#cmdrvs

It is WEDNESDAY! (No, Stephen Green. NOT Wentz-day. Stahp.) So that means it is time for the NEXT episode of Commander VS from Star City Games! Lemme tell you… There are two themes to this one. The fact that the guys are each playing their fan request decks AND “Draw/Land/Go”… What do I mean by that second part? Well… You will see.

But first… This one is for you, Justin:

Let the Battle... Begin!

To start, the decks are Sedris, the Traitor King from Justin Parnell with a Cycle theme to it, Hope of Ghirapur Voltron Equipment from Jonathan Suarez, Kambal, Consul of Allocation Taxes from Stephen Green and Riku of Two Reflections “Group Hug” from Jeremy Noell. Looking at the deck techs, I was excited about watching the video because I have been wanting to build a Rakdos Cycle deck with Olivia, Mobilized for War and adding blue to the mix with a Commander that allows you to Unearth all your creatures sounds amazing. Then, I run a Kambal Stax deck for 3DH on Twitch stream and I was part of the team on Discord that helped build Jeremy’s deck. However, I do not think I was ready for the way this game went… Let us begin!

Before the game, they did a roll-off because there are two people in last place, Jeremy and Suarez. At first, I barely noticed but then I realized that Jeremy has been first out (and very quickly first out) of the past two videos and I think he should have been given first as a mercy rule. Of course, I may be biased 😉 Stephen very quickly did what he came here to do (NO FUN!) by casting Spirit of Labyrinth first, with Justin very unhappy about the fact that his cycles would no longer be netting him extra cards during his turns. He was further distressed when Suarez hit him with his Commander (HoG for future notice), which he had dropped turn one. EVERYONE was further frustrated when Stephen ONCE AGAIN kept everyone from having fun, playing Static Orb. As someone who hates playing against Stax effects, I started cringing here. As someone who play Kambal Stax, I was cheering and trying not to tip my chair over backward!

Of course, Stax can be considered “mean” for the group, so the “group hug” deck had to try to help. Jeremy cast Mana Flare and Justin makes a comment that he will remember it in the future as a favor. I would imagine he was happy, since this enabled him to cast Sedris on turn three! If that was not impressive enough, Saurez used the doubled mana to cast and equip Sword of Feast and Famine to HoG, swing at Stephen which triggers both Sword of the Animist and Feast and Famine. Untapping all of his lands and with help from Mana Flare, Suarez was able to cast both Staff of Nin and Trading Post in his second main phase. What a turn!

Stephen follows up with simply playing Kambal and passing turn. Jeremy tries to ramp up by casting Kodama’s Reach, paying the life tax from Kambal. Justin draws a card, plays a Scry land and passes. Remember that second theme I was talking about? This is what I meant. Draw, land (sometimes), pass.

“Is there a Static Orb? I didn’t notice,” Suarez said, casting a million things

Suarez uses the only mana he can untap/play to cast Chief of the Foundry and attacks Justin for five more Commander Damage, putting Justin at 8. Justin discards Mulldrifter from the Feast and Famine trigger while Suarez untaps his lands, an obvious future play to get more cards in hand. Suarez opts to sacrifice HoG and prevent Justin from playing noncreature spells until Suarez’s next turn and uses his untapped and double mana to recast HoG, equip both swords to it, use Trading Post to sacrifice some minor artifact and draw a card. Again, WHAT A TURN! Sword of Feast and Famine and Mana Flare are keeping Suarez from being tripped up by the Static Orb.

As before, the next three turns seem… Well, less impressive. Stephen casts Archfiend of Depravity and passes. Jeremy uses his doubled and untapped mana and casts Curse of Swine, targeting every creature on the board (while still having to pay the life tax from Kambal). Justin replays Sedris, activates Unearth for Mulldrifter and attacks Suarez in retaliation for the hits from HoG before passing turn and exiling the Mulldrifter. It is gone forever!

Suarez resets his field with his Commander fully equipped after attacking with an equipped Swine and then casts… SEMBLANCE ANVIL?! What even is this card? Justin catches on and questions it, to which Suarez says “Hey, I can sacrifice it to my Trading Post, leave me alone!” … I mean… Yeah. That is a true statement. Sure? I can only suspect shenanigans from Suarez with a card like this.

