The Solitary Tree by Caspar David Friedrich (1822). Llanowar Tribe by Scott Murphy.

My "Know Thyself" columns are about me forgetting my own preferences for how I like to play Commander and having bad experiences as a result. My hope is that in sharing them with you, I might help some of you to avoid the same predicaments that I occasionally get myself into.

Earlier this year I posted a column about a lesson I learned from a particularly frustrating Atraxa game. I play to relax and hang out with friends and don't like the added stress of piloting a deck with lots and lots of triggers. In my eagerness to play every style of deck and really experience all there is to experience in this amazing format, I set myself up for failure. I got myself into a situation where I had so many triggers and got so annoyed by my inability to catch them all before my tablemates pointed them out for me, that I just scooped in frustration.

Today's column isn't about a game in which I scooped. I hate scooping and don't like to play with folks who scoop. Today's column is about a couple of casual Dragon decks that I built and played with some degree of success. The things I was trying to do with these particular decks set me up for some games in which I was pretty miserable. I probably should have known what I was getting myself into but sometimes I lose sight of fundamentals that are pretty important in building successful Commander decks, even if they are only going to be played in a casual setting.

The Games

This time around I'm not writing about a singular moment or a single game that went bad. I'm writing about a series of games. My problem was simple - I set myself up with a pair of decks that I was really excited about playing, but which were unable to create much of a boardstate in the early game.

The two commanders I built around were Niv-Mizzet Reborn and Morphon, the Boundless. They are both great commanders that can have successful decks built around them. I had decided to tear apart my old The Ur-Dragon deck and build both of these as Dragon decks.

Niv-Mizzet Reborn cares about two-color cards so I built the deck with as many 2-color dragons as I could cram into the list. I knew about the Food Chain/Niv Mizzet Reborn lists that could be found online, but I was building this primarily for casual play so a cEDH deck wasn't my goal. I wound up building the deck around a dozen dragons and 10 cards with land cycling. It was fun to play, but would have real trouble doing much of anything in the first five or six turns.

Morophon, the Boundless became a Dragon Tribal deck with as many three and five color dragons as I could fit into the mix. The goal was to maximize the amount of cost savings I could get by making sure I'd always enter the turn after resolving Morophon with at least two or three dragons I could immediately cast. Dropping a Scion of the Ur-Dragon for zero mana or The Ur-Dragon for four mana always felt good, but leaning so heavily on high-costed dragons left me with a familiar problem. I would have practically no board presence for the first five or six turns.

It's worth noting that the Morophon deck in particular was lacking in removal and "answers". The Niv-Mizzet Reborn deck might not have been a heavy control deck but it had some removal. The Morophon deck had practically no way to stop someone else from winning the game first and that's not good. It's also a casual deck, and in casual play I'll often let my friends do what they want to do without too much resistance. It's just a game and I don't mind seeing them win. I'll try to kill them with my Dragons first but I won't thwart their every wincon. You can and should play removal even in "casual" play but this list was an experiment in going overboard with my tribe of choice. That surely didn't help the deck's performance, though it did give me more of a feeling of playing an "all the Dragons" deck and that's what I was going for..

Both decks won and lost games, but they consistently put me in a position that I really didn't enjoy.

I don't like feeling powerless and defenseless when my deck isn't giving me anything to play early and other decks that have much, much lower mana curves are able to really blow up and just swing at me freely.

I don't like the feeling of wanting my friends to "go easy" on me. If they do and I'm able to resolve my commander and get my deck rolling, I'll have a decent chance of having a good game and maybe even killing an opponent or two. My friends shouldn't have to "go easy" on me, but they want me to have fun too. I'd wind up repaying them with a ton of damage in the air from my Dragons later in the game.

It's not a great dynamic.

Friends might hold back their attacks just to make sure that they have blockers. They might hit you a few times and stop just out of pity. They might just figure you aren't a threat. This can happen with any deck, but my Dragon decks seemed especially prone to having bad early games.

I don't enjoy games where I feel like I didn't earn the win, or only got the win because folks took pity on me. Nearly everyone who plays casual Commander has the occasional game like that, but they never leave me with a good taste in my mouth.

