Welcome to my blog. This is where I write about the games I've been playing. I tend to not bother explaining what cards do and assume a certain level of knowledge from my readers. I highly recommend downloading the browser extension Autocard Anywhere. It will let you mouse over card names and see pictures of the cards that I'm talking about. Most players, myself included, have trouble remembering obscure cards and since we can play any card from the entire history of Magic the Gathering, it might make my writing a little more accessible.
I played on both Tuesday night and Saturday in our weekly EDH League.
Casual Night
I don't know what my problem was this past Tuesday night but I brought some not-so-great decks and headed down to NexGen comics as I usually do on Tuesday nights. Maybe I was starting to come down with a cold or something, but the whole night I wasn't really feeling it. I wound up playing three games and none of them left me feeling that great, though I'm sure not winning was a part of that.
I don't ever think my "bad" decks are incapable of winning, but our meta has gotten good enough that the chance they have is pretty slim, especially with certain players at the table. Not everyone takes the "casual" part of casual night very seriously, and that's OK. I'd rather have more players than fewer player and if the spikier members of our local EDH Community need to play at a high level to have fun they're going to win more games. Not everyone is capable of having, playing and enjoying a less powerful, less resilient deck. Some nights, I'm not even sure I am.
Game One
I again ate dinner on the drive over and was ready to play when I hit the store. For some reason I decided to start the night with my Nazahn deck. I hadn't played it in a long time and it just felt like the one to start with. I was up against an Edgar Markov deck, a Drana deck and a Zurgo Helmsmasher deck.
I got out to an OK start but found myself losing stuff at a pretty rapid clip. I got out an early Bloodforged Battle-Axe but only got to make one copy of it before my creatures got wiped away. Later on I got Nazahn out and got his hammer, only to seem my artifacts exiled and it didn't take long after that for Nazahn to hit the Command Zone again.
The Zurgo player had his moment of being threatening, but chose to randomly decide who to go after. I think he had a rough day and wanted to play but didn't want to "be the bad guy" and just Zurgo someone out of existence. Zurgo can do that in a pinch, he's a strong voltron commander if voltron is your thing.
The Drana player got off to probably the best start, amassing a nice little army of vampires and somehow avoiding taking much damage. When I realized he was still up near 40, I managed to sway the table towards giving him a little love. I was able to swing for 19 with two creatures, one of which had Fireshrieker attached and the other had Strata Scythe. I think the latter was Balan, Wandering Knight - a legendary cat I've long wanted to build a deck around.
After everyone, including myself, took chunks out of the Drana player's life total, I had a turn where I was tempted to let up on him, but decided to get in one last swing. At that point, unfortunately, I was now easily at the highest life total and had also been playing my politics with a little too heavy of a hand. It became clear to the table that I needed to suffer now, and I proceeded to take a couple of knocks.
I think the Drana player wound up killing the Zurgo player and then I was faced with the decision of trying to kill the Edgar player or trying to kill the Drana player. The Edgar player had a much better board, but I had tutored for Prowler's Helm. I figured I could kill Edgar and then deal with Drana, but I had over looked his Captivating Vampire.
I couldn't have stopped him anyways, given what I had in hand, so it was only a matter of the order in which everything was going to happen. He stole my Balan and the next thing I knew, I was dead. Being in good spirits so far, I gave him the obligatory high-five. The Edgar player is a good guy who I enjoy playing with and while I was going for a kill, he made a good play with a powerful card that I shouldn't have overlooked. I think he won the game soon after, as the Drana player had been reduced to barely any boardstate and a pretty low life total.
Game Two
We picked up a fifth player and the Edgar player switched tables. He hates five player games, but we were joined by one of our local spikes. I switched to Maelstrom Wanderer. The Edgar player switched to Lord Windgrace. The Zurgo player switched to Avacyn, Angel of Hope. The new player was on Etali and the spike was on his Endrek Sahr deck. I played my Maelstrom Wanderer deck. It's not particularly well-tuned and can win games, but I don't think of it as a great deck. It's basically a pile of hydras, planeswalkers, mana dorks and creatures with cascade. I could see tuning it up someday but for now I'm playing it as a beater deck that's not so bad that it has no shot but not so good that it's really much of a threat.
This game, for me, wound up being pretty bad. I went for a very, very long time with no green sources and a hand full of spells with green in their casting costs. I hate doing nothing in the early game, and soon found myself discarding down to hand size because I was out of lands and had nothing I could cast.
