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Hey Gamers! This past weekend was another iteration of our local casual Commander tournament, The Commander Challenge, at the Connection Games & Hobbies in Vancouver, Canada. I’ve been going to a lot of these lately, as the games have been really good.
Last time I played Dee Kay, Finder of the Lost and some janky attractions to a 4th place finish. You can check out the recap right here:
How’d I do this time? You’ll have to read down, or scroll to the bottom. Reading is way better. I have a list of what I played and play-by-play of the games.
This is a real Commander Tournament, with rules, entry fee, prizes, etc. You get your placing based on a combination of games wins (I won 1 of the 3 I played in), and votes from other players. There is no criteria for votes and they are confidential. Players assign 2 votes after the games, with the first vote being worth 2 points, and the second vote worth 1.
Prizes are drafted from a pool of the shop owner’s construction, always including a mystery box – almost always the first pick. I came into things looking for some Ixalan cards, as I skipped the prerelease.
First up is the deck I played. As always, you will see no fetchlands, no tutors, no combos, and stuff like that. Depowered? Not really. Commander is a complicated game, and if the goal is getting opponent votes, all sorts of strategies can arise.
My main strats? Play fair, be interactive, make moves. Play lands that come in untapped. Play cheap instants. Play lesser known, old, and outdated cards, but play them for real. Lean a little too heavily on Maze of Ith. Some things never change.
The Other Purphoros
What’s the deck do?
There’s a fairly well known enchantment in Magic’s competitive sphere called Sneak Attack. The card lets players cheat huge, game-ending things into play for a much smaller investment than normal. Things like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and Griselbrand.
Now, none of these cards are that popular in Legacy and Vintage anymore. Sneak Attack pops up every now and again, but mostly supplementing Show and Tell, but Atraxa, Grand Unifier has become the creature of choice to cheat into play for big wins.
My Commander, Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded works very similarly to Sneak Attack. It costs more mana, both to cast and to activate, and is restricted to red and artifact creatures, but those restrictions aren’t so bad.
The upside is that Purphoros is indestructible, sometimes a big creature, sometimes not (arguably better), and grants a blanket haste effect instead of just the sneaky attackers. The colour/artifact creature thing is the same as Purphoros’s colour identity as a Commander anyway.
The idea is cheat some stuff into play that either is huge, has a huge effect, or leaves stuff behind. Then I have plenty of ways to copy the stuff I cheat in, or leverage it going to the graveyard.
The deck wants to get to 5 mana ASAP, cast the Commander, then go to 6 mana to get 2 sneak attacks per round. My mana is a little sketchy, as I didn’t want to load up on smaller mana-rocks that would lose impact dramatically beyond turn 4.
I’ve had a weird history with mono-red, and maybe it’s just what the decks are forced to do in order to compete with the other colours, but I usually come away unsatisfied. Too much explosion out of nowhere, a lot of unpredictability to resolve, and opponents rolling eyes at the nonsense. Let’s see if we get there.
One More Thing… Ixalan!
We had an extra game feature for this Commander Challenge in the form of “Commander Party: The Lost Caverns of Ixalan“.
Each group had a sort-of map, along with a set of cards representing the Ixalan gods. Players could move down the map, gaining some solid perks, until they hit the god stage, where they could select a god power to have for the rest of the game.
The ‘maps’ had the gods as the 3rd stop, and only required playing 3, 4 and 5 drops to progress through the steps. You could also attack multiple opponents at once to move one step. It was very easy, and pushed aggressive strategies a little too much.
The god powers themselves were too much. Think turbo-charged versions of the already very powerful Ixalan god cards. Check them out for yourselves, and imagine what they’d do to your Commander games if they appeared turn 5 or so.
Game Action!
It has been really tough to take notes, keep my head in the game and all that. This time I also didn’t have any caffeine before the games. Not saying I’m chemical-dependent, but the last games of the day melt my brain pretty good.
Round 1
My Round 1 opponents numbered only 2, which is mostly a good thing. It makes for a bit of a lop-sided game sometimes, where a player who gets ahead has less opposition and has to make fewer hard choices, but everyone gets everyone’s vote. It’s a really really good game to win.
