Community

Just finished another EDH game (another victory to the Moonfolk!) that had me crossing my fingers right down to the wire. It was also a perfect illustration of why I almost never concede a game before I actually lose.

The game was against a Sharuum deck, a Horde of Notions deck, and Gardevior's Adamaro deck (which the Moonfolk faced yesterday and beat--this was the grudge rematch). The Horde player had conceded due to time pressures earlier on, and Gardevior was succumbing to Sharuum's Akroma's Memorial-enhanced minions, at 1 life.

I had been lying low all game, trying to assemble combo pieces; I had Hedron Crab and Patron in play already, but had been lacking a second bounceland to really rev things up until just the last turn, and hadn't wanted to tip my hand by partially comboing early.

So I've been thinking about building a monoblue Patron of the Moon EDH deck for Magic Online; I went to the bots last night and surprisingly picked up almost everything I needed all at once, and built a first draft right away.

In its inaugural game, right after assembly, the entire table got steamrolled by a Teysa deck packing Recurring Nightmare--the less said about that game, the better. But during the second game, completed just minutes ago, everything fell into place, and the Moonfolk pulled it through, in a nicely spectacular fashion. Patron plus Hedron Crab plus two Ravnica Bouncelands is awesomely powerful; I can only imagine how awesome it would have been like if that had been a Roil Elemental rather than the Crab.

The deck is definitely very rough; it's quite slow, has very little

I just finished up a profoundly anticlimactic Commander game.

The game had gone long haul; the players were myself, a Horde of Notions deck, a Rubinia Soulsinger deck, and a Karona, False God deck. The Horde deck was being run by a player who had only played EDH once before and it seemed to be one of those decks that's simply an excuse for tossing in almost everything you could find. The Rubinia deck was scary, using lots of blue extra-turn spells along with green recursion to keep on going, with Mirari's Wake to fuel it. The Karona deck was not so scary; it looked more like a let's-have-fun deck, and Riptide Shapeshifter seemed to confirm that appearance.

Karona had dropped midgame, causing mass chaos alongside a Progenitus...and everyone else. The Horde deck died, but I had dropped Blazing

Okay, so after encountering this thread over on the MtGSalvation Rulings forum, I'm finding I have a hankering for building a new EDH deck whose only purpose is to do exactly that, and cause as much mass confusion as possible.

The only question is whether to make it a paper deck, or an online deck.

An online deck would automatically handle all the triggers as appropriate, which'd be great, but then again, it might be more entertaining to look at the utter helplessness on my opponents' faces when they face it in paper and try to figure out what on earth will happen when they try to do something, and I do have the rules knowledge to work it out...

Either way, I think the best way to go would be U/R, with Jhoira of the Ghitu as the General. I'll have to think more about this.

And the pendulum swings. In my second game with the newly enhanced deck, I encounter no significant mana problems, and pull off some teriffically epic (and at the very least wonderfully entertaining) plays.

The game was vs Iona, Shield of Emeria, Uril, the Miststalker, and Reaper King. Here are some of the highlights.

The game started off impressively fast with a turn-two Luminarch Ascension from the Iona player; I Wiped it Away it before it could receive its last counter, then when it re-dropped, I bounced it again with Riftwing Cloudskate before it could generate more than a couple angels, by which time board positions had developed enough to keep it in check. (I'm going to love Riftwing in this deck; I can feel it.)

I swung at the Reaper King player to get him to set off his Oblivion

The modifications to my EDH deck I talked about in my last entry included adding a bunch of mana accelleration and mana fixing to the deck. So, naturally, in the very first game I play after modifying the deck--the very first one--I encounter the most epic, unbelievable, staggering, probability-defying, excruciatingly painful case of mana screw I have ever encountered in any game.

My opening hand included an Island and a Plains along with Sensei's Divining Top, to go along with a bunch of relatively cheap spells, among them Condemn, Drift of Phantasms, Mulldrifter, and Paradise Plume. Better than many hands, so I keep. My first turn, I drop the land and the Top. Second turn, I activate Top before drawing...and see three nonland cards. Well, damn. This is probably going to hurt.

How little

I just finished modifying my Isperia deck, I think for the first time since I built it. The modifications include adding Sower of Temptation, Riftwing Cloudskate, Voidstone Gargoyle, and more. I've had the wishlist all set, and had been looking apathetically at bots earlier, but kept putting it off--for weeks now--because I'm really quite lazy about deckbuilding, but the game I just had finally pushed me over the edge.

It was the last portion of the game--the Zur the Enchanter player had bitten the dust relatively early, and the Ib Halfheart player had had to leave, so it was just me and a Jenara deck...with Jenara on the bottom of his library thanks to an earlier Condemn.

My life total was lower, but I had an overwhelming board advantage, with Isperia, Blazing Archon, Purity, and Oathsworn

Well that sucked.

So we've been having a pretty good game so far--there's me, a Hazezon Tamar deck, a Kresh the Bloodbraided deck, and a Vhati il-Dal deck. It's fairly late in the game--two hours along--and things are looking grim for me. Kresh is a 10/10, and has a Spearbreaker Behemoth hanging around to protect him, and I'm scared. So I transmute Dizzy Spell for Condemn to protect myself, only to see Kresh pick up a Whispersilk Cloak before combat and smack me.

Things roll around to my turn, and I have very few possible outs. There's Prahv, which I don't draw. Return to Dust, which I also don't draw. Blazing Archon, which I once again don't draw (and can't tutor up because Isperia isn't on the field at the moment). I do, however, have a Glarecaster in hand...but there's a problem. I don't

Tonight's EDH game was a perfect illustration of why style points will kill you. I was playing against a Seshiro the Anointed deck and a Raksha the Golden Cub deck. (There was also a Rhys the Redeemed deck, but it dropped out early.)

I started the game out fairly strong, but then both opponents kept drawing a ton of removal for my card-drawing artifacts and enchantments. (Seriously, between them they killed Mind's Eye, Honden of Seing Winds, Future Sight, AND Sensei's Divining Top, and that's in addition to my Fieldmist Borderpost, Sacred Mesa, Faith's Fetters, and a bunch of the Raksha player's stuff too.)

I'm eventually left behind in development, because my deck's mana hungry, especially with Glory in the graveyard and the need to be able to use it (and boy do I need to use it); I'm