The other night we experienced part 2 of the Limited EDH experiment. Joel, Tom and I sat down to sling some "dragons" in my basement. Tom was held up at clinic by some ugliness with a patient which gave Joel and I some time to work on his deck. Joel was wondering if he had any good generals. I looked. He had a slew of mono-colored generals and one glaring five-color general - Sliver Legion.
Time for fill in the blank: The first thing we did was check to see how many _______ he had.
Did you say slivers? BZZZZZZZ. Wrong, sliver boy!. This is limited and you're thinking five colors. The correct answer is multiple-color producing lands, land fetch, and color-filtering. So how much did he have? Plenty. An embarrassment, if you will. As in 14-15 lands that could do double duty or more. If I recall correctly, there were three panoramas, two of the Alara shard lands, four or five of the Ravnica common two-fers, an Exotic Orchard, Tendo Ice Bridge, and Murmuring Bosk. He had three snow lands (Mountain, Plains and the dually Tresserhorn Sinks) and an into the north. Kodama's Reach, the Alara enchantment that makes a land a Forest, Plains, and Mountain. There were Three Obelisks, a Darksteel Ingot and five or six Signets.
Then we looked at Slivers. 14 or 15. Not bad. Four changelings and a Mistform critter later and we were above twenty.
When this deck rocked out, it was Impressive. In only two practice games I was once on the wrong end of him casting his general on turn 4! With the mana fixing and acceleration in the deck, I'm guessing that he will be able to do this at least once every four games or so. It's possible that he is too heavy on the artifact mana producers, as he seemed to glut on it in the game we played.
Speaking of the game, here's what I remember. Tom was using a deck that I built from another ULC for my wife, should I get her to be interested (and yeah, I just wanted another excuse to fiddle with my teeny cardboard friends). It uses Momir Vig and Kiyomaro as Joint Chiefs. When I sat down the night before to run Shari through it, she walloped me good and sound. I got off to a faster opening and beat her down to just below twenty life and then she locked me up on the back of Blazing Archon protected by Aerie Mystics with Covert Operative to do the dirty work. I could not draw the kind of removal I needed for such a scenario. Tom started piloting it and then did something I wasn't expecting - he cast Kiyomaro instead of Momir Vig as his primary General. But, really, that wasn't too bad. Slow starts on my part and Joel's meant that a vigilant 7/7 or 8/8 that pumped Tom's life up ten points per shot wasn't too bad.
Kiyomaro and a few helpers got us to a life scenario of Tom at 51 and Joel and I at 20 and 24, respectively. Kiyomaro was dealt with and I got a board together that included a Forgotten Ancient carrying a Diviner's Wand, who was also pumped up and faux-vigilanced by a Murkfiend Liege, plus some other random dude and the permanent that was scaring more people than it should have - an Isochron Scepter with a Turn To Mist imprinted on it. Tom then played the spell he said he hadn't seen before - Hallowed Burial. Board was reset. A few creatures hit the board and I finally got a second green to safely cast Mire Boa and have it carry a Wand of Card Drawing Goodness. I also got out a Yavimaya Dryad that helped me get a leg up on Joel and Tom's land count. At least until Tom offed the Dryad, unable to get the main culprit - the Scepter. Tom had a few utility creatures come into play and Joel had a changeling and a Deadshot Minotaur that started wielding a Heartseeker. Tom had raised Joel's ire more, so Joel went after Tom's non-regenerating critters. After he offed several and I wanted to make a move, I Creeped his equipment. Many turns went by as Joel got out Slivers, including his gerneral, while Tom and I sat behind regenerators equipped with Wands, drawing cards and confounding Joel's small, non-evasive Sliver fleet. Witness on Tom's part helped Hallowed Burial hit again and it nailed Joel's general, the Sliver Legion. Ouch.
On the rebound from this reset was when things could have gone either way. Tom and I had dueling Wand-wielders. Joel was getting left in the dust as Tom and I each started drawing two to five cards per turn. Tom seemed to be getting slightly better draws with his, as he got down the Archon, a Cytospawn Shambler and a Wall of Reverence. His life kept climbing and I was desperately trying to fend off his Covert Operative carrying some Opaline Bracers (for three). Joel decided the worst artifact on the table was the bracers, as they would hasten our demise (Joel and I were in the 12 to 14 life range). Tom didn't slow down too much, but started playing out his hand. He then chuckled as he complimented the deck design choice of a card from unhinged: Granny's Payback. Turns out Tom is30 years old. which meant that he went to 89 life. Joel then found a second artifact kill and went after Tom's Wand. Why? Because Tom's life total was huhge andhe had a scarier board presence. Two turns later I finally leveraged all my mana and drew five cards. The next, pretty much deciding turn, went like this: Eyeblight's Ending the Archon, Witness the Ending, End the Wall of Reverence, cast Nulltread Gargantuan to put Witness on top of library, use wand to draw Witness, Witness the End, and End the Shambler. Tom knew it was the end, thenks to the Eternal End engine (E cubed FTW!) I swung with my previously cast and Murkfiend Liege-pumped general. Tom took 8 and Vorosh became a 14/14. Next turn Tom was dead, but spite neck-snapped Vorosh (He had to get going, and it was inevitable at that point). Joel pretty much conceded one turn later, after I drew another four cards with the wand and he had no flying defenses to speak of for when Vorosh came back.
Here's a DUH statement: Card drawing in limited games is good. Tom even suggested banning the Wand because of it's brokenness. However, there were four artifact kill spells cast that game and only one was aimed at a Wand. Granted, Tom was going to aim one at my Scepter (still not my Wand), but I cast a Riptide Replicator for 8 so he dealt with that instead. But he might be right. Because of the Wand, I never made any Factory tokens off Urza's Factory and made very few Pests from the Nuisance Engine. I always filtered extra mana into the Wand for more cards. Good times, man, good times.
The game went rather long, perhaps a shade too long, but I blame Tom and his bottom of the library reset shenanigans. I actually had a Stir the Grave in my opening hand and kept it the entire game because almost all the stuff I lost went to the bottom of the library instead of my graveyard. That and I usually saved my mana for Wand activations. Maybe Tom was right about banning the wand.....
Time to fly,
Rodolfo
No comments:
Post a Comment