Pattern Recognition #97 - Slow Grow 2

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

17 January 2019

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Hello everyone! Welcome back to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.net's longest running article series about the bric and brac of Magic: The Gathering, card design, game history and theory as well as being my own personal soap box for when I want to go on and on about things that interest me. Who am I? Well, I am berryjon, self professed Old Fogey and yes, I've been playing this game for longer than some of you have been alive. I've earned that title.

So, welcome back to the second week of my retrospective of my Slow Grow Commander League. If you're confused about what that is, just go back a couple articles and read all about it.

Now, to quickly remind you what happened last time, after weeks 0 and 1, I had decided that there needed to be two things I needed to patch up in Lord Windgrace's precon to start to make it more viable. And that meant:

WEEK TWO

OUT: Grim Backwoods, Haunted Fengraf, Tranquil Thicket, Khalni Garden, Forgotten Cave
IN: Geothermal Crevice, Darigaaz's Caldera, Sheltered Thicket, Dragonskull Summit, Overgrown Tomb

Now, a lot of the discussion that came from the fairly casual environment the local store fosters, and one of the things I kept hearing was that I, and a few other players with heavy land bases should remove five lands and replace them with other cards.

As you can see from my choices above, I disagreed. You see, I saw the Lands Matter aspect of this deck, and I wanted to turn this deck into a decent enough Landfall deck - or at least as decent as I could given the options available to me.

But there is one thing I want to make clear to all of you here, before you decide to rake me over the coals for my lack of Fetch Lands in the deck. I want to say upfront that I am only using cards that are in my collection, and I actually don't have Fetches. They were printed either in a set that got damaged at one point, or when I was unemployed and had to moderate my purchases to the occasional booster. Nor was I going to buy cards for this League. Rather, I was just going to limit myself to my own personal existing collection - plus whatever cards I got from prize boosters.

SERIOUSLY WIZARDS! PUT FETCHES INTO A COMMANDER PRECON!

Anyhow, let me explain my choices here. Grim Backwoods and Haunted Fengraf were removed because they were not only non-coloured mana producers, but as I looked at their secondary effects, I just wasn't really sold on them when there were other options in play. Grim Backwoods draw effect was just too slow for my tastes, and so I kicked it to the curb, while the Haunted Fengraf has the most horrible word in it - RANDOM. So yeah, goodbye, nice knowing you. Don't call me. I'll call you.

Tranquil Thicket and Forgotten Cave did see some use in Week 0 and Week 1 - as fuel for the +2 on Lord Windgrace. That's is. A land that comes into play tapped for a single mana just doesn't sit right for me unless it has some other useful ETB effect - which helps explain my love for New Benalia, which can't go into this deck naturally. I never Cycled them either. So out they go.

In addition, Khalni Garden provides such a minor synergy with Avenger of Zendikar that I didn't bother. Hell, on Week 1, I got more use out of casting Reality Scramble on the generated Plant that the land seemed pretty useless in of itself. So out it went as well.

Bringin in new lands, Sheltered Thicket and Overgrown Tomb provide legal targets for the slow Fetches in the deck already, and you can't really go wrong with a proper Shock Land in any format. And naturally, I used the original Ravnica printing. And Dragonskull Summit is a decent Checkland off of both previous additions. So yay for synergy?

Now I'm going to say, straight up, that Geothermal Crevice and Darigaaz's Caldera are not good choices of mine. Rather, they are personal favourites from ye olde days of yore. Geothermal Crevice, art by John Avon which automatically makes it the best ever, is a neat trick in this deck given that it's in all three relevant colors and can recur using the Commander. Which I actually pulled off - finally - in Week 6. In a slower paced game, I can pop it for the bonus mana to give me a quick boost, while in a quicker game, or one in more tense time frames, it can put me back into parity for having played a tapped land last turn and was unable to use it.

On the other side of the coin, Darigaaz's Caldera is a damned good choice. It's an Untapped Jund Land, that has the "cost" of bouncing a land - in a deck that wants to play more lands. This, in my opinion, makes it better than the Ravnican Bounce Lands.

