Entry 13: Time Time is a concern for any hobby. More free time means more time for our hobbies. Less free time means the opposite. As commander players, we are always thinking about time. We need time to construct the deck, assemble the cards, and play the game. Magic, and commander, is a time consuming process. For the past two months, time has been a hot commodity for me. I’ve played less commander games, and I haven’t had a diary entry for nearly three months. A new commute, a new home to manage, a new puppy to watch, and a project to start. Last week, it finally all came to a head, and I just — stopped. I let magic take a back seat for a second. I stopped my Moxtober project. I stopped worrying about my lack of diary entries, and I stopped looking for commander games. While that may seem disappointing, it was actually refreshing. I wouldn’t say I was burnt out on magic, I still thought about it throughout the day, but I did need a reset. I took a few days. I didn’t design cards. I didn’t work on art. I just let my brain rest, and soon enough I picked back up the things I enjoyed. I built a new deck. I worked on some custom designs. I got some new cards for my deck diary. The deck diary went through some big changes this week as I picked up a swath of Midnight Hunt cards from both @EclipseMeteor and @AllieGolem (on twitter). With Nadaar at the helm, the deck didn’t see a lot of changes. I think that’s partially because Adventures in the Forgotten Realms was such an affordable set. If I wanted a card from AFR, it was pretty easy for me to get a hold of it, meaning lots of the cards came in at once. Getting a big batch of Midnight Hunt cards gives me some hope that sets will continue to be affordable moving forward. Making changes on a set by set basis is a lot cleaner than continuous changes throughout the lifetime of a set. The biggest change to my deck diary is another commander swap. Nadaar is great and I’ve loved venturing so far. In fact, I love it so much I now have multiple decks that care about diving into dungeons. As such, I wanted to make a swap here to another really exciting commander that was just released. Adeline might be one of the best mono white commanders from this year. Her stats are pushed. Her ability is pushed. She’s just really strong, and at a mana value that white loves. I also love that she sticks to a theme of the commanders from this deck diary project — she’s versatile. This deck is going to play creatures, both because I’m building it and because the nature of the project lends itself to midrange strategies. These creatures lend themselves to Adeline's powerful token ability, and while this isn't a token deck getting three creatures each attack is powerful regardless. The second biggest change is the removal of one of my favorite cards from the deck. Earlier this year I got to the point that every card was new from the last two years. Now I’m pushing that a step further and replacing cards from the oldest set in the deck first. That means that Theros cards are getting removed from the deck for new cards from Midnight Hunt. That has resulted in the removal of one of my favorite cards from this project — Taranika. When I started this project I didn’t expect to absolutely fall in love with Taranika but I guess it makes sense. Before starting my deck diary, I had tried to build Taranika several times but never figured out how to do it. Applying this restriction seemed to unlock something for me by pairing two mana creatures with double strike and Taranika. This project forced me to think differently, play cards I’d written off, and by extension finally find out how to make those cards work. That philosophy has carried through the project. With each new addition, I spend a little less time thinking about potential synergy and more time focused on simply trying out the card that interests me. In doing so, I hope to continue to find more cards that worm their way into my heart much like Taranika did. I don't have much to say about the new additions from AFR and MID as I just haven't gotten that many games in these past two months. However, I was actually able to play two games with an Oathbreaker variant of this deck. Oathbreaker is a sixty card singleton format where each deck is headed by a Planeswalker and Signature spell (an instant or sorcery within the commander's color identity). One of the things I've enjoyed about this format is that several of my commander decks can convert easily into an Oathbreaker deck. The deck diary was no exception. With Basri Ket at the helm, I was able to make some swingy plays and have a lot of fun, but the highlight was getting to play Flumph. By the end of the game, people were just declaring "I attack Flumph" and this gave me some huge card advantage. This new approach of "targeted group hug" is really interesting as it creates a tantalizing dilemma. Normally group hug cards suffer from giving you substantially fewer resources than your collective opponents. Truce for example draws you two cards, but draws your opponents a total of six. Flumph circumvents this math by drawing you a card each time and a single opponent a card. So this means in a turn cycle of attacks you can draw three cards and each opponent simply draws one. This results in your collective opponent drawing three and you drawing three an even exchange. However the advantage of drawing more cards then each individual opponent can't be understated either. I don't know what the math says about this advantage, but playing with it felt fantastic, and that's enough for Flumph to get my endorsement. With that note, I'm out of time for now, but hopefully not out of time for long.
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AuthorMonoWhiteBorder -- A man who loves MtG and his small dog. Archives
June 2021
Categories"MonoWhiteBorder" and corresponding content is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.
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