pie chart

2020 Blood Pod Challenge

Commander / EDH Aggro BRGW Multiplayer Stax Toolbox

MemoryLapse

Upvote 0
0

Creature (37)

Land (29)

Instant (10)

Artifact (4)

Commanders (2)

Commander: foil Tana, the Bloodsower
Commander: foil Tymna the Weaver

Enchantment (10)

Sorcery (8)

Maybeboard

Creature (14)

Land (10)

Artifact (1)

Enchantment (5)

Sorcery (3)

Planeswalker (1)

Instant (1)

Welcome to the 2020 Blood Pod Challenge

As a brewer, I constantly change decks. Only on rare occasions do I manage to keep the same deck together for more than a few months. But in 2020, that’s all going to change. My objective is to focus the majority of my Magic-related efforts into one commander deck that is finely tuned by the end of the year. Also, I hope to play this and mostly this so I can get a good feel for how the deck functions. Its mostly just a way for me to have fun playing magic while shifting my primary style, not to design a new cEDH deck nor to fit into a either a casual or competitive pod; just jamming some sweet games.
I selected the concept of Blood Pod for a few reasons:

  1. The deck has both casual and competitive potential.

  2. The deck leverages card advantage to win in a longer game.

  3. It isn’t blue. (Stepping outside of my comfort zone on this one; see my Opus Weaver deck for my go-to)

  4. It typically wins by attacking. (Again, outside of my comfort zone)

  5. It is a flexile deck held together by a general game plan, but most slots can be experimented with (though not all will make the deck more competitive).

  6. It can start out with weak cards and grow in strength with only a few changes.

For my initial build, I intended to build the deck weaker than it could be. Over time, I want to be able to explain why each card is worth its inclusion and what difference it has made to the deck. With that in mind, I only included three cards that tutor (excluding fetchlands): Yisan, Wanderer Bard, Birthing Pod, and Buried Alive. The second and third are responsible for setting up table-clearing combos, but pod and Yisan generate excellent advantages without an immediate victory. Also, I did not look at other X-pod decks when designing my first draft. This is so I get as raw of a deck as I can; I included cards that were good and cards that I wanted to put in for fun. Also of note, I built the deck with cards lying around at the time as opposed to digging for optimal cards. This will rapidly change as I find time to fetch them.

Commanders:

Tymna the Weaver

Tana, the Bloodsower

The 98:

Avacyn's Pilgrim

Bane of Progress

Beast Whisperer

Birds of Paradise

Caustic Caterpillar

Eidolon of Rhetoric

Elves of Deep Shadow

Elvish Mystic

Etali, Primal Storm

Eternal Witness

Feldon of the Third Path

Felidar Guardian

Fyndhorn Elves

Garruk's Horde

Inferno Titan

Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord

Karmic Guide

Kataki, War's Wage

Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker

Knight of Autumn

Llanowar Elves

Magus of the Moon

Magus of the Wheel

Manglehorn

Priest of Titania

Qasali Pridemage

Reclamation Sage

Ruric Thar, the Unbowed

Sakura-Tribe Elder

Scavenging Ooze

Selfless Squire

Sire Of Insanity

Skyshroud Elf

Sun Titan

Tendershoot Dryad

Thantis, the Warweaver

Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves

Village Bell-Ringer

Warmonger Hellkite

Xantcha, Sleeper Agent

Yisan, the Wanderer Bard

Domri Rade

Animate Dead

Blood Moon

Grasp of Fate

Growing Rites of Itlimoc  

Guardian Project

Leyline of the Void

Pernicious Deed

Possibility Storm

Root Maze

Rule of Law

Sylvan Library

Armageddon

Buried Alive

Death

Sudden Demise

Birthing Pod

Sol Ring

Sphere of Resistance

Winter Orb

Nature's Claim

Swords to Plowshares

Sylvan Reclamation

Blossoming Sands

Brushland

Caves of Koilos

Command Tower

Evolving Wilds

Exotic Orchard

Grove of the Burnwillows

Horizon Canopy

Jungle Hollow

Jungle Shrine

Karplusan Forest

Kazandu Refuge

Llanowar Wastes

Nomad Outpost

Nurturing Peatland

Overgrown Tomb

Polluted Delta

Razorverge Thicket

Rugged Highlands

Sandsteppe Citadel

Savage Lands

4x Snow-Covered Forest

1x Snow-Covered Mountain

2x Snow-Covered Plains

2x Snow-Covered Swamp

Stomping Ground

Temple Garden

Terramorphic Expanse

Windswept Heath

By the end of December, I plan on examining the progress of the deck to see how much it has evolved. Along the way, I will record when and what my changes to the deck are, as well as loose records of my commander games.
Play to get experience, then primer
1: Decided upon a deck

