It's been a few weeks again since I've posted here. I've had a few pretty rough weeks, but my intention is to keep sharing my games with you when I have anything positive or interesting to write about. My first news isn't particularly positive.
On July 6th my father passed. My mother had died last December and my father's passing was both a bit of a shock and at the same time not unexpected. He was 82 and was a pretty great Dad, all things considered. I was closer to my Mom, but as you can imagine my past few weeks have been difficult.
Our family drove down to Pennsylvania that weekend. Our normal EDH League games were off for the M19 prerelease anyways, but my kid really wanted to do the prerelease so we hit the road on Sunday. My sister's family lives a few houses down from where my parents had been living, so it wasn't necessary for me to head down as soon as we had gotten word of Dad's passing.
Pubstomped at The Portal
We got the chance to spend some time with my sister and her family and to help out with a few things that were somewhat time-sensitive during our trip to Pennsylvania. We also normally play EDH on Monday nights when we're in the area, and we did so on this trip.
Unfortunately, our visit was not much fun. I didn't bring my best decks, though arguably I should have as a win or two might have cheered me up a bit. My daughter joined me for the evening.
We wound up playing a few games. I think my daughter, Lili, combo'ed off with her Pir and Toothy deck in the first game.
After that game a fifth player joined us and did a kinda weird thing where he didn't just put his board (sans playmat) onto the quarter of the table he was sitting at, but put his commander and library onto the edge of the table where Lili was sitting, encroaching into her space. During the game he was also pretty aggressive about grabbing cards to look at and the result was that after the game Lili went to look at cards instead of continuing to play. For my part, I wasn't aware of how this fifth player was making her uncomfortable until later on. I don't remember how that game went, but I know I sure didn't do well as I was playing subpar decks that were probably too casual for the table.
In the last game, during which Lili was off looking at cards, we got pubstomped. Not only did we get wrecked by a kid with a much higher-powered deck, but he was one of those jerks who thinks that it's great to proxy cards across his collection of decks so that they are all better and he doesn't have to buy duplicate cards or move them around. Whether or not a closed group is OK with that is none of my business, but it's pretty shitty to go to a LGS and spring your proxy deck on a bunch of players who aren't running proxies. By just assuming that's an OK way to build your deck you are building and playing with a competitive advantage because normal EDH players don't just pretend that they have cards in their deck that aren't actually in the deck.
Unsurprisingly, Douchcebag McProxyuser won the game. I was pissed, not only because he was kinda being a douchebag proxy user and playing a proxied deck against non-proxied (and more casual) decks, but also because I know my kid and I knew that was my last game of the night.
I don't mind losing but I dislike having a short night where all the games are disappointing and I have nothing positive to take out of the experience. I had a few sharp words with Mr. McProxyuser about the fairness of playing proxied decks against unproxied decks, knowing that chances are good he was just a win-at-all-costs Spike who likely chalked my complaint up to my being a salty loser. I've been a salty loser, but in this case I still think my point was and is valid. Don't mix proxy-decks with non-proxy decks in a public LGS setting - your wins will essentially be tainted and it exposes you as someone who cares way too much about winning. Don't be Douchebag McProxyuser. Use proxies in your private groups but man up and play real cards at the LGS.
So that was an evening ruined, but my weekend was already a pretty bad one. I hadn't expected to lose my father so soon after losing my Mom and I'm still not sure I've really processed either loss. Still, life goes on and you just pick up the pieces and try to make the best of things.
EDH League
I missed our casual night on Tuesday because we were in Pennsylvania, but our Commander league started up our July games on Saturday. The theme was commanders with "Graveyard" on the card or in the oracle text, and I decided I would play a different deck for each game over the course of the three weeks we'd be playing.
I started out with Anafenza, the Foremost. It's a pretty bad Abzan vampires deck. We had an old friend at the table who hadn't played with us in many months. He started out pretty manaflooded and I knew that if we just left him alone, he'd win. We did. He did. My deck really didn't do much of anything, but I didn't really expect it to.
