My Commander deck 1: Wort's Goblin Horde

First of all, it turns out that being a new dad is considerably more time consuming that I had anticipated, so this is my first post for a good while (almost 6 weeks in fact). However, I think that things might be calming down now, and I will hopefully get chance to update this blog much more frequently again.

This post is the first in hopefully a series of posts about the Magic: the Gathering format, Commander. I am a huge fan of Commander, and it is my favourite way of playing Magic. I got into it when looking for a way to use a good portion of my collection in new ways. I have a collection that is wide in nature rather than deep, due to having been in and out of the game since the late 1990s. A format that allows me to build 100 card decks that have only one of each card in them sounds great to me. I dabbled with a few ideas of what to build for my first deck, but settled eventually on Goblins, as they are fun and fast to play, and I really felt like I would enjoy a Goblin Commander deck. I had a few problems building it, but here is the deck list as it stands currently:

General

Creature (30)

• 1x Archetype of Finality
• 1x Blackcleave Goblin
• 1x Caterwauling Boggart
• 1x Festering Goblin
• 1x Flamestick Courier
• 1x Foundry Street Denizen
• 1x Goblin Battle Jester
• 1x Goblin Chieftain
• 1x Goblin Gaveleer
• 1x Goblin Grappler
• 1x Goblin Piledriver
• 1x Goblin Shortcutter
• 1x Goblin Sledder
• 1x Goblin Turncoat
• 1x Goblin Warchief
• 1x Guttersnipe
• 1x Krenko, Mob Boss
• 1x Krenko's Enforcer
• 1x Mad Auntie
• 1x Mogg War Marshal
• 1x Reckless One
• 1x Rock Jockey
• 1x Rummaging Goblin
• 1x Siege-Gang Commander
• 1x Skirk Commando
• 1x Skirk Drill Sergeant
• 1x Spikeshot Goblin
• 1x Tsabo Tavoc
• 1x Wall of Fire
• 1x Warren Pilferers

Sorcery (13)

• 1x Act of Treason
• 1x Burn at the Stake
• 1x Cleaver Riot
• 1x Diabolic Tutor
• 1x Fireball
• 1x Goblin Rally
• 1x Goblin War Strike
• 1x Krenko's Command
• 1x Pillar of Flame
• 1x Rupture
• 1x Sizzle
• 1x Survey the Wreckage
• 1x Vandalblast

Land (33)

• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Goblin Burrows
• 16x Mountain
• 1x Opal Palace
• 4x Swamp
• 7x Swamp
• 1x Temple of Malice
• 1x Temple of the False God
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse

Instant (5)

• 1x Dogpile
• 1x Dynacharge
• 1x Fling
• 1x Massive Raid
• 1x Titan's Strength

Artifact (12)

• 1x Akroma's Memorial
• 1x Bladed Pinions
• 1x Bonesplitter
• 1x Hall of Triumph
• 1x Mask of Avacyn
• 1x Ring of Three Wishes
• 1x Ring of Valkas
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Slagwurm Armor
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Whispersilk Cloak

Enchantment (6)

• 1x Barrage of Expendables
• 1x Five-Alarm Fire
• 1x Goblin War Paint
• 1x Goblinslide
• 1x Madcap Skills
• 1x War Cadence

 Building this deck gave me an immediate issue: who to chose as a Commander? I didn't actually have a Legendary Goblin, so actually settled initially on Tsabo Tavoc, as she gave me access to both red and black, and there are some interesting goblin cards in black. The second colour also gave me access to some really good spells, and some card draw, a weakness for red. With this in mind I searched my collection for suitable goblins, and quickly found I had far more than I could ever include in the deck, so that was a good thing. There were some auto-includes on that list (Siege-Gang Commander, Goblin Piledriver, and Goblin Warchief) plus some that I could see would be interesting to include. The first draft of the deck (which I no longer retain the list for, unfortunately) was a very fast, much more creature focused list, with few artifacts and only a handful of spells. I confidently took it along to Nebula Custom Gaming, and promptly lost badly! Later I tried it out with some friends and was convinced it wasn't good. So back to the drawing board.










 Development

So I needed a real goblin for a Commander, and that pointed me toward Wort, Boggart Auntie. She gave me access to my two colours still, and also allows me to bring back a dead goblin every turn for free. This is very useful, as goblins die very easily. Many folk kept telling me to use Krenko, Mob Boss, and this was tempting. However, he is mono-red, and that ruled out my black goblins, plus I can also make sure he stays on the table by pulling him out of my yard with Wort, so I decided on the Boggart Auntie.

