Back To Your Room, Latulla

Or: Card disadvantage is a thing.

I did run the deck through one last match against Fuz, who was sticking with Sedris as his commander. I won that match yet I never felt good or comfortable about it. In game two, Fuz never saw a source of red mana, and in game three I used Tectonic Rift to cut him off of blue long enough to establish my board presence and Chandra Ablaze.

I won, so that's good, right?

Except it really isn't. I'm having trouble putting my finger on it but even in victory, I felt like my deck was limping towards it, like an amputee zombie.
In the end, I have to recognize that Latulla is a deck that just doesn't come together as I've built it. Too slow to get going in 1v1 play, asking to eliminate cards in hand for fragile if useful board effects and just not quite enough oomph to be great.

That's OK. In a deck where I don't want to play Subterranean Spirit, Goblin Bomb, or Fiery Gambit, a stronger theme or greater focus on powerful effects might be worthwhile. But I like having weird cards in these decks and so I'm going to accept that this is what it is, with a few exceptions to help mitigate the card disadvantage.

Conquering Manticore seems awesome. Reiterate gives me some tactical opportunities that I didn't have before, especially late game when these spells may count. Finally, Blasphemous Act as another sweeper and a card I can play out of the graveyard with Chandra.

It's time to shelve this deck for now. It's been grinding me and when that happens, it's usually a good idea to take a break.

Latulla's Castle

I played some matches against Rider: he went with Erebos and Riku in his games and I am not going to lie to you:

I got blown the hell out. Nothing was effective at all, everything died and I definitely had to turn a corner mentally from: 'Man, losing sucks' to 'OK, what's wrong here?' Analysis is always better than wallowing but I still had to work through the discouragement of having everything suck.

The biggest issues was, again, mana and the mana required for a red deck to really take out large creatures. Game one vs Erebos had me taking massive beatings from Delraich. I mean. Yeesh.

I had a Flowstone Overseer out in a couple games and while he's very good at killing small creatures, the cost to do so pretty much ends everything else I do that turn.

There are two things that come to mind at this point.

First, maybe Latulla isn't a 1v1 deck. Maybe it's really geared to multiplayer scenarios and I should react accordingly, tweaking the deck for a more defensive posture.

Second; maybe I should just overhaul the entire thing. Walls, protection, get Latulla out and just fireball the heck out of 'em. It would be different, that's for sure.

Honestly, I don't know what to do and it's a little frustrating. I've taken some time to look at creatures with defender in red and that is is thoroughly underwhelming, not to mention lacking in density to make a worthwhile Commander deck.

What's a drag at the moment is that I feel as though the energy I'm putting towards this deck isn't being rewarded with knowledge or victory. Just: Oh, I'm not doing this right.

Well, that's not very awesome. Maybe I need to shelve this for a little bit? Hard to say a the moment but something isn't working out.

Latulla + the Destroyers

I've practiced with enough decks to get a feel for them now. Sometimes I can tell when I'm on to something and sometimes I feel like it's just not coming together at all. This is what Latulla has felt like.

I played some games against Noah on Saturday; he was running the Mimeoplasm and it was readily evident that Latualla has no way to deal with massive creatures. Grimgrin arrived, a giant Mimeoplasm was created and I had very little to react to it and couldn't find a way to get into the game. Also, I had real problems dealing with Lightning Greaves.

That's right, playing mono-Red I was having trouble with artifacts. 

Goldfishing on Sunday I felt the same way: this deck just didn't do anything. I wasn't experiencing much in the way of mana issues, I just never felt like I was leading to something. I'm playing red and I am not blowing up as much shit as I would like. And let's face it: if you aren't blowing up enough shit in Red, something isn't right.

So I've tried to add more of that: first, Myriad Landscape, because if you have a mono-colored Commander deck why shouldn't I have that?

Next up: Oxidda Scrapmelter, because this will eat the triumvirate of artifacts that are found in nearly every Commander deck (Sol Ring, Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots), Seismic Mage, because when I played Dwarven Blastminer Noah said, "That's bad.(for me)", Perilous Vault because blowing things up is what we want to do and finally, Foriysian Totem.

When I did an analysis of Latulla at deckbuilders, the mana curve skewed fairly high. Having an artifact on turn 2 or 3 to play that ramps my mana up seemed more important than playing Chaos Warp and the creature density felt light so the Totem felt like a great fit. Good in every stage of the game, I've got a good feeling about this-and if it performs well, the other Totems from Time Spiral should be worth considering.

