If all goes to plan I will have a new play mat for Star Wars:Destiny that will be pretty amazing.

I love this image from Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Those X-Wings skimming the water as they race to the rescue of Maz, Han, Chewie, Rey and Finn (plus everyone else at Maz’s place) is just iconic to me.

I was hoping we’d see an official play mat with it on. But it hasn’t happened yet. So I’ve had to resort to “borrowing” the above image off the Internet and getting an unofficial version made with it.

If the results are good I might look into getting some Fenland Gamer ones made up.   Some general large ones for game sessions. But if demand or the public cry out loud enough one for our MtG players. Both would be pretty cool. I’d love one of the official Ultra-Pro MtG 6ft play mats for our group. But justifying just short of £100 for that is very very hard. Having club ones that individuals get to buy if they want is an easier decision.

This afternoon Charlie and I met up and played our first ever games of Commander using two of the prebuilt 2017 decks.

Charlie went with the Feline Ferocity deck, so cat tribal with Arahbo, Roar of the Wild as its commander. I chose cool dragons tribal with Draconic Domination and it’s commander the Ur-Dragon.

In our first game after a couple of turns Charlie had a couple of creatures out, and I just had to take the damage they were dealing, and then he dropped Quietus Spike on the board.

Luckily he didn’t have enough mana to equip it straight away. I needed a solution. I could play a dragon and block with it. It would die. But I’d have to keep doing that each turn until I found a better solution. Or I could hope to top deck the answer. Which is what I did on my card draw.

I drew Crux of Fate, chose Destroy all non-Dragon creatures. Wiped the Board clean of all cat creatures on Charlie’s side and removed any targets for that horrible spike. After that I was able to get dragons onto the board and hit Charlie at will. Charlie wasn’t able to draw into any more creatures.

Not being able to sacrifice a creature with Wasitora out meant I was able to get some cute cat dragon tokens out. Plus Charlie did once manage to draw and play a creature but then had to sacrifice it!

Game two saw an early Dragonspeaker Shaman hit the board. Which with my commanders eminence ability meant I was getting a 3 mana discount on casting dragons.

So I was casting big dragons a lot earlier than I should. Charlie still wasn’t drawing any answers and once again took a beating. But give Charlie his dues he was determined that the cats could work.

Game 3. Charlie was giving me rat tokens! I got three before I killed off the Hungry Lynx creating them.

Thing is with Dromoka in play on my side I was putting two +1/+1 tokens on them!

I was attacking at will, with once more the cards hating Charlie, no damage coming back at me. So the inevitable happened again and I won. I wasn’t used to this. I was winning at Magic!

For our fourth and final game we swapped decks. I joked “you know what’s going to happen, I’ll win with this deck”. I was able to play a turn one soul ring. I had some great mana ramp. I played an enchancement that doubled my mana produced by a land when I tapped it, plus gave my creatures +1/+1.

I had a couple of artefacts that I was able to equip on to I think it was Temur Sabretooth. Which with the Commander ability meant it had vigilance, first strike, trample, and was something like a 11/11 when it swung in.

Although Charlie was able to get rid of my enchantment slowing my mana ramp down a little, it was too little too late. He wasn’t drawing any answers and I was hitting him hard with my beefed up creature.

I managed to win with the cat tribe!

The cards were really harsh to Charlie this afternoon, whilst really kind to me. I enjoyed this 1 v 1 game of Commander. But I’m really keen now to try it with more players and see how the politics of the game kick in.

But a great afternoon with a great opponent. Thanks for the games Charlie.