Pattern Recognition #310 - Slow Grow 0A - Rules and Deck

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

25 January 2024

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Hello Everyone! My name is berryjon, and I welcome you all to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series. Also the only one. I am a well deserved Old Fogey having started the game back in 1996. My experience in both Magic and Gaming is quite extensive, and I use this series to try and bring some of that to you. I dabble in deck construction, mechanics design, Magic's story and characters, as well as more abstract concepts. Or whatever happens to catch my fancy that week. Please, feel free to talk about each week's subject in the comments section at the bottom of the page, from corrections to suggested improvements or your own anecdotes. I won't bite. :) Now, on with the show!

And welcome back! Well, my dad declined to ask any questions about Magic this week, and I checked in with my LGS this past weekend only to find that they had posted the rules for this year's Slow Grow Tournament. It starts in two weeks! Which is after Pre-release, and lets people use the Murders Precons as a base to start with if they so choose.

Which means that today's article will have two parts. First will be me going over the rules of the tournament this year and explaining them because they were written poorly. Second will be my deck choice and how I expect to move forward with it over the course of the five weeks of changes.

THE RULES

For those of you not in the know, the Slow Grow tournament is a Commander tournament taking place over six weeks. In the first week, each player brings a Commander Preconstructed Deck to play with, unmodified (with the exceptions of Trade Secrets from the Commander 2011 Precon and the accidental extra Mountain Valley that got a double-printing in the Dominaria United Commander Precon. Those can be replaced on the first week without issue. As long as you let the Tournament Organizer know what you're replacing them with.

Anyway, each week after the first, so starting on the second, you can take out five cards of your choice from the deck, and replace them with five other cards. So, by the end of the tournament, you've replaced a total of 25 cards from your deck. Simple, no?

Each week consists of three rounds, with points being scored in each as per the following scheme:

4 points for 1st, 3 points for 2nd, 2 points for 3rd, 1 point for 4th or fifth.

An easy start here, and the Tournament Organizer will try to break tables down to avoid having more than five players at a table. If there are three players at a table, no one will get 1 point for finishing in last, and there will always be a point if you're stuck at a large table.

Actually, let me make a side digression here. Points can only be scored by players in the Slow Grow. They cannot be scored by anyone who may be sitting down to play, but isn't in the tournament. So if three Slow Grow players and a fourth are in a pod, and the guy not playing a jumped up precon trashes everyone and wins, that person doesn't lock out the four points for coming in first. The Slow Grow Player with the highest result comes in first and gets the four points. However, while people outside the tournament cannot gain points, points can be gained by actions against those players, such as thorugh a Commander Damage kill which will be shown later.

+1 Point for First Combat Damage

As it says, this is a point gained for scoring the first hit of the game. This is a point to help favor aggro decks, but can be exploited as last year, one player took the Necron WH40K deck and replaced the Commander with Ashnod, Flesh Merchant. Of the fifteen games they played, they for THIRTEEN points from first Blood. I stopped them from 14 with a Path to Exile in my Cats deck, and I'm not sure about the other missing point. I tried to go for this a couple years ago when I did my Wyleth deck, but it can be hard to get reliably. And this deck probably won't get it at all unless I get absurdly lucky.

+1 Point for saving another player. This can only be scored once per game, per player.

A bit more abstract, "saving" a player is effectively swooping in and preventing them from being removed from the game. Things like Fog or Cyclonic Rift to prevent lethal combat damage are reliable sources of this, but the important part is that you have to act in the face of the opponent's imminent demise. You can't just do something in the way of interaction, and claim you saved someone. This is a point that is agred upon by the whole table, not just because you said so.

+1 Point for finishing the game before time is called.

This is a point awarded to all players if the game is done before the hour for the round is up. It is a reward for fast play and not dithering, durdling, or taking a twenty minute turn that just results in a mess on the table. Play well, play good, and don't waste your opponents time. And everyone gets this, especially the players who lost.

+2 Points for killing a Player with Commander damage. This can be scored multiple times.

When I played my Wyleth, Soul of Steel deck a couple years ago, aiming for this was my primary goal. Coming in third after Commander Killing the player in fourth would give me points equal to first, and I was able to take that combination all the way to 4th place overall at the tournament.

I'm thinking I should try that one again. has got a lot more toys to play with since then....

But back to this year. I have plans.

+2 points for having your Commander stay on the battlefield for one full turn cycle.

A new rule for this year, one that influenced my choice for deck this year. You can only score this once per game, but it is a way to reward players for playing their commander that isn't casting them four times, while at the same time, avoiding punishing players that don't wind up casting it at all. And for Partners, this can still only be scored once total, not once per Commander.

+2 points for sending an opponents Commander back to the Command Zone. Once per Player, not per Commander.

Another new rule to encourage interaction, this one is a little more complicated as the actual rule is "Destroy, Exile, or cause to be Sacrificed. Returning to the hand does not count." Effectively, this is to help encourage people to interact with Commanders more directly, and is in opposition to the previous point award, very deliberately. You also can't generate the points by doing something to your own Commander, such as by removing all the loyalty counters from your Planeswalker Commander for an ability, or sacrificing it to Ashnod's Altar. And again, the point is per player, not per Commander to avoid punishing Partners.

+3 points for losing the game though an effect you control. This can only be scored if there are still two or more players left in the game.