This time, I was up against Nath of the Gilt-Leaf and a newcomer to the Challenge on Prosper, Tome-Bound.
I’ve always wanted to play Nath, but I wish it was a non-random discard that hit everyone, including the owner. It would be less punishing and could enable madness and other fun discard stuff. The Nath player agreed. Maybe we could lobby Wizards for a makeover?
I’ve seen Prosper in action before, in the hands of a close friend, and it went off like crazy. I’m surprised in hindsight that it isn’t blue, because it feels like it. There are a lot of cards that can be played from exile these days, and treasure is a powerful enabler.
We started slow. The Ixalan subgame was tricky to remember, as we’d just seen it for the first time, and I had to mulligan to 6 cards, keeping a one-land hand and knowing going any further down on cards was likely to end me before I started.
On turn 2, Nath played Waste Not, and on turn 3, I discarded to hand size at then end of my turn for their first trigger with it. I managed to get to three lands the next turn and play my Unstable Obelisk before I could be forced to discard it.
Nath built up quick, including a large Dauthi Horror that was eating our life points in chunks. Prosper countered with The Meathook Massacre, wiping out almost all of Nath’s progress. Prosper added Goldspan Dragon which looked to turbocharge their prosperity.
I managed to start making my way through the Ixalan map, copying my Unstable Obelisk and finally playing my Commander. Suddenly I was at 6 mana, and could have myself a big turn, which I did. I played Myr Battlesphere and Alena, Kessig Trapper, making 4 myr tokens, and immediately sending the battlesphere at Prosper.
I tapped the myr tokens to buff the battlesphere’s power to 8, and then after combat used Alena’s ability to make 8 red mana. I used 6 to play The Immortal Sun, and then the rest to help sneak attack in Meteor Golem to kill the Goldspan Dragon.
Nath responded by emptying the rest of my hand, making a lot of zombie tokens thanks to Waste Not. This big board presence was again their undoing, as Prosper played Extinction Event, again wiping Nath down to not much.
Prosper’s sorcery-speed board wipes were very effective, but not against Sneak Attack. On my turn, I drew Combustible Gearhulk and forced a terrible choice on Prosper. They chose to let me draw, which was good as they were at 20 life, and I pulled 10 total mana value in cards.
One of those was Aspiring Champion which sneak attacked in and connected, finding Cybermen Squadron.
I think Cybermen Squadron is criminally underrated. It’s very very good. In this case it was bananas, because I also managed to get to step 3 on the Ixalan chart, and grab a god power. I grabbed, Ojer Taq, the token tripler, even if it never came up for my deck, because it was fun. I didn’t ever think about token tripling and myriad. Until it was right in front of me.
On my turn, I drew Phyrexian Triniform and sneak attacked it in. With triple myriad, I was able to overwhelm Prosper completely with 3 copies of it, and nearly end Nath as well. Even after the dust settled, my board was full of tokens and ready for another big attack next turn.
Worse of all for Nath, I had no cards in hand and The Immortal Sun was drawing me a second one on my turn. Even if they could make me discard at instant speed, I could counter by sneak attacking any threat into play. Their draw didn’t help, life totals were quite low, and I presented an unstoppable force. All that added up to victory!
Which was a little bittersweet. I was hoping to avoid an explosion of power like this, which was hard to keep track of and came out of nowhere to my opponents’ chagrin.
On to the next round!
Round 2
Round 2 featured Brenard, Ginger Sculptor, Ovika, Enigma Goliath, and a favourite opponent of mine, Iroas, God of Victory. The player, not the Commander. Iroas is tough to play against. Very aggressive.
I’ve never played Brenard before, but I have seen Ovika, and know that them untapping with their Commander might end the game.
It wasn’t too hot of a start. We played lands. Some signature cards. Iroas played Swiftfoot Boots. I played Nim Deathmantle. Brenard played Blade Splicer. Ovika played Midnight Clock. We advanced along the Ixalan path.
I played Mikokoro, Center of the Sea, which was probably a mistake. My deck is starved for card draw, especially because a lot of red’s ‘card draw’ exiles cards from your deck and lets you play them. Not great for a deck that wants cards in hand for cheaty sneak attacks. So Mikokoro made the cut, and drew us all some cards over a few turns.
