As some of the people in this community are aware I got the unique chance to move cross country with a 2 week break between when I left my old job and when I had to start my new one. This lead to me being able to travel to cEDH events across the country in New Jersey, Pennsylvannia, and Colorado and the chance to play in local game nights in Maryland, the state of Chicago, South Dakota, and California. Overall I gained lots of experience for tEDH that I wish to share since many people are either not interested in traveling to these places or do not have the spare time.
I want to fill in some context for this trip so people understand my approach to games, what the differences are between the games I was used to and the games I played in. I received a job offer back in August 2025 to move out to California and decided to plan a move starting October 31st and planned my route to hit different cEDH events different days of the week for a full week starting November 1st with the Play to Win hosted Cloud City event. The cEDH scene in Maryland is extremely underdeveloped with many people having a big interest in the scene but not many events firing frequently. The store I started out “Storm Crow Games” is in Eldersburg Maryland (Total population 30,314). The most consistent pods that fire that I could find in the year living in Maryland were there. Just 2 maybe 3 tables constantly firing on Wendsday nights. That’s not to say the player pool or skill is bad, just small. The “meta” that I was in consisted of a grixis core. 2 farm players and 1 Inalla specialist made up the bulk of my games. A Tymna/Thras, Gwennom, and Selvala specialist rounded out the consistent cast of who I played into. The other players I would see somewhat frequently included 2 kinnan players, an etali pilot and right when i was leaving a Lumra specialist (later found out to be in the top4 of scgcon Baltimore).
In this meta is where I forged a somewhat unique version of Rog/Thras. My version of the deck leans on Song of Creation, and general storm effects like Geralf to generate an overwhelming advantage and assemble a boardstate that can’t be picked apart. The deck is specifically resiliant against Orcish Bowmaster and Mayhem Devil which are normally viewed as a somewhat silver bullet vs a deck full of 1/1s. Original Decklist linked at the bottom, as well as what I would change and the new approach I have to games after this experience. Each “meta” I played in has a short paragraph and what I would called “noteworthy players” and pointers for the meta.
- New Jersey - Rewinding slightly I often had the chance to play some games with Kaslin, Zeekers, Tony, and Deekers of New Jersey fame. These guys specialize in RogThras and at the Pittsburg Steel city event Kaslin and I were matched in the open. On day 2 we sat down with some friends and decided to jam some games and compare notes on the deck. Kaslin’s approach to the deck was very different to mine. I prefer to play mainly within my turn and within my mainphase, think for a few minutes and try to execute a game winning line. Kaslin gave me some good pointers and showed me some holes in my gameplay by causing every game we played to end in a draw in conjunction with an Oswald pilot. Over the upcoming months I then played and tested new ideas on the New Jersey cEDH livestream and never won a game. Every time I have played on the livestream I have lost, sometimes to greedy keeps, sometimes to misplays. The New Jersey meta fundamentally is more midrange centric the meta I am used to playing into. There isn’t anyone who shows spellseeker and ends the game, there isn’t someone who shows their commander and offers a draw. The games are about the board and building an advantage, the stack and understanding interaction and who threatens you, and a few key moments where the game collapses. New Jersey fundamentally had an approach to the game that was slower, which my deck was not build to handle. Where my deck can present a win from minimal resources by building it at once, Kaslin’s deck constricts the game and plays many more interactive pieces to stop the game. When everyone else at the table is sitting there interacting and stopping advantage pieces from eachother understanding how the game will go in 2 turns time, and I am left trying to calculate how to play around 2 pieces of interaction, the window I normally try and look for was never was there to begin with. If I go for a win, each other player can negotiate and stop me. Sometimes these players would hold back interaction and reveal places where a counter-spell can be better used against themselves in order to gain micro-advantages. The stream games would prepare me for this trip though they would start my record at 0-7-0.
In this New Jersey meta I should’ve been more ready to talk. Looking back there was definitely some unwillingness to just show and discuss alternatives. Maybe it was the pressure from being on stream multiple nights, but overall I did needed to be more open in my politics game and be willing to share information.
