Last weekend's Guilds of Ravnica prerelase meant our EDH League skipped a weekend. The previous Tuesday's casual night games were somewhat uneventful. By that I mean I neither won a game nor got to do anything particularly interesting in them, and I wanted to take a week off from my extra blogging over and above my articles for CoolStuffInc.com.
I'm back on my usual Sunday / Monday writing schedule now and today I'll touch on my Prerelease and then I'll jump into last week's Casual and EDH games.
Prerelease
I never feel confident when doing sealed or draft events, but I do them anyways. My Guilds of Ravnical sealed pool was OK. I was in Dimir and almost went for a full Blue/Black deck until it dawned on me that Undergrowth pairs really well with Surveil.
I wound up building a decent Sultai Surveil/Undergrowth deck and won my first round 2-0 against a buddy of mine from EDH League. My second round was against a fast Boros deck and variance kicked me in the jimmy pretty hard for the next two games. I soon found myself 1-1 and went into round three against another Boros deck. I won the first game and led in the second game for the majority of it, really only losing at the end thanks to my opponent's lifegain. We had 3 minutes left in the round and my generous nature got the better of me. I conceded the round to him so I could drop and go play Commander. I figured winning packs would mean more to the young guy than it would to me, though I never found out how he did.
My sealed pool didn't have much to get excited about. I picked up a second prerelease kit before leaving but only wound up with Etrada and two of the new Niv-Mizzets. Looks like I'll have to order the cards I want from Guilds of Ravnica, but that's OK. I've actually been pretty happy with CoolStuffInc as a vendor so far.
The commander game was fun. I played my old Lazav, Dimir Mastermind deck. At one point I was able to have both Lazav and Evil Twin on the field as copies of Consuming Aberration with over 50 cards in opponents' graveyards and a Phenax on the field. I still somehow managed to lose the game, but it was full of twists and turns, and my buddy that I had beaten in round 1 of the prerelease came out with the win. He's now won the last three games I've played with him, so I think I need to start playing less nice and giving him more aggro if I want that to stop.
Casual Night
Tuesday rolled around and I found myself with a bag full of less competitive decks as I headed off to NexGen Comics to play casual games all evening. Our spike problem seemed to have resolved itself. The kid who thought nothing of crushing casual tables game after game has not been around for a while. I have it on good authority that one of the store's blunter regular players reamed him out when he asked if he could join a pickup game. Apparently he also was super upset about the game about a month ago where the table played on after he had combo'ed out on turn 5.
Sorry not sorry.
Sometimes the way you treat other people comes back to bite you, and I think this was a case of that.
Now that the spike problem was no longer happening, I didn't feel a need to bring decks with me to try to deal with pubstompers. We wound up playing three games on the evening. To my astonishment, I won more than my fair share. That doesn't usually happen.
Game One
In my first game I played my new O-Kagachi Maze's End deck. It's filled to the brim with fogs, boardwipes and land tutors designed to get and play Guildgates. I built it to deal with the player who had declared a vendetta against me a few weeks ago. I suspect he wasn't really serious, but he was there and played with us in the first two games of the night.
The goal of the new deck is to see how long it can last if someone is just going after you and you alone for no reason but to get a vendetta out of their system. The Maze's End wincon isn't intended to be a realistic way to win games.
The game saw me on O-Kagachi, the guy with the grudge playing Ur-Dragon, a player on Ghave, Guru of Spores and a fourth player. I don't recall what the last player was playing. The Ur-Dragon deck wasn't meant to be an optimized list, but I assumed he'd try to kill me first. When the Ur-Dragon player realized I was on a Maze's End deck he declared that I was going to win the game. I didn't agree, and I meant it when I said that I really didn't expect the deck to pull out the win. It's not a particularly serious deck.
I was able to start with a turn 1 Amulet of Vigor, which is fantastic with Guildgates and any land that enters tapped. I was also able to get out an early Ghostly Prison and get Maze's End out. Nobody was swinging at me and I soon had two boardwipes and a Constant Mists in hand and the engine was cranking along quite nicely. On the end step before my turn I kept grabbing a new guildgate and soon was at 5. Five guildgates is only half-way there but I was starting to imagine it might happen.
