Casual Night
After last week's "casual" Commander night, I made sure to bring a couple of decent decks in case I got stuck in a pod with a real spike. Most of us have no interest in turn 5 wins or losses in our Tuesday night games, but Commander is a funny format. It's OK to bring and play a strong deck on casual night. It's even OK to play said strong deck until you've notched a win with it. It's incredibly tone deaf to run off a string of 4-5 wins with that deck. Still, we don't have hard and fast rules on how our non-league Commander night runs, so I can see someone thinking that is OK and being self-centered enough to not care about the experience and enjoyment of the other players at the table.
I brought my Narset and The Mimeoplasm decks, not because they are capable of out-racing Emmett Otter's tricked-out blue combo deck, but because they're probably my strongest decks and might give me a chance, if only a slim one, to be able to steal a game if I was stuck with him.
I also brought my Raff Capashen, Pir & Toothy, Lathliss and Muldrotha decks. They're all pretty casual, in that they aren't heavily focused on denying my friends the ability to play the game and they aren't driving to combo off as soon as possible.
We only wound up playing two games, as the second lasted way longer than I thought it would. Emmett Otter showed up, but we didn't wind up sharing a table. The store had upwards of 15 Commander players show up, so we had a full four tables playing. I was at a table with some of my favorite folks to play with, so I didn't wind up switching between games.
In our first game I played my Lathliss deck against a Saskia deck, a pretty casual Najeela deck and a pretty strong Najeela deck piloted by a player who loves to downplay how strong his decks really are.
I was able to get out to a decent start and got an Extraplanar Lens on board on turn four. The Saskia deck and the strong Najeela deck had slow starts but the weak Najeela deck was cranking out warriors and getting ready to do some work.
I had Sarkhan's Triumph, a dragon tutor, in my hand. I wanted to save it for later, but the casual Najeela deck started swinging at me and I didn't want to give them the room to really get out of hand. If an opponent swings at me once, I generally assume it's probably going to happen again. With mana from a Worn Powerstone and 8 red mana from 4 mountains I was able to tutor up and cast Thunder Dragon to wipe out the Najeela player's board. The Saskia player lost a creature as well, but I couldn't risk having even the casual Najeela deck blow up. I've got a Najeela deck. That girl is nasty.
It turns out that making a 5/5 token red dragon for every non-token dragon you cast is also pretty strong.
I fairly quickly had both Najeela players dead and it didn't take long for the Saskia player to concede that he had no answers for my flying army of dragons.
My Lathliss deck is now 2-1, with its only loss coming to Emmett Otter's pesky blue combo deck that few of my decks are fast enough to even be able to challenge. Will Lathliss become yet another "casual" deck that I don't play on casual night because it's too strong? I hope not, but I'll probably keep trotting it out every few weeks. It's fun. It still feels relatively fair. It'll rarely win before turn 10 and has no way to win before turn 5. I can't say enough good things about it.
In game two I played my Pir and Toothy hydras & planeswalkers deck. The Saskia player stayed with Saskia. The spikey Najeela player had been mana-screwed and a little ganged up on in game one, and chose to stay with his Najeela deck. The casual Najeela player switched to a somewhat casual pillowfort Zur the Enchanter deck.
I got a good start with a turn one Hardened Scales and a Sol Ring and Pir on turn two. I held off on Toothy for a turn, instead ramping and then getting Toothy on board on turn four. The good Najeela deck got off to a better start than in game one. The Zur player was getting his pillowfort set up. The Saskia player was mostly just taking 1 damage from Zur each turn but not doing a lot in the early game.
I was able to get a bunch of counters onto Toothy thanks to a Soul's Majesty. The Najeela player had swung at me earlier, so I sent a pretty huge (18/18?) Toothy at him. Unfortunately, he used a Path to Exile on Toothy, I had already dropped my land for turn, and I wound up having to draw and discard a ton of cards. I drew into Reliquary Tower, but as I had dropped my land already there wasn't much I could do. I had a good laugh at my lack of foresight and I couldn't blame the Najeela player one bit. I had piled on him in the previous game when he was in a weak, mana-screwed position so I deserved whatever payback he wanted to try to send at me.
