This week saw my first games after winning November on the back of my Multani and Rith decks. My hope was to have a good month of December as well. The month's theme is "commanders from the plane of Dominaria". The plan is to play my semi-competitive Marwyn and Muldrotha lists, both of which are capable of early wins and pack some interaction. I like my chances of grabbing a win at some point over the course of the month, but this week my best games again happened to be on...
Casual Night
I've been trying to figure out if I'm playing decks that are a little too strong for our local game store's "casual" night. In truth, we call it casual night because there's no prizes, we don't count points and we're not even playing for bragging rights. I have managed to have a pretty decent run over the past four weeks. This week I grabbed a bunch of decks on my way out the door, including my Maze's End deck and my Ramos storm deck. I hadn't played either in a while and figured I'd give them a shot.
Game One
I decided to start off the night with my O-Kagachi Maze's End deck. It's chock full of guildgates, gate tutors and boardwipes, but I never actually expect it to really compete to win a game. One thing about casual decks that is always in my favor though is that they don't usually run much land destruction. What that means is that I'm starting to feel a bit of inevitability about these games. I can usually sweep and pillowfort my way to the end game and then I usually have a decent shot at hitting the Maze's End wincon. I once even killed someone with O-Kagachi, but the deck isn't really built to win on the battlefield.
I was going to shuffle up with some of the guys I had played with the previous Tuesday but some other friends showed up who I hadn't played with for a few weeks so I jumped in with them and our first game was a four player affair. It was me on O-Kagachi against a player on Breya, a player on Lord Windgrace and a player on Mina & Denn.
The Mina & Denn player was very chatty and presented himself as the Aggro player at the table. I got out an early Windborn Muse to discourage any early attacks and when it came time to drop Mystic Barrier it was an easy decision to have combat flow so players were attacking to the right. That put the Mina and Denn "aggro" deck in the position of swinging at Lord Windgrace, who in turn could swing at Breya, who in turn could swing at me.
There was some early attacks and before long the board was wiped - I think by a Nev's Disk - and we all started rebuilding. I had used Scapeshift to go get Maze's End and two Gates, so my plans were in motion and the table didn't seem too concerned. The Windgrace player was really blowing up.
I had a Hallowed Burial in my hand and had the mana to play it, but wound up playing something else. I didn't really want to use a boardwipe until it was absolutely necessary. I hadn't fully realized how out of control the Lord Windgrace player's board was, but when I took a closer look I realized he had an Avenger of Zendikar out and 14 0/1 Plant tokens. I really should have boardwiped, but I realized I had something just as powerful as a boardwipe - I had the THREAT of a boardwipe.
I had already commented on how my deck was practically tribal boardwipes, so I gave it a try. I told the Lord Windgrace player that if he promised not to swing at me on his next turn I wouldn't boardwipe. I had four mana open. It was a plausible threat. Hallowed Burial costs 5 mana, but he had no idea what I had in my hand and he clearly didn't want to lose his amazing board. I wasn't a threat on the battlefield. I had 7 or 8 Gates and Maze's End out but he didn't seem concerned enough about that to even bother to count my Gates. He said OK and I passed turn, fully planning to use three of my open mana for another Maze's End activation if I lived long enough to do so.
The Breya player went after me and didn't have any answers for the Windgrace player's amazing boardstate.
On Lord Windgrace's turn, he proceeded to do all manner of crazy stuff, including casting Kamahl's Druidic Vow for a whopping 12. He put a bunch of lands onto the field, making his plant tokens huge. He also got Omnath, Locus of Rage, so he got a bunch of elementals as well. When it came time to go to combat, I still had four open mana. If I hadn't left mana open I think he might have reconsidered and just killed the table but he kept his word and killed just Breya and the Mina and Denn players.
My bluff worked. On his end step I got another Gate and on my turn I cast Hallowed Burial and put all of our creatures on the bottom of our libraries. O-Kagachi went to the command zone and he didn't even get to use any of his Omnath elemental death triggers. I was confident that I had the game in the bag. I just needed another turn or two.
On his turn he played a few creatures, but nothing that seemed alarmingly dangerous. He put out a creature that got a bunch of counters and I exiled it. I had Overwhelming Splendor in hand but didn't want to get hit by a 1/1 with a ton of +1/+1 counters on it.
On my turn I played Overwelming Splendor and his chances of finishing me off seemed more and more remote.
My biggest problem was that my Gate fetching was taking way too long. Maze's End enters tapped, so the speed at which I was plodding towards my wincon wasn't exactly impressive. The turn or two that I was thinking I'd need really was going to be four or maybe five turns.
