Almost everyone who’s ever been involved in a Barigord Studios adventure has been passionate for gaming! We love board games, table games, video games, roleplaying games, and game shows! This post is best viewed on barigord.com.
The last post can be found here:
Hey out there Magic players! I took last week off because I figured you were all too busy celebrating Valentine’s Day to want to read about card games. Right?
Well anyway, this past weekend was another Commander Challenge, our favourite local casual Commander tournament at the Connection Games & Hobbies in Vancouver. This one was sold out! I got the last ticket. Thanks Phil!!!
These posts tend to be very long, and kinda rambly, and I’m looking to clean that up. Let me know in the comments how I did!
The Deck: Zero Power Nethroi
I wrote a post about this once before. It’s a Nethroi, Apex of Death deck where all of the creatures have 0 power in the graveyard (plus Grist, the Hunger Tide which has 1), which means that whenever Nethroi mutates, everything in the graveyard comes back to play.
It’s quite the spectacle when it pops. Here’s the deck:
The Power of Zero
Deck Construction
I’ve clearly made some choices. No Sol Ring or any other mana rocks. No fetchlands or searching of any kind. No basic lands either.
I do include a bunch of sorceries that reveal cards from the top of your library until you find a land, and all of those can do any land, but that’s really atypical for Commander decks, which like to accelerate on mana like crazy.
If this was a combo deck, it’d be all about searching for Hermit Druid and Concordant Crossroads, then mutating Nethroi for one big alpha strike or something like that. Not my cup of tea.
The reason for the lack of acceleration is that the deck needs time to fill the graveyard. Nethroi’s mutation cost of 7 mana is about right for how many turns it takes to fill the yard and make sure nothing is going to disrupt you too badly.
The lack of basics is mostly to enable Awakened Amalgam and Field of the Dead, which can reliably provide a mutate target on a empty board.
The deck also has some control elements to help stop early bloomers. Most is exile.
But it’s not a fast deck, and it is very vulnerable to both graveyard hate, and Blood Moon. So flying under the radar is good. Because when the deck pops….
One last reason for the low artifact count is my mana won’t be decimated by Vandalblast or something, and I can make the most of cards like Cleansing Nova and Austere Command.
Strategy
Fill the yard, mutate Nethroi, go to town, but… what if that gets stopped? What if an opponent just kills the mutate target with Nethroi on the stack? Are there backup plans?
There are a few. Bonehoard, Living Death, and Spider Spawning all cover the angle where Nethroi fizzles or my board is wiped. High Market and Phyrexian Tower help get Nethroi reloaded in the Command Zone. Thrilling Encore is tricky to use, but can be an answer to wipes as well.
I have a handful of cards that put some parts of my graveyard back in my library, but honestly, few Commander games are going to last longer than me milling myself for 80 cards or so, which is doable. Unless the graveyard hate is relentless, I should survive a nasty Bojuka Bog and be okay.
The Challenge
It was Ravnica, Murders at Mr. Boddy’s Manor theme day! We each got a little card with the 10 Ravnica guilds on the back, and guessing game instructions on the front. It was fun in theory, but it wasn’t clear if the active player or all players guessed at the end of the turn, and not everyone was into it. We only did it in rounds 1 and 3.
Round 1
The first round featured Ghired, Conclave Exile, Vazi, Keen Negotiator, and Ratchet, Field Medic.
I kept a hand of Grand Coliseum, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Hall of Heliod’s Generosity, Drownyard Temple, Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig, Spider Spawning, and Boss’s Chauffeur.
The game was very active in the early going, except for me. I just played lands. Ideally I’d be milling myself somehow, but I didn’t draw anything.
Ghired had to mulligan 3 times, but came out swinging with a variety of creatures and Elemental Bond for card draw. Vazi played treasure-makers like Goldspan Dragon and Marut, looking ready to pop at any time. But Ratchet was the one to beat, quickly loading up their commander with +1/+1 counters and equipment, and attacking all of us.
I grabbed extra lands with Expand the Sphere on turn 4, then reset the board on turn 5 with a Merciless Eviction on artifacts, mostly to deal with Ratchet. Then on the following turn, cast Living Death to get rid of the remaining threats and give myself some board presence.
We all reloaded, with Ratchet coming back quick and climbing to 11/15 thanks to Heliod, Sun-Crowned and Sword of Hearth and Home.
