All in all, I had a pretty good 2018, at least in terms of my Commander games. I built a ton of decks, learned to love some new cards I had never played before, and just generally had a lot of fun.
I took last Sunday off from my weekly blog posts. I had expected to be missing out on our weekly casual night games, but for two weeks over the holidays we played on Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays. None of those games were particularly memorable. Our league is continuing to have monthly themes in 2019 that will give us a bump in our league point totals, so I worked up a couple of on-theme decks and played them this past Wednesday night.
The theme for January is the numeral "8". It has to appear on your commander somewhere, but the copyright and collector number line are not included. If you have a promo card, the gold text stamped onto it DOES count, so in theory I could play my pretty strong Marwyn, the Nurturer deck all month long, but instead I decided to build some new decks.
In a competitive or semi-competitive meta it's very difficult to compete with a commander who costs 8 or more mana. I had a very successful 2018 and managed to win both November and December so I decided to go that route anyways, even if it makes it much harder to actually pull out any wins on the month.
My commanders of choice were a legendary Golem I've owned for many years but never built around and a big old sea monster who somehow became an excuse to build a merfolk deck.
I built my first draft of Bosh as mostly just artifact tribal with a few darksteel (and blighsteel) threats but no real combos. I tossed in a couple of fork / reiterate spells to have some way to deal with counter magic. The Slinn Voda build is merfolk tribal with a healthy heaping of counterspells and bounce effects.
Casual Games
I barely remember the casual night after Christmas. I don't think I won any games but it's possible I stole one somewhere along the way. It was nice to see folks over the holidays. We had just wrapped up our last week of EDH League for the year and I had netted my second month in a row on the back of strong games from Marwyn and Muldrotha.
The following Saturday we had our annual potluck. A lot of the guys aren't particularly into cooking so there was a healthy (or unhealthy?) assortment of pizza, cookies, donuts, french fries, a cake and other store-bought stuff. I made a recipe I've grown to love - Drunken Chicken. It's a spicy creole dish that is slow-cooked in a crock pot all day. Ladled over a corn muffin and mashed potatoes, it's probably one of my favorite meals and a bunch of the guys remembered it from the previous year's potluck.
We played casual games that Saturday and I was able to win one with my Maelstrom Wanderer deck with an early Primal Surge. This time around I managed to drop about a third of my deck onto the field. A couple of people scooped and the remaining player wasn't going to be able to deal with my combination of planeswalkers, Deadeye Navigator, a Managorger Hydra and a Deepglow Skate. It was nice to get a win and to not have the hilariously bad luck I had the last time I tried to pull that off. I think I hit two cards before revealing one of the two other non-permanents in the deck.
This past Wednesday we again played on what was usually an off day because our LGS was closed the day before. It was one of the guys' birthday and I brought a few good decks but also a bunch of casual builds. I wound up playing Bosh, Slinn Voda and Ramos, which I had rebuilt to have a ton of hybrid mana cards. None of the decks did particularly well, but I got to see one of my opponents do something I had always wanted to do - clear a table with Hydra Omnivore. The final game the birthday boy was on his best deck, Karador, and we all kept him off of his wincon in the early turns pretty effectively. I hadn't been getting much luck with land drops and was pretty much out of the game, but I was able to bounce another player's attack on the rest of the table, allowing the Karador player to get his second win of the night. My shot at winning at that point was remote and I don't mind playing a little kingmaker every once in a while, especially on someone's birthday.
Neither my Bosh deck nor my Merfolk deck did much of anything, though the Merfolk deck made a better showing in its game.
EDH League
Going into our first week of League games for 2019 I was hoping I might get a good game out of one of my decks, but fully expected to come away from it needing to retool one or both of them. Neither one felt like it had much focus or anything resembling a reliable wincon. They might be able to hang in the most casual of metas, but I wasn't expecting to win.
Round One
In my first round I found myself up against the player I had narrowly beat out the previous month for the top point total. He was borrowing a Lazav combo deck. My other opponent was playing an Azor, the Lawbringer deck. It was a three player table and I had chosen to start my day with Bosh.
