The Kermesse of St. George by Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1628). Vial Smasher the Fierce by Deruchenko Alexander.

For a few weeks now I've been mentioning that I had registered for Dean Goote's 2022 Commander Sealed fundraiser for the Trevor Project. After much anticipation, that weekend has come and gone and today I'd like to share my deck, some of my memories and a few thoughts about what I might do differently if I'm able to go again next year.

I drove out from the Boston area Friday morning. I hadn't been able to cajole anyone to join me in the adventure. The entry fee was $170, and it falls early during the start of the school year, so I knew it was going to be a hard sell to begin with. I had heard about the event from Mark Mahler of the Commandercast podcast. My old Honda Element, which had been run into by a deer on the way home from Commanderfest Montreal, had since been replaced by a recent model Nissan Rogue. It was an uneventful trip, with a stop in Utica to have lunch at a Pizzeria Uno's not too far off of I-90. I checked into my hotel and got myself ready for the announced pre-party at The Fifth Frame, a local brewery at 155 Saint Paul Street in downtown Rochester.

I got there early with a plan to eat before jamming a game or two. The Fifth Frame's "Bastard Burger" was delicious and I don't even remember what beer I paired it with, but it was a fine meal and bar that I'd easily recommend. I'm a slow eater and slower when I'm chatting, and I ended up chatting with one Josh Nelson, a writer for BleedingCool.com who was also there to cover the Commander Sealed fundraiser. We never managed to share a game over the weekend, but they were good company and you should check out that site for a wide range of content about gaming, collectibles, media and geek culture in general.

As we sat at the bar, ate, compared notes, and talked about EDH and writing, behind us the tables were slowly filling up. By the time I was done, had paid and had gotten myself together, it was clear that every table was filled with playmats or other random patrons and the location might have been unprepared for the number of people wanting to join in the fun. I love a good game of EDH, but I'm a lightweight so 1 beer was enough for me for the evening. I ended up deciding to head back to the hotel and rest up for the next day.

The Build-Up

My first mistake was to think it was a good idea to walk over to the venue. It wasn't the last I made that day, but none of them took much away from my enjoyment of the event. Armed with a gym bag filled with a playmat, dice pouch, sleeves, full art basic lands (13 of each type) and four decks for casual play, I made the half hour walk from the HIlton Garden Inn. A walk through downtown Rochester early on a Saturday morning when the weather is good and you've got a day of EDH ahead of you is a pretty nice way to start the day, and my plan was to grab a meal at one of the food options at the mall before catching some pickup games ahead of the main event.

It wasn't a mall. Well, the Village Gate is sort of a mall. It looked like an old mill or warehouse building that had been converted into a place for shops and restaurants with an expansive open upper level with skylights and ample room for tables and an event like Commander Sealed. In truth, it was a great location - I live in the Northeast and I love old, renovated mill buildings - but there was nary a Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts to be seen and I hadn't had breakfast yet.

I ended up walking over to Melo Coffee and Kitchen, a quaint little breakfast place nearby where I was able to scarf down a breakfast burrito and satisfy my need for a little caffeine to start the day. After a short walk back to the Village Gate Atrium, I checked in and got ready for the event.

I was able to jam one pickup game. I pulled out my fairest deck: Lathliss, Dragon Queen. Despite having a very slow early game I was able to pilot her to victory, helped in no small part by a Mana Echoes, a Caged Sun, and too many dragons for the rest of the table to handle.

The Plan

For the previous few days, and during the morning running up to the event, I was thinking a lot about what my plan would be for deck construction. We would each be cracking 17 booster packs, and we would be seated into 4-player tables, with a paired table that would make up our "trading pool." I was told that trading was restricted to 1 to 1 trades, meaning that you couldn't just give someone 20 cards you weren't using, but were supposed to end up with as many cards after the trade as you started with.

I had brought five stacks of 13 of each basic land. I just happened to have full art basics available so I figured it would be easier to have that part of deck construction already taken care of. If I went with the best 3 color legendary creature I opened, I could jam 39 lands and my commander into one pile and then build in a 6 x 10 pattern, ending up with a clean 100-card deck.

