Friday Night Magic Commander Night - September 4th, 2026

 Tonight I was back for another night of Commander, which was a good thing as I had finished putting together a new deck and wanted to give it a few test runs.

Two other players joined me, giving us a pod of three for one game, and then another player joined us after our first bringing us up to a pod of 4 players for the rest of the night.

Cloud, Midgar Mercenary

The deck I played for both the first game of the night, with three players, and for our second game once we bumped ourselves up to a pod of 4, and the deck that I came out wanting to put through some paces tonight.

In the first game, I ran afoul of having too many of my more expensive cards in-hand, plus having an overzealous Oveka player decide that most anything I tried to do was going to eat either a counter or, in one case, a Commandeer, meaning that while the deck still managed to function, it was definitely less functional than it could have been. Eventually, I was overrun severely by Bard, King of Dale and the horde of Humans that his player was helming.

In the second, where we added the Arkenstone Emblem from tonight's "Heart of the Mountain" Commander event, it ran much more smoothly, even while myself and two other players were beating each other senseless over the Emblem. No Blue players meant that the deck didn't eat every counterspell available, and a few good pieces of Equipment, including the Buster Sword, meant I was able to get some incredibly solid value from him swinging.

Eventually, I took the win off of the alternate wincon, though by that point two of the other three players were eliminated and I was likely going to win via combat pretty handily regardless.

As this is the deck I was most looking forward to trying out tonight, I am incredibly pumped that it actually did work out incredibly well, maybe not exactly the way I was hoping to, but close enough that I think the deck will be well worth bringing around often for Commander Nights. I could, feasibly, bump it up to a Bracket 3 list if I wanted to try to nab a few of my Game Changers from other decks - I've been surprisingly tempted to take Teferi's Protection and Smothering Tithe out of my Winota deck, for instance, though I lack good replacements for them - but where it currently stands is still pretty solid in my opinion. It's a deck I would probably feel comfortable playing against Bracket 3 lists, though once we start getting into "high power" gameplay in Bracket 4, let alone cEDH/Bracket 5, that's where I think it drops off hard.

Winota, Joiner of Forces

For our third game of the night, I played my Winota list, and it was... a severe power mismatch. One other player was playing The Ur-Dragon and I was expecting a much more dangerous list than what actually got played. Everybody else scooped after I had two rounds of incredibly potent Winota triggers, taking us to our fourth and what wound up final game.

The Wandering Minstrel

And for that fourth game, I played The Wandering Minstrel, a deck I haven't shuffled up in what feels like ages. The deck didn't exactly run the way I would've liked it to, as I saw precious few creatures and almost none of the Enchantments that improve my tokens in any way.

While I was beaten into the dirt by Bello with a little assistance from The Ur-Dragon, Oveka was incredibly mana screwed and was a non-entity during the game. Eventually, Bello and a bevy of buffed up Artifacts overran us all.

Friday Night Magic - August 21st, 2026

 In a bizarre twist of fate, I went out to the card shop originally planning for Commander Night - it was The Hobbit Commander Party, even, and the rules for that looked like quite a bit of fun - but I ultimately didn't actually play Commander.

I got to play Pauper, instead. On the card shop's Discord server, somebody had mentioned that they would be bringing some Pauper decks along to play if people were interested. Given that I always bring my two Pauper decks along, I was of course incredibly interested.

So after finding the person in question, the two of us shuffled up to play... a lot of games tonight. They had three different decks with them, and I had my two. Hilariously, though, as I was looking up my Moxfield account, I don't even have one of the two "built" on the site. I even went to dig up my old TappedOut account that I never use anymore, and while I do have the deck list put up there, it was an out of date version of the list. So that's fun! I also just updated said list so I can link it in a moment.

I digress. The list I do have up on my Moxfield is my Monoblue Terror-Delver. The other deck I have is a Monogreen Stompy list (man, linking to TappedOut feels a bit weird).

The decks my opponent had were Tron, a Delver of their own, and "Gruul Ponza" which was largely the same concept as my Stompy, but in Red/Green, running Land Destruction, and with some different Creature choices. I digress.

I didn't even remotely keep any notes on the games we played, as each one went by rather quickly. They were all best-of-3 sets, we Sideboarded in and out between games, and generally had a good 4-ish hours or so playing some good old 60 Card Magic with each other.

I did figure out a few glaring weaknesses in my two Pauper Lists, as an aside. While the Stompy deck's weaknesses aren't as big of a deal to me - until playing today and finding out that "No this is actually a real Pauper Archetype", I thought it was just some goofy monogreen jank, but no, the list I'm running is genuinely incredibly solid as Pauper lists go, it's just that there are a few cards that would serve it rather well - the weaknesses in my Terror-Delver list I do want to iron out.

As an aside, if you're reading this later down the line, the deck list will likely already be modified to reflect the changes I'm planning to make.

Ever since I put the deck together, I knew running a playset of Force Spikes was probably a bad decision. I had the full four-pack in the list because I had actually had it put together for years as a fun little deckbuilding challenge to myself, building a paper Pauper deck long before it was made an actual, official paper format. Then when they did make it one, they banned Daze - understandable, but my deck had been running a playset. So I needed something to take Daze's place, so Force Spike was a quick answer.

Tonight being the first time that I got to properly put the deck through its paces, I finally got to see firsthand exactly how bad a decision that really was. It's great if you can have it in the first couple turns of the game, but against both Tron and Ponza, it was pretty evident how quickly it became a waste of cardboard in my hand. I also ran into entirely too many situations where I was almost out of cards in hand because I have startlingly little card draw, I've now realized. Far less than I thought I had. I need to swap some of my counter magic out to make room for a few pieces, because having answers in the deck doesn't mean anything when I can't find those answers in time to play them.

I could also use some answers for dealing with non-creature threats. We were looking at some Pauper lists after we were done but before we left, and some of the lists were running Boomerang as an option.

So in addition to draw power, I'll be working on my removal suite a little bit, rather than trying to rely on counters.

After nothing but Commander for Magic for so long, it was nice to play something else, and I have a few ideas for how to make my preferred deck a little better to boot. I honestly look forward to the next time I get to shuffle up for Pauper, though I may be playing Commander again the next time I can make it out. Time will tell, of course.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - August 7th, 2026

 Another night of Commander at the card shop. I got in with a group of folks that I've played with before, though most nights they already have a "full" pod, so it's been some time since I've gotten the opportunity to play alongside them.

The shop was packed for The Hobbit prerelease, so there were comparatively few Commander players out. With the group of folks I played with, we got through three games, one with a group of four, and then we had a fifth hop in for the other two. Given the layout of the table we were playing at, it was actually shockingly easy to keep track of everything despite having the fifth person.

I admit that detail for these is going to be lacking. It was storming fiercely when I left the shop, so a lot of my focus was on getting safely home, and I hadn't taken down a lot of notes about each game and how my decks were operating.

