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:
Searching is Forbidden
Hey Magic players! This past weekend was another iteration of Commander Challenge, my LGS’s classic casual Commander tournament. These run monthly, sometimes bi-monthly, and occasionally come with a twist! This time it was the No-Search Commander Challenge!
I like the No-Search Challenge a lot, because I don’t like to search my library for any reason. None of my Commander decks have any search cards in them. No tutors, no fetches, no Evolving Wilds or Rampant Growth. Try it! It’s very liberating! The No Search Challenge is evidence that I might be on to something.
And the players turned out. The No Search Challenge sold out at max capacity of 32, and I saw a few familiar faces miss out. Sorry to those who did. I hope you still had a great afternoon!
I’m not Searching for Treasure… It’s a Routine Hobbit Hole Inspection…
I brought my Lobelia, Defender of Bag End deck, which I wrote about here on the site just a couple of weeks ago. I played it almost exactly as listed, though I swapped out a Haunted Cloak for a Ring of Valkas at the last minute.
Here’s the article I wrote, including the decklist:
The deck played really well. I was pleasantly surprised. It was quick, had a lot of game against different situations, and was absolutely capable of pulling off a win. I would definitely play it again.
That being said, it had a few glaring weaknesses. For starters, it needed some board wipes. I would go grab Black Sun’s Zenith for sure, and add another 3 or 4 from my hoard. I don’t have Toxic Deluge or Nuclear Fallout or Damnation but those are probably the best ones.
I’m not worried about Lobelia getting wiped in a board wipe. In fact, it would have helped the deck a lot. When she enters, she usually grabs 3 cards from opposing decks, but I found that getting all land or a couple of duds made me want a reset ASAP. Mono-black doesn’t have a lot of blink or non-legendary copy token options, so wiping then recasting/reanimating makes a lot of sense for the deck.
I would go a lot deeper on sacrifice too, adding more stuff like Village Rites, alongside more cheap reanimators like Not Dead After All. And to make room, I’d have to cut some artifacts. Sad, but the deck does best when Lobelia gets hold of something great from an opponent, not amasses a pile of trinkets.
Round 1
Round 1 featured Kaust, Eyes of the Glade, Iroas, God of Victory, and Giada, Font of Hope.
The Kaust deck was lots of face-down/face-up shenanigans. It didn’t play many face down cards overall, but the few it did play were very impactful. Pyrotechnic Performer was a performer indeed, and nearly took down the whole table.
I’ve played against the Iroas deck often. It’s very fast, very explosive, and makes no apologies. It tends to leverage ‘army-in-a-can’ cards, like the new Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon. Those cards create a massive amount of tokens which support the deck’s very aggressive gameplan. In addition, it plays Impact Tremors and Purphoros, God of the Forge for easy passive wins.
The Giada deck was also very straightforward, playing a classic array of Angels from across Magic’s many sets. It was nice to see an OG Akroma, Angel of Wrath, among others.
Game Action – Iroas Smashes Face
The game was quick. Kaust threatened with the Pyrotechnic Performer early, but Iroas started piling up more tokens than the rest of us could handle. I held them off with a Silent Arbiter, but that made me their biggest target and I was out first.
Kaust played a Fraying Line that eventually exiled more than 60 creatures total, but Iroas had their Commander out with enough devotion to keep it a creature, then added City on Fire to triple-up Iroas’s 7-power to Commander-Damage-lethal. Then they offed Kaust, and closed out the game with a second combat phase from Karlach, Fury of Avernus, defeating Giada too.
Lobelia did okay, exiling Iroas’s Impact Tremors, which likely prolonged the game by a whole turn. She also shrugged off Giada’s Prison Sentence with a combination of Deadly Dispute and Undying Evil, drawing several cards, making a treasure, and resetting the mini-trove of pilfered cards. Wizard’s Rockets, as a cheap artifact that draws a card when sacrificed, felt very good.
Round 2
Round 2 included Ghave, Guru of Spores, Hans Eriksson, and Muzzio, Visionary Architect.
Ghave seemed like a classic fungus deck, sporting some OG Fallen Empires cards, like Spore Flower. They also got to use some of the weirder black and white fungus cards, like Pallid Mycoderm. Very cool!
The Hans deck was stuffed with extremely powerful creatures, using the Commander to cheat them into play. The deck was less concerned with keeping Hans alive, instead ramping mana to make sure they could easily recast him. Red and green have no shortage of dangerous creatures, and we saw plenty of them!
Muzzio, like me, was all about artifacts. The deck was very capable of leveraging a toolbox of artifacts until it could find one of a couple of infinite combos. Being mono-blue, it had to have some really creative answers to opposing armies, and it sure did. I enjoyed seeing Memnarch in play for the first time a long time.
