Casual Night
This past Tuesday I headed off to our local game store with the goal of getting in a few games and getting home in time to catch the end of the Bruins and Celtics games. Both teams are in the playoffs, but unlike last Tuesday it wasn't an elimination game for either team.
I headed off with the goal of playing my new Sydri, Galvanic Genius deck at least once. Beyond that I had my Ramos and Narset with me but hadn't planned out any other deck choices for my games. I got there well before 6 but had already missed the first round of games. Fortunately it wasn't too long before I was able to jump into a game with some of the folks who arrived closer to our official start time of 6pm.
Game One
The first game wound up being a six player affair. Normally those can be slow but I didn't even bother to remind everyone to try to play faster than normal. I shuffled up my Sydri, Galvanic Genius deck and figured I'd be a long shot to win. I was up against Jodah, Kynaios & Tiro, Sigarda (Host of Herons), Samut and Avacyn (Indestructible). Without any great flying defense I'd have to fly under the radar and not be a threat in order to survive. Sydri doesn't exactly build an amazing board state, so that probably wouldn't be too hard.
In the early game I didn't have much going on. The Samut player had the best start and was throwing bits of damage around the table pretty freely. The Avacyn player got a Smothering Tithe out and for most of the game was piling up the treasures like crazy. A six player table with mostly janky decks is a great place to land an early Smothering Tithe. You get lots of unpaid draw triggers to make treasures and the level of enchantment removal in everyone's decks is a little lighter than average.
My Sydri deck has a couple of plays I built into it that I really wanted to use. One involves a little artifact called Caltrops. It does 1 damage to each attacking creature, which usually isn't a big deal. Sydri has 2 activated abilities. For a blue mana she can take a non creature artifact and turn it into a creature. For a white and a black she can give that newly minted creature deathtouch and lifelink.
When the Samut player turned his attention to me, I warned him not to attack me. I had both Sydri and Caltrops out but I didn't explain the interaction. I just advised him to not attack me. He considered his options and decided to anyways, so I turned Caltrops into a creature, checked to make sure nobody had removal they wanted to use, and then gave it death touch and lifeline. I only killed two attacking creatures and only gained two life, but it was pretty sweet. The cat was now out of the bag - I wasn't going to surprise anyone with an incoming alpha strike, but I'm still glad I did it. You never know when your stuff will get blown up so if you've got something on board that you can use to protect yourself, you might as well do so.
The Avacyn player spent most of the mid-game growing his board and looking like as soon as he played his commander we were all going to be pretty screwed. The pile of treasures wasn't helping, and after a while I dropped a Wrath of God, losing my own meager board but slowing down the more aggressive players. Avacyn and Sigarda both had armies that I wasn't going to be able to deal with.
I thought I had bought myself some time, but I had handed the Jodah player a huge gift. He was playing a ton of planeswalkers and now had the breathing room to have some fun. On either his next turn or the turn after that he was able to Ult a Jace, Memory Adept, allowing him to have any number of players draw 20.
He decided to have everyone draw 20 cards!
My draw included a possible win, but I had to get back to my turn first. I had drawn into Aetherflux Reservoir.
The Jodah player didn't land a win con on his turn, and it's possible his deck didn't have anything like that. It seemed like a fun pile of planeswalkers but hadn't shown any indication of having anything real nasty sleeved up in it.
The Kynaios & Tiro player did some stuff but nothing so impactful that I remember it. He's an infrequent visitor to our casual nights and doesn't usually threaten to win a game.
The Samut player had tutored for Kiki-Jiki. I don't remember if it was in response to the Jace Ult, or if it was on the K & T player's end step, but he's a guy who is absolutely not shy about winning games. All of his decks run wincons and he had just made the arguably poor choice to show us his after we had all drawn a ton of cards and had the time to prepare for it. Unfortunately for him, the K & T and the Sigarda player were before him in turn order. The former was barely aware that he had half of a combo in hand, but the Sigarda player had already declared that the Samut player wasn't going to get a turn.