Game 1 - Saheeli, Radiant Creator

For the first game of the night, and our only four-person game, I pulled out my Saheeli deck. I haven't played it in a while, and I just sort of wanted to.

The game was one where we all kind of got to "do our thing" a little bit, though I didn't really feel like I got to do as much of "my thing" as I would've liked due to somewhat limited resources. Not so limited I couldn't do anything, but limited enough to keep me from making a significant impact on the game.

Meanwhile, the Edgar Markov beside me didn't have quite the same issue, and the vampire deck ran over the rest of us.

Game 2 - Yuna, Grand Summoner

The game where I played the least amount of Magic. I had Yuna, a couple of other mana dorks, a few solid Summons to swing into the field, and O'aka as a draw engine...

And then a board wipe hit the field, and I wasn't able to draw into enough replacements to really get back into the game.

Game 3 - Bartz Klauser (Winota, Joiner of Forces)

And for our third and final game of the night, I pulled out my Winota deck, which just got a couple of small upgrades added to it recently from some singles I received.

I had a resoundingly powerful first few turns, dropping in a handful of Goblins, including General Kreat, and throwing around a couple of points of damage before I played Winota on turn 4. With General Kreat, the Fanatical Firebrand, and the Token that General Kreat had made on turn 3, I had three Winota Triggers immediately, which saw me drop in Alexios, Minwu/Mangara, and Greymond.

Alexios got through one of my opponent's turn before he ate a Deadly Rollick. And then a Toxic Deluge hit the field and wiped out the board, setting almost everyone back significantly - except the Y'shtola player, who had saved their board with a Teferi's Protection.

Over the next several turns, the rest of us worked together to try to take the Y'shtola player down, as they built up a dangerous lead thanks to their board being the only one to survive the Deluge. An Ethersworn Canonist tried to keep things in check, though Delney, Streetwise Lookout kept the Y'shtola player running well, especially with a Curiosity on the catgirl that provided a ton of card draw on top of her own ability. With my Bartz/Winota getting counterspelled when I made my only other possible opportunity to play her, I was stuck playing without my Commander and the ability that actually makes the deck operate the way it's supposed to.

Eventually we took out the Y'shtola, but the three of us who survived the matter were all down to around 3 life points each. I made the decision to play "kingmaker" and take one of the other players before getting overrun by the last remaining opponent.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - July 10th, 2026

 A little over a month ago, I did my usual blog post on my Commander Night - which also happened to be a "Magic Presents: Pride" event, which also happened to fall a scant few days after Wizards of the Coast engaged in some transphobic fuckery as part of their union-busting efforts.

Since then, I've been busy on my Friday Nights. Work, "Summerween" at the haunted house where I work, a trip to Too Many Games, more work...

This was the first time in over a month where I could even consider going out to play Commander.

I decided I was going to go. I just don't plan to spend any more money on Magic product any time soon. A little unfortunate, because there are a couple of upcoming sets I had previously been looking forward to - I am not (wholly) immune to Universes Beyond, because I love The Hobbit and would've been more than glad to pick up a fair bit from the set.

But... Not right now. Not unless I see something that indicates Wizards plans to be less of a shitty company, which is a tall order.

Which brings me to tonight's games.

I, uh, may have flown too close to the sun. Only one of the games I played today was with a pod of four.

Winota may have done her thing a little too well. Two of the four players in the first game I played tonight broke off into another pod (though I think part of that was also that they had more friends show up... but still), leaving me and the last player just playing one-on-one games against each other for the rest of the night.

I got one game in with Sanar, winning it because my opponent looked at it, wondered if it was "the meme deck", decided it wasn't, and then when I got my turn with Sanar in play, they realized it was the meme after about four or five lands.

Next up was the first of my two games with The Wandering Minstrel, which went swimmingly - I had my Token Nonsense™ set up and churning out two 4/4 Angels with Flying and Vigilance every turn, sometimes four Angels if I drew into a land!

The problem was that my opponent had a Platinum Angel with a Lightning Greaves attached, and I had no way to get around the Shroud and remove the Angel, so while I was able to handily beat them deep into a negative life total, it ultimately meant nothing in the face of their inability to lose the game.

This was followed up by a game with Ashling, which I ultimately won, my Elementals engaging in quite some shenanigans. I realized early on that Myriad of Mysteries was mostly ineffective in a one-on-one game due to Myriad doing nothing without more opponents to make copies of my creatures, but it was still a five-color permanent, letting Shimmercreep do a fair bit of life-drain thanks to Conjurer's Closet blinking it for a few turns.

And finally, I pulled Minstrel back out to play against their Yuna deck, and we had...

Frankly, a hilariously bad game where neither of us had anything going on for like, ten turns. I did a lot of work swinging with Emet-Selch and the Regalia, and finally got an 11/11 Hero out of the "Lasting Fayth" Adventure attached to Zanarkand. Combined with the Minstrel's activated ability, this gave me enough power to finish my opponent off, who had still not seen much of anything from their deck.

After that, we both decided to call it for the night.

Friday Night Magic: Magic Presents Pride Commander Event - June 5th, 2026

 Normally this would be my work week, but I decided to spend some PTO to get an extra-long vacation for myself as a small gift. Which is why I'll be able to attend the FFTCG LCQ on Sunday, and is giving me the chance to hit a few more TCG Nights than normal!

But, before I get into tonight's night of Magic, I do want to talk about something.

For just a little more than a month now, members of the development team for Magic: the Gathering Arena, the digital game client, have been working to unionize. Wizards of the Coast, or perhaps higher-ups from Hasbro, have been fighting against those efforts tooth and nail. Disgustingly, part of these efforts have included openly deadnaming trans members of said development team.

And in fact, they doubled down, doing so again earlier this week after what was evidently a mealymouthed apology, deadnaming all of these trans employees again by refusing to update forms in advance of the union vote on Tuesday. Tuesday, if you don't have your calendar handy, was June 2nd. The second day of Pride Month.

I'm cisgender. I cannot, will not claim to understand the full breadth of the bullshit and bigotry that transgender individuals experience in their day-to-day, let alone this experience, being forced to identify with your deadname, an identity that does not align with who you are as a person, all in the name of fighting for basic work protections.

Frankly, fuck Wizards of the Coast, and fuck Hasbro.

And for added insult, today, the 5th, is the first day for "Magic: the Gathering Presents Pride" events. A paltry three days after deadnaming all of their trans employees for the second time in as many weeks. But sure, let's celebrate "Gruulfriends" with a pretty Gilded Lotus that has Nissa and Chandra in the art.

Again: Fuck Wizards of the Coast, and fuck Hasbro.

Now, I said I was going to talk about that before I "get into tonight's night of Magic"... But honestly, I don't feel like it. Not in any great detail, not after thinking about all of this.