What to do?

Sometimes the fix is obvious.

If I want a deck that is able to present some early blockers, I need to retool these lists with more low-mana creatures that will either draw me cards or produce mana so that I can get my commander out faster. It's not rocket science.

I should also have put more removal in the decks, or at the very least in the Morphon list.

Why didn't I do that in the first place?

In the case of Morophon I think I just got distracted by the idea of running "all the Dragons".

In the case of Niv-Mizzet I think I used up too many slots in the deck (10) with cards that could be cycled to get lands.

I still love the original concept behind both of these decks but I didn't build them very responsibly. I should have put the brakes on and paid more attention to having a better early-game boardstate.

I should reiterate that the problem with these decks was not actually that they never won games. They were capable of winning in the casual environment they were played in, but I wasn't enjoying the early game. Those un-fun first five or six turns were too often putting me in a bad mood and making it harder for me to enjoy the game even if the deck did well in the mid and late game.

So what am I going to do?

In the case of Niv-Mizzet Reborn I am going to take a crack at reworking it as a Food Chain deck. I'm not seriously trying to turn it into a tuned cEDH list and I'm certainly not going to steal someone else's list. I'm going to see if I can make it work on my own because I enjoy problem solving and I'll enjoy taking a crack at my own janky Food Chain/Niv-Mizzet Reborn build. I'll probably run cards no responsible cEDH player would ever run, but I'll have fun with it and it might even win a little more often. Food Chain is really good at winning games.

In the case of Morophon, the Boundless I am absolutely going to keep it casual but tweak it to try to make it work better. I love the idea of maximizing your cost savings by going with Dragons and I think once the deck is a little more consistent it should be able to play well in a casual meta. It'll still try to win its games on the battlefield and it will never be as strong as a tuned Scion of the Ur-Dragon combo deck but I expect it to be more fun to play than it is now.

Some players don't care about taking early aggro. I know it shouldn't let it bother me, but I don't like it. I don't expect opponents to go easy on me and I don't feel great if I pull out a win after a terrible start to a game.

We're all different and understanding yourself and how you like to play Commander is a key part of trying to get as much enjoyment out of this game as possible.

I'm going to rework Niv-Mizzet and tweak Morophon but I'm not stopping there.

I've got an Edgar Markov sitting in a binder and I have some fun ideas about some alters I'd like to have made for a Mardu deck of some sort. I never did play Edgar Markov when the 2017 precons came out so this seems like a fine excuse to dig through my cards and see what kind of vampire deck I can throw together. The goal will be to build a fun casual deck that can build a strong early boardstate and not fold to, or easily overpower, other decks in our meta.

When I'm in the mood for a decent early game I'll have one more option to play. When I'm in the mood to put up with a deck that might have a bad early game, I'll be able to pull out my Morophon deck, my Mayael the Anima deck or any of the slower "battlecruiser" style Commander decks I've got lying around.

Let's take a look at the next drafts of these two decks.

Jank Chain Niv-Mizzet Reborn

If you're looking for a serious Food Chain/Niv-Mizzet Reborn list, you're in the wrong place. I decided to go through my cards and see what I could throw together. I happened to have a lot of the key pieces but some of my finishers aren't exactly standard fare. Because we're playing Niv-Mizzet Reborn, those wincons are two color cards. If we can land the combo we should be able to draw every two color card in our deck by playing and replaying Niv-Mizzet.

I wound up adding in a few tutors including three Dimir cards with the Transmute keyword so I have lots of ways to go get Food Chain and one of its three favorite cast-from-exile creatures. I also picked up a copy of Foresight so that I can exile them and have them available to combo with.

The deck plays a healthy amount of removal so playing control until you can tutor for your combo pieces should be a viable path to victory. I have left a few remnants of the Dragon tribal list in this deck. That's both good and bad. It means it won't be as good a true Food Chain combo deck, but it should be able to be played in casual circles if I just resist the lure of trying to combo off.