The Sigarda player had a ton of counters on his commander and was able to kill the Samut player. I think the Avacyn player then played his commander but I wasn't concerned. He didn't have a haste enabler for her and before long he passed the turn.
On my turn I was able to play Aetherflux Reservoir. I was at 52 life, but thanks to the Jace card draw I had a Cancel and a Swan Song in hand.
The Avacyn player had a Nivenyrral's Disk on the field untapped which I had forgotten about entirely.
I paid a blue mana to make Aetherflux Reservoir into a creature and explained what was coming next. They had all seen my Caltrops shenanigans so most of them quickly figured out this was probably game.
Then the Avacyn player popped his disk, putting a board wipe on the stack in response to my Sydri activation.
I responded by paying another blue mana to put another Sydri activation on the stack.
The disk was tapped and I had the mana to pay WB to give my Aetherflux Reservoir deathtouch and lifelink.
Upon resolution of those triggers, but before the disk wiping the board, I confirmed that nobody had removal for my Aetherflux Reservoir now that it had legs. I was clear to pay my 50 life. I did so and again confirmed that nobody had a way to do 2 or more direct damage to me. They didn't, so I cleared the table with activations of my death ray! When Aetherflux Reservoir does 50 damage to an opponent it has lifelink so I gain the life and can pay it again.
Mission accomplished! I was able to check off two things I wanted to do with my Sydri deck in one game. I might now go winless in my league games, but in the grand scheme of things that's OK. I was happy to have built a deck to do a thing and to have seen it do that thing.
It's worth noting that the table discussed the fact that if the Avacyn player had waited until the last possible moment to pop his disk, he would have saved the table. I think if I had paid 50 life and then he had put the board wipe on the stack, it would have blown up my Aetherflux Reservoir and I would have been stuck at 2 life with no board and likely would have died before my next turn. Still, I'll take it. I probably would have screwed up the Nev's Disk timing as well and at that point everyone was ready to move on to the next game. I actually offered to let him go back and do the timing right, even though I'd be out of the game as a result, but nobody felt that was necessary.
Game Two
At that point I moved to another table as we were all mixing up. One of the guys has managed to become one of those players that nobody apparently wants to play with. It's a pity, as he's not a bad guy but he seems clueless about trying to find a balance between his own fun and the enjoyment of his tablemates. He plays pretty brutal decks with lots of forced sacrifice and has a play style that our more casual players don't enjoy. I don't enjoy it that much either, but I'll still shuffle up with him. It's a guaranteed loss unless I'm playing the right deck and really go after him, but I don't begrudge anyone their fair share of wins. It's when someone seems to be obsessed with pushing hard to win every game that I start to find them a little tiresome.
The local Dino Tribal player and I had wanted to get a game in for a while, so I was moving tables so he could join me. We wound up picking up two other players, one of whom wanted to get away from the guys mentioned above and the other just wanted to get into another game.
I was on my Marath Dino Tribal deck, sitting across from the Zacama Dino Tribal player. We were joined by a player on Jodah Superfriends (a tuned list, not the janky one from the previous game) and the Samut player. At the start of the game advised both the Jodah player and the Samut player that they were sitting across from a dirtbag. By that, I of course meant a player who plays really strong cards and decks on casual night. I'm also a dirtbag at times, though I do try to mix it up.
This game was a bit of a disappointment, at least from my perspective. I got out an early Soul Warden and a creature that let me put a Dinosaur on top of my library. I chose Trapjaw Tyrant, thinking that I could block Samut with it and avoid a little aggro from the Samut player. Trapjaw would exile Samut after the first strike damage, but it turned out to not matter.
The Samut player again came out of the gate pretty strong, but the Jodah player managed to land Omniscience, Doubling Season and Tamiyo, the Moon Sage, which of course he ulted. He then tutored up Lightning Bolt proceeded to kill us all with that combo. You play your Lightning Bolt, get it back to your hand thanks to Tamiyo's emblem, and re-cast it thanks to Omniscience.