Once I had my new Commander in place, I needed a strategy. In my first runs, the goblins came out of the gate fast, but very quickly became outclassed, and I was left with an empty hand. To further compound this, Wort kept on being removed due to her lack of protection, and this meant she couldn't get goblins back out. So first of all I needed some protection for her: Slagwurm Armor, Whispersilk Cloak, Swiftfoot Boots and Mask of Avacyn were selected to loan Wort some protection, and the inclusion of all four allows some redundancy. In addition, each had their own little advantage, so Whispersilk Cloak allowed for unblockable Commander damage, Slagwurm Armor is transferable should it need to be, and Mask of Avacyn allows for a small power boost. Due to the width of my collection, I had all of these cards in my collection and this meant I didn't need to buy them in. This is a heck of a boon!

So now my Commander was protected, I needed some win conditions in the deck. Here I wanted to give myself some variety. The usual goblin modus operandi of swarm isn't that great in Commander, so it needed something else. Here I added Blackcleave Goblin, to allow me to hit my opponent with Infect (10 points of Infect damage and the game is over for my opponent.). Wort allows me to pull this card out of the graveyard when it dies, and the addition of Whispersilk Cloak allows it to get in often... nasty.
Krenko, Mob Boss comes in for the next few conditions: swarm is made much better when you have potentially tens of new goblins each turn. These can then be used as ammunition for Siege-Gang Commander, and also for Barrage of Expendables to cause damage to my opponents directly for the cost of some replaceable tokens. Massive raid allows me to hit with a large amount of damage due to high creature numbers, as does Dogpile and Goblin War Strike. To make the swarm really useful I added in Akroma's Memorial: this artifact allows me to have have a swarm of flying, haste, first strike, trample and protection goblins. The other lord effects on some of the goblins (Mad Auntie, Goblin Chieftan) and Hall of Triumph add to the goblin's power which mean the weak horde all of a sudden looks much tougher.

Finally i looked at how I could solve my card draw problem. In a word: Skullclamp! Owning a wide selection of cards really helps when you realise one of the most broken cards ever is in your collection. This artifact allows me to kill off goblin tokens for 2 cards at the cost of one mana. If this card gets going, things get horrible very quickly. If I can tutor this up, then the deck really takes off. It is very vulnerable to removal, however,  and the deck hasn't got a way of recovering it.



Outcome

Once these changes were made, the deck got a whole lot more effective! When I don't get the chance to build up, then keeping Wort alive and using her to hit for Commander damage proves very effective. Allowing the goblin horde to grow gets really scary, as the card draw allowed by Skullclamp, and the tokens or Festering Goblin being the fuel for it mean that i can get ahead on card advantage very quickly, making the deck pretty scary. However it isn't so scary that you get ganged up on, and it certainly is fun to play.

Areas for Improvements

There are some obvious ways that this deck could be improved. First off, I think it could do with more card draw. I need to add some black card draw cards, perhaps Sign in Blood, or Read the Bones: Bitter Revelation may also help here as it could add goblins to the graveyard that Wort can pull out. Bloodgift Demon could help with the card draw as well as adding a large flyer, which is another area the deck is weak.

The deck lacks for mass removal, and therefor something like Mizzium Mortars or Drown in Sorrow might help on that front, but this may just remains a place this deck stays weak.

So that is my goblin deck. I am enjoying playing it, and I am now working on improving it and also foiling it out, for sheer bling value. The next article will look at a different deck completely, one that I built with a specific strategy in mind: Selesnya Tokens.

Boxing with Khan(s)

So I purchased my first ever booster box recently, of the newly released Khans or Tarkir set. Up until now I have purchased boosters, Fat Packs and even gone halves on a booster box but this was my first ever solo purchase of a box, and I did it with great excitement. This would be my first chance to keep all the mythics and rares myself, and there would be 36 fresh boosters to crack... what's not to like???

I hadn't really read up much on the Khans set before I got the box, mainly to preserve the sense of mystery in the new cards when I opened them, but I had read about Wizards of the Coast changing how Standard was going to work with fair warning before Khans was released so I knew what to expect there. As I play a mixture of different formats, the changes to Standard didn't seem so bad to me, and keeping it fresh every 18 months seems like a step in the right direction. It's not like I lose the use of the cards when they rotate out, I have other formats I can play them in.