- Pennsylvania - Cloud City. I am proud to say that I have been to enough of these play-to-win tournaments where players just come up to me and know me. While I’m not a local, I frequent the PA meta since the Maryland meta is so small. In PA there are many more noteworthy people and much bigger players. ComedIan MTG and I have been matched up in 7 back to back tournaments stretching back to February at Queen and Rook, before the play to win event (which he didn’t go to). Ryan Newburry (more well known for Flesh and Blood) was also at this event on Wandering Minstrel. Aeddon Lukkus was on his signature BlueFarm, Zach Nuggent was on RogThras as well. While the tournament had alot of names I recognized, I felt the most ready for this event. The players here were looking to Jam. Many players brought off meta decks looking to attack at weird times and angles. I played into Rakdos the Muscle, Wandering Minstrel, Max/Will, Tayam, and Najeela. Overall while my deck is slated to play into this turbo meta, variance seemed to not be on my side. Starting the day at 1-0-1 I ended the day at 1-3-1. I would summarize this tournament with “I talked but most other players didn’t.” Most of the players at each table were looking to do their own plan with the players making it to top16 being the ones willing to yap. Aeddon once again locked up his top 4 finish on BlueFarm for the 4th play to win event in a row. I got dinner with him afterwards to talk about his experience. He told me that the matchups were not great from his perspective either just doing basic blue farm things and outvaluing people at each table, until the finish line where kinnan won. Aeddon had the impressive feat of winning on a mulligan to 2 that event, but outside of topdecking a Mystic Remora T1, the event mainly comprised of people who talked and people who didnt bringing my record to 1-10-1 before my trip. At this point I also knew that I had finished the last local league I played in 2nd place overall, counting that league my record is 6-11-4
After discussing with Aeddon and Zach I realized my goals for the tournament were fundamentally flawed. Instead of looking for more explosive hands I should’ve played for hands that could definitely see a T3 and use the board to my advantage. The whole tournament was packed with greedy decks looking to play a parasitic game. I should’ve recognized this fact better and used my understanding of how my deck fits into that role better.
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Illinois - So I started my drive, originally I was going to travel to Tennesee, then to Illinois however some last minute stuff came up with my family so I had to start the drive to Chicago instead. I met up with a player named Josh to try and fire games of cedh in person. That night also happened to be a release night for a different TCG so we ended up not firing many games. I asked Josh about what the meta was and about some of the players. I learned about absolute legend Ral pilots and an overall faster meta. Josh himself had Sisay in paper as well as Stella Lee. He placed a large ephasis on winning over the top of other players and how he valued speed and winning from nothing. The Illinois meta sounded very parasitic and its a real shame I never got to play any proper games. Me and Josh ended up jamming Judge Tower for about an hour before getting a 1v1 cedh game on.
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South Dakota - Soix Falls would be my next stop to visit a player named “Basil”. Basil made it clear to me that the cEDH scene out there was almost non-existent. 2 pods in the whole state fire a week. Which is when he brought up a fascinating project and a slight detour from this trip. Basil works out of what I can only describe as a “Youth Wellness” camp for boys. To get the kids to socialize more and to talk with eachother, in conjunction with the TableTop Simulator community he created a “Youth Meta” for these boys to play amongst eachother. These decks are designed to encourage talking and be viable within their own bounds. This project is entirely insulated from the wider cedh scene and is more an experiment to encourage socialization. Zooming back out to my trip, Basil showed me his RogSi list, and we brewed for a night constructing different Naus lines and how to win through harder boardstates and different resources. We went to a casual commander night as a change of pace and I left for the next place.
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Colorado - Denver. Partway through the trip I received a message from a friend of mine about how the CritEDH league is based out of Denver. Her being a local decided to hit up one of the gamestore discords to where I was greeted to a wonderful text from Austin of the CritEDH league to play at his game night. So I did. I met up with my friend and together we participated in the CritEDH local meta. This meta is very similar to New Jersey however there are a few key differences. Players don’t bluff in the same way and information is much more open. In the first round I played a player (funny enough one of the moderators of CritEDH Logan) asked the table ”Can anyone show me a counterspell to not search for Naus.” The table going Silent for a second Logan says ”I don’t need to search a win if you guys can show me ill get stopped.” I jump in at this point and give him a face down Force of Will. At this point I did not have a blue card in hand and was trying to bluff him into getting a piece that could stop a 3rd player. We talk for a second and the 3rd player jumps in and goes. ”I’m going to simplify this and Misstep your tutor. I don’t think I will like anything you’re going to find and I’d rather get his interaction out of hand.” When he finished talking I realized my mulligan fundamentally didn’t work for what I was trying to achieve. The bluff failed and I showed Logan my entire hand with his tutor being countered. That game ended in a draw due to me being forced to hold up 5 mana for both the Force and an Otawara. Each game that night had some kind of political element like that that took several games to adjust to. Everyone going, ”This is scary, I can be less scary if you show me a reason. Lets talk about how scary we can all be.” I tried shifting my language around and eventually was able to find a good spot to win the last game I played of the night. But the political element to the game was distinctly different from everywhere else I played. People were trying to win from angles everyone else couldn’t see. Austin in game 2 manged to find a line that involved me sacrificing a stolen Ranger Captain of Eos via Apple of Eden in order to stop a 3rd player from casting Orim’s Chant so Austin could cast his Grand Abolisher through an on the stack YawgsWill and create discard triggers via an already played Necropotence to execute a Food Chain loop.