In his defense, he claimed that the deck either does broken stuff or nothing at all, but it still felt to me like everyone at the table had expected a more enjoyable and battlefield-oriented game. We specifically went to that table and were trying to play with our goofy dino decks. Samut would have fit in fine with a combat-oriented strategy, but it genuinely felt rude for the Jodah player to have come over and essentially "pubstomped" us.
Still, on casual night I try to urge folks to play what they want. Maybe the dude wanted to do busted stuff at a table that probably couldn't handle it and he got his wish. I sometimes want that, so I get it, but it didn't set well with any of us.
The Bruins game was in full swing at that point and I almost packed up and left. I was annoyed with the Jodah player and I wanted to catch part of the game, but they were losing. I realized that if I left the store a little cranky and got home early only to watch my favorite hockey team get blown out, that would really make for a bummer of an evening. Sure, I won a game to kick off the night, but I decided to stick around and get one last game in before heading home. I could also keep half an eye on the score, as the game was playing on one of the TVs.
Game Three
For some reason I decided to switch to my O-Kagachi deck for our last game. I hadn't played it in ages and while it isn't real strong it has enough boardwipes and fogs to usually hang around for a while. It's a Maze's End deck, so it actually has a wincon, even if it isn't super consistent about hitting it.
The Zacama and Samut players stuck with their decks, as the previous game wasn't much of a game for anyone but the winner. The Jodah player switched to a fairly well tuned Nekusar deck. I wasn't thrilled by that, but what can you do? If he crushed us twice in a row, more power to him, I guess.
The early game again saw me not do an awful lot. i was able to play a turn one Spore Frog but didn't do much else in the first few turns. The Zacama player spent his early game trying to ramp. The Nekusar player soon had stuff out to cause us to draw more cards and got his commander out so we were soon drawing 3 and taking 6 damage to start off our turns. The Samut player had a good start but since Zacama and I weren't doing much, he sent his aggro at Nekusar.
I was able to play a District Guide and start playing Guildgates, hoping to fly under the radar. For a while it felt like there were two games going on, as the Zacama player and I had nothing going on and the Nekusar player and Samut player were very active.
The Samut player wound up playing a Wave of Vitriol, probably to try to slow down the Nekusar player. While it impacted everyone, I was the player that it really screwed over. I had five Guildgates at that point in time and was starting to think I might be able to push for the Maze's End win. I had a scapeshift in hand, but now I had to sacrifice all of my artifacts, enchantments and nonbasic lands.
I went to search my library for the basic lands that would replace those non basics and was surprised to not see anything but Forests and Plains. I had built my deck to lean towards Selesnya as I wanted to hit my ramp spells and board wipes as consistently as possible. That meant I wasn't going to be casting my commander anytime soon, but there wasn't much I could do about it.
I think the Samut player on his next turn was finally able to get lethal on the Nekusar player by grabbing a Craterhoof Behemoth. I had to weigh the Nekusar player's damage clock against my ability to outlast the Samut player. I wound up deciding the let the Nekusar player die. I had my Spore Frog out, but also had a fog in hand. Nekusar had been hammering us with damage all game long, so he had to go.
I wound up playing a Scapeshift, sacrificing six basic lands and getting Maze's End, three Guildgates, Thespian Stage and Dark Depths. Somewhere along the way I had gotten a Ranumap Excavator on the field so when I used Thespian Stage to try to make it a copy of Dark Depths and the Samut player blew it up with Wasteland, I was able to get it back out immediately by playing it from my graveyard. I was able to get my Marit Lage token - a 20/20 flying indestructible token creature - and then wipe the board again. Things were looking good.
The Samut player wasn't able to recover and I swung for lethal on my next turn. Now all I had to do was get past the Gishath and Zacama on the Dino player's board.
