I've been waiting for weeks.

Literally.

Weeks.

My group meets at my house just about every Thursday to play Magic. We are a casual bunch who plays mostly Commander and 60-card casual, but we also do regular Cube drafts. Add in Conspiracy drafts, Battlebond drafts, and the occasional sealed game, and you get a sense of the focus our group has on the fun aspects of Magic. I am blessed to have a great group of players.

The group size varies every week. For a while we had ten or twelve regularly showing up. Lately is it closer to five. Every week for several weeks, I've been waiting for there to be exactly four of us. Four is a great number for so many formats, and Commander is no exception. But I had something in particular in mind and I really wanted four of us.

We had three a couple of times, then five. Another week it looked like it was going to be four, but then we had an extra person show up. Then it was Thanksgiving Thursday, so we skipped. Then we had three the week after that. Then I had to cancel due to a work event. Then this week, it was looking like I would finally get four of us. The day arrived, and no one cancelled, and there were no surprise arrivals! We had our four! It was finally time!

I bought the full set of Commander 2018 decks when they first came out. I set them aside for a while because there were new decks I had built that I wanted to try out. We were drafting a lot and the urge to crack open the Commander decks wasn't too strong. Then October hit and it was time. However, I thought it would be cool to share them with the group and we could all play one of the decks! I'd heard they were of comparable strength, and I wanted to see them face off against each other. And it was finally the night!

The Game

As hinted by the heading, there was only one game. We started at 6:45 and finished at 9:15. Yes, the game took two and a half hours! However, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about the players:

John: Aminatou, the Fateshifter. John is the most Johnnie of the players in our group, so it isn't a surprise he opted for Aminatou. John is a solid player who assesses the board state really well and plays accordingly.

Brad: Lord Windgrace. Brad tends to prefer the most aggro strategy he can muster. I'm not sure if I always agree with his threat assessment, but he wins regularly, which probably says more about my threat assessment than Brad's. To get a sense of how much Brad likes aggro, he opted to not use Lord Windgrace as his commander, going with Thantis, the Warweaver .

Andy: Saheeli, the Gifted. Andy is the newest player, having come back to the game just over a year ago. He has been playing long enough that he understands the best lines of play. I'd say he sometimes misses things but since I'm the one who didn't read Coveted Jewel properly, I'm hardly the one to throw stones.

Bruce: Estrid, the Masked. I've been playing longer than anyone else and I write about Magic, so I should be the best player... Sure.

We picked our decks mostly at random. We didn't look through the cards and all of us had forgotten most of the cards in the decks, so every new card was a reason to read and get excited. It also meant we were likely walking into each other's traps, but since we were all in the same boat, it seemed like a fun idea!

The game started slowly, with some ramp from everyone. Brad got out an early Thantis and that's when my game completely changed. It dawned on me that I would only every have maybe one creature to protect Estrid and everyone would have to attack, so the likelihood of me keeping Estrid in play didn't seem good. I shifted my strategy to try and revolve around Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle since I had managed to get it on the table on turn three. I worked my ramp, trying to set everything up so Arixmethes would go live with Nylea's Colossus on the battlefield and Epic Proportions waiting to enchant the creature. I wanted to hit with an Arixmethes that was at least 50 power, and was pretty sure I could pull it off.

The issue was that Thantis proved to be more problematic than I expected. My creatures in hand were all expensive and since everyone was forced to attack, I was forced to play out defenses almost every turn, undermining my plans. Then Andy and Saheeli hit the table and things just seemed to get worse.

Saheeli is a ramping machine. Andy opted to play her out early and it let him ramp into some solid creatures that just made Saheeli even more effective at getting more permanents onto the battlefield. Coveted Jewel, Sol Ring, and a Signet all showed up. An early Treasure Nabber also helped the ramp, as John was relying on his Signet and Sol Ring to do work!

The problem was that Andy's deck just wasn't offering much more than that. He had seven or eight artifacts out and I think he was able to make almost twenty mana at one point, but he just wasn't finding what he needed to take control of the board.

John was probably the one person at the table who started a little slower than I did. He was staying involved, but he had few permanents and was beginning to suffer when Thantis and the Juggernauts started to do some real damage. His ability to destroy all creatures and put them at the bottom of their owners' libraries served him well at that point.

This is when things started to get crazy. I don't recall the exact order of events, so I'll just give you the highlights:

Thantis. Brad's move to play Thantis forced the game forward. It meant that we weren't all trying to just sit back and protect our planeswalker commanders, but were forced to attack. It also meant Brad was almost gleeful about the way Thantis messed with the board strategies.

There wasn't any one card that was working but the synergy for the deck was finally paying off. I was drawing cards, using my mana and getting a handful of creatures out. Arixmethes was back, but it was mostly a way to tap for 4 mana with Estrid out and leave my opponents wondering when Arixmethes would be coming their way.

Saheeli. Every turn it seemed like Andy had unlimited mana. He finally added a Steel Hellkite to his Darksteel Juggernaut and was enjoying attacking every turn and having Unwinding Clock to defend himself. The Dragon was proving to be a great mana sink and things were looking dire for the rest of us.

Aminatou. For most people, Aminatou is a way to draw some cards and flicker some of your permanents. John opted to start setting up the board, and finally pulled the trigger on the planeswalker's ultimate! He took all of my permanents, I took Saheeli and the rest of John's permanents. Andy got Avenger of Zendikar, a Khalni Heart Expedition with two tokens on it and six plants. Brad and Brad got 2 mana rocks from John. John also loves a good bit of chaos, so watching this happen warmed his heart.

It was on Andy's turn that we realized just how bizarre the board was. Andy played a land and after the dust settled, had six 4/5 plant tokens. He wasn't going to eliminate Brad, since he would lose his plant army right after. He could eliminate John, and he could eliminate me. His problem was that if he eliminated John, he would be defenseless to my attack. This meant he would have to attack me. Once I was eliminated, John would lose all the permanents he had since they were all mine. That would leave John defenseless and easy pickings the following turn. Easy decision.

The problem was that he wasn't convinced he could kill either John or me. He knew if we survived the attack, we would likely just attack Brad. That would take out all of Andy's creatures and leave him wide open. And with Thantis back in play, just sitting back wasn't an option, so he swung at both of us.

I was happy to finish off John and Brad had to leave, so the end with just Andy and I was anticlimactic. I swung with two flying creatures on my next turn and won the game!

Thoughts

I'd tell you about the decks as a whole, but the single game we played was bizarre. So few board wipes, or even removal, that talking about the decks as a whole, seems pointless. I could even mention a few cards, but one game just isn't representative of the card. Forge of Heroes did great work for me this game, but that was more a product of that circumstance. Arixmethes was fun and created a little game around it and whether I would attack or not. Thantis was a game changer, but would it have been as impressive in a game with creatures as planeswalkers? Either way, I know Brad had a good time with it.

In the end, what I can really tell you about the decks was that they seemed evenly matched and we had a great time playing. Each of us commented about how we each seemed to get a chance to do something cool with our deck an no one felt overwhelmed. It was fun to play with decks where the next card was a surprise. It was fun having a longer game. It was fun to play with the cards and hang out with friends.

Commander 2018 was fun.

I would say Commander 2018 is a rousing success!

Bruce

@manaburned