In the coming turns I was able to get my Reliquary tower out, get Toothy out and again put a ton of counters onto him with Urban Evolution. The Najeela player found himself in the position where he could probably have killed somebody. He actually asked me if I was going to try to kill him on my turn and I answered honestly that I would probably swing at whoever had last swung at me. For some reason that wasn't enough of a warning and he split his attackers and took a nice chunk of damage out of both me and the Saskia player. As it turns out, he probably should have killed me.
On my turn I played Deepglow Skate to get Toothy up to lethal, used my Rogue's Passage to make him unblockable and swung to kill the Najeela player. He wasn't table-flipping mad, but he definitely seemed to think that I shouldn't have killed him for the sin of hitting me for a meager ten or twelve damage. I reminded him of what I had just said not a few minutes earlier, that I was probably going to play like an 8 year old in the schoolyard and hit back anyone that hit me.
I thought I was pretty clear, but I also think he might easily have had game the next turn if he hadn't been eliminated. He won a game later that night at another table, so his deck definitely "works" if given the space to operate and a given a little luck with mana and card draw.
All this time the Zur player was just working on his pillowfort.
Now that it was just three of us, Saskia and I set about trying to figure out how to get through Zur's pillowfort. Neither of us was running a removal-heavy deck so it was going to be a challenge. Zur had Hushwing Gryff, Propaganda and Ghostly Prison out so we'd be paying 6 mana for each attacker. He also had Circle of Protection Blue, Black and White on the field so my Toothy wasn't going to do much.
To make things worse, my Toothy got Imprisoned in the Moon. I was able to free him with one of Vivien Ried's abilities but she was soon killed and Toothy got tagged with a Humility.
I had Zameck Guildmage out, so I was able to remove a +1/+1 counter from Toothy, draw a card and then put three +1/+1 counters onto Toothy thanks to Hardened Scales and Pir. The cost for each of these activations was one blue mana and one green mana. Using this method, turn after turn I slowly dug through my deck. The Saskia player slowly grew their board but left me alone as I might be better able to kill the Zur player with one attacker.
The card I was searching for was Bioshift. I could shift all the +1/+1 counters (now over 80) from Toothy over to Pir and use Rogue's Passage to swing for lethal on the Zur player. I had Heroic Intervention in hand to try to protect the play, but Bioshift was just not showing up.
Eventually the Saskia player decided the best play was to kill me and then try to kill the Zur player. I couldn't argue - he had left me alone far longer than he had to. He swung for lethal and then it was just Saskia and Zur left. I didn't bother to block, as I bore him no grudges and he had let me burn through multiple turns looking for answers to Zur without swinging at me. If he had, I would have easily killed him, but I had been hoping one of us would draw into a way to deal with Zur.
I realized that I had lethal on Zur in my now-huge hand after I had been eliminated. I could have played Increasing Savagery to put 5 +1/+1 counters on Pir, played it out of the graveyard to put 10 +1/+1 counters on Pir, played Deadeye Navigator, soulbonding it to Deepglow Skate, flickered Skate to double the counters on Pir, made Pir unblockable with Rogue's passage and then swung for lethal. I had Zendikar Resurgent out, but even with a mana doubler I might not have been able to do all of that quickly enough to get the job done. If it had taken more than one turn Zur could just have tutored up Circle of Protection Blue and foiled my clever plan.
At any rate, I didn't see the play in my hand until it was too late, and my Bioshift was nowhere to be found. It turned out to be another 10 or 12 cards deeper in my deck and I had already gotten through at least 60 cards. One thing about casual play - not using tutors will sometimes put you in the position where your best way to find an answer just isn't going to be fast or efficient enough.
