Welcome to my blog. This is where I write about the games I've been playing. Sometimes they go well, sometimes they can be something of a train wreck. Either way, I try my best to keep a sense of humor about them even if I can't always get out of my own way. This week had some pretty good games but also some pretty bad ones...
Casual Night
I've been on a bit of a roll lately, winning all three games on the third Saturday of our EDH League month and winning a game on the previous Tuesday as well. I like to win but I also like for games to be balanced and fun. I have my share of losing streaks too, and for this Tuesday night I decided to pack up a bunch my weaker decks with the goal of seeing how far I could push my luck.
I wound up only playing two games on the night, as I showed up in time to jump into a five player game that turned into a six player game when an extra player showed up at the last minute. A six man game can be pretty bad if everyone is playing slowly and overthinking each decision they make, but when you have a group willing to play fast and loose, it can actually go well.
Game One
As I was on a run of good luck, I decided to play my Sidisi, Brood Tyrant deck. I still haven't landed the elusive Mortal Combat win, but I was hoping maybe today would be the day. It's a 2019 goal of mine to check that particular item off of my bucket list.
I was joined by a players on Avacyn, Angel of Hope, Oloro, Ageless Ascetic, Razaketh the Foul-Blooded, Aminatou and Atraxa. Sidisi isn't exactly full of ways to deal with flying attackers, so I was less than optimistic that things would work out well for me. I actually had my Multani, Maro-Sorceror deck with me, but I resisted the urge to switch up at the last minute. Some games you enter into and pretty much assume that it will be a long shot at best to win. This was one of those games.
Sidisi is designed to slowly trickle cards into my graveyard from my library so that I can make zombies. It's usually effective at mounting a decent little army and it can occasionally spiral out of control. It's not fast but it can sneak up on a table and mount a real threat to win the game.
I was mostly focused on my own stuff during this game, so there's no way I'm going to be able to reliably tell you what happened on everyone else's board. The Avacyn player had a slow start and was clearly not playing a tuned deck and didn't seem to have mass land destruction, so while I was nervous about not being able to block his commander, I wasn't too concerned about him. The Oloro player did Oloro things and shot his life total up pretty quickly but never presented a serious threat. The Razaketh player didn't do anything too scary, nor did the Aminatou player. The Atraxa player was playing their deck for the first time and was putting out creatures with the Outlast keyword and doing other minor things. None of the flying commanders seemed too concerned with getting their commanders out and swinging them at me.
I was able to mount a decent board and play a few zombie lords and get Endless Ranks of the Dead onto the battlefield. Pretty soon I was putting handfuls of zombies onto the battlefield on my upkeep and looking like I was going to be the problem at the table. I do run a few flyers - mostly ones that put cards into my graveyard from my library so that I can make zombies - so when the Avacyn player got their commander out and started swinging it my way I realized I was going to need to find an answer. Nobody else had spiraled out of control yet, but I was able to tutor up a Living Death use it to put my battlefield into the graveyard and all the creatures from my graveyard onto the battlefield. Everyone else got to do that too, but I had a decent little army waiting down in the dirt and I was happy to bring them out to play.
The Avacyn was gone, as was Atraxa, so I had given myself a little breathing room. I believe someone else may have drawn out a counter spell by trying to board wipe earlier, but I could be wrong on that. I didn't have enough to finish anybody off yet, but as the game went on I kept slowly putting cards into the bin with various creature-based effects.
Somewhere around this time I think the Oloro player shot his life total up near 100. I don't even remember how he did it, but it was nice to no longer be the threat. On my next few turns I threw my army at him and was able to whittle him back down to where the rest of us were. I had a lot of power on board, but mostly in smaller creatures. My Ghoultree - a 10/10 green zombie tree - got a little attention, but was exiled before it even got to attack. I was still able to get some swings in, but my opponents again were soon able to get their flying commanders out and start putting the pressure on.
With no solid answer for flying attackers, I was looking at probably being eliminated soon. I had no life gain and my life total was around 20 at that point. Between Atraxa, Avacyn and Razaketh - who I think was still in the game at that point - I had to do something quick.
I wound up swinging a few creatures at everyone else, with the predictable outcome that they were all killed in combat. I was trying to come across as if I was lashing out one last time before getting killed, but I did have an out. In my second main phase I was able to use Dread Return to bring back Eternal Witness, return Living Death to my hand and cast it. My opponents' boards were gone, as was mine, and my now much larger graveyard was again dumped on my battlefield.
In each of the Living Death castings I was able to put two force-sac dorks onto the field, so both times my opponents got some creatures back and immediately had to sacrifice them. It was a pretty sweet play, though I imagine it was pretty annoying from their perspective.