The most detail I'll get into is this: Tonight was my shop's "Magic Presents Pride" event. I played a lot of games tonight. A few with a pod of 3, a few with a pod of 4.

Most of them, I played my new Winota deck. The last, I played my Ashling. But when the shop employee was shouting out about how tonight was celebrating Pride and handing out promotional packs and pins, in the back of my mind, I just thought again about everything I lined out above.

It soured my mood a fair bit. I had already been considering not even going out tonight after thinking my way through all of this and putting all of my thoughts to proverbial paper. But I made the call to go out and play. I do enjoy the game in spite of the bullshit that WotC continually engages in. The union organizers, as far as I've seen, haven't called for any sort of boycott.

But after the way I felt my mood drop, I'm going to be rethinking my relationship with Magic for the foreseeable future. Until WotC decides to be better, at least. We'll see. I have the choice made for me easily for the next couple of weeks, since I won't be able to do Commander Night due to previous obligations.

But we'll see how things go when I'm not being given such an easy layup.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - May 29th, 2026

 Another Friday, another Commander Night, another good three hours of game.

Singular.

I played one game of Commander tonight, that took a solid three hours, and while everybody playing acknowledged how long it went, it never really - to me, at least - felt like it had dragged.

All four players held the role of "The Threat" at various points. We all got to do our decks' thing, we did knock one player out weirdly early on and all thought the game would be coming to an end sooner after that than it did, but, uh. It didn't end quite that quickly.

Tonight, I decided to play a deck I haven't used in a long while, my Saheeli, Radiant Creator deck.

And what a wild game it wound up being. Like I said, despite its length, it never really seemed to drag, there was constant play and counterplay going on.

There were five or six separate board wipes, four of which were mine (two activations of Aethersquall Ancient, a Blasphemous Act, and a Chain Reaction). In my last two turns I had successfully activated Aetherflux Conduit once each - meaning back to back turns managing to generate 40+ energy to successfully utilize the Conduit, thanks in large part to my Aether Refinery.

I made a misplay and overreached in my last turn, inadvertently wrecking the plan of one opponent, playing Perrie the Pulverizer, who would've otherwise been able to finish off the third player, Quintorius, History Chaser, which in turn would've left me to win the game. Unfortunately, I screwed up, and the Quintorius player finished the two of us off on their turn.

But honestly, after everything, despite being upset at myself and my misplay, I can't even be mad. The game was long, but I can safely say I managed to do everything I could have ever wanted to do in a game playing Saheeli.

Commander Deck Examination - The Wandering Minstrel

 Tonight is Commander Night at the card shop. However, I have no drive to head out there this evening - my work week was rough, and I had obligations to follow that up with helping at a Chaos Rising prerelease for the Pokémon League last night, so I am, plainly speaking, exhausted.

But I didn't want to go without a post for today, so I thought to myself: Why not try my hand at a different style of post for once? I've said before that I want to branch out and work on posts that aren't strictly "after-action" posts from my myriad nights playing TCGs.

Which then brought me to the question of what deck do I want to take a close look at? Since this would normally be a Commander night for me, one of my Commander Decks is the obvious answer, which then modifies the question to which Commander deck do I want to take a close look at?

And while I could try to explain myself or go heavy into why I did not want to do this or that deck, that's all just waffling around pointlessly.

I want to look at my Wandering Minstrel deck. Why? Because it's possibly my favorite deck right now, even if I know it can still use a lot of tweaking to make it better.

The Commander

Normally, when you build a Commander deck, you want to start with the Commander itself, right? That's the obvious way to build - "This is the creature card I want to focus my deck's strategy around." Or the other way around, as cases may be, that the Commander is the best creature to have consistent access to in order to support your chosen strategy - "I want to build a spellslinger deck, what Commander would support that best without getting me hated off the table?" or similar.

This is a case a little closer to that second one. I didn't, strictly speaking, start off with any particular strategy in mind, nor did I start off with thinking that the Minstrel's abilities would be fun to build around. I started with the fact that I had one copy of every single Town land that was printed in the Final Fantasy set, which would make a reasonably budget-friendly five-color mana base. From there, I chose the Minstrel as my Commander because he supported that.

He lets my Towns enter untapped. He gives me benefits for playing a lot of Towns in the form of a constant source of Tokens. He becomes a wincon in the Command Zone thanks to his (admittedly rather expensive) activated ability. Also, pertinently, he's technically a five-color Commander thanks to that very same activated ability, meaning I could actually run all of my Towns, the entire point of building this particular deck in the first place.

The Main Focus: Towns

 

Obviously, having started with the fact that I have all 23 Towns in the deck, and that I chose a Commander who benefits from those Towns, the next step was choosing additional cards that benefit from my manabase. The Final Fantasy x Magic: the Gathering set made Town support a small theme for Blue and Green cards, with 8 cards - counting my Commander, the Minstrel, and Balamb Garden, one of the Towns itself - that either benefit Towns, or benefit from having Towns. Prishe's Wanderings and Reach the Horizon let me ramp my Towns from straight out of the deck, Travel the Overworld and Qiqirn Merchant both let me draw well at a nicely discounted rate, Town Greeter will let me do some self-mill and nab a land from the bin, and the PuPu UFO enables some minor ramp ability that can turn into a hefty Flying beater later in the game, for a modest mana cost.

Of course, once I have those Towns in play, I need something else to do aside from just ramping more of them and drawing cards.

The Synergies

That's where Omega, Heartless Evolution comes into play. This powerful Raid Boss (why they went with the FFXIV version and not the FFV original I can at best only guess at, but a powerful effect is a powerful effect) benefits from my having a lot of non-basic lands in play.

Non-basic lands such as, for example, all 23 lands with the Town subtype.

If I could more consistently get the Legendary Robot in-hand, I would absolutely consider it to be my deck's "secret Commander". For quite a while, I'd wanted to build a deck that actively just had Omega in the Command Zone, but I don't have nearly enough non-basics in just Blue and Green to make such a deck properly tick. Slipping them into the 99 of the Minstrel works out quite well, all the same.

Once I settled on running Omega as part of the 99, I got it into my head that there would be some Magical Christmasland Moments where I could start literally locking games down using the Robot.

 

Which brought me to Ol' Reliable #1 and Ol' Reliable #2: Panharmonicon and Conjurer's Closet. While the initial thought was 100% laser-focused on what they could do alongside Omega, I eventually came to realize that many of the other cards I wound up adding also came packaged with some incredible ETB effects that this one-two punch of flicker-oriented Artifacts could help out with.

