Another Friday, another Commander Night at the local game store. It was also the Secrets of Strixhaven prerelease event, and I was caught thoroughly off-guard by how many attendees the shop had sold tickets to, which pushed the Commander players into a different play space than usual.
Regardless, three other solo players and I banded together to create a pod of 4 for... Honestly a lot of games, tonight. I brought a good half-dozen or so decks with me, but really wanted to only play one of them - though, for a minor change of pace, I did break out a second, different one.
The two decks I played tonight were:
Sanar, Innovative First-Year
I only pulled out Sanar for the second-to-last game of the night, because I had been playing Vincent fairly non-stop for several hours prior to that. I wanted a change of pace, just for one game... and I wanted to see if I could sneak out a win with the little Goblin.
My opening hand with Sanar was weirdly ideal, in that I actually opened with my two "combo pieces" both in hand. This made the game last a grand total of four of my turns.
Turn 1, I played Temple of Epiphany. Turn 2, Thriving Bluff. Turn 3, a Mountain and the Magmakin - this, I believe, is what gave me the victory. My opponents didn't expect anything was up when I had a turn 3 play after two turns with taplands. On turn 4, I didn't play another land, I just played my Treasure Hunt - paying the one for a Rhystic Study that had been in play from one of my opponents for several turns. I picked my deck up, turned it upside down, and invited my opponents to look to make certain that I wasn't lying about it all being lands otherwise.
When none of them had any interaction - they were all tapped out, and none of them had any free removal spells available - I passed my turn and discarded my 87 excess cards, dealing all three opponents an equal amount of damage.
Sanar won, and I am so bloody thrilled about that. I promptly put the deck back away, and pulled Vincent out one last time for the final game of the night.
Vincent, Vengeful Atoner
This was the deck I had been looking forward to playing tonight. I just put it together within the past week or two and wanted to put it through some paces to feel out how this initial draft of the list works.
And the short of it is that it's a little odd. Or, more accurately, it's a little inconsistent. Each game, I was able to easily drop Vincent into play fairly early - I never had terrible mana issues. Even a game where I had a two-land opening hand, I also had two mana rocks available to me, and I was able to use those to help play Vincent by turn 4.
The problem came from being able to accomplish much after that. Some games, Vincent was able to swing for the fences, pummeling my opponents and growing steadily larger until he was decking every opponent for chunky damage, others he got stymied hard by removal and a lack of Haste or protection. Moreso the lack of Haste, despite my having numerous avenues for providing him with it.
Not helping matters is that, at its core, Vincent is an aggro deck. The entire plan is to play creatures, and then turn those creatures sideways. To that end, with 24 creatures - not counting Vincent himself - the deck is perhaps a little light on adequate threats. Not helping much was that there were a ton of cards that I just never drew during the night. I never saw Slicer, Professional Face-Breaker, Gogo, Mysterious Mime, Kharn the Betrayer...
A lot of the deck's threats, really.
But I digress. At its core, Vincent is an aggro deck. One of my opponents tonight was playing combo decks. Arguably CEDH-caliber combo decks (arguably, they were a touch slow). Combos have this nasty habit of outpacing aggro, especially when the combo decks are inherently designed to be wildly consistent. So there's a possibility that some of my issues tonight stemmed from that; not all, by a long shot, but some.
Regardless. I think I've identified one of the deck's biggest weaknesses for this initial draft. Weird as it is to say, I think I might have too much interaction in the list - I might need to trade some of the removal out for more threats and/or more card draw (Laughing Mad and Cathartic Reunion are good, but I can only get so far with those when my more consistent "turn after turn" options like Furious Rise and Professional Face-Breaker are nowhere to be found) so that I can have more options in play than just Vincent himself trying to do work.
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