My Marit Lage was tapped, but when the Zacama player swung in at me I was able to use that fog I had been sitting on. Unfortunately his bigger attackers had vigilance and his Zacama had reach. I had to find an answer for that.
I wound up being able to cast an Enlightened Tutor for Darksteel Mutation, putting it on top of my library. I then cast Guild Summit and tapped one Guildgate to draw it. I was then able to cast it and put it on Zacama and swing over his blockers for game.
I felt a little bad, as the Zacama player almost had me and he doesn't win a ton of games, but I was happy to get that rare second win on the night. I was even happier to not see the Jodah player win with Nekusar. I didn't expect to get a Marit Lage win with O-Kagachi, but it was a reminder that building multiple win con into a deck is essential. Sometimes your Maze's End game has to win on the battlefield, even if that's not its favorite way to try to close out a game.
I was able to get home for the last few minutes of the Bruins game. They lost, but the playoff series is a best-of-seven and my team is only down two games to one. There are plenty of games left to play.
EDH League
I rolled into the first week of May having somehow managed to go winless in all 6 league games I played in April. Normally I set my first goal each month to be just to win one game. For the first time in I-don't-know-how-long I wasn't able to do that, but I was playing some pretty bad decks. I tried an experiment with Horde of Notions, a couple of janky combo wincons and a ton of answers. I often found myself with the win in hand, but I was never able to land it. My goal this month was again relatively modest - I just wanted to try to win a freakin' game.
Game One
My first round saw me up against some really good players. I decided to start with Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain and I found myself playing against Najeela, Erebos and Sliver Overlord. The Najeela player was one of the guys who has in the past managed to win a year of league play, so I pretty much assumed that he was going to roll over us with his warriors.
I started the game with Battered Golem and Mox Amber in my hand so I had two pieces of one of my combos already in hand. I basically played out lands and rocks and got Jhoira out on turn four. Early on I tutored for Retraction Helix, as that's part of my wincon, but I wasn't going to go for it until we hit turn five.
I think Najeela started with a turn one Sol Ring and started swinging on turn three. He started out by attacking the Erebos player, then hit the Slivers player and on the next turn he swung at me. While it was nice that he was spreading damage around, he had his biggest army when he swung at me and he had a warrior that would let him do direct damage before swinging. I went from 40 to 30 and the combat damage put me all the way down to 9. Yikes.
I could have done something about it, but I've been trying to hold back on using early removal. It didn't feel good to lose over three quarters of my life total so quickly and I figured I was done for.
The Sliver Overlord player had his commander out and I think his slivers were unblockable,so on his next turn he could have killed me, but for some reason he didn't. Maybe he felt bad that I had drawn the short straw and wound up being the third player for Najeela to swing at. He could have killed anyone he wanted to kill, but I wasn't going to complain.
On my turn I figured I was dead soon so I might as well go for it. I have a few bad habits, and one of them is to jump into an attempt to combo off without doublechecking everything is ready. I played my Battered Golem, which untaps whenever I play an artifact. I then played Retraction Helix on my Golem so he could tap to bounce an artifact to my hand. It was so simple - I'd bounce my Mox Amber, replay it, draw a card off of Jhoira, do it again and draw into a wincon.
Dear readers, I'm sure many of you see the issue in my clever plan. Battered Golem didn't have haste.
I've screwed up plenty of times in games, even in league play, but it never makes me feel good. I felt like an idiot - I know better but being at 9 life and figuring I was dead soon anyways might have been what got me to lose my focus.
I didn't bother asking for a "take-back" and put my Retraction Helix in the graveyard. I was a little upset at myself, but all was not lost. I had Past in Flames in hand.
I fully expected to not make it to my next turn, but there wasn't much I could do about it. I tried not to mope about my misplay, but I also tried not to appear too nonchalant. Basically, I acknowledged that I was playing like a dumbass (which I was) but also tried not to over-do OR under-do it. I was at the mercy of the whims of my opponents and any indication that I'd be winning on my next turn would probably get me killed.
