Commander 2017 Arena – Dragons vs. Cats! (Part 6 of 6)
Wow, it has been a minute since I wrote the last part of this series. My sincere apologies, I remembered nearly every week and tried to set aside time to write this up and it felt like I never had time or something always seemed to pop up… No excuses though, I obviously need to finish the series and that is what I am doing… Right now!
ROUND ONE! WHAT’S LOUDER, THE MEOW OR THE ROAR?!
Since it has been a minute since Dani and I played these games, I may have trouble remembering all the details. Luckily, I was taking pictures as we played of the more interesting parts, so we should be good.
I remember piloting the Cat deck while Dani took Dragons. She decided to run Ramos, Value Engine and I tested out Nazahn, Tutor of the Real Commander; A Hammer. Both nicknames proved to be true, as Dani had a very scary turn once Ramos hit the field and the Hammer of Nazahn did most of the work for me. Honestly, the Hammer is an insane piece of Equipment. It works as a buff, a semi-Darksteel Plate AND an Equipment-Specific Sigarda’s Aid. My “play of the game” was casting Kindred Summons with only a couple of Cats on the field. With an outstanding bit of luck, I got Qasali Slingers FIRST and then Leonin Shikari, meaning I got two triggers of Slingers and was able to get rid of Ramos and something else on Dani’s side of the board. I tossed a bunch of swords and axes onto one of my ferocious felines and hit her in the a few times for the win! (Jazal Goldmane on the field definitely did not hurt, either.)
Result:
Dragons: 0
Cats: 1
ROUND TWO! ONE V ONE ME, BRUH!
I swapped out the Tutor of Hammers for Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist while Dani tried Ramos out again. Honestly, no one can blame someone for wanting a Commander that gets huge just for casting spells and then pops that power for straight value in the form of 10 mana, so I fully understand her choice. Still, I liked the idea of Mirri taking some of the power away from the Dragon deck, which is designed to ramp up, drop LOTS of big dumb dragons and swarm/swoop in for big damage to win. With Mirri tapped, only one Dragon was going to fly in and that seemed amazing for me.
Again, Dani ramped up and started doing really mean, broken things easily. I am still astounding how everyone critiqued the Dragon precon for the basic-dominant mana base and it seems to perform very well, despite this “weakness”. Still, my Commander only costing 3 was a boon, as I got my defense and offense started quicker. It very much felt like I was simply a step ahead always. A White Sun’s Zenith for 11 pretty much spelled the end without a board wipe in Dani’s hand and that was the match!
FINAL RESULTS!
Dragons: 0
Cats: 2
FINAL THOUGHTS
Again, since this game was awhile ago, I do not plan on trying to get Dani to remember it well enough to give final thoughts. I have a vague memory of how it went down, so I will offer what I can. In the end, it seemed like a match-up of quick, dangerous aggro vers. the big stompy deck, which suffered from needing to ramp up and simply being unable to match their opponent. I think Dragons can definitely be improved with a better mana base, but overall I felt it worked great every time Dani or I played it.
Cats honestly felt more like Tribal Equipment. I get that many of the great Cat creatures interact with Equipment, but I felt they could have gone a different way to make it feel more tribal for the creature type. Still, the deck is fun, fast and simple to pilot. Honestly, I do not know if I want build Mirri with a token theme or some kind of “hidden Commander” theme with Nazahan, naturally with a Balan in the deck.
SERIES THOUGHTS
Since this is the last game, I wanted to reflect over all six games. I know if we go back and look at the results of the games, it might appear that I stomped on Dani a lot, but having played each game, I can contest that most of the 2-0 games (and even some of the games in the 2-1 matches) were largely since we were playing precons and I drew better cards. As a rule, precons are not the most well-built decks because the three different Commanders all have different strategies and the deck is loosely supposed to represent each strategy. Still, I think the decks were decent at what they did. Wizards did a very good job, despite a lot of people (myself as one of them) critiquing the lists when they were released.
Well… That is it! We have all six games for the Arena series in the bag. I have a few ideas for what I will be writing next. Some ideas are a fanfiction story I have loosely been thinking about, a weekly series each Wednesday on my thoughts of the Commander VS game, or just random thoughts I want to embellish on that take more than 280 characters for the Tweeters. I will be working on writing more often. I am unsure of whether I mentioned this in a previous post, but I started writing a series for EDHREC.com and I hope you check it out! It is called “Replacement Commanders” and it is about the 8 “other” Legendary Creatures of the precons and how to build around them.
Until next time, everyone, follow me on Twitter and I hope you check Praetor Magic out on YouTube!
