Oh, and we had a miracle.
No one was playing combo. At least, no one that made it to the final table.
I had quickly put together a version of my Lazav deck without poison, time walks, counterspells, or any of that stuff, the night before. It was a little light on land, but I tested five or six hands and seemed to hit what I needed.
At my table, it was my Lazav with Krenko, Edric, and Tomorrow, Azami's Familiar.
The guy playing Tomorrow had left most of his cards at a friend's house, so he had a pile of cards with him that was "less than tuned" shall we say. That was a point of luck in my favor, certainly. He did have bucket loads of counterspells, but not the backbreaking deluge of card advantage I normally see from a blue deck. Krenko was a good build, capable of crazy goblin shenanigans. The Edric deck was also full of Simic goodness.
Lazav, in all his glory, is not the strongest of Commanders. He's got to be out. He's got to have a good creature to copy, and when he does Xerox the creature the "enters the battlefield" effects don't even trigger. While I've hit a good copy with him from time-to-time, he usually just sits there looking all cloak and dagger as a 3/3 hexproof with his bad self. This game was a little different, though.
At one point, I had a Consuming Aberration out with a Whispersilk Cloak on it. "Here, put this on. They'll never notice you." I cast Bribery on the Edric player, taking his Deadeye Navigator. I didn't bother counting graveyards because the Edric player hadn't been touched and I figured that the Aberration was big, but not that big. As it turns out, he was 40+ power, so I took out Edric in one hit. There goes my Navigator.
When Krenko's turn comes around, he casts Mogg Infestation at me, kills my creatures, and gives me 6 Goblin tokens for my trouble. I recast Lazav on my turn along with a Mesmeric Orb. On his turn, he mills for a handful and turns over a Goblin Piledriver. Oh, I'll copy that. Thanks for the goblin tokens. Fun stuff. The blue player didn't know what hit him.
Krenko was dangerously close to making truck loads of goblins and using Goblin Bombardment or something equally evil to kill me. My solution? Cast Keening Stone and activate. He had exactly the number of cards in his graveyard to mill out. I passed turn and won when he couldn't draw, putting me at the final table.
At the final table, my light land count came back to bite me. I sat at two mana-producing lands and a Maze of Ith for most of the game. One guy seemed really upset about every little thing that affected him negatively in any way, no matter how small. Maybe he was having a bad day, but I'm not sure what he expected. His attitude was like, "What? You would cast spells that interfere with my plans to win the game? Who do you think you are?" Weird.
The winner is a guy who is usually in contention each week with his Jhoira deck. The win is the typical strategy: suspend something awesome and blow the world up. Sometimes it's Blightsteel Colossus. Other times it's an Eldrazi.
All things considered, I'm looking forward to taking this U/B deck in new directions. Undead Alchemist looks like a lot of fun. The key card is Mesmeric Orb. It's inexpensive to cast and sinister. Mid-game, untapping 10-15 permanents per turn is typical. Grind. Grind. Grind.
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