When the Ur-Dragon player swung at me for 8 and I just took it, he realized that was a bad sign. I was eventually able to play a land and Scapeshift three basic lands get myself to 10 with Maze's End in hand. I then wiped the board, played Blind Obedience and passed the turn. I had Crucible of Worlds in hand in case someone had a way to start blowing up my lands, I had another boardwipe in hand as a backup, and I also had Constant Mists in case someone threatened to kill me with combat damage.
My opponents didn't have any answers, though the Ur-Dragon player was able to get rid of my enchantments. The issue was Amulet of Vigor, which would let me play Maze's End, which enters tapped, and then win on that turn because it would untap.
I was able to survive until my turn with Amulet of Vigor intact, played Maze's End and won the game.
It was a pretty sweet win and slightly astonishing to me, but I'll take it.
Game Two
Coming off a win, I usually drop down my power level. I wasn't sure how I'd go weaker than my O-Kagachi deck, but I pulled out Firesong and Sunspeaker to see how it might do. I hadn't played it in months because it struggles to make enough mana and just never seems to work for me.
The Ur-Dragon player and the Ghave player stayed with their decks, the fourth player switched to a Gabriel Angelfire deck and we were joined by a kid playing Kumena.
Early in the game I could see things weren't going to go well. My commander was countered by the Kumena player and I just knew it would never hit the table again. The deck just doesn't ramp much at all. On a later turn when I went to play Pyromancer's Goggles I decided to see if I could goad the Kumena player into countering that too. I calmly explained that Goggles was an incredibly powerful card and probably should be countered... and then he countered it. I know that sounds odd, but when I get in a whimsical mood I sometimes find fun in seeing if I can convince opponents to do things that aren't actually that smart. I was out of the game anyways for all practical purposes, so why not see if I could play a mind game or two?
I was able to get out Alabaster Mage, lose it to a boardwipe, play a Sun Titan and get Alabaster Mage back, but that was really the most threatening I ever got in that game. Ghave played a Cathar's Crusade which the Kumena player strangely didn't have a counter for (go figure), but Ghave was unable to turn that into a combo win. The Ur-Dragon player eventually killed me and everyone else but the Kumena player. He then scooped and conceded to the Kumena player. It was weird, but he's a weird guy. Maybe he was happy that my commander never even hit the table. I don't know, but it wasn't the worst game ever.
Game Three
With a win and revenge under his belt, the Ur-Dragon player departed for the evening. We were joined by a Tuvasa player who had been waiting for the next game and a Jeleva player. The Ghave player stayed with us and I was able to convince the Gabriel player that the Jeleva player was bringing in a super strong deck and that he should pull out something that would be up to the challenge. He chose to go with Zur, the Enchanter. I switched to Rith, the Awakener.
I started with a hand full of green cards and no forests, but I had lands so I went for it anyways. Unfortunately, the Zur player got an early board lock out, keeping us from being able to play more than five lands. I had a Temple of the False God so I was able to produce 6 mana, but my friend playing Tuvasa was utterly mana screwed. He had a plains and a Temple of the False God and stayed at that for nearly the whole game. We chatted and nobody attacked him, but it was a miserable game for him and I was impressed with his ability to just hang out and enjoy the company and conversation.
I was able to get out an early Anointed Procession and played Knight of the White Orchid to grab another Plains before the board lock hit us. After a few turns the Zur player relented, got rid of his lockdown piece and I was able to play lands. I got a Land Tax out and was able to grab three Forests and start really building.
My commander is in Naya colors (red/white/green) and I couldn't really get the game plan going without green. What the deck wants to do is give Rith double-strike and swing into two combat damage triggers. I never saw any double-strike options but I did draw into Impact Tremors. I was able to play it and swing with Rith, calling "white" and getting 14 saprolings. That caused Impact Tremors to do 14 damage to each of my opponents and set me up for the win on my next turn if nobody had answers.
The Jeleva player got a Meekstone out on his turn, preventing Rith from untapping on my turn. I had sorcery-speed removal in hand and was able to play it to get rid of the Meekstone, and then just decided to swing for lethal on him with 9 of my saprolings anyways. I had been distracted and didn't realize how low he had gotten. My Rith wasn't going to untap until my next turn though, so the table had a brief reprieve.