I liked the idea of simplifying as much of the process as possible ahead of time. I don't love the stress of working under a deadline and we would only have an hour for deck construction. If I had to switch to some other color combination (2/c, 5/c most likely) I would deal with it, but 3/c seemed to be the sweet spot where I'd be able to grab the best cards from my pool but not have too many issues with color fixing or with dead cards that were jammed in just to make a full deck.

I don't do much sealed play, but I figured that we would be unlikely to see much if any combo. My guess was that victory would be found on the battlefield. With that in mind, I would prioritize a creature-based strategy with creatures that have keywords like lifegain, vigilance, flying, deathtouch and so on.

The Build

After we wrapped up our pickup game, we all waited for the table seating numbers to get sent out via Discord. Almost all of the weekend's activity was coordinated through Discord and it worked quite nicely. The seating for the build phase did have to get posted in paper, but they worked out the kinks after that. Once we had all figured out our tables, we sat down and waited patiently for our booster packs.

I was lucky enough to get seated with some pretty cool people, one of whom I had the pleasure of meeting and playing a game with at Commandfest Montreal earlier this year.

There were a few boosters that could vary from player to player, but most of them were the same for all of us. I saved my wrappers for later reference and my pool was made up packs from the following sets:

• Adventures in the Forgotten Realms
• Commander Legends (x2)
• Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate (x2)
• Dominaria United
• Double Masters 2022
• Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths
• Innistrad Double Feature
• Modern Horizons
• Modern Horizons II
• Mystery Booster: Convention Edition
• Streets of New Capenna
• Theros Beyond Death
• Throne of Eldraine
• War of the Spark
• Zendikar Rising

I cracked packs and sorted them into color piles, artifacts, multicolored cards and legends as quickly as I could, hoping to see that perfect card that would inspire a great build and lead to at least one victory over the course of the day.

One of the things I kept seeing on the pre-event discord conversations for Commander Sealed was how amazing it would be for us to open up cards that are normally banned in Commander!

You could play Emrakul, the Aeons Torn this weekend!

You could run Emrakul into a Squirrel or even a field of 15 Squirrels and recreate a famous meme!

So who did I open up in one of my first few packs?

I was definitely tempted to build Braids..

I had a whole plan for the lands I'd be running. If I built her, I knew for sure that I'd be playing every Black card I opened and might still not have enough in my pool to make for a decent deck. I didn't want to burn up time negotiating trades with other players and have to figure out what they might want from my pool just to make the deck playable.

More than anything, I didn't want to be that guy who gets hated off of every table he played at because his commander is so oppressive and obnoxious that it's just easier that way. I've convinced a few tables to kill someone first because of their commander. I know how these things can play out, and I couldn't in good conscience think of a single argument for any table not killing me first if I was on Braids.

I actually asked my two-table trading pool if anyone wanted to play the OG Black Braids. Nobody was interested.

I kept opening packs and eventually found myself with only one three colored legendary creature: Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer.

I noticed as I opened my packs that I had a decent assortment of dragons and dragon-adjacent cards, some of which I had never played before! I knew that flying could be a key way to get damage through and that I didn't want to be defenseless against my opponents' flyers so it didn't take long for me to decide to build around dragons.

Preyseizer Dragon was a new one for me, and at one point that day I was able to have him gobble up four creatures including my commander and then knock someone off a table. Bouncing Rocco is really the name of the game so you can get repeated tutors, but in this deck my only real hope was to kill him and play him again with that pesky commander tax added in.

Ambitious Dragonborn paired up with Syr Faren, the Hengehammer and a pump spell in another one of my games to let me play that big Dragon in my second main phase for a pretty decent number of +1/+1 counters. Ganax, Astral Hunter got a reaction out of my tablemates but never really pulled his weight. I had fourteen Dragons in all, but a few of them didn't even have flying.

My original goal was to avoid building a tribal deck, so this direction was a bit of a surprise to me.

I ended up opening both Anger, which could give my team haste if it found its way to the graveyard, and Nylea's Forerunner, which could give my team trample. Neither played a huge role in my games, but both saw play. I opened a Teferi's Protection and managed to use it to dodge a Nevinyrral's Disk, but I didn't have an overwhelming board at the time. It was probably still worth it. I did have five creatures out including my deck's surprise all-star.

