The Ur-DragonThe Ur-Dragon Illustrated by Jaime Jones

Hello, and welcome to Am I the Bolas?

This column is for all of you out there who have ever played some Magic and wondered if you were the bad guy. I'm here to take in your story with all of its nuances so I can bring some clarity to all those asking, "Am I the Bolas?"

I'm ready to hear you out and offer advice. All you have to do is email [email protected] with your story, a pseudonym you want to use, and of course, only include details you don't mind in the column! You might see your story below one day. You might even hear it on the podcast. Which podcast?

THIS PODCAST!

I'm Mike Carrozza, the guy who's checking his watch riding this thing to space.

"The '8' button looks side-ways, but it should still work - what's taking so long???"

This week - Fine, I'll do it.

(Post edited for brevity, clarity, and then some.)

SUBMISSION

VERDICT

Thank you for writing and asking me to weigh in on your story. As I mention every week, if folks don't write to me, there's no column, so if you, the reader, want to send me a story, whether it's your own or one from Reddit or a friend's, please send it to [email protected] and I'll get to it here.

The Ur-DragonThe Ur-Dragon is the most popular commander according to EDHREC at the time of writing and is famously really strong considering it's a reduction for all your Dragons cards without even ever needing to play it from the command zone. Pair that with the Game Changers mentioned and it sounds like we've got a Bracket 3 minimum here.

No shade to you and James, but it sounds like your decks don't meet the same level as Finn's Dragon deck.

I mean, Transmogrifying WandTransmogrifying Wand is a sweet card, but it's often relegated to colorless Commander decks or theme decks like Bruse Tarl, Roving RancherBruse Tarl, Roving Rancher. It's in your Mardu token deck, so the theme of tokens remains, but these colors are famously so good at removing things with the likes of VindicateVindicate, Utter EndUtter End, and Anguished UnmakingAnguished Unmaking, among many, many others. The Wand is in over 15k decks according to EDHREC. It's not a bad card, but it's one that I'd personally leave off my lists as I would consider it outclassed in many cases.

This is an indicator to me that we're looking at this deck and James' deck as likely Bracket 1 or 2. So with Finn's deck automatically a Bracket 3, we already have an interesting discussion when players engage in inter-Bracket games and the inherent biases therein.

Bracket bias aside, you've got experience against this deck and have talked about how you and James both had to expend all of your removal on Finn's deck in previous games. Lucky break in this game since Finn's been mana flooded the whole time and this allowed you and James to actually set up your boards without having to spend your turns to remove more of Finn's pieces.

Finn playing The Ur-DragonThe Ur-Dragon after ramping into it and being flooded the whole game isn't as scary on its own. But consider that, with all the ramp and mana being available to him next turn, the big Dragon's attack trigger, plus the likelihood of Finn drawing something he can play next turn, on top of the dwindling number of lands left in his deck - leaving this creature alone can't benefit you for too long.

You can probably buy some good will by letting it stick, which means it's going to hit the only other direction available...for now.

James was asked not to remove the Dragon. By not removing Finn's commander, James is probably hoping to have The Ur-DragonThe Ur-Dragon swing your way and buy him some time. Personally, if my opponent played a nine-mana Dragon that can draw cards and put permanents into play for free, if I had the means to remove it, I'd probably do that. James being convinced to let Finn have the Dragon is either a way to try to curry favor with the more powerful player to get them off his back or someone opting to allow a player to have their fun.

The guilt (for the lack of a better word) of having removed most things from Finn's board over the course of the evening coupled with Finn's mana flooding this game may have influenced James in his Wand targeting. Not to mention the outright request of allowing Finn to let The Ur-DragonThe Ur-Dragon's trigger to go off, I think I'll stick with "guilt" being the right word here. That said, I'm not sure why he decided to use it on your Oakhame AdversaryOakhame Adversary, but okie dokie.

You were pushed to react. Rather than saving the Adversary, you made the decision to keep the player with the biggest threat in check. In terms of gameplay, you identified that your opponents have struck an agreement and you had something you could do about it. Are you playing to win? Yeah? Then great job, this is the right move. Way to go. If this had been a pattern in previous games and Finn had not spent those games dropping card after card on board, maybe there'd be an element of "let him have a little fun," but Finn's fun was had those other games, I'm sure, and maybe his fun meant that you spent your games having to remove his stuff instead of getting to have your fun, right?

Requesting that your opponents let you get your attack trigger off because they "kept killing" your commander in other games is basically dropping the conceit of there being a win on the line. If you oblige, then the game's win gets an asterisk of "if I had killed it like I wanted to." If that's the game you're playing, by all means, go for it, but that discussion was had with James and not you RRI, so you're perfectly justified in your decision.

However, you had a way to protect the Adversary and you could have used the Thrash after letting Finn get his big trigger. The verdict isn't straightforward. I don't think you're the Bolas because if you were playing to win, your threat assessment is correct. You still had the ability to be lenient and then nip that in the bud with a delay, but ultimately, if the win is important to you, then this isn't the way.

If you had decided to let it slide, this would have been fine, too. I don't think Finn scooping and leaving is great, but also it's fair. I don't blame Finn for wanting to find a game that'll match his power level. Furthermore, I think he'd benefit from a full pod, like you all would.

I guess the verdict really depends on how I'm feeling because I could lean either way and, when reading this submission a few times leading up to writing this, I'd had strong feelings in both directions. Today, I'm thinking not the Bolas.