I finally got my Commander mutated, and pulled a 7/7 Embodiment of Agonies, an 8/8 Boss’s Chauffeur, and a 10/10 Multani, Yavimaya’s Avatar. Good, but we all had stuff, and nobody had much of an advantage on the others.
And that’s as far as it went. Time was called, and we were on to Round 2! I will mention that I solved my case using our Murders sub-game, which was a pretty good feel!
I voted for Vazi (2 pts) for their turn 1 revised Taiga and general candor. They also were a bit new to their deck, and hadn’t Commandered in a while, and I want to encourage future Challenge visits.
Ratchet (1 pt) got my second vote for a strong deck, strong play, and very personable demeanor. No shade on Ghired, but I can only give 2 votes.
Round 2
The second round featured Athreos, God of Passage, Imoti, Celebrant of Bounty, and Jon Irenicus, Shattered One.
This was a really cool matchup because I have Imoti and Jon Irenicus decks of my own, and it’s great to see others in action. My Imoti deck is here, with a Challenge recap here. My Irenicus deck is here, and a Challenge recap here.
Athreos mentioned up front that they were a group hug deck that was all about sharing the love, and Imoti mentioned they went big power on a very low budget.
I kept Eiganjo Castle, Silent Clearing, Renata, Called to the Hunt, Undergrowth Stadium, Urborg, Matzalantli, the Great Door, and Crashing Drawbridge.
Nothing major happened in the first few turns. I played Matzalantli, the Great Door and enjoyed it immediately. I find the deck could use both a little more card draw and some discard, so it really fit the bill.
Imoti pushed their Commander out early, and then was crushed to see Irenicus give it to Athreos with Wrong Turn. So much so that Irenicus returned it a turn later with Modify Memory.
Imoti then got going big time with both Rampaging Baloths and Scute Swarm, which required Irenicus to respond with Invasion of Fiora to wipe it all away. Then Irenicus played Phyrexian Soulgorger and used their Commander’s ability to give it to Athreos.
My version of the deck plays less scary creatures than this. But it’s very funny since you can’t sacrifice it, thanks to Jon Irenicus, Shattered One! I liked the Irenicus deck a lot.
On turn 7, I popped for the first time, mutating Nethroi onto my already 11/11 Molimo, Maro-Sorcerer. This resulted in Grist, the Hunger Tide, a 9/9 Pentavus, a 6/6 Mindless Automaton, a 16/16 Custodi Soulbinders, a 4/8 Crashing Drawbridge, and the combo of Renata, Called to the Hunt and Sweet-Gum Recluse that put 4 +1/+1 counters on all of the above to make them that large.
Athreos played the surprisingly effective Teyo, Geometric Tactician forcing everyone to attack only to their right, and then Irenicus wiped it all away with Decree of Pain.
I reloaded right away, mutating Nethroi again for a similar result, but Athreos took care of things this time with Single Combat. I kept Nethroi, because I had a surprise in hand and wanted the lifelink.
On Irenicus’ turn, they finally played some graveyard hate, in the form of Scavenger Grounds. On my turn, I forced them to use it by playing my surprise: Bonehoard, which would have made my commander enormous. Irenicus exiled my graveyard, but I still managed to attack for enough to take them out… However, Athreos swooped in and saved the day, leaving Irenicus alive with 20 Commander damage on them from me.
It was full-on Archenemy at this point, with me as the big bad. Imoti and Athreos took turns stealing creatures from my library with Inevitable Betrayal copied by Wandering Archaic, but my creatures are optimized in my deck, and not great in others.
It was Jon Irenicus that made the play of the day, which stalled things enough that we went to time. They played and gave me Evil Eye of Orms-by-Gore, a throwback from Legends, that prevents all non-eye creatures from attacking. Since it couldn’t be sacrificed, I would have to use removal on it to attack with my big stuff, and I didn’t draw any.
On what turned out to be the final turn, Athreos played Wedding Ring and married me. That was a first for me.
We all agreed that we had sufficiently Commandered, and moved on. My votes were for Irenicus (2 pts), as they made all sorts of impactful plays, especially the Evil Eye, and my new spouse, Athreos, God of Passage (1 pt). It may only have lasted a turn or two, but I think we should still get a huge cake. Apologies to Imoti, who was very vote-worthy also.
Round 3
The final round made voting easy. We had a couple of people drop out to go do life stuff (rolling my eyes), and the last matchup was just a three-spot.