Stephen replays Kambal and passes. Jeremy plays Riku and passes. Justin plays a God-Pharaoh’s Gift, dropping quite a bomb and moves to combat, “eternalizing” (I know it is not really Eternalize. That is why I did not capitalize it. I know.) and swings it at Suarez, looting a card. Justin moves to his end step, where Suarez sacs the Anvil to Trading Post (huh… I guess he may not have been plotting shenanigans. Or he is luring us into a false sense of security… Not sure which yet!) and pings Stephen with Staff of Nin.

On his turn, Saurez again runs rampant all over all the things, playing a Myr Battlesphere (oh MY, this card is going to do some damage if left unchecked in a deck like this), swings HoG at Justin to put the Commander Damage counter to 11, sacrifices HoG to keep Justin from casting noncreature spells, RECASTS IT AND EQUIPS BOTH SWORDS TO IT… Nothing out of hand here at all.

Everyone else? Stephen plays a Kismet (laughing maniacally) and passes. Jeremy draws a card and passes (ouch, that hurts me in my Commander Soul). Justin must not have many creature spells in his hand, since he draws a card and moves to combat, swinging his swine tokens at Jeremy. In his second main phase, he cycles Decree of Pain, wiping most of the field while Suarez pings Kambal for the final point of damage to get him off the field.

It’s All Downhill From Here

I am going to speed this up a bit. Suarez continues to focus on Justin with HoG, getting out more equipment (or copied equipment, in the case of Masterwork of Ingenuity) while Stephen and Jeremy play a creature or single spell and pass. Justin tries to cycle into an answer, seeing lethal Commander Damage on the field and finds nothing. Suarez kills him with Commander Damage. There is a single misplay where Stephen casts Tangle Wire with double mana after Suarez has cast All is Dust and Mana Flare has been sacrificed, but the team catch it and back up. Jeremy tries to retaliate with a burn spell for four. Suarez gets both Jeremy and Stephen to the point where any attack on Jeremy is death and one more hit of HoG will be Commander Damage lethal to Stephen. In a last-ditch effort, Stephen tries to Vindicate his own Static Orb, but Suarez casts a Warping Wail, a COLORLESS COUNTERSPELL to keep it up and hurting everyone but him, then swings in for the WIN!

Final Thoughts from DM

Overall, the game was short and (bitter)sweet. The video length was about an hour and fifteen minutes, which included both the intro and outro portions. There was only two things that were questionable and the gang caught the Tangle Wire/Mana Flare trip-up before the round even ended, so good on them. I think the Static Orb was played at an incorrect time, but no one knew Suarez had Sword of Feast and Famine when it came down. As someone who has played Stax decks and against them, I am reluctant to play anything that will also slow me down without a way to get around it. If Static Orb came down after, say, Stephen played his own Sword of Feast and Famine, I would say it was a great play. Anything that happened from there would just be circumstances no one sees coming.

Next week is a mystery theme, so I am excited to see what happens. Jeremy mentioned on social media that they are picking the winners of the giveaway, so I would imagine they may announce it either in the next video or the holiday video after that. Whatever the theme, next week is the final game of this season, so everyone is going to have to pull out all the stops to try to get on or stay on top.

Hello there! Hope everyone had a good weekend. It is Monday as I write this, and I am very excited to write it in the first place! Today I am going to breakdown last Wednesday’s Commander Versus video with some thoughts, laughs and maybe a little bit of criticisms… Who knows?! You will, after we take this journey together!

First thing is first, let us talk about the theme and the decks played. The theme of the week was 1DH, sometimes known as Penny Dreadful or One Dollar Highlander. The format has gotten popular online as 1TIX as well, where the entire deck only totals up to a single TIX, which is essentially a dollar. I think the reason I was most excited about this format is because Jeremy Noell and I have been streaming 1DH and 3DH on Twitch a couple of times per week these past couple of months and I really hope that this fact played into the theme choice somehow. Note, I have no idea there is any truth behind that speculation, but I do hope it is true. For decks, Stephen Green picks one of my fellow EDHREC writer’s, Andrew Cummings Sek’Kuar, Deathkeeper, Suarez played a budget Elemental Tribal Horde of Notions, Justin played a Voltron-styled Autumn Willow and Jeremy played a variation of his own Magic Online 1DH deck of Daghatar the Adamant. I have seen the deck perform well in the past, so I was interested to see if that success carried over to the big YouTube screen on Commander Versus.

