I hope you all had a peaceful, enjoyable Thanksgiving - I certainly did, as the Thanksgiving Holiday meant that the card shop was closed for the day yesterday, so I got to take a night off even from my Professor duties.
But tonight was no longer Thanksgiving: It was Friday, and that meant Commander Night at the card shop. I got in four games tonight, three of which were with only three players in the pod.
The Wandering Minstrel vs Mr. Foxglove and Ghost of Ramirez de Pietro/Brinelin the Moon Kraken
The first game of the night, using my Minstrel deck that has been modified a little bit to be even more Token-oriented in spite of my original plans for the deck.
On my end, I managed to get the Minstrel in play, and on the turn I hit my fifth Town, I had both Divine Visitation and Roar of Resistance in play, meaning that instead of generating a 2/2 Elemental, Minstrel was instead cranking out 4/4 Angels with Flying and Vigilance each combat, Angels that then had Haste due to the Roar of Resistance.
A few turns of generating Angels and swinging a little bit of damage around were halted by Foxglove destroying my Visitation, and Ghost Kraken swinging at me with a massive Ojer Kaslem that they had previously stolen from Foxglove, which ate most of my Angels when I blocked to avoid the potential damage since they had been all but announcing plans to drop a Cyclonic Rift during their first Main Phase, until they had realized that they wanted to swing the Ojer Kaslem.
However, with my Tokens still growing stronger, I thought I had a turn that I could finish both of them off. Foxglove had no fliers, and Ghost Kraken had too few blockers to stop my damage from coming through thanks to Summon: Fat Chocobo's Kerplunk ability giving Trample to my field. Using Minstrel's last ability to buff my board, I swung out with what should have been a lethal turn... had Moon Kraken not proceeded to jump through hoops to ultimately hit me with an Aetherize, removing my board presence and ultimately handing Foxglove the win.
Baral, Chief of Compliance vs Jetmir, Nexus of Revels and Ghost/Kraken
Ghost Kraken and I had to work pretty hard together to keep Jetmir under control so that we weren't run over by a hoard of tokens that were buffed to the high heavens by Jetmir. Several cards hit the field on Jetmir's end that mass-produced Tokens and kept Jetmir active almost the entire time that the Cat Demon Crime Lord was in play.
I was able to survive one or two attacks from Jetmir thanks to Propaganda keeping them from being able to swing out at me in force. This gave me enough breathing room that I was able to win with a High Tide turn, first dropping Enter the Infinite to draw my deck, and then barely having the mana leftover to drop Thassa's Oracle and win the game off of the Merfolk's entry trigger.
Kamahl, Heart of Krosa/Gilanra, Caller of Wildwood vs Dr. Eggman and Ghost/Kraken
Shifting gears from my "nearly-no creatures" Baral deck, I pulled out my mono-green "windmill slam big creatures into play" list...
Which really didn't windmill slam very many big creatures into play, this game. I actually won mostly off the back of my Mana Dorks, pumped by Kamahl's combat trigger. Birds of Paradise, a few one-mana Elves, and Elvish Archdruid were the bulk of my forces, alongside both of my Commanders, and the one non-Kamahl "big creature" I dropped: Jumbo Cactuar.
With Heroic Intervention keeping my Cactuar in play when Ghost Kraken tried to remove it, I was able to win by throwing the Cactuar at Eggman, and everything else at Ghost Kraken, hitting Eggman with a Trampler packing 10,003 power, and around 36 damage worth of Elves, Bird, and Kamahl, each player having taken a bit of damage previously already.
Saheeli, Radiant Creator vs Karona, False God, Tatsunari, Toad Rider, and Ghost/Kraken
The fourth and final game of the night for me, and the only one with four players as one of the shop's employees was able to sneak in to join us for a round. I haven't used my Saheeli for a while, so I decided to shuffle her up and throw her against the field.
A fairly slow game for the lot of us, and I'm pretty sure the only game I've ever seen the Ghost Kraken player not have a turn 1 Wizard Class which was part of what made it slow on their end.
Because Ghost Kraken didn't have a maximum hand size, the copy of Mystic Redaction that they had in play ended up milling us all quite dramatically - between Rhystic Study and several heavy draw spells, they were discarding between five and seven cards for a few turns, hitting us all for double-digits worth of mill.
On my end, I barely survived a round with Karona in play through a little bit of light politics. My use of Aether Revolt and a few Energy generators wound up being key to my winning the game - in particular, Aetheric Amplifier, as the effect doubling my number of Energy Counters meant exponentially-increasing damage from the enchantment. In fact, my final turn, after Karona and Ghost Kraken had been taken out of the game, saw me hit a combination that I hadn't considered the full ramifications of:
Using Saheeli's combat trigger, I made a copy of Aether Revolt, then immediately left combat. Now with two copies of Revolt, I activated the Amplifier to double my then-19 Energy Counters - which thanks to Izzet Generatorium, gave me 20 Counters in total. Each Aether Revolt triggering for 20 damage meant popping Tatsunari for a total of 40 damage, finishing them off and taking the win in the end.
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