Round two had me at the same table as the old friend, who was playing Animar. I was playing Muldrotha, but it's a really casual build. I'm going to be reworking it into a voltron build but for this version relies on a Deadeye Navigator combo to be able to win. Animar won on turn 5, which was way faster than my deck would ever have been able to win short of having a lucky "god-hand" and zero interaction.
Not only was my Saturday a pretty miserable one, game-wise, I also got an incredibly low four "Gen Points" awarded to me by my opponents on the day. While I hadn't had any impact on the games, I normally associate low gen points with being an unpleasant tablemate, and I didn't think I had been particularly unpleasant to play with. It was a worthwhile reminder that my mood will be better if I play better decks and that will probably make me more pleasant to play against.
Casual Night
It's a week and a half out from my Father's passing and I've somehow managed to cobble together a pretty epically bad string of EDH games. Nothing's been going right and all I want is to sit down and have some fun casual games with my buddies at our Tuesday casual commander night at our LGS.
I brought a bunch of casual decks along with my two favorite green decks - Marwyn and Molimo, Maro-Sorceror. I brought those two because I had a new deckbox that was one of those green flip boxes that stores two decks side by side. I had been resisting buying any more deckboxes but my constant churn of deckbuilding had me at a point where it made sense.
Folks gathered and I wound up sitting at a table with a kid who had brought a highly tuned Padeem combo deck. He had an otter tattoo on his arm, so for the purposes of today's writing I'll just refer to him as Emmett Otter. On casual night combo isn't exactly verboten but it isn't exactly encouraged either. Most of us would rather have a long durdly game that is won or lost in the trenches. It's more fun for us, and in that environment a tuned combo deck that can win early with counterspell support could probably go 10-0 at a four player table.
I only had one deck - Marwyn - that could even try to keep up with Emmett Otter's Padeem deck. I'm also the organizer of the scheduled EDH stuff at our LGS so I figured I'd take one for the team and sit in his group even though I had a feeling it was going to make for a long night.
I think we wound up playing six or seven games and they were pretty miserable.
One of my favorite table-mates played the first game and then switched tables rather than face an evening of losses against a tone-deaf Spike (Emmet Otter) who clearly didn't care about anyone's fun but their own. Win at all costs. Another good friend who plays more casual decks than mine was a trooper and stuck it out with us, but he also seemed pretty displeased. Our league's best player, Matt ("player number two") was also with us but hadn't brought his best decks to the store so he wasn't in a much better position to deal with a player like Emmett Otter than I was.
A long run of quick losses to start off casual night wasn't exactly how I had planned to spend my evening, but after four straight Padeem wins, Matt was able to get a win and towards the end of that part of the night so did I.
My Marwyn deck got a couple of chances to get stomped into the dirt and not once did Marwyn deign to let me even see one of my combo pieces. My sole win at that table happened after Matt had killed Emmett Otter and I had enough elves to swing on him for a chunk of damage. My life total had gotten high enough that I wasn't within range of his Ezuri deck. It's possible Matt was happy to see someone else other than him and Emmett Otter win a game, but I'm not really sure he threw the game to me.
Eventually we switched up tables. Emmett Otter had been trying to switch tables as it was obvious we weren't exactly enjoying getting crushed by his Padeem deck. We wound up having two three-player casual games and a more competitive 4-player game that of course included Emmett.
My buddy who had been stuck with Emmett had joined me in one of the three-person games and I played my new Lathliss, Dragon Queen mono-red tribal dragons deck. It hadn't been able to beat Padeem, but my hope was that at a slower table it could compete for a win.
The deck has the backbone of my old mono-red deck that had gone through many generals from Purophoros to Zada, Squee, Ashling and most recently, Etali. It has 24 red dragons and one basic plan - to play dragons and swing for the win. It might not win games in the trenches, but it will win games flying over the trenches and there isn't a combo in sight so on some level I think it qualifies as casual.