Gladiolus and Ignis being able to ramp more mana. Cloud of Darkness being shockingly potent removal. Delivery Moogle being able to grab any 1 of 7 different artifacts, including a lot of my Mana Rocks. Flickering Summon: Fat Chocobo can provide even more Tokens alongside the Minstrel's own, bolstering my deck's board presence (though due to being a Chapter Ability, Panharmonicon wouldn't work with it to double the tokens produced by the Bird). Even just Exdeath's 3 life can mean the difference between getting blown out by an aggressive player and surviving to crack back at them.

I've also been considering the addition of Y'shtola Rhul, the monoblue version of FFXIV's preeminent catgirl that has an end-of-turn flicker and provides a second end-of-turn, but I haven't gotten around to figuring out what to remove for her as of the time of writing this post. Part of the reason for that is the deck's other main strategy, which is a focus on the Minstrel's token producing trigger.

 

Of the deck's 10 Enchantments, 8 are dedicated to bolstering the Minstrel's Token generation (and working just as well with the copy of Chocobo Racetrack in the 99). Divine Visitation replacing the 2/2s with, in essence, Serra Angels. Roar of Resistance giving the tokens, whatever form they take, Haste, while Echoing Assault makes them harder to block via Menace. Doubling Season and Parallel Lives bumping the Tokens-per-Trigger count from 1 to 2 to potentially 4. Caretaker's Talent giving me additional card draw and potentially massively buffing the tokens (even the baseline 2/2s are a lot scarier when they become 4/4s instead).

Inspiring Leader and Intangible Virtue both provide Anthem effects to bolster my Tokens - as does Phantom General, who admittedly isn't an Enchantment, but is one of the few non-Enchantment means the deck has for buffing Minstrel's Elementals.

Coming back to why this makes it hard to figure out what to remove for Y'shtola, the Enchantments that bolster the Minstrel's innate abilities make up a fair portion of the deck, so I wouldn't really want to cut any of them if I could avoid it, though this does have the unfortunate side effect of the deck feeling in some ways like it's a little disjointed, almost like it's two different decks that have been stapled together.

The Fluff

 

Then there are the last few cards, which are either decent cards in their own right, or that I added just for a little bit of flavor.

Dark Confidant, who while he's a little less scary these days, still holds a special place to me as historically being one of the best sources of consistent card draw in the game. Garland, Knight of Cornelia and his flipside, Chaos, the Endless, who... well, while Garland can potentially offer some deck manipulation due to the number of noncreature spells in the deck, he's mostly there for the sake of Chaos. Specifically, because Chaos is a Raid Boss that can be faced down during Stormblood's Omega Raid series. Did the Minstrel have anything to do with that Raid series? No - not even the Savage versions of the fights.

Did that stop me? No. Not at all.

In fact, that's actually why a number of the Creatures in the deck made the cut during my earliest draft: They were enemies that can be faced in FFXIV. This version of Dark Confidant, in addition to being a card advantage engine, is directly modeled on the Ascians of the game. Emet-Selch is the leader of the Ascians, a memorable boss fight and beloved antagonist character (and the Extreme version of his fight is unlocked through a version of the Minstrel). Exdeath and Chaos are faced in the Stormblood Raid series. Cloud of Darkness is battled at the end of the Crystal Tower Alliance Raid series, as well as more recently in Dawntrail having a "Chaotic" version that was tuned for then-current Level 100 Players to battle against (that was, again, unlocked via the Minstrel!).

Anyways. Aside from the fluff of "these can be fought in FFXIV", there are other cards that are in for "generally just kind of good" reasons.

Windborn Muse, Propaganda, and Ghostly Prison keep me safe from combat-oriented decks while I try to build up my position. Minwu, Rebellion Strategist (from Final Fantasy: Through the Ages, a reprint of Mangara, the Diplomat) providing further incentive to not attack me lest I get a bit of card draw, while also punishing opponents for playing too many cards in one turn - by again, letting me draw cards. Explorer's Scope and the Regalia to potentially ramp some more land. A few removal spells, a couple of counterspells, and a smattering of other interaction to protect myself or cut down threats are all there to round the list out.

Conclusion

All in all, my Wandering Minstrel deck is a very safely Bracket 2 List. It has two main strategies, which are admittedly a little disjointed from one another. It's not a combo deck, nor is it heavy on Stax Pieces. It's very much a "battlecruiser", building itself up over a few turns while trying to keep itself alive, until it reaches the "critical mass" where it can start taking over a game. Two or three Enchantments are all it really needs to see the Minstrel's ability to generate tokens quickly get out of hand, after all.

Also, I'm glad I trimmed out the additional combat step cards that I previously had in the list so I could make room for more actual removal. They were a cute-sounding trick - "Oh, the Minstrel makes tokens at the start of combat, let's get more combats!" - but in practice they were either worthlessly gumming up my hand, or they were just win-more.

That all said though, the deck could use more tweaking, overall. Shift the focus of the deck towards the ETBs and add more flicker effects - Y'shtola, Ephemerate, Cloudshift, so on and so forth - or towards going all-in on being a token deck - try to get a copy of Anointed Procession, add in even more token production of different sorts, maybe throw in Purphoros to get damage off of the tokens entering. One or the other, tightening up the list that way.

Another possibility is providing additional interaction. The deck is probably still a little light on removal if I'm being honest, so getting a few extra pieces could be useful. That or I could add Tutors to the deck to improve its consistency.

I could even go heavy on trying to build the list up as a Stax-heavy control list, hiding behind effects like Trinisphere, Deafening Silence, and Drannith Magistrate to slow my opponents down while holding up mana to counter or remove whatever they attempt to do, all while letting the Minstrel's tokens be my threats on-board. That would probably start pushing the deck more towards Bracket 3 or even 4, however, which isn't where I really want to go with the deck.

But I digress.

This sort of quasi-deep-dive into my decklist was actually a lot of fun to write-up. I'll have to try to do this more often on days when I can't, or don't have the energy to head out to the shop for otherwise regular TCG nights, or on nights where an event doesn't fire (this most likely being something that would happen to Final Fantasy TCG rather than the others I play, but c'est la vie). I know I have a number of busy weekends coming up through the summer - haunted house things and various conventions I plan to attend - so if I have the time, maybe I can write some of these up to have posts available on the days I can't actually get out to play.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - May 1st, 2026

 Another Friday, another Commander Night.

This is going to be a relatively short post, because despite how long each of our games wound up taking, my decks didn't really do much.

There were three games tonight. First with a Pod of 4, then a Pod of 5, and the third game was back down to a Pod of 4.

Game 1 - Playing Cloud, Planet's Champion

I kept a two-land hand. As happens literally every time I keep a two-land hand, this meant I didn't see a third land for several turns, and this put me behind in a big way.

You would think I'd learn. And yet.

