All I wanted was to play some Commander. Try out the changes I’d done to the mono red aggro deck. Which I really must give a cool deck name. Something like Etali Red Menace or Etali Ground Hog Day.

And that’s how my visit to my FLGS started yesterday. Myself, a friend, and some-one I know/played against had a 3 player game of Commander. My friend was using the Lord Windgrace Commander pre-con from last year. I was mana screwed, watching Windgrace get an abundance of mana. The other player was doing better on the mana front but not able to compete with Windgrace. Despite some pity, the inevitable was only being delayed. The Windgrace deck stomped all over us.

Things went tits up when a fourth player joined us. The omens were not good when they sat down and basically slagged off casual Commander! I paraphrase the words here but the basic gist was “people say that Commander is a casual game, but they are wrong it’s competitive. Everything can be competitive. Do I use my regular deck or my broken deck?” Fortunately they went with a “regular” deck.

And this new person just wouldn’t shut the feck up. Talk about verbal diarrhoea. I was taking a dislike to this person. But I thought I can be strong, it’s just for a game.

But things were only going from annoying to worse.

The only person this annoyance attacked during the game was me. I was being targeted, despite at that point the other two being the bigger threats. I’ve been on the receiving end of this sort of targeting before. It’s not fun.

This guy was ruining the game for me.

So I decided to scoop. I’d had enough. I also let them know what a dick they were.

They did try to apologise, unsure what they had done, and explain it as the way they act is part of their personality. I called them a twat at that point. Trying to use such a weak excuse to justify being a dick. Implying that it’s something they have no control over. Which from personal experience I know is bollocks.

So that was Tuesday afternoon spoiled, even ruined by a dick.

I was going to share the changes in this post. But that can wait for another day. One where I have played them some more.

I was able to get along to a Commander Monday at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole. One of the benefits of Easter holidays and working in education.

I took along 3 decks with me today. 3 decks that I hadn’t played for a long while.

In the first game I played my mono white angel deck that has Lyra Dawnbringer as it’s Commander.

I was mana screwed with the deck. Naturally with a lack of lands or ramp I was behind the curve of the others. Eventually I was able to get Reya Dawnbringer out, but she was bounced back to my hand before I could use her ability.

Eventually I did get Reya out, which allowed me to pull back Emeria Shepherd from my graveyard. I then cleverly played one of my elusive lands to trigger Emeria’s ability to put another angel on the battlefield.

But getting this combo off was the highlight of the game for me. It was also one of the last things I got to do before meeting my demise.

Game 2 saw my Trostani token spam deck hit the table.

This deck went silly at one point with soldier tokens. Seedborn Muse allowed me to fire off the Rhys the Redeemed 6 CMC ability during the other players turns.

When you are basically doubling everything. It soon gets silly. By the time I was board wiped I had 108 tokens out. Sadly for the guy that did the board wipe he drew a card for each creature killed. Basically milling himself.

So yeah I didn’t win after that. But I did something pretty awesome and cool.

The third and final game was with my elf deck that got show down by a bloody angel that switched off activated abilities on creatures. So all of a sudden after that was played no tapping for mana, to add life, or buff up a creature. It was kinda funny really. I play the same angel in my angel deck, and had done so in the earlier game. Sadly it’s a great card against my elves.

So not a win in sight, but I had a blast. Did some cool stuff. Great company. What more could you want?

I’ve not been to a Monday Commander session at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole since the first one was held a few weeks ago.

So half term gave me the ideal excuse to get along to another one.

When I arrived a couple of ex-students of mine Josh and Tom were there, as was Andy a regular at the shop and training MtG judge. It appeared a bit of Commander deck building advice was being given to Josh.

I used my Muldrotha deck for the first game of Commander. Which was a true roller coaster ride. I do regret using my Cyclonic Rift to save Tom from a massive attack by Andy that would have killed him. I had already “bluffed” Andy not to attack me the previous turn of his. Well it wasn’t a bluff, I had the card in hand with the mana open to cast it. But Andy wasn’t sure of that.

What was my reward for saving Tom’s butt? Yeah you guessed it, a few rounds later he killed me first before moving on and killing Andy and Josh in a single strike.

Game two for the afternoon saw the Horrors from the Deep wake from their slumber and head towards the surface to wreck havoc and destruction.

