Pattern Recognition #265 - Slow Grow 2023 Deck Choice

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

5 January 2023

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Good day everyone! My name is berryjon, and I welcome you all to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut's longest running article series. I am something of an Old Fogey and a definite Smart Ass, and I have been around the block quite a few times. My experience is quite broad and deep, and so I use this series to try and bring some of that to you. Be it deck design, card construction, mechanics or in-universe characters and the history of the game. Or whatever happens to catch my attention each week. Which happens far more often than I care to admit. Please, feel free to talk about my subject matter in the comments at the bottom of the page, add suggestions or just plain correct me.

Hello everyone and welcome to 2023! Woo! Yay! Celebrations! Hangovers!

Yeah, not you guys either? Fair enough, I can't argue that. Well, I could, but it would be an argument I would lose.

So, it's no surprise to people here, I would like to think, that one of my favourite things to do each year is to participate in the local Slow Grow tournament. For those of you who aren't aware of what this is, it is a multi-week Commander tournament held up here in G.P. where each player starts the tournament with a Preconstructed Commander deck, assuming that it hasn't won a previous tournament and therefore been banned, such as what has happened with Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver from last year. Points are earned each week based on your positioning at each of the three tables that week, as well as through other actions, such as losing a point if you fail to cast your Commander, or getting an extra point if you cast them 4 or more times.

At the start of each subsequent week, for weeks 2 through 6 of the tournament, you can switch out up to 5 cards in your deck, for a total of up to 25 changes over the course of tournament. At the end, players get prizes based on how many weeks they participated, where they placed, and other little things.

As of the time of this writing, the full rules for the tournament this year have yet to be published or released, despite my prodding of the person running it. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, STOP BEING MEAN TO ME What I do know is that the core points will stay the same, 4 points for first down to 1 point for last. Points for Commander Damage kills and Saving players are still in the rules, but what they are valued at has yet to be determined.

I will let you all know when I have that info.

But as for the tournament itself, choosing the deck you enter with can be the result of careful planning and consideration, or as I suspect will happen this year, be people going for the newest hotness, because they can. Why yes, I am expecting a rather large contingent of WarHammer 40K decks, especially the 'Nids, to show up at this tournament, while a few of the Brother's War precons will show their heads as well.

But not me. No, I have a different plan. One that's been cooking since last year's tournament. I would like to thank Elfarcher73 for having the decklist on hand when I went to build it, but I will be taking with me this year, Feline Ferocity- GW Cat Tribal C17 PreCon.

From Commander 2017, this deck was one of four Tribal decks from that year, and while the others were Wizards, Vampires and Dragons, this deck? This deck is Cats.

As a side note, apparently my favourite creature type - Kavu - was shortlisted for a deck in this set, but there were no immediate plans to print more Kavu back in 2017, so there was little external support for it, so it got the axe. But hey, things change, right?

So, let's look at the deck.

THE DECK

With three commanders baked into the deck, the Cats deck really has only two lines baked into it. First, the face commander, Arahbo, Roar of the World. This 5/5 Cat Avatar for has the core ability that went through all four of the Commander decks in that set, Eminence. To be more speciifc, this is a keyword that indicates that the creature that has it, has an ability that can be triggered while the creature is in the Command Zone, as well as on the Battlefield. To be more specific, at the beginning of combat on my turn, if Arahbo is in the Command Zone or on the battlefield, I can give another cat I control +3/+3 until the end of the turn. Simple, and tribal. In addition, he has a more traditional triggered ability that whenever another Cat I control attacks, I can pay , and give that attacking cat Trample and +X/+X until the end of the turn, where is the creature's power. Yes, these two abilities synergize, meaning I can turn a 1/1 Sacred Cat into an 8/8 by pointing both abilities at it when it attacks.

Running this Commander means that the deck is a mid-range Aggro deck, one that lays out a few decent Cats, and then swings for the hills with them, boosting as many as possible to get as much damage through as possible with each attack. This is supported by having a few options for powerful Cats, as well as some Voltron options to keep the Cats going when the going gets tough.

