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C-C-C-Combo!


This past week saw yet another deck get torn apart. Maybe "torn apart" is an overstatement, but I had gotten tired of playing Karona, Myr Tribal and having my only real threat be the Myr Incubator into Karona alpha strike. The deck is built to try to land the Banishing Knack / Battered Golem combo, which is actually a 4-card combo. The problem is that Karona was only there to let me play all 5 Myr mana dorks. That meant something to me, but I hate playing a deck that just doesn't feel like it works.

In the 99 of the Karona deck was Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain. The deck had recently been reworked to be much more heavily Izzet, so it was an easy choice to swap out Karona, remove the few cards left in there that used white, green or black, and rework the land base so it could be a Jhoira deck.

In other news, I also took the Eldrazi backbone of my now-retired Oona Polymorph deck (which was a blast, by the way) and built Jhoira of the Ghitu with Eldrazi and all the extra turn spells from my now-retired Narset deck.

A month ago I had a beloved Narset deck and a pretty janky 5/c Myr deck that I loved but that rarely got even close to hitting it's main combo. Now I have two Jhoira decks. Go figure.

Casual Night

I didn't think the new Jhoira Myr deck was actually going to be able to win games any better than the old Myr deck could, but I packed my two Jhoiras up with some good decks and headed off to NexGen comics to try my luck.

We played three games on the night.

Game One

The first game was meant to be a push. I played with my Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain Myr deck. My opponents were on Edgar Markov, Zurgo Helmsmasher, Lord Windgrace and Ghave.

I was able to get out an early Propaganda, but spent the entire game not hitting any red mana sources and never got to cast Jhoira.

The Vampires deck got a great start and was swinging early. The Zurgo player was also swinging but thanks to my Propaganda I was pretty much left to my own devices. I had a Silver Myr and a few other creatures and was able to draw into Traxos, Scourge of Kroog, which is one of the pieces of the deck's Rube Goldberg device.

I had Efficient Construction out and had played a Spellbook earlier to make a Thopter creature token, so I had two more pieces of the combo already on the field.

When I drew into Long Term Plans I realized I might be able to combo off. I cast it on an end step to put Banishing Knack three cards down but other than cracking a Mind Stone I was stuck drawing just my one card per turn.

Fortunately, nobody realized what I was up to. My old Karona deck landed this convoluted and fairly easy to disrupt combo only once or twice, so it wasn't exactly in my opponents' minds.

I was able to draw into Aetherflux Reservoir on the turn that I was going to combo off. The combo basically works like this:

Play Banishing Knack (or Retraction Helix) on Traxos (or Battered Golem) so that you can tap it and bounce a permanent to your hand. You bounce a 0-drop artifact so you can recast it for 0 mana. You cast your Spellbook / Mana Vault / Tormod's Crypt / whatever and that untaps Traxos. You can do this as many times as you like, but it only wins you the game if you have something else that gets triggered by this interaction. I played Aetherflux Reservoir and already had Efficient Construction AND Golem Foundry on the field, so the combo would kill the table and make a Thopter/Golem army for my next turn if I needed it.

My opponents were a little confused and thought I was going to bounce their entire boards. They weren't any more pleased when I explained that it just won me the game and I didn't care about their permanents.

Comboing off on casual night is normally not received really well. Most players on Tuesdays want to win or lose on the battlefield, but in my defense I really didn't expect the deck to work. I figured I'd get rolled in short order and would then feel better about upping my deck's power level for the next game. I also thought I was starting with my worst deck.

Game Two

The second game saw me switch not to a weaker deck but to a combat deck. I dropped Jhoira and switched to Lathliss, Dragon Queen. Edgar stayed with Edgar, Ghave stayed with Ghave and Zurgo switched to Ezuri, Claw of Progress.

In the early game the Edgar player resolved to make me pay for the sins of the previous game and in very short order I found myself at around half my life total and facing a fairly impressive army of vampires ready to roll over me.

I was at 24 life and soon to be dead, but I had a Mana Geyser in hand and had just played Grinning Ignus. On my turn I was able to bounce Grinning Ignus to my hand for 3 mana, pay 2 more to get something like 11-14 mana from the Mana Geyser and play some dragons. I screwed up the order, but wound up with Lathliss, a Dragon Hatchling, two 5/5 dragon tokens and another dragon as well. I had my blockers but the Vampires player had flyers and I didn't think I was going to get out of my predicament.