On Zur's turn he swung and tutored for Imprisoned in the Moon. My Rith was now a land. When he passed turn, I gladly untapped it, played an Eternal Witness to get my removal back, removed the enchantment, swung with Rith and killed the table with ETB damage after calling "green" and making over 50 more Saprolings.
It was my second win on the night, which is a bit out of the ordinary. I'm definitely fond of my Rith deck, and was happy to see it blow up.
I wound up giving my buddy who was on Garbiel and Zur my Firesong & Sunspeaker before we left. The card, not the deck. I have played that one enough and I'm happy to free up some sleeves for another project. Firesong & Sunspeaker aren't terrible, but in those colors it doesn't take much in the way of removal and counterspells for your commander to never see the table again. He had a really rough few weeks and it was a way of extending a little kindness. I hope he has more luck with them than I had, because they just never really felt like they worked for me.
EDH League
Saturday brought a return to our weekly EDH League. Every month we get a fresh start and every month we have a new theme.
The theme... it's something of a trap.
If you want to play decks that are "on theme" it's basically a way to ensure that you probably won't wind up at the top of the rankings at the end of the month. If that sounds like an overstatement, well... it's only a slight overstatement. The themes are for those of us who love building decks, don't feel a need to try to win every game we play in, and want some extra incentive to mix it up and do something different.
This month's theme is Gods, or more accurately, "Gods, Karona the False God, Nicol Bolas and O-Kagachi". The player who chose the theme for October decided to include anyone he felt was sufficiently divine in the lore as to qualify as a God, even if its creature type wasn't actually "God". I'm totally OK with that, as it was his theme to pick and I wasn't going to stifle his creativity.
I went into the month with three "on-theme" options for decks to play. My O-Kagachi deck is one, but I don't think of it as being good enough for league play. My Karona, False God deck is one I'm going to play at least half the time this month, but I don't really expect it to win any games. It's got a few ways to win but the combos involve way too many cards and I run way too few counterspells for me to have a lot of confidence in it. My third option is a rebuilt Purphoros deck that should be able to win a game if I'm not stuck at too many tables with blue decks.
Round One
We had enough players for three tables, which is about average for our league. I was at a five-player table playing Karona against a Selvala Eldrazi deck, an Aminatou combo deck, a Mairsil deck and a Muldrotha deck.
I was able to get a decent board with a bunch of lands, a Mana Crypt, Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain and an Ornithopter that I jokingly referred to as "my wincon".
The Selvala player got out to a decent start, but the basic problem was that the table wasn't sufficiently focused on stopping the Aminatou player, who also happens to be my daughter. I don't think her deck has lost a single game at this point. Even if everyone had ganged up on her, she might still have been able to pull off a win, but with all of us resolving petty squabbles over minor threats like Eldrazi Titans, she was able to combo off with Felidar Guardian, eventually winning with Grey Merchant of Asphodel.
I hadn't been particularly close to finding enough of my combo pieces to be able to threaten a win. I'm running lots of tutors, but the deck just isn't very consistent yet. I added more draw this past week in the form of Vedalken Archmage and Jhoira, but at least in its first game it wasn't able to do much.
Round Two
We didn't have enough time to play a pickup game so we just leapt into round two after a short break. I switched over to Purphoros. The Aminatou player at my table again, and she switched to her Pir & Toothy deck. Mairsil was also at my table again and stuck with Mairsil. The final two players in our pod were playing Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain and Niv-MIzzet, Parun.
I was playing Purphoros at a table with four blue decks....
I'm sure you think you know how this ends, but it was way more convoluted a game than even I expected it to be.
The Niv-MIzzet, Parun player was seated to my right, and made it clear that he'd be keeping Purphoros off the table. I didn't even have the chance to hope my deck might fly under the radar - they knew what a good Purphoros deck could do and had no interest in finding out if my build was casual or optimized.
I was able to hit my land drops and play a turn two Iron Myr. Our league has a "first blood" point that you can get for combat damage and for noncombat damage. On my third turn nobody had done combat damage yet and the Niv-Mizzet player had open mana but no blockers.
I had an idea.
