Welcome to my blog. This is where I recount the games I've been playing. I play twice a week on Tuesday nights and Saturdays in our EDH league at NexGen Comics in Pelham, New Hampshire. I've always wondered if my favorite Commander podcasters or writers actually play the game that often, so when I moved my writing from here over to CoolStuffInc.com at the beginning of last year, I decided I'd start blogging my games here. If nothing else, my readers can follow how I've been playing and even see how decks I've written about have actually played out in both a casual and a more competitive meta.I try to keep it fun and as accurate as I can make it, but I'll openly admit that I'm usually lighter on the details than I'd like to be. Without further ado, let's jump into it.
Casual Night
After a 0-2 showing on Saturday with my Marath Dinosaurs deck and my Horde of Notions deck, I decided I'd try to get each of those decks another game in our Tuesday night casual games. We'll only have three weekends of play this month because of the War of the Spark prerelease, so I want to try to get each one to notch a win before we're on to May.
I wound up playing four games on the night, though one was so short that it was really more like three.
Game One
For some reason I decided to start the night on Nikya of the Old Ways, even though I haven't reworked it yet. The deck is currently an all-in Primal Surge deck that should be able to win if it can resolve that particular sorcery spell. I was at a four player table with a Chainer, Yasova, Jodah and Inalla. We were playing Planechase, which means that for the life of me I won't be able to remember which planes we were on when, and for the most part we were lucky to remember to roll the Planechase die at all.
I was able to start the game with Primal Surge in hand and spent most of the game trying to position myself to where I could go for the win. The Yasova player actually cheated my Zhur-Taa Ancient so everyone had extra mana. There were several moments where I was close to being able to Primal Surge, but the board state changed and I had to hold off. The Zhur-Taa Ancient got bounced to my hand right before I was going to go for it. My Nikya was conveniently removed from play, opening up the opportunity for me to cast non-creature spells and I played my Zhur-Taa Ancient with the hope of being able to cast my Primal Surge on my next turn.
The Jodah player wound up being able to get off Omniscience and Enter the Infinite and that was game. None of us had any way to stop it. I don't know if I would have had enough power on board at a five player table to win the game, but it would have been close. You can't play a creature like Zhur-Taa Ancient and be too upset when someone else wins off of it. You're basically gambling that you can abuse the extra mana more than an opponent, and this time it backfired on me.
Game Two
Wanting to play one of my league decks for the month, I switched up to Horde of Notions. The Inalla player wanted to try out a heavily proxies cEDH list he had assembled from online - Siggi's Gitrog Monster deck. The Chainer player switched to his best deck - Karador. The Yasova player switched to Taigam and the Jodah player switched to Sliver Overlord. I didn't have a deck that was at that power level, but figured Horde has a lot of answers in it, and it probably wouldn't take too long to get another loss under my belt.
I wasn't wrong. Gitrog combo'ed off pretty quickly, though Karador and possibly also Taigam were positioning themselves to win soon if the Gitrog deck hadn't won first. It wasn't a ton of fun, but it also didn't take very long. I think the Gitrog player appreciated getting a chance to try playing the list, but he said he didn't really enjoy it that much. I think cEDH lists are fine, but the games are really best when everyone is at the same power level. I'm not sure I even have a deck at that level, but it was interesting to see the deck play out its win con. If nothing else, those games are usually over pretty quickly.
Game Three
The Gitrog player asked if he could borrow a deck and he wound up using my Marath, WIll of the Wild deck. It's been reworked to have all the traditional Marath combo pieces removed and replaced with Dinosaurs that have the Enrage keyword. That means it's worse but hopefully more fair and fun for casual games.
I stayed on Horde of Notions because the previous game was barely even a game. The Karador player switched to Niv-Mizzet, Parun. The Taigam player wasn't feel great and wound up leaving and the Sliver Overlord player switched to Kaalia.
