Welcome to my blog. This is where Commanderruminations first started and is where I now write about the games I've played. I don't really share full play-by-play rundowns but generally just sum up how things have been going. I'm probably way more biased towards myself and my favored playstyles than I realize, but maybe that goes without saying.
This past week I actually played on both Monday and Tuesday and then had my usual league games on Saturday. I also goldfished a new deck more times than I could possibly count.
Precon League
Precon league was a bust. We didn't even have enough players to have a full table, but I was pretty much expecting it to not work. I think the issues were manifold. We already have a healthy Commander community playing on Tuesday nights and Saturday afternoons, so adding another day might have been unrealistic. Players also like to tear apart precon decks and update all of their other Commander decks, and those that want to play their precon decks usually want to tweak them every which way or use the alternate commanders to build a variety of decks.
We did wind up playing one three player game with one of the players we've been struggling with bringing into the meta. He likes to play a very tricked-out Padeem deck that reliably combos out quite early in the game. He plays this deck on our "casual" night. The problem with that is the meta actually is quite casual and unable to keep him from winning 75% or more of the games he plays in. That's not fun for anyone but him, and we're trying to get him to fit into the group in a way that makes games fun for everyone, not just him.
In the three player game we played, one player was on Lord Windgrace, the spike was borrowing my Lathliss, Dragon Queen deck and I was playing my Muldrotha deck. I really wanted to give him a weaker deck but he's one of those guys who seems to really, really care about winning. Most of us care somewhat about winning but to crush tables on casual night and not willingly switch down to a weaker deck tells me it's really important to him.
It wound up being a pretty long and interesting game. I think I was able to kill the Lord Windgrace player in the midgame and it wound up being between Lathliss and Muldrotha at the end. Windgrace had wrecked the board before being killed, in part to try to hand me the game. I was able to get Lathliss within one turn of being killed, and I had a Spore Frog that I could play and recur every turn, but I was at 3 life, so it wouldn't take much to get me. The spike played a Sarkhan's Triumph to get Scourge of Valkas onto the table. I had no way to prevent noncombat damage, so he had me the turn before I would have swung for lethal. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy the game and I'm sure it helped that he won.
I was happy to have had a half-decent game and I'm hopeful that we're getting through to this kid that it's better to play at the level of the meta and that you can wind up having some really exciting and memorable games that way. It would have been nice to win of course but being in the game for most of it and coming so close to winning is far from a wasted evening.
Casual Night
Speaking of wasted evenings...
I kid. Tuesay night was not a wasted evening, but it was pretty close.
I wound up playing one game at a table with one of our regulars - the same guy who joined us the night before and played Lord Windgrace, and three other players. I consider him a friend at this point, but as you'll see, we don't always get along. There are a few things I really hate. One of them is being mocked, and I don't mean just table banter and kidding around. Another is getting killed for no good reason and sitting out for over an hour with nothing to do when all I really wanted to do was play Commander. Tuesday night I got to have both of these fun experiences.
I was playing Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign. The "regular" was on Yargle, another player was on Bant Enchantments and I don't recall what the two other players were on. It was a five player game. The Yargle player got off to a bad start and decided to throw the game to the Bantchantments player, giving his biggest threat lots of spicy enchantments including Phyresis. He was also kind of acting like a bit of an jerk to me above and beyond just throwing the game, taking table banter a little over the line from just kidding around to being genuinely mean. I tried to help the table deal with the out-of-control Bant player's boardstate by overloading a Cyclonic Rift but he just cast Teferi's Protection. As it turned out, he didn't lose the Yargle player's auras. I had earlier gotten a Serra Avatar out so that I could block incoming threats, but that wasn't enough. The Yargle player had been goading the bant player to kill me and he was able to do so, swinging for 17 infect. I was out and I was pretty annoyed.
As it turned out, the game lasted over an hour longer and I think the "regular" wound up winning. I was able to talk to this friend on Saturday and his defense was that he was mocking me over something that he had just made up - not something I actually do. In addition to being weird, I pointed out that folks don't know what's in each other's heads and I had no way of knowing whether he actually believed what he was saying or not. The bottom line is that I tried to explain to this guy that pretty much nobody likes being mocked for any reason ever. You'd think this isn't the sort of thing one would have to explain to a guy in his thirties, but it also isn't unheard of for a commander player to be bad at dealing with social situations.