If I swung at him with Iron Myr I woudn't be able to tap it for mana to cast Purphoros, but I would get that "first blood" point. If the Niv-Mizzet player did something to stop my attack he'd probably use enough mana that he wouldn't be able to counter anything. With only two lands, he'd rightly think I was a turn off from even trying to cast Purphoros.
I swung and he immediately tapped his mana and used Rapid Hybridization on my Myr. No "first blood" league point for me, but I still had two untapped mountains. I played a mountain as my land for turn, and was able to exile Simian Spirit Guide from my hand to make 1 red mana, tap three mountains and cast Purphoros, God of the Forge.
That was about the last thing that went right in that game.
The exact details are something of a blur, but the early to mid-game involved us all losing our hands and having a turn or two where Maralen of the Mornsong was out and we couldn't draw cards. One of the players was talking about tutoring up Stranglehold because he thought it would be hilarious. We eventually all lost our lands as well, so the game basically reset.
Going into this reset the Pir & Toothy player had enough. We have a 10 point penalty for scooping, but if you have the consent of the table you can leave the game and it isn't considered "scooping" so you don't lose points. She asked if anyone objected to her conceding and nobody objected. I couldn't blame her - it was pretty miserable.
The Mairsil player had a creature exiled with a cage counter who let him wheel the table so every now and then he was forcing the table to discard and draw. I was slowly rebuilding my manabase but things didn't look good.
The Jhoira player at one point started to combo off. He was sitting two places down from me and all I could tell was that he was playing lots of artifacts and was hoping to draw into a wincon. I was rooting for him, as he hadn't been involved in any of the wheeling, land destruction or counterspell use that had been messing up my game plan. He's the same guy who had been stuck on 2 lands in our third game the previous Tuesday night and had carried himself with far more grace and humor than I would have, so I was hoping he'd pull off the win.
He wasn't able to pull off the win on that turn or on the next turn. He had played Leveler and had Laboratory Maniac out, but didn't have a way to draw. As part of the push to win, he had used Mana Severance to exile all the lands from his library. He was all-in, but before the turn where he would have drawn into the Lab Man win, the Mairsil was able to dig up a Fireball and had just enough mana to kill Lab Man.
The game continued, but after a while the Niv-Mizzet player asked if he could also concede. I was a little surprised, but our "scoop" rule is in place to stop players from "douche-scooping", or to put it more kindly, using the scoop as a tactical move. He knew he didn't have a way to win and simply wanted to bow out of the game gracefully. Nobody objected, so we were down to just myself and the Mairsil player.
I had a meager board with two goblins, Ghirapur Gearcrafter and a Thopter token. Mairsil had Mairsil, now with a wheel dork and Hateflayer exiled with cage counters. There wasn't any reason to think I would be able to pull out a win, but I was certainly going to try. We were both at around 18 life. My biggest problem was that I had cleverly played Smoke - an old enchantment which allows each player to only untap one creature each turn. That meant that even if I was able to produce a bunch of attackers they would be good for one swing and that's about all.
Purphoros was no longer on the field. It had been hit by a Chaos Warp and I got a mountain out of the deal.
This is where things got a little goofy.
I had a Battle Hymn in hand, so for two mana I'd be able to produce red mana equal to the number of creatures I controlled - four. I also had Mana Geyser and Pyromancer's Goggles in hand. My opponent had 7 tapped lands. I really wanted to play Pyromancer's Goggles and use it to play Mana Geyser into enough mana to pump out a bunch of attackers using Firecat Blitz. The problem was that once I cast a spell, my opponent could wheel my hand, so there was no way I could get both of them onto the stack. It wouldn't have won me the game anyways, but it would have gotten my opponent down below 10.
I wound up playing Battle Hymn. My opponent wheeled and I found myself with a new hand that included Goblin Charbelcher and Ashnod's Altar.
I didn't really think Charbelcher would get me there, but after a long look at my other options I decided it was my best shot.
Goblin Charbelcher is an artifact that costs four and taps for three mana to let you reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a land card. For each nonland card you reveal it does 1 damage to the target of your choice. If you reveal a mountain it does two damage per card.
I'm not running a ridiculous number of lands so I figured my chances were OK. I wasn't dead on my next turn so if I got lucky or even had two turns where I got an OK number of nonlands I had a shot. I checked and the deck runs 33 lands.