The Endrek Sahr player has this habit of building very strong decks that combo off and then whining when he's targeted early. The result is that nobody wants to hear him whine so they leave him alone and then he combos off. Then everyone is vaguely annoyed but knows it's their own damn fault for leaving him for so long. It's not an awesome dynamic, but I sure wasn't in a position to do much about it. I had nothing going on and when the Edrek Sahr player started playing his force-sacrifice dorks I wasn't affected much, if at all.
The Lord Windgrace player also had a slow start, but the Etali player had a good start and had been playing and swinging Etali and getting some good value off the five player table he was at. Etali scales wonderfully with bigger tables. Endrek Sahr was dong well, but Avacyn didn't have a lot going on.
When I eventually was able to get a creature out, I was able to play Maelstrom Wanderer, cascade into a Mirage Mirror and maybe a mana dork. I then made Mirage Mirror into a copy of Etali and swung Wanderer and my Mirror Etali at the Etali Player. I didn't flop into much of anything helpful.
Before long the Endrek Sahr deck, having hung out and durdled like he always does, decided to go off. He cheated in or played (not sure which) a Sheoldred and a Grey Merchant of Asphodel and before you know it the game was over. I think he had contributed to the effort to try to keep Etali in check, but it was the usual "Oh, you're ready to end the game? OK. Gee, that was fun." kind of ending.
My annoyance was palpable, but a lot of it was actually based on my frustration with my deck not even giving me a good game. I don't mind losing if my game was enjoyable. Being out of it so long at the beginning, which was certainly no one else's fault, didn't put me in the mood to enjoy another Edrek Sahr casual night win. I've seen it before and it's not as tiresome as having to play a Black Mike deck but it's still not my favorite way to lose.
After the game, the Endrek Sahr player asked me if I like any of his decks. I was somewhat at a loss for how to respond. I like playing against a variety of decks and playstyles. If someone always plays decks that have to durdle and then combo off at the end, need to be left alone to be able to succeed, and complain when they're attacked (as they should be), I'm eventually going to find that tiresome. The funny thing though is that my mood is usually related to how my own deck is performing. If I'm being kept from playing the game by a ton of force-sac effects, removal, sweepers or counters I'll probably find that a little aggravating, but nothing bugs me more than a deck just not working right. Variance is a real thing, and when you build a ton of decks and you try to keep budgets in mind you're always going to have games where the mana just isn't flowing right or you simply aren't drawing what you need.
Game Three
We lost the Etali player and shuffled up for a final four-player game. I switched to Zedruu because... I don't even know why. I had just switched the deck up, dropping out the Assist cards I had been playing and adding some other stuff. It's not a great deck and can't really compete with the better decks in our meta, but I wanted to take it for a spin and see if I could do something fun with it.
The Lord Windgrace player switched to Karlov. The Endrek Sahr player, who also plays a fairly competitive Karador deck, switched to Niv-Mizzet, Parun. The Avacyn player switched to Phenax.
I got off to an OK start and nobody really popped off in the early game. I wasn't in the position to go after anyone with aggro, which meant Niv-Mizzet was probably going to durdle for a long time and then win. Does that sound familiar? It should.
The Phenax player was able to get out Mindcrank and Duskmantle Guildmage but didn't have the mana to pop off. On my turn, I had a Fractured Identity in hand and was waiting for a really juicy target - or for my Leveler to show up - but instead decided to use it to stop him from ending the game on his next turn. I was tempted to use Fractured Identity on Mindcrank for the LOLs but that wouldn't have actually solved the problem, so I exiled Duskmantle Guildmage and gave everyone else a token copy of it. The Niv-Mizzet player probably would have had an answer, but it didn't seem sensible to risk it.
I then had a moment where I was very close to using Zedruu to give the Phenax player my token copy of Duskmantle Guildmage with the deal that he had to try to kill me via combat damage, not mill or anything else. Neither of us was a combat-oriented deck so it would have made for a really interesting end game if it had worked. The other players might still have been able to stop that plan, but I decided not to go for it. He had a Blighted Agent in hand and also runs Consuming Aberration so he wasn't without options for winning on the battlefield. I probably should have gone for it, if only to get the Niv-Mizzet player out of the game, but I didn't. It was the last game of the night and I was hoping everyone would enjoy it.
Things durdled along for a while. I was getting lots of lands but didn't draw into anything particularly spicy. I think I saw my Mindslaver at one point in time but I didn't have any of my Souleaters available to give to someone so I could kill them off. Niv-Mizzet came out, got boots on and he just drew lots of cards to control the board and then kill us all off. What fun.
