About a week ago I sent my Doran list off to Thaumaturge, who runs “The Command Zone”, a blog on EDH similar to this one and well worth checking out. Today he posted up his fixed version of the list, and I must say it’s looking pretty good. Check it out here: The Command Zone
I’ll be making pretty much all of the changes he suggests; look out for a bigger, better Doran coming soon to a table near you!
For those who may be interested; I made a “game notes” sheet in Excel and took it to the epic game last night; this is what it ended up looking like:
I’ll type this up as a proper game report… soon. I hope 🙂
News at 11
(in human language: Played a game tonight. Fought through mono-blue ickyness. Won game. Will type up report when brain properly working)
I took a bunch of notes for this game so I have more of an idea about what happened.
Oros, (my) Nin, Damia, (my) Kaalia, and Progenitus
I get a turn 2 Sakura-Tribe Elder which lets me get double Signets (Dimir and Golgari) turn 3, but in the meantime Oros mountain cycles Igneous Pouncer and then Reanimates it on his turn three, attacking Kaalia. I drop a Zombie Infestation and Cryptoplasm. The next turn he attacks Kaalia again, and this time has Sunhome to really bring the beats. Kaalia drops a Pristine Angel, forcing the Igneous Pouncer (which lives for a surprisingly long time) to focus elsewhere. Nin has a Darksteel Myr on the board, and my Crpytoplasm copies it, meaning it’s Progenitus (which is really a 5-colour control deck – he never casts Progenitus the whole game) which gets the 8 damage.
A few turns later Progenitus casts Brilliant Ultimatum, which meets a Dream Fracture from Nin. On his next turn he tries Debtor’s Knell, to which Nin responds with Hinder, and Progenitus counters with Dismiss.
Meanwhile Kaalia has cast the Oros of her own, and equipped it with Champions Helm. It swings into Oros, and activates it’s ability which kills off a few creatures, most notably Nin. It also kills a completely surplus to requirements Llanowar Elves of mine. At this stage my Cryptoplasm is still the Darksteel Myr, so it survives.
Oros casts (Oros’s) Oros to Legend Rule (Kaalia’s) Oros (my notes say Oros –> Oros –> Oros 😉 ),
The Knell starts doing it’s work, first bringing back Kaalia’s Oros, then (after a Day of Judgement from Oros) her Pristine Angel.
Kaalia gets cast for the third time, and equipped with Champion’s Helm. By this stage I have 12 mana and Damia in play, and go for what I hope will start to close out the game; I first cast Psychosis Crawler, which meets an Overwhelming Intellect from Nin. I Eternal Witness the Crawler back, then try something a bit risky – Bottled Cloister.
Kaalia then attacks me, and drops…. Angel of Despair into play. Uh-oh… Thankfully he’s persuaded to hit the Debtor’s Knell, and not the Cloister. I take 9 from the attack, but still have my hand safely under the Cloister. It survives the whole round, and I stack the triggers properly so Damia refills my hand (draw 7) then get my old hand back (4 cards at the time) and draw an extra. If the Psychosis Crawler hadn’t been countered I would have been much happier 🙂
Progenitus gets back and recasts Brilliant Ultimatum which reveals:
Oh damn. The table debates for a while and put Intet and Bloodgift in one pile and the other three in another. He takes the Intet pile. On his next attack, he attacks Nin with Intet, and the Oros player decides to Sunhome Intet, which gives Progentius Future Sight and Mulldrifter for “free”. Mulldrifter draws him into Maelstrom Nexus and Spin into Myth (revealed due to the Future Sight).
Oros then tries to reset the board a little with Kirtar’s Wrath, but it meets a Spell Crumple from Progenitus who by now has a pretty dominant board position.
On my turn I tap out to Genesis Wave for 10 getting:
9 out of 10 ain’t bad even if 6 of them were lands 😀
Kaalia attacks me again, this time dropping Dragon Tyrant into play 😦 I block Kaalia with my 5/6 Intet, and take 18 from the pumped Tyrant, dropping me to 7.
Progenitus plays and activates an Oblivion Stone, which aside from all my creatures (including Damia) kills my three Signets, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, and most importantly Bottled Cloister. Sad face…
Oros drops Kaervek the Merciless. If anyone casts a big spell, Kaervek can just kill me. My turn rolls around, and my Crytoplasm becomes a Kaervek (it survived the O-Stone due to still being a Darksteel Myr), and the Legend Rule does its thing so that I’m not quite dead.
Kaalia plays Malfegor, discarding two cards which is enough to clear the board of creatures again. End of Kaalia’s turn, Progenitus plays Fact or Fiction revealing:
We split it the first two and the last three, and he takes the three. On his turn he plays the Chronarch, getting Brilliant Ultimatum back again. He plays it immediately, revealing:
We again debate for a while, and decide that Unburial Rites and everything else is the way to go. He takes the everything else and casts them all for free (Willbender as a Morph. It’s always Willbender), Arcane Denial excepted.