If I had gone to combat I'd have lost my Battle Hymn mana, so I took a deep breath and played my Goblin Charbelcher. The Mairsil player raised his eyebrows and looked the card over, but had no response. I then played Ashnod's Altar, sacrificed the two tapped goblins on my board to make four mana and paid three to tap Goblin Charbelcher.
I re-read the card aloud so folks would know what was going on. For cards like this I like the dramatic moment. Everyone still playing attention was dying to know what I'm going to "flop" into. It's not unlike a Narset attack trigger. Once I had everyone's attention, I grabbed a chunk of the top of my library and went to reveal the top card.
It was....
a MOUNTAIN!
Zero non-land cards were revealed so Goblin Charbelcher did zero times two damage to my opponent, which... let me do the math... is ZERO damage.
As you can imagine, we all got a good laugh out of it and the Mairsil player was quite relieved to not only not die, but not even take any damage.
On his next turn, in addition to attacking me and using Mairsil's Hateflayer untap ability to do even more damage, he also found a way to Chaos Warp my Charbelcher. I don't even remember how he got Chaos Warp back, but my last hope was gone. He passed the turn, confident that he had me dead on his next turn.
On my turn he again used the wheel ability of the caged creature Mairsil had been using all game long and again, I ditched another hand and drew... into Goblin Charbelcher!
I couldn't believe it.
I didn't seriously think I'd be able to luck into eight non-lands to be able to kill him, but I didn't see any better option in my hand. I had some creatures but nothing that would make a difference if Purphoros wasn't already on the field. Norin the Wary was in my hand, and while he's a cute little ETB dork, without a way to turn that activity into damage he'd just be a waste of a red mana.
I wasn't even sure if it would resolve but I went for it.
I tapped four mountain and played Goblin Charbelcher again.
My opponent was not pleased but I reminded him that he forced me to shuffle it into my library and then wheeled. My library simply wasn't that big at that point in the game and while it seemed unlikely, I had drawn back into it.
He had no response - other than a nervous expression on his face.
I sacrificed Ghirapur Gearcrafter and the Thopter to Ashnod's Altar to make enough mana and tapped Goblin Charbelcher.
Again, I grabbed a chunk of the top of my library.
Again, I picked up the top card and prepared to begin flipping cards onto the table.
If I was able to hit 8 non-land cards before I hit a mountain I'd win the game.
The first card....
against all odds....
and to the amusement of everyone watching...
and much to my chagrin...
was...
ANOTHER MOUNTAIN!
Yet again, the math wasn't in my favor.
Zero non-lands revealed times two damage per non-land revealed equals ZERO DAMAGE.
I might have played a creature before passing turn, but my fate was sealed - and sealed in hilarious fashion.
On his turn Mairsil finished me off. I congratulated him on the win, and came away from the game much amused and with a story to share with you guys.
I can't say it was a good game, but I was able to do a few things, have a few laughs (largely at my own expense) and despite playing in a game so miserable that two opponents conceded I was able to make it to the very end.
Final Thoughts
Sometimes when I have a really good Tuesday and then a miserable Saturday I wonder if I used up all my good luck on casual night.
I suspect my Karona deck isn't as bad as it felt when I played it, and that my Purphoros deck just ran into a wall of blue decks. I also think I may play Karona and O-Kagachi next Saturday, though I'm less optimistic than before about my chances of winning a game this month.
As you can see, I'm not even on the board after one week and we've got a record number of names in our top 5 thanks to a two-way tie for fourth place and a three-way tie for fifth place. Last Month's winner was Pierre, who apparently I forgot to put in the top spot on the board. I'll rectify that at soon as possible. He's a good guy who deserves to have his name up there for all to see.
I was never that optimistic about my league points this month to begin with, but I hate to not even be on the board. That said - I'm going to stay with my theme decks. I won a couple of months early this year and I've got some fun stuff planned for November and December so I'm good to keep with the decks I've got lined up for October.
I've got an article for tomorrow's Commanderruminations column on CoolStuffInc.com about building a Storm deck with Ramos, Dragon Engine at the helm. As you may remember, I love Ramos and will probably be building the deck and playing it on Tuesdays once I've got all the cards assembled for the list.
That's all I've got for you today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!