Legionnaire Night V

On a stormy May night, 7 combatants came together to duel it out for the coveted black bordered Akron Legionnaire.

We started the night with dinner at El Chile Bravo before entering the battlefield. The format of the night was Iron Chef. Each player randomly drew 3 ingredients that were not good cards in general. These came from all across the history of the game. We then had to choose 2 of the 3 cards and build around them. In addition to points for wins and draws, cool points could be earned by performing cool combos/interactions involving our ingredients.

As a history you can find the information about Legionnaire Night 1 here. Legionnaire Nights 2 and 3 were hosted by the Casale brothers (Bill and Jim respectively) and have yet to be properly documented. Legionnaire Night 4 has been documented here.

I decided to take a different approach to my event, and run it as if it was a DCI sanctioned tournament. Everyone filled out a deck list and submitted it. I even had DCI cards with fake DCI numbers printed up for everyone. When it was time to start the matchups were posted and the players went to their table assignments for games. Match result slips were delivered to the tables, and play began.

I chose to submit a deck I named Echoing Cephalid Breakfast Across the Eons. My secret ingredients were Soul Echo and Parallel Thoughts. Since Soul Echo allowed me to live while having 0 or less life, and I only had to sacrifice it during my upkeep, I paired it with Eon Hub, which makes both players skip their upkeep step. This combo would allow me to live through lethal damage until/unless my opponent could remove the Soul Echo. I used Parallel Thoughts to effectively create 7 card sub-libraries that I could draw from. Since you do not technically draw from them, it also allowed you to stay alive if milled out. I decided that the proper way to utilize this was self mill. So I brought in Cephalid Illusionist and Shuko to mill myself out. I then won with either Laboratory Maniac or Jace, Wielder of Mysteries.

Round 1

Opponent: Jim Demko

Deck: Warp Profusion

In game 1, I drew the god hand for my deck, and was able to self mill and win on turn 4 before Jim did much of anything. At this point he mentioned that he hates Jace, Wielder of Mysteries. I suspected his enjoyment of the match was not going to grow much. Game 2 was more back and forth, but after countering a Warp World from him (one of his secret ingredients), I was able to get my combo down and self mill myself for the win. This game when I was casting Laboratory Maniac, I mention that if he hated Jace, he was definitely going to hate Lab Maniac. He agreed, but explained that it was our to some bad experiences in EDH.

Record: 1-0 (2-0 in games)

Round 2

Opponent: Jim Casale

Deck: Savage Enchantress 

Once again, game 1 went my way and fairly quickly. I got my self mill combo down and I explained it to Jimmy as I won game 1 fairly quickly. In game 2, his big green creatures came to the board and he took the match. I did get Soul Echo and Eon Hub down, but Jimmy attacked me down to below 0, then drew his 1 out to remove the Soul Echo, thus killing me. It was a cool way to die. Game 3 was another back and forth affair but I was able to assemble my combo while countering his big threats.

Record: 2-0 (4-1 in games)

Round 3

Opponent: BYE

I enjoyed my bye on the Bill Casale sit out couch. I answered a couple of rules questions for Greg H and Jim C, but mostly just enjoyed the downtimes.

Record: 2-0 (4-1 in games)

Round 4

Opponent: Greg C

Deck: UB Discard

There wasn’t much to speak about here. He cast a turn 1 Inquisition of Kozilek, and correctly called my deck self mill. He got an Isochron Scepter down and put Unsummon under that. I was not able to draw an answer and eventually scooped. Game 2, I got my combo going and was able to mill myself with a Lab Maniac on the board. He had a single out on his turn, but was 1 mana short and I took the win. Game 3 he dropped an Isochron Scepter with Remand under it on turn 2, and another with Unsummon on turn 3. We played it out, but I was unable to beat that.

Record: 2-1 (5-3 in games)

After 4 rounds we cut to a top 4. Here are the standings prior to the cut

I sat down to play Jim Casale again, and we both agreed that neither of us wanted to play Greg H, and that likely neither of us could beat him.

Semifinals Opponent: Jim C

I won game 1 fairly soundly without him doing very much. I lost the next two games due to a combination of bad draws and Jimmy’s deck coming together. I played my deck to the best of my ability, but it just was not to be. All credit due to Jimmy here, and he did not let up even though he felt like an underdog the entire match.

Finals The finals were between Greg H and Jim C. We found out at this point that Greg H had not dropped a game yet. and that was not going to change. His deck The Bridge of Death utilized Bridge from Below to make an army of 2/2 Zombies. I was watching this game, and looked up to talk with Matt and Bill, and when I looked down I wondered what happened to his Zombies. Upon mentioning that it was game 1, I was informed it was game 2, and thus I had my answer to what happened to the zombies. They were removed when Greg won game 1.

Greg H walked away with the black-bordered Akron Legionnaire, marking the first in his collection. 

After the matches, everyone presented their deck ideas to the group for a vote for the most creative. It was fun to see what the builder was trying to accomplish. Not pictured was Matt actually putting together a PowerPoint deck to explain his entire deck. It was a really good presentation. After all was said and done, votes were cast and Jim D won the most creative award. He ended up with the white-bordered Akron Legionnaire, making it another first time Legionnaire winner.

Afterwards, prizes were drafted, and we said our goodbyes officially putting Legionnaire Night V in the books. We briefly discussed Legionnaire Night 6, but no firm plans were made.