After a day of wrestling with these changes, the goldfishing aspect felt better. I don't know if the deck is better but at least I'll go into the next few tests feeling more confident. 

Latulla + the Tweaks

I started off with the usual research at reddit and found...nothing. People just don't want to use Latulla as a commander. On the other hand, when I posted the deck, I got some nice responses and ideas!

Some of these I just need to do some digging around for: Dwarven Hold or Mercadian Bazaar, for example. Others I'm not quite sure how they'd fit into the scheme, like Reforge the Soul or Dictate of the Twin Gods but others, like Chaos Warp, I was eyeing already.

So it's good to know that I've got some overlap with the suggestions.

Unfortunately, I've only managed one match with Latulla and that was online against Fuz.

Game one, I got out Koth and Chandra. Fighting off two planeswalkers really isn't anyone's idea of a good time and I won that game pretty handily. Games two and three, I was mana screwed and this really doesn't teach me anything.

Hell, look at that pic: I don't even know how Joven got out there! Although I will say: Dominus of Fealty in games two and three was pretty boss.

If I experience many games over the next testing phase with mana screw then it's time to fix that. But two games in a match? That happens and I can't hold it up as serious data. 

I'm removing Koth for now, and the Rock Slide, for Inferno and Fissure. If I can get some more games in, that might tell me what I can cut for a Dragon Mage. Because, c'mon: Who doesn't want to run Dragon Mage if they can?

Commander: Latulla, Keldon Overseer

That last run of Commander was fun: let's do another! This time, with a Commander listed among the worst.

1 Madblind Mountain 1 Temple of the False God 31 Mountain 1 Dormant Volcano 1 Forgotten Cave 1 Smoldering Crater	1 Shattering Pulse 1 False Orders 1 Rock Slide (Planeswalker) 1 Chandra Ablaze 1 Koth of the Hammer
1 Fervor 1 Goblin Bomb 1 Stranglehold 1 Vow of Lightning 1 Heat Wave 1 Dragon Roost 1 Gratuitous Violence 1 Warstorm Surge	1 Incendiary Command 1 War Cadence 1 Volcanic Wind 1 Flamebreak 1 Fiery Gambit 1 Destructive Force 1 Winds of Change 1 Tectonic Rift 1 Ruination 1 Pyrotechnics 1 Retribution
1 Balefire Dragon 1 Pyreheart Wolf 1 Moonveil Dragon 1 Gang of Devils 1 Dwarven Blastminer 1 Electryte 1 Viashino Heretic 1 Balduvian Horde 1 Karplusan Yeti 1 Taurean Mauler 1 Bloodmark Mentor 1 Hammer Mage 1 Blood Hound 1 Furnace Dragon 1 Rustmouth Ogre 1 Magma Phoenix 1 Subterranean Spirit 1 Wildfire Emissary 1 Mountain Yeti 1 Joven 1 Avatar of Fury 1 Laccolith Titan 1 Flowstone Overseer 1 Hellkite Charger 1 Shivan Phoenix 1 Lord of Shatterskull Pass 1 Iron Myr	1 Heart of Ramos 1 Phyrexian Splicer 1 Sol Ring 1 Jalum Tome 1 Dragon's Claw 1 Power Matrix 1 Farsight Mask 1 Fire Diamond 1 Krark's Thumb 1 Caged Sun 1 Ruby Medallion

In some ways, this deck is a decent articulation of what I think Commander decks should have: a whole bunch of weird cards that don't see the light of day otherwise. That doesn't mean I don't want to win: it just means that Subterranean Spirit deserves some love, man.

That said, I think it's pretty clear that Heat Wave belongs in a Tiny Leaders sideboard and Blood Hound is just bad unless you've got a way to manipulate +1 counters. I'm already running the more chaotic coin flip cards so I think trying to incorporate another theme, especially one so off of Red's path, is unwise.

I also feel like this deck is woefully shy of instants. There are not very many good instants for Red that are "commander sized" if you will. A search for instants costing five for more gave me what I felt were two options: Radiate and Savage Beating, with Runeflare Trap coming in at honorable mention. This does not bode well in my opinion and it may be worth adding more or adding cards like Defense Grid so I can execute my plans with less interference.