Still, I was confident. I even had a Darksteel Mutation in hand in case my opponent played anything truly scary.
Here's the thing. When you are actually trying to win a game, it helps a lot to REALLY pay attention to what your opponent is playing. I was so sure I had game, I was pretty much coasting through these turns. Overwhelming Spendor was going to lock down his ability to do pretty much anything scary and I'd eventually just tutor up my last Gate and win.
It's true that Overwhelming Splendor is a great card... until it's no longer on the battlefield. Then it's ain't worth a squirt of piss and it certainly won't stop your opponent from murdering you.
I think I was at 9 Gates, so I was teetering on the precipice of being able to win when my opponent found his answer.
I don't even remember what he cast, but he removed my Overwhelming Splendor and swung at me with one of the very few creatures he had on the field. I only had one creature as well. Mine might have been a token creature - possibly a 4/4 beast.
His creature?
His creature was a Crash of Rhino Beetles. That's a 5/5 with Trample that gets +10/+10 if its controller has 10 or more lands.
Not good, but not a problem, right?
It became a problem when he discarded a Rumblehulk to give it +X/+X where X was the number of lands he controlled. He controlled a ridiculous number of lands. I went from being on the verge of winning to being quite dead.
Honestly, I was happy for him and gave him a congratulatory fist-bump and confessed that he totally deserved the win because I was a shifty bastard and never had the ability to instant-speed boardwipe earlier in the game when I threatened to do so. I would have been happy to win the game, but I've seen him lose his share and was glad to see Lord Windgrace close out a game with a victory.
Game Two
We shuffled up for the next game. I switched to my Ramos, Dragon Engine deck. Breya switched to Jodah. Lord Windgrace switched to Karlov. The Mina and Denn player switched tables and we were joined by a Karador player. The Karador player often plays Endrek Sahr on casual nights, but his Karador deck is a pretty sweet build with the ability to close out a game in pretty short order.
I got Ramos out but before I was able to even try to do anything interesting, Karador had a Reveillark combo set up and started to combo off. We were all ready to concede the win but he insisted that he should be made to go through it because sometimes he screws it up.
After much sacrificing and recurring it turned out that he screwed it up.
I got another turn and got my chance to start trying to do something interesting before he nailed his combo on his turn, which I figured he'd probably do.
I played some spells, took some counters off of Ramos to make some mana, drew some cards, played some more spells... and unfortunately I played just the wrong spell.
Crackling Doom is a wonderful Ramos spell as it deals a little damage, gets rid of possible threats and puts three +1/+1 counters on Ramos.
Sounds great, right?
It's great except when it forces the Karador player to sacrifice his Reveillark and let him start up another series of combo steps.
He returned something to blow up my Ramos. Ramos, Dragon Engine is a artifact creature so he's pretty easy to blow up.
Slightly disgusted by my lack of foresight I just passed the turn. Karador hadn't won yet, but on his next turn he won.
I didn't seriously think I was going to be able to win on my turn but I should really brush up on the Reveillark combo package so I better understand what opponents are trying to do with that particular card. It's not like I haven't lost to it before, but until I run the combo myself I often don't really learn it that well.
Game Three
The previous game was so short that I decided to play Ramos again. The Jodah player switched to Inalla but the Karlov player also stayed with the same deck. The Karador player switched to Tawnos because, like me, he doesn't find it sporting to play a strong deck through win after win after win. Maybe we could have stopped it eventually, but having a balanced game is usually more fun for everyone.
I got off to an OK start. I kept a few Borderposts in hand and just played lands and a Murmuring Mystic. My opponents mostly concerned themselves with building up their boards and while there were a few early swings nobody seemed to be playing an aggro game. At least, they weren't bothering to swing at me, so that's how I remember it.
The turn after playing Ramos I played my two Borderposts to put four counters on Ramos. I didn't return lands to my hand for my borderposts, so I wound up passing turn without having done much of anything. I could have swung for a chunk of damage, but that's not how this deck wants to try to win games. Better to lay low and not give anyone a reason to feed Ramos a K-Grip.
By my next turn nobody else had done much, or at least not much to stop me from trying to blow up. I might have taken a little damage but was still not seen as a threat. I didn't have anything out to protect the win, but I figured I'd go for it and see how far I could get.