After winning a game I sometimes don't even bother to try to politic my way out of a jam. I figure after a combo win the table wants its pound of flesh. I could have tried to convince the table to work together with me to try to take down the Vampires player but I couldn't pretend my board was any less scary - he just had earlier momentum because Edgar has a lower mana curve and is just a much faster deck.

Edgar swung at me, I blocked enough attackers to leave me at 3 life and have a crackback on my turn. When my turn came around I didn't draw into anything helpful, so the end was in sight. I swung back at him, pumping my dragons to do as much damage as possible. The Ghave player wound up killing me on his turn, as I had no blockers, and before long the Edgar deck had overwhelmed the rest of the table.

Game Three

The third game saw me switch to my Muldrotha deck. The Edgar player switched over to Animar. The Ghave player stayed with Ghave - I think it was the only deck they had with them. The Ezuri player, unbeknownst to me, switched to their Muldrotha deck.

This was another weird game. I didn't see any green mana sources for what felt like forever. I got out some early blockers in the form of a couple of creatures who could pull cards out of my graveyard. One was Archaeomancer but neither mattered as I had nothing in my graveyard. I was mostly happy to have a blue creature out so I could block Animar if he came my way.

For much of the early to mid game I had no access to green mana. I did have a Thespian Stage out and after a while I made it a copy of a Forest that the Animar player had. I still wound up not playing Muldrotha as I wanted to keep other options open. I had a few counterspells in hand and at one point I was able to counter the Animar player's casting of an Ulamog Crusher, which had been under a hideaway land. Animar immediately cast a Void Winnower - which I would have countered instead if I had known it was coming - and I then took a turn of aggro from him for the offence of countering one of his creatures.

The Ghave player was blowing up mightily and the other Muldrotha player had some nice threats out, including a Consuming Aberration. I was the least of anyone's worries and after that brief threat my opponents returned to dealing with the real problems at the table - each other.

The Consuming Aberration was slowly loading up my graveyard, which would have been great except that my Muldrotha was still in the command zone.

The Ghave player had Cathar's Crusade out and was starting to really go crazy with putting out saprolings and +1/+1 counters. He eventually killed the Animar player and then set his sights on dealing with the other Multrotha player. I still wasn't a threat, as I had such a meager boardstate.

Around this time I drew into Spore Frog. I cast it, as there was nothing stopping anyone from just killing me if they wanted me out of the game. My hope was eventually to topdeck a land that produced green so I could play Muldrotha and get the Spore Frog recursion going.

We had a minor mishap in the game where the other Muldrotha player had a Butcher of Malakir out. The issue was that for at least one turn the Ghave player was swinging at the Muldrotha player, losing a bunch of Saprolings and having to sac some creatures. Everyone, myself and the owner of Butcher of Malakir included, missed that I needed to sacrifice creatures too. The Butcher of Malakir's owner was specifically telling the Ghave player to sacrifice saprolings, but never thought to say anything to me, and I missed the trigger as well.

I had been using Spore Frog as a way to try to convince the Ghave player to leave me until last. Muldrotha wasn't out, but the idea that I could fog every turn if I got lucky and topdecked a green source of mana was absolutely on my mind. The problem was that in that combat that we "rolled back" because my board wouldn't have been there, I wouldn't have had the fog frog.

I offered to the table to roll back to the start of combat because I wanted the Ghave player to be able to send attackers at me if he wanted to. It seemed only fair, but I assured him that if he attacked me he'd still do no damage even without the Spore Frog. He was still OK with just attacking the other Muldrotha player. Apparently I can be convincing when I want to be.

Now that I had no board, I let the two opponents with Armies duke it out for a bit until the Ghave player swung for lethal on the other Muldrotha player. It was then that I overloaded the Cyclonic Rift I had been holding onto since before I lost my Spore Frog. The Ghave player lost his slightly ridiculous collection of saprolings and mountains of 6-sided dice. Most of his creatures were well over 20 power, as he had Reyhan, last of the Abzan on the field to help move those counters around after attackers died.

My biggest reason to save the other Muldrotha player was that I figured having a second target for Ghave would be really helpful to survive long enough to play my Muldrotha and try to combo off. The other reason was that the other Muldrotha player had been dealing with car trouble, and anytime I know a person is already having a bad day I like to try to help make their day better, at least in a casual EDH game where nothing's really at stake. Also, I figured he wouldn't kill me until Ghave was out of the way so now I had only one opponent to really worry about.

On my next turn I finally played Muldrotha.