This game was definitely more fun. There was interaction and a good back and forth at the table for a while. I was trying to draw into one of the combos my deck is built to try to win with. The Kaalia player wound up swinging his creatures at Marath, who had a strong early game and proved to be able to maintain a consistently strong board.
I was able to keep Marath from doing much in the early game with an artifact that let me name Marath and prevented the named card from activating any of its activated abilities. Someone eventually blew that up, which opened the door for Marath to get back into the game and cause trouble. I actually could have done more to shut him down but in a casual game I usually don't like picking on one player too much, even if I know it's the right play to make. That can change based on who the player is and what deck they're playing, but I tend to spread damage out and avoid knocking one person out early if the game might go long. In this case I was spreading my removal around so nobody felt picked on.
The Marath deck did more for its pilot than it usually did for me, but I'm always happy to see one of my decks do well even if it's being played by someone else.
The Marath player wound up combining a flipped Growing Rites of Itlamoc, an indestructible aura and a Dinosaur that let him untap a permanent to generate a ridiculous amount of mana. I think we had done dumb stuff earlier like get tempted by a Tempt with Discovery, but the bottom line is that if Marath can make crazy amounts of mana, it just wins games. He pinged us to death and we moved on to the next game.
I'm hopeful that I'll have similar luck (or skill) with my Marath deck at some point this month, but if nothing else I was really happy to hear that the deck was a lot of fun. It's always fun to win, of course, but my impression is that over and above just winning, the deck wound up being interesting and entertaining to play.
Game Four
I didn't want to lose three games in a row with my Horde of Notions deck so I wound up switching to one of my two Jhoira decks. I have both the old "suspend" Jhoira and the new "card draw" Jhoira built, but the former always feels slow and predictable. Giving someone multiple turns to prepare for an incoming extra turns spell or Eldrazi Titan doesn't work well against good players with lots of answers. I went with Jhoira Weatherlight Captain. She's built around a Retraction Helix win con but I hadn't played her in a long time.
We lost the Niv-Mizzet player, so it was just three of us. The Kaalia player switched to Nekusar and the Marath player stayed with Marath, though he did ask if I wanted to give the deck a whirl. If someone borrows a deck and wins with it, I'm usually not going to want to play it just on the off chance that my luck will be real bad and I'll get annoyed that it isn't "behaving" for me. Also, he's a great player and I didn't want to take the wheel and drive it into a ditch. It isn't always the pilot, but I'd be lying if I were to blame all of my bad games on variance.
This game saw an amusing deja vu moment where Marath played out Growing Rites of Itlamoc and we had visions of him assembling the same board state yet again. The Nekusar player drew most of the Marath player's attention, thank goodness, and that pretty much opened me up to be able to durdle a little and try to draw into my combo.
I was able to get Jhoira out was able to play a Consecrated Sphinx to give my card draw a nice little kick. I had started the game with Retraction Helix in hand and soon had drawn into Banishing Knack. Both of these instants will combo with either Traxos, Scourge of Kroog or Battered Golem to let me bounce and re-cast a zero drop artifact an infinite number of times. I also run mana rocks like Mana Vault, and before I knew it I had drawn into the combo.
With Traxos out and Retraction Helix cast on him, I used Mana Vault to make infinite mana. The Marath player pointed out that I actually had infinite colored mana, as I had a Chrome Mox out as well. I replayed Jhoira and drew into Molten Nursery, which pings my opponents for 1 damage when I cast a colorless spell.
I won that last game, but was reminded that I don't enjoy combo wins anywhere near as much as wins on the battlefield. I don't have a real problem with combo wins but for some reason I always feel like I'm getting away with something, while a win in the trenches feels more "earned" somehow.
EDH League
I came into the second of three Saturdays in April not even in the league's top 5. I was now mostly hoping to win a game at some point over the course of the month. I'm playing Marath dino tribal and Horde of Notions but wasn't hopeful that either deck would be able to pull off a win at all.
Pickup Game
I hit the store early enough to get in a pickup game, or at least part of a pickup game.
