Welcome to my weekly blog. This is where I share the stories of the Commander games I've been playing. I don't always go into a lot of detail but I want to give my readers a window on the ups and downs of my experience in this format. It can be humbling and uplifting. However my games have been going, I try to report on them with candor and with as much of a sense of humor as I can muster up.
I usually play on Tuesday nights and on Saturdays in our EDH League but this week saw me down in Boston, Massachusetts for PAX East on Sunday and hope with my amazing wife for her birthday on Tuesday night.
PAX East
I arrived at the south Boston convention center early enough to easily make it to the 10:30 Magic event where Jimmy Wong was going to show off a bunch of War of the Spark cards. Then I waited in line outside and when I finally found my way to the spot where the Magic stuff was being announced, there were no seats left and the "enforcers" politely and repeatedly reminded me and everyone else stuck on the outside that we couldn't watch from the aisle and had to move along.
I gave up and figured I'd look up the spoilers online later that night. There were only two things I was hoping to do at PAX East and one of them was already a failure. I spent the next few hours wandering around looking at stuff and looking for dealers with Magic stuff. I picked up a few cards and resisted the urge to buy anything particularly expensive. I'm reworking my Marath deck to have way, way more Dinosaurs and way less of the combo stuff. It'll be weaker as a result, but I'm OK with that. I was able to pick up Zacama and Gishath but still need Ghalta and Zetalpa.
After grabbing a meatball sub from one of the food trucks outside and waiting in line forever to get back in because it was too chilly to not eat indoors, I wandered some more and finally found my way to the Magic play area.
My second goal had been to play EDH, but by the time I found my way to the spot where you could sign up and pay $10 to get into a Commander pod, they were 10 minutes from closing up and there was nobody else waiting to jump in and play. Slightly disgruntled, I was in the process of deciding to just give up when I someone heard me say the word "Commander". The next thing I knew, I had corralled four other players who were happy to not pay $10 for the privilege of playing EDH and we had found our way to some tables and were shuffling up for a game.
Game One
My four table mates were younger than me, though that's not difficult, as I'm nearly 50. I brought up the topic of power levels and it turned out that everyone was pretty much playing casual fun decks. I had brought four decks with me, including Najeela and Muldrotha, both of which are capable of winning games fairly quickly. I'm not sure they're quite "cEDH" decks but I realized they would be way too much for this table.
I wound up going with Lathliss, Dragon Queen, because while red Dragon tribal is surprisingly strong, it's ultimately a fair deck. I was faced with a Krenko deck, a Vaevictus deck, an Aminatou deck and a Daxos deck.
The game wound up being fairly fun. The Krenko player got out to a good start but apparently wasn't running combo, so while we were concerned about him getting out of hand, I wasn't too worried. The Vaevictus player was able to use his commander to get rid of problem permanents. The poor Aminatou player wound up losing his commander a whole bunch of times, in part because I always had flyers and have played against a few very good Aminatou decks. The Daxos player didn't wind up doing much, probably just because of bad luck, but it might have just been a poorly designed deck. I'm not sure he ever got a single experience counter.
Fairly early in the game I shifted from thinking about winning to thinking about having fun and playing fair. When I had a few dragons out and played my Mana Echoes, I was faced with a decision. I've recently added the enchantment to the deck, and I look forward to someday having a blowout win off the back of the mana it would generate, but today wasn't the day. As soon as it hit the table, I made a point of explaining what it did and telling the table that they really should find a way to get rid of it.
With five dragons on the field, if I were to play a single dragon I would get six and then seven additional mana. That mana may be colorless, but I can feed it and an equal amount of red mana into Lathliss to pump up my dragon army. If I had six red mana available after the new dragon's ETB, I'd be able to give my five dragons +6/+0 until end of turn. When swinging with five 5/5 dragons, that would turn an output of 25 damage into 55 damage and probably means someone would be out of the game.
Mana Echoes isn't a combo piece but it's very strong and with enough dragons in hand it can play into additional spells in a way that I'm sure is going to be good in this deck. My table mates may not have ever faced this deck before but they trusted me enough to get rid of it before my next turn. I wasn't necessarily thrilled, but I didn't mind. Overtly showing good sportsmanship and playing fair can help you later on in games in a way that's hard to measure or quantify. Karma exists.
I was able to bounce back from some removal and at least one board wipe and throughout the game the Krenko deck was the only other one who consistently seemed to present a strong board. As we approached the end game I started swinging lethal on folks. At one point I got the Aminatou player to pass over my Lathliss when he had removal. I think I also worked a "leave each other for last" deal with the Vaevictus player, but when everyone else was out of the game I found myself with a lethal strike that could take both of them out.
