This game was against a couple of fellow judges at a Judge Conference so it was not played against players in my normal meta. This is one of the biggest reasons I played it: I wanted to see how it would do in a different setting. It went well, and was fun, but it took kind of a weird turn. The opponents were
Sliver Overlord,
Muldrotha the Gravetide, and
Derevi, Empyrial Tactician (Bird Tribal).
Slivers started off slow, as did I. I kept a 2 lander (2 Islands) but I had
Solemn Simulacrum and
Day's Undoing. My thought was that as long as I get a land in 3 draws, I can fire off Undoing if needed and if I get 2 lands, I can cast Solemn, I ended up getting 2 lands and casting Solemn. I then missed a land drop but was still able to land Ephara and
Stormscape Familiar.
Muldrotha worked to get a few things going. One of which was looping
Fleshbag Marauder to make us sac stuff. However, and this was one of my favorite plays of the early game, I had cast
Gilded Drake to steal their Overlord and then, in response to the Marauder, I stole one of their Slivers to sac. I didn't get to do much more since they cast a sliver to exile Overlord but it was still fun.
Muldrotha ended up getting out a
Fleet Swallower and attacking Slivers. They then targeted them with the trigger and milled half their deck. This ended up milling a lot of their good creatures (or, so they said) and it painted a target on them to have their graveyard exiled. So, that is what I did. I cast
Angel of Finality and exiled their graveyard. They ended up scooping.
A couple turns went by, and I attempted to deal with Muldrotha as best as possible. Mostly just keeping Fleet Swallower off the field. Eventually, they got it back and were able to attack. They attacked me but targeted themselves. They binned a lot of good stuff but, luckily, I had
Remorseful Cleric on the field (it seems they missed it or didn't realize what it did) so I just exiled their yard before they could do anything with it.
They ended up having to leave after about an hour of play due to other commitments. So, now, it was just me and Derevi duking it out. And this took forever. The game continued for another 2.5 hours where we never got to finish it due to the store closing. Some of the highlights of this game were:
I had gotten down to 9 life and decided to go risky and slam a
Mana Crypt since I needed the mana to draw cards. I was able to draw into an
Angel of the Dire Hour to exile their attacking creatures and won 3 or 4 dice rolls while losing 1. They swung in again and got me down to 2. My upkeep came around and I cast
Disallow on the trigger and ripped
Resolute Archangel off the top. Keep in mind this is after digging about 10 cards with Eldrazi Displacer and Top and Ephara. They couldn't stop it so I gained 38 life.
Derevi got a
Dovescape on the field for a while and was casting stuff into it to get birds. I was just hanging on with some of my fliers and my
Eldrazi Displacer to exile the tokens. They hit me for 9 one turn and gained some life due to a bird that gave their attacking creatures lifelink. but I was still surviving. I then dropped in a
Charming Prince so instead of exiling their tokens, I just blinked Prince to gain 21 life.
I tried to cast a
Winds of Abandon using
Nimble Obstructionist to counter the Dovescape trigger. They countered my Winds since they had
Boseiju, Who Shelters All to get through the Dovescape.
I tried to draw into more cards, and gained life, with
Cloudblazer and Displacer and stopped 2 cards short of the one I wanted
Venser, Shaper Savant. This would have allowed me to bounce the Dovescape and recast the
Winds of Abandon I got back to my hand off of
Archaeomancer. I ended up drawing him on Derevi's turn but I had to use him to bounce a
Wrath of God back to their hand (that Boseiju made uncounterable).
I later got
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir down to stop their shenanigans with
Alchemist's Refuge. This didn't stop them from activating Derevi and sacrificing him to
Seaside Haven over and over again. They had a ton of mana due to Gaea's Cradle and the transform land that is a Cradle.
Trying to stop my Teferi, they drew down to 6 cards in their library off of a fused
Beck//Call which triggered a ridiculous number of times since they kept casting things into Dovescape to get birds to draw cards to cast more stuff, etc. etc. But, they couldn't stop him. As part of this though, they ended up getting a huge
Kangee, Aerie Keeper with 17 counters. And they had 30+ birds on the field. Now, I could have blinked it with Displacer but I wanted to go a little deeper to just get my Angel of the Dire Hour back. Instead, I got
Selfless Squire. So, now, I had a 500/500 (more or less) Squire. We never actually calculated it since it didn't matter. I just rode the Displacer + Squire for a couple turns.
At one point, and I wish I would have gone with this earlier, I had a
Supreme Verdict in hand and I was going to blink my Prince a bunch of times to exile all my creatures. Since that is until end of turn, I could do that to save my board, wrath their board (and my Prince) and then get my creatures back. I waited too long to do it which I think was a mistake. Since they had a
Supreme Verdict of their own, it likely didn't matter.
The game ended with them bouncing their Dovescape, casting Supreme Verdict, and then casting
Memory to shuffle their graveyard back into their library. Since the store was closing, we had to pack it up. I don't know that there was any player who clearly would have won, but I was feeling pretty good about where the game was. Likely they felt the same though
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