Sometime around here I have a 20/20 Allosaurus Rider (19 lands are fun!) and swing into Nin to try finish him off, but Oros gives him a spirit token off Forbidden Orchard to block with, for some reason that no one can properly explain.
I draw and cast Ice Cauldron, add 3UUB to it and stick a Rite of Replication of my own under it. I also suspend a Living End, and play a morph (“it’s Willbender!” they exclaim. I don’t dissuade them of this opinion. It’s actually Vesuvan Shapeshifter).
Oros casts Carnifex Demon. On my turn I get the Rite out from under the Ice Cauldron and target the Carnifex Demon – Oros takes the two counters off in response to make his bigger and kill the two “Willbenders” – I morph my shapeshifter into a Carnifex Demon of my own.
This where I think I made an error. I have 6 Carnifex Demons (5 from RoR with 2 -1/-1 counters on them and 1 Shapeshifter with 1) and 9 black mana available. The Oros player has a Carnifex Demon with no -1/-1 counters on it and 3 black mana. I spend a good couple of minutes trying to figure out some way where I can kill his with -1/-1 counters while still holding on to mine – we spend the next five minutes activating, resolving, and responding to triggers, and when the dust clears, they’re all dead. I’m reasonably sure I did it wrong, but I still don’t know how I could have done it. The primary issue is of course that each time I activate one of my demons, it puts a -1/-1 counter on every other demon I have as well, and eventually they add up to kill everything. It was suggested that I should have really only used one or two of them, and not worried about the rest; I think that’s probably correct. If anyone can figure this out (assuming optimum responses from my opponent as well) then please post in the comments!
Not much happens until it’s my turn again, and I attempt to Genesis Wave (I got it back with Regrowth) for 12. Progenitus casts Dismiss. Nin Twincasts the G.Wave. Progenitus Spell Crumples the Twincast. Nin Rewinds the Spell Crumple. In the end, Nin gets the G.Wave, and Progenitus gets a card, and I get to spend 15 mana. Sigh.
All this happens while I’m still on 5 life (I got hit for 2 by someone somewhere). Shortly after that Oros swings at me with his general, and I’m the first one out. Shortly thereafter Progenitus (decked by a Mana Geyser-fueled Blue Sun’s Zenith from Nin) and Nin follow and then Kaalia kills of Oros and wins.
Aside from the somewhat random (and if I’m honest somewhat annoying) interventions by Oros on behalf of Progenitus (against Nin) and for Nin (against me), this was a very enjoyable game. It’s by far the best game my Damia deck has had, despite being the first eliminated. Lessons learned:
MVP: Tough call – I’m going to go with Genesis Wave here, but the only reason it was so good (or would have been if it wasn’t countered the second time) is because of the work that went into my boardstate earlier
LVP: Llanowar Elves. Was a dead draw.
It’s definitely the silly (or maybe stupid) season at the moment and I’ve been so snowed under with work it’s not funny. As a result Sek’Kuar is about 80% built but I haven’t done anything to the misbehaving decks. Today is the last day at work for a couple of weeks so hopefully (if I’m not too busy around the house!) I’ll be able to update somewhat more regularly. Also, there is a New Year’s Resolution coming – stay tuned!
Apologies for slackness people, been crazy at work which leads to too tired to type at home 😉
Working on two posts at the moment; a game report from Tuesday in which I played four games, and a first draft and strategy article on the Sek’Kuar deck I’m building.
Stay tuned!
It’s been a while since I posted anything – there are lots 
of reasons for that but the most relevant is that I’ve been internalising a really complictated situation in my ‘ead (Those of you who don’t get the reference – and most probably won’t – click here 😉 ). While building my last 3 or 4 decks, I keep running into cards and thinking “Hey that would work really well in Sek’Kuar!” I have tons of ideas for this deck and it will be one of the more syngergistic and therefore hopefully smoother and better decks that I have.
But then I look at poor old Doran, and Isperia, and the newer but no less disappointing Garza Zol and Damia – all of which could be fun and interesting and dangerous – but at the moment they’re definitely below the curve on power level, and some of them just aren’t that interesting.
So I have bit of a dilemma – do I build Sek’Kuar, or rebuild some of my less fun, less “good” decks?
I have some ideas for each of these poor suffering decks, and I think I’ve been a bit guilty (especially with Doran, Isperia and Garza Zol) of sticking too much to the theme at the expense of power. All of the decks mentioned can simply be ignored by the other players and taken out pretty much at leisure (with the odd exception – all the decks have won games except Damia and I’ve only played that twice), and that’s the sign of a bad deck, surely.
What do you folks think? All of my ideas for Sek’Kuar are more or less entrenched and I won’t forget about them soon, but I like putting decks together and giving them a play to see how they go. I also have a great dislike for decks I know should be better, and aren’t.
What to do, what to do….
This is not the greatest deck in the world... 