercy, but I had gotten Narset onto the field (with Dragon Wings attached) so i was in a position to negotiate. I acknowledged that I was under their thumb and pointed out that if the wanted to direct where Narset would be attacking I'd have much more fun at least getting in a few swings than sitting there with nothing to do, or even worse, being out of the game entirely. If I had attacked one of them I might have been able to loop into enough stuff to kill one of them, but I might just flop into three or even four lands. My logic was sound and they went for it.
I was able to hit the Marath player for five commander damage but that was all. I think I flopped into a mana rock, a Vedalken Orrery and a Loxodon Warhammer. Since I was playing ball, the Gonti player and the Drana player figured they could use me to kill Marath and maybe Kraj, build up good enough boards and deal with me when the time came. I told them I wasn't running much if any land destruction so Arcane Lighthouse was probably going to stay on the field for the duration of the game.
On my next turn I was able to flop into a Hammer of Nazahn and a Savage Beating. The Gonti player attempted to counter the Hammer with a Swan Song, but that doesn't work on artifacts, so the Hammer resolved and equipped. I would have liked to cast Savage Beating for the extra turn, but the Gonti player could have countered it, so I told them I would use it for it's ability to grant double-strike instead if they let it resolve. I was again swinging at the Marath player, so they let it happen and Marath was indeed savagely beaten.
I had also cast a Gift of Immortality on Narset, so I was at the point where she was doubly indestructible and was swinging for 10 damage. The Gonti and Drana players had let the horse out of the barn and nothing short of a Cyclonic Rift or some really bad flops was going to stop me.
Of course, if another player won the game first, that would do the job pretty well too. The Gonti player decided to try to do that. They had several Sol Rings and my Mana Crypt, and also had a Rune-Scarred Demon on the field. They were in a very good position and decided to cast either a Helm of the Hosts or a Blade of Selves - I don't recall which but I think it was the latter. They were basically going to go to combat, tutor into some wincons and win on their second main phase.
When they went to equip Rune-Scarred Demon, I cast Swords to Plowshares. If you've been following along, you know what happened next. They cast the Swan Song that they had gotten out of my deck with Gonti to counter my Swords. Fortunately for the table, or at least for me, I had a Past in Flames in my hand and just enough mana. I cast it thanks to my Vedalken Orrery, and then cast Swords to Plowshares again, this time successfully removing Rune-Scarred Demon. The crisis was averted.
Somewhere along the way Narset was killed. She was only a 10/4, as two of her boosts didn't pump up her toughness at all. Gift of Immortality kicked in, brought her back and my game was barely slowed down at all. I really don't like being forced to attack someone because if I don't, I'll lose my board or my commander, so at this point I decided not to let the Gonti and Drana players force me to attack the Kraj player.
Fortunately for me, they were out of answers. Hexproof is a wonderful thing, as is multiple layers of indestructibility. I was able to swing into and kill Matt, kill the Gonti player and then finish off the game by killing the Kraj player. By the end, I had flopped into my foil Karn's Temporal Sundering, which made me happy. I love that art and picked up a foil just for my Narset deck.
All in all, i was able to successfully navigate a challenging table and see my deck do what it's built to do. Winning games with Narset always feels good, though I do get why folks hate her so much. When she gets out of control she really is quite a handful. My opponents acknowledged their error in even letting Narset hit the field at all, but to be honest, I'm pretty good at working a table and negotiating with opponents.
Final Thoughts
I started today's writing thinking that I was going to try to cut back on my Sunday morning writing and a few hours later I've written my usual novel. My goal is to work on my writing skill, so I guess it's a good thing, but some weeks will probably have less here than you're used to seeing.
For tomorrow's Commanderruminations artlce over on GatheringMagic.com I've got an article in which I explore the idea of what a "midrange" deck is. I've been using the term a lot lately, and it felt like something I wanted to write about.
That's all I've got for you today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you back here next week!