For tonight's Commander night, I only brought one deck with me, a modified version of the Aetherdrift Energy precon. I wanted to get in as many games with the deck as I could, as I've never played an Energy deck before and wanted to get as good a feel for it as possible.
Plus I've been considering putting together a Crystals deck for the Final Fantasy TCG, and Energy is a highly similar mechanic in many ways, so finding out if I enjoy this style of deck will also serve to tell me if it would be worth investing in the cards for a Crystals deck. Bonus points, as it were. I digress, today's post isn't about the FFTCG, it's about Commander.
There was also a small, unexpected bonus of being a Commander Party, so there was a small Aetherdrift racing-themed addition to the rules in the first of the four games that we played.
For all four of the following games, I was playing this Saheeli, Radiant Creator deck.
Game 1 vs Vnwxt, Verbose Host, Zinnia, Valley's Voice, and The Infamous Cruelclaw - Win
A quick summation of the first few turns: Zinnia was mana screwed, Vnwxt jetted out the gates swinging hard and fast, Cruelclaw was off to a decently fast start as well, and I built my position with a handful of Energy producers and a few small payoffs.
Vnwxt being a deck ostensibly built to make use of the "Start your engines!"/Speed mechanic from Aetherdrift got to make the most use of the race track from the Commander Party rules. Zinnia's player was incredibly grumpy about the addition of the speed mechanic, referring to it as being incredibly stupid and outright refusing to recognize it was an available option for them. Cruelclaw and I both simply forgot to even think about our Speed for the most part, as our decks did not intend to make use of it from the onset.
Eventually, we all kind of just stopped remembering to use the Aetherdrift Racetrack, because it added entirely too much to keep in mind easily. I still kind of like it in theory, personally, but with a deck that wasn't thinking about Speed, and with me having been genuinely unaware of the Commander Party until I had arrived at the store, it wasn't something I had been mentally prepared to take any advantage of.
Regardless. Between Vnwxt's early, evasive aggression and heavy mill package and Cruelclaw's genuinely powerful combat damage trigger, the game looked like it was set to be a battle between the two of them. Zinnia, having a heavy mana drought, eventually scooped.
I managed to resolve an Aether Revolt, and with my handful of Energy producers, I was able to stabilize on the field and took out Vnwxt's player, with Cruelclaw scooping not long after as I was able to consistently keep the mercenary weasel out of play with Conversion Apparatus providing me Energy counters on demand to fuel Aether Revolt's triggered ability.
Game 2 vs Zinnia, Three-Dog, Galaxy News DJ, and Hanna, Ship's Navigator - Loss
I didn't keep particularly detailed notes from this game, but the short of it was this:
Everybody got to do their thing, but Three-Dog did their things significantly harder. I tried to stabilize, but their board of ever-growing tokens and mass of enchantments, with Kellan the Fae-Blooded powering the tokens up dramatically, just overpowered the rest of us.
Game 3 vs Skeleton Ship, Veyran, Voice of Duality, and Hylda of the Icy Crown - Loss
Skeleton Ship was the Three-Dog player from the previous game, and was swiftly bullied down to 1 life. This in addition to the fact that both Veyran and Hylda somewhat countered what the Skeleton Ship deck planned to do lead to the Skeleton Ship getting largely left alone after this.
This opened me up to aggression, and I was in fact the first player to be taken out. Charmbreaker Devils with Veyran doubling their triggers suddenly became a lethal threat that there was nothing I could do to stop.
Ironically enough, Veyran then scooped a few turns after due to Hylda's field of Enchantments making them effectively untouchable, as the Skeleton Ship player learned over several turns of not managing to do anything except delay the inevitable.
Game 4 vs Gavi, Nest Warden, Kwain, Itinerant Meddler, and Jan Jansen, Chaos Crafter - Loss
An early High Noon from Gavi combined with a ton of card draw from Kwain meant an absurd amount of effective mill at the table, as everybody was drawing three to four cards a turn, but could only cast one spell.
This caused the game to drag out enormously, as Stax is wont to do. My attempt to use Primal Prayers to Flash creatures in during my opponent's turns, circumventing the "one spell per turn" restriction from the High Noon, was stymied by removal, though I was able to get two creatures into play off of it.
Eventually, the High Noon was removed, I was able to drop a number of mana rocks, and then Jan cast Farewell, exiling everything except for their Daretti, Scrap Savant.
This was followed by Gavi managing to take down Daretti, then cycling a Decree of Annihilation during Kwain's upkeep. This left everybody's boards completely barren. Jan scooped at that stage, as there was nothing that they could possibly do with an empty board. I was soon after taken out by Gavi.
Kwain, who had a massive hand due to a Reliquary Tower meaning that they'd been the only one not discarding everything that they drew, slowly but surely built a small, but effective pillow fort while Gavi took me down over the course of two turns. The game ended in a draw when Kwain cast a Windfall, with Kwain and Gavi drawing over thirty cards and decking out.
CONCLUSION
So, this isn't a normal section of these blog posts, but since I went into tonight planning to play my new Saheeli deck as much as possible and feel it out, see if I enjoyed the kind of deck it is, let alone enjoyed the deck itself, and in fact opened tonight's post up by bringing attention to that idea, I figured that it would be worth at least a small "conclusion" segment here.
And the conclusion I reached is that this deck was an absolute blast to play. I don't often feel like I get a deck 100% "right" in its first iteration, and I don't know if I would say that even this one is 100% right, but it's incredibly near it, in my opinion. There was nearly no point in any of the four games where I felt like I had zero options on what I could do, with the obvious exception of the fourth and final game after Farewell and Decree of Annihilation completely wiped out the board. Even if all I did was enter combat and make a 5/5 copy of one of my mana rocks or my lands with Saheeli and swung with it, it was still an option that I had available to me. Keeping track of my triggers for when I generated Energy counters and everything I could do with them was a small bit of extra bookkeeping, but nothing strenuous.
With Energy being such a sparsely utilized mechanic, it also isn't a deck that feels like it will need to be updated with any significant frequency, which is great for me as I am a budget player at heart. Are there ways that the deck could be upgraded at expense? Sure. But it felt good where it currently is. Under the recently-revealed bracket system, Moxfield estimates the deck to be a Bracket 2 - the "Core" experience, roughly where preconstructed decks are tuned to land. But it managed to hang on its own in Game 4 against the Jan Jansen deck, whose owner reported to be Bracket 4.
Now, is that in part because of Gavi's High Noon meant that everybody was slowed down drastically? Sure. But the point stands that the deck felt good. It felt strong enough to hang with heavier hitting decks, but not overbearing to where it ran away with the other, "lower power" games.
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