2: Built first draft of deck and generated tappedout page

3: Brief testing against non-full pod

4/5: Rapid upgrades

19: For fun game after an event

15: Weekly Magic Club commander shenanigans
This has not happened yet.
This has not happened yet.
This has not happened yet.
This has not happened yet.
This has not happened yet.
This has not happened yet.
This has not happened yet.
This has not happened yet.
This has not happened yet.
This has not happened yet.
Jan 3: Test game against Tokens led by Trostani, Selesnya's Voice. Mana dorks + Armageddon was very effective at subduing the opponent while chugging along with Beast Whisperer draws.

Jan 19: Post-prerelease game against 2 low-power decks and one tuned Atraxa, Praetors' Voice. Atraxa got off to a decent start, but both Blood Moon effects and a plethora of artifact hate shut down the other decks at the table. A Hokori, Dust Drinker hit the table, and as a result of the draw advantage off of my Tymna, I pulled ahead in time to rush out a kiki/bell-ringer combo for the win.

Feb 15: Large game involving a bulk rare stuffed Atris, Oracle of Half-Truths, a tuned Muldrotha, the Gravetide, chaos Golos, Tireless Pilgrim, vampire tribal Edgar Markov, and a Prime Speaker Vannifar built out of a cube. The game started off strong with a Leyline of the Void shutting down a few players' plans, but as answers began appearing to disable my stax pieces, more sprung up. The game was close to a finish, but the Edgar player hinted at ways to remove a Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker combo, so I ended up poding upwards into a Ruric Thar, the Unbowed, who, because of a series of wraths, kept bouncing between graveyard and battlefield, dealing chunks of damage all the while. With the help of Ruric, life totals became low enough that a few players knocked each other out from damage, but Muldrotha persisted due to a closely guarded life total. In the end, Muldrotha won due to a Jace, Wielder of Mysteries and self-decking while backed up by a Underrealm Lich and a heavy suite of countermagic. This game was not competitive, but certainly was an exciting exercise with Blood Pod.

February 22: Two games with Blood Pod: The first game's opponents consisted of Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow Control/Stax, the same Muldrotha, the Gravetide deck from the previous week, and a combo-centric Ghave, Guru of Spores. This game embodied the 'fair' gameplan of Blood Pod. It ramped up with some early dorks into a Sire of Stagnation in the first few turns. Of note, Pod was able to drop a Survival of the Fittest on turn 2. Blood Pod was able to grind out a large amount of value from there by playing both commanders, building a large number of saprolings, and drawing cards. The opponents held their own, setting up walls of blockers and slowing the game significantly. Fortunately, over a couple of turns, Pod cycled through a couple of creature draws into Kiki-Jiki, the mirror breaker and Felidar Guardian the first time, then into a Karmic Guide which promptly won the game. The second game was a similar pod, the main difference being that Muldrotha was replaced by Rakdos, Lord of Riots. This game was all about resource denial. A series of mana sources (dorks and Carpet of Flowers) was deployed early around a turn 2 Winter Orb. That, paired with a few choice stax pieces like a Leyline of the Void that faced down Ghave's Academy Rector, allowed Blood Pod to pull ahead. There was also an Inferno Titan in there somewhere picking off all the little creatures on the board and dealt some damage, but unfortunately, nothing lethal to players. In the end though, the opponents pooled their resources to slowly disassemble the board until Rakdos wiped the field at the same time that it deployed a barrage of creatures too large for the rest of the board to survive. The game went to Rakdos on the subsequent turn cycle.

Suggestions are always welcome and encouraged!

Suggestions

Updates Add

Comments

Attention! Complete Comment Tutorial! This annoying message will go away once you do!

Become a supporter of TappedOut and hide ads for only $3/month!

Important! Formatting tips — Comment Tutorial — markdown syntax

Please login to comment

Casual

93% Competitive