Game Action – Sleight of Hans
The game got off to a hot start when Hans got their commander out, and used it to cheat Ojer Kaslem, Deepest Growth into play really early. They used the card advantage from hitting with the Ojer to rapidly pile up resources. It wasn’t long before Ghave’s Spore Flower was keeping the game alive.
When Hans revealed a Hellkite Tyrant, both Muzzio and I got worried, and managed to work together using my Liquimetal Torque to turn it into an artifact so Muzzio could bounce it pre-combat with Hurkyl’s Recall. This set Hans back a bit, allowing time for me to sit back and build up.
I had used my Commander to get a Thundering Mightmare from Hans, and along with a Battle Mammoth from same, was slowly building up a pair of huge creatures as my opponents cast spells. Hans realized too late, and only had Blasphemous Act to stop my huge duo. Not even close to their 20ish toughness each. I was able to swing in for the win in just a couple attacks!
Lobelia won the game for me this time, which is to say, an opponent’s card did. But Lobelia stole it. However, I found I often had too many artifacts in play, none I wanted to sacrifice, and not enough answers for my opponents’ creatures. Food for thought. The big winner card was Helm of the Host which felt better on Lobelia than anywhere else I’ve ever put it.
Round 3
The final round included Agrus Kos, Wojek Veteran, Rocco, Street Chef, and Mr. House, President and CEO.
The Agrus Kos deck was classic Boros. I’m not sure about mana rocks and utility artifacts, but the rest was all both red and white. The deck wanted to get out and get attacking early, using cards like Swiftblade Vindicator that would get a huge boost from the Commander.
The Rocco deck was a little tough to read. They wanted to help other players play their cards, but there was possibly another strategy that we didn’t get to see. Making the Commander huge seemed pretty easy for the deck to pull off.
The Mr. House deck was all blinged out with foil cards. They are only so many dice-roll cards to play in these colours, and the deck played many of them. Since the Commander potentially generates 2 artifact tokens on every dice roll, cards that leverage tokens were in abundance too.
Game Action – House Rules
For my third game in a row, my turn 1 play was Wizard’s Rockets. Unlike the other games, it was my turn 1 draw. It was great every time. No other card appeared more than once in my opening hands + draws. I only saw 2 Swamps total in those 24 cards, so this was some weird luck.
Let’s talk about luck. I’d never played against Comet, Stellar Pup before. Mr. House played it. It’s a luck-based card, which is… interesting. If you get the right rolls, you can luck right into a sequence of triggers than can win just about any game of Magic on the spot. This is easier in 60-card constructed, but doable in Commander as well. After a couple of activations in our game, and a couple lucky 6s, Comet was effectively 6 cards worth of value and sitting at 8 loyalty. No dice-roll modifiers needed. Lucking into that sort of absurd value doesn’t belong in Magic. If it wasn’t for a multiple-card effort from Agrus and an unlucky roll from Mr. House, the card would have taken over the game by itself. It could easily cost 7 mana and still be utterly broken. I don’t think this card belongs in black borders, and I really hope I never have to see it in play again.
The Mr. House deck really didn’t need the rest of us to be there. My Lobelia managed to snag their Purphoros, God of the Forge, but their Mirkwood Bats more than made up for it. It felt a lot like Mr. House was just rolling dice and making tokens and winning while the rest of us watched. Actually it was that.
I played a combo of Meekstone and False Floor which kept the robot army (and Agrus) down, but Rocco blew them up, and the robots came for us all the following turn. We were dead to passive damage from the tokens and Mirkwood Bats anyway. As with Comet, I’d prefer not to see the deck again. I’m optimistic, because it doesn’t seem as fun to play as it is strong.
The game was over quick, and I didn’t see many cards, but a pair of 4-drops felt too clunky for the deck. One was Roaming Throne which would potentially double up Lobelia’s entry trigger. The effect seemed very narrow, and I could never even justify the 4 mana. Mystic Forge, another 4 drop, also didn’t perform. I’m surprised, thinking I’d be playing cheap trinkets off the top of my deck all day. Maybe it needs another chance but it was a big nothing-burger in the game. It might a decent cut if I’m going to reduce the artifact density of the deck overall.
Wrap Up and Prizes
I’m not sure exactly where I finished. I think it was 10th or so. Regardless, my prize choice was the ‘Gandalf in the Pelennor Fields’ Scene Box which is an awesome prize. It’s got some really cool cards in it, and also 3 set boosters.
My big pull from the set boosters was fittingly, another Gandalf. This one is Gandalf the White which seems very powerful. Not sure it’s my kind of card, but I’ll try to jam it into something. Lobelia would love having it in play, for sure!
Conclusion
Thanks again to The Connection Games & Hobbies for another great Commander Challenge. These are very popular again, so if you’re planning to go to the next one, reserve your ticket in advance!
Thanks for reading!
1 Comment