I collected the box from Nebula Custom Gaming and sat down for a while to start cracking boosters, as I had a little time to kill, and was too excited to wait (despite being a grown man I retain my childlike excitement at new toys it seems). My excitement was sustained by opening my first two packs and pulling a foil rare and then a foil mythic (for a total of 4 rares and mythics from 2 packs).
Narset, Enlightened Master in foil rather complemented Jeskai Ascendancy in foil rather well I thought, and certainly made me want to crack more open. After cracking a few more open, and discussing with Lee the prospect of some swaps (I would have loved to have gotten hold of Sorin, Solemn Visitor off of him but it was promised to someone else) I had gotten a couple of rare fetchlands (which are very much this set's cash cards) but needed to go and collect my brother, so had to delay opening the rest.

Later on, as I was opening the remaining two thirds of the box, I was a little disappointed. I had gotten a mythic and a foil rare in the opening two but with 8 packs left to go had failed to open any other mythics. Sure I had grabbed a total of 5 fetchlands, and had gotten some really interesting looking cards, but come on, everyone loves a mythic! I need not have worried it seems, the last 8 packs yielded 5 more mythics rares, including a Sorin, Solemn Visitor of my own to my great pleasure. I also grabbed a Wingmate Roc, a very strong looking Mythic that looks like it will be good fun to play.

With all of my boosters opened and with some cards already earmarked for resale (read: fetchlands) I set about considering the set as a whole. It has a strong 3 colour scheme and this was something I hadn't come across before. I had invested quite heavily in the Return to Ravnica block, especially Dragon's Maze so had experienced a multi-colour focused block before but three colours was a new thing. I have been considering what i should play and what I should build from these cards, and was immediately drawn towards Abzan based on a number of the cards I had pulled (including Sorin). Also there were some really fun looking cards that were Blue/Green (not colours I normally play) so there may well be something for Sultai and Temur brewing away in the back of my mind. The fact that I then acquired a playset of Sagu Mauler may also have boosted these colours for me too ;)

All in all I am looking forward to getting my teeth into building a new Standard deck focusing on Khans or Tarkir. I certainly have some cards that I am not using from the Theros block that could slip nicely into an Abzan deck, and I am very much looking forward to brewing something up and seeing how it does. I'll hopefully get a decklist up in the next week or so.

Second Taste of the Tournament Cherry

Its been a couple of weeks since I last wrote again and lots has been going on gaming wise. I hope to get a couple more posts written this week detailing what I have been up to, and what with, but for this post I want to talk about my second experience of playing in a Magic:the Gathering tournament. It has been over a week since the tournament, so the experience isn't as fresh in my mind as I would have liked it to be, so please forgive the lack of detail on some of the matches.

This tournament once again took place at Nebula Custom gaming in Walsall, on Saturday the 27th of September, and was a casual tournament, meaning that the metagame would be wide open to all sorts of different decks, both in power level and in style. I wracked my brains for a week or so before the tournament wondering what deck to play in this event, and even had a stab at building a new Soldier deck in White/Red but did not get enough chance to play test it before the day of the tournament. In the end I decided to go with what I know was decent and reasonably fast (learning from my last experience) and went with my Hellcow's Hammer deck.

My first round match up was against Kate, who was playing an Elf deck. this was the first time I had met Kate and so I didn't know what to expect from her deck. The first game got underway and I got very lucky on my draw, with a great hand coming together in my first seven. We both played lands for a our first turn and second turn. This allowed me to start getting minotaurs out early on and they started to swing for damage straight away. Kate was playing a deck which allowed for a decent amount of lifegain, so whilst I kept on swinging in for damage, she was able to bring her total back up some to mitigate this effect. However, her elves were unable to put much of a dent in the minotaurs that were building on my side of the board, and once I hate got a pair of Rageblood Shamans and a Kragma Warcaller out to boost my creatures I was able to swing in for 21 damage in one attack ending this game.

The second game was much closer than the first, with the minotaurs not coming out as quickly as the first hand, and the elves getting off to a better start. However, the stronger minotaur creatures, and the judicious use of Doomblade, were able to swing things in my favour and I finished up the match 2-0.

The second round brought me up against Rich, one of Nebula's Co-owners. He was playing an Izzet-based Red/Blue deck with a lot of Instants and Sorceries which inspired his Nivix Cyclops' to fly (yep) over and hit hard. The first hand got of to a great start for me and a bad one for Rich, as I got a minotaur out on turn 2 and was able to start causing damage from turn three. Rich however, was stuck mana-screwed and unable to do anything, discarding cards for the 2nd and 3rd turns. By the time he got anything out is was pretty much over and I won the first game. The second match was a whole other story. This time I struggled for mana, and when I did get creatures out they fell foul of Rich's spells, which in turn powered up his Cyclops. This one was a short, brutal and in my case lethal game, tying it at 1-1 going into a decider.

