Welcome to my blog. This is where I write about my games. I write the Commanderruminations column over on CoolStuffInc.com about all things Commander, but here is where I try to give you a window on the ups and downs of my EDH games. Lately there have been an awful lot of downs. I had a lot of success towards the end of 2019 and was going to scale things down a little for January. The predictable result has been a lot of losses and that's leaving me a little cranky. I was even thinking about discontinuing this blog until I have something more cheery to write about, but the purpose is to share game stories, not just to tell you how awesome my wins are.
I played twice this past week on our Tuesday night "casual" night and on Saturday in our EDH league.
Casual Night
I headed off to casual night this week with the usual assortment of casual decks and a few good ones. I think the best I had with me was Najeela but I never play her on casual night. I had not had much success with the Bosh and Slinn Voda decks I'm playing for league this month and had tweaked each of them a little to see if they might be able to keep up with the meta. I brought both, along with Ramos hybrid mana and Sidisi, Brood Tyrant. We wound up playing three games on the night.
Game One
The first tilt was a six player planechase game. I played Ramos, Dragon Engine. The rest of the table was made of of Drana, Sigarda, Chainer, Gonti and Zacama.
I can't recount each plane we visited but I can tell you that I wound up falling for the age-old trap of being the most dangerous looking player. I didn't die first but I'm confident that I basically brought about my own demise by starting out fairly strong.
I was able to play Ramos on time and hit the Chainer player for an early 7 Commander damage. On my next turn I was able to drop a Corpsejack Menace, pull five counters off of Ramos and then play a Conflux to put a total of 12 counters on my commander, bringing it from a 7/7 to a lethal threat for anyone who was lacking flying or reach blockers. I swung for lethal on the Chainer player (who might actually have been playing Endrek Sahr).
He was not pleased.
The first player I eliminated is someone who is somewhat notorious for durdling in casual games until he gets to the point where he can just win the game anytime he likes. I usually don't go after him but for once I decided I'd take the opportunity I was given and take him out first. He isn't used to my ever going after him like that and I'm unlikely to do it again anytime soon. It's not really my style, but I had a giant flying Dragon and the chance to start killing people without flying/reach blockers. Why pass up the opportunity?
On my next turn the only player without reach blockers was the Zacama player so he died next.
The second player I had killed is someone who has inspired me to bring my Marath Dinosaurs deck off of the back burner. Marath is a fantastic Commander and while Dinosaurs isn't the optimal build, this guy's Zacama deck has me feeling the urge to take my own Dinos out for a few games, maybe as soon as next Tuesday.
My problem was that I haven't played this version of my Ramos deck often enough and I wasn't as focused on making the best Conflux tutors as I was on not making five other players wait for me to resolve my earlier Conflux. I had grabbed five spells, one of each color, but to be honest they probably weren't very good picks. I should have gone defensive and checked for my Teferi's Protection first. Privileged Position would have been a good green choice, but you get the idea. I got five cards but after killing my second consecutive opponent I was faced with a boardwipe and never really recovered.
The Drana player wound up winning the game. I think I got Ramos out again but never had the time or cards in hand to do anything very threatening. I had a Chandra's Ignition in hand from my Conflux but was never able to put it to good use.
My old build had an established Conflux line of play that I would reliably win with, but this janky pile of hybrid cards, while amusing (to me) isn't exactly well tuned. I'm enjoying it but will also be reworking it into a Simic Ascendancy deck as soon as Ravnica Allegiance is out and I get my hands on that card.
Game Two
For our second game we wound up with a four player table. The Drana player switched to Saskia and we were joined by an Estrid player and a Karlov player. We were no longer playing Planechase and I switched to my Sidisi Brood Tyrant deck.
This was one of those games where I got way too cute and could have just won the game. My Sidisi deck has a Mortal Combat wincon that I really want to hit at some point in 2019. I consider it a bucket list item, not unlike having won games with Leveler / Fractured Identity and other such nonsense. It's goofy fun that I enjoy but I won't subject my friends to those sort of shenanigans more than once or twice before I move on to something else.