The game went pretty well for me. I was able to get both Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and Extraplanar Lens out, though an opponent playing Muldrotha bounced the artifact to my hand. That never feels good, as you had to exile a land to play it, but I persevered and played it again in the late game.
Early on I was able to get Lathliss out and on the next turn play Divergent Transformations to exile Dragonspeaker Shaman and Solemn Simulacrum to cheat two creatures into play from my library. I happened to hit Grinning Ignus and a red dragon with Amplify 3. I showed a dragon from my hand and suddenly had both a 8/8 dragon (5/5 with three +1/+1 counters) and a second 5/5 dragon token (I already had one from a few turns before).
In the end I was able to swing for the win with my dragons and it felt nice to see my new dragons deck do what it's supposed to do. At a better or larger table it might have had issues, but I was able to make good decisions at key points in the game to position myself for a win. I probably also lucked out and didn't have to rebuild from any boardwipes, as the deck is seriously lacking in draw and will probably struggle against control strategies.
The strangest thing about the entire evening was that at one point I noticed that Emmett Otter (I didn't actually call him that) was no longer playing in the pod down at the other end of the row of tables we were at. Apparently he didn't mind playing a deck chock-full of moxes (and other fast mana), card draw, counterspells and combo wincons on casual night, but couldn't handle a table of lesser decks treating him like he was the main threat and ganging up on him.
Apparently Emmett Otter had rage-quit and left the store.
I couldn't believe it at first. If I win two games in a row, I'm so happy that I can get destroyed for the rest of the night and usually not let it get to me at all. Some nights even a single win is enough to make it so I don't mind losing that much.
Five or six wins and then you rage-quit?
I guess I don't understand people very well sometimes, but apparently Emmett Otter wasn't satisfied winning a bunch of games in a row and just dominating his opponents for a huge portion of the evening. He also had to never, ever get ganged up on.
I don't know if he'll be back. He hadn't been a regular player with us, only showing up a few times a year, but in the future I might just choose to sit at a different table. It's totally OK to play a strong deck - even a cEDH deck - on casual night. To ONLY play that deck and string out a long series of wins is simply rude, and I honestly wouldn't mind if I never play against him again. I also didn't like how snarky I got during our games, as I'm not very good at keeping my mood to myself and I let myself get into a pretty cranky mood during those early games.
In the end, it actually wound up being a wonderful night, not because of Emmett Otter, but because I got to spend time playing and chatting with a bunch of guys I really enjoy playing with.
It was the kind of camaraderie that feeds the soul. I had the chance to talk a little bit about what I'd been going through with family stuff, and everyone was supportive and considerate. I also got to play four hours of EDH, which in itself is a wonderful thing, even if the first half of it was pretty frustrating.
Pre-DH League
Maybe that should be Pre-EDH League, or PREDH League. This past Saturday I had a wedding to attend but stopped by the LGS to drop off our scoresheets and play a couple of games with basically anyone who happened to show up early.
I had carefully mapped out my July to play six league games using four different decks and then one additional deck twice. It was going to be Anafenza & Muldrotha on week 1, Jarad & Lazav on week 2 and The Mimeoplasm and a reworked Muldrotha on week 3. Even if I couldn't stay for league I decided to play my Jarad and Lazav decks in the pickup games we played from noon to 2pm, before the league games kicked off.
I was joined by some of my favorite league players who happened to show up early, including "player number two", Matt, who I may have to just start calling "player number one" because he's just been winning like crazy.
In the first game I played Jarad. One of the guys was on a boros deck and his boardwipes got me to a point where I couldn't cast Jarad and didn't have much of anything I could cast. I think Matt had protected his board with a well-timed Heroic Intervention.
Earlier on I had a Terastadon that was a 6/6 and a few mana dorks and was able to respond to a boardwipe by sacrificing 10 power worth of creatures to drop my opponents' life totals by 10. Right before I was eliminated I drew into Phyrexian Devourer, but it was just a little too late. I didn't have the mana to play Jarad and Matt killed the table before I was able to draw into a land and go for the win. I was able to delay it for one turn by casting Darkness, but he had a Temur Sabertooth out and was able to bounce and re-cast a Craterhoof to make sure he had lethal.