The deciding round was the best game I played in the whole tournament, with blows being traded on both sides, and the pendulum swinging back and fourth several times, before I  was lucky enough to get a Kragma Warcaller out and keep him out, whilst using two minotaur tokens from Flurry of Horns to swing in for enough damage to seal the game and the match. I was left on 2 life in this game and it was a real close call, but I had really enjoyed it.

This brought up the third and final round. I was one of two players who had won their opening 2 matches, and this brought me face to face with Duncan and his mono-black Vampires deck. I had seen how he had chewed through his other opponents and I knew I needed to be very fast to beat him. the first game didn't bode well as he managed to get vampires out quickly, and I was stuck with my ground pounding and somewhat slower to cast minotaurs. What is worse is that as the Vampires were mono-black, my Doomblades were worthless in this game. We both swung in aggressively, with Duncan knowing I couldn't block his fliers and me knowing that there was little point holding my forces back. However, his vampires were also providing him with copious amounts of Lifegain, meaning all I was really doing was stopping his life from building up too fast! The inevitable happened and I lost the opening game.

The second game brought my sideboard into play, and out went the Doomblades, to be replaced by Dark Betrayal, and Drown in Sorrow came in for Sinister Possession. I was determined to try and give a better showing formyself this hand... However my opening hand really let me down and I had to mulligan down to 6 cards. This gave me a mono-red hand with a decent amount of burn and mana. Hoping this would prove enough to keep me in it until my minotaurs came out of the deck I went with it. Duncan's vampires quickly established a decent board presence (although my Searing Bloods proved useful at removing one or two of his really big threats), and I traded burn spells to his creature damage, reducing his life total as he hit mine. Unfortunately, I quickly ran out of spells and was reliant on topdecking creatures... and the only ones I was able to pull was the ever reliant Kragma Warcaller, who proved too expensive to cast. Duncan quickly finished me off and left me defeated 0-2.

With this defeat in the final round I ended up placing 3rd overall: not too bad considering my 7th place in the last tournament, and also left me with a healthy respect for Vampire decks!

At the end of the afternoon I placed an order with Nebula for a booster box of the new Khans of Tarkir set.This is my first ever time buying a booster box just for myself, and I am looking forward to what I get from it (more on that in the next post!).

My First Tournament Experience

So I finally played in my first Magic: the Gathering tournament this past weekend (12th of September) over at Nebula Custom Gaming. It was a Pauper tournament and had a pretty decent turnout as there were 10 other players and me. I didn't have long to prepare for the tournament itself, as I didn't have a pauper deck and had never built one before so I went into it a little blind. I managed to rebuild one of my current decks to Pauper by simply replacing much of the nifty Rare based tactics and keeping it about one core card. The deck was a variation on Mono-Black Devotion, using Gray Merchant of Asphodel as its core, and then built around cheap but hopefully effective creatures that had 2 Black Mana in their summoning costs, and some cheap Enchantments to help out on the Devotion front too. As something of a finisher, and to take advantage of the high devotion going on, I included a playset of Marshmist Titan too. The decklist is as follows:

Land
24 x Swamp

Creatures
3 x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
2 x Faerie Macabre
4 x Severed Legion
4 x Marshmist Titan
2 x Disciple of Phenax
1 x Ghoulraiser
1 x Wicked Akuba

Enchantments
4 x Sinister Possession
2 x Unholy Strength
2 x Eternal Thirst
2 x Claim of Erebos
2 x Font of Return

Spells
2 x Victim of Night
2 x Vendetta
1 x Disentomb
1 x Raise Dead
1 x Ghoulcaller's Chant

Sideboard
4 x Pharika's Chosen
2 x Claim of Erebos
2 x Font of Return
2 x Renegade Demon
2 x Death's Approach
3 x Cast into Darkness

With the tournament played out in the Swiss format, I got seated in the first round and met my opponent (Oli).