Yeah. I said that.

Fight me.

So why not have it? And it makes for a fourth Bounce Land for Landfall shenanigans, so there's no reason not to.

So, with choices made, I went back into the league for Week 2!

I noticed that we were down to about the usual 10-12 people, and of those, I was the only Lord Windgrace player still standing. In addition, because the store has such a relatively low turnout on most weeks, for Leagues like this, players who aren't in the League can bring their non-League decks and sit down to play. Points can be scored on them, but they don't count for points scored against other players, or for positioning. For example, I was at a table of three on Week 4, and one of the players was a non-League deck (fuck you, Krenko, Mob Boss). This meant that I would be in second at the worst, and that player could be dealt damage for First Blood for example (but yeah, outrunning a semi-tuned Goblin deck with Lord Windgrace doesn't happen).

GAME 1

My notes from this game are pretty spotty. Taking notes at the table, tracking health totals and playing the game can get hectic on occasion, and at the time, I still wasn't sure if I wanted to go through with this article series.

However, I can tell you that my land fixing choices were instantly exonerated, and I only got land-screwed properly only once more over the course of the League. And while I lost - again - I was able to determine another thing about this deck after my seventh game with it.

There's only really one good "blast" in terms of landfall in the deck. Under optimum conditions, I can reliably put 6-8 lands onto the battlefield in a single turn, and that's it. The primary limiting factor isn't the graveyard, but rather all the cards in the deck that can only search for Basic Lands, and with only 7 Forests, 6 Swamps and 5 Mountains, I actually was worried that I was going to run out of valid targets a couple of times throughout the League.

However, Avenger of Zendikar, despite being awesome, and definite MVP of the deck, has problems in that once the Plants go, that's it. It's just an over-sized beater.

GAME 2

Another game with low notes. It was also another of my regular matches against the Saskia the Unyielding player. Here, Xantcha, Sleeper Agent began to prove her worth as a social card in Commander. When I got her out, I gave her to the Saskia player with the promise to not target me with her first. Having a 5/5 on the board under the control of Saskia might not have been the best overall play, but it sure as hell was fun. And being able to burn my excess mana for card draws was fun.

But this also gave me my second major comment about the deck.

There are only two real blow-out Win Conditions in the deck. Nesting Dragon and Avenger of Zendikar. Of course, I didn't convince myself of this until much later. There's a lot of removal in the deck as well, but it tends to be global in nature, and again, I'm in a worse position to recover than other decks can.

A lot of people are also talking up Xantcha as a Commander, and while I can sorta see it, I'm not convinced that she'll be good for it in the long run. Black and Red aren't good for mana acceleration in the long game to use her activated ability, and while certain cards like Assault Suit, Vow of Lightning and Vow of Malice make me think she's more of a gimmick Commander than something serious.

And I know me. Vorthos first, everything else a distant fourth.

WHERE'S ASHNOD AND GIX, WIZARDS? Complete the supporting cast for Urza sooner rather than later, please!

Game 3

Not much here again, I was running on fumes after a long day of work, then on my third hour of Magic.

The only thing of note before I went out in 3rd place was a casting of Emissary of Grudges. An interesting card, but I aimed it at the Meren of Clan Nel Toth deck. I don't recall why I did that, but this was another game were I was doing nothing for my first few turns hoping to get board presence.

I was now absolutely certain that I needed to lower the casting cost of this deck, and put some creatures into it. I also, now that I was looking seriously at the non-lands in the deck, seeing some very weird choices about what Wizards decided should go into the deck.

I left the round with 5 points under my belt, coming in third, third and fourth this week. 11 total.

This meant that I was, officially, in last place. There were now point penalties for attacking me first at each table.

I was hoping to cover two weeks each article, but it seems like my decision process took up a lot of space, with the actual weeks being relegated to an afterthought. Maybe once a game comes down to more than just "I try to gain board state, everyone else wins", I can write more.

Join me next time when I talk about a returning mechanic in Ravnica, one that hasn't been Keyworded until now, then I'll come back to Slow Grow in two weeks!

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!