Commander Thassa Mono-blue

I saw the winning lists from the Commander 1v1 league, and they were mostly the same deck: mono-blue Legacy. I made a mono-blue deck with a little more of the variety I like, and also at a much more casual power level.

I played against a Mirri the Cursed deck.

Here, I send Mirri back to my opponent's hand.

Dissipation Field kept my opponent at bay.

My opponent placed two enchantments on Thassa.

I returned Thassa to my hand and made a few more plays before my opponent gave up. Based on the league results, and until the banlist is expanded to weaken Blue, the only good decks that can be played in this format will be mono-blue, or heavy on blue.

Standard Amonkhet Turbofog

I lost against this deck and found it interesting enough that I wanted to build it by watching the replay of my loss. It is a very interesting deck. I am not planning to play it too much at this point because I am still trying to figure out how many of the cards play. It can be annoying for most opponents, and that's always an issue with Fog decks.

Here are two early plays from my loss. Grapple with the Past seeds the graveyard with lands.

And then with Splendid Reclamation, my opponent brought all their lands from their graveyard to the battlefield. I was planning to continue showing screenshots from that very long game because my opponent understood this deck far better than I understand it, but the replay times out for very long games!

Here is my deck. I could not see a reason for which to decrease the playsets of the cards I knew were key, and therefore chose to include them all and increase the size of the deck to match those playsets.

Here is a sample game. My opponent gave up pretty early... This is what happens to control on MTGO: people rage-quit a lot. Here is Fog No.1. Fog is better than this card because it only costs G.

Fog No. 2.

I play Memory using the Aftermath ability and draw at least one Yehenny's Expertise.

I can cast one of these for free.

 And my opponent gave up after the board wipe... this is a really awesome deck, requiring a solid knowledge of many interactions. I love it.

Standard Amonkhet Random Decks

More like random decks I lost against while playing my White/Green Exert terrible deck. I encountered interesting decks. Here they are:

Here is the mono-black Zombies deck that has done so well at the Pro Tour this weekend. It went wide on me really quickly.

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I was able to Exert Champion of Rhonas to cast Kozilek.

My opponent transformed Westvale Abbey to Ormendahl, Profane Prince (Flying, lifelink, indestructible, haste 9 / 7). I was done after this.

There is also a Metallic Mimic Servo tokens deck that goes wide very quickly.

Here is a Blue/Red Hedron Alignment (Hexproof At the beginning of your upkeep, you may reveal your hand. If you do, you win the game if you own a card named Hedron Alignment in exile, in your hand, in your graveyard, and on the battlefield. 1U: Scry 1.) It is packed with all the great things Blue and Red can do to stall the game.

Here is more removal.

Once my opponent cast Chandra, Torch of Defiance, I was done.

The ultimate guaranteed the win.

Here is a cycling deck. It uses Archfiend of Ifnir, New Perspectives, Weirding Wood and Vizier of Tumbling Sands.

Standard Amonkhet Exert Deck plus Approach of the Second Sun

I suspected Exert would be a lot like Cohort, and perhaps Phasing: a sucky, lose-a-turn ability, and unless I am missing something, I think I was right. Here is the final, if you can call optimized, deck. I lost every game, and therefore, if I did any optimizing, it was to lose faster? I started with Naya (White/Red/Green) and then I very soon cut Red out. It didn't matter, this deck was born to lose.

Here is my track record, an incredible 0-19 record. This has to be the worst record of any deck I have ever optimized.

Here, I get board-wiped. My opponent was playing around Trespasser's Curse, something I want to do. I am surprised Trespasser's Curse is common, and I like that! It's always great to have a common that is more useful than for just Limited.

For the rest of this post, I am describing a loss against an Approach of the Second Sun deck. This description is more about my opponent's interesting and successful deck than about my terrible Exert deck. I still don't know why As Foretold is in this deck. I guess you can get some free-casting out of it (At the beginning of your upkeep, put a time counter on As Foretold. Once each turn, you may pay 0 rather than pay the mana cost for a spell you cast with converted mana cost X or less, where X is the number of time counters on As Foretold.) I did not see my opponent do much free-casting. They were able to build up the mana for hard-casting.

My Exert critters are doing "their thing" here. It's like pitting kittens against lions, though, and I am the one with an army of Exert kittens.

I get board-wiped.

Target removal at work.

My opponent got to play all four Anticipates in their deck.

They even got to use Disallow.

More target removal.

Here is the first Approach of the Second Sun (If Approach of the Second Sun was cast from your hand and you've cast another spell named Approach of the Second Sun this game, you win the game. Otherwise, put Approach of the Second Sun into its owner's library seventh from the top and you gain 7 life.) In this case, this is the first cast, and so it goes back to the deck.

I finally get to hardcast my big critter.

It gets removed.

And the game ends.

Eight Packs of Born of the Gods Online

I need a Brimaz to test the New Era Cube.

Hey, there, Mr. Brimaz.