Round One
In the opening round my deck performed reasonably well, giving me plenty of land to play and allowing me to start getting creatures out as fast as I could, with a Wicked Akuba on turn two, and a Severed Legion turns three and four. What I hadn't really noticed in all the excitement was that my opponent was struggling for mana. We traded a few blows but he only had one creature and I hadn't really notcied what his creature was doing, concentrating on my own deck (big mistake...). I won the first game and felt confident that my deck would perform ok.
In the second game, I again got a decent starting hand with 4 land (perhaps a little high but no bad thing) and a Severed Legion. However it started to go wrong quite quickly as all I drew was more land. Meanwhile, Oli had started to get his Infect deck going, hitting the required 2 mana he struggled to get last game. By the time I got creatures down (turn 3) I was already in a spot of bother, with 7 infect counters already clocked up. The Severed Legion delayed things for a round before I was dispatched.
The deciding game was even more painful than the second game. Oli had now got his deck into its stride and I was struggling to keep up the pace. It was a pretty one-sided affair and by turn 4 I had lost the match entirely. Not a great opener to the tournament, but at least I had managed to win one game!

Round Two
The second round saw me get a bye, due to their being 11 players. Handily this goes down as a win in the stats, meaning I wasn't looking too bad in the standings by the start of the 3rd round.

Round Three
Having sat out the second round I was eager to dive back in on round three and play smarter than I had in the first round. I had realised at this point that there were a fair number of mono-black decks at the tournament (I counted 4 including my own), and none of them had fared too well in the first or second rounds. I hoped I could change that!
I sat down to meet my second opponent, Fish. I hadn't seen what he had played in the first two rounds, and so was unprepared for what he would play. He got the roll, and started on the play, with both of us playing lands in the first turn and nothing else. His second turn saw his first creature, a Kiln Fiend and that's when I realised what he was playing: Red-Blue. This match turned into a massacre very quickly at this point. The Kiln Fiend was followed by a second next round, and that's when things got rough. First Fish bounced my Severed Legion, removing my only blocker. Then, as a Sorcery has been cast, the Kiln Fiend got stronger and swung in. This tactic was repeated for the next 3 turns before I was done. I realised at the end of this game I was sorely miss matched in this round.
The second game started much like the first except that I got out my Pharika's Chosen early (sideboarded in) and hoped to even things up. However, this simply meant that I had given Fish targets for his Instant and Sorcery spells and he proceeded to beat me down with Kiln Fiends pretty quickly. By turn 4 I was destroyed and the whole match had taken less than 12 minutes, the quickest in the round!
This left me floundering down at the bottom of the rankings, and looking at a pretty humiliating start to tournament gaming. However there was one round left.

Round Four
In the final round I was drawn against Vince, Nebula's Co-Owner, who was also playing a mono-black deck. We sat down and he started on the play, both of us getting into the swing of things and managing to play our decks. It was clear straight away that this was a much more even macth-up than my last match, both taking lives off each other and both being able to play. However I was ebbing lives more quickly than Vince and in fact he got me down to one life by turn 6. However at this point I had an Eternal Thirst on a Marshmist Titan and had managed to add two +1/+1 counters to it. This swung in and gave me vital life back, but I also had creatures left to block. This stabilised the board for a couple of turns, with the addition of a second Marshmist Titan. With the game evenly poised around turn 9, I finally saw a Gray Merchant arrive in my hand! This was the first time in the whole tournament my key card had arrived, and I played it as soon as I could. With  a Devotion of 10 and Vince only having 10 lives left, I played Gray Merchant and claimed the game. This swingy, close game had been the best of the tournament for me, very enjoyable and fun.
The second game was a straightforward affair: I had little in the way of creatures to summon (save one lone Severed Legion, which was quickly dispatched) and lost in short order, putting the match at 1-1.
The deciding game was all set to be a tense affair between two evenly matched decks. Alas, poor Vince never managed to get going, with  his deck not coming out quite right. I was able to build my board presence (once again with the Severed Legions, but also the Wicked Akuba), and once I had was able to go to town, swinging in and dealing damage with Vince only able to block one creature. The final blow came when the Wicked Akuba and the zombies swung in for 6, leaving Vince on 4 lives. I had 4 open mana and the Wicked Akuba had dealt damage, so I pumped its ability and dealt the final 4 points of damage to seal the game and the match, and end my involvement in the tournament.

All in all the tournament was great fun, and certainly thought me some valuable lessons about playing MtG in a tournament (namely, build faster decks!). The last match against Vince was really good fun and I am looking forward to playing regularly at Nebula again now I am back in the Midlands.

And my final tournament position? 7th. It could have been better, but also, could have been much, much worse!

P.S. Nebula now have a new website, as well as their Facebook page. Well worth checking out!