Norin & Friends
Commander / EDH
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Playtesting —June 2, 2020
1
Holy crap, that was different!
I just put together a budget Norin the Wary deck for which I tried to include some alternative commanders, just like I've done with recent EDH builds. In this playtest, I pitted these commanders against each other to see how they'd do.
Rakka Mar and Kazuul seemed to be doing alright at first, just by virtue of building some early board presence. Rakka Mar was doling out some damage, and I didn't see how anyone would want to mess with Kazuul. Torbran was public enemy #1 just because he seemed like the best commander, so he was taking all of Rakka Mar's early hits.
Norin was disappointing early on, as none of the ETB payoffs I'd put into the deck had been drawn. Then he got Confusion in the Ranks, and WOW! I don't think I realize how insane that card is with Norin. Every turn, he was stealing the best creature on the board. There were some futile efforts to cast stuff after that, and Rakka Mar slowed thing down by using a Firecat Blitz to steal a bunch of stuff back. However, that just postponed the inevitable: Norin eventually had everything, and nobody wanted to cast a Hamletback Goliath only to see it traded for a 3/1 token. Some enchantment removal would have broken Norin's lock, but this is a monored deck.
Wow.
Well, I'll want to try this again, maybe without the unstoppable combo, but it was pretty neat to see that in action.
2
Wow again!
Norin wasn't looking so good in this one, lacking anything that synergized with him early on. Rakka Mar again came out swinging, while Kazuul seemed like he'd be strong but wasn't (also again). Torbran stumbled on mana (again), so the game as a whole had a lot of parallels with the previous one.
A major difference was the uptick in the punisher spells that came out in this one, accelerating the game toward its conclusion. Players were haphazardly losing life just doing things they had to do, like casting spells or having permanents in play.
Kazuul eventually got the upper hand via the sick combo of Fanatic of Mogis and Hostility. With his devotion at 7 and three opponents still around, Kazuul put 21 elementals into play and was threatening to win at any moment. A Mogg Infestation tried to slow the destruction, but Kazuul still ended up with 52 goblins.
Norin had been spinning his wheels but showed some potential once Molten Echoes came into play. Since everyone else assumed they'd get the upperhand eventually, they continued to cast spells and activate Norin's ability, which created a token of himself that flickered before it would be exiled. He managed to get 18 Norins into play, though I'm guessing I might have missed a turn when nothing happened, at which point all the tokens would have disappeared.
These tokens were pointless in the face of Kazuul's 52 goblins, but Rakka Mar played a last ditch Obliterate, which reset everything except the enchantments. Due to his Goblin Assault, Kazuul was best able to recover from this, but at least he was only dinging people for 1 or 2 damage per turn instead of 52. Now that I'm recapping this, I am quite sure those Norin tokens would have disappeared at some point during those turns when everyone was putting out their first Mountain again.
Regardless, everything changed when Norin drew Impact Tremors. All of a sudden, his "18" Norins flickered and came back to deal lethal damage to the field. What!?!?
Even if I screwed this up, it's still clear that Norin had the most interesting and powerful synergy going at the end of the game. The other commanders never really got anything going that felt unique to them, though they did manage to pull off some generic monored shenanigans.