It was a four player affair and I decided to trot out my Hallar, Firefletcher deck. I was up against Bruna, the Fading Light, Lazav the Multifarious and Yennet, Cryptic Sovereign. The Bruna player got out to a good start and was poised to be able to meld Bruna with Gisela to make Brisela, Voice of Nightmares when the Yennett player exiled Gisela to save the table from that headache.
He had been saving his Swords (or Path?) for my Hallar, but Gisela seemed like a better target at the time. I then dropped a Forgotten Ancient alongside my the turn one Hardened Scales and the Hallar that were already out and things got a little crazy. Forgotten Ancient got two counters every time a player cast a spell and on my next turn I was able to move something like fourteen counters over to Hallar. I had enough mana to kick two spells on my turn and do around 30 damage to my opponents. I then swung Hallar at the Lazav player to kill him.
I had another kicker spell in hand, but we also were past our usual start time for league. We had been waiting for one of our regular players and he had just arrived. The Bruna player wiped the board and I had to apologize and step away to get names written down and then split up the tables for league. I don't know what happened in the rest of the game, but I was still at 30 life so in my head I am chalking the game up as a win, or as close enough to a win to make me feel pretty good.
Game One
For my first league game I decided to go with Marath, Will of the Wild. I was at a four player table, up against Azami, Lady of Scrolls, Kumena merfolk tribal and Gishath, dinosaur tribal. It was the sort of group that might have made for an easy win with Horde of Notions but I was saving that deck for a table that would require lots of answers.
I was able to get out a turn one Soul Warden but it didn't take long for the Gishath player to land a Rampaging Ferocidon which kept me from gaining any more life. That made the Suture Priest in my hand seem less than useful, and it wound up being stranded there for the next two hours.
We all jostled for position for the entire game, with Gishath having the most consistently strong boardstate. The most interesting moment was probably when the Azami player kicked a Rite of Replication on a 5/5 trample haste dinosaur that the Gishath player had on the field and swung all of them at him in retaliation for all the aggro he had been dealing with from my tablemate's dinosaurs.
The Kumena player had his focus on the Gishath player and I was flying under everyone's radar. That would have been great if I were playing combo, but I was hoping to draw into a ton of enrage trigger dinosaurs so I could play with Marath's ability to ping them. The only dinosaur I got out in the early game was a Ravenous Daggertooth, which would gain me 2 life if it was pinged. Nobody was gaining any life that game thanks to the Ferocidon on the battlefield across from me.
The game wound up stretching our really long i part because the Azami player played a Fatespinner, forcing each of us to skip either our draw, our combat or our main phase. Just as I'm sure he intended, we all usually skipped combat, but fortunately he never drew into a combo. I could have pinged it to death at any time but honestly didn't mind having the time to try to draw into something the deck wanted to try to do.
I didn't draw into much but I was able to play out a Ghalta, which was soon followed up by another Ghalta on the Gishath player's board.
For some reason the Kumena player decided it would be fun to try to speed the game along and he played a Coat of Arms on a table with three opponents that all had dinosaurs. I guess he was in "YOLO" mode. That helped the Gishath player the most.
I had blown up a Strionic Resonator on the Azami player's board earlier in the game with Ancient Grudge and it was still in my graveyard, so when the Azami player inexplicably decided to send four 5/5 dinosaurs that I think were 9/9s thanks to Coat of Arms, I flashed back Ancient Grudge to blow up the Coat of Arms. I then used Path and Swords to remove two more of them, blocked one and only took 8 damage. I was at the highest life total, so that might have been why, but I wasn't inclined to want to lose any more life than I had to lose.
We soon found ourselves up against the two hour time limit for the game and when it hit on the Gishath player's turn we'd each get a five minute turn before the game was declared a draw. I had no way to kill anyone, so on my turn I decided to wipe the board, play a couple of little creatures including the Suture Priest that had been stuck in my hand, and passed turn. With no nonland permanents, nobody had a way to win and the game ended as a draw.
