A bit of a spoiler alert, I didn't win a single game tonight. But eh, that's just how Commander goes sometimes. Still had a blast with the pod of 3 I joined in with, making a pod of 4 for every game.
Game 1 - Nelly Borca, Impulsive Accuser vs. Gitrog, Ravenous Ride, Amalia Benavides Aguirre, and Red Death, Shipwrecker
My inaugural game using my newest deck, and this was not a great game for it. The Gitrog player has been burned by Nelly decks in the past, and especially with the Gitrog, Ravenous Ride there isn't much that can be done if Nelly could've stayed on board to lock the behemoth frog monster down with her Suspect-and-Goad attack trigger.
What this translates to is that Gitrog hated me down incredibly hard, incredibly early. I did a little bit of Goading and did have a good time with my deck for its inaugural game, but it was nowhere near enough to keep me in the game for long.
Game 2 - Krenko, Mob Boss vs. Loot, Exuberant Explorer, Amalia, and Sokrates, Athenian Teacher
This game was a slightly slow start, but once I got Krenko down, I was able to expand my board presence decently. My first use of Krenko generated 4 tokens, but everybody at the table knew what Krenko could do if left unchecked. Still, everybody else at the table were also generating frightening threats of their own. Except for Sokrates, who I did knock down to 6 life, only for Loot's player to finish them off on their next turn.
While trying to dig through my deck to find answers - and, more to the point, to find one of my deck's infinite combo lines - I inadvertently triggered Amalia's "20 power, destroy the board" effect. After which, Amalia played an Ascent from Avernus to revive almost their entire graveyard, and the writing was simply on the wall at that stage.
Game 3 - Narci, Fable Singer vs. Jacob Hauken, Inspector, Doran, the Siege Tower, and Kastral, the Windcrested
The first few turns of the game saw everybody simply building up their mana, but a hefty turn 4 from Hauken's player, fueled by a High Tide, saw Hauken become the table's archenemy thanks to a host of free spells powering their field. Unfortunately, the free spells, combined with a Shark Typhoon generating an army of flying shark tokens, was just too much. None of the rest of us were able to find sufficient answers to handle Hauken's ever-growing board and ability to cast effectively every spell they could want for free.
Game 4 - Nelly Borca vs. Tinybones, Bauble Burglar, Kastral, and Doran
An early Nelly and Tinybones set the game up as quite aggressive, Kastral played a Mockingbird to copy Tinybones to make discarding quite ridiculous for us all, and a Rankle's Prank from the actual Tinybones player filled up their joint stash quite decently, and wiped most of the early creatures.
Doran dropped a collection of enchantments to bolster his own position, while I tried to rebuild. A moderate lack of card draw kept me from being able to bounce back as quickly as I would have liked, but a Smuggler's Share helped a little on that front.
Tinybones was the first to fall, with both Kastral and Doran focusing them down fairly hard.
Last March of the Ents gave Doran an outrageous board, prompting Kastral to play a mass bounce spell to buy time to find answers. It proved insufficient, as Noxious Revival brought Last March back, allowing Doran to replay their entire board and run away with the game.
I realized on my drive home from the card store that I didn't draw as many cards as I should have been. The last handful of turns, I completely forgot Nelly's trigger, but given Doran's imposing army of trees, I don't think that the extra cards would have saved me in the end. I simply wasn't able to find anything I needed to deal with the field that they established, and the odds were against me drawing my few potential outs, especially as Doran was sitting at over 100 life by the end of the game.
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