Locations
Five of us sat down to end the night of drafting with a final game of multiplayer. I had no idea I was about to experience the perfect storm.
Eric was sitting across from me and started the game with a Plains, tapping for Soul's Attendant. This Soul's Attendant and the attendant life-gain would be one reason that the early focus in the game moved away from me—leaving me to build up.
My turn followed. My hand consisted of Teysa, Orzhov Scion, Twilight Drover, Capashen Unicorn and some land. This was a solid opening hand for my deck. The deck wants three white creatures and Teysa in play. Then, I play either Sleight of Mind or Mind Bend to change all instances of the word “black” on Teysa to “white.” Teysa then reads, “Sacrifice three white creatures: Remove target creatures from the game. Put three 1/1 white Spirit creature tokens with flying on to the battlefield.” You can then machine gun all the creatures on the battlefield, leaving only your creatures and the untargetable ones. From that point, you should be able to win the game. I have only ever managed to pull it off once. It is, admittedly, a very delicate combo, so for it to work requires a perfect storm. I dropped a land and passed the turn, hopeful that things would fall into place.
The next couple of turns were fairly uneventful. John played a Mitotic Slime and was setting up a black and green mana base. When John plays B/G, I immediately expect to see Pernicious Deed at some point soon. A Pernicious Deed wrecks my creature-based combo. While John wasn’t immediately a problem, I expected he would be soon. He did not disappoint: Soon after, he dropped a Spiritmonger, and the next turn, I was taking 6 damage.
George played a foil Sliver and announced he was playing the Sliver precon. I’m still not sure if he augmented the precon in any way, but we are talking Slivers. Anyone who has played against Slivers—even a bad Sliver deck—can tell you that you have to stay on top of the Sliver player because once things become too crazy, you are probably never recovering, even when someone is playing Pernicious Deeds. In the early turns, George had a Muscle Sliver, a Gemhide Sliver, a Clot Sliver, and a Metallic Sliver.
Stephen was running a brand new deck: Thallids. Normally, Thallid decks are something of a joke. There are so many cards that can easily handle the slow-moving Thallid deck that I wouldn’t even worry about it, but this was Stephen was running it. I have never seen Stephen run a deck that wasn’t completely maximized. A rule I have in multiplayer games is to kill Stephen early. His decks build up levels of redundancy that are nearly impossible to break through later in the game, so when all things are equal, I go after Stephen. But what do you do when someone who maximizes his decks plays an underpowered tribe?
Stephen played some early Thallids, and he followed it up with Parallel Lives. His lands were original dual lands. I really wasn’t sure what sort of horror would come from this, but I knew he owned Doubling Season, so I expected Thallids to hit the battlefield as fast as ever.
With Thallids and Slivers coming to the table, Eric had been gaining life. His life total was well into the 40s at that point in the game. He was starting to drop some threats, but up to that point, he was unwilling to go after anyone.
My early turns were going according to plan. I had played out the Capashen Unicorn and the Twilight Drover. We had laughed at my luck playing the Drover with a Thallid deck at the table. My Drover had four +1/+1 counters on it, thanks to Stephen sacrificing some of his tokens to do various things. I had drawn a tutor and searched out a Sleight of Mind, so everything was ready to go. At the end of one of Eric’s turns, I used the Drover’s ability and made four 1/1 Spirits to set up my turn. I played out Teysa, and no one flinched. Then, I played the Sleight of Mind and the table cringed. The perfect storm had hit. George was tapped out, so he could do nothing. Stephen was also tapped out, so I knew I was safe there. Eric had mana open, but he also did nothing. Eric is the player in the group who is most likely to have something in his hand to mess with what you are doing, so I figured he could stop the loop . . . but that he would only do so when I started killing off his creatures. I made a mental note to take out his creatures last.
John surprised me by going old school and straight up Counterspelling my Sleight of Mind. I hadn’t even noticed he was playing blue at all! Everyone at the table realized that they had dodged a bullet, but I could expect that I wasn’t going to be allowed to set up my combo again anytime soon. I was also expecting more attention than I wanted or could handle. Now that everyone was aware of what I was trying to do, I couldn’t expect them to just sit there and let it happen. The perfect storm had slipped by!
Unfortunately, I didn’t think there was anything I could do about it. While I couldn’t remember all the contents of my deck, I did know that most of the cards revolved around the ability to sacrifice a lot of creatures. Without the Sleight of Mind, my ability to do that was going to be seriously limited. While the Drover and Teysa worked well together, it would cost 3 mana to make a couple of Spirits, so making more creatures to sacrifice could become pricey. I was going to be very reliant on Stephen and his Thallids if I hoped to have Spirit tokens around for blocking.
John swung at me again with the Spiritmonger. I was hoping the growing Sliver threat, along with crazy Thallids and Eric’s life-gaining monstrosity would encourage him to go elsewhere with the Spiritmonger, but no such luck. He swung in, and I chumped with one of the few Spirit tokens I had. The ’Monger earned another +1/+1 counter, my Twilight Drover gained two +1/+1 counters, and John passed the turn.
George’s Slivers became a truly ugly mess when he played the Winged Sliver. No one else even batted an eyelash, so I had to assume everyone else had some way to stop the Slivers . . . or were completely oblivious to our impending doom. Seven or eight 3/3 flying Slivers is a real threat. Surprisingly to me, George passed the turn.
I was looking around to assess the situation and realized why George wasn’t attacking. Any attack that he would make would leave him vulnerable to everyone else on the board. While he could put a real beating on any one opponent, he would pay a stiff price in retribution. I expected a Crystalline Sliver in the next few turns would cause everyone to reassess their positions in the game.