Brenard played the scariest thing first, with Mirari’s Wake hitting the table. They were looking to make huge food golems with big synergy very quickly.
Iroas played Fireflux Squad, which was a consideration for my deck, but I wasn’t quite sold. It did well for Iroas, as they equipped it with Swiftfoot Boots and sent it in for an attack. Their Commander was out by this point, so attacking was pretty safe. They also had a couple of merfolk tokens from the Ixalan thing, and used one of them for the Fireflux Squad‘s trigger. It turned into Soltari Visionary, which took out Mirari’s Wake.
The rest of the table was now on the back foot. I played Atsushi, the Blazing Sky which can come back really easy with Nim Deathmantle and the treasures it makes on dying. I guess you could go infinite with a free sac outlet and Goldspan Dragon.
Iroas didn’t let up, adding Cathars’ Crusade and smashing us down with a big attack. Iroas grabbed the Ojer Kaslem god effect, which makes it so you reveal cards from your topdeck equal to your biggest creature’s damage, and you can play all the creatures and lands you find this way. It’s very very broken.
The rest of us did stuff, and Ovika even untapped with their Commander, but the Iroas snowball had turned into an avalanche. The following turn, they added True Conviction and when their Commander hit for 16 double-strike damage, they used the Ixalan sub-game god ability to put more than 10 creatures into play.
One of those was Purphoros, God of the Forge. The Purphoros I’m not playing. Because it has a reputation as a nasty game winner. And so it did.
Just the creatures entering the battlefield were enough to end things, even though we all kind of screwed up and missed the ‘only do this once per turn’ aspect of the god ability. There was a lot going on.
All in all, it was an 80 damage or so turn from Iroas without using something like Craterhoof Behemoth. I’m okay losing to that.
We played a second game, where I was much more involved, including imprinting Etali, Primal Storm on Mimic Vat and killing Iroas by Flinging a Metalwork Colossus at them.
I saw much more of Brenard’s deck, and it had some really cool synergies happening. It was also really resilient, and tried to get us to kill its own creatures so it could recur them for all sorts of value. Ovika was ready to pop at the end, but time was called, and we were ready for a final game.
Round 3
The final round included new Ixalan Commanders Amalia Benavides Aguirre and Pantlaza, Sun-Favored, as well as The Ur-Dragon. I knew right away that The Ur-Dragon was a changeling deck. I’ve played it before, and have one of my own. It’s very strong, as is the player, and always a great opponent.
I kept a hand unlike any I’d seen so far that day: full of mana. This put me in an awkward position. I had to ramp hard, which I did, but it put the first big target on my back.
On turn 2 I played a Sol Ring and copied it with Sculpting Steel. Amalia destroyed the copy with Loran of the Third Path, but I followed up with Mirage Mirror and Gilded Lotus on turn 3.
Of course everyone was ramping, but I looked extra dangerous. Behind the curtain, however, I was very light on anything to do with my mana, hoping mostly to draw into some action.
On turn 4, Amalia played Black Market Connections, which I ended up copying with the Mirage Mirror a few times over the next few turns, just to get the card draw.
On their turn 4, The Ur-Dragon played Umbris, Fear Manifest, which is not something I ever considered for changelings, though maybe I should. It offers 2 wincons by itself, as well as also potentially exiling specific answers. It figured pretty heavily from then on.
I mentioned above that I lean too heavily on Maze of Ith some games. This was one of them. It came down turn 4, along with my Commander and my final step on the Ixalan path to get a god power. I chose Ojer Kaslem, that Iroas used to wreck the table the previous game, thinking I might be able to do the same.
On turn 5, Amalia added Serra Paragon, Pantlaza played their commander, and The Ur-Dragon exploded with a flurry of threats that were tough to assess, like Maskwood Nexus, The Bears of Littjara and Feline Sovereign. That last one got by me. Maybe I mistook it for Hungry Lynx which also has a protection thing. Both give all your changelings protection from all your changelings, which can be a double-edged sword. But I didn’t factor in the second, artifact-destroying ability heavily enough.
