I played one of the most epic and fun games last Thursday at Guardian Games‘s EDH night. A game that not only taught me the importance of having answers, but the importance of holding back on the most disruptive answers. It was a game that encapsulated the lesson imparted by this article by Adam Styborski about the importance of dialing down the heat to facilitate fun games.

I was piloting my Savra deck, which honestly doesn’t do much other than look threatening. It’s really resilient to board wipe and it’s able to barf up tokens on a surprisingly consistent basis (oh [card]Golgari Germination[/card], I love you sooooooo much, but not as much as I love the combination of [card]Phyrexian Tower[/card] and [card]Phyrexian Reclamation[/card], or [card]Avenger of Zendikar[/card] and [card]Nim Deathmantle[/card]). But win conditions? Psh. Who needs win conditions? This is a Savra deck without a [card]Grave Pact[/card]. Also in the game: a [card Wrexial, the Risen Deep]Wrexial[/card] deck, a [card Thraximundar]ThraxiFUNdar[/card] deck, a [card]Kira, Great Glass-Spinner[/card] built solely of rares, and a [card Doran the Siege Tower]Doran[/card] control deck with a hearty helping of tokens on the side.

The game started off with several explosions. The Wrexial deck ramped into a [card]Knowledge Exploitation[/card] , targeting the Thrax deck, and cast [card]Damnation[/card] to sweep the board clean. A few turns later, after those of us playing creature-focused decks started establishing more of a board presence, Wrexial swung for the Thrax deck, hit, and used Wrexial’s triggered ability to cast Damnation again. After that move, I didn’t play too many creatures, instead focusing on making Savra do that thing she does by playing [card]Ashnod’s Altar[/card] and [card]Reassembling Skeleton[/card]. When I topdecked [card]Perilous Forays[/card] and [card]Demonic Tutor[/card], I knew things were going to get real interesting.

The Wrexial deck bowed out soon thereafter, and with one control player gone, the board started getting downright nutty. I cast my Perilous Forays, which raised some eyebrows but didn’t cause undue alarm. I successfully baited a counterspell with [card Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre]Ulamog[/card], only to have my graveyard hated into oblivion with [card]Tormod’s Crypt[/card] before his enters-the-graveyard trigger could resolve. My next turn, I used my Demonic Tutor to fetch and cast (entwined, of course) [card]Tooth and Nail[/card] to grab my [card]Primeval Titan[/card] and [card]Avenger of Zendikar[/card], and then used the Titan to fetch my [card]Phyrexian Tower[/card]. These moves caused considerably more alarm.

And then the cycle of Blowing Everything Up, All The Time started. [card]Decree of Pain[/card] from the Thrax deck. Damnation from me (hey, all the kids were doing it, and I wanted in). [card]Izzet Chronarch[/card] to fetch [card]Decree of Pain[/card], which was promptly cast again. [card]Decree of Pain[/card] from me, except the Kira deck copied it with [card]Sigil Tracer[/card] so I didn’t get to draw any cards. I didn’t care, because I was sacrificing one third of my critters to the Ashnod’s Altar, then using the mana and the rest of the critters to fetch all of my basic lands with [card]Perilous Forays[/card]. (By the time the game ended, I had almost 30 lands on the table.)

The Doran Deck got out a [card]Mimic Vat[/card] and succesfully stole and imprinted a [card]Cytoplast Manipulator[/card] from the Kira deck, which I then [card Putrefy]Putrefied[/card]. The Kira deck started building a little army of wizards spearheaded by [card]Azami, Lady of Scrolls[/card]. The Doran deck cast [card]Genesis Wave[/card] for 34, only to be stopped cold by a [card]Time Stop[/card]. And then I topdecked [card]Eternal Witness[/card] and [card]Phyrexian Reclamation[/card], which meant my recursion shenanigans became truly epic—I was able to sac my Witness to resurrect her to bring back any card I wanted, and I had enough mana to do this a couple times and cast what I wanted. [card]Oblivion Stone[/card] made an appearance, TWICE, which slowed me down a little, but then [card]Deadwood Treefolk[/card] poked his  his head up to say hi on my side of the field, which meant [card]Eternal Witness[/card] was back in the game, which meant more [card]Tooth and Nail[/card] shenanigans and yet another appearance of Phyrexian Reclamation, this time with extra [card]Nim Deathmantle[/card] tomfoolery.

The interesting was, I think I probably could’ve won the game if I’d bothered to fetch my [card]Terastodon[/card] with one of the two or three times I cast my Tooth and Nail. Given the ease and frequency with which I was blowing stuff up and then resurrecting them, and the large  amount of lands I’d managed to throw on the battlefield, I could’ve smashed a good amount of non-creature permanents, killed the Terastodon and the elephant tokens with Decree of Pain, and used my Eternal Witness and Phyrexian Reclamation to continually kill, recast and re-kill the Terastodon and its elephant tokens. But each time I searched my library, I flipped past him without hesitation. I wanted to play to have fun. I wanted to play to be hilarious. [card]Grave Titan[/card] and [card]It That Betrays[/card] were far more flavorful and fun choices. Terastodon would’ve ratcheted the stress up to unfun levels.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t trying to win. When the Thrax deck drew into its infinite combo with [card]Palinchron[/card], [card]Sneak Attack[/card] and [card]Capsize[/card], I blew up the [card]Sneak Attack[/card] with my [card]Krosan Grip[/card] to kill the combo. But more important than actual victory, was a fighting chance at victory. And I don’t want to downplay the importance having a chance at winning had on my enjoyment. See, there’s a unique soul-crushing feeling that swamps me when I’m playing against a deck nobody at the table has a chance against. It becomes an exercise in futility. Around turn 7 or 8, when it becomes increasingly clear that there’s no point in playing spells because everybody’s stuff is going to be blown up/exiled/sacrificed/not resolve in the first place/never untap again, I enter a depressive fugue: I go through the motions because there might be a sliver of a chance that things will turn around, but deep inside, I know I won’t recover. It’s a completely different experience from going up against four other decks of varying power levels, with different ways of achieving victory, without any of the decks dominating the others. In the latter circumstance, playing becomes a truly interactive experience, and I have so much fun casting spells, winning becomes, if not irrelevant, then auxiliary to the pleasure I derive from the game. When the Thrax deck found another way to go infinite, I didn’t begrudge my loss a single bit. I shook everybody’s hands with genuine pleasure, and we laughed over how often we wiped the board, and the number of times I managed to drag my Phyrexian Reclamation back from the graveyard.

And I think that’s a good lesson for me to have learned. My Timmy and Spike sides have been struggling for primacy in the past few weeks, and I was afraid I was going to end up building decks like a Timmy and but sporting a Spike attitude while playing. It’s nice to know that when the situation calls for it, I can leave the elephants behind.