Why is that, do you think?

I enjoy playing Commander in multiplayer but only when the group is small; five people at maximum. More than that and it takes too long to get (and sometimes take) your turn; why not just split up and play two games?

But this weekend I faced off against Fuz alone, and multiplayer games are not quite the same as 1v1. Most of those games were against his Sedris deck but there were a few against some of the pre-made Commander decks from 2011.

Things I learned:

Frantic Search is still evil. I should start putting that card in every Commander deck I own. Even if they don't run blue.

I think the hole I spoke of last time, that there aren't a lot of global effects in this deck, may be something that has to be addressed, whether I tilt this deck to 1v1 or multiplayer. Getting outnumbered early is something that can easily happen and a chance to start over is helpful. Conversely, I could add in more card drawing or search effects in order to push combos like Triskelion and Mephidross Vampire, or other tribal synergies. Dark Ritual is the card most likely to come out, as is False Demise if I don't upgrade the creature removal suite. 

On the flipside, cards like Vampire Lacerator give me an opportunity for an early rush and have earned their stay in the deck. Forcing an opponent to use their removal on tiny creatures is always helpful when I'm hoping to cast Blood Tyrant later. Plus, with the Bloodlord of Vaasgoth, the opportunity for cheap huge creatures is there. The drawback that the small creatures provide isn't outweighed by the synergy, yet.

League, final

Well, I did much better this time, posting a winning record in what were absolute streetfight matches. There was the matchup I lost after my opponent did 40 damage to me. There was the one I won with only 16 cards left in my deck. It was that kind of day. The games were exceedingly challenging and well played by everyone.

I went with this deck:

Slitherhead
Sin Collector
Purge the Profane
Heavy Mattock
Bladed Bracers
Angelic Armaments
Ring of Xathrid
Cathedral Sanctifier
Haazda Snare Squad
Voiceless Spirit
Maze Sentinel
Palisade Giant
Boros Elite
Oblivion Ring
Guardian Lions
Smite the Monstrous
Ray of Revelation
Pacifism
Angelic Wall
Ajani, Caller of the Pride
Basilica Guards
Farbog Explorer
Doom Blade
Victim of Night
Fatal Fumes
Mark of the Vampire
Liliana's Shade
Syndicate Enforcer
Ubul Sar Gatekeepers
Unburial Rites
Harrowing Journey
Daggerdrome Imp
Morkut Banshee
Harvester of Souls
Wring Flesh
Walking Corpse
Child of Night
Evolving Wilds
11 Swamp
12 Plains

My strategy was to play the mana game. I figured (correctly, as it turned out) that my opponents were going to try and make 3 color decks work, using their best cards. I was going to make my mana work and hope that my deck would function at a higher level because of this, despite having less powerful cards (I'm looking at you, Liliana's Shade. I hate you.)

It worked, for the most part. There was only one game where I suffered from mana issues, and that was game 1 vs Noah, when I had a hand full of cards requiring white, and drew 4 Swamps. My opening hand was reasonable but not great so I kept it because I was afraid to go to five.

I should have gone to five. Go big or stay home.

The rest of the time, cunning play, solid mana, lifegain and the occasional topdeck carried me through. I didn't win League, though: I was 12-9 throughout and that wasn't even close to the 19-2 record of the winner. Still, these kinds of formats help sharpen my skills so I am looking forward to doing this again.

In about a year.

Pros and Cons

The thing about doing a tribal deck, especially in Commander, is that some questions don't even need to be asked. There are various synergies that come with a tribe and as a result, certain things don't come under consideration because cards like Urge to Feed trump the addition of other removal spells.

I bring this up because what it means is that between the tribal theme and my own philosophy, I tend to eschew mass removal spells like Meltdown over cards like Sunder from Within and Sinkhole. In multiplayer, this can be problematic. On the upside, my evaluation process is tested further, so I get better at that but on the downside, I can easily find myself in a bad situation because I haven't picked the right tools for the job.

In this case: against Noah's Niv-Mizzet deck, he was able to use some artifacts in order to set up a situation where he drew 37 cards 4 times in a row, and killed Seth and I.

But I'm in Canada now, so I can test decks with Fuz and I am certain something good will come of it.

Commander: Garza Zol, Plague Queen

I generally don't name my Commander decks, because they already have unique titles: the Commander leads the deck, thus bestows the name. But in this case, I have a little subtitle for this one,  Everybody I Know Has Fangs.