I had two zombie lords in hand and was able to play them. Over the next few turns I cleared the table. By the last few turns there were only four of us left, but I don't recall exactly when the first two players were kicked to the curb. I think I might have been the one to do it, but it was a six player game and at this point the details are lost to me.
With a very long and probably very frustrating (for my opponents) game behind us, we shuffled up for a five player game with one of the players having to leave.
Game Two
In this second game I decided to go with Brudiclad. I was tempted to play Hallar but my Hallar deck is undefeated at this point and I wanted to take my foot off the gas pedal. Hallar is going to lose soon enough, but in case he'd be too much for the folks I was playing with I decided to pass him over. Brudiclad has been OK but hasn't really had any great games yet.
The Oloro player stayed with Oloro. The Razaketh player switched to Progenitus. The Aminatou player switched to Muldrotha and the Atraxa player switched to Karlov.
I was able to get out an early Empty the Warrens and get two Goblin tokens, only to lose one to a forced sacrifice effect from the Muldrotha player. He was able to play an early Permeating Mass and I immediately decided my plan was to make an army of them and hope I could get the table to buy into the idea of having everyone wind up with Permeating Mass tokens.
The Karlov player was able to play an Archetype of Courage, putting us in the position where any plan to turn his creatures into Permeating Mass tokens probably wasn't going to work. Archetype of Courage gives its controller's creatures first strike, so he'd be able to kill incoming PMs without his creatures taking damage.
The Muldrotha player was able to play a Keening Stone and a Worldshaper and after a few turns he convinced the Karlov player to kill his Worldshaper with a blocker. He had a modest graveyard, but before damage he used his Keening Stone to double his graveyard. When Worldshaper died he got to put all the lands from his graveyard onto the field. It was a beautiful move and put him in a great position, but he didn't have a way to win at that point in time.
Again, I'm not exactly sure of the timing of these plays, but the Karlov player played a creature that gave our creatures -1/-1, meaning that my Brudiclad 2/1 Myr tokens would die upon entering the battlefield and Permeating Mass was now a 0/2 so it could not do damage in combat and turn anything else into a Permeating Mass.
I had turned my own token army - a modest 4 or 5 creatures - into Permeating Mass tokens in the hopes of having some fun, but when Karlov thwarted that plan I decided to let loose. I was able to play a Malignus, which at the time was a 30 power thanks to the Oloro player, and used Twinflame to make a token of it.
I had enough power to clear the table if I had taken the care to choose my targets well, but I had also just come off of a win and didn't really want to be a bully. On that first turn I swung two of the Malignus tokens at the Oloro player because he could block and take one of them, and I sent one at each of the other players. They don't have trample, so they could easily be blocked.
On my next turn I swung one at each player and kept the rest back as blockers. The Progenitus player had been struggling all night long and while my attack wouldn't have killed him, I offered to assign the damage to his Tamiyo planeswalker instead. I figured that would keep him in the game rather than having him die. The Oloro player had been slowly hitting us for damage every turn. To my surprise he just took it and on his next turn killed himself.
I was happy to have done something crazy and figured someone else would find an answer. I knew I was punting a win away by not carefully looking at which of my opponents really needed to die first and focusing my aggro on them. I didn't care. I was having fun and was OK with someone stealing the win if they could. The only question was who could pull that proverbial rabbit out of a hat and deal with my army of Malignus tokens.
On the Muldrotha player's turn I found out.
He had crazy amounts of mana available from those lands he got earlier and he cast a Torment of Hailfire for 20, killing the table.
In retrospect the obvious play would have been to leave the Oloro player alone, kill the Muldrotha player (easily) for the sin of having so many lands on the battlefield and kill the Karlov player for having a creature that was keeping my 2/1 Myr creature tokens from surviving once they hit the battlefield. WIth those two players out of the way it probably would have been easy to kill the Oloro player with an ever-growing army of Malignus tokens.
I'm pretty sure if I had slowed down and "gone for the win", I had the table, but playing in a more friendly way opened up the window for the Muldrotha player to steal the game. I have a Muldrotha deck so I gave him a high-five and was happy for him to get the win. I don't know if anyone noticed or cared that I was "going easy" on them, but I hope that not crushing two straight games was the right thing to do.
My Brudiclad deck doesn't exactly crush tables, so it was a real surprise to see it put forth such a good showing.
EDH League
I went into the fourth of five weeks of play in our Commander League in second place, but far enough out of the lead that I figured I didn't have a shot at catching the top player. He's really pretty amazing and can even built suboptimal commanders to be strong, resilient and dangerous. I wasn't particularly upset about the idea that he'd win his second month this year, but I was wholly unprepared to not even see him at the store. Not everyone is able to free up their Saturday afternoons the way I've been able to, but for whatever reason we wound up with less players than usual this past Saturday.