I did manage to get my way to 5 mana, strapped a handful of Equipment to Cloud (after being nearly locked out by a Karn, the Great Creator from one of my opponents), but wasn't able to do anything with that. Cloud didn't have enough oomph to take anybody out, and two of my opponents were slowly bleeding the table to death so I was down to 12 or 13 life by the time I would have been able to do much of anything. With one of my main sources of life gain - Shadowspear - sent to my discard pile, I wasn't able to recover from that, and I was removed from the game shortly after.

Game 2 - Playing Yuna, Grand Summoner

This game I had the opposite problem, I kept a six land hand - not that I realized that at first.

I proceeded to not be able to draw much of anything to do with my mana, and decided to look at my decklist - subsequently, I realized that I actually don't have a lot of card draw in the deck. I have a bit, some of it being solid and recurring, but none of which was doing me any good this game.

The addition of a fifth player also went a long way towards making the game much harder to fully keep track of, on top of my having precious little to do and all the mana in the world to do it with.

Game 3 - Playing Baral, Chief of Compliance

The one game I won tonight, in no small part because of an Elf player at the table letting me draw a ton off of my Rhystic Study, with them thinking that they'd ideally be able to win before all of my cards meant much of anything.

The game went a little slow, but during the Elf Player's 7th turn, I drew into High Tide and Mystical Tutor. I used the Tutor to go grab my Enter the Infinite. Turn 8, I dropped my land - I somehow managed to not miss a single land drop this game - played High Tide for free thanks to an Eluge that had been in play for several turns, and proceeded to "combo off" by dropping Enter the Infinite and Thassa's Oracle.

Easy, clean win. A little slower than I would like the deck to run, but nonetheless.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - April 17th, 2026

 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:

1. Sanar, Innovative First-Year
   
2. Vincent, Vengeful Atoner
   

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.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - April 3rd, 2026

 As it turns out, I do still play card games other than the FFTCG! It's just that the month of March was incredibly busy and full of Real Life Responsibilities™ for me, so I haven't had time to get out and play anything else since, oh, February.

But tonight? Oh, I was finally back for a bit of Magic: the Gathering, tonight! I joined up with a pod of 3, giving us four players for all three games we got through tonight.

Game 1 - Playing Ashling, the Limitless

I kept a decidedly decent opening hand, one with three lands and a copy of Fertile Ground for some pseudo-ramp. Given that I've kept much worse, and that if nothing else I had the means to play Ashling and then start Evoking my Elementals on subsequent turns, I wasn't going to complain.

Unfortunately, some of my Elementals - Yarok, the Desecrator, Twinflame Travelers, Fury, and Lamentation - were hated off the board fairly quickly.

Fortunately, one of my opponents played Living Death, and I subsequently was able to re-wipe the board in short order thanks to the sudden influx of removal triggers thanks to both Yarok and the Travelers adding extra triggers.

When I hit Mass of Mysteries, it felt like I basically had the game in the bag. Double up on handing out Myriad triggers thanks to Twinflame Travelers adding an extra trigger to the Mysteries, then the Travelers also triggering an extra Myriad trigger, and each of my many entering token copies then getting triple triggers thanks to Yarok and the Travelers once again...

And then Mass of Mysteries ate removal. Then, when I used my own reanimation, it ate a second round of removal. Eventually, myself and two of my opponents wound up in a stalemate, and it became a case of whoever swung first would be playing Kingmaker for the remaining player.

I chose to finish the game, biting that bullet and taking on the role.

Game 2 - Playing Cloud, Planet's Champion

Another game with a remarkable opening hand that only got better after my first draw, I was able to quickly drop a couple of goodies for Cloud before getting the spiky-haired SOLDIER onto the battlefield himself.

From there, the game went in a variety of wild directions, but in the end, after numerous board wipes and attempts at protection, Cloud bludgeoned each of my opponents into the dirt with a stack of phenomenal Equipments. The final swing on the last remaining opponent was stacked with the Buster Sword, Brotherhood Regalia, Shadowspear, and Excalibur, Sword of Eden... plus a couple of other goodies I don't fully remember, all I remember is that Cloud swung as a 25/14, and the most life that the final opponent standing could've had going into my turn was 20, meaning that a single hit from Cloud would've deleted them twice over.

Game 3 - Playing The Wandering Minstrel

For the third game in a row, I had a solid opening hand. I guess Magic sort of missed me after I was gone for a month.

The only real weakness in my early game was that I was a bit light on Towns, so it took me a bit to get the Minstrel online and pumping out Tokens. There was also a Mothman at the table, and several of my "token boosters" - Divine Visitation, Doubling Season, and Roar of Resistance - were all milled away by Radiation Counters over the course of the game. Those same Rad counters meant that my graveyard was full of permanents, enabling Cloud of Darkness - with the help of a Conjurer's Closet - to delete more than a handful of troublesome creatures, at least until the Celes player slammed a Ruinous Ultimatum on the table without any solid follow-up to that.

This game also technically didn't finish. It was nearly 11pm, I was sitting at 50 life with the next closest total being 24 and the next closest after that being 9, nobody had any really good win conditions available, so we decided to just scoop so we could leave and the store's employees could get on with closing shop for the night.

We did apologize on our way out. We're not monsters.

Conclusion

All in all, a really solid night of Magic. My two five-color decks - Ashling and Minstrel - felt like they played better than they have the last several times I'd shuffled them up, and the three folks I joined in with were seemingly pleasant dudes.

Sunday is Easter, so the mall - and card shop - are going to be closed, so my next TCG night this week will be FFTCG on Monday.

...

I promise, I will play Gundam TCG again eventually. Life - and holidays - have just been horribly in the way.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - February 20th, 2026

 Friday! Time to play some Magic, a slight derust after I spent my entire last week off playing Final Fantasy TCG (including the Monday following the Winter Cup that I didn't do a write-up on - only one other person showed up, who was new to the game, and I walked them through a game to teach them a bit better).

I showed up on my own, a newer player joined me, and then we had two others sit down to join us beside, so for all three games we got in tonight, we had a full pod of four.

In order, the three decks I played were:

1. Ashling, the Limitless
   
2. Sanar, Innovative First-Year
   
3. Cloud, Planet's Champion
   

And in short form, I won...

Exactly none of the three games.

Without going wholly into headings and whatnot, because this is going to be a short write-up week:

Ashling, I kept a hand that I knew was a mistake. I couldn't even call it greedy, but it was a bad idea and I knew it. Two lands, one of which was colorless, and the other was a Swamp, with none of the deck's precious few mana rocks. I was stuck on two lands for a good three-quarters of the game, and only barely eked my way to a playable situation when I finally drew lands 3 and 4. Unfortunately, it was too little, too late, and while I did manage to make a few decent plays, the rest of the table was far too well established for me to make any real headway against.