Commander: Garza Zol, Plague Queen	Artifacts Blade of the Bloodchief  Obelisk of Grixis
Enchantments False Demise  Control Magic	Sorceries Blood Tithe Blood Tribute Dream Cache Earthquake Rush of Knowledge Slave of Bolas Sinkhole Feast of Blood Exsanguinate Consume Spirit Soul Burn Sunder from Within Demolish
Lands Crypt of Agadeem  Dreadship Reef  Urborg Volcano  Crosis's Catacombs  Lake of the Dead  Barren Moor  Izzet Boilerworks  Dimir Aqueduct  Rakdos Carnarium 9 Mountain 9 Island 11 Swamp	Instants Brainstorm Dark Ritual Lim-Dûl's Vault Swerve Murmurs from Beyond Repulse Yamabushi's Flame Glacial Ray Reverberate Sulfurous Blast Think Twice Urge to Feed Vampiric Fury Vampiric Tutor
Creatures Lord of Lineage/Bloodline Keeper  Blood Tyrant  Vampiric Dragon  Vampire Nighthawk  Vampire Lacerator  Izzet Chronarch  Skeletal Vampire  Sengir Nosferatu  Sengir Vampire  Baron Sengir  Irini Sengir  Child of Night  Blood Seeker  Rakish Heir  Falkenrath Marauders	Creatures Krovikan Vampire  Kalitas, Bloodchief of Ghet  Malakir Bloodwitch  Guul Draz Vampire  Gatekeeper of Malakir  Butcher of Malakir  Pulse Tracker  Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief  Mephidross Vampire  Mirri the Cursed  Guul Draz Assassin  Captivating Vampire  Bloodlord of Vaasgoth  Triskelion  Olivia Voldaren

I suppose that the first thing I ought to do is repeat my general Commander philosophy. This format is where I get to shove in all the weird, unused cards or singletons that I wouldn't get to play otherwise. In Commander, I try a little harder to consider theme and the glory of cool things, than I do the success of a plan in relationship to victory.

I realize that making a vampire tribal deck may not seem like something out of the ordinary but I dislike making decks that I know work. Vampires have been pushed steadily since Zendikar block and while I don't know that a winning vampire deck has been mapped out, making a traditional 60 card deck is just too easy. Unless I can put a slant on it that is unique (read: probably bad) then I find it difficult to be interested.

I frontload all this because I have had people tell me, in a slightly pitying tone, "Vampire Lacerator really doesn't work in Commander."

Trust me: I know how this format works. It works any way you want it to and I want to make a vampire tribal deck. It's OK if some of the cards are bad; that's partly why I'm writing, to properly look at these decks and swap bad cards for better ones.

But in Commander I'm more willing to accept my choices because they are cool. Telling me that something doesn't work when it's clearly part of the theme is ignoring what my goals are and is unhelpful advice. That doesn't mean I'm going to keep the Lacerator in forever but it's good for the time being.

Let's roll it out!

Dig Out The Metal

Leave it to Jason to hit the weak spot in my deck.

Two matches: one versus a mono-green deck with Predator Ooze and Dungrove Elder, conveniently Rancor'd, which are stubbornly resistant to my removal suite, and another against a mono-black (mostly) zombie deck, including the greatest hits of Gravecrawler, Geralf's Messenger and Nether Traitor.

In the mono-G matchup, I couldn't race him; even with Soul Feast, there is a point where Necrologia is a dead card for me, usually when I'm at 5 or less, because I don't have sweeper cards. All my damage was directed at Jason but I couldn't get enough to win the games.

Zombies!

Against zombies, I lost 1-2 and the game I won was where my removal mattered juuuust enough (special props to Scorching Lava), and then I was able to Necrologia for 6 and throw 4 lands away to do 8 damage and come from behind. But the games I lost were ones where I had to remove undying creatures twice, using up resources that needed to be directed elsewhere, so I couldn't carve out enough time to arrive at a board state that let me win.

They were close games though, so nothing is dissuading me from my current design. Yes, the Vampire Nighthawks would have been useful in the mono-G matchup, but so would Damnation, Scar, Thoughtseize or a hundred other combinations. This is where a sideboard would be useful and certainly the Nighthawks and more discard would probably be where I'd look to shore up difficult matchups.

So let's call it good with this list:

3 Dark Ritual
3 Incinerate
3 Seismic Assault
3 Rakdos Carnarium
3 Necrologia
3 Scorching Lava
2 Rocky Tar Pit
5 Swamp
2 Shadowblood Ridge
3 Terminate
3 Manaforge Cinder
3 Mogg Fanatic
2 Grim Lavamancer
3 Organ Grinder
10 Mountain
4 Blightning
2 Dragonskull Summit
3 Soul Feast

Now, some people may have heard about the next Commander set which is coming out in a month, so let's talk about Commander stuff for 30 days!