Trench Gorger is such a great card to play once you have sufficient mana out. As you can see in the game yesterday it got rid of my remaining 22 lands, to become a 22/22. With trample. Which is nice. But the big benefit is that it gets rid of dead draws. Well not completely. There were still one or two cards that were in the deck to help me ramp and get lands, and therefore useless now. But that’s better than nearing 30.

Andy took out Josh. His threat assessment was that Josh was the bigger threat. Well he’d know because it was his deck Josh was playing.

With my big threats on the board I was able to take Andy out, well at that point I had them all with flying whilst grounding everyone else’s fliers.

It then took a couple of rounds for the horrors that had surfaced to pound Tom into submission. And get me my first win with this deck. Wow.

It was great to catch up with Josh and Tom. Everyone had a fun time. It’s great that The Hobbit Hole hosts this for those that are at a lose end on a Monday.

My FLGS The Hobbit Hole has started a Monday afternoon Commander club. It’s aimed at those at a lose end basically, like those between jobs, students, the retired, on holiday or some other reason.

I found myself at a lose end after taking mum shopping in the morning. So I thought why not?

Three decks found their way into my bag, Trostani, my mono red goblins, and the new death and taxes deck.

Once at The Hobbit Hole 3 other people for whatever reason found themselves at a lose end also, and decided to do some Commanderin’.

The good news from the afternoon of playing luxury cardboard rectangles was I got to play all 3 decks, and long story short they at least got to do their thing (to some extent) but didn’t come close to winning.

My decks weren’t bad decks in my opinion. Well I’ve admitted my death and taxes is a work in progress and needs at least it’s mana base revisiting. But they were out classed. As were the decks of 2 of the other players.

If we use the Command Zone podcasts power rating for decks (see graphic below, and a whole podcast here) which runs on a scale of 1 to 10 for the rest of this post it will help give a point of reference.

So the graphic they did maps like this. It should be noted for reference purposes the precons that WotC sell each year come in on this scale as casual decks and a power ranking of about 4 (in the opinion of The Command Zone presenters, and I wouldn’t disagree with that).

So where do my decks fall on this scale? I would rate my decks between 4 and 6 depending on the deck, so either casual/focused decks.

In yesterday’s 3 games two of us where definitely playing decks between 4 and 6 on the power scale. While one was boarderline between 6/7, and the archenemy player was definitely 8/9 on the power scale with his decks. I’m calling the player with the over powered decks the archenemy because that’s the way the games ended up. One against many.

It should be a testament to the archenemy player that despite the three of us trying to gang up and take him out, he still wiped the floor with us. His decks were way to powerful.

I did try Krenko, Mob Boss as my commander with the goblins. Partly inspired by seeing him used in Bob’s goblin deck as the commander the previous week. I hadn’t really settled on the commander for the deck. So having the chance to try this card out was good. I liked it as the commander. Much better than Squee. Although I do like the idea of using Zo-Zu as the commander also.

Funny enough Treasure Nabber came out in my death and taxes deck but not my goblin deck. Which is when I’d have loved to have used it, as the goblins were up against an artifacts deck. Apparently whispering subliminal messages of “use your sol ring” or “use your artifacts” while Treasure Nabber is out doesn’t brainwash them into using their artifacts. It did slow down the others though because they refused to use their sol rings, or other mana generating artifacts. Sadly it didn’t affect the archenemy.

Island Sanctuary did get a chance to hit the table, sadly not with the other half of the combo. It gave me a couple of turns protection, and was useless once the archenemy got a steel hellkite out.

At the end of the session thinking aloud the archenemy player suggested he might build his next deck and not optimise it as much as he normally does. Luckily I don’t play commander against this player normally. I think this was the first time I had. But to be honest I don’t think I’d play with this guy again, unless he did turn down the level of his decks. It might be “fun” for him. But for me, and I suspect the others it wasn’t much fun for us. The little fun I did get was from my decks getting to do a little of what they were meant to do. Like generate goblin tokens or lots of tokens in general.

I suppose to some extent we didn’t fully establish the social contract and the power levels of decks that everyone was going to be playing. We ruled out mass land destruction, and going infinite. But the power level got missed. So a little blame does rest on the rest of us for the way this session turned out.

I know on a Friday evening the commander sessions are promoted as mildly competitive. That’s fine. I don’t play there on a Friday. For me Commander is a casual game that is meant to be fun.

If the game is with similar powered decks, or one or two are slightly higher on the power level, then the game is going to ebb and flow. And in general the majority will be having fun. But when there is such a big gap between power levels of decks. Then we get something like this session.