The Lazav player managed to start with everything he needed for a Necrotic Ooze / Phyrexian Devourer / Triskelion combo win and he windfalled and was able to play and turn Lazav into a copy of Nooze before turn 5. I don't think I even cast my commander in that game, it was over so quick.
Pickup Game
We played a pickup game in which the Lazav player decided to play his own deck - Valduk. Apparently he didn't think it was good enough for League play. I switched to Ramos and the Azor player stayed on Azor.
The Valduc plyaer got out to a fast start with a Hero's blade and a quick series of attacks with 3/1 elementals. Azor started out with a Serra Ascendant so he was swinging early with a 6/6 lifeilnker. I was eventually able to get Ramos out and swing on the Vaduk player for 7 and the next turn I pulled 5 counters off of Ramos, cast a bunch of spells and fly in for another 14 damage to kill him. My problem was that I had already been beat up by both of my opponents and I was never really able to recover. I staved off death for a few turns until the Azor player finished me off.
It wasn't a win but I enjoyed seeing Ramos do a little of what this new build is supposed to do - play dumb old hybrid mana spells and kill opponents with commander damage. Yeah, it's not as flashy as the old cascade combo wincon, but it's fun and I expect to be reworking Ramos again this Spring, if not sooner. I've got some ideas on a Simic Ascendancy wincon that I think I'm going to want to play with.
Round Two
If my round one game was over practically before it began, my round two game was comparatively long, interactive and quite entertaining.
It was a four player table and I found myself up against some of the best players our league has seen over the past few years. I played Slinn Voda merfolk tribal, and was easily the weakest deck in the pod. Jared was with us, playing his Bruna deck. Matt, who probably would have won the top point total for 2018 if he hadn't gone off to college, was with us playing a mono-black flip-Liliana removal tribal build that was designed to survive into the late game and drop a bunch of Demons onto the table. The fourth player was a friend of Jared's who was on a Kess storm deck.
The early game saw me get out a few merfolk and a Hall of Triumph and do a bunch of damage to Jared. I figured I might as well do what I could, because if he got Bruna online I wasn't going to have much in the way of answers for that kind of threat.
The Liliana player was biding his time and saving kill spells for when the Bruna or Kess players decided to do something threatening. I was sitting on a few counterspells myself, which felt pretty nice.
Eventually the Kess player started to try to storm off, and I think it took the entire table and a little luck to keep him off the win. He got himself down to 1 life with an Ad Nauseam and killed himself before I could take my turn. I was next in the table rotation but he wanted to go out on his own terms.
With just three of us left, I think I had been Windfalled out of any counterspells and Bruna was able to hit the table. He swung at Matt first, rightly seeing him as a bigger threat, with Eldrazi Conscription and Corrupted Conscience attached and killing him in one shot. I was able to stave off death for a turn with a Cyclonic Rift but had no real answers, so he killed me a turn later.
It was actually a pretty engaging game, but I came away from it thinking that I really need to work in some combos rather than just hoping my merfolk and some counters and bounce spells will ever "get there". I'm thinking Isochron Scepter might need to join the party and I need to do some research on High Tide combos. I really have very little experience with Merfolk so it's been fun to dip a toe into those waters.
Final Thoughts
I'm thinking that I might want to add some stax pieces into my Bosh deck. I punted the first two games of the year, but I'm not above playing a Mycosynth Lattice into an overloaded Vandalblast or just using Kill Switch to tap down my opponents' boards. I'm pretty sure I can find something useful to add into my Merfolk list as well, but we're only going to have four more games (2 more Saturdays) in January so I'm not exactly expecting to be able to climb back up to the top spot.
It wasn't a great day but I still managed to show up on the board, if only because the top two players happened to tie for first place.
For tomorrow's Commanderruminations article over on CoolStuffInc.com I've got a first draft of a Haunt of Hightower build. I'm going to be buying a box and I'm pretty excited about building Haunt. I've got an old Skithiryx deck I never play so that deck will get the axe and will probably see some of its better cards get reworked into the new build.
That's all I've got for you today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!