My graveyard was huge. I played Amulet of Vigor out of it and then played Archaoemancer, returning Splendid Reclamation to my hand. I then played it, returning a dozen or so lands to the battlefield and untapping them with Amulet of Vigor.

That one interaction is basically my favorite thing about this deck. Having a huge yard, bringing all my lands out and untapping them is incredibly powerful. I then played Commander's Sphere, played a tutor to get Viscera Seer and played that. I then sacrificed Muldrotha and replayed her from my command zone so that I could play a second artifact that turn from my graveyard. That artifact was Lightning Greaves.

I was out of mana, but poised to win the game on my next turn. My opponents didn't know this of course, and I wasn't about to tell them. I equipped Greaves to Muldrotha and passed turn.

On their turns, the other Muldrotha and Ghave started to rebuild their boards, appropriately nervous about what I was up to. They did as much as they could, but they couldn't kill me and nearly tapped out trying to climb back into the game.

On my turn I played Hermit Druid out of the graveyard and attached Lightning Greaves. I then tapped Hermit Druid, milling my whole library as I run zero basic lands, and putting Narcomoeba on the battlefield when it was going to enter the graveyard. The other Muldrotha player then killed my Muldrotha, thinking he'd better stop me from getting any more use out of her, but the horse was out of the barn at that point.

I flashed back Dread Return to cast Laboratory Maniac, sacrificed my Commander's Sphere to draw a card and won the game with Lab Man.

I felt a little bad about two combo wins on "casual night" but I hadn't expected the first one to happen, and the second one was at the end of a really long game so it wasn't like I hit a turn 2 Flash Hulk win. My Muldrotha deck can do that, but in truth when I went for the win I intentionally bypassed Mike & Trike to go for Hermit Druid into Lab Man, figuring that would give my opponents a window to be able to stop or kill me. That window wasn't very long - one turn - and it felt nicer than just winning on the spot. I'd have been happy for them if they had stopped me but I was also happy to notch my second win of the night.

EDH League

Saturday rolled around and while I was not even on the board, I was determined to play at least one more day with decks that were "on theme" for the month. The decks I planned to play were my O-Kagachi, Maze's End deck and my Purphoros deck.

Game One

In the first game I played my O-Kagachi Maze's End deck. It's not a great deck but I was hoping the control elements in it (boardwipes, fogs) would give me a chance to maybe hang in the game long enough for it to be fun. The table was four casual decks and a pain-in-the-ass spike. Omnath, Locus of Rage, Lord Windgrace and the new Trostani and my deck somehow weren't able to win before turn 5. Go figure. The deck that won was a Marwyn build that went infinite on turn 4, locked down the table and exiled our board and won on turn 5 so as to not incur early kill/win penalties. Nobody really had fun and we shuffled up and played a pickup game without him to kill time until round 2.

Pickup Game

In the pickup game it was again me on O-Kagachi against Omnath, Lord Windgrace and Trostani. This was actually a real game. There were lots of boardwipes. I got up to 5 gates, had Amulet of Vigor out and Maze's End and probably would have won if the game had gone long enough. The Lord Windgrace player would have had game before that but for the boardwipe I had in hand. The Omnath player also seemed to think they would have won and he's probably right. He's an old spike who played with us earlier in the year and dominated play before he went off to college. Even when he plays "casual" decks he winds up winning with dirty combos. It's just his way. We wound up scooping because we had to start round two.

Round Two

As luck would have it, our second round had many of the same faces from our earlier game. We had enough players to split into four tables, but our table had three players stay together. The Omnath player switched to his Darigaaz deck and the Trostani player stayed with us as well. We were joined by a player on Breya and a new league player who had won his first round and was on Edgar Markov. I was on Purphoros.

In the early game the Edgar player showed why he won his first round and was off to a decent start, as did Trostani and Darigaaz. Breya didn't get much out at first and I had an early Guttersnipe and some 1/1 Devil creature tokens as blockers..

I got Purphoros out on turn four and on turn five topdecked a Mana Geyser. That's where everything went horribly wrong.

I had Blood Moon, Mana Geyser, Grafted Exoskeleton and a Mardu Scout in hand and I made a colossal misplay.

I played Mana Geyser into Blood Moon and Mardu Scout (not dashed). I then played and equipped Grafted Exoskeleton to Purphoros.