So I looked through cards a little and then headed out to my car. As I was about to pull out of my parking space I spotted a player arriving who was soon going to be heading off to college. She also had some cards I had loaned her, so I got back out, went back into the store with her and spent the rest of the evening chatting and playing a few one-on-one games. I won a game with Yennett when her deck was refusing to produce enough lands, and then she won a game when my deck wasn't able to keep up with her Surrak Dragonclaw aggro. She's a great kid and it was nice to tell her a little about my college experiences, play a few games and pick up a few cards rather than end the night on a less pleasant note.
EDH League
Between Tuesday and Saturday I built up and goldfished a new deck build around Xantcha, Sleeper Agent. I went from thinking that it was a weird cornercase general that would be an interesting experiment to being really optimistic that I've finally found a Rakdos commander deck that I can get behind. It's weird. It's dangerous. It has unique challenges, but also has a pretty high ceiling. Tomorrow's Commanderruminations post is all about how the deck was built and how it plays, so I'll leave out the details.
I went into the day not even "on the board" of our EDH League. We have a chalkboard on the wall at our LGS where we post the to 5 point totals for the league along with the name of the previous month's winner. The league is free with no prizes, but as they say - glory is forever. Having your name up on the board is pretty decent motivation for a lot of our players to try to win a month.
I came in with the goal of playing Xantcha if I was in a pod with the guy who had annoyed me on Tuesday night. Yeah, I know - it's a little juvenile but I felt "owed him one". If I wasn't at a table with him I would play my Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign deck.
In game one I was at a table with my daughter, who was playing Animatou, and the Surrak Dragonclaw player from Tuesday night. We also had an Ur-Dragon deck at the table.
Most of the early game seemed to be made up of Animatou using Jace, Architect of thought's -2 ability every single turn and every single time she asked the Surrak player to give her two piles, she got a 3-0 split. Fortunately for us, her Animatou build wasn't her usual combo build and she wound up being able to go through a huge portion of her library without hitting a wincon. It was the deck's first time out and I'm increasingly suspicious that she may have intentionally built a casual deck because with the number of cards she looked at she usually would just win the game.
Fortunately for everyone, the Ur-Dragon player was having none of it. He did a great job sending dragons over at her again and again and before long she was down around 15 life. I'm an opportunistic league player and when the Ur-Dragon player swung for lethal with a 5 power dragon and with The Ur-Dragon I used Maze of Ith on the smaller one so she would be at 5 life, setting me up to finish the job on my turn.
I got that kill and was eventually able to win the game with a Serra Avatar, a Toxic Deluge and a Temporal Mastery, both of which I had cast using Yennett's attack trigger. I don't even remember how the Ur-Dragon player was killed but I don't think I got everybody unless I screwed up my scoresheet and didn't give myself enough points. I'm not in the running for the month anyways so I'm not worried about it. After the game an opponent commented that I had manipulated the top of my library, mostly by scrying, every single turn of the game. That wasn't exactly true, but after the first few turns I had managed to use lands, rocks and instants to set up every significant play I made in the game. I never actually got an enchantment out that would let me drop cards onto the top of my library, but I was still able to see the deck do what it's meant to do and that made me happy.
In round two I was again in a pod with the Ur-Dragon player and the Surrak Dragonclaw player. My kid wound up in another pod and a really strong player was with us. He was playing Lathliss, Dragon Queen. I know quite well how strong Lathliss can be so I decided to also play my Lathliss deck. I didn't think I had anything that would be able to keep up and I didn't want to just hand him the game.
I was right. His deck performed well, assembling and maintaining a pretty impressive board of dragons and dragon tokens. I somehow wound up being the lightning rod for counter magic for most of the game, in part because he and the Surrak player seemed to have some sort of collusion or cooperation going on that apparently dated back to previous games they had played. It's OK for players to collude or cooperate, and it's up to the rest of the table to deal with it, but to be honest it is also pretty frustrating and it makes for a bit of an uphill battle for everyone else. I was able to keep the other Lathliss player from going after me by playing the game as if we were "Lathliss buddies" and not doing anything to him, so I can't really complain.
There were several pivotal moments where I probably managed to lose the game. My Lathliss deck actually has over a 50% winrate so I consider it to be a strong deck in the meta it's been playing in.