It felt nice to get a win, and while I regretted not bringing any truly weak / janky decks, I didn't feel like I had been unfair. It had been a fun game with lots of chatting and the occasional political move. We had some onlookers who seemed to enjoy watching us play. The Daxos player and the Aminatou player seemed interested in seeing what my Najeela and Muldrotha decks could do and I had planned to take them out and do a quick "deck tech" for them, but we jumped into the next game before that could happen.
Game Two
We wound up losing everyone but the Aminatou player and picking up two new players. I switched to Ramos, Dragon Engine, as it's strong and can be played in a fair manner if I choose not to go after the combo win. The Aminatou player and I were joined by a player on the new Teysa Karlov and a player running Norin the Wary. Both of them claimed to not be playing super strong decks. I was a little wary, but figured I'd have enough removal in Ramos to be able to try to handle anything.
I think they were telling the truth, but the Norin player still started out the game with an early Tangle Wire and followed that up with Blood Moon. He hadn't gotten any ETB damage triggers on the field, but Norin was jumping in and out of play like crazy. He had one of those wonderful two-sided Norins that he could flip over to show a Norin card with Norin missing and just his torch on the ground. It wasn't a sweet hand-painted alter but it was pretty cool nonetheless.
I actually asked him if he had a way to lock the table down. I had my daughter wandering around at the convention and if he was going to lock us into a 4 hour death struggle I'd be happy to just concede the game and move on with my life. I wasn't trying to be rude about it - I just didn't know if he had the capacity to turn the game into an exercise in futility or not. Some "stax" decks can make games go really, really long, but he didn't think he was going to be able to do that.
I had a Debt to the Deathless in hand and was hoping to get Ramos out and use it to shoot my life total up into the 70s, but the Norin player got a Teferi's Puzzle Box on the field and soon we were drawing and putting our hands onto the bottom of our libraries at the start of every turn. While we then drew that many cards, it didn't fill me with hope that this game was going to go well for anyone but the Norin player. Several of us had been swinging damage at him, and eventually it became clear that he was going to be the first to die.
I don't remember who killed him, but the Teysa player and I were having the best games. I think the Aminatou player had some flyers out but he was the next to go. Ramos was huge and apparently nobody was running enough removal - a theme that had started earlier in the day with the five player game.
Playing against a really high level of player in our EDH league and on our casual nights has gotten me used to decks that have answers and are fast and resilient. I suspect when I play against strangers at a place like PAX East I'm likely to encounter a much more casual type of player than I'm used to. I miss those old, janky games where you can play bad cards and not feel like you're just handing someone a win.
With just myself and the Teysa player left, I decided to try to close things out. I probably could have played fair, but she had Sanguine Bond on the field and had admitted to running Exquisite Blood so I knew a combo wasn't going to be considered "rude".
I had Conflux in hand and I think I might have had Dromoka on the field, so I could do whatever I wanted. That pretty much meant the game was mine. I used Conflux to get five cards, including Phyresis and Chandra's Ignition. Ramos was big enough to be lethal with infect, so I dropped the aura on him and put the cherry on top of my Ramos Sundae. The cherry is always Chandra's Ignition, and it's always super sweet when I pull that off.
I apologized out of habit for winning with such a "dirty" win con, but nobody seemed to think it was done in bad taste. It wasn't, of course, but when playing with strangers I err on the side of politeness. I think everyone had fun, and I was able to see two of my favorite decks do what they were built to do.
I could easily see going to PAX East and jamming casual Commander games all day long. There will always be folks who want to play, and most of us don't want to pay $10 for the "official" pods they run. I almost think we as a community need to establish some sort of sign so we can find each other. A pin reading "Will play EDH for fun" would do, but something cooler like wearing a hat with a feather in it or something else weird could be fun too.
EDH League
Coming off of winning the month of March, I wanted to power down a little, though I didn't think I was necessarily playing overpowered decks for my win. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that I wanted to not focus on winning. I wound up taking my Marath combo deck, which had a smattering of Enrage keyword Dinosaurs and pulling out all the combo pieces and loading it up with Dinos. I also built a Horde of Notions deck with as much control as I could fit into it and a few combo finishers. I didn't know if either will win a league game in the three short weeks we'll be playing in April, but we'll soon find out. Our month is shortened due to the prerelease at the end of April.
I rolled into NexGen comics a little early and was surprised to see three tables already playing pickup games of commander. We wound up with over a dozen players when we started, as a few folks showed up at 2 and a few of the guys playing already weren't going to play in league.