I passed turn.
The Najeela player had lethal on someone and for some reason he kept rotating his attacks. I had gotten my turn to be hit and it nearly killed me. Now it went back to the Erebos player.
The Najeela player swung for lethal on the Erebos player and we were suddenly down to three of us.
The Slivers player isn't a regular in league, so he didn't decide to kill me just to steal a kill from the Najeela player. I wouldn't have blamed him if he had, but for some reason he sent his attackers at the Najeela player. It wasn't enough but I think it was just out of a desire to take a chunk out of the table bully before we all died. I don't mean that the Najeela player was really being a bully - just that he was playing the strongest deck and sometimes you want to go down swinging if you haven't drawn into any real answers.
When he passed turn, I knew I probably had the win. I had a Cancel in hand and played Past in Flames and then played my Retraction Helix again. I proceeded to execute my combo - successfully this time. I drew an arbitrarily large part of my deck and then started looking for a wincon. I had plenty of mana at that point and even had to kill Jhoira with a Rapid Hybridization just to be able to keep working without drawing myself out.
I wound up playing Molten Nursery and Aetherflux Reservoir and while i could have paid attention to the intricacies of our point system, I just told the table that I killed them with Aetherflux Reservoir after an arbitratrily large number of Amber Mox castings. I probably should have "farmed" points but my decision to wrap things up probably only cost me four polints overall. I don't think anyone likes watching someone draw out the win just to game the system and maximize their league points so I often don't bother.
With a win under my belt, I was pretty happy. I didn't kill the whole table and I screwed up my combo but with a little luck and a little mercy from folks who could have kllled me, I was able to start the month on a positive note.
Pickup Game
After going over our point system with a new player who showed up to join us in round two, we started up a pickup game.
I played Nikya of the Old Ways. The Najeela player switched to Atraxa. Our new player was on Tatyova and we were joined by a player on The Mimeoplasm.
I tried to play an early Elvish Piper but that either got countered or blown up. I then tried to play Nikya but again she was either countered or was blown up. My early game was pretty fruitless. The Atraxa player was the one policing me and he was making good decisions. They just happened to be at my expense.
The Tatyova player was a complete unknown. We'd never played with him before and we had all gone with some relatively weaker, or "fairer" decks just in case he wasn't real experienced. As it turned out, he was fine. He ramped like crazy and before long it was clear that he was probably going to run away with the game. My board was pretty meager, as I was stuck with 6, 7 and 8 drops in hand and no Nikya to help make the mana to cast them. The poor Mimeoplasm player had his commander stolen by the Tatyova player and the guy said he thought it would be funny to kill someone with their own commander so he kept trying to do that.
The Mimeoplasm player has been improving his game and his decks lately, so it was sweet to see him pull some shenanigans involving a Sephulchral Primordial to get a last-second blocker by pulling a Thrummingbird out of the Atraxa player's graveyard.
Somehow we were able to get the Tatyova player under control without anyone dying, but as I feared, the last round one table still playing was able to wrap up their game before we were able to finish up our pickup game.
Game Two
For my second round of league games I managed to draw an even tougher table than I had in my round one game. These days I tend to play two decks for the month, playing each deck once every Saturday, so I had put away Jhoira and pulled out Sydri, Galvanic Genius. It's the deck I had won a game with on Tuesday night, so I knew it had some pop but I still wasn't super confident. I was up against the round one Najeela player, now on Animar, a younger guy who has really been improving, on Bruna, and one of our spikier regulars on Tasigur. The Tasigur player is the same fellow who is a local judge and who set our league's record for points in a day. He did it last year with his Tasigur deck so as soon as a saw what he was playing I knew we had our work cut out for us.
