I just got done playing a game online against
Mangara of Corondor,
Omnath, Locus of Mana, and
Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis. This game was a ridiculous game so this summary is going to be pretty long. I will offer my thoughts on the list, as well as that of Blinx's deck, in a separate thread after I post this one.
The game started off with Kynaois landing a turn 1
Magus of the Vineyard. I had started the game and didn't have black mana but did have a
Cultivate. So, I untapped, used the floating 2 mana, and cast Cultivate, planning on grabbing a Swamp so I could play the
Phyrexian Reclamation in hand. But Mangara got me with a
Mana Tithe (I still maintain this is a terrible card to play in EDH, but it got me). So, I played a land and passed.
Mangara did a little and Omnath cast their general. Kynaois went further into group hug with an
Anvil of Bogardan. I was able to get down
Spike Weaver on Turn 3 and
Lord Windgrace on turn 4. I would have gotten Windgrace earlier, but I did miss a black mana until turn 4 so Anvil really helped. Next turn I dropped in
The Big Idea and got some tokens since I didn't want to sac anything for cards yet.
In a short while, Omnath cast
Hall of Gemstone which really messed things up for me and Kynaois. Although, Kynaois also dropped in
Heartbeat of Spring and
Overabundance so we all had plenty of mana. I used my Reclamation that I had cast to get back
Ashaya, Soul of the Wild that I had discarded to Anvil and then cast Ashaya and
Ulvenwald Hydra on the same turn. I got a
Bazaar of Baghdad off the Hydra.
The Heartbeat was still a problem and the mana "doublers" were really pushing Omnath ahead, as expected. Luckily, no one was really drawing too many cards except for me thanks to Windgrace and Tevesh Szat so they couldn't do a lot with the mana. Nor could I thanks to Hall.
A turn or two later though I drew into
World Shaper and
Reclamation Sage. I named Black with Hall, used the two Green floating from Magus, and cast World Shaper, Sage, and
Drana, the Last Bloodchief. I blew up the Hall with Sage.
Mangara was sort of doing stuff and did exile Windgrace and my Bazaar at a couple different times. The did go after Omnath a bit too so they seemed to be pretty smart about who to go after and when. Omnath was mostly kept off storing up tons of mana.
After getting rid of Hall, Mangara cast a
Planar Cleansing. Which was basically the best thing that could have happened for me. I lost Tevesh Szat and a couple tokens. And that was it. Ashaya came through in spades there (and did again later; more on that below).
I took this opportunity to swing out at Omnath with Ashaya and Hydra, both 20/20. They scooped before I actually finalized my attacks so I just swung everything at Mangara, though I think it may have glitched out a little as I don't think they took more than 20 damage (which would have been about what the other creatures were). Not that it mattered a lot.
One thing I forgot to mention is that everyone had a ton of lands because of an early
Collective Voyage that had 13 mana pumped into it. I ended up getting 7 lands as I didn't want to overextend but everyone else got 13 which made everything else really tough to control.
Now that we were down a player, and I had the biggest board, I was somewhat of the threat. Kynaois finally got their general down and then really heavy into having us all draw cards with thing like
Font of Mythos and a couple spells.
Eventually though, I got the rest of my basics. My Reclamation was destroyed but
Eternal Witness got it back and then it was exiled.
Nissa of Shadowed Boughs came down and just untapped a land to help me cast
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger along with a couple other spells that turn while also keeping up mana for
Constant Mists and my
Phyrexian Tower in case I needed it. And, it turns out I did.
Mangara continued to be a pain and did a lot to keep the board cleared. They did fire off a
Day of Judgment to clear out everything except Ulamog and then they tried to steal it. I just sacrificed him for mana so they couldn't take him.
So, again, the board was cleared but we all kept building back up. And it always seemed like I was ahead of everyone else in that. I had 14 cards in hand one turn. I did what I could to build my board back up and one of the main cards was
Scute Swarm. I dropped that in, played a fetch land, cracked it for a Mountain, played
Titania, Protector of Argoth, to get back my
Volrath's Stronghold that was blown up. I also had
Korvold, Fae-Cursed King down during this time so I had been drawing some cards with him. Next turn I cast
Omnath, Locus of Rage and got a couple Elementals. I think I only had 3 total though
Mangara was able to use all their mana to cast a
Storm Herd to get 50 some tokens. I really wanted to use Eternal Witness to get back my
Rakdos Charm to just kill them but I couldn't sequence it right to still be able to do stuff so I just cast
Extinction Event to get rid of everything. I only lost Ulvenwald Hydra that I had reanimated but I sacrificed it to
Diamond Valley to gain 23 life. Which was important since I was at 15.
With this board state, Mangara again attempted to clear the board. I responded by using Stronghold to put Ashaya from my yard on top of my library. I then sacrificed a Scute Swarm token (I had somewhere around 30-40 at this time) to Phyrexian Tower which triggered Korvold to draw me Ashaya. I then activated
Winding Canyons with that 2 mana and had just enough mana to flash in Ashaya. I knew this wouldn't save any of my tokens, but it would still save quite a bit of my board. Unfortunately, MTGO doesn't like Scute Swarm. This caused those 40 Scute Swarms to trigger since Ashaya enters as a land and the game crashed after they were all on the stack before they resolved. It is possible someone conceded with the stack like this and that is what caused the crash, but I never got to see what would happen when the smoke cleared.
All in all, this was one hell of a game. A lot of back and forth, though I still don't like the way Kynaois really let it get out of control. Throwing a bunch of mana at everyone and messing up the resource aspect just causes games to sort of descend into chaos which is what happened here.
But whatever...the game still had a lot of interaction and required a careful eye on my and Mangara's part (I don't think Kynaois really cared what was happening and they never became a real threat) which meant that there were a lot of lines that required tight play.