That all-star wasn't even a Dragon. Steadfast Unicorn allowed me to pay four mana, one of which had to be white, to give my creatures +1/+1 and vigilance. Being able to swing out with evasive creatures but still have them available to block was why I ended up being able to stay in all of my games until the very end. I had a few games where I was activating it two or three times in a turn, though I never went so wide that it won me a game.

Searching for Something

The funniest thing about playing a Rocco deck with very little preparation or planning was that I constantly felt like I had no idea what I should really have been looking for when I searched my library. I didn't even realize the impact of Steadfast Unicorn until it had proven its worth in a few games and found myself overpaying for a search and passing it up for a higher mana card because I didn't want to feel like I was wasting my mana.

If I were to build a Rocco deck outside of this sealed environment, I'd probably be tempted to load it up with combos and use Rocco as a quick and easy way to match one half of a 2-card combo with the other half to let me threaten a win early and often. I would also put serious consideration into running Food Chain combo so that I could play my whole deck once I had that combo up and running. You can read up on that approach to building a Rocco deck here on CoolStuffInc. Paige Smith. She wrote a column called Rocco's Combo Life back when Streets of New Capenna had just come out. She didn't include Food Chain, but it's still a banger of a deck and well worth checking out.

Sealed Rocco | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer

• Creatures (31)
• 1 Ambitious Dragonborn
• 1 Anger
• 1 Annoyed Altisaur
• 1 Arcbound Whelp
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Chardalyn Dragon
• 1 Draconic Muralists
• 1 Dragon Egg
• 1 Dragon Whelp
• 1 Dread Linnorm
• 1 Elvish Rejuvenator
• 1 Elvish Visionary
• 1 Exhibition Magician
• 1 Fyndhorn Elves
• 1 Ganax, Astral Hunter
• 1 Lurking Green Dragon
• 1 Nylea's Forerunner
• 1 Oakhame Ranger
• 1 Ore-Scale Guardian
• 1 Preyseizer Dragon
• 1 Purifying Dragon
• 1 Qasali Pridemage
• 1 Radiant, Serra Archangel
• 1 Scaled Nurturer
• 1 Steadfast Unicorn
• 1 Syr Faren, the Hengehammer
• 1 Tajuru Blightblade
• 1 Tiamat's Fanatics
• 1 Volcanic Dragon
• 1 Wall of Omens
• 1 Weathered Wayfarer

• Instants (11)
• 1 Broken Wings
• 1 Coordinated Charge
• 1 Dynacharge
• 1 For the Family
• 1 Forced Landing
• 1 Gideon's Sacrifice
• 1 Nature's Claim
• 1 Raking Claws
• 1 Shelter
• 1 Teferi's Protection
• 1 Valakut Awakening

• Sorceries (7)
• 1 Goatnap
• 1 Nissa's Triumph
• 1 Portent of Betrayal
• 1 Renegade Tactics
• 1 Tormenting Voice
• 1 Travel Preparations
• 1 You Meet in a Tavern

• Enchantments (5)
• 1 Acolyte of Bahamut
• 1 Far Traveler
• 1 Martial Impetus
• 1 Nature's Embrace
• 1 Unnatural Growth

• Artifacts (4)
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Dispeller's Capsule
• 1 Karn's Sylex
• 1 Spectral Searchlight

• Lands (41)
• 13 Forest
• 13 Mountain
• 13 Plains
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Sacred Peaks

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Without access to all the ramp that I usually build with, I decided it made sense to stay at or over 40 lands. I threw in the Evolving Wilds just for fixing and my build pool tablemate Joe Cherries (of Nitpicking Nerds fame) gave me a Sacred Peaks as well. My hesitation to add that last land was over the fact that it enters tapped and I was already at 40 lands, but I think it was probably a good decision. I ended up with a good distribution of colors in my deck and I generally didn't have too many issues getting the colors I needed to play my deck.

In the three games we played - two in the afternoon and one after the dinner break - there were a bunch of cards I never saw. Fyndhorn Elves never made an appearance, but the 1-mana deathtouch Tajuru Blightblade kept ground attackers at bay for well over half of one of my games. Nobody likes to swing into a deathtouch blocker. I loaded up with several ways to remove flying blockers, but only ever drew into one of them. I did manage to play my Annoyed Altisaur but I only cascaded into Shelter, which has great art, but was not a card that I was happy to hit there.

