36 Plains and a Dream

I’m the kind of person who needs to fully understand something before I can actually enjoy using it.

Basically, I need the entire instruction manual before I touch the shiny buttons.

The problem?

I also get distracted by the shiny buttons.

Combine that with the memory of a rabid squirrel, and learning new concepts becomes just a wee bit difficult.

But it’s okay.

I’m obviously very comfortable making decisions based on half-baked notions, as you’re about to see.

My First Attempt at cEDH

After watching my friends play numerous games of cEDH, I decided to try picking it up through osmosis.

Kids, don’t try this at home.

It’s not a particularly reliable learning method.

I decided it was time to build my first cEDH deck.

Keep in mind, at this point I’d been playing Magic for about seven months.

Commander, not cEDH.

Obviously, I knew exactly what I was doing.

Enter Ao

I am not about to justify what you’re about to read.

I will, however, explain what little bit of thought process there actually was.

Tarkir: Dragonstorm had been released a little over a month before I even became aware of cEDH, so I was still riding my dragon high with Felothar the Steadfast.

I love me some “Big Butts”!

While looking for ways to improve my precon, which is still in its original precon state to this day because apparently I have the attention span of a rabid squirrel, I came across Ao, the Dawn Sky.

This wonderful mono-white legendary creature checked all my boxes:

Dragon? Check.
Legendary Creature? Check.
Flying? Check.
Free cards? Check.

Clearly, this would be a perfect cEDH commander.

So, armed with this flawless logic, I built Day-Oh, featuring Ao, the Dawn Sky.

What could possibly go wrong?

The Process

I went to EDHREC, used their search function, and pulled a list of roughly 280 cards for me to sort through.

Did I notice that there were fewer than five decks featuring this absolute gem as a cEDH commander?

Nope.

This was happening.

It took me roughly three weeks to sort through the list.

My criteria were simple:

I had to understand what the card did and, for the most part, how it worked.

Okay.

Maybe “understand” is a strong word.

I needed to have a semblance of an idea about how I thought the card worked.

And since I knew I was going to be new to the format, I decided that stax was obviously the best way to endear myself to my future podmates.

Yes.

I am that person.

Well…

I was that person.

Thanks, friends.

The Stax Problem

I played the deck a handful of times.

For some reason, it was surprisingly difficult to find a pod willing to play against it.

And when I did find a pod?

People were definitely not happy with me.

I’ll admit, I took that a little personally at the time.

I’d put a lot of work into this deck.

It had plenty of affordable stax pieces. Nothing was over $50, which was a perfectly reasonable price to my past self.

Oh, how things have changed.

I had life gain.

I had 36 basic Plains.

What more could a cEDH deck possibly need?

I mean, it was the best mono-white cEDH deck around!

Sarcasm.

It was also the only mono-white cEDH deck around.

Small technicality.

There was another problem.

I didn’t know what a mulligan was.

I didn’t know what a win condition was.

And my entire game plan revolved around repeatedly killing my own commander so I could put as many nonland permanents onto the battlefield as possible without paying for them.

It was a beautiful plan.

In theory.

The problem was that my opponents had the audacity to interact with my plan.

They wouldn’t let Ao die in a glorious blaze of self-sacrifice.

So I got…

Nothing.

And if you thought that being a stax deck would somehow protect me from becoming the table’s primary target, you would also be wrong.

All I accomplished was making myself everyone’s problem.

The Moment It Finally Clicked

It wasn’t until Awesome Andie, the sister-in-law who originally inspired my interest in Magic, sat down beside me with a mono-white stax deck of her own that I finally understood what I’d been doing.

There I was.

On the receiving end.

And suddenly everything made sense.

I was:

A dumbass.
An asshole who was sucking the fun out of the game.
In desperate need of a new cEDH deck.

It was a humbling experience.

Did it cure me of my petty ways?

Absolutely not.

I’m still a Petty Betty, and I love it to the depths of my soul.

But it did teach me something important.

There is a difference between playing a strategy and understanding why you’re playing that strategy.

I had been doing the first one.

I had absolutely no clue about the second.

And that brings us to deck number two in my cEDH journey:

Thalia and the Gitrog Monster.

Was she recommended to me?

Nope.

Did I carefully research the commander, study established lists, and understand the strategy before building her?

Also nope.

I overheard a conversation where someone said she was a good starter cEDH deck.

There was definitely more to the conversation.

I don’t remember any of it and I also didn’t pay attention to any of it.

I looked her up on Scryfall, saw the card, and apparently decided that was enough research.

Because, you know…

I’m great at this whole cEDH thing.

She met all of my extremely sophisticated criteria:

Legendary? Check.
Not mono-white? Check.
Bonus points. She’s an Abzan girlie.

What could possibly go wrong?