20 or 18 Year Old Whiskey?

I know that last time, I said I would be dabbling with Vampire Nighthawk in the Lose Hope slot.

I didn't.

I know, I know: Vampire Nighthawk is good. I should run good cards.

But as I was cleaning up my desk, I ended up finding the Any Colour You Like deck (which instead of dismantling I twisted into a Painters Servant/Grindstone deck) and while taking it apart I found the four Soul Feasts that were in there.

The drawback to Soul Feast is that it costs more than the Nighthawk but the upside is that it dodges removal, which is a big deal these days, and doesn't take a turn to get going: I cast Soul Feast, I gain 4 life, no waiting.

When I asked Fuz about these options, he said "It's like asking if you want to fuck a 20 or 18 year old whiskey."

I did not know I could fuck whiskey, so it may be time to expand my horizons.

I ended up taking the Soul Feast configuration against Fuz's White Weenie deck in two nailbiting games. Manaforge Cinder did some critical mana fixing in both games and Blightning was fantastic. It hit a Wrath of God and a Disenchant in game 2 (pictures), which was critical because I was on the end of a beatdown of epic proportions, going down to one life due to an early Student of Warfare, rapidly leveled up to deal me 8 a turn.

I cast Seismic Assault, then used everything up in order to stabilize the board; discard Swamp + Grim Lavamancer to kill the Student. Then discard another land to kill a Knight of Meadowgrain. Lavamancer activation to kill Knight Exemplar (two of them!) and Incinerate for Knight of the Holy Nimbus.

In a last ditch effort, I Necrologia'd for five, going to one life, then next turn was able to cast Blightning and Incinerate off a Dark Ritual run through the Manaforge Cinder in order to give me more time. I used that time to cast Soul Feast to go up to 5. At 8 life, with a Hero of Bladehold and a Crusade on the board Fuz swung at me for 10.

I blocked the Hero with an Organ Grinder, then activated the Grinder to bring Fuz down to 5. Blocked a token with a Grim Lavamancer, then took 3 from the unblocked token. Fuz says "Go," and I untap, pitch a land for 2 damage an cast a second Soul Feast to win.

Whew. Now, did I get lucky, or have I chosen wisely? It's hard to say, but the fact that I pulled out close matches against an aggro deck (a matchup I know to be difficult) makes me think that I've got this deck on the right track, at least for now.

Blightning Rod

I thought I had this posted on Thursday. Sorry everyone! We now join our story in progress...

Although I won games against Fuz with my original configuration of Shrapnel, I knew it was just luck. I needed to win games more decisively, which meant either a) speed or b) disruption.

Theros still isn't out (when I wrote this last Thursday), but the best 'faster' card that I thought would be helpful was Read the Bones. Lacking that, I've been using Lose Hope (over Festering March and Flame Javelin) as a way to provide disruption. I like Lose Hope, actually. The filtering is nice and I'm having to make some choices that I think I'm getting incorrect. Which is good, because that means I'm learning.

However, Lose Hope is also another creature killer and I have quite a bit of that, as I've seen in games against Noah and stonethorn. Too much of a good thing, perhaps, leaving me unable to finish the game.

And replacing Lose Hope with Read the Bones is risky, because I already want to go all-in on cards like Necrologia. I'm not sure I can take the life loss.

That's the questionable card, though. I had an 'Aha!' moment and removed Dread and Murderous Redcap for Blightning and that was an excellent decision. In all my games, whenever I cast Blightning, my opponents were unhappy with it. Always a good sign.

The other 'Aha!' moment I had was with the mana base. It's challenging to make a deck that has, as two of its key spells, RRR and BB in them. If I had more lands that could produce red or black, I would be in better shape (of course, right?)

So I went to ye olde binders and found two Dragonskull Summit which should make everything better. Not as good as Badlands but it's best to use the tools available, since purchase of a Badlands invokes the My Money rule. (My Money > less of My Money.)

However, I want to return to the Lose Hope conundrum. The redundancy they provide may not be reason enough to keep them but I do like the brainteaser of which cards to scry. Still, if I could add in something that created problems and contributed to speeding up my win condition, this might be a better thing. I'll have to keep my eye out. A card like Vampire Nighthawk could be exceptionally good for this deck, giving me time to set up my combo through lifegain against more aggressive decks, or be a win condition on its own against slower ones if I look for the turn 1 Swamp, Dark Ritual, Nighthawk play.

We'll put the Nighthawk on deck, if Lose Hope doesn't cut it.