Merieke & Friends

Commander / EDH MULRAH

66 VIEWS | IN 2 FOLDERS

Friday Night COVID Commander —Sept. 18, 2020

This game was pretty wild, with a lot of swings and shifts in who seemed to be winning throughout the game. I don't remember the order in which things happened, but here are some of the key aspects of the game:

1. Ryan's Oona hit me for 18 Commander damage early on, and only with a Treachery was I able to prevent a loss.
2. I probably would have lost anyway due to Ryan's small army of flyers, but Jeremy used Wrath of God to clear the board, saving me...and probably him.
3. I tried to pull off a quick win early on with Rest in Peace + Helm of Obedience. I figured I'd get eyerolls and requests to retire the deck, but Ryan caught on and countered the Helm. Nice play!
4. Demonic Pact was a spicy, fun card. I tossed it out there when I thought I could win with the above combo, and when Ryan foiled it I figured I was doomed. It was actually fun to luck into one of my deck's many blink spells at just the right moment and watch the ensuing minigame as Jeremy and Ryan would try to eliminate my outs. I nearly lost again later on before realizing I could use my own Ratchet Bomb to take it out!
5. My deck seemed to be pretty dominant for most of the midgame, as I had a nice synergy going with Agent of Treachery and various blink effects. I repeatedly stole Jeremy's planeswalkers and managed to keep Oona off the board.
6. At one point, I had seven or so planeswalkers in play and an absurd number of cards in hand. After methodically discarding down to seven, I then had to pick up all my nonland permanents because Ryan played Cyclonic Rift.
7. Shortly thereafter, Jeremy played Elspeth Conquers Death, which benefited from Ryan's Coat of Arms. Unable to do anything about it, Ryan and I passed the turn back to him, and he soon had nine 9/9 soldier tokens in play. There was nothing either of us could do about this army of soldiers, so Jeremy won the game!

Overall, this was an enjoyable game, but it did bog down when I had seven planeswalkers. Not only were all the abilities complex to consider, I was also drawing tons of cards that had their own interactions. I felt bad about taking so long just to use the planeswalkers--many of which were Jeremy's--so more than once I just passed the turn with mana up or without having read all the cards I'd drawn just because I didn't want to slow the game down even more than I already was. I guess this had a lot to do with the deck that Jeremy was playing, which included a lot of planeswalkers, so the "you did this to yourself" theme of my deck ironically flipped back on me, as I was swimming in the complexity of the board state I'd created from others' cards. More familiarity with the interactions within my own deck might have enabled me to more readily identify small synergies to gain more value, but that's always going to get messed with when I've got others' cards under my control. In any case, it was slightly less enjoyable than prior outings due to the abridged turns resulting from a complex board, but this remains my favorite the EDH decks I've built.