I played an Idyllic Tutor to put Thousand-Year Storm on top of my library, removed 5 counters from Ramos to make WWUUBBRRGG and the played Flicker on Ramos so that I could use him again that turn. Next I used Manamorphose to make 2 mana and draw Thousand Year Storm and put 2 counters onto my shiny new Ramos. I played Thousand Year Storm to put another two counters on Ramos and I think I must have played another spell and then pulled five more counters off of Ramos to make another WWUUBBRRGG. I had been eating through the mana I was creating pretty quickly as I went through my turn.
At this point I had cast three instant or sorcery spells in the turn and Thousand Year Storm is kind enough to count spells that were cast before it entered the battlefield. That means that when I went to cast Increasing Savagery on Ramos, the folks who knew what was up started to scoop their battlefields up. Increasing Savagery would put five +1/+1 counters on Ramos, but it would do it four times. The next spell I'd be casting would be cast five times. In true Ramos fashion, at least the way I build him, the next spell was Chandra's Ignition.
Chandra's Ignition does damage to each opponent and each creature equal to the power of target creature.
Ramos was a 4/4 with twenty-two +1/+1 counters on him, so he'd be doing 26 x 5 = 130 damage to everyone but Ramos and myself.
The funny thing is that the Tawnos (Karador, in the previous game) player was the first to start scooping up his cards. I tend to act as if he's being a little tiresome when he plays his Karador deck on casual night, though I don't really mean it. I'm happy for him to play kick-ass decks sometimes so long as it's not constantly. To be honest, he probably could have given me way more crap for winning a "casual night" game in that fashion. I don't think of Ramos as being a super strong deck, but I also haven't played it a ton. When it pops off, it really can blow up a table. The Chandra's Ignition "cherry on top" ending is a favorite of mine, but the plan is now more of a general storm build that is OK, but is fantastic if Thousand Year Storm can stay on the table.
As I wrote out my notes, the Tawnos player made a point to borrow my pen and write in big bold letters on my notepad "OPPONENTS SCOOPED" next to my game notes for that game. In truth, I never got so far as to calculate the damage totals - they just assumed that I had the win given how easily I was churning through spells and making mana.
Game Four
As we shuffled up for our last game I decided to play a deck that probably wouldn't come across as another tiresome combo deck. I switched to Lathliss, Dragon Queen. It's a strong but fair deck that can wreck a table but will win by combat and is pretty low on the combo scale. There might be one in there, but the plan is just to play dragons and swing for lethal through the air.
The Inalla player switched to Atraxa, so I knew I'd have a flying deathtouch blocker to deal with on his board. The Karlov player switched to Daghatar. The Mina and Denn player from earlier in the night joined us again and the Tawnos player switched to Karador and made it clear that the only thing he wanted to do in the game was kill the Mina and Denn player.
While I'm not a huge fan of that kind of behavior, the Karador player wasn't being a jerk about it. The Mina and Denn player was oblivious and was also kind of annoying. The two guys also knew each other from back when they used to play at Alpha Titan Gaming in Hudson, NH, so I wasn't about to get involved in that back and forth.
I didn't get much of anything but a Skittering Surveyor out in the early game but I hit my land drops and was poised to do some dumb stuff the turn after Lathliss hit the field. I played a Strionic Resonator, which raised a few eyebrows, but my board was pretty meager at that point.
The Karador player had set himself up to start doing dumb stuff, but wasn't quite ready to combo off. His plan was just to kill the Mina and Denn player and then get killed.
I played a Mana Geyser and was able to play Lathliss and then play another dragon, use Strionic Resonator to copy my Lathliss trigger, and have a nice little dragon army in place. I also had Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx out, so if I could get more red devotion I might be able to make some serious mana.
The Mina and Denn player played a Collective Voyage, which I happily paid into and we all got 8 additional lands. I was now in the position of making some serious mana, and I was one of the only players with a pretty good outlet for it already on the field.
The Atraxa player was assembling a pretty impressive boardstate. I don't recall what the Daghatar or the Mina and Denn players had going on, but I know they didn't have flyers. The Karador player on his turn started to combo off, slowly milling the Mina and Denn player. He didn't get that it was a combo, but he also apparently has the bad habit of losing his temper when he's targeted in a game. The Karador player thought he made it clear that he milled out the Mina and Denn player and passed turn. The Mina and Denn player didn't think he had been milled out.
On my turn I figured out what mana I had available and played Panharmonicon and played another dragon, using Strionic Resonator and Panharmonicon to make three more 5/5 dragons. When I went to combat the Karador player finished the mill kill on the Mina and Denn player, who I think scooped out of frustration. I would have just killed him if he hadn't stopped complaining, to be honest, but he was now out of the game.