Things looked decent enough on my turn. I got an Atsushi, the Blazing Sky out, and attacked for some damage in the air. The proc from my Ixalan god power got me my Antiquities Colossus of Sardia and Etali, Primal Storm. I followed this up with Colfenor’s Urn.
I also had Industrial Advancement, and used it at the end of turn to turn my Colossus into Phyrexian Triniform. Normally a good move, but I think I wanted the trample in hindsight. The Colossus went into the Urn for later.
On turn 6, Amalia played Ranger-Captain of Eos and Soul’s Attendant, then attacked two of us to snag their own Ixalan god power, Ojer Axonil, which buffs damage like crazy.
Pantlaza played a bunch of stuff, including Hit the Mother Lode, and added a pile of power to their board, but held back, and watched it all get swept away when The Ur-Dragon played Widespread Brutality. This targeted Umbris, who was now an Army thanks to the Maskwood Nexus, as well as 18/18.
It wiped away most of our stuff, except the changeling tokens from Amalia’s Black Market Connections which I probably should have been making myself when I had the chance. My big creatures went into the Urn, however, and I made some 3/3 golem tokens.
But I was also tapped out, and couldn’t turn my Mirage Mirror into a second Maze of Ith. When The Ur-Dragon attacked me with the huge Umbris and an Avian Changeling, I forgot about the Feline Sovereign, or maybe I didn’t grok the effect the first time, but I mazed the Umbris out of habit and the changeling got through and killed my Colfenor’s Urn before I could use it to bring my stuff back.
It totally threw me off. In hindsight I could have blocked with my golems, too, and just mazed the flyer. There was no trample at the time.
No trample was the theme on my turn also. I managed a Metalwork Colossus but it wasn’t going to get through anywhere to trigger my god power, so I had to sacrifice it to Industrial Advancement, getting only a Goblin Welder for my troubles.
Both of Amalia and Pantlaza passed without a major move, and when it came to The Ur-Dragon, they dropped Hofri Ghostforge and lined me up for an alpha strike. I’m honestly not sure if the math was there, but every creature was going to connect thanks to trample, and even if I survived, I would lose my entire board of artifacts. I conceded, knowing the real killing blow was to the Colfenor’s Urn.
Amalia then took control, killing Hofri with Black Sun’s Twilight, the Maskwood Nexus with Loran of the Third Path and Umbris with Karlov of the Ghost Council. They also added Mirror Entity, which was also in play on the changeling side. Very on theme.
Pantlaza made a strong late showing also, playing dinosaurs like crazy, including Tyrranax Rex which smashed into The Ur-Dragon for a big strike. The Dragon responded by playing their commander, but Amalia was ready with more exile from Karlov.
Pantlaza had a massive board of dinos going, but thought The Ur-Dragon‘s commander was still in play, and tried to steal it with Swooping Pteranodon. This threw them off just enough, and they had to make a compromise target instead, choosing Amalia’s Serra Paragon. If they had the play back, things might have ended up quite different.
Pantlaza did get the Tyrranax Rex through on The Ur-Dragon again, then surprised all of us with Ram Through, ending the changeling threat for the day.
The Ixalan gods made one final impact on the day, as Amalia flashed in Cathar Commando, then swung for lethal at Pantlaza with a board of random creatures. The god power from the subgame made the minimum damage each could do into 4, and the Mirror Entity would leave things in no doubt if that wasn’t enough. Pantlaza was without any answer and the day ended with a solid victory for Amalia.
Result and Prize
Two solid victories for Amalia, as they also were the top finisher on the day, and selected the Mystery Box. It contained a Lord of the Rings Special Edition Collector Booster. There was some applause for the booster.
As in the previous Challenge, I finished 4th place! How about that!
I had my eye on a Caverns of Ixalan prerelease kit, which I grabbed immediately. There were much higher value prizes, but this was possibly the biggest impact on my collection, since I had no cards from the set at all.
I’m happy with what I got. Lots of neat uncommons, including the Chupacabra Echo and Earthshaker Dreadmaw I wanted for my cube. Nothing super notable in the rares, but I’m not crazy about double-faced cards, so I’m glad I didn’t get too many.
Conclusion
Commander Challenge is still a great day of gaming. There’s one more this year, on the 30th, and I’m thinking of doing something old school for it.
Thanks for reading!
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