I sound salty as hell, but to be blunt - he's a very good player and I can't begrudge him the wins he's been getting. I suspect he's rocking a 50% win rate on casual nights. I could probably do that if I played certain decks but because it's casual night I choose to drop down my power level a lot. I probably do that more than I should, as I wind up with nights where I don't play at tables where my lower-level decks can have a fun game. By fun, I mean having a game where everyone feels like they have a chance it it isn't just a foregone conclusion that one player will eventually win. That's not fun for me, even if it might be for others.
Nazahn didn't do much. Maelstrom Wanderer had a bad mana early game. Zedruu was probably just outmatched. They weren't terrible games but the night didn't leave me feeling that great. Last week I resolved to bring better decks this week, but this week I somehow managed to fail to do that. Hopefully next week I'll wind up with better games, but every week is different and there's no knowing how things will play out when you shuffle up and start a game. My 0-3 night puts me at 1-15 in my last 16 games, which is honestly a little depressing, but this game had plenty of ups and downs and apparently I'm still in a possibly self-imposed downswing.
One positive out of all of this is that I may be working on a new deck or two around commanders I've never built before. I may have to take apart my Varina and Nazahn decks to accomplish this but it'll be fun to have something new to be disappointed by (lol) in the coming weeks!
EDH League
I came into week three of our weekly EDH League in third place, thanks largely to a good game from my Marwyn deck last week. I've been playing my Muldrotha and Marwyn decks in equal measure and plan to continue to do so for the rest of the month. Both are combo builds and while I wouldn't call either "cEDH" they can be pretty explosive.
My Muldrotha deck had not been performing well and in the first two weeks I had managed to lose two games against another Muldrotha deck. If nothing else, I was hoping to get a win against this particular deck, if only to get some level of confirmation that I've got a decent build on my hands. I think it's pretty good, so going 0-2 was bothering me a little. The other Muldrotha player is a great guy and a fine deckbuilder, but I still didn't particularly want to lose yet another match against him.
Game One
My first game just happened to put me in a pod against my fellow Muldrotha player. It was the two of us, each on Muldrotha, a Grimgrin player and an Aryel player. I knew both of our decks were good, if not very good. I wasn't particularly worried about the other two opponents, though I've lost enough games over the years to know that almost any game can go badly for you even if you're playing as well as you can.
My starting hand had lands, and more importantly, it had a card I had added into the deck this past week just for this matchup. I kept my lands and my Nihil Spellbomb and we started the game.
I got out an early Sylvan Safekeeper and played a Dryad Arbor to have at least some board presence early on. The other Muldrotha player was playing creatures that load up his graveyard, and before long had a nice little pile to try to work from. My Nihil Spellbomb came out on turn four or five and his graveyard was soon exiled.
I wound up using a tutor to go get a Mana Crypt. My life total was already creeping down thanks to fetch and pain lands, and this wasn't going to help with that, but I still liked the idea of making a good choice for once with an early tutor.
Thanks to my Mana Crypt I was able to play Muldrotha. Not only did it resolve, but i was able to counter my opponent's Muldrotha and reuse my Nihil Spellbomb out of my graveyard. I didn't have game, but I was in a pretty good position and the other Muldrotha player was on his back heels. The Grimgrin and Aryel players were working to assemble their own boardstates and my board wasn't particularly intimidating yet so he was getting most of the aggro from the table. The Grimgrin table had taken a few swings from Aryel as well. Having an early blocker, even a small one, can do wonders for encouraging attackers to go at someone with nothing on the battlefield at all.
I had a flusterstorm in hand, but hadn't used it yet. I was thinking of keeping it to use against Muldrotha again, but when he went to cast it a second time I was tapped out. I had Traumatized myself, putting 40 cards from my library into the graveyard and had then cast Food Chain. I was now a clear problem, but didn't have any mana available. I had a Deathrite Shaman on the field, but that was about all.
The other Muldrotha player and the rest of the table debated whether or not I had game on my next turn. The Aryel player even looked through my graveyard, at my suggestion, and was a little stunned at the stuff I was running in the deck. Flash Hulk was what jumped out at him, but the deck also sports a Hermit Druid and Mike & Trike. It's built to win and hopefully to win quick or at least out of nowhere.
On my end step, the Muldrotha player overloaded a Cyclonic Rift. All my lands were tapped, so I used Deathrite Shaman to exile a land from a graveyard to make Blue and then I used Flusterstorm to counter it.
