I never really played magic when I was younger. Maybe once or twice in middle school with other people's cards, and maybe once after. It appealed to me a bit, but I always felt as though it would be way to big of a time and money suck. Over the years a few people here and there had asked me to play again, but life is busy and between various levels of university and, probably, a few too many trips to the bar I never had time.
Life goes on, the degrees got finished, the career got started, I got hitched, and there's even a child now. So, of course it's at this point, when my son is three years old and near a mid-career job change, I, a functioning adult decided to pick up a new time consuming, money consuming habit. It started when I agreed to try it out and attend a Magic night group with a few friends that had been bugging me for years to try. If I recall properly my first try was hosted by Futuremonk and StoveX1 was there too. I watched my first game and then everyone around the table lobbied to be the first to lend me a deck for my first ever game of commander. You might think that this is where Ben-Ben first comes in, but no one at the table was that cruel. No instead it came down to a mono green elf deck and a somewhat janky, but powerful Yennet, Cryptic Sovereign deck (Yennett, Klepto Sovereign). I chose the jank and had a great time playing. I didn't win my first game, although the deck did function and I definitely affected play. The deck was full of big spells and every new card I looked at was exciting. I distinctly remember cheating a void winnower into play with Yennet's ability and everyone at the table agreeing that they needed to deal with me ASAP. After that I was hooked. My friends told me not to buy anything right. Play a few more times and figure out what you like first. Well, as it turned out, I like free stuff. At first it was cheating things into play, but sadly that was not to be my path for my first constructed deck.
No, my first cards came free. Soon after my first night I was at a party and casually mentioned that I'd played magic for the first time recently. Another friend who'm I would never have pegged to play magic or anything of the sort heard me talking and said he had a bunch of cards. As he explained it, he'd dabbled a bit in playing and loved the excitement of cracking packs but over time had played less and less. He had come into some of his cards for free and he wanted to pass them on to someone who would use them. A few days later I took possession of a shoebox full of randomly assorted cards from Battle for Zendikar and before. I obsessed over the cards for days, honestly it was more entertainment than the first several games I'd played. I carefully sorted all 1400+ cards by color and started to figure out what I had. At that point still finding myself unwilling (and telling myself unable) to go out and buy cards to make a deck, I resolved to build my first deck using the hand-me-downs I had. I knew nothing of proper deck construction (still probably don't) but figured my first order of business should be to figure out what my commander would be. It didn't take long sorting through the cards to realize something was amiss. Several hundred cards in I still had not encountered a single legendary creature. I knew that most legendary creatures were "rare" but figured that at least a few of the cards would be legendary. I was wrong. Only one of the 1400+ cards was a Legendary creature, and his name was
Ben-Ben, Akki Hermit
. It turned out that I'd been given mostly rejects from my friends quick sort through his collection. He didn't play, but he still liked to collect and look at the cards, and legendary creatures were just cooler and more exciting to collect and look at!
I messaged a picture of the card to the play group that I'd started to join and asked if it was a legal commander, and if it would be a good commander. Honestly it's surprising that they didn't laugh me off right there.
"He's a legal commander", they confirmed. He's one of the worst they'd collectively seen, but Goblin tribal is a thing they was assured me and a person could try to build a Ben-Ben deck.
The first version of this deck was built purely with the free cards, and coupled with my inexperience crafting decks, the first time I played it, it suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked.
Since that time I've received a few more hand-me-downs and developed a full blown addiction to loading and unloading my Card Kingdom cart. I've switched up things here and there in a vague attempt to make the deck more competitive and more cohesive, but it never really got very powerful. The list you see here is the final built form of this deck, it has a few good cards, and a few decent combos/synergies, but for the most part it was just about playing as many goblins as possible and trying to have some kind of effect on a game. I'll never forget trying with this guy, but honestly, this deck was just not worth keeping together over time. So, this page is my memorial to "Hermit Dreams" a craptacular EDH deck.
