Friday Night Magic Commander Night - January 10th, 2025

I always go to Commander nights on my own, because I don't really have anybody else to take with me or otherwise play with, so I'm at the mercy of finding folks who have space for at least one person to join their pod. Tonight, I was able to find room with a pod of 3.

Game 1, Narci vs. Prismatic Bridge and The Archimandrite

The first game was with a pod of 3 while waiting on the fourth to show up at the shop. I played my recently-built Narci, Fable Singer deck. This game went fairly quickly, with the Prismatic Bridge player dropping the Bridge kind of early. Because I was curious what the deck would do, and because the fourth player showed up partway into the game, while I had the opportunity to destroy it, I let it ride.

When they dropped their only creature in the deck, Ink-Treader Nephilim, they proceeded to use Ink-Treader's effect, which combined with myself and Archimandrite's boards meant that they were able to draw literally two dozen cards, and generate a dozen and a half tokens, which were then pumped into absurdly large creatures. The game was done after that.

Game 2, Xanathar/Gyruda vs Xanathar, The Archimandrite, and Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls

With our fourth player joining us, I was about to play my Abdel Adrian & Far Traveler deck, but then I saw that the fourth player was using his Secret Lair Drop art of Xanathar, Guild Kingpin as his Commander, so I pulled out my own Xanathar deck, which has a "second" Commander using Gyruda, Doom of Depths as a Companion.

Everybody started off a little bit slowly, but thanks to Valgavoth giving everybody some extra card draw through Stormfist Crusader we all got to "do our thing", at least a little bit. With myself and the other Xanathar player stealing cards from each of the other two players' decks - we bizarrely never targeted each other - the game got pretty out-of-hand pretty quickly with patently absurd numbers of triggers and card theft.

Eventually, between Valgavoth's group slug antics, and The Archimandrite's outrageous life gain, the game's winner became pretty clear, though we played it out. Ultimately, The Archimandrite wound up taking the win, outracing the Chandra, Awakened Inferno Emblems and Spiteful Visions from Valgavoth in a way that myself and the other Xanathar couldn't.

Game 3 Abdel, Far Traveler vs The Ancient One, Ulalek, Fused Monstrosity, and Lord of the Nazgul

So with our third game of the night, I pulled out the Abdel Adrian deck that I had initially intended to play in Game 2: Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward with the Far Traveler Background.

The game started off frighteningly, with the Eldrazi deck quickly dropping dozens of mana worth of mana rocks. If the Ancient One player hadn't played a board wipe, the game would've been finished within just a few minutes thanks to the board state that the Eldrazi player was able to power out. I was able to take out a couple of the Eldrazi's mana rocks afterwards, which slowed the deck down to a manageable level.

Unfortunately, while we were focused on the Eldrazi, the Nazgul player set up a few quiet pieces that enabled an outrageous presence. With a massively boosted Lord of the Nazgul and his Ring-Bearer emblem at its fourth and final stage, the Nazgul ultimately took the win.

Game 4 Abdel, Far Traveler vs Uril, Mist Stalker, Rafiq of the Many, and Go-Shintai of Life's Origin

Unhappy with Abdel's performance in game 3, I played the deck a second time for the fourth game. I had a pretty steady, decent opening and was on-pace to start really "going off" on curve.

Then Uril got adequately Voltron'd up and took me down the turn after I played Abdel, because I was the only person without any flying blockers. Whoops.

I didn't pay much attention to the game after that because I was putting Abdel away at that stage, but Uril got an aura to give Trample and it didn't last very long anyways.

Game 5 Narci vs Prismatic Bridge, Meren of Clan Nel Toth, and Rafiq of the Many

To finish the night out, I pulled Narci back out to give her a second go. With a turn 1 Sol Ring and turn 2 Narci, I had a decent, if not necessarily outrageous opening. Turn 4 I was able to drop a Sandwurm Convergence to protect me from flying creatures and start powering out a steady army of 5/5 Wurms. Remembering what the Prismatic Bridge during the first game of the night, I focused that player down pretty hard.

Meanwhile, Rafiq was swinging at me with an unblockable Yuan-ti Rogue that powered its way through Dungeons, getting a variety of different effects that saw that Yuan-ti hitting 4 rooms per turn, for 3 room activations each. Meren built a little slowly, but started getting some incredibly strong Grey Merchant of Asphodel loops by sacrificing it with different effects, such as Birthing Pod, then reanimating it with Meren.

The Dungeon value proved to be too strong in the end, and Rafiq took the win. I was a little upset, less because of the loss and more because my deck didn't really do many "Enchantress" things the way it's built to do. C'est la vie, sometimes that's how the deck shuffles.

In all, it was an incredibly fun night of Commander. Didn't get a single win, but I got to play all three of my newest decks, and the two absolute newest I got to play multiple times. Well, technically multiple times, considering how quickly Abdel was knocked out of the second game I played it for.