For Sanar, the deck underwent its sole game plan flawlessly, with me dropping Sanar on turn 4, turn 5 getting my Artillerist and my Treasure Hunt, playing a fifth land and dropping both the Creature and the Sorcery... only for one of my opponents to hit the Artillerist with Path to Exile. I summarily scooped and stood to go stretch and grab a snack from the shop

And lastly, Cloud, where I was removed from the game after my 4th turn because of an opposing landfall deck going absolutely ham. They successfully deleted myself and one other opponent, and then subsequently atomized the final player on their next turn.

Not a great night back to Magic in terms of results, but ah well. I had fun.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - January 9th, 2026

My first night playing TCGs in the new year, and it was a rather solid night of Commander. I joined 3 other players to make a full pod of 4 for the night, and we got four good games in.

I, for my end, got to play with each of the four decks I brought with me. In order, I played:

1) The Wandering Minstrel - Loss

2) Cloud, Planet's Champion - Win

3) Saheeli, Radiant Creator - Loss

4) Baral, Chief of Compliance - Win

And while I don't have notes on what each of my opponents were playing in each game, that's honestly fine. It has occurred to me that Commander is not exactly a format that's conducive to attempting a play-by-play after the fact, given the tumultuous nature of the format and the pace of play with four separate decks all running at once.

Furthermore, tonight gave me a weird opportunity. In all four games, I kept a hand with one or two lands in them. All four games went incredibly differently for me from there, though.

Game 1 - The Wandering Minstrel

Starting with the Minstrel, my opening hand had Jidoor, Aristocratic Capital and Windurst, Federation Center. Cool, with those two lands, I would be able to drop Minstrel on turn 3 and be able to roll with the game from there.

Or at least, that would be the theory. In a deck with 37 lands, starting with only 2 isn't quite as risky as you might think - statistically, it's a low starting land count (since the deck is, well, just over 37% land since the Minstrel himself sits in the Command Zone, so the average should be around 3), but that just means higher odds of drawing into more lands over the next few turns. I just needed to really hit one by turn 3 and I would have been able to work with that.

I did not hit one by turn 3. Or by turn 4. Or turn 5 or 6.

It was at the point that my opponents were telling me to just go search my deck for a Basic and to play the game from there. I politely declined each time, which... was honestly probably a mistake? But I was the one who kept the two-land hand, I was going to roll with the consequences of that action.

Even if it meant the consequence was that I really did not get to play the game. I made one noteworthy play, and that was using Louisoix's Sacrifice to stop one opponent from playing The One Ring, which cost me my Minstrel to be able to afford it.

Game 2 - Cloud, Planet's Champion

I opened with one colorless land - War Room - alongside Sol Ring and Brotherhood Regalia.

At 35 lands and only 4 mana rocks, this deck has significantly less wiggle room to keep a bad opening hand than the Minstrel does.

And yet, I was not punished. At least, not nearly so badly as the Minstrel was. It took me a couple of turns to hit the mana I needed to "fully" play the game, but I had ample opportunity to drop a few tools into play in advance of Cloud's entrance, and had a couple of other creatures in play that I was able to load up for a couple of early swings. Turn 1, I top-decked a Mountain which on turn 2 let me drop Raubahn into play - who admittedly ate immediate removal - and I did have to use the War Room to draw a few cards at the cost of a bit of life.

But once I did successfully get the mana I needed, I slammed Cloud into play and immediately loaded him up with the Equipment I had previously had waiting for him. Turns out that Trailblazer's Boots giving him Non-Basic Landwalk is incredibly strong since it made my Voltron Deck effectively run with an unblockable Commander. I didn't manage to draw anything that was able to power him up until a few turns later when Ashe, Princess of Dalmasca joined the table and, swinging thanks to the Haste granted by Lightning Greaves, landed me a copy of the Buster Sword.

Teferi's Protection a few turn cycles later kept me alive while one opponent - playing Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder - otherwise wound up in a position where they were able to take out both other opponents at once, leaving me available to swing in for the last few points of Commander damage off of the still very-unblockable Cloud.

Game 3 - Saheeli, Radiant Creator

To be honest, I had forgotten how much land was in this deck. 38 lands with a whole host of mana rocks. So two lands and a Talisman of Impulse should have been more than adequate. Surely I would see another land, right?

Well, I did. A little later than I would've liked, but I got there. I was mostly saved by my Izzet Generatorium, Bespoke Battlewagon, and Conversion Apparatus working together to give me the mana I needed to play the game.

The problem was that I started running into nothing but lands. I didn't have anything to do with my mana, nor with my Energy, and I was stuck durdling a little to try to make a few plays.

Which, unfortunately, was incredibly insufficient. I technically lasted the longest before getting knocked out, but I think that was mostly because I was presenting absolutely zero threat.

Game 4 - Baral, Chief of Compliance

A deck that's designed to play incredibly low to the ground anyway, with a host of inexpensive mana rocks and ways to make my collection of Instants and Sorceries cheaper to cast, the fact that the deck only has 29 lands usually isn't much of a problem.

And this game, that almost wasn't enough. I had a rough time not with mana - I had plenty of that, by game's end, and had once again started with two lands in hand - but with getting anything to do with that mana. I saw precious few of my counter magic - the only spell I distinctly recall was An Offer You Can't Refuse, and that was literally used against me when one player took my turn with Emrakul, the Promised End for a frustratingly efficient turn, where they played my own Sapphire Medallion, countered it with Offer, and used the resulting Treasures to cast Jace, the Mind Sculptor, which they used to bounce their own Emrakul so they could take another player's turn later on. That left me without cards in hand, but I did get to take my own turn after the end of the controlled turn, and Jace's 0-cost Brainstorm effect did some significant work to help me get more cards back in hand.

Despite the Emrakul turn, and despite being knocked to 10 life by the end of the game, I felt like I was targeted down surprisingly little, which saved me in a big way when I was able to scrape together a winning High Tide turn after Narset nabbed a Mystical Tutor for me.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - December 26th, 2025

 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.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - November 28th, 2025

 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.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - November 14th, 2025

 After over a month since the last time I played Magic due to my being busy with a haunted house, I made my way back out to the shop to play some Commander.

Three of the games tonight were with five players, which was... a lot. Do not necessarily recommend, at least not with the tables laid out the way that the card shop lays them out.

The Wandering Minstrel vs Warrior of Light (Jodah, the Unifier), Indoraptor, the Perfect Hybrid, Y'shtola, Night's Blesssed and Massacre Girl, Known Killer

My Minstrel deck worked remarkably well this game, and that made me... equal parts glad, and a little frustrated. Because the way that this game went, now I feel like I really do want to build the deck towards a focus on Minstrel's combat trigger.

That said, while it did work out well enough, it did run into some much more frightening threats. Indoraptor was able to drop into play as a 24/22, though Y'shtola was able to put an end to it when it tried to look towards them with the dinosaur's random targeting.

After removing the Indoraptor, thanks to an Irenicus's Vile Duplication that allowed them to clone their Commander, and the life drain effects went overboard, letting Y'shtola take the win pretty handily.