The game started off simply, with Jeremy taking First Blood with a one-drop Herald of Anafenza smacking Stephen for one. With the way the group does points, I almost agree with Green that the right thing to do is start whittling down the person in the lead (Justin Parnell) but it can be hard to assess threats within the first two or three turns. Stephen had a great response with a Fleshbag Marauder that took out three other creatures, essentially wiping the field. Jeremy’s next creature from his hand is a personal favorite of mine; Orzhov Advokist. I love the politics of “everyone gets a reward… IF you leave me alone for a round!” and (spoiler alert!) this card does some WORK in this game. I especially enjoyed when Jeremy recurred the Advokist with Vigor Mortis because of the synergy of getting to put a counter on the creature. Later in the video, we see the power of the Advokist after Jeremy gets largely left alone for multiple turns. Stephen even comments that he felt “suckered into your advocate.”

The first thing I noticed that was odd was Suarez swinging at Justin twice with his Commander for 10 Commander damage and then Jeremy hitting him with Daghatar and bringing him down to 25 in the first 30 minutes of the game. I know I just mentioned that Justin is in the lead, but the reality is that up until this point, Parnell had barely played any big impact spells or creatures and was simply forced to take hits left and right. Even then, it seems like Suarez feels bad about how much Justin is getting hit and swings his now-larger Commander at Stephen instead. This again confuses me because if you want to run a Voltron strategy and you get someone to half-Blackjack… Why let up? It felt like the play was made more for being “nice” and while I get the idea of trying to give the audience a good show, not at the expense of throwing logic out the window. It was a very emotional five-minute span as I felt like Parnell was a good target, then guilty because it looked like Arch Enemy without Parnell getting any advantage like Schemes and then questioning why someone would deviate from a so-far successful strategy just to be nice.

Of course, Stephen Green does not take that attack lying down. A Butcher of Malakir hits the field and before our very eyes, everyone’s field is empty while Green still has three creatures. As a Golgari player, seeing the Grave Pact effect on a stick run wild on the game made my soul all warm and fuzzy. On Jeremy’s turn, he Diabolic Tutors for a Profane Command and I can only assume one of the modes was originally designed to be -x/-x for the Butcher, but Justin beats him to the punch with a Desert Twister, even commenting that his Voltron deck could not hold up against the Butcher. Still, Jeremy finds good use for his Command by getting rid of Sek’kuar and bringing back Orzhov Advokist in one fell swoop. Speaking of awesome plays, Suarez casts Bring to Light for 5 and finds All Suns’ Dawn, giving him four different spells back to his hand from his graveyard, which seems like great value, even if it is 10 mana total.

The game starts winding down from here on out. Justin jumps Dagahtar when it attacks Stephen for 10 damage (much to Stephen’s chagrin when he has the chance to kill Justin and refrains). Of course, this is after Suarez attacks Justin, much to JUSTIN’S chagrin when he purposely cast Predator Flagship for a flavor win with Suarez. Stephen Green tries to alpha strike Suarez for 17 damage while Jeremy gets a near-free Primeval Protector, casting it for only two mana. TWO MANA! Justin goes all in with a Rude Awakening turning his lands into mans and swinging 10 damage at Jeremy Noell. Green nearly turns the game around with Victimize, bringing back the Butcher and Fleshbag Marauder, but Suarez responds to Fleshbag’s trigger with a Putrefy to the Butcher. Stephen then makes a very intelligent attack at Suarez, bringing his life total down to the point where his Spiteflame Witch will be very dangerous to the owner and not just the rest of the field. Still, Suarez can attack and kill Stephen and Jeremy secures second by killing Justin. Roil Elemental on Suarez’s field allows him to steal Jeremy’s only two creatures and attack uncontested for the victory!

Overall, the game was fun to watch. I felt that Justin had a hard time making an impact on the field and it was reminiscent of when he played the Wizard Commander 2017 Precon and got stuck on lands or when he played Vona and got Pithing Needled and floundered for a path to victory after that. I’m surprised that Justin is in the lead (albeit not by much) this season since it feels like he is having a rough few games. In the end, coming in second or third and getting a few additional points can still make a world of difference, I guess. For this game, I enjoyed Jeremy’s deck the most because of the synergy with the +1/+1 counters, but I felt that Stephen Green’s deck was also well constructed. Suarez’s deck seemed to be mostly Elemental madness and obviously it worked out for him, despite some doubts that I had for it. I hope the rest of the group enjoyed some budget Magic: the Gathering because I would love to get some games in with more of them in the games Jeremy and I play throughout the week via Magic Online.