After what felt like a lot longer than the two weeks it's actually been since I've had any card gaming of actual substance to talk about, I made it out to my usual card shop for a Commander night.
I got in four games of Commander tonight, two were played with my Narci deck, finally scratching that two-week old itch to pull her back out, and the other two were played with my Saheeli deck, which remains an absolute blast to play. Three of these games were with pods of 3, and only the last was a full pod of 4.
Game 1: Saheeli vs. Rafiq of the Many and Atraxa, Praetor's Voice - Loss
The Rafiq deck is one that I've played against before, and much like that game nearly three months ago, the game went incredibly quickly in Rafiq's favor. A turn 1 Noble Hierarch led into a turn 2 Yuan-Ti Malison, this in turn being followed up by a turn 3 Rafiq hitting the table for an immediate 8 damage swing that triggered two instances of venturing into dungeons.
Rafiq kept that pressure up, building his board with more and more effects to make the snake hit harder and harder as it swung in on its own, and managed to find answers to every attempt to put a stop to the oppressive value from the unblockable rogue and the dungeon effects. The game was over in swift course as a result.
Game 2: Narci vs. The Archimandrite and Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph - Loss
The Archimandrite was played by the same pilot as Rafiq, and was likewise a deck I played against nearly three months ago as outlined in the above-linked post.
This game, like the previous game, went by rather quickly. It had a somewhat slower start due to the different decks in play, but a Shiny Impetus on my Satyr Enchanter meant that I was doing a lot of Archimandrite's work for him. I also wasn't able to do many Enchantress-y things due to getting severely mana flooded, and the few things I did accomplish primarily kept Ghyrson Starn held back from accomplishing much of anything during his turns.
The game winning turn came when Archimandrite, still at 37 life due to Ghyrson and I not being able to punch much damage through, swung one creature at each of us, then played Beacon of Immortality to double his life total, meaning that both Archimandrite and his other creature each got +37 power. As Ghyrson and I had done some damage to each other, and I had been plugging away at myself to some degree with my own lands, this resulted in a sudden and practical OHKO.
After this game, two other players arrived, friends of the two with whom I had been playing and that they had been waiting on, as the two were waiting to get product from the Tarkir: Dragonstorm prerelease going on at the time before jumping into playing.
Two other nearby players, however, were looking for somebody to play against, so I shuffled Narci up once more to play.
Game 3: Narci vs. Hazel of the Rootbloom and Brinelin, the Moon Kraken/Ghost of Ramirez DePietro - Win
This game was long, slow, and incredibly durdly. I once again got heavily mana flooded, and spent a good dozen turns playing lands and mana rocks with only a few enchantments here or there making their way to the table. Hazel could have very easily been putting out threatening damage despite a somewhat mediocre board, but was electing to just sit and build up the squirrel army a little. Meanwhile, Brinelin played a serious game of draw-go, including using Jace Beleren to do nothing but let all three players draw constantly. The extra draw power from Jace is, quite frankly, the main reason I was finally able to draw through my mana and start generating a proper presence on the table.
And once I did establish that presence, I quickly became not quite the archenemy, as Hazel continued to not do much of consequence, but definitely the main target for Brinelin. I eventually hit a few Sagas, including most prominently the Battle at the Helvault, and once the Avacyn token hit the table, that turned the game over to me in incredibly short order. The life drain from Narci as my Sagas ran their course certainly helped as well.
The two I joined for this game left the shop after, having plans later in the weekend that they needed to prepare for. I returned to watching the first pod I had joined with, and eventually one of them needed to leave for personal reasons, opening a space up for one final game of the night in my only pod of 4.
Game 4: Saheeli vs. Breena, the Demagogue, Baylen, the Haymaker, and Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER - Win
To start with, the Cloud was a proxied copy of the face commander for the upcoming Final Fantasy MtG set's Commander decks. All of us were completely on board with it being used.
The game itself began with Baylen hitting the ground running, with a turn 1 Sol Ring leading into artifacts to reduce spell costs, as well as an Impact Tremors to throw damage around with their rabbit tokens entering the field. The rest of us began to build up much more slowly, and all three of us quickly punched Baylen down quite low in life. Once Baylen's life was fairly low, Cloud took note of Breena's board and comparatively hefty life total - the owl was still sitting at around 30 life when the rest of us were in the low 20s or even the teens. This prompted the equipment deck to turn around and focus fire towards Breena for several turns, while I continued to plug away at building a board presence. An attempted Blasphemous Act to deal with the increasingly large sluggers was met with Cloud's board and the Breena alone being made indestructible, meaning that the players most hurt by the mass removal were myself and Baylen, the two players who were overall in the worst positions at the time as it was.
Once Cloud eliminated Breena, it became a somewhat frantic effort on my part to build up some defense against the massive mercenary. Fortunately, Cloud turned towards Baylen to remove the rabbit from the game, buying me one final turn. Even more fortunately, that turn was all that I needed. With some significant luck - and no small amount of calculating out energy generation and energy costs, which my brain is still somewhat fried by - I was able to get my Commander in play, then use a Gonti's Aether Heart to take a second turn. During the second turn, using Saheeli's "start of combat" effect in conjunction with a Lightning Runner and Aetherwind Basker, I was able to swing through Cloud's relatively meager blockers and take the win.
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