Cloud, Planet's Champion vs Warrior of Light (Jodah), Indoraptor, Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER, and Hidetsugu and Kairi

This game was fairly quick, because the Hidetsugu and Kairi player was able to combo off fast and took a fast win.

I honestly do not remember anything else about this game. Having the fifth player so far out of sight and mind made it a lot harder for me to pay as much attention as I'd have liked.

Lathliss, Dragon Queen vs The Ur-Dragon, The Wise Mothman, Sauron, the Dark Lord, and Vivi Ornitier

This game ran a little long. Thanks to Ur-Dragon's copy of Urza's Incubator, I was able to play a nice pile of dragons which gave me shocking command over the board for several turns. This included popping the Vivi player with a copy of Steel Hellkite, and using the artifact dragon's second activated ability to wipe out half of the little wizard's board.

A few turns later, I did finish off the Vivi player, and really should've taken Sauron out at the same time as I easily could have. Unfortunately, because I didn't, Sauron's 17-power Orc Army was able to swing in at me unblocked a few turns later, after a board wipe, and I was taken out by a non-combat damage trigger not long after. Fortunately, the Ur-Dragon "avenged" me and took the win.

Cloud, Planet's Champion vs Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER and Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER

The last game of the night, as two of our players needed to bounce. It was also getting late, so we tried to play a fast game.

Tried.

Turn 2, I played Drannith Magistrate, which held things down a little bit. A few turns later, I played Sword of the Animist and used that to help me ramp my mana a little bit.

I did drop Cloud into play, but thanks to some Shenanigans™, Sephiroth's player was able to wipe the board.

I promptly replayed Cloud... forgetting that Sephiroth's ability is an on-entry ability, and not just an attack trigger, meaning I lost Cloud to a Grave Pact trigger immediately after. This slowed me down dramatically, as I didn't have a "plan B" available, which gave the other Cloud player room to take control of the game.

My last turn, I did play Firion, Wild Rose Swordsman and Gilgamesh, Master-at-Arms, giving me a potent attacker that I used to finish off Sephiroth, although I was subsequently crushed by the other Cloud immediately after.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - September 5th, 2025

 Another night of Commander, tonight seeing three solid games. I played two new decks and one that I've had for a bit, but with a new Commander at the helm of it. The first game was with only three players total, and the other two had a pod of four.

Game 1: The Wandering Minstrel vs Y'shtola, Night's Blessed and Pantlaza, Sun-Favored

Ah, the five-color experience. With five colors in my list, I found myself unable to procure the Blue mana I needed to cast my Commander until around turn 6, and then only because I was able to drop Gladiolus to search out a land that could produce Blue for me.

I did finally play the Minstrel, however, though it was somewhat on the "too little, too late" side. I did lose the Inspiring Commander background enchantment that made my tokens even the slightest bit threatening in part because the Y'shtola player was a little annoyed that they "didn't understand" it due to their misreading of it.

Nonetheless, Pantlaza ran away with the game, crushing us both with Dinosaurs.

This was a solid "first run" for my Minstrel deck, despite the mana woes, and I look forward to playing it more in the future. There are countless ways I can think of to make it better, though many of those would be well outside of my current budget.

Game 2: Lathliss, Dragon Queen vs. Ziatora the Incinerator, Meren of Clan Nel Toth, and Brinelin the Moon Kraken & The Ghost of Ramirez de Pietro

This wound up a very slow, grindy game. I was mostly able to play due to Ruby Medallion and The Fire Crystal. I was able to drop numerous Dragons into play thanks to the reduced cost, however I ran out of cards-in-hand, so when my Dragons got hated out of the skies - repeatedly - and Bane of Progress wiped my Artifacts, Ziatora was able to turn things around and grind out the victory.

After having taken apart my Krenko to build this after getting hated out once too many with the Goblin Mob Boss...

Getting my Dragons hated down some more wasn't quite what I'd hoped to have happen. I suppose I can't completely fault my opponents for this one, but it would've been nice if it hadn't. Ah well. I'll give this deck a couple more tries before I decide if I want to keep it or not. I have a plan for what would replace it as my mono-red deck of choice if I do take it apart, but that's a preemptive concern.

Game 3: Kamahl, Heart of Krosa & Gilanra, Wirewood Caller vs. Gyruda, Doom of Depths, Lathril, Blade of the Elves, and Brinelin & Ghost of Ramirez

For this game, we added some Planechase planes into the mix, to spice the game up a little bit.

It absolutely did, in fact, spice the game up a little bit. In fact, things got quite hectic.

Gyruda opened with Leyline of the Void and proceeded to mill us all out a lot thanks in part to The Mindskinner. Between Kamahl and my Thunderfoot Baloth, though, I was able to make my board absolutely massive to take Gyruda out and stop the mill.

Unfortunately, Lathril immediately wiped me out on their next turn, before they ran over the Brinelin/Ghost of Ramirez player the turn after that.

In spite of the extra unpredictability from Planechase, this was a great run for my monogreen deck, which is the only list I played today that wasn't "new", though it was previously helmed by Surrak. The additional card draw from Gilanra was a nice benefit, and the overwhelming force provided by Kamahl made a good way to provide the deck a solid win-con in the Command Zone.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - August 22nd, 2025

Commander Night! Unfortunately I didn't get to go out and play FFTCG last Wednesday due to nobody else in the local area wanting to go out to the other shop, so that's even more practice that I missed out on going into this upcoming Sunday's Local Qualifier.

But, alas. That's neither here nor there. Tonight was Commander Night, so I'm here to talk Magic, not FFTCG.

I joined another solo player and a group of two to make a pod of 4 tonight. One of the two showed up late, so out of the four games we played, one was with only three players.

Krenko, Mob Boss vs Ziatora the Incinerator and Miles "Tails" Prower

Our one game with a set of three, this game was quick. Despite only having three lands, I was able to power out a remarkable board state alongside playing Krenko not once but twice.

Unfortunately, Ziatora burned me out by giving Ziatora Infect through Tainted Strike, then flinging a Ghalta at my face using the Demon Dragon. Through my use of General Kreat and an Impact Tremors, Tails was already knocked to five life, so Ziatora finished the job the turn after.

Surrak, Elusive Hunter vs Ziatora, Hylda of the Icy Crown, and Kefka, Court Mage

With our fourth having now joined us, we shuffled up for our second game.

Kefka ran away with the game handily, having opened with a Sol Ring and Arcane Signet, ramping their mana outrageously. With Kefka's discard and sacrifice effects, it kept the rest of us from being able to much play our own decks.

Surrak vs Mr. Foxglove, Light-Paws, Voice of the Emperor, and Ulalek, Fused Atrocity

Wanting another game with Surrak, this time hopefully not held back by Kefka, I shuffled my deck back up once again.

