Tacoma MXP Commandfest Recap with Eliana
Tally Ho, Cathars! It’s Eliana—also known as defiantcathar! I’m your resident PlayEDH streamer and favorite Legacy Death & Taxes player, both of which will be relevant to this article! Today I’m going to talk about the large Magic event I recently attended in Tacoma, Washington. In this article, I want to do a recap of my experience at the event, including the birth of a meme which would rule the Internet for several days after its creation.
Despite some conflation between them, there are typically two kinds of large scale Magic events that occur these days. We have the very large MagicCons, of which there are typically several a year and always coincide with the Pro Tour and are organized and bankrolled directly by Wizards of the Coast. We also have the slightly smaller events organized by other large tournament organizers but not directly by Wizards (such as Star City Games’ SCG CON and Laughing Dragon’s MXP events).
While most people probably understand this distinction, I know there are still plenty of people who have never made it out to one of these events and probably did not even understand that there was indeed a distinction between the two! With all of this in mind, the specific event we are going to be talking about here is one of the latter, a Magic Experience/CommandFest event—with a side of Star Wars and Warhammer as well apparently—put on by Laughing Dragon.
This event was entered around a Modern 20k which absorbed a chunk of the play area, but there was a COPIOUS amount of space reserved for various types of on demand play and other side events. Additionally, there was a centrally located area between the play area and the vendor area where myself and my fellow content creators were posted up most of the weekend for games with fans, friends, and also streamed games on site! This was also where the general content creator meet and greets were held. All in all, the set up was similar, yet simultaneously better than many other events I’ve attended. Laughing Dragon ran a fairly tight ship all weekend and took good care of both of us, and the general attendees.
My Friday at the con revolved primarily around spending time playing pickup games of casual EDH and cEDH, debuting a few new casual lists over the weekend including Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd. You’ll likely see me playing this deck on a PlayEDH stream soon! Additionally, I was able to trade in a good chunk of cards at the vendor area to get the last few cards I needed to de-proxy my cEDH Ellivere list!
This made me ALMOST consider altering my plans for the weekend to spend Saturday morning playing in the proxyless cEDH event being run with my friends Scylla of Commander’s Cauldron and VeggieWagon. Both of them made the top 16 and Scylla was even in the final four. These thoughts quickly faded come Saturday morning, because the event I had been most excited to play in was in the afternoon.
On Saturday afternoon, I played in the Legacy 5kt. Legacy is the primary competitive format that I play and a great love of mine when it comes to Magic. Following the shake-ups of Modern Horizons 3, I was extremely excited to test out changes I had made to my deck of choice since getting into the format, Death & Taxes.
For those unfamiliar, Death & Taxes is a creature based control deck in legacy that is usually mono-white, though at various points in the deck’s history it has splashed a color based on meta (most frequently red for Magus of the Moon but most recently black for Thoughtseize and Orcish Bowmasters) and I had made the decision to return the deck to mono-white after the release of MH3.
The new tools the deck gained access to in the form of cards like White Orchid Phantom and Witch Enchanter made the mono-colored version significantly more attractive than it had been in the previous few years, and I was optimistic about the build I had devised with some input from a few other skilled pilots.
I was ready to grind, dressed extremely comfy for the event in my Team KMC tanktop and a corgi kigurumi to the delight of the dog meme enjoyers. The event started off very well with me scoring some wins over the difficult esper scam match and a competitive round against Temur delver, also featuring some new cards from MH3 such as the new Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student // Tamiyo, Seasoned Scholar.
In round 3, things started to fall apart slightly due to some controversial occurrences. My opponent showed up to our match extremely late, after the ten-minute window, which means that he should have received a loss. The judge instructed us to simply play as normal, which was frustrating to me. I then spoke to another judge about the occurrence and it was confirmed to me that my opponent should not have been allowed to play, but that the original ruling would be upheld regardless. I was pretty frustrated by this result as my deck does not typically win quickly and having less time certainly favored my opponent.
I decided to put the round out of my mind despite my frustration and attempt to keep playing. In round 4, I played an odd matchup against Mono-Red Burn. The opponent apparently was usually a Death & Taxes player and we got on well, but despite dominating much of the mid and late games, was unable to combat a back-to-back Price of Progress! Such is the way of Magic. I won’t spend too long dwelling on the intricacies of the Legacy metagame to my EDH-centric crowd, but needless to say I am going to continue playing with and tweaking the return to mono white Taxes, as I believe it has a lot of potential, should the meta shakeout the way I expect it to. BUT I DIGRESS! After these disappointing two rounds in a row, I elected to drop from the event and spend time with friends instead!
Unbeknownst to me, Sunday would turn out to be the biggest day of the event for me despite being the final day with the least scheduled. You see, despite coming to the event to do content creator meet-and-greets and play Legacy tournaments, I had come to the con with a more important mission and I was determined to not fail: I was going to leave Tacoma with a giant card off the prize wall.
I have long desired one of these giant prize cards, but they cost an inordinate amount of prize tickets and are notoriously difficult to transport. Sseeing as how this event was only about an hour drive from my home, I figured this would be the best time to attempt it. I was already at a disadvantage, as I hadn't really been on the grind for tickets the first two days because I had been busy with my other commitments, but I was determined.
I took what meager tickets I had and went to the Creator Bounty Chaos Draft I was obligated to participate in. I got to share a draft pod with my fellow creator MTG in Quarantine and we had a very fun time, but the tickets I received from this event were negligible toward my total goal. I managed to convince one of my podmates to contribute tickets towards my cause, moving me slightly closer to my goal. I used my vouchers to do side events. I participated in more Limited events and some more Commander games to accrue some more tickets before managing to snag the last few I needed by begging friends to assist me. Finally, I had achieved what I thought was impossible.
I traded in the tickets to the prize wall, watching the person running the booth count them out with bated breath. He locked eyes with me and nodded before confirming my selection. An oversized version of my favorite card from Modern Horizons 3, none other than Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd.
“YEeeeee-YEEEEEEEEEEEE!” was the triumphant cry from the vendor, echoing across the con hall. I hoisted the card high above my head and my girlfriend snapped a picture, which would later be reposted and retweeted by the official MagicOnline account, cascading into a deluge of memes in which hundreds of people photoshopped me hoisting various signs, cards, and objects above my head all over Twitter for two days.
There you have it. What began as a weekend of creator duties and competitive grinding became the next chapter of a dog-centric saga that would leave an indelible mark on both my brand and the Internet as friends and fans alike shared a picture of me hoisting a giant card over my head. After a weekend of ups and downs, I have to say, going home with the oversized Phelia and seeing the Internet’s reaction to it truly made my weekend. Thank you Laughing Dragon! If anyone has a chance to make it out to one of their events over here on the US West Coast, I highly recommend it, and you will likely see me there as well! I’ll leave the giant card at home though.
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