After some concern earlier today about potential winter storms dropping freezing rain on my area, the weather turned out to be incredibly mild and I was able to easily head out to the card shop for Commander night.
I wound up getting a solid six games in tonight, five of which were with a pod of 3, and the last was with a pod of 4.
Y'shtola, Night's Blessed vs Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer and Gisa, the Hellraiser
I had a fairly slow start, and was mostly saved from Gisa's incredible amounts of undead violence thanks to the protection of an early Propaganda.
Consequently, Gisa rather swiftly removed Brudiclad from the game, and I had time to mount some defense and turn the game around. Thanks to the control elements in the deck, and Y'shtola's life drain effect to keep me reasonably healthy, I was able to take the win over the Gisa player.
Cloud, Planet's Champion vs Grist, Voracious Larva and Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker
I kept an incredibly greedy hand. One land, but I had Sol Ring and Inspiring Statuary. Surely I would draw another land fairly soon, and be able to play the game, right?
Anyways I was behind for much of the game with an outrageous resource deficit. By the time I started catching up properly, Shirei - who also had a Turn 1 Sol Ring, and but didn't keep nearly as bad a hand otherwise - was so thoroughly established with their engine that awaiting their victory was absolutely just a formality.
Cloud vs Grist and Daxos the Returned
Unhappy with how Cloud played in the previous game (which was, admittedly, almost entirely my fault for keeping such a bad starting hand), I shuffled him up again.
This time, I kept a 5-land hand and had a turn 1 Esper Sentinel. The Sentinel didn't give me a lot of card draw, but it provided just enough resources to give me the win. Cloud with a Conqueror's Flail was able to two-shot each of my opponents, and Grist wasn't able to take me out despite an incredibly frightening Valgavoth, Terror Eater getting reanimated.
Clever Concealment allowing me to save my Flail was easily the winning play.
Baral, Chief of Compliance vs Urabrask and Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER
I very quickly lost this game. I had a difficult time getting spells that could let me draw deeper into my deck, and Cloud heavily focused me down with their attacks.
Baral vs Belbe, Corrupted Observer and Grist
Much like with Cloud, I was unhappy with Baral's performance in the previous game and so I shuffled the deck back up for a second game.
This time, Grist scooped a few turns after I played Harbinger of the Seas, as they had nothing but non-basic lands so they were hard-locked from playing the game. This left the game a one-on-one between myself and the Belbe player, and my collection of counter magic meant there wasn't much of anything that they could do to stop me from just swiftly taking the game.
I dropped Enter the Infinite, drew my deck, left one card behind, and Belbe scooped after seeing their last card draw and concluding they couldn't do anything.
After this, both of my opponents for the past five games had to leave, but I was able to join another pod that had room.
Lathliss, Dragon Queen vs The Ur-Dragon, Nyla, Shirshu Sleuth, and Gogo, Master of Mimicry
This game played incredibly long, slow, and grindy. Gogo had control over almost the entire game, in part because of their having a bevy of powerful abilities they could copy - including the activated abilities from their Fetchlands allowing them to ramp their mana to an absurd degree.
Eventually, to reset the board and keep Gogo in check, I dropped a Blasphemous Act, clearing away the board. I tried to follow up by replaying Lathliss, but Gogo burned a ton of resources to keep me from getting my Dragon Queen back onto the table. This left Ur-Dragon and Nyla free to build up on their turns instead, a self-admitted miscalculation on Gogo's part.
Fortunately, Gogo was still the target for the rest of the table, which gave me breathing room to reestablish a board position of my own. Getting several card draws off of my copy of Dragon's Hoard definitely helped me on that front.
Dragon's Tempest, finally being able to replay Lathliss again, a handful of other Dragons, and an overloaded Vandalblast to wipe Nyla's board was what ultimately gave me the position I needed to take the game over the rest of the way, taking out Nyla first. After soaking a hit from Ur-Dragon's Intent the Dreamer, I won the next turn thanks to Wrathful Red Dragon's triggered ability meaning that the air force I swung in with was definitely dealing the Ur-Dragon enough damage to finish the game out.
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