Jank Food Chain Niv-Mizzet Reborn | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Niv-Mizzet Reborn

• Creatures (18)
• 1 Atarka, World Render
• 1 Bladewing the Risen
• 1 Boltwing Marauder
• 1 Chorus of the Conclave
• 1 Deathrite Shaman
• 1 Dimir Infiltrator
• 1 Dragonlord Dromoka
• 1 Dragonlord Silumgar
• 1 Eternal Scourge
• 1 Frilled Mystic
• 1 Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
• 1 Joiner Adept
• 1 Leyline Prowler
• 1 Misthollow Griffin
• 1 Ramos, Dragon Engine
• 1 Rashmi, Eternities Crafter
• 1 Soulherder
• 1 Squee, the Immortal

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Ashiok, Dream Render
• 1 Samut, Tyrant Smasher

• Instants (22)
• 1 Absorb
• 1 Ancient Excavation
• 1 Anguished Unmaking
• 1 Assassin's Trophy
• 1 Clutch of the Undercity
• 1 Deflecting Palm
• 1 Eladamri's Call
• 1 Firemind's Foresight
• 1 Growth Spiral
• 1 Guttural Response
• 1 Heartwarming Redemption
• 1 Ionize
• 1 Lim-Dul's Vault
• 1 Nature's Chant
• 1 Perplex
• 1 Render Silent
• 1 Sphinx's Revelation
• 1 Sylvan Reclamation
• 1 Terminate
• 1 Utter End
• 1 Vampiric Tutor
• 1 Windgrace's Judgment

• Sorceries (13)
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Debt to the Deathless
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Foresight
• 1 Grave Upheaval
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Migratory Route
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Treacherous Terrain
• 1 Treasured Find
• 1 Urban Evolution
• 1 Waves of Aggression

• Enchantments (2)
• 1 Dragon Tempest
• 1 Food Chain

• Artifacts (6)
• 1 Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1 Blade of Selves
• 1 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Conjurer's Closet
• 1 Sol Ring

• Lands (36)
• 4 Forest
• 4 Island
• 4 Mountain
• 4 Plains
• 4 Swamp
• 1 Arcane Sanctum
• 1 Ash Barrens
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Crucible of the Spirit Dragon
• 1 Crumbling Necropolis
• 1 Frontier Bivouac
• 1 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
• 1 Jungle Shrine
• 1 Mystic Monastery
• 1 Nomad Outpost
• 1 Opulent Palace
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Sandsteppe Citadel
• 1 Savage Lands
• 1 Seaside Citadel
• 1 Unclaimed Territory

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The first draft of this deck had all 10 of the two-color land cycling cards and was just remarkable at putting cards into my hand when I played Niv Mizzet Reborn. I achieved that by putting in a ton of two-color cards and spreading them out among all 10 of the guilds. It was effective at giving me cards for Niv to put into my hand, but I suspect this version will be a lot more fun to play.

This deck is actually set up to win with a really terrible card - Chorus of the Conclave.

With infinite Food Chain mana and Chorus on the field I can overpay for my creatures and give them a ton of +1/+1 counters. If I have Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord on the field I can sacrifice one of those huge creatures to kill the table. With the planeswalker Samut, Tyrant Smasher on the field I can play a ridiculously big Dragon and swing for a kill because Samut will give it haste. A creature that can give my other creatures haste would be better, as I'd be able to play it with Food Chain mana, but I had Samut lying around so it'll do for now.

I can also just play Aetherflux Reservoir and kill the table with my infinite cast triggers from the Food Chain combo. The deck can play fair, and will pretty much have to if Food Chain is removed. That's OK. I'm not a cEDH player and I'm not playing in a cEDH meta so this deck isn't meant to provide the level of power and consistency that a real cEDH list would bring.

Morophon Dragon Tribal

This Morophon list is fairly close to the list that I first built for Morophon. The biggest challenge is ramp, so part of the rebuild involved pulling out dragons and putting in mana dorks. Getting Morophon out early is pretty important to this deck's success.

If Morophon gets countered the deck can still function but you'll have to play the full mana cost for your Dragons. It's not built to stop combo decks and it's still not going to have a strong early game but I think this list is in a better place than the first draft I played. I never did build the Licid Tribal list I threw together for CoolStuffInc when this commander first came out.