This was shaping up to be one of those games where it felt like everything went right and I made good choices at the right times.
My opponents sent a little aggro my way but not enough to make me worry. The Grimgrin player swung his commander at me and killed my Muldrotha. The Aryel player killed the other Muldrotha. They were done with Muldrotha shenanigans and were hoping to make us all win on the battlefield.
On my turn I had a Food Chain on the field, but no Eternal Scourge or Misthollow Griffin to be found. My commander was going to cost 8 now, thanks to the commander tax. I also had Amulet of Vigor out, though for the life of my I don't recall exactly when I cast it or whether it was from the graveyard using Muldrotha or from my hand. It was probably the former, after I had cast Traumatize. I think earlier on I had done that and then played a bounce land from the graveyard.
I unearthed Fatestitcher from my graveyard. I then used Fatestitcher to untap Mana Crypt. I used Dread Return and sacrificed Fatestitcher, Sylvan Safekeeper and Deathrite Shaman to return Archaeomancer to the field. When Archaeomancer hit the field I returned Spendid Reclamation to my hand and cast it, returning well over a dozen lands to the field and untapping them.
With all sorts of mana available to me now, I re-cast Muldrotha, cast Eternal Witness out of the graveyard, returning Demonic Tutor to my hand. I then used Demonic Tutor to go get Eternal Scourge and cast it. My opponents were tapped out, thinking they had a turn before I would try to go off because my Commander had been put back in the command zone.
Food Chain and Eternal Scourge combo to make infinite mana, so I was able to use Food Chain to re-cast Muldrotha again and again, playing every creature, artifact and enchantment out of my graveyard and then winning with an arbitrarily huge Walking Ballista.
It was a pretty sweet game, especially because I had to work to figure out how to pull off the win after my commander had been killed by the Grimgrin player. I'm still 1-2 against the other Muldrotha player but it felt really good to get a win against him on the month.
Titling this week's blog post "Muldrotha Revenge" is probably a bit of an overstatement, but I struggle to think of something each Sunday and it seemed as good a title as any.
Now that each of my decks had won a game, I was pretty happy but still not really expecting to be able to do more than compete for second place in our league's rankings for the month.
Game Two
For the second round I switched to my Marwyn deck. We had five tables of players - 4 four player tables and 2 three player tables. I split up the pods and found myself in one of the three player tables with a couple of guys who showed up just for round two. The other tables all started and we waited for the last guy to show up. He had called ahead and was a regular well worth waiting for. I try to go out of my way to be accommodating to anyone who plays with us a lot, though I obviously prefer that folks are on time.
We eventually got our table started. It was me on Marwyn against a Niv-Mizzet, Parun deck and a Sigarda, Host of Herons deck. The Niv-Mizzet player had built both of the decks and I had to assume both were quite good. Neither of the guys had played against Marwyn yet, so I was hoping to fly under the radar and pull out a win. Apparently the Sigarda deck would go wide and was very explosive, but the second player was borrowing it so I had to hope that he wouldn't be familiar enough with it to be able to play it optimally.
I got out to a fast start, playing a Beastcaller Savant and my Marwyn. I got out a Wirewood Lodge so I was going to be able to make lots of mana with Marwyn, but the Niv-Mizzet player cast Curse of the Swine on three of my creatures, including a Priest of Titania, Marwyn and another one, putting two in exile and Marwyn back in the command zone.
I was able to get Marwyn out again on my next turn and again start trying to blow up. I hadn't seen any of my combo pieces yet, but was content to build up my board and see if I could convince the Sigarda player to work with me against the Niv-Mizzet player. I was successful, but the Sigarda player's attack just resulted in the Niv player casting Evacuation and putting everyone's creatures back into their hands.
On my turn I again started to rebuild, casting Marwyn and then some elves to put counters on Marwyn.
On my opponents' turns they both started rebuilding and tapped out to do so..
I then drew into a Genesis Hydra. If I could use it to put a combo piece onto the field with enough mana to spare to untap Marwyn, I'd probably have game.
I played Stoneforge Masterwork, equipping it to Marwyn and making her have 9 power. I then tapped her for 9, used Wirewood Lodge to untap her and tapped her for 9 again so I had 18 floating green mana. I used 15 of that mana and two mana dorks to play Genesis Hydra for 15.
The third or fourth card of the fifteen cards I revealed was Staff of Domination. I put it onto the field and used it to untap Marwyn and make infinite mana.