The third Commander - and no, I didn't skip one as I think the second one is strongest while the third is weakest, so I'll talk about the strongest last - is Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith. This 5/4 Cat Artificer for , when cast, allows you search your library (but not graveyard or hand) for the Hammer of Nazahan, an equipment that grants the equipped creature +2/+0 and Indestructible, but also has the additional caveat that any further equipment you play will be auto-attached to a creature when they enter the battlefield.

What all this says is that when you resolve Nazahn, you get a 7/4 Indestructible creature that allows you to auto-equip Equipment when they enter the battlefield. In addition, he has one further ability. Whenever an Equipped creature (not just himself, but any) attacks, you may tap target creature defending player controls. This allows Nazahn to selectively remove a creature from blocking, or rather, one for each attacking and equipped creature. This can be useful against all sorts of decks, and should not be discounted. You just have to swing with him, and he doesn't have haste.

Lastly, the best of the three. Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist. This 3/2 Cat Warrior only costs , and has First Strike built into her. Whenever she attacks, each opponent can't block with more than one creature this combat - even if you're not attacking that player with Mirri directly, while as long as she is tapped, no more than one creature can attack me each combat.

Mirri is an amazing card, and honestly, was the reason why I got this deck in the first place all those years ago. She's cheap to cast, which means I can have a good chance at getting first blood points across the game, First Strike is deceptively useful, but her most powerful ability is to be an asymmetrical Silent Arbiter. You can attack with as many as you want, and as long as Mirri is tapped, you can only be attacked by one in return. Which is the crux of the problem. Mirri has to be tapped, which means that Vigilance, one of the most important abilities she could have, could just as easily backfire against me if I don't have her tapped against an opponent with plenty of attackers - like say a certain Elf Deck from Kaldheim last year that my brother is plotting on running this year.

I'll talk about that later, maybe. Anyways, the deck itself is quite wonky, and looking it over, the breakdown of cards in the deck is cause for concern in a couple of area.

First, the Cats. There are plenty of them in the deck, and a White Sun's Zenith as well, but not many of them want to be thrown into combat. A lot of them are utility Cats, such as Hungry Lynx, Alms Collector and Seht's Tiger. But there are a few that don't mind getting tossed sideways at someone, as Balan, Wandering Knight is first among them. Bypassing Equip costs, and going from First to Double Strike in the process is great value. Raksha Golden Cub is best friends with Kemba, Kha Regent in terms of making cats, then making them big kitties to murder people with.

Second, the removal, or lack there of. There are two pieces of mass removal in the deck, one being Rout, and the other is Divine Reckoning. I'm going to tell you all straight up, I'm going to need to add more mass removal because Wing Shards isn't going to cut it. In fact, this deck does more Artifact and Enchantment removal than anything else, which could work well in my favor going into this with the Brother's War Precons fresh in people's minds. Those have a lot of artifacts.

Third, let's talk the acceleration in this deck. I am really not impressed by the options before me, as this deck lacks a couple of viable pieces that were already in print at the time. So, please, remember that this deck was published before Throne of Eldraine brought Arcane Signet into the game, so it's absence is quite expected. No, my problems are quite manifold. First is that there are only three Mana Rocks in the deck, and there are no Mana Dorks. We have Sol Ring, Dreamstone Hedron and Hedron Archive. There is no cheap options, such as Mind Stone, Fellwar Stone, or even a Selesnya Signet. From there, we have three Fetch Lands. No, not Fetch-Fetch. Seeing one of those in a Commander Precon would do mean and miserable things to the pricing of them. Expect it to happen this year the way things are going for Hasbro. No, I'm talking about Blighted Woodland, Krosan Verge and Myriad Landscape. You know, with them infront of me, it's easy to see the similarities between Verge and Landscape, while the Woodland enters untapped bit costs more to activate. At least using them results in a total increase in my land count rather than just replacing themselves like with Prismatic Vista.