Morophon Dragons | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Morophon, the Boundless

• Creatures (32)
• 1 Atarka, World Render
• 1 Beast Whisperer
• 1 Bladewing the Risen
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Copper Myr
• 1 Darigaaz Reincarnated
• 1 Dragonlord's Servant
• 1 Dromoka, the Eternal
• 1 Geode Golem
• 1 Gold Myr
• 1 Hedron Crawler
• 1 Intet, the Dreamer
• 1 Iron Myr
• 1 Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain
• 1 Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund
• 1 Leaden Myr
• 1 Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
• 1 Maze Sentinel
• 1 Ojutai, Soul of Winter
• 1 O-Kagachi, Vengeful Kami
• 1 Palladia-Mors, the Ruiner
• 1 Rith, the Awakener
• 1 Scion of the Ur-Dragon
• 1 Silumgar, the Drifting Death
• 1 Silver Myr
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Teneb, the Harvester
• 1 The Ur-Dragon
• 1 Treva, the Renewer
• 1 Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire
• 1 Vorosh, the Hunter
• 1 Wasitora, Nekoru Queen

• Instants (2)
• 1 Intellectual Offering
• 1 Swan Song

• Sorceries (8)
• 1 Crux of Fate
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Hunter's Prowess
• 1 In Garruk's Wake
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Plea for Power
• 1 Primevals' Glorious Rebirth
• 1 Rampant Growth

• Enchantments (5)
• 1 Beastmaster Ascension
• 1 Dragon Tempest
• 1 Dragon Wings
• 1 Gift of Immortality
• 1 Smothering Tithe

• Artifacts (15)
• 1 Azorius Signet
• 1 Boros Signet
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Dragon's Hoard
• 1 Fist of Suns
• 1 Golgari Signet
• 1 Gruul Signet
• 1 Izzet Signet
• 1 Orzhov Signet
• 1 Rakdos Signet
• 1 Selesnya Signet
• 1 Simic Signet
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Staff of Nin

• Lands (37)
• 4 Island
• 4 Mountain
• 4 Plains
• 4 Swamp
• 5 Forest
• 1 Battlefield Forge
• 1 Bountiful Promenade
• 1 Buried Ruin
• 1 Caves of Koilos
• 1 City of Brass
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Forbidden Orchard
• 1 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
• 1 Llanowar Wastes
• 1 Luxury Suite
• 1 Morphic Pool
• 1 Sea of Clouds
• 1 Spire Garden
• 1 Yavimaya Coast
• 1 Inventors' Fair

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It was hard to pull so many Dragons out of the first draft of this deck, but when I decided upon their replacements it got a lot easier. I love Myr, so I threw in five Myr mana dorks along with a Hedron Crawler and a Geode Golem. Ten signets along with six mana dorks and the smattering of ramp cards that were already in the list seems to give this list the ability to consistently get Morophon out ahead of schedule.

There's a little card draw and some one-sided boardwipes in there, but if I were to move this list in a more competitive direction I would have to add a lot more removal and probably at least one combo wincon. I doubt I'll take that step. I like having some of my decks be decidedly casual in nature and I suspect this will remain one of them.

Final Thoughts

I usually share at least one decklist with you in every column I write, but this week you got two. Whether that means you got lucky or not has a lot to do with what you think of my decklists, but the purpose of this week's column isn't to flex my deck-building muscles or expose my deck-building shortcomings. My goal was to share some bad experiences I had and share how I'm trying to build off of them and try to make sure that these decks have more enjoyable games in their future.

If you've been having trouble with certain matchups or with certain decks, at some point you should step back and look at the bigger picture. Why are your games not as enjoyable as you'd like them to be? Is there something you can do to make them fit your favorite playstyle better? Maybe you need to add more removal, card draw or ramp, even if it means cutting corners that you really don't want to cut. If you're not having fun, don't let something silly like my "all the Dragons" concept be the hill you die on. Tweak your list, make hard choices and move the deck in a direction where you'll be able to enjoy your games more.

That's all I've got for today. I hope you enjoy these "Know Thyself" columns. It's a little daunting to expose some of my weaknesses and worse moments for everyone to see, but if there's a reader out there who can benefit from it then it's worth it.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!