Round One
If my previous Sunday's PAX East games were a reminder that casual players that don't play and deckbuild constantly can be surprisingly easy to win against, my Saturday league games were a reminder that if I don't bring my "A game" and also play good decks it's a very challenging environment to play in.
I found myself at a four player table. I decided to start with Marath and was up against Thromok, the Insatiable, Kynaios and tiro and Rakdos, Lord of Riots.
The Rakdos player is one of the best players in our meta and the guy who probably would have won March if he hadn't missed the last two weeks of the month. The K & T player was playing hug and the Thromok player was a bit of an unknown. I knew I'd have my hands full with the Rakdos player. If anyone knew what to do with the kind of ridiculous cost savings Rakdos can give you, it was him. He was the first player to the right of the hug player, so that wasn't going to make things any easier.
I wound up mulliganing down to six and didn't have any good early game plays. My hope was to start off with something good, like Marath and a Ranging Raptors so I could get enough mana to pay some of the ridiculously big dinosaurs that I'm running in the deck. I wound up with lands and Dinos that I'd never even be able to cast.
I did get Marath out, but the Rakdos player was able to get his commander out and play a pretty decent number of threats. For some reason I'd failed to let him know that I wasn't playing the old combo Marath build and was taking all of his aggro. I might have been his first victim anyways, as i had won the previous month and will have a 3 point bounty on my head for all of April. I was soon down to half my starting life total, but tried not to grouse about it. When someone picks on you in Commander, you can choose to simply take it as a compliment. Clearly I was the biggest threat at the table, if only because my buddy didn't realize I was now on Marath Dino Tribal. Still, he figured I was capable of being a problem for him and on some level that's better than just being a speedbump and getting ignored until you can be easily dealt with.
I had a wrath in hand, but to my surprise someone (I forget who) wiped the board. My death was no longer quite as inevitable as I thought it would be.
The game was not without bright spots. I was able to play a Tempt with Discovery and get everyone to be tempted. I promised to only get basic lands - that's my strategy with this deck when playing that card. It didn't wind up helping very much. I think the next sequence went something like this. I was able to play a Mirari's Wake, setting me up to be able to tap 9 lands for 18 mana on my next turn.
My goal was to play Animist's Awakening for at least 16 or 17. I had spell mastery so my lands would come in untapped, and then I'd use that mana to actually play the dinosaurs that were stranded in my hand. I think I had Bellowing Aegisaur and Silverclad Ferocidons in hand. The former puts +1/+1 counters on your permanents when it takes damage. The latter forces your opponents to sacrifice a permanent when it gets dinged. From there I could give the latter indestructible and ping it as many times as my mana would allow to try to send my opponents' boards back to the stone age. In reality I probably wouldn't have been able to force them to sacrifice more than a half dozen permanents
I spent most of the coming turn cycle figuring out what my plan would actually be, but before it got back to me, the K & T player wheeled us all, giving the Rakdos player a new hand. The boardwipe had taken him out of the game and the hug player conveniently put him right back into it. He - the Rakdos player, not the hug player, for the second time dumped his hand onto the field and for good measure blew up my Mirari's Wake.
It was the right play, but didn't fill me with hope that I'd be able to find a way to push for the win.
Actually, my deck choice also didn't fill me with hope that I'd find a way to push for the win, but losing my mana doubler sure didn't help in this particular game. Rakdos wound up running away with it. He killed us all with a combo because he does love his combos, but I suspect he could have closed things out on the battlefield if he had wanted to play that way. He didn't. He doesn't "play with his food". He wins when he can do so and in a competitive context like a league - even a free one with cookies - I certainly can't blame anyone for that.
As it turned out we had another round one table with a player who was such a bad loser that he and his buddy left after one round. I checked in with his tablemates to see what had transpired and apparently he was such a bad sport that he left at least one of his opponents feeling like they never want to play with him again. It looks like I'm going to have to institute some sort of warning system for folks who can't deal with getting crushed. We all get crushed sometimes - especially in league games. Most of us don't enjoy it when it happens, but there has to be a line beyond which a player is no longer welcome to play with us. I'm thinking a "three strikes and you're out" system will do, and I may require the problem player to apologize to their tablemates for their behavior as part of the process. It's easy to apologize for being a whiny-ass bitch. I've done it, even when I wasn't being all that whiny, and it's an important thing for an adult to learn how to do.
I digress. After my first beating of the day - which I didn't exactly enjoy but I hope I didn't take too badly - we were on to round two.