Only for Light-Paws to rapidly accelerate through their Commander's own effect letting them snowball like mad. I did have a ton of mana, but unfortunately I was flooded heavily and wasn't able to do much with it for quite a number of turns.

Light-Paws took Foxglove out of the game in one shot, and I managed to barely politic myself into another turn. When Light-Paws swung for Ulalek, the Eldrazi were able to effectively put an end to Light-Paws's entire position by flickering the kitsune and effectively removing every Aura she had been wearing. This bought me time to begin stabilizing, and with my card draw I was able to start dropping several powerhouse creatures, including Ghalta and Bahamut.

Which were promptly turned against me when Ulalek stole them and swung them, taking me out of the game.

Krenko vs Ziatora, Ziatora, and Gyruda, Doom of Depths

Our final game of the night, we wanted the game to be fairly quick, so I pulled Krenko back out.

Unfortunately, my draws were pretty rancid, which didn't help me when one of the Ziatora swung a Jumbo Cactuar into the defenseless Gyruda, hitting them for 10,000 damage, then flung the Cactuar into me with Ziatora's end-of-turn trigger. A Beast Within targeting the other Ziatora when they tried to combo off with a Tainted Strike effectively won the game at that point, especially with recursion to bring back the Cactuar and swing it again the next turn thanks to The Fire Crystal giving it haste.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - August 8th, 2025

 Showing up to the shop on my own as I do, I joined a group of 3 to get a Pod of 4 all night. I played a variety of different decks, including my newest, which I wanted to test out.

Surrak, Elusive Hunter vs Ragost, Deft Gastronaut, Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER, and Karona, False God

This wound up a wildly aggressive game by all four of us. I had a fairly explosive turn 1, dropping a Sol Ring and Emerald Medallion, which provided me a ton of value over the course of the game. Several heavy haymakers from my side later, plus Ragoth hitting the table with its effect, we were all under twenty life within a few turns.

Eventually, I dropped Summon: Bahamut into play, and my opponents - Sephiroth in particular - not glomming on to what the completion of the Saga Dragon's Lore Counters would mean for the game meant that four turns later, I nuked everybody (bar myself, obviously) for nearly 40 damage, finishing the game out.

Cloud, Planet's Champion vs Sephiroth, Karona, and Slogurk, the Overslime

An early Drannith Magistrate on my end slowed the game down drastically for Sephiroth, and at least moderately for Slogurk. This was fortunate, since I was suffering a pretty nasty drought of mana, which kept me running incredibly slow throughout the game.

I did drop Cloud three times - the first time, he was countered, the second he got taken out by Sephiroth using Liliana, Dreadhorde General to force sacrifices, and the third he managed to stick around to finish out the game. Between runs with Cloud, I was using Raubahn as my primary attacker.

In truth, it was strictly my Shadowspear giving Lifelink to my attackers that kept me alive through the game. Without the life gained from that equipment, I would have lost the game quite early on. As it was, I was able to buy myself time to stabilize myself, and ultimately won with a heavily-loaded Cloud.

Y'shtola, Night's Blessed vs Sephiroth, Karona, and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Our third and final game of the night, in part because the previous game was kept slow thanks to my Magistrate, and in part because this game ran slow, grindy, and sloggy. Two aristocrats style decks kept boards well in-hand, even as I slowly pinged the table down with Y'shtola, an early Papalymo, and Black Mage's Rod.

While several effective board wipes occurred, I was able to keep Y'shtola around and used her to significant effect. Yawgmoth heavily whittled themselves down, which left me with room to eventually take the win after dropping Estinien into play, giving me a heavy-hitting attacker to finish my opponents off with.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - July 25th, 2025

 I will be completely honest from the outset here: I do not remember almost any other deck tonight aside from the four that I played, and in the order that I played those four. The one exception is that one of my opponents for tonight played a Thrasios/Tymna deck all night.

It was... an experience. They continually insisted it was just "a slow, grindy midrange deck" but consistently played cEDH staple after cEDH staple and did absurd shenanigans. They were hated out in almost every game that we played, but the fact remains that it was the first time I got to come across the "Oh, sure, it's those Commanders, but it's not that kind of deck!" experience.

Dear reader, it was absolutely that kind of deck. But I digress.

Cloud, Planet's Champion

For the first game of the night, I played my Cloud deck. I've had this finished for a few weeks, but this was the first time I've been able to actually play it since then.

It went swimmingly for me. Unironically, it did almost everything I could have asked to have it do. I even managed to play the copy of Buster Sword I picked up at last week's anime local anime convention, and it was genuinely the reason that I was able to win this game.

The final opponent standing was a mono-green stompy style of list, and they swung absolutely massive creatures at me. I barely managed to survive that turn, I was left with exactly one life point. I drew Buster Sword, played it and strapped it to Cloud, then thanks in part to my Mask of Memory, I was able to draw 3 cards off of the first attack, which hit for 10. I then played Zack Fair for free with the second half of the Buster Sword trigger. Before the second instance of damage from Cloud, I used Zack's effect to put his +1/+1 counter onto Cloud so that the second attack dealt 11 damage, putting my opponent at 21 Commander Damage and winning me the game by the absolute skin of my teeth.

Baral, Chief of Compliance

This game was a lot. It effectively wound up as a cEDH game between the four players, and while it was mostly a fine game, the very final turn of the game turned into an absolute mess. The Thrasios/Tymna player was a major part of that.

I made moves to combo off and win the game, and the stack turned to an absolute mess, in part because the Thrasios/Tymna player utterly ignored the concept of Priority, and tried to do numerous things in rapid succession, though ultimately we did manage to untangle the mess that the stack had become.

And then I didn't even win off of my intended effect, I won because the Thrasios/Tymna player was at a low enough life total that they were taken out by their own The One Ring on their upkeep, while the other two players had scooped by that point.

Krenko, Mob Boss

After the insanity of how the last game turned out, I wanted a game where I could just turn off my brain and slam a few creatures into play and turn them sideways.

I did, in fact, have a game that required zero brain power. This is because Krenko was destroyed multiple times, and the handful of other creatures I was able to play were taken down by a board wipe.

So I basically didn't really get to play this game, is what I'm getting at. It was a lot of hilarity hearing the cEDH player, who had no other decks with them, say that Krenko is "scary" and that was why they were hating my Goblins down so much.

Y'shtola, Night's Blessed

At this point, the Thrasios/Tymna player had to leave, so this was a three-person game to close out the night. One opponent was taken down incredibly quickly, and then went up front to poke around at the store's goods and singles for like, twenty minutes before myself and the other player finally finished our game.

I wound up losing this one, but it was the sort of game that I had been hoping to get in with Krenko, where I had a relatively simple plan and didn't need to do a ton of thinking to make it work.