The Karador player had said he wanted us to kill him next so I swung with 22 mana worth of dragons - two 6 power dragons and two 5 power token dragons - and pumped them all +3/+3 with Lathliss to do 34 damage. He was at 32, but realized that he had a Nature's Claim and was able to give himself 4 life to survive the attack. I was a little confused, but I'm down with the whimsy and didn't really care that much. I think he died before his turn came around again but I don't even remember how.
On the Atraxa player's turn he looked at my boardstate, looked at the ridiculous number of lands I had and realized the writing was on the wall. He played a bunch of creatures - he was also 8 lands ahead of where he should have been - and swung with everything. The Daghatar player was kind enough to point out all the creature he put into combat that didn't have haste, and in the end I still took a chunk of damage but not enough to really worry me. The Daghatar player also swung with a few creatures. I think I might have blocked a few attackers and taken a little damage, but I was still in good shape going into my turn.
My draw was my most wonderful topdeck of the night. I drew into Koth of the Hammer, a planeswalker with the convenient ability to give me one mana for every mountain I control on the turn he is played.
I played Koth. I used his -2 loyalty ability to give myself 15 mana. I used Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx to give myself another 8 mana, and when all was said and done I was able to spend 32 mana to pump each of my Dragons by +16/+0. I had two 6/6 dragons, including Lathliss, five 5/5 dragons and one 4/4 dragon. After the pump I was swinging with two 22/6 dragons, five 21/5 dragons and one 20/4 dragon.
I would have been dead on the next turn if the Atraxa player got the chance to have a "crackback" swing, and I noticed that the Daghatar player had green mana open, so I said I think I have game if nobody has a fog or an answer. They didn't, and Lathliss was able to win another game.
I didn't realize until much later that I had only played Dragon decks on the night, and all in all they did pretty darn well. It was nearly another 3 win night, though my own sloppy play was to blame for not paying enough attention to that pesky Crash of Rhino Beetles that wound up killing me in my O-Kagachi game.
EDH League
I headed off to our EDH League this week with the hope of picking up where I had left off the previous week, but I knew I was looking at what would probably be a difficult challenge. For some reason I expected to see more competitive decks than usual and my own "best decks" are pretty good but I'm not sure they are really cEDH level decks. I was right, though I wound up having an even worse day than I expected.
Game One
My first round was against a Thalia deck, a Tawnos deck and a Jhoira deck. I had recently picked up a Gaea's Cradle for my Marwyn deck and decided to go with that for the first game of the day. I was at a table with people I enjoyed playing with, but I wasn't particularly optimistic about my chances of beating the Tawnos deck.
I got off to a decent start with Marwyn, playing some elves and getting Marwyn out on time. I got another elf and a Beast Whisperer out before the Tawnos player dropped an Blasphemous Act to wipe the board. I had overextended. I was sitting there with a Heroic Intervention in hand, but had not left any open mana. I doubt that would have saved my butt that game, but it was not a good start. My plan had not been to spend the rest of the game tapping out, but I was hoping to be able to get away with it. I had Staff of Domination in hand and might have been able to threaten a win in a turn.
The Tawnos player was focused on artifacts, so didn't mind wiping the board and our attempts to rebuild soon got hit with an All is Dust. He comboed off soon after. It was an inauspicious start to my month, and I find myself wondering how often I'll be teetering on the edge of a combo win only to see someone else beat me to the punch.
Jhoira 1 v 1
To kill time as other tables finished their rounds, I wound up playing a two player game with my Jhoira of the Ghitu deck against the Jhoira player from the previous game. I was able to suspend an Eldrazi with Annihilator 3, counter her Jhoira and play an extra turn spell to position myself so a victory would have been inevitable. It was an interesting, if short, game. I was somewhat surprised at how many counters I had put into my build. I had only played it once before and it hadn't done much. Jhoira tends to be a little slow and I'm not sure it will be able to keep up with our meta's faster decks.
Game Two
My second round of EDH League was at a five player table with an Aryel deck, a Bruna deck, a Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain deck and a Muldrotha deck. I was also on Muldrotha for this game.
The Bruna player is the guy I've mentioned in the past. We had a wonderful month of back and forth struggles last year when I still had my Narset, Enlightened Master deck together. I've actually played him a lot in recent weeks and every time the table has wound up finding an answer for him. There was a point in time when his Bruna deck was winning well over half of its games. I'm not sure if that's still true, but it is still a force to be reckoned with. As it turns out, so is Muldrotha.
