Heart, Neck, and Elbow of the Cards · 2:09am Sep 27th, 2018
So, a fun story from my weekly Magic night this monday.
I decided to try out my spiffy new Wonder Twins commander deck against my playgroup. Naturally, I just so happened to be playing against a guy who was running Thrasios and Kraum, all the original Alpha/Beta/Unlimited dual lands, a ton of ramp, and Valakut.
As you can guess, it didn’t go so well for me for most of the game. By the end of it, he had knocked out both of my other opponents, had nearly all of his lands on the battlefield at once, and had a board state consisting of Exploration, Azusa, http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=6078, Oracle of Mul Daya, and Tatyova. As a small mercy, someone had already exiled his Scapeshift, but either way it didn’t look like it would matter. On his next turn, he would play his spells, bounce his mountains back, and drop them (he could play five lands per turn, in case you weren’t counting) to kill me with Valakut’s landfall triggers. Oh, and he had Thespian’s Stage copying Valakut, in case you didn’t think it was bullshit that Valakut is nonlegendary.
By the time my turn came around, I had basically nothing left. While my life total was higher, he had such a vastly superior board state that there was nothing I could do to counterplay... not directly, at least.
So with little left I could do against him, I play Talent of the Telepath. I look at the top seven cards of his library, and cast two of them for free. But in a stroke of brilliant luck, all I needed was one.
Among the top cards of his library was Sunder. And on his last turn, he had countered my one board wipe with Pact of Negation. If he had no lands at the start of his next turn, he would lose instantly.
And that is how I pulled off the second luckiest Magic victory I had this year.
Those sorts of victories are always great. You remember them for quite some time.
That, sir, was bananas. Some serious petard-hoisting there!
I have fond memories of the Commander game where I cast Ana Battlemage with its black kicker effect, targeting my opponent's Blightsteel Colossus that he just played, ready to finish me off due to my poor board state at that time.
He was pretty dumbfounded when he realized he'd just lost. He just sat there for a second, before he calmly and silently started picking up his cards.
"Draw your last pathetic card, Zenni."
"My deck has no pathetic cards, Kaiba... though on second thought, I think I'll use one of yours."
Fantastic work. Even better than that time I killed someone with their own Triskaidekaphobia.