Round Two
For April I decided I'd switch between Marath and Horde of Notions and I had already played Marath, so it was on to my control deck.
My Horde of Notions build has a few elementals, but mostly it's a control shell with the goal of winning with an ETB loop either out of the graveyard or using Food Chain. Alternately I can swing with Horde of Notions five times for commander damage, but that's not my first choice.
I was at another four player table, which was nice, and I was joined by the K & T player from round one, which was also nice. He's a great tablemate and while he doesn't really enjoy the faster, more powerful decks that have grown common in our league's meta, he's always fun to play with. We were joined by a player on Thrasios and Kydele and a player on Tasigur, the Golden Fang. The former was likely going to combo off, but probably not as quickly as with his old Selvala Brostorm deck. My guess was that he borrowed pieces from that to build this deck, so it was going to be quite capable of winning games. The Tasigur player was the local judge who still owns the league record for points in a day, playing the same deck that accomplished that feat. I was going to have my hands full.
The game wasn't incredibly short, but it didn't take long for the Tasigur player to get to a point where his victory felt somewhat inevitable - at least to me. We both kept Thrasios & Kydele off the win, especially after he tutored for Staff of Domination. I put some effort into keeping Tasigur off of his wincons but it wasn't enough. I blew up an early Thought Vessel, which he complained about, only to see the Hug player play an Anvil of Bogardan - giving everyone no max hand size. When the Tasigur player put out a Nezahal, Primal Tide, I gave up on trying to keep him from avoiding to have to discard.
I was able to blow up a Mana Crypt that the Tasigur player put out but when he played a Chrome Mox and he asked if I was going to blow up that too, I relented. It was probably that I didn't appreciate the slight exasperation in his voice. I pretty much assumed he was going to combo off and I didn't think I could stop both him AND the Thrasios player with a hug deck giving them both extra draw. We were all drawing three and discarding one at the start of our turns.
I've been trying to adopt a policy that when someone begs for something in a competitive EDH game, I do the opposite. The same applies to whining. I'm not sure if the Tasigur player's response to my considering blowing up his Mox was "whining" but he wins a lot, had already won a game that day in round one, and I sure didn't appreciate his acting like it would have been an unreasonable or "bullying" play for me to get rid of it. Apparently, I'm a softie because I fell for it. To be honest, it was probably an indication that I had already given up on the game.
I had played an early Squee,the Immortal and then spent the next twenty minutes pretending that I didn't know what a Food Chain was. When I played a Misthollow Griffin, I doubled down on pretending I had no idea what a "combo" was, but everyone knew I was kidding. The bottom line is that the Tasigur player wasn't going to let me combo off and I knew it. I had no way to force a combo through and didn't have Food Chain or a tutor in my hand anyways. As I said - the Tasigur player's victory felt inevitable at that point.
When Tasigur swung his Nezahal at me I was at 40 life. For some reason I really don't like taking damage, and like a fool I did exactly what he wanted me to do. I should have know better but I exiled he Nezahal, giving him a card draw. Apparently that was what he was after and the next thing we all knew he was looping stuff and making infinite mana, casting all of our graveyards and libraries and winning the game in the usual ridiculous way his deck wins its games.
I wasn't mad but I hadn't appreciated his attitude earlier in the game. That said - I'm not always the most pleasant tablemate in the world either, so i get it. Nobody likes having their stuff messed with or their plans changed, even if they're the odds on favorite to win the game.
I'm not sure even if I had done a better job of threat assessment and interaction I could have won that table. Having two strong combo decks and a hug deck can make for a real challenge for a control deck to keep everyone off of their wincons and it was too much for my new Horde of Notions deck this time around.
With two somewhat expected losses under my belt, I grabbed some time to do an interview for tomorrow's CoolStuffInc.com Commanderruminations column. One of the store owners had a fantastic Marath control deck and I wanted to talk to him about it. I then ran the points, updated the chalkboard and headed out.
Final Thoughts
It was nice to win a month - even if that win was largely attributable to our top player not showing up, but Saturday's beatdowns definitely brought me back down to earth.
I may be hard pressed to win a game this month, but I'm not giving up hope. Dinosaurs might still "get there" but chances are better that I'll have a game where Horde of Notions is able to keep other threats at bay and combo off. Either way, I will do my best to keep my sense of humor and appreciate playing a great game with great people.
As you can see, I'm on the board as the previous month's winner, but I'm not in the current top five. I might be able to crawl my way onto the list, but it won't be easy. It rarely is.
That's all I've got for you today. Tomorrow I'll have that spotlight on that Marath control build on CoolStuffInc.com for you.
Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!