The early game saw me get out a Viscera Seer and an Amulet of Vigor. I really didn't have any answers and didn't have much going on but I was able to play Orbs of Warding. I didn't expect that to save me from Bruna, but much to my surprise it didn't need to. The Bruna player was sitting on open mana past the point where he could have played his commander. He clearly wanted to be able to either play her with counter support or stop one of us from trying to combo off.
I had been able to play a Birthing Pod and had tutored for Food Chain, but had also misplayed. Instead of setting myself up to be able to use Birthing Pod to go get Eternal Scourge, I had focused on trying to get Muldrotha out. My mana wasn't really flowing at all that day in any of my games, so that was part of the problem. Still, it was a misplay on my part.
The Muldrotha player had been loading up his graveyard slowly and steadily. My Muldrotha build is more explosive, wanting to go from zero to a win out of nowhere, but his list was happy to play creatures that would drop a few cards into the graveyard every turn or so. He was getting fantastic value out of a Sakura Tribe Elder and Stitcher's Supplier and when he went to combo off, the Bruna player was able to counter something that he just re-played out of the graveyard. His build is centered around playing clones and other ways to get extra Muldrotha castings so that he can loop creatures and eventually go infinite. He was looping, but the wincon he had on board didn't make infinite mana and relied on targeting. I had hexproof from Orbs of Warding.
He killed the other three players and passed the turn. My window for being able to win was all screwed up by my lack of foresight. I was able to play Food Chain but wasn't able to go get Eternal Scourge, which likely would have set me up for the win. I instead tutored up Hermit Druid and made sure to explain that it was a wincon in my build as I didn't run any basic lands. I didn't tell my opponent that I had a key part of that wincon in my hand, hoping he would expend resources to kill Hermit Druid and not find a way to get around my hexproof.
As it turned out, he was able to get out Altar of the Brood, which reads "each player" instead of "target player". He milled me out, putting my Narcomoeba on the field, and then cast Windfall. I had no way to cheat Lab Man onto the field with the mana I had available and the cards I had in hand. If I had one more turn I think I might have been able to steal the win, but he closed out the game beautifully.
Killing Time
To kill some time as we waited for the other tables to finish so I could count up points, we played a few pickup games. I hesitate to go into any detail at all, as they were barely even games. The first was Muldrotha - Selvala - Karador - Muldrotha, featuring me and the other Muldrotha player on the decks we had just played in our league game. The Selvala player combo'ed off on turn 3. The next game was Muldrotha - Ur Dragon - Karador - Muldrotha and the Karador player combo'ed off pretty quickly. I think that was a turn 4 or 5 win. What fun.
It feels disingenuous to complain too much about someone playing a turn 3 combo deck when I'm playing a deck that also wants to do degenerate stuff, but I certainly don't enjoy games in which the game is over before anyone has the chance to do anything. It wasn't particularly enjoyable and was a crappy way to cap off what turned out to be a mostly crappy day, at least from the perspective of the games I had played.
Some of that blame goes on me for some honestly subpar play, but I'm sure there was a little bad luck mixed in there as well. Better mana flow can do wonders for a deck's performance and today neither my mana nor my decisions seemed to be flowing particularly well. Clearly the blame for that goes on me as the deckbuilder but I'm not really in the mood to do any more self-flagellating here.
Today kind of sucked but I expect I'll wind up having some good League games before the month is over. As for turn 3 casual game pubstomping, I think it's just inevitable that we'll sometimes have games like that and all you can really do is either suffer through them (trying your best to find answers) or not play against those decks if they're truly not going to be fun games. At least they're short.
Final Thoughts
You'll notice in this post's title there is no reference to anything but my casual night Dragon games. I considered calling this post Dragons and Disasters, but my EDH League games don't really rise to the level of disaster. Dragons and Dick-stomping might have been more accurate, as I certainly got my dick stomped all day long on Saturday, but I tend to lean away from using that kind of language in the titles of my writing. Hopefully in the weeks to come I'll have better things to write about after my Saturday games.
Our league rankings after the first week of December include some new names. I'm up there at the top as the previous month's winner and with any luck I'll climb into the top 5 over the next few weeks.
On the positive side of things, we had four tables in round one and three tables in round two, and I was happy to see some players show up who hadn't been able to join us for a while. Even on my worst day, if folks are having fun and the league fires with 3-4 tables worth of players it's hard to complain too much.
I have to admit that I am again finding myself thinking about just looking up ("net-decking") a true, proven cEDH list and having that available for when I'm sitting down and playing against decks that my own brews simply aren't going to be able to keep up with. I think I'll resist that temptation for now, but it's definitely there.
That's all I've got for now. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!