Sidisi had been reworked to run Leyline of Anticipation and Vedaleken Orrery so that I can drop my Mortal Combat into play on an end step and win out of nowhere. I know... that's no fun for anyone but me, but as I said, I'll eventually land it and then move on, possibly taking apart the deck if there's a new legendary to brew around.
The game started pretty well. I got out my Commander and was reliably able to fill up my graveyard and stay under everyone's radar. The Saskia player never even thought about naming me. I wasn't throwing attackers around and wouldn't have been much of a threat if I had done so. I had little to no protection from flyers and took a little damage because of that, but for the most part I was happy to chill out and slowly build a zombie army.
I got a lot of mileage out of Dreamscape Artist in the early game by using it to discard a Golgari Thug on the end step before my turn, only to dredge it back into my hand to be re-used again later.
My colossal misplay occurred when I was able to get out a Doom Whisperer. I think there were two opponents left and one of them was at something like 3 life. I had well over a dozen creatures in my graveyard, but my precious Mortal Combat was at the bottom of my graveyard. I was at 25 or so life and faced a decision. Do I go after the Mortal Combat win or just load up and swing for the fences on my turn.
The correct decision would have been to use Doom Whisperer on the end step before my turn to load up my graveyard, using Surveil to try to set myself up with a Zombie Lord to draw and play on my turn. I would probably have been able to win that way.
Instead my fixation with Mortal Combat got the better of me. I did use Surveil on the end step and I did start growing my army and whittling down my life total, but when I hit Eternal Witness and Vedalken Orrery on the same 2 card Surveil, I stopped. I should have kept going and tried to win the game, but I was a dummy and on my turn drew Eternal Witness, played it, put Mortal Combat in my hand, played it and then realized that I had screwed the pooch.
On casual night I don't play with as much of a competitive focus as I probably should, and once again I turned a win into a loss with only myself to blame. It's possible I didn't actually have a win but I'm pretty sure it was there for the taking.
The Saskia player did win. He wound up leaving for the night with plenty of friendly ribbing over not wanting to demoralize us too much with a winning streak.
Game Three
The last game of the night has been an issue for me on casual night lately. I should really just play a great deck and try to make it a quick game. Leaving on a win always feels good and not getting home late is also kind of nice, but yet again I decided to play a bad deck. I decided to play my reworked Bosh, Iron Golem deck, so in truth I didn't know if it was bad or just OK. I did want to give it another try before playing it for our league games this coming Saturday.
I was up against a Kyanios & Tiro soldiers deck, an Azor deck and a Lord Windgrace deck.
Bosh is expensive. 8 mana is nothing to sneeze at, and in this game it took what felt like forever to even get him onto the battlefield.
The most threatening thing I did in the game probably would have won any normal game of Commander, but we play with an infect count of 13 in our casual night games, as that's what we play by in our Commander league.
I drew into a Grafted Exoskeleton but before I could equip it to Bosh the Azor player hit him with a Darksteel Mutation. While annoying, I was able to play it, equip it to the Darksteel Colossus that I was probably going to have Bosh throw at someone. I then equipped Basilisk Collar to Darksteel Colossus and swung at the Azor player. They blocked my 13/13 indestructible trample deathtouch infect lifelink Colossus with one creature, taking 12 infect damage but staying in the game.
I think the Azor player dug to a combo win the next turn...
All in all, casual night wasn't the complete bust that it sometimes feels like. I killed a few people with Ramos, came close to winning a game with Sidisi and should have killed someone with my Bosh deck. This month is probably going to feel pretty long, as I'm not expecting to win many games on Saturdays and my prereleases are rarely a success. I might actually have go 0 for January if things play out right (or wrong).
I also might bring good decks to casual night next week just to try to keep that from happening.