The first major setback was that an early Mana Geyser I cast was countered. This might have been as early as turn 5 and if I had been able to get it to resolve I would have been able to cast Lathliss, cast a Dragon Egg and another dragon, get two 5/5 dragon tokens and have enough power on board to probably kill the other Lathliss player as we moved into the midgame. Sadly, I wasn't able to get out of control and actually wound up being a step behind the other Lathliss player for the rest of the game, assembling a decent little dragon army but never catching up to their boardstate.
The second major setback was a Disrupt Decorum that I was able to convince the Surrak player to let resolve. My dreams of having everyone swing out on their turn and having a clean swing at the other Lathliss player were overly optimistic. My hope was that the other Lathliss player, having to swing out, would kill the Ur-Dragon player, honoring their apparent non-aggression pact with the Surrak player. Then Surrak would swing out at the Lathliss player, leaving me able to kill either or both on my turn. What actually happened is that Lathliss was able to tap a bunch of their creatures using some spell that let him tap his creatures to help with the casting cost. It might have been Obelisk of Urd. The Surrak player on their turn used Chord of Calling to tap down their creatures. They had been gaining life so when the Ur-Dragon's turn came around they swung at the Surrak player but not for enough damage to make much of a difference. It was a great idea, but I was at a table with some really good players who happened to have the answer to the challenge I was presenting.
On their turns my opponents also made sure to whittle down my army of dragons so that when I got my chance to swing the best I could do is kill the Ur-Dragon player. I did so and he even went easy on my, only killing one of my attackers with his blockers when he could have killed two. I think prior to combat I had tried to cast a Thunder Dragon and would have had 17 damage from Scourge of Valkas, but it was countered by the Surrak player. As I said - I was a bit of a lightning-rod for counter magic that game.
In the end it was a long, interesting game. I was able to have a decent boardstate and I eliminated at least one opponent, but couldn't overcome two strong players who seemed to be just a little bit in cahoots with each other. That early Mana Geyser would have helped a lot, but sometimes things just don't work out. I don't think I made any major misplays and the table did do a great job dealing with my late game Disrupt Decorum.
When all the points were totaled, I found myself in fifth place in our rankings, which if nothing else means that I'm "on the board". I should probably spruce up this blog with pictures way more than I do, and a shot of that chalkboard might be worth including. I'm already handling a lot of things on Saturdays so it's the sort of thing I might forget to do, but I'll have to see about adding that in.
After the second round I did play a pickup game but it ended badly. I had wanted to test out my new Xantcha deck but it wasn't exactly behaving well. The Lathliss player from the previous game cheated in an early Blightsteel Colossus, went to kill me and then he was going to scoop out of the game because he had to leave. I had taken 11 infect (we play with a 13 infect count in league, so the meta usually uses 13 in pickup / casual games) and was going to swing at me a second time. I've had issues with this guy in the past but killing an opponent and then scooping is a pretty douchebag thing to do. If you're going to play the game, play the game. If you're not going to play the game, don't waste everyone's time and just don't start it. I had actually convinced him to send his second swing at someone else and then I realized I was "pleading for my life" and decided - fuck it, I had to run points for the league anyways so I'd take the kill and go run points. The worst part of it all was that he didn't even choose me for any good reason - he rolled a fucking die to determine who to send his Blighsteel at. Yes, this was one of those players. I don't normally recoil at the cowardice of letting a die roll determine who to swing at, but this was a Blightsteel with Lightning Greaves. We have a running joke that the league motto is to kill this guy first and this was an apt reminder that it's really not a joke - this guy usually deserves to be killed first and if you don't, he wins and often wins in annoying ways.
I went off to run points, my daughter comboed off a few turns later, and I was pleased to find myself on the board. If nothing else, I had a win on the day and a few good moments to look back on. There were ups and downs, but I can't really complain too much. I try to get a win every month in our league games and I got mine.
Final Thoughts
This week had its ups and downs, but all in all things are going pretty well. Yannett got her first wins, finally managing to put together enough threats to kill a table. It'll never be the powerhouse glass cannon that my Narset deck is, but there's a lot of fun in topdeck manipulation and the occasional blind attack trigger flop that turns out to be something great.
My Xantcha deck is looking pretty good. I have some edits to make after Saturday's game and after talking about it with my daughter, who I still maintain is a better deckbuilder than me. She was able to convince me to pull out a set of infinite mana combos around Kiki-Jiki and I'll be adding more removal and possibly a Darkness, as nobody expects a Rakdos deck to fog.
That decklist will be up on CoolStuffInc.com tomorrow. That's all I've got for you today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!