I had no idea how good the Animar deck was, but I've seen Animar decks go off and decided I'd try to keep that from happening. The Tasigur player wins a ton of games, but if the Animar player was regretting not killing me first in round one and wanted to rectify that, I figured it made sense to slow him down. I was able to drop an Imprisoned on the Moon on Animar the turn after he played it, but as it turned out he had no intention of going after me. Fortunately he had also built his Animar deck to be able to work without it, and he wound up doing the most to try to chip away at the Tasigur player.
I wound up spending most of the game trying to balance efforts to keep the Tasigur player in check with trying to find a way to combo off. I had gotten out a turn two Dreamscape Artist but was only able to manage to use him once. I probably should have focused on using him more. The Tasigur player tried to go off using Paradox Engine but the table was able to stop him and i was able to use a Bojuka Bog to exile his graveyard.
I drew into an Utter End and wound up having to use it when the Tasigur player got out a Seedborn Muse and was activating Tasigur on everyone else's turn. I think that was when I walked right into a Narset's Reversal that I should have remembered was in his hand, but fortunately that counter just put Utter End back in my hand and I was able to get it done on my next turn.
I had been sitting on Mycosynth Lattice and hoping to be able to play it and have enough blue mana up to nuke a bunch of the Tasigur player's lands. My hope was to pretty much set him back to the stone age and force him to rely upon rocks alone to win. He is a tremendous player and while it's "dirty pool" it probably would have been relatively effective.
If you're wondering why the Bruna player hadn't been mentioned yet, it's simply because he was stuck on lands. All he had was plains on the field and didn't draw a single blue source all game. Sometimes that happens, but it's never fun and I felt particularly bad that it was happening in a league game. It slipped my mind that my Mycosynth Lattice would have solved his color problems, but I never got to cast it.
Before long the Tasigur player again went for the win. I can't recall what he did at this point but it was the usual infinite mana to let him draw his deck and play his and everyone else's decks to win the game. I'm somehow able to simultaneously be annoyed when someone else pulls off that kind of wincon and yet be driving after my own dirty combos. Don't get me wrong - I'm not flipping-tables mad, but when I've been struggling to keep a combo player in check, I'm close to getting my own wincon out and I'm unable to stop someone from landing their combo it can be pretty aggravating.
I suppose I should have appreciated how bad the Bruna player's game was. He had nothing going on at all. If I hadn't wasted an Imprisoned in the Moon on Animar and a Cancel to back it up, I might have been able to slow down Tasigur even more but I still don't trust that the Animar player wouldn't have combo'ed off just as quickly and killed us all. I doubt he was playing Animar Group Hug, if that's even a thing.
I had started with a win but Sydri had come up short. After my short bout of crankiness abated I congratulated the Tasigur player on his win, which was well earned, and we wound up playing a pickup game.
Pickup Game
I was wearing my Narset "All the turns are mine" shirt so I decided I wanted to get a game in with my favorite dirty Voltron deck. My Narset is now a no-turns, no steps Narset. It runs a bunch of other stuff and can still kill a table with commander damage, but it isn't going to be launching into Part the Waterveil and Expropriate (with Illusion of Choice so I get all turns). I don't want the deck to be bad, but I also don't want it to feel as patently unfair as the best Narset builds can feel.
I was up against The Mimeoplasm, Saheeli Rai and Zedruu, the Greathearted. I used to have a Zedruu deck so I really wanted to see what he'd be able to do with the generous goat lady. The Saheeli Rai player is a fantastic player and the Zedruu player was the guy who won our round two game with Tasigur, but my suspicion was that both of their decks were just a few notches down on the power level. I figured they probably ran combos, but that they weren't likely to threaten an early win and I'd probably get the chance to at least swing a few times with Narset.
I was able to get my girl out on turn five after keeping a hand with five or maybe six lands. I had drawn into a Signet and was able to use a Dreamscape Artist I had played on turn 2 to put Dragon Wings in the graveyard. My plan had been to probably swing at the Saheeli Rai player, but the Zedruu player had dropped a Dissipation field and told me he'd give it to whoever I swung at. Telling the Narset player he isn't going to be able to swing at anyone isn't a great plan. He should have done it as a surprise, but he was shortsighted enough to share that bright idea so I figured I'd try to kill him first.