It wasn't a bad game, but I also wasn't super focused on trying to win. I was just happy to get some games in with friends given that I had to miss league.
For the second game I played Lazav. I got out an early Dreamscape Artist and for a number of turns focused on ramping. I was eventually able to use Increasing Confusion to mill an opponent and turn my Lazav into a copy of Hamletback Goliath.
We had a fifth player playing Kyanios and Tiro who had joined the game, and he had a Mana Flare out so I was in a good position mana-wise. Unfortunately the K & T player wasn't just playing hug, and when I went to cast Rise from the Dark Realms to really pop off and probably make Lazav big enough to kill someone, he countered it. I would say "shame on me" for not checking to see if he had counter mana available, but with Mana Flare up everyone had counter mana available. Sad day for me, and my chance to possibly win the game was thwarted.
Lazav was still pretty huge, and I had a Hot Soup on the field. One of my buddies who was on an Atraxa deck, and who tends to ignore other threats and go after me for fun, had been swinging at me despite the fact that I hadn't been doing anything to him (or anyone else) up to that point. He's a strong player and while he loves to go after me, I also love to kill him when I get the chance. This was one of those times. Lazav stayed out, nobody found any boardwipes, the Atraxa player brought me down to 18 life and I was able to equip Hot Soup, play and equip Prowler's Helm, play and equip Whispersilk cloak and swing for the kill.
The game was soon over. Matt again found a way to swing for lethal on the table and I had no way to stop him. I think he was likely playing decks that were just a notch higher in power level than what I was playing, but I wasn't really gunning for victories in those games. I was just happy to see friends and get some games in.
Final Thoughts
Next month our league is going to be changing its monthly theme to commanders with the keyword "Flying". I have no idea what I'm going to play. Among my options in my current collection of decks are Lathliss, Rith, The Ur-Dragon, Ramos and Raff Capashen. My old Wasitora and Skittles decks were pulled apart long ago. I've got a foil Prossh in a binder and I'm seriously tempted to just throw together as strong a Prossh deck as I can assemble for my August league games, but in reality it's healthy for the league to see different faces at the top of our rankings and the past four months have just seen me and Matt in the top spot.
I'm a little tempted to brew up a mono-white deck that has the ability to shut down a single player so that I can try to slow down anyone who is running away with our league's point totals, but in reality there's no guarantee I'll even be at the top player's table. The month when a local judge set new records in point totals I was only at his table once over the course of four weeks of play.
The other issue with me gunning for the top point total in August is that I'll be missing a week. It's hard enough to win a month against the quality of players our league has playing in it. Missing a week pretty much makes winning the month impossible. My habit of not playing actual top-tier decks also makes it a challenge. I spread my good cards pretty thin across my 20+ deck collection and lately I've been forgetting to move good cards into the deck I'm playing for league, so my few Mana Crypts are off in some decks I haven't even touched for months. I know... first world problems, right?
So in some ways it's been a rough few weeks, but I've taken great comfort in having a good group of friends to play with over at NexGen comics. The games haven't always been fun, but the benefit of building even a small community of players is that when things aren't going well you have folks to play with and talk to and that can help you get through difficult times in your life.
Last December I had to share the news of my mother's passing. I implored folks to take a moment to call their Moms if they were still able to. I'll leave you today with a similar thought. If you're close to your dad, give him a call. Lots of us aren't great at reaching out to our parents for no reason, but the reason can be that your parents would probably love to hear from you even if it isn't about anything important, and you never know when they'll be gone. It's something I should have done more, and I'd urge you to try to do it while you can, if you still can.
Thanks for reading. Tomorrow I've got a decklist column for Commanderruminations about a shiny new red dragon deck I've been working on over on GatheringMagic.com. You should check it out!
See you next week, and again - call your Dad!