How It All Played Out

Game One

My first sealed match was against a Tatyova, Steward of Tides deck, a Zur the Enchanter deck and a Kyodai, Soul of Kamigawa deck. The Tatyova player had been at my build table, so it was nice to have one familiar face in the game.

The Zur deck got out an early Light-Paws, Emperor's Voice and Elenda, the Dusk Rose and was off to the races. He got his Zur out and the table did its best not to panic, reminding ourselves that this was a sealed Zur build and probably didn't have the kinds of headaches and bombs that you usually see from that powerful commander.

The Kyodai player was able to board wipe, which might have single handedly kept me from being able to push for a win. My board was pretty strong, but he was having a rough time of it and just wanted to do something. His wrath was Slash the Ranks, which hits all creatures and planeswalkers except for commanders. Rocco wasn't even on the field at the time and if he was, I'd have wanted Rocco to get blown up so I could recast him and tutor again.

The Tatoyva player had a rough game, not really pulling into anything that would help them push a lands-based strategy. The Kyodai player had an even rougher game, getting hit with Cut Your Losses copied, so they had to mill half of their library twice. They eventually drew themselves out to lose the game.

The game was a long one, and the time limit hit us before we were done. In Commander Sealed that meant that we got a Havoc Festival emblem. Players would no longer gain life and on each player's upkeep they would lose half of their life rounded up. If I recall correctly, the Zur the Enchanter player drew into Temporal Mastery, casting it for its miracle cost and setting himself up to win.

The Zur player had a dominating game, at one point even having a Pathrazer of Ulamog on the field. The mood was good and we all congratulated the Zur player on a well-earned victory. I was sure he'd have a shot at making it far, though I never heard what his final record was.

The most notable thing about this game other than the fantastic Zur deck we faced was that we were the table to cause the judges to adjust the Havoc Festival rules for the entire event. Last year they had 60-minute rounds and this year it was increased to 90 minutes. We had enough of a logjam of boardstate and a combination of Zur tutoring and Rocco tutoring that our game took a long time to get to the end even with a Havoc Festival emblem on the field.

After round one, the system was changed to have an additional Havoc Festival emblem applied after each turn cycle after time expired.

Game Two

My second game was against an Omnath, Locus of Creation deck, a Raff, Weatherlight Stalwart deck and a Soul of Windgrace deck.

This match was one in which it became evident how important lifegain is in a sealed multiplayer match with a Havoc Festival phase once the time limit is reached. I was able to build up a decent board and hit the Omnath player for 13 damage early on. He had suspended a wheel and I just needed to empty my hand of anything relevant before discarding and drawing a fresh seven. If I had realized how strong Omnath would end up being in the game I would have given him more attention. I don't think any of us realized how strong that deck would play even without the usual ramp staples.

The Raff, Weatherlight Stalwart deck seemed to be a flyers deck as well and spent some early turns hitting me in the air before I was able to play my Preyseizer Dragon and swing lethal on them. The Soul of Windgrace player and I had to focus all of our attention on the Omnath player. At one point they even had a nonlegendary copy of Omnath on the field and were getting double value out of every landfall trigger.

We hit the Havoc Festival phase of the game again and it ended up being one of those moments where it seemed like there was no good option and someone would have to play kingmaker. I ended up killing the Soul of Windgrace player with a Volcanic Dragon because they couldn't promise they wouldn't kill me on their turn. I thought I had the Omnath player, but they cast a timely Raise the Alarm to come up with blockers for a turn.

My Steadfast Unicorn had been good in round one and was an all-star in this game, letting me reliably swing out but have blockers on my opponents' turns. The Havoc Festival math was seeming to always turn against me, but I hadn't really planned or built with that odd mechanic in mind. Clearly that was an oversight, but I was still relevant in each game until the end and was able to knock out tablemates in each game.

With one round left, we had a dinner break that wasn't long enough for me to get a meal so I scarfed down a Cliff Bar, chatted with some of my past tablemates, and hung out until the next round was going to start. It probably didn't help that my games kept going past the 90-minute mark. I was 0-2, hungry, hot, tired, and hoping for a good final game to cap off my afternoon.

