I’m a bit late on reporting how Father’s Day went down but better late than never, I’ve been told. I’ll gloss over the fabulous brunch (fresh quiche & an assortment of croissants and pains au chocolat) and will focus instead on the gifts from the boys.

Noah reached deep into his Magic collection and put forward a challenge. He gave me a Gor Muldrak, Amphinologist. Not familiar with this field of zoology, I turned to Google to discover that Amphins are a race of salamander-like creatures that live on Shandalar, one of the many plains that exist in Magic. I do wonder though whether Gor Muldrak, let’s call him Gor for short, is a herpetologist. Perhaps he even knows Bennie Bracks the Zoologist or Lonis the Cryptozoologist. Okay, enough with the tangent.

So why did Noah give me Gor? He challenged me to build a new Commander deck with him as my commander. My first thought was that Noah wanted me to build a salamander tribal deck but with only 13 cards that mention these amphibians (aside from Gor), it was quickly clear that this was not even remotely possible.

I’m not sure what direction this deck will take but I suspect it may be a group hug kind of deck. Definitely not something that I normally play. Maybe coupled with lots of removal to ensure that all my new friends don’t have anything but salamanders on their boards.

Noah also gave me a few cards that he thought I would find useful, including a Shatterskull Charger for my Giants deck and a Legion Angel.

For his part, Christian got me a few cards from my wish list. Among those is a Goblin Matron, a Munitions Expert (for a future Goblins deck) as well as Clever Lumimancer and a Luminarch Aspirant. The former will likely end up in a Magecraft kind of deck while Luminarch is likely to make its way into my Atraxa deck. A Legion’s Initiative is headed into a future Commander deck that I will reveal when it’s done (I don’t want to say more in case one of the boys reads this entry).

We also managed to squeeze in a game of Commander in the afternoon. As always, it was good fun but, Father’s Day or not, both played with winning in mind (as it should be).

All in all, a perfect way to spend Father’s Day.