New rule this year, which is interesting. Basically, casting Phage the Untouchable, or killing yourself on a City of Brass is rewarded for effectively going out in style. BUT, this only applies if there would still be two or more players left in the game in order to avoid too much gaming of the system by taking yourself out when you would take 2nd place. I'm not sure how often this will come up, but we'll see.

+3 points for killing a player via any means, who has a Jeweled Lotus in play, in the Graveyard, or in Exile.

Definitely a swing on the Sol Ring ban from last year, I suppose this one card, Jeweled Lotus may be enough of a problem for the free mana and being able to get a high-cost commander out on Turn 1?

I mean, it's not like I got one in the Commander Masters Box that my brother and his kids bought me for Christmas. I wasn't going to use it. No. Not me. Why would I? Not going to be an issue for me, I think.

-5 points for casting Thassa's Oracle.

No, no cheating out cheap wins like that. This also comes with the caveat that other such cards will receive similar punishments if they become a problem.

Look, it's not my fault that I was still thinking about Teferi, Temporal Archmage in the back of my mind, and how I can with with Thassa's Oracle or Laboratory Maniac or other such cards! Not mine at all! It was someone elses!

puts that plan away

So those are the points for this year. Some adjustments may occur, but for now, that's that. And that just leaves me with my play option....

THE DECK

Saheeli, the Gifted from the Commander 2018 Precons runs a Artifacts deck, and I spent about an hour Sunday morning rebuilding the card from my collection. I almost didn't find Duplicant and was worried I would have to get a replacement, but no, it was just out of order.

I chose this one because I have been playing the Commodore Gruff deck on and off since the summer, and while it's fun, there's this little card called The Immortal Sun that kinda shuts it down, hard. Note to self, go get one. And I've rolled out the Spellslinger deck early last year with Balmor, Battlemage Captain, and while I had fun with it, I was having doubts as to my ability to really make the precon sing.

Don't worry, Veyran, Voice of Duality, I have plans for you.

But rolling out with Saheeli serves an important purpose of being a Planeswalker, and one that creates a token creature with her +1. This means that killing her can be harder than usual, especially if I have another creature or two already in play, which means that I have a decent chance of getting those 2 points sooner, rather than later. There is a distinct lack of "Destroy Target Planeswalker" in a lot of these precons, so I think my odds are good.

Anyway, here is the deck list:

Saheeli Precon

Commander / EDH* samuriwerewolf

1407 VIEWS | IN 2 FOLDERS

I would like to thank samuriwerewolf for building that decklist. Thank you! And the rest of you should thank them too. It's only polite.

The deck has remarkably good internal synergy with all the artifacts involved, as including the Commander, there are only 28 coloured cards in the deck, and 38 lands. Meaning that I have 34 colourless cards that don't really care about my mana base, just that the mana is there. The curve is a little wonky, but works at being pretty flat in the to range. This means I shouldn't have to worry about mana screwing myself over the course of the tournament.

Planning ahead, I can see some easy cuts. While Enchanter's Bane seems like an easy slip, that we have the Enchantress Deck from this past summer fresh in people's memory seems like I may be hasty in cutting in Week 2. We'll see how the decks shake out.

But while there are a few cuts I want to still consider after seeing 9 opposing decks, I am already thinking about what cards to put in, and there are a few good options that immediately jump to mind.

You see, I see Saheeli in action, and what she does amazingly well, is cost reduction. Remember that her second +1 affects the next spell, not the next artifact. And with 38 lands and 11 mana rocks of various stripes, large-value spells aren't an issue. Which is what makes Blightsteel Colossus, Darksteel Colossus, Stratadon, Metalwork Colossus, Skitterbeam Battalion, Hulking Metamorph, Phyrexian Triniform, Triplicate Titan and Stonecoil Serpent all far more viable and reliable than they might otherwise be.

I think I'm going to take this deck in the direction of "HUGE STOMPY", and then have a side of Copy Artifact type effects in here. Saheeli's Artistry is already here, and it's a good start. But the brilliant thing about this sort of deck is that I can run a nice selection of STOMPY creatures to make my opponents miserable, but that doesn't discount also going wide with Servos and Thoptors. A single Hangarback Walker becomes anti-removal when you realize that it's just going to spill into a horde of tokens that are all flying. Survivors are right out though. Not even Jeff can complain when I cut Varchild from the deck to make room for good stuff.

Of course, I need to balance my threats with my responses. Cyclonic Rift is important, as will be Rite of Replication to additional resources. I don't want to go too much into control, and while some is fine, i want to ensure that I have the means to advance my gameplan rather than being too reactive to the plans of everyone else. Padeem, Consul of Innovation, Inventors' Fair... man, there's going to be so much fun stuff over the past five years that I'm going to have fun looking through and adding in.

And I still have Mechanized Production in my pocket to win with token copies, so there's that.

I know I'm not laying out a lot of details here and now, but it's an unavoidable part of this year as I'm not quite sure yet what I want to put in and what I want to take out - and in what order. That's going to be part of my week-by week responses.

So, if any of you have (good) suggestions, I'm more than willing to hear you out! Comment below!

And with that out of the way, join me next week when I talk about something else. What, I'm not sure yet, but it will be a thing.

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job (now), but more income is always better, and I can use it to buy cards! I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!