Not even the most complicated stack of the night. The Denver meta is sneaky and you best be familiar with the rules before you play there. If you’re not familiar with how the cleanup step works, I highly recommend looking into the comprehensive rules, specifically rules 514, 514.1, 514.2, 903.9, and 903.9a. Denver while not the fastest meta, was definitely one that was played with a higher skill ceiling than I’m used to, definitely lots to learn from the CritEDH guys. That night ended at 1-1-2 bringing my total to 7-12-6. As a silver lining though my friend who brought a Tayam list not updated since 2024 managed to go 2-1-1 that night ending with a top4 finish. Splitting the prizepool counts as a loss by the books, but I’d count that as a draw.
These games really made me reconsider my sequencing skills and my mechanical understanding of the game. The rules interactions between the game I played with Austin lead to me going onto a deep dive about the cleanup step to better understand when to interact. They also made me realize what my goals need to be for politicks. Everything needs to convey information and I need to be clearer with my goals for what I need from other players. Everyone is trying to win and understanding how I can utilize the board best to my advantage needs to be better understood. I will say I do think at this point “Variance” played a large role in the results of Denver, 3 games is not a large sample size and given how stacked the competition is there, I would need to play more games to better understand what to do to improve my deck and yap skills.
- California, Pasadena. After 61 hours of driving I made it to my final destination. Fishbowl had just passed and I got the chance to play against Sylvie, the winner of Fishbowl. Sylvie directed me to a coffee shop where I got to sit down and play into the very interesting pod of BlueFarm, TymnaDargo, Winnota, and myself for 3 hours. That first day I got absolute torn asunder with a neat 0-2-1 in friendly games. Sylvie is a very smart pilot who kept my deck in check and did not allow me to make a move for any of the games we played. Sylvie to no one’s surprise ran the show and won every game not drawn. After a couple days I managed to make it out to a proper game night where it wasn’t just 4 of us at a coffee shop. In that environment I collected another very nice 0-3-1. I played into Wayne Liu (the Zirda guy who won Birdcage) for every game, they won every game I played against them. I also played into the same BlueFarm player from 2 days prior, a derevi stan, and a wonderful Temeshi player. All of these players were fabulous, and the games were incredibly quick. Or at least decided quickly. the 4 games took just over 4 hours combined, most of them though were mostly determined on the smart mulligans of Wayne (finding key pieces and figuring it out from there) or core timing matchups. The one game I thought I could win I punted. BlueFarm just put Thoracle on the stack, and Temeshi answered with Orims Chant. BlueFarm responds with Consult exiling the whole thing. I made the mistake of after Consult not letting Orim’s Chant Resolve and instead cast Mindbreak trap immediately after Consult. This lead to the MBT being Flustered by the BlueFarm player. All I needed was a small amount of patience and It could’ve been stopped. The games in California were decided very quickly, by tutors sequencing and very little talking. I felt very out of place in these games coming off the backs of Denver where I talked until I lost my voice. This final night took my final tally to 7-17-8.
So all of that - over 6 days of driving 4.2k miles total - for a 21% winrate and a 25% draw rate. This experience has revealed some massive holes in my gameplay stemming from my habits built from playing into a meta where you just jam to win. I was unable to identify proper windows to jam in both slower and more developed metas, unable to sequence the stack correctly in a multiplayer setting and was unable to secure an even average record. This has left me with solid places to improve and a new fire to learn and improve my mechanics of the game. I’ve changed my deck to now support a better grind engine as well as be able to win from fewer required resources and through the suggestions of much better players than myself like Jonathan Vick have been able to make a build that keeps the storm focused design to thrive in metas dominated by faster bluefarms that split their gameplay between midrange and turbo.
Most players only share the wins, the massive successes, the highs of the format, the end result of a tournament sunrun. But this experience is something I know many people will not get. The ability to play in person and meet the people they only knew online. The people you meet online can teach you a huge deal about the game and can show you massive holes in your game if you take the time to look beyond the result.
I would recommend this experience to everyone, especially the losses.