I dropped a Strionic Resonator put a Dragon Breath enchantment on my commander and swung her at the Zedruu player, getting two Narset triggers. My deck runs a few creatures and I wound up hitting maybe three cards I could use - a Blackblade Reforged and a Helm of the Gods. Both would help out later, but I now had my Narset back in my hand. I assured the Zedruu player that now all he had to do was counter Narset when I went to cast her. He confessed that he didn't run any counterspells and I realized it might not be worth trying to kill him first. Also, I still wanted to see what he deck could do.
I wound up tutoring for a card that could steal a permanent. That would solve my Dissipation Field problem. The Saheeli Rai and Zedruu players are old friends and I had a feeling that if I swung at the former, the Dissipation Field would stay right where it was.
On my next turn I played Narset again and was able to attach Dragon Wings and Dragon Breath to her out of my graveyard. I think the Mimeoplasm player had blown up my Strionic Resonator, though it might have been the Saheeli Rai player, but I was able to swing that turn and get another Narset flop. I think I flopped into Reconnaissance.
At some point I was able to play Penance, which is an enchantment that lets you drop cards onto the top of your library. On my next turn I was able to drop Boros Charm and a couple of "steal" spells for my next Narset attack. I had also equipped my Helm of the Gods and my Blackblade Reforged so when I gave her double-strike with Boros Charm she was lethal. I used the enchantments to steal Zedruu and maybe Dissipation Field.
Without his commander, the Zedruu player was pretty much out of options. On my next turn I was able to swing lethal on him and turn my attention to the Mimeoplasm player. On my Narset trigger I think I hit Corrupted Conscience and used it to steal his commander. It was over 10 power, so it would be lethal even if Narset wasn't. I had also hit a tutor and had grabbed Eldrazi Concription.
On his turn the Mimeoplasm player dropped a Fleet Swallower. He had already hit me with Traumatize, so my graveyard was pretty huge. He then played a Mind Control to steal back his commander! As I said, his card choices and play had improved a lot and I was enjoying watching him start to find more answers and play more legitimate threats in recent weeks. Unfortunately, his now-lethal commander didn't have haste. He did have not one but two Fleet Swallowers at this point. In the previous turn he had dropped a Progenitur Mimic and he swung both at me. I wound up having to mill 23 and then 12 cards, leaving me with just a tiny little stack of a library.
On my next turn I was able to draw into a Vedalken Orrery. I wouldn't have needed it, but I dropped it, put Eldrazi Conscription on top of my library and swung. I wound up hitting for 33 commander damage, so the extra 10 wasn't needed, but for the second time in the week I was able to win two games! It's possible that this last game wasn't the fairest match ever. Even with a no-turns, no-steps Narset, she's still very hard to deal with. I didn't replace all those extra combat steps and extra turns with bad cards, just different cards like Storm Herd and Mind Control spells. I'm running creatures too, which is bad practice in Narset, but the goal is to have a deck that can play in casual games. It isn't an automatic win, but it's proven that it definitely can win in casual games, that's for sure.
Final Thoughts
Being on theme really helps in our league and I'm pretty much always playing on theme. I also managed to steal a win today, so my point total finds me at the top of our league's rankings.
That may not last long, but I'm not going to complain. Our top player, the guy who won last month, isn't going to make it next week so he'll be hard-pressed to make a run for May's top spot. The other guys are great but I think I have a decent shot at it if I don't keep screwing up my wincons. I was lucky as hell to have gotten away with my misstep in my first game and I should really try to keep that from happening again.
Tomorrow I've got a decklist for Fblthp, the Lost going up on CoolStuffInc.com. I'm still not sure how well I did, but I think it's a decent attempt to explore a more cEDH approach to the little homonculus.
Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week1