Player Glances at Graveyard, Gets Pinged by Syr Konrad
Philadelphia, PA — Hours into a grueling Commander game, a player made the fatal misplay of briefly looking at her graveyard while Syr Konrad, the Grim was in play.
“I’m…still not sure what happened,” Rose Watermark said, clearly still shaken from the experience. A blanket was wrapped around her shivering form as she sat outside the LGS where the incident occurred. “Doesn’t that card just trigger off creatures dying or something? And maybe one or two other things.”
The first ping–which brought Ms. Watermark down to 10 life–was nothing unusual. Her opponent sacrificed Doomed Traveler to Altar of Dementia, something she’s seen a hundred times. The Altar milled a creature off her opponent’s deck, prompting another Konrad trigger and bringing her to 9 life. Watermark said that she had to take a second look at Syr Konrad, as she didn’t remember all of the trigger conditions.
“I looked, because reading the card explains the card, but it was so confusing,” she said. “It was just one long sentence listing out a bunch of conditions. I mean, I guess what happened could’ve been one of them?”
Watermark’s opponent, who fled the scene and is yet unidentified, proceeded to sacrifice the rest of their board to the Altar of Dementia, save for Syr Konrad. By the time all of that had resolved, Watermark was at 3 life, and her opponent had an Archon of Cruelty sitting at the top of their graveyard.
“At that point, I knew my chances were slim, but I had a Ghost Vacuum to exile the Archon, and if they passed the turn, I had lethal on board.” Of course, unbeknownst to her, Konrad triggered off of the Archon leaving the graveyard, leaving Watermark at only 2 life.
“I was in shock,” she said about the event. “I thought, how many conditions does this stupid card have? And I asked that very thing. Turns out, asking about Syr Konrad’s ability is one of the conditions, so then I was down to 1.”
Ms. Watermark’s opponent passed the turn, paving the way for her to swing in for lethal. However, before she declared her attackers, her eyes quickly darted to her opponent’s graveyard.
“And then they just said, ‘Konrad trigger, good game,’ as if that made any sense. I was just trying to assess the board state. I didn’t mean to look, I promise I didn’t.” Ms. Watermark, drinking soup given to her by the LGS staff while she recovered outside, refuses to even look at the card now. “I assume anything I do will ping me for 1, so I just won’t do anything. It’s…it’s safest that way.”
Syr Konrad was available for comments, but unfortunately didn’t have any room for flavor text. He did ping me for asking, though.