I should note that this game was the first time I had ever seen Smothering Tithe out for the whole game and at least half the time players paid 2 mana rather than give the Smothering Tithe's owner a treasure. I was responsible for at least half of those payments and it was quite... smothering. I was impressed with the table's ability to mostly "do the right thing" and not just hand the Gishath player the game by giving him tons of mana.
That's not very exciting, but it was actually a pretty interesting game. I do see how running Marath without any true combo finishers is a little underwhelming, but I knew that going into the month. This build is meant to be fun and casual. More often than not, that means winning fewer games.
Game Two
My second game had me on Horde of Notions and up against a really strong table. I was with Azami again and we were faced with an Arcum Daggson player and the Aminatou player who won two months with her back in 2018. It wasn't going to be easy.
I knew it was going to be especially difficult when the Arcum Daggson started the game with an early Torpor Orb. My deck's wincon relies on ETB triggers, so I was going to need to remove that at some point. I had a Krosan Grip in hand, and made the decision to blow up the Mana Vault that the Azami player dropped on turn one, figuring that if he won the game early that would be worse than being stuck under a Torpor Orb for a while.
The early to mid-game was notable for the Aminatou player doing his best to freak about about how the game would be over if the Arcum player were able to untap with his commander in play and able to tutor for an artifact. I don't know that he was wrong, but he sure was emphatic about how he felt about Arcum. I share a distaste for that particular commander, having seen it in action before, but the Azami player wasn't much less dangerous.
We saw a series of overloaded Cyclonic Rifts and a lot of really interactive back-and-forth struggles, including counterspell battles between Azami and Arcum. It was a really interesting game and I was able to partipate with removal every now and then.
My problem was the Torpor Orb.
I wound up spending the last twenty minutes or so of the game stuck with the win in my hand but no way to go for it. With all ETB triggers suppressed, my Food Chain, Purphoros and Squee weren't going to do me much good. I actually had a window where I could have gone for it, but despite the pretty decent amount of removal in the deck I simply wasn't getting any draw.
I should note that this game also saw a Smothering Tithe in play, this time under the Aminatou player's control. Ironically, he also played Omniscience at least twice and still was never able to turn that into a win. He simply didn't have the right cards in hand to get there.
In the end there was a dramatic exchange where I tried to evoke a Night Incarnate to try to set the Azami player back. It felt like he was very close to winning. The two blue players then threw counterspells onto the stack until in the end the Azami player got his way. He kept his board and I think on his next turn, or possibly the turn after, he was able to combo off, drop Lab Man and draw into the win.
It was a little rough to be stuck under that Torpor Orb but I had also been assuming that any attempt I made to win would have been swiftly countered anyways. The Azami player hadn't played with us in months so I was happy to see him get a win on the day.
Final Thoughts
I ran the points and headed home.
Probably as the result of players not showing up or having to leave after only one round, I was able to creep up into the top five. Our current top two players are very strong and while I'll probably wind up the month on the board, I'm unlikely to crack the top 3.
Over on CoolStuffinc.com tomorrow I'll have a column arguing the "con" side of the argument over whether or not planeswalkers should be allowed as commanders in our format.
In our league we'll have a new theme for May. That theme is commanders with the word "Artifact" or "Enchantment" in their text box. I'm thinking of going with Hanna, Ship's Navigator and Sydri, Galvanic Genius. I'm not convinced I can turn either one into a powerhouse but I love the art on both of them and I think they'd be fun to build and play. I ought to be able to load both of them up with enough control elements to have a chance.
On a side note, I again find myself thinking of building Food Chain Prossh. I'll need a good excuse, but he's on my mind. My only concern is that when Prossh goes off, he's not particularly fun for anyone - possibly even his controller. Still, I opened up a foil Prossh a while back and it's been sitting in a binder waiting patiently for me to get around to building it.
That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!