After that, we get Mirari's Wake and Zendikar Resurgent. The former is absolutely baller in this deck as if I can get off some token generation, say doubling mana into the White Sun's Zenith, I would be rocking. The latter is another mana doubler, but also has an insane mana value of 7, and if I resolve it, I need to start casting creatures to get the best use out of it. It's good, don't get me wrong, but I think it's not going to be a good fit for this deck.

Next, we get three spells; Traverse the Outlands scales on how big your biggest creature is, and let me tell you, resolving that in a Ghalta, Primal Hunger deck can remove all the remaining lands from your deck. Here, I can expect a return of 1 land per mana spent, if not more depending on how the Equipment shakes out. We also get Cultivate and Nissa's Pilgrimage, and while I like the former, the latter only goes for Basic Forests, of which there are six in this deck. It's an easy cut, but I will need to best decide when and what to replace it with.

Lastly, we have the oddballs. Sword of the Animist does a lot of work, and really synergizes well with Mirri. And when it popped up for me last year, I didn't regret having it at all. Oreskos Explorer is also a nice card, and can go get several lands depending on the turn order. But hey, it's not like it's yet another card from that depends on the opponents being ahead just to have value. And lastly, we have Abundance, with Rebecca Guay's awesome art. This card lets you choose if you want to draw a land or a non-land, meaning that you can now skip unnecessary land draws, and draw them when you need it.

But my biggest problem is just how expensive they are! Yes, I have the Ring and Cultivate, but I can't really start accelerating until I have four mana! And that leads me into my next problem.

The Goddamned Mana Base.

37 lands isn't bad. It's good.

14 of them enter the battlefield tapped.

That's bad. Like, not even a Brushland, but then again, for the longest time it was hard to get Pain Lands into a Commadner deck. Apparently, spending 1 life for a coloured mana is too easy when you have 40 to play with. But with so many lands that enter tapped in this deck, I need to be able to plot my mana curve out multiple turns ahead, and in a game of Commander, that will take ages to come back around. No, this mana base needs a serious overhaul, and I could spend all 25 card substitutions doing just that, and then be in a position to do things.

And what about the Equipment? There's 13 in the deck, including the precon-exclusive Hammer. Skullclamp is in the deck, but it's actually something of a trap as it's best use of ", Sacrifice a Creature: Draw two Cards" doesn't work in a deck where tokens are 2 toughness. We also get the traditional Lightning Greaves and Swiftwood Boots, but the Greaves grant Shroud, which prevent other Equip abilities from targetting the protected creature. Quietus Spike is amazing for dealing with runaway lifegain decks, while Grappling Hook pairs so well with Mirri it isn't funny. But the Argentum Armor? Don't make me laugh. You'd have to cheat it into equipping, and the casting, as it is a huge target for removal, as well as whatever creauture it is attached to. What I'm saying is that from my experiences with Voltron last year, this selection is hilariously had, and you can make a good cause that ripping it all out in favor of more Cats is a viable choice.

Thoughts

But I knew what I was getting into when I chose a deck that is five+ years old for my precon. There's a lot of jank and a lot of poor build decisions in it. There's a lot of work to do, but I think I can do it. The mana base needs an overhaul, my final decision about the Commander will determine what I rip out of the deck and what I keep, and I will honestly be still working on this deck all the way through to the last week. Let me know what you guys think of this deck in the comments below! Maybe you'll see something about it that I haven't. But save your larger critiques until I talk about my (alternate) Commanders for the deck, please.

Join me next week, when I either talk about something different, or I talk about my pre-tournament play with the deck, just to get a feel for it. At the same time, I will also discuss my options for the Commander of the deck, and how each would affect the deck going forward. There is definitely one choice I'm considering that will surpirse a lot of people, if only because you may not realize that it's in color.

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!