Also in my hand was Mogg Infestation. It destroys all creatures a player controls and that player gets 2 goblins for each creature that is destroyed. Purphoros is indestructible so in my mind I saw my four other creatures dying, and my Purhoros getting to do 16 infect damage to the table, giving me the win.

Seems plausible right?

There is something to be said for playing fewer decks, playing them more often, and really, really knowing your cards. Clearly I was failing on this last point. If you don't see my error yet, let me explain.

Problem one is that Purphoros needs 5 devotion to red to be a creature. Once you destroy your creatures with Mogg Infestation, he returns to his non-creature state. That would cause Grafted Exoskeleton to fall off, meaning he would do no infect damage on the ETB triggers.

Problem two is a classic "RTFC" moment. I have a bad habit of not catching the last line of text on a card because the first few sentences are so terribly exciting. When Grafted Exoskeleton is removed from a creature you sacrifice it. Purphoros may be indestructible, but he can certainly be sacrificed.

I and the rest of the table thought game was over, and the Darigaaz player had even started scooping up his cards. He had to rebuild his board and a judge helped us sort out exactly how everything was supposed to play out. I felt incredibly stupid for my misplay, but did my best to keep a positive attitude and soldier on. If I got the right cards there was no reason I couldn't still win.

Everyone else was at a fairly low life total, but I was also clearly identified as the biggest threat at the table. My Blood Moon had the Edgar player in check for the moment. As things played out, I didn't draw into anything helpful. The Breya player was super close to death, and someone rightly stole that kill before my turn came around again.

The Darigaaz player wound up winning with a combo so tired I had skipped over using it on Tuesday night when I won with my Muldrotha deck. Saturday is most certainly not Tuesday, and I generally encourage folks to play what the like. His solution for how to deal with Purphoros was simply to play Mike & Trike and win.

I honestly found that end deeply frustrating, but my frustration was as much at myself for screwing up my line of play as it was at him for pulling that old combo out. It works, it's legal, and I sometimes use it but I'll freely admit that it's super lame and I feel like a tryhard spike when I win with it.

I went to run points, and did engage in a 3 player game while waiting for the last table to finish up, but it hardly warrants inclusion. A player wanted to test his Kess Storm deck. I played Najeela and just didn't draw into enough lands to play anything more than a Goblin Piker and a Skullclamp. It was not a fun way to end my day, and it makes me again wonder why folks play decks like that. Naturally, I also long to have a deck like that, so I can whip it out and win when I really want to win. At least, that's how it seems when you get crushed early.

Final Thoughts

My third week of October league games wasn't particularly successful, though again, I fell into the "trap" that is playing on theme. We've got some interesting votes coming up next week, so we'll see what changes for November's league games.

There's some saying or maxim about half the battle being just showing up, and for our EDH league there is some truth in that. My first round was crap and my second round wasn't memorable in a good way, but I got a few points and I've been showing up every week. As a result, I've crept onto the board, but I'm pretty far from the top.

I'll take it, I guess, but I wish there was a solution to the problem of unbalanced games in league play. We're not a cEDH league but players care so much about winning, even with only "bragging rights" on the line, that they'll sit at a table with weaker decks and play a turn 4 or 5 cEDH deck. It sucks for everyone (except the pubstomper) and while this dynamic doesn't define every game, it has been a bigger problem in recent months.

So that was my week. Some fun games on Tuesday where I wound up comboing more than may have been appropriate, and then some less fun games on Saturday where I didn't play combo and probably should have.

In tomorrow's Commanderruminations column on CoolStuffInc.com I'll be writing about Varina, Lich Queen.

So far the most amusing thing I have to talk about is how her name is one letter off from an anatomical reference, and her moniker is one letter off from "Lick Queen". This begs the question of what Wizards manage to leave out of other sets, if Varina got to production.

Was there an Ixalan legendary Vampire Pirate named Pemis, the Engorged?

If there was, he'd have had an Enraged trigger that would put +1/+1 counters on him. Naturally, if you messed with your Pemis enough, he'd "go off". You'd remove all the +1/+1 counters like Ashling, the Pilgrim, and put that many 1/1 Vampire Pirates onto the battlefield. Get it? Sea-men??? Come on... it's a little funny. Yes. I may be edging towards 50 but part of me still has the sense of humor of a 12 year old.

I think I'll leave that idea here and spare my editors from having to decide whether it's hilarious or whether they should fire me and find someone more serious to write Commander content for them.

That's all I've got for you today. Thanks for keeping up with my games and putting up with my sense of humor. I'll see you next week!

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