RIW Hobbies & Games

The RIW Experience

posts Sunday, Aug 10 2025 7:32PM 0Comments Dave Vader

The RIW Experience

I had been excited about this for months, but it became real in that “this is happening” way (instead of the “that would be nice” way) in the airport, when I saw my family waiting for me. They had driven down from their home in upstate Michigan to spend the weekend playing Pauper Commander (or PDH) with me in Livonia.

I am very into PDH. In a big way. My family is connected to the format more tangentially. My brother Lee plays kitchen table games with his sons Max and Alex in 3-person pods which sometimes makes the math pretty awkward. Max, 12, likes to see how many zombies he can make in a turn, and really likes to see how many times he can cycle Gempalm Polluter in a turn. Alex, 10, who wasn’t able to join us in Livonia, mostly likes big dinosaurs. My father, Steve, has been playing magic nonstop since 1995 – he taught my brother and I how to play when we were little – but he actively avoids multiplayer formats. Only having one opponent makes decision-making much more straightforward.

As we were all standing around the checked luggage carousel waiting for the carryon that JetBlue had taken from me as I boarded, Lee said “hypothetically, if someone were about to jump into their first ever competitive PDH event, what kind of threats should that person look out for? Asking for a friend.” I told him to tell his friend about how abruptly a Freed from the Real can end games in Gretchen or Weavers decks, and that one should never suffer a Malcolm to live. That if the Dargo + Kediss player was attacking the combo player, the removal should get pointed at Kediss, not Dargo. About killing Abdel with Cloudshift on the stack. He asked good questions, I tried to answer with my best guesses about what the Pauper Championships would be like. I was half right.

Lee needed to know about threats because he was going to be piloting Toggo + Halana, a control deck full of deathtouchers and rocks that gets to choose what lives and what dies until it runs out of rocks. The rocks are plentiful but not unlimited, so a lot of decisions need to be made about where to deliver them, which requires a lot of format knowledge about what the competitive scene looked like. Max’s Tormod + Ghost deck is more about turbo-zombies than control, so there weren’t a lot of decision points there. The flowchart is a straight line:

Screenshot 2025-08-10 at 6.31.29 PM

My dad’s case was the trickiest – his relative inexperience with multiplayer politics meant I needed to set him up with a deck that was powerful enough to meaningfully impact games, but still accessible in a way didn’t involve memorizing complex combo lines. How do you hand someone a combat deck while ensuring they won’t have to wade through tablewide discussions about where he should or shouldn’t attack? The answer is: you let the cards tell you where to attack, with Veteran Soldier + Amber. Amber always knows where to go, and the soldiers she makes also go places all on their own. Impact Tremors involves no decision-making. It was perfect.

My own deck decision was similarly guide-railed. The PDH RC has been experimenting with occasional Break the Rules Month ‘BtRM’, where we encourage folks to experiment with deck building ideas that aren’t strictly legal but seem fun. July, the month of RIW’s Pauper Championships, was “uncommon vehicles are legal commanders” month. While we on the RC encourage exploration, we’re very clear that we’re not in charge of tournaments, and that tournament rules are up to tournament organizers. RIW Hobbies Tournament Organizer Jon is an awesome and delightful human who loves Break the Rules Month as much as I do, so he greenlit vehicles for this event. All five RC members work on and contribute to BtRM, but I’m something of an unofficial “Lead Designer” on the project. I had to represent a vehicle. There was no other choice. Which is how I found myself behind the steering wheel of the Rocket Booster Baby Bumber Buggy, making treasures and digging for an Atog to Fling.

The four of us made it to the hotel room pretty late, after much excited discussion about what tomorrow was going to look and feel like. We had picked up a set of Edge of Eternities pre-release kits from RIW on the way, but were too tired to crack them that night. I traded my dad the Amber + Veteran Soldier deck for a sandwich, I ate the sandwich (it was delicious), and we all got some rest for the big day.

The big day 2025 was not as big as the big day 2023, but we still had a great turnout: 18 players plus two supporters in the form of Derek (of the RC) and Brad (of the PDH Pod) running pickup games. The 18 players included a lot of local players I had never met before but who are awesome people and I was delighted to share games with, like Jackson and Scott and Jenna and JD (a lot of J-names in Livonia, I learned). I was also delighted to see the faces of some online community members that I’ve been friends with for years, like Bobby and Ankylosaur and of course Jon himself.

As I expected, the games were outstanding. All day long I experienced the perfect mix of tight high-level play and friendly vibes: players got sent to their graves with smiles on their faces and jokes on their lips having played a good game with no mistakes. Table discussions were lighthearted but honest. Friends were made. Salt was conspicuously absent. I’ve never had a better time at an all-day competitive event.

The games weren’t even the best part. RIW fired up the grill and invited us all to feast on an absurd quantity of fresh hot dogs, bratwurst, chips, cookies, and sodas, all on the house. And that also wasn’t the best part. The best part of PDH is consistently the community, and RIW’s event was no exception. We’re not all the best magic players (some of us never learned how to read) but among all the people I’ve played magic with, PDH keeps me in the company of the best people.

It’s unclear whether my family listened closely to the hit-list I offered them the night before or if they’re just unreasonably skilled magic players, but both Steve and Lee 2-0ed the first two rounds. Amber kept turning sideways to both make bodies and draw cards, and the rocks got chucked at threats and faces alike until there was none left of either. Steve took his first loss in round 3 to Lee, who moved up to 3-0 and a guaranteed seat in the top 4. Lee didn’t need to win round 4, but he won it anyway, on principle. Steve drew in round 4 to also earn a guaranteed seat in the finals. Three other players went to tiebreakers to fill the other two seats in the top 4: JD on a Crypt Rats deck he borrowed from Jon when he showed up expecting a pre-release and was ambushed by a Pauper Commander Championship event instead, Ankylosaur on a Lorehold Apprentice list that he’s won events with in the past, and Bobby on this Gretchen deck that he built with no basic islands after the 17th time I “joked” about banning islands. Tragically, Bobby’s tiebreakers were the worst, and he landed in 5th place, sending Ankylosaur and JD to the finals.

The finals were streamed on twitch.tv/riwhobbies, so someone probably got a real good look at how that game went, but that person wasn’t me. I was busy playing pickup games with Brad and Derek, as well as my nephew Max, who did about as poorly in the event as I did, but had as much fun as I had. Every 25 minutes or so I’d look up at the Twitch stream and see another player had been eliminated: first JD, then Ankylosaur, finally Steve after the Boros Garrison he needed to recast Amber ate a Cleansing Wildfire because Lee is a monster. And that was it!

At the end of the day, Lee concluded his first PDH tournament in first place with a dominating 5-0 record, using a deck his kids never let him play because it’s too oppressive but that I suggested years ago would make a fun tournament build. Steve solidified second place with a deck he had never seen or heard of until he traded a sandwich for it the night before the event. JD secured 4th place with a deck he borrowed from Jon that morning, and Ankylosaur enjoyed 3rd place with a deck he’s had great success with in the past. The four of them split the prize pool, which was $10 more than the tournament’s total revenue: RIW would’ve lost money on the event even without giving us all free delicious food. They do it because they know what I know: that the PDH community is incredible, and that investments into incredible communities are good investments.

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