We split up into three tables and got down to business. Everyone else in our top 5 was there, so the chances were pretty good that our rankings, which didn't shift at all between week two and week three, would change after today's games.
Round One
I was on Hallar, the Firefletcher for game one. It hadn't lost a game yet, but I was confident it would lose eventually and figured another league game would be a good way to get that first loss out of the way. Don't get me wrong - I wasn't trying to lose the game but I just figured it was bound to happen.
I was up against a Kumena merfolk deck, my friend with the Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker / Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder deck and a fourth player on Zacama.
I got Hallar out on time, but wasn't able to establish much of a board presence. I started with a hand with 5 lands and drew into another two right off the bat, so it wasn't looking good for me to do much in the game. The Ishai / Bruse Tarl player also got out to a slow start. That surprised me, as I was used to him getting Ishai out early and then swinging her as often as possible. For some reason he held back - possibly to avoid removal until he could get protection. I wasn't going to complain.
The Kumena player had a pretty good start and swung some early damage around but didn't do anything too scary.
The Zacama player just ramped. He did very little in the early and mid game, relying on a Maze of Ith to scare away any possible attacks. He kept joking that he was playing a hug deck, but we should have been paying a little more attention to the utility lands he was putting down.
My Hallar deck definitely has the capacity to win games, but if it runs into enough removal I knew it would have a rough time. I wasted a turn trying to cast Zendikar Resurgent only to have the Ishai player counter it with a Rewind. I wound up playing a Mana Geyser a little too early and played a Strionic Resonator, kicked a Mold Shambler to blow up an enchantment the Kumena player had out, and copied the Hallar trigger to do one and then two damage to all opponents. I wanted to do something rather than just draw and pass turn, but it was probably not a good decision to waste that spell on such a small result.
The Zacama player eventually wound up playing Zacama, and using Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion and Slayer's Stronghold to one-shot the Ishai player. His 9/9 commander got +2/+2 and double-strike from his utility lands and we knew we were in trouble. We hadn't seen it coming, though in retrospect we should have. After the Ishai player was out of the way, the remaining two of us died in rapid succession.
I was saying that Hallar can win games. It can - I had a miracle card that puts four +1/+1 counters on a creature. I also had Grafted Exoskeleton in hand so if I had played more cautiously I might have been able to position myself to be able to kill the table with infect damage. My opponents might have had answers even if I had done everything perfectly, but this was not one of those kinds of days.
With round one out of the way, we dropped a few players, added a few new players and found our tables for round two.
Round Two
I decided to play Ramos, Dragon Engine for round two. The Kumena player from the first round was with us, and we were joined by a player on Experiment Kraj and a player on Marchesa, the Black Rose.
This game wound up being a bit of a train wreck, at least for me. I've had plenty of good games lately, but this was one where I felt like everything I did was a mistake, if not a colossal misplay.
Long story short - I could have killed the Marchesa player early on with a huge Ramos, but instead of going slow and making of what I was swinging into, I wound up swinging what should have been a lethal attack into a flying blocker without realizing it. I have the bad habit of dealing with round two scoresheets in the middle of my round two games and I find it kind of distracting. I also am literally two weeks away from having my eyes checked and my prescription for my glasses updated, but the bottom line is that I was playing way, way too sloppy. I had instant speed remove - Path to Exlie - in hand as well, so I should have been able to kill the Marchesa player and then probably finish the table off with no issues. Instead, I begrudingly accepted my misplay and the Marchesa player lived.
He declared his blockers as I was figuring out my attacks and I should have just told him I wasn't done figuring out my attacks yet, but for some reason I didn't do that. I had overlooked his (slightly blurry) flyer and ultimately the fault was with me.
Over the next few turns... well, to be accurate, the next hour, i managed to pile misplay after misplay on top of each other, to the point where I was honestly almost glad that I didn't end up winning. I didn't deserve to win that game, though I love my Ramos deck and I very much wished I hadn't screwed up my game so badly.
The Marchesa player got whittled down to a really low life total. I was able to overload a Cyclonic Rift twice in the mid game but still wasn't able to dig to find a way to win after hamstringing my chances so badly.
There is nothing that gets me more upset than when I'm mad at myself, but I think all in all I mostly kept my sense of humor about the game. I have seen the Marchesa player win a lot of games, often when he probably should have been killed. He's a great player and we even joke that our league motto ought to be to kill him first.
With the Marchesa player at death's door - around 3 life - the newer players at the table both had the chance to finish him off.