Stephen’s next turn brought out Deathspore Thallid, and things were going to become very ugly. Stephen could produce a ridiculous number of Thallids at any time to be sacrificed to the Deathspore Thallid. Every creature on the board was at some level of risk except for my Twilight Drover, who would obtain a corresponding +1/+1 for every -1/-1 produced by sacrificing Thallid tokens. It was at that moment when I believed my board situation was forgotten by everyone because the Thallid could destroy anyone. The Slivers could be completely crippled. John was currently leaning heavily on a Spiritmonger that could be killed off. Eric’s mostly-weenie horde was certainly at risk.
Stephen decided to start small and get rid of Eric’s Soul's Attendant. He knew if he was going to make all these Thallids, the last thing he wanted was to see Eric’s life total drift into triple digits. Eric’s response was to Unmake the Deathspore Thallid.
I couldn’t have been happier to see it play out the way it did. Eric’s Unmake was used up on someone else’s creature, and Stephen’s Deathspore Thallid took out an annoying card, then was taken out itself. My opponents used up three cards; I used up none. Now, that is card advantage I can really get behind!
On Eric’s next turn, he played Deathbringer Liege. I hate that card. Each of us has a friend who built a deck that took advantage of an average card in such a way that it became a Shawshank Redemption–style beating every time we played. My friend Josh used the Liege against me that way. This has given me an unnatural hatred of that card. Naturally, he played a black and white spell and used the Liege’s ability to kill Teysa. I didn’t have the mana available to make any Spirit tokens to sacrifice and kill the Liege in Teysa’s dying last gasp. I could have sacrificed the Capashen Unicorn, the Twilight Drover, and my remaining Spirit token to destroy the Liege, but I was still going to lose Teysa. I couldn’t see the benefit of giving him every one of my creatures, so I did nothing. I really hate that card.
It was now my turn. Since almost getting my combo to go off, things had just become worse. Now I would need to find another Teysa and another Sleight of Mind while keeping a way to make tokens on the board. Things did not look good. The perfect storm was lost.
Then, I drew my card.
Hello, Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter!
I knew I didn’t want to play him right away. The Deathbringer Liege would only kill him off, and I was already sick of losing creatures to the Liege. I decided to sit for a turn and watch what would happen.
John was having little luck with his deck. After taking a couple of shots at me with his Spiritmonger, he decided to hold back and block. I think the idea of tapping the Spiritmonger to attack with the Deathbringer Liege in play wasn’t all that appealing. Why make it easier for Eric to kill his creatures off?
George also held. I had plenty of mana open, so he knew I could make enough Spirits to make attacking me pointless. Attacking Eric would probably result in him losing his Winged Sliver then losing several other creatures during the attack. Attacking John or Stephen would have probably met with some success, but the counterattack from either of them would be pretty powerful. Better to sit and wait for the Crystalline Sliver to arrive.
Stephen made several more Thallids and sacrificed them for reasons I can’t recall. I just remember being very happy to pile +1/+1 counters on my Twilight Drover. I was even happier to see Stephen take out the Deathbringer Liege. I don’t recall exactly how he managed it. Stephen’s part of the battlefield had become a cluster of Thallids that did various things that I was only paying some attention to. I couldn’t do anything about it, and I was sure he was focused on other, bigger fish, so I wasn’t worried about the counterattack.
Eric’s turn was quick and of little consequence, but I ended it by making more Spirit tokens. On my turn, I had a 5/5 Twilight Drover and four 1/1 tokens. It was time for Vish Kal. For the next two turns, no one had any response, and I attacked John twice with Vish Kal. Everyone was watching for an opening and allowing their forces to grow. Thanks to Stephen’s Thallids, I was able to add more and more Spirit tokens. I was able to kill a new Deathbringer Liege by sacrificing my Spirits to Vish Kal and removing the resulting +1/+1 counters to take him out before he could take out Vish Kal. Even after sacrificing the Spirits, I still had more than ten of them out.
I figured I was in a good position to start taking out my opponents. I could have taken out John with a larger Vish Kal and done the same to George after killing off his Winged Sliver. Stephen and Eric might be a little more work, but removing opponents was going to be good for me at this point in the game.
On my next turn, I eliminated John and thought I was in a good position to handle any threats. On George’s turn, he dropped Coat of Arms. Uh-oh. His Slivers had all just gained +8/+8. Stephen’s Thallids were going to be ridiculous! I was watching George try to decide how to take advantage of his huge, flying Slivers when Eric commented that my Spirits were all getting +10/+10. George had that uh-oh look on his face, and I just grinned. I had completely forgotten about my Spirits as Spirit creatures, but just as fodder for Vish Kal. This game had just turned amazing.
Everyone took their turns, and no one attacked. George knew he could not eliminate Stephen and me on the same turn, and if he killed only one of us, the other would certainly kill him, so he did nothing. Stephen followed the same logic. Eric had only a few creatures and certainly nothing as big as the monstrosities that were currently running rampant on the battlefield.
I made several more Spirits at the end of Eric’s turn, then started my turn. I attacked Stephen with every Spirit I had. I knew he had a way to gain life from his Thallids, so I wanted to be sure that even after sacrificing everything to gain life, he would still be dead. Stephen was calculating the numbers when he realized that even if he survived this turn, he could not survive the next turn, and he dropped from the game. I then sacrificed one Spirit to Vish Kal to add fifteen or so +1/+1 counters to Vish Kal. I removed those counters to kill the Winged Sliver. I told George that I would just sacrifice a Spirit to kill his Slivers in turn, leaving him defenseless and unable to attack me. On my next turn, I would attack both him and Eric with the Spirits and take them both out of the game.
Thallids
Spirit creature tokens
Balanced opponents
The perfect storm.
