Today I went over to Huntingdon to play some Magic the Gathering and Commander. On the way I picked up my “break up for the cards” copies of the 3 2018 precons I had put aside at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole. They didn’t have any Subjective Reality decks left (had to order one online), plus a pot of grey paint and a couple of fine tip paint brushes. The later is for when the dire wolf model arrives.

The first game of the afternoon was a 4 player game which saw my Scarab God zombie horde deck get me to first loser. It didn’t really start to kick in, and do its stuff. It looked like it was going to start doing its thing, but a board wipe put an end to that idea.

By the end of the first game 2 others had turned up and we split into 2 groups of 3 to play.

The second game saw my Harry Potter Wizards deck get its butt kicked by a Giants deck. The deck didn’t really start to do anything, so yeah.

Zombie hordes over ran my big green stompy deck, despite me having a nice big stompy hydra on the board. Pumped up 2/2 zombie tokens, that became 4/4 with death touch after some abilities and enchantments, have 19 of those swing in not a lot you can do.

The fourth and final saw my angels come down from high.

“These words he speaks are true,
We’re all humanary stew,
If we don’t pledge allegiance to
Nico Bolas

The horror that he brings,
The horror of his teeth,
The unholiest of kings,
Nico Bolas.

Our minds will be his toy,
And every girl and boy
Will learn to be employed by
Nico Bolas.”

[lyrics poorly changed a little from Alice Coopers Black Widow]

Playing the angel deck it felt like I was the heavenly host for Nico Bolas. And that’s despite stopping the Nicol Bolas legendary dragon (core 2019 version) from transforming into its Planeswalker version.

I think when I played my first board wipe (Hour of Devastation) I did say as casting it “you have angered our Lord Nico Bolas, for the hour of devastation has arrived” or words very similar to these. Luckily my Commander was indestructible so I was able to keep her on the battlefield. In fact I was able to perform the same trick for my second board wipe (Wrath of God) too. It really does feel like you delivering Nico Bolas’s judgement upon the unclean when playing these cards.

I had lots of mana, so when I cast Helm of Hosts and equipped onto my Commander, it was game over more or less. And so it was.

A great afternoon of Commander.

Ok I guess after the two clues one or two might be remotely interested in the answer.

Well the “Secret theme” of the deck I’m going to brew is Ninja. The commander will be Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow from the 2018 Commander precon Subjective Reality.

The first clue was the tune Wastelands by Ben Daglish from the C64 game The Last Ninja. And the second clue was a bit of art from the advert for the game.

Painting tomorrow.