{"ops":[{"insert":"When I read the challenge, I immediately went to go look for 'loses the game' cards, and while I was browsing I stumbled back onto "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Triskaidekaphobia"}},{"insert":" and it caught my heart immediately. I already knew I wanted to bring some Halloween energy to the October contest and the "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"deadly number 13"},{"insert":" was perfect. I quickly scooped up "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Tree of Perdition"}},{"insert":" because of the easy synergy with my main win-con and since it had been on my mind recently with the new art. I started by looking at Rakdos commanders, ala, "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls"}},{"insert":" and "},{"insert":{"card-link":"The Lord of Pain"}},{"insert":" since they satisfied that 'spooky' itch I was feeling with this deck. But while that would allow me to do some even jump-scarier things like "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Heartless Hidetsugu"}},{"insert":" and "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Hidetsugu's Second Rite"}},{"insert":" or the ability to control life totals with X spells. But Rakdos lacked the suddenness that I wanted with Triskaidekaphobia so I tried adding blue but I couldn't find a commander that would let me control life totals as accurately as I wanted. \n\nThen I found "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Obyra, Dreaming Duelist"}},{"insert":": Subtle, basic, boring even. And the pieces clicked. Obyra puts me in careful control of my opponents' life, using some small pings and small creatures I can usually control exactly how much I'm dealing. But the best part is that Obyra is Faerie commander, and a pretty basic one at that. No-one bats an eye when the faerie player plays flash enablers like "},{"insert":{"card-link":"High Fae Trickster"}},{"insert":", that's like half of what faeries are! No-one thinks is weird when the faerie player casts "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Notorious Throng"}},{"insert":" and takes another turn, you're playing the kindred with the extra turn spell, why wouldn't you play it? And then BAM! Flash in Triskaidekaphobia on your end step, get you to 13 on my combat, then throng to kill you on my upkeep.\n\nBut once I had thought of this, it got me thinking, I'm in blue, so I might as well stick with the 13 theme and run the other Trisky in "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Triskaidekaphile"}},{"insert":". And it's not just tacked on, either. Because we're playing a kindred deck, I get access to a lot of cards that let me draw when faeries attack, deal damage, or enter like "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Kindred Discovery"}},{"insert":". Since we can control these, we can pretty easily sneak up to 13 (or 14) cards, cast it on the opponent before ours' endstep, almost certainly win the game. If you're really extra, bring a buzzer with thunder on it to play up the reveal, lol. It's at least thematically correct for Triskadekaphile.\n\nAnd then, of course, the other thing you've likely already noticed. The running theme in the deck. Four of our categories have exactly 13 cards. Now, some cards could pull double duty, but I arranged them based on their primary role. 13 Removal pieces, 13 draw pieces, 13 ramp pieces, and 13 cards that allow us to keep saying we are a faerie deck. But further than that even, (despite how much it hurt my heart to not optimize my basics), we have 13 "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Island"}},{"insert":"s, 13 "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Swamp"}},{"insert":"s, and 13 nonbasic lands in the deck. There's also 5 secret instances of 13 left yet to find on the page. Btw, guess what the word count and character count here are divisible by.\n"}]}