Game Three

My last game started at 7 and saw me matched up against a Queza, Augur of Agonies deck, a Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy / Guild Artisan deck and a Raffine, Scheming Seer deck.

My notes on this game are lacking. The play area was very hot, I was exhausted, and the light wasn't great at the table where we were playing. I remember that the Gale deck was using the Guild Artisan background enchantment and was attacking the Queza player, to make treasures. The Queza player was responding by pinging the Gale player whenever they drew a card. Both were very focused on each other and the Raffine player and I were just trying to build up our boards.

The Raffine player was missing colors, having a hard time and ended up dropping out of the game. Their deck was not behaving and I suspect they wanted to either head out, get in some casual games or get food. The game was again a long one and to their credit the Raffine player stuck it out for a long time before conceding.

The Gale and Raffine players were drawing cards much faster than my Naya deck. The Gale player in particular seemed to have something of a burn strategy. That stuck in my mind a bit, but they insisted that they just happened to draw into the few burn spells they had in the deck.

In the end we hit that delightful Havoc Festival phase. My board was again too hard to get through and I also wasn't able to set up and keep any threats that were big enough to make a huge difference. Commander Sealed attracted what felt like a very experienced and capable assortment of EDH players. My tabelmates knew enough to play removal and to play it well.

I ended up trying to finagle a way to end up the game in a position to win, but at some point between game one and game three, the way the Havoc Festival worked seemed to have changed. It might have been my own misunderstanding, but instead of each player getting a turn with 1 Havoc Festival emblem and then it moving up to two, it was changed so that the active player who ended the game with time expiring would jump up to two emblems on their next turn. If that sounds like it doesn't make sense, I can't argue, but the result was that the Queza player won because I got double-emblemed when I originally thought I'd get single-emblemed.

This third game also had a weird issue where my tablemates were playing with playtest cards opened from their booster packs, and I had confirmed on the website that those were not supposed to be legal. I had one that might have gone into my deck but I looked it up and saw that it couldn't be played. The head judge confirmed for us that they were legal and that this was a change to the instructions on the website. I was a tiny bit miffed over that, as I might have enjoyed playing my playtest card.

Overall the event organizers and judges did a great job. The issues I ran into were minor ones and didn't really affect my enjoyment of the day. These things are complicated and I can't imagine an event of this size going off without a single hitch.

Final Thoughts

I always like to say that I aim to win my fair share of games. When I include that casual pickup game at the beginning of the day, I did win 25% of my games and that is better than none. I was still a little disappointed, but I don't think of myself as being particularly good at sealed (or draft) Magic. I also think a deck like Rocco really wants you to be familiar with your list and for you to know exactly what you're looking for every time you search. I was in all of my games, knocked tablemates out, and had a lot of fun.

I ended up getting some Pad Thai and eating my dinner while the final table was playing. I didn't pester them with questions about their decks but I can tell you that the winning deck was an Abomination of Llanowar list that ran Akroma's Memorial, Ancient Bronze Dragon and Apex Devastator. Apparently they "gummed up the board" and finished the table off with drain effects and by going wide. You can check out that list here.

I think a bit of luck does play into an event like this, but I also can't deny that there were a great many very capable EDH players in the mix. My own 0-3 showing felt a little bad, but that could have easily been 2-1 or maybe even 3-0 if a few things had gone differently. If I had known at the time I might have just decided to YOLO Black Braids, but I think I enjoyed my games a lot more by not playing that oppressive deck.

In the end, Dean Goote and his crew of staff, organizers and judges were able to put on a fantastic event that grew from 64 players in 2021 to 256 players this year. They ended up raising over $15,000 and I have every intention of trying to go again next year. I even have some very specific ideas for how to try to tackle that end-of-game Havoc Festival problem!

I'll be back to my usual content next week and expect to be writing about Dominaria United cards for quite a while. There are a lot of them to cover and I'm not a Warhammer 40k player or a big fan of the Universes Beyond sets so I may leave those cards to other writers that are excited about that product. If there are 40k cards you would like me to cover, let me know in the comments.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!