The Saskia player was able to slowly whittle down the Zur player's life total, attacking with a Wurmcoil Engine and a diverse army of creatures that included Odric, Lunarch Marshal so they all shared their keywords. The Zur deck wasn't devoid of wincons but he wasn't able to pull into any of them and eventually the Saskia player was able to finish him off.
The game was fun, I was able to kill an opponent, play a significant role, and I somehow managed to avoid having my 80/80 Pir bounced, killed or exiled without the ability to turn that into a Lab Man win. Having to draw 80 cards when you have 30 left in your library would have easily eliminated me from the game. I probably should put Lab Man into the deck but I suspect that will turn it into the kind of douchebag combo deck that I don't actually want it to be. For now I think Hydras and Planeswalkers is the way to go.
I wasn't able to play my new Muldrotha deck, which while also casual in its approach, is new and different enough that I'm looking forward to playing it. I might even write it up as a decklist or as a "dual decklist" column if I can find someone to work with.
EDH League
Every Saturday I play Commander at our LGS in the league I run, but this Saturday was a bit of a treat. One of the hosts of the Commandercast podcast, Mark Mahler, happens to live right down in Connecticut and was able to come up and join us for the day. I showed up early and he was able to make it up a half hour before our regular start time. I wound up playing a bunch of games over the course of the day, even managing to win one.
Arriving an hour early, I jumped into a pickup game with my Rith the Redeemed deck. I wound up keeping a hand with two 5 drop artifacts, Coat of Arms and and Mind's Eye, but only had one white-producing land, Temple Garden. I played a Mountain, tutored for a Land Tax with Gamble and then wound up randomly discarding Temple Garden. It was going to be one of those nights. I wound up being short on mana for the rest of the game, but jumped out early when Mark showed up at 1:30.
I have to tell you that it's a little surreal playing Magic with someone whose voice you've heard for hours on end while listening to a podcast.. Fortunately, Mark wound up being as pleasant and down-to-earth a tablemate as I expected him to be. We chatted and it turned out that we'd be starting 15 minutes late because one of our regulars who was second on the leaderboard was running late. It being the last weekend of the month, we decided to wait for him.
That meant we'd have time to try to jam in another pickup game, so we shuffled up some decks and got a four player game rolling. Mark has been playing with a Tana, the Bloodsower and Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa deck but hasn't yet built it in paper. I played it, another player played a deck built just around Tana. Mark played Sidisi, Brood Tyrant. Our fourth player played something I don't even remember, but I do recall that he played an artifact (or enchantment?) that would bounce a creature to your hand during your upkeep if it has a greater power than the number of cards in your hand. That was going to be a problem for the mono-Tana deck, as he was using equipment to pump his general, but my deck relies on keeping creatures small so they can get in past blockers using Sidar's ability.
I was able to demonstrate to Mark what my deck basically tries to do by swinging at him with Sidar Kondo, Tana and two saprolings and bringing him from a life total in the twenties down to 1. At that point we were already rolling past 2pm. The fourth player whose commander I don't recall had managed to steal a bunch of creatures. I had a decent manabase and had a fog in the graveyard and a fog in my hand, so things weren't going to wrap up anytime real soon. Our missing league player finally walked in the door and we scooped up and got our first round of league rolling.
In round one I played my The Mimeoplasm deck. It's a Hermit Druid / Protean Hulk combo build with a few fun things thrown in because I like them. While it can combo off on turn 2 or 3, I'm happiest when I can Traumatize myself and then use Splendid Reclamation or World Shaper to put a ton of lands onto the battlefield.
I didn't wind up at Mark's table for this game, but was playing with a buddy of mine who was on his Saskia deck. The two other players were a newer player on a casual deck and a fourth player on an Anafenza, the Foremost deck. Anafenza shuts down graveyard interactions that involve creatures. It was going to be a rough game.