EDH League
Saturday morning I decided to rework my short-lived Silvos, Rogue Elemental deck into a Surrak deck. Surrak costs four mana to cast and is on theme. Our month's theme is commanders with the numeral "8" somewhere on them. Silvos was nowhere near good enough to play for league and I had a bunch of Green goodstuff cards that I mixed into the list, dropping out the underperforming cards - of which there were many. The old deck was all black-bordered pre-modern cards and while there were some decent cards in the list, all in all it was pretty mediocre.
I headed off to the LGS with a little hope of winning a game, but not much more than a little. We've got our fair share of Spikes to contend with and that can make it hard to play a casual deck and have much success at all. I wound up playing three games on the day, not counting a pickup game between rounds that we had to cut short when the last round 1 table finished up its game.
Round One
I initially got stuck at a three player table for round one with a kid playing a budget Selvala Brostorm cEDH deck. We were lucky enough to have a latecomer show up and get randomly placed at our table, and even luckier that it was Bryan Li. I wrote about Bryan and his Sidisi deck last month for one of my columns. Bryan was on his Gonti deck and we also had one of our spikier regulars on a Karador deck, so I basically had no shot at the table. I chose my Slinn Voda deck, in the hopes that I might be able to use a counterspell to have some affect on the game before it was over.
Early on I got a few merfolk out and wound up hitting the Selvala player for maybe 6 damage over several turns before he combo'ed out and won.
I was able to use a Force of Will to stop a tutor but it didn't matter in the long run. The game was not much fun for anyone but him, but League is where you should be playing your best decks if that's what you want to do, so I certainly can't begrudge him the win.
After the game we played a pickup game in which I trotted out my Sidisi, Blood Vizier deck. It self-milled for a while but as I mentioned earlier, we had to scrap the game to start round two.
Round Two
Our second round was a four player game. I was on Surrak and was with a Tawnos player, a Silvos, Rogue Elemental player and an Estrid player.
My deck didn't hit any of its draw but I started the game with Tooth and Nail in hand and was able to get up to nine mana, including mana from mana dorks. The Tawnos player had been leaving mana open and I had been holding off from trying to entwine it to win with Craterhoof Behemoth and Avenger of Zendikar. The Tawnos player was that guy who durdles all game long and then combo's off and whines if you swing at him at all, so I was not thrilled that he was the one keeping me from trying to go for the win.
When I did, it was a misplay on my part. There had been crosstalk at the table and he had earlier mentioned that he had a flusterstorm in hand. I had only vaguely been paying attention, so when I tapped my mana, plopped down the Tooth and Nail, and then realized my miscalculation, I was pretty aggravated with myself. I had left one mana up, and Flusterstorm would require two mana.
I was fully expecting him to counter it, but told him that if he let it go through, I'd not swing at him that turn. For some reason he let it resolve.
I then got my Craterhoof and Avenger, made 7 plant tokens and swung lethal on the Estrid and Silvos players. The Silvos player was pissed, in part because he was only just barely getting some lands onto the field, and also because I had been saying we were "green buddies" and implying that he wasn't my target. He actually wasn't, but when you land a Craterhoof and Avenger and can kill two people at the table you're not going to give someone a pass in a League game just for funsies.
I think on his next turn the Tawnos player dropped a Mycosynth Lattice to turn all of my permanents into artifacts and then overloaded a Vandalblast.
I just added those cards to my Bosh deck last week so I really couldn't complain, but the dude took forever to finish me off. Then when he combo'ed out and I reminded him that you have to actually DO the things that you want to claim points for, he drew his deck, put his permanents on the field, killed me with an infinite Walking Ballista and then had the gall to say "oh yeah, and I sacrifice my commander and re-cast it". Uh... no you didn't. I wasn't mad that he won, though my patience for losing is wearing pretty thin, and I wasn't upset at how he did it, but don't pull that shit. Either competently farm points or don't, but don't try to cheese out extra points at the end.