We had our own Andrew Wade on Hans Eriksson and Zask, Skittering Swarmlord as my opponents. I know the Hans deck, and it’s a riot. Hans fights all sorts of wacky creatures, and all the fights are a little rigged somehow.
I’d never seen Zask before, but on closer inspection, it was very similar in gameplan to me: self-mill, recur creatures and make a lot of creepy-crawlies. It actually presented a bit of a problem, because a lot of my cards could help Zask more than hurt them. Stuff like Living Death.
I kept Maze of Ith, Riftstone Portal, Phyrexian Tower, Excise the Imperfect, Sinister Concoction, Cleansing Nova and Feed the Pack. A fairly awkward hand with no coloured mana, but lots of answers. I would cut Feed the Pack in future. It’s crazy with a 16/16 creature to sacrifice, but it’s really just win-more.
For the third time, things got started at a nice, slow pace, even though Zask played some early mana dorks. Both opposing Commander appeared on turn 4, and Hans followed up with Scroll Rack on turn 5 to set up their attacks.
Both Hans and Zask turned their attention to me, and attacked. Hans added Bladegriff Prototype, and Zask ninjitsued in Spring-Leaf Avenger and I found myself down to 28 in a hurry.
I played Matzalantli, the Great Door again, which was again great, but the attacks kept coming, and after turn 6, I was at 17. I stabilized a bit after that, and Hans turned their attention more to Zask, so the danger rating dropped a bit.
Hans took a big chunk out of Zask’s board with Breaker of Armies, and really put the pressure on with Boxing Ring and the extremely scary Warstorm Surge.
It can be tough to play with a card like Warstorm Surge, as it becomes very easy to do tons of damage straight to opponents’ faces. You have to figure out if this is better than shooting down all their creatures, or policing the board, and it often feels wrong to just pour on the damage like that. In short, I think Hans could have been more ruthless and ended my game much earlier. But they were more diplomatic, and that opened the door for both myself and Zask.
On turn 9, I finally managed to slow Hans with Living Death, though it helped out Zask a lot too. For me though it resulted in a similar board to a Nethroi pop. I managed to solve the Ravnica case thing that turn too, and got Embodiment of Agonies and Expand the Sphere on double proliferate. The Embodiment is amazing, and one of the best cards in the deck to reanimate.
I was suddenly the biggest threat, though Hans had an 8/8 Deceiver of Form and attempted to finish Zask with it by equipping it with Prowler’s Helm. Hans could have come at me with it instead, except I had a couple of random Walls!
Regardless, I stopped the Deceiver with Maze of Ith, and then wiped away all the artifacts with Cleansing Nova on my turn. Hans was reset almost to zero, and luckily solved their Ravnica case just in time, because on the following turn, Zask swung in for lethal with the help of some tricky math, a Phyrexian Tower sacrifice, and Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest.
Lucky for me, Mazirek came my way in the same attack, and I was able to kill it. That made a huge difference, because I was able to sacrifice my walls to draw cards and make mana on my turn, then popped Nethroi. By this time, I’d also managed to flip Matzalantli, the Great Door into The Core:
Which I was tapping for 20 mana. While Zask had a lot on board, my Nethroi pop had resulted in 15 creatures, including an 18/18 Boss’s Chauffeur.
Zask decided to wave the white flag, and I accepted the win!
I was able to vote for both opponents, which was great! I gave the 2 pts to Zask. I could totally have given it to Hans/Andrew, but he won the whole Challenge last time, and he does well enough on votes overall, so I chose the player I’d never played before.
Voting for newer people, or people I know haven’t enjoyed a lot of success, is often my motivation, especially if they were equal in gameplay and such.
Prizes and Placing
The overall winner wasn’t someone I knew or played against, but apparently they won all their games, and got votes as well. Tough to beat that!
I finished somewhere in the lower middle. I didn’t think too hard about prizes and grabbed an appealing box when my name was called. It was Signature Spellbook: Chandra. Nice, but I actually already have all the relevant cards in it. Derp. It will remain unopened.
Not a great result, but the deck isn’t exactly a friend-maker.
Conclusion
I think I got my Nethroi itch scratched for a while. It’s such an oddball that I expect I’ll keep the shell of it around for a while. I love keeping an eye out for cool 0-power creatures in Nethroi’s colours.
I’m not sure what I’d play next time, but there are some options. Let me know what you think in the poll below!
Thanks for reading!
1 Comment