I was able to get an early Amulet of Vigor down, but wasn't able to combo off before Anafenza hit the table. I mostly just hung out, advanced my board and tried not to draw any hate. For the most part it worked. The Saskia player and I get along well, but have a bit of a history of really focusing all of our aggro on each other at the slighest provocation. In general I don't hit him and he doesn't hit me unless we're willing to deal with the payback, which sometimes can be a real bitch. I actually really enjoy playing with him and he's gotten much better over the past few years to the point where he regularly kicks my ass. I'm not sure why but for some reason he decided in this game not to poke the bear.
When Saskia came out he named the Anafenza player but send his attacks at the younger player who hadn't had a good start. He and Anafenza were taking their lumps and soon the kid was one swing from being eliminated. I would have saved him, if only for a turn and to nab a "bodyguard" point, if I could have, but it wasn't in the cards. He did me one favor before he was out - he killed a World Shaper that I had out. It resulted in just four lands coming out of the graveyard and onto the battlefield for me, but that was enough.
The Saskia player next swung at me with enough power to bring me down to four. He had named Anafenza both times that he cast Saskia and the damage I took was lethal for the Anafenza player so I took it and banked on the fact that he didn't have a way to deal that last four damage outside of combat. I was right.
On my turn I tapped Hermit Druid, put my library into my graveyard (I run zero basics), unearthed Fate Stitcher to make sure I had enough creatures, flashed back Dread Return to put Laboratory Maniac onto the field and then cycled a land I had kept in my hand to force a card draw and win. He didn't have a way to stop me, and it felt pretty good but I was also lucky. Every month I try to get a win in League somewhere along the way, and that was my win for the month.
In round two I was at a five player table with Mark. I played my new probably-too-casual-for-league Muldrotha Enchantress Voltron build. Mark played Feldon of the Third Path, We also had a Kalemne player, a Niv-Mizzet player and a Damia player.
Kalemne got out a Rite of the Raging Storm. Niv Mizzet got out an early Consecrated Sphinx. Damia got out a Vraska the Unseen. While we were all scared of Niv-Mizzet drawing cards, we were also scared of those 1/1 assassins. On Mark's turn he sent the 5/1 Lightning Rager he got from Rite at Vraska, knocking her down to 1. On my turn I had a 5/3 Thoughtrender Lamia and sent it and the 5/1 Rager at Niv Mizzet. I got five damage through, but on his next turn Niv-Mizzet was able to combo off.
We played one more pickup game where I played my Mudrotha deck again. It again didn't do much but I'm not giving up on it. Mark switched to his Selvala mill deck. We were up against another mill deck and I had removed my only way to cycle my graveyard back into my library. That's a mistake I need to rectify. Mark's deck didn't do a heck of a lot during the early and mid-game but he was the one that milled me out using double-parleys on every turn thanks to Seedborn Muse and Wirewood Lodge. The mill player's Windborn Muse helped with that process, but Mark was the one to do me in. He had presented a significant threat earlier in the game with a huge Centaur Vinecrasher, but someone had an answer for it.
After our games wrapped up, we chatted for a bit and then Mark headed out and I ran the league points for the day. Matt ("player number two"), who had won the previous two months in a row wasn't able to make it. I really should start calling him "Player Number One", given his recent dominance. The player he beat out on the last day of the month for June was again beaten out on the last day of the month - this time by the guy who had won our top point total for 2017.
It was a great day of Commander. We had five table in round one and three tables in round two, which is a pretty decent turnout for this group. Mark was a lot of fun to meet and play with and I even managed to win a game.
That's all I've got for today. I'll be missing next weekend but should be back here the week after with another recap. Tomorrow I've got a column about... well, about a lot of things but it's the story of how and why I got my first alter made. It's a Blood Moon and I hope it's worth a read. It'll be over on GatheringMagic.com tomorrow. Check it out!
Thanks for reading!