I then used Staff to set my life to a ridiculous number (I chose 999, as I had 3 d10s) and proceeded to draw my deck and play everything. I was looking for Concordant Crossroads so I could swing with the whole team, but didn't find it. I actually dug down to my last card and didn't find it. I wound up using Staff to tap my opponents' creatures, made infinitely large Oozes with Gelatinous Genesis and swung for lethal.
The funny thing is that I never bothered to check that last card to see if it was Concordant Crossroads, but by process of elimination, it had to be.
With two wins on the day, both with decks that blew up in ways that netted me a ton of points, I figured I was probably going to leap up in our league's rankings into second place.
Pickup Game
I wound up playing a pickup game but I hesitate to even include it. I played my new Sidisi, Brood Tyrant deck. It is built like that other guy's Muldrotha deck, in that it wants to load up the graveyard in small steps, not all at once. The new deck I was saying I might build out of my old Varina deck? This is it, and I was happy to be able to play it for its first game, even if it's not really tuned at all.
It was already getting late and I hate to get home past 7pm on League days, but one of the guys really wanted to get in a casual game with me. The other guy with the new deck was keen to show me his Zndrsplt / Okaun coin flip deck. The Niv-Mizzet player switched to Aminatou. The Sigarda player stayed on Sigarda and another player joined us, playing his own Niv-Mizzet, Parun deck.
My early game was fantastic. I got Sidisi out and had lots of small, incremental self-mills that created zombies. I was able to get out a couple of Zombie Lords and send attackers at the Niv-Mizzet player and then at the Aminatou player. The former is that guy that durdles, complains when you attack him, and then wins when he gets bored. The latter had a Bojuka Bog out and was blinking it. He hadn't picked me yet but it was only a matter of time before my graveyard would go away.
I had a Mortal Combat in hand and was hoping to get 20 creatures into my graveyard. I run 45, not including Sidisi, so I liked my chances of at least threatening a Mortal Combat win. It's a bucket list item for me and I think I'm going to eventually be able to pull it off with this deck.
The coin flip deck wasn't doing much yet but had been killing some of my zombies with some coin flip stuff. The Sigarda deck wasn't blowing up but had a decent board.
As we went into the midgame I did play Mortal Combat when I had 20 creatures in my graveyard. I think the Sigarda player had swung in on me and I blocked so as to lose enough creatures to put my graveyard over 20. Preditably, the Aminatou player blinked or flickered his Bojuka Bog and my graveyard was gone. I wasn't dead yet, though, and still had a decent board.
The next part of the game was when things got silly. There was a Curse of Echoes cast on the Niv-Mizzet player, who had his commander out and who was about to try to go off. I had to start running the points for league so I paid half attention to the game and started counting up league scoresheets.
There wound up being a lot of confusion over what spells were going off in what order, with all manner of silliness. It's hard to even explain, but imagine one of those big games where multiple players are debating what happens when, and who wants to copy which spell, and how things are supposed to resolve, and through all the chaos the poor coin flip player is trying to get people to engage in that coin flip life-betting game.
Eventually the Niv-Mizzet player won, because he always seems to win when he complains about being attacked and then gets left alone. I probably could have killed someone earlier on, but I was happy with the games I had played earlier in the day and was mostly just interested in seeing how the Sidisi deck would play. I think it's got potential, even as a casual build, and I'm looking forward to playing it again. I'm also looking forward to playing the coin flip deck again, possibly with an equally janky deck like my Zedruu list.
Final Thoughts
I feel like i didn't give that last game enough of my attention, but I already wound up arriving home an hour later than the latest I usually get home. Running the points took a while with a four table and five table round to deal with.
The player who had been in first had said that he wanted to go for it this month, but in his second round he took -20 in penalty points. I was genuinely surprised, but I'm not going to question his point totals. As a result I was able to leap all the way up to first place.
I actually came one point shy of tying our league's record for most points in a single day. Apparently in my games I somehow managed to win but also to be a good tablemate. I was awarded a decent number of "gen" points on the day. I'm definitely hoping to win the month now, and given the decks I'm playing I think I have a decent shot, but if the second place player manages to overtake me I'll be glad for him.
That's all I've got for today. Tomorrow over on CoolStuffInc.com I'll have my spotlight article on Jared DeSousa's Bruna deck, and with any luck I'll have a spotlight article on one of Bryan Li's decks for the following week.
Thanks for reading and I'll see you back here next week!