Lord Windgrace MLD cEDH

Commander / EDH* jcsmbio07018

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Commander Precon League Report - Week 4 —Sept. 3, 2018

Well it has been a long time since my last update! After my week off on vacations I had unfortunately to also miss the 3rd week of the commander precon league. That put my odds at making the top 5 and earning prizes to slim at best. However I believe in the miracles of Lord Windgrace and so I sleeved my 40 modifications to the precon (10 per week is the LGS rule) and decided to go for the last of 4 weeks of this tournment. After 40 modifications, barring the landbase, the decklist was very similar, in terms of philosophy, to the final one. A few cards I played due to the fact that I knew that the meta would consist only of precon commander of C18:

With this meta considerations in mind, here goes the report of the 2 rounds I played yesterday:

  • Round 1 vs. Windgrace and Aminatou: Well this was father and son, against me, with their wife/mother watching. I imediately felt it would be really tough to fight those odds so I want all-in. Turn 1 Deathrite Shaman, Turn 2 Vampiric Tutor for Survival of the Fittest, Turn 3 Survival leaving 2 activations up. Turn 4 they are both tapped out but I'm one mana short of fetching Phyrexian Delver and playing it. I just pass, waiting for them to tap out again. Aminatou's player does, Windgrace's doesn't. I fetch delver, proceed to combo. Imediately understand they are not understanding I will win. Proceed to be a good guy and tell them how I am about to win. Proceed to be an even "gooder" guy and explain to them that any kind of instant speed creature interaction breaks the combo and forces me to try again next turn. They stop to think a LOT and then Windgrace's player kills Zealous Conscripts and reveals to us that he has necromancy, so he can reanimate conscripts on his turn, steal my kiki and proceed to combo off as I just tutored him on how to. His son starts to pack the cards I stop him as I looked for a solution. Only way out was Aminatou blinking Chupacabra on my Kiki. Reluctantly, I turned son against father for the first and last time in the game. Because after this the great 2v1 galore began. To be fair, knowing that I could combo off out of nowhere made it fair that they ganged up on me. But plays like Aminatou being at 41, I'm at 21, Windgrace's player reanimates Magister Sphinx and chooses to put me at 10 instead of Aminatou... That made me salty. Knowing that on round 2 he let his son combo while holding to Putrefy.... That made me saltier. But it's ok. As a good friend of mine told me "Hey, he's paying for two decks!". I ended up being taken out of the table. Then Aminatou missed lethal 3 times, while I was freaking out watching that from afar xD Windgrace won in the end, while holding at 3 life for 10 turns. At least it was Wakanda forever. Went outside to get some air and reduce my saltiness, while getting ready for the last round of the game.
  • Round 2 vs. Saheeli and Saheeli: The game I prepared for all week. Saheeli nr 1 plays Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, land, go. Well, that's bad. Saheeli nr 2 plays a single land, says he has no interaction for nr 1. That's worse. I have Tireless Tracker, Chandra, Torch of Defiance, Turntimber Sower and lands. Challenge accepted. I plays both three drops and proceed to draw a multitude of cards with Tracker while both Saheeli's build ridiculous boards. Eventually they are both out of control. However I have Vandalblast and Obliterate. One of the Saheelis has Soul of New Phyrexia in the grave so I decide to do what a man does: cast Vandalblast to force Soul to be activated, completely shutting down one of the players while opening up for an Obliterate play next turn with Chandra and Windgrace on board. Actually there was no need. Next turn I topdeck Ruinous Path attack one Saheeli, kill the other, play Avenger of Zendikar and pump plants twice. They scoop.

League summary: Well, played two weeks, 4 rounds, won 3. That's 75% win-rate, not bad at all :P Actually ended up placing 5th, which awards me one M25 booster xD Somehow just playing two of the four weeks I made it to prizes, which makes me feel even better. As for the deck I feel Lord Windgrace is a very powerful MtG card. It packs an insane amount of card advantage and recursion on three colors, opening up the possibility of creating a very solid MLD strategy with combo backup. I feel, though, that this deck will probably end up short of cEDH material. Lack of access to blue makes it really hard to protect your plays and stop other players, short of mulliganing hard for the correct stax pieces. This is not Blood Pod where you play every possible hate piece and will always affect the board in some way. However, in a slightly less competitive meta, this deck needs respect. Not only is the commander VERY powerful, the MLD strategy is solid and becomes a lot more stable with access to black tutors. Next week I'll start testing this in constructed tables and will keep posting updates.

jcsmbio07018 says... #1

Heyainumaan, thanks for the reply, will try to address your suggestions now:

1) Poxis interesting, and it fulfills the same role as Death Cloud for a cheaper cost, but potentially less devastating consequences. I like both of them but triple black makes it really hard for me to consider it seriously. Even double black cards make me think twice if they are worth, triple black needed to be game winning on spot, which none of them are :) With that being said, Death Cloud would be the next MLD spell in the hierarchy, after Tectonic Break. Might test it but don't really think it will make the cut.

2) Sensei's Divining Top and Mirri's Guile are decent card filtering mechanisms. With the amount of fetches we run they are both worth a shot. However, I don't feel card filtering is good enough for this deck. We need to draw cards, hard. I will put a card like Tireless Tracker in front of any card filtering mechanism, any day of the week :P That being said, Top is better as it actually can draw us an answer imediately.

Hope I answered all suggestions :P Will update the list today as well as report my first testrun of the deck :)

August 13, 2018 3:30 a.m.

jcsmbio07018 says... #2

Hey MalcolmTent and CamTheMan505! Introduced the report on the commander league we are playing with the precons on my LGS for week 1 ;) Already introduced 10 modifications to the decks, you can read everything about it in the updates section!

August 13, 2018 4:07 a.m.

CamTheMan505 says... #3

I need to post my list here as it is very similar to yours; however, I want to include more win conditions to kill the table. I have had several games where stax is working but I'm not able to get my combo pieces to kill the table.

I'll be looking into combo pieces that make sense in this deck to include and will update here in a few days.

August 13, 2018 11:18 a.m.

jcsmbio07018 says... #4

CamTheMan505 I've played just with the 10 modifications I placed in the updates section and I always found one MLD spell at least :P Either followed or preceded by Garruk or Xenagos. Even with Windgrace's +2 only you cycle through your deck very fast, I feel. Ofc I played against slightly modified precons. Against top tier decks I'll try it this week I hope ;)

August 13, 2018 11:34 a.m.

MalcolmTent says... #5

Congratulations on your games! Really glad to see Tireless Tracker make the list. I too got to sit down and put a windgrace deck through it's paces and was subtly reminded of abzan dredge lists thanks to Worm Harvest with a sprinkling of fun from Rubblehulk. Looking forward to the next update.

August 15, 2018 9:21 p.m.

jcsmbio07018 says... #6

To be sincere I hate Rubblehulk. I think it's vanilla trash xD If it gave trample it would still be trashy but a bit more acceptable. As it stand it's just bad. Worm Harvest is decent but to slow. Had it been instant it might have made the cut. But it's a lot better than Rubblehulk ahaha xD

August 16, 2018 3:24 a.m.

SynergyBuild says... #7

Worm Harvest is actually a fun combo card between cards like Earthcraft, Phyrexian Altar, Ashnod's Altar that converts lands in hand for massive amounts of mana, add in The Gitrog Monster, Carnage Altar, and some other effects and you can draw through your whole deck and make an absurd amount of mana, which is pretty fun.

It normally only works in a deck based around abusing tokens though, so not here.

August 16, 2018 8:22 a.m.