I actually gave him 4 of our "Gen" points as credit for playing well, even if it was a somewhat disheartening game for me. I think the worst thing in retrospect is that I got ZERO "Gen" points from anyone else at the table and I didn't even win the game. Apparently an Entwined Tooth & Nail to get Craterhoof and Avenger isn't the kind of thing that's going to win you friends. I was kind of surprised that the Tawnos player, who was ahead of me in our League rankings also stiffed me for Gen points. Maybe by that point in the day I had been getting surlier than I realized at the time. I don't know, but it was a little jarring. I don't think I've ever lost a game and still gotten zero Gen points before, and I really didn't think I was being a bad tablemate. The Tawnos player, after all, was the one to let the Tooth & Nail resolve when he didn't have to.
Pickup Game
After running the points we were able to play a pickup game. I was on Sidisi, the Tawnos player was on Chainer, and the Estrid player switched to Experiment Kraj. The Silvos player switched to something else, but for the life of my I don't recall what he was playing except that it had Blue in it.
For the first half of the game I was dutifully trying to trigger Sidisi with little instances of self-mill to make zombies, but was missing pretty much every time. After 6-8 attempts to make zombies I only had one and it was looking like my last game of the day was going to be a dreadful one.
The Chainer player had a Massacre Wurm that got cheated into play and I lost much of my board. I felt like I was watching a very familiar story unfold. The Chainer player is the guy who durdles & whines and in this game I wasn't able to put any pressure on him. He slowly build up his engine and before we knew it he was looping Massacre Wurm and then Kokusho and the table was dead.
I was slowly starting to get somewhere but yet again, my deck was outclassed and this made for a pretty shitty end to a relatively shitty day of Magic. I had been sitting on a Twilight's Call with over a dozen creatures in my graveyard and a Vedalken Orrery on the field, but I felt like casting it would have just given the game to the Chainer player. My stuff was all little and at the time I didn't think it would have let me swing for lethal. Also, I figured he would have gotten another recursion loop going and that was the thing we were trying to avoid.
This was the game that made me want to stop writing about my games here on my blog, as I don't have anything nice to say and when possible I really do try to keep things upbeat.
I clearly need to do some work on my Sidisi deck. I'm not going to be trying to make it competitive. It's a casual deck and there's ample space in my deck collection for casual decks. I still eventually want to see it win a game, though, and there are a few non-tutor, non-combo things I might do to nudge it in that direction. I'm thinking that adding in some Undergrowth cards might be worth trying, as I am reliably loading up the yard.
Final Thoughts
I feel like I'm in another rut, but it's one I put myself in when I decided to play on theme and drop the power level of the decks I'm playing this month. I didn't switch a Mana Crypt into any of my League decks. I certainly didn't decide to go off theme, and this month's theme isn't an easy one to play at a competitive level. This is a predicament of my own fixing, and I'm still in our league's top 5 for the month - probably as much because of players missing games as anything else.
I somehow managed to claw my way up to third place in our rankings. I suppose I should be happy for that, but I think I'm riding a 0-12 streak and it'd be nice to steal a win somewhere along the way.
League will be off next Saturday so I might take a break from blogging but I might share my prerelease stories with you next Sunday morning. I usually bring Commander decks and expect to drop out after going 0-2. Last year I brought just my Narset deck to the prerelease and after getting my ass kicked by actually competent Sealed players, I wrecked a few tables and came away feeling OK about the day. I have no idea what I'll be bringing with me next Saturday but I know I'm going to be playing my Marath Dinosaurs deck to the store this Tuesday. I haven't played it in a while and remember it being pretty fun.
There are ups and downs. My losing streak is continuing and it's probably affecting my mood when I play, but it will break eventually. I'll be playing better decks in February and while I don't expect to win that month I do expect to have more fun.
That's all I've got for you today. Sorry I've got no happy news or hilarious misadventures to share. This is a difficult format. You play against three opponents (on average) and they all want to win every bit as much as you, so it's not unheard of to have a losing streak of 10 or a dozen games or more. These things happen, and if you can't endure them you probably shouldn't play Commander.
Thanks for reading and I'll likely see you back here next week!