Despite my advice that it would be best and safest to do so - they both let him off the hook. I should have killed him early in the game but screwed it up (my fault entirely). Now two more players could have killed him and out of kindness or pity, they let him live. They had all had a rough go with my two overloaded Rifts and even though my own board was no longer scary, they must have still seen me as the threat.
On the Marchesa player's turn he resolved a Living Death. Yes - the same spell I was abusing on Tuesday night was coming back to haunt us. We all lost our boards except the Marchesa player, who now had a ridiculously good battlefield full of scary flyers. I had nothing in my graveyard so now I had no creatures at all and little chance of rebuilding. Marchesa's army didn't have haste, and he didn't have the win, but I was sure he was going to find a way, even at 3 life, to finish us all off eventually.
When he went to cast Whip of Erebos, the Kumena player had a counterspell. He almost didn't cast it, but I kinda freaked out and was like HE IS AT 3 LIFE OMG YES YOU COUNTER WHIP OF EREBOS! I don't often get that excited but when the Kumena player was considering letting the Marchesa player crawl back into the game (and probably beat us all in the process), I was able to convince him to cast the counter.
The Marchesa player still had a great boardstate and probably would have been able to stop anything we were doing. He had a Kaerveck the Merciless on the field so I was sure I was going to have to watch him slowly whittle down our life totals until he won - yes, even at 3 life. He stole the Kraj player's Herald of Secret Streams and seemed to have answers for everything, but he made one mistake.
He had a way to counter a creature spell, but hadn't left the mana up, and on the Kraj player's turn the Kraj player was able to play a Triskelion and use Kraj to kill the Marchesa player!
I couldn't believe it.
After all my screw-ups in this game, and trust me that I'm not even telling you the half of it, the Marchesa player was still the first one killed. The Kraj player was able to combo with Gilder Bairn and kill me and the Kumena player before we could find any way to deal with his board. It was fitting enough that he got the win, but it was the kind of game that might have left me staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night thinking about what the hell I did wrong (a lot) and how frustrated I was.
It was pretty funny to see the new players have the same experience the rest of us have had with the Marchesa player. He's really very good and builds incredibly resilient decks that always seem to have answers, so it's frustrating to see him slip out of situations where he could possibly be eliminated from a game. Now they know.
I'm writing this part on Saturday night - a rarity for me - in part because I want to get it out of my system. I care about winning to some extent but I care even more about playing decently and not making a ton of misplays. Today's round two was just an epic train wreck from my perspective. It was bad and it somewhat disheartening, but decent players have bad games. I tried pretty hard to keep a sense of humor about it.
Final Thoughts
Do I need new glasses?
Heck, yes.
Should I have someone else gather my round two scoresheets so I don't get distracted when I'm playing?
Probably.
Do decent players have terrible, no-good, embarrassing games where they make more misplays than they probably ought to?
Yes, they do.
The next time you have a terrible game, please remember - you're not alone and you're not an idiot... at least any more than I am. We all have train wrecks and the most important thing to try to do is keep your sense of humor. Laugh at yourself. Be frustrated, but never forget that it's just a game.
The Marchesa player took his eventual loss well, though my insistent praise for how good a player he is and how hard he can be to kill probably helped to soften the blow. It's all true, of course. He's fantastic, but because of that he can be incredibly frustrating to play against - every bit as much as our league's current top player - the guy who couldn't make it this week for League.
The weirdest thing about my League Saturday is that I got a decent number of "Gen" points out of my games. I must have been a decent table-mate, all things considered. I didn't feel like I was being pleasant to play with because I really was incredibly frustrated with my own misplays, but I had tried to laugh about it not be too cranky. As it turned out, my point totals and the top player being absent gave me a bit of a surprise when I ran the points.
I wound up in the top spot. The second place player had a fantastic day and catapulted up to second place as the league's top player fell to third.
That means I've got a shot at the month if I don't screw things up too badly next Saturday. I'll have to decide whether to be a dirtbag and play my competitive Marwyn elfball deck or go more casual and play Ramos. I'm leaning towards Ramos because I just love that commander and really want to get a good game out of him before the month is over.
One last bright spot is worth mentioning. Michael Rapp, the local player who won GP (MF) Toronto, showed up to play cube at the store on Saturday and had a playmat he had made from inkedgaming.com, using the artwork shown at the top of today's post. He was really happy with how it came out and that in turn made me happy, so that was nice. Any of my header art mashups, so long as you grab the 1200 x 700 pixel versions, can be turned into decent playmats. I'm currently using my Ramos playmat and I love it.
So that was my week. It started well, I punted a game on Tuesday and then the wheels fell off the wagon on Saturday, but somehow I still managed to end up in the top spot. League scoring systems are weird, and sometimes it's possible to do well and turn in strong showings even when you don't win your games.
That's all I've got for you today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!