Bringing a knife to a tank fight

I’m a somewhat new father, which is awesome — other than the fact that I barely have time to play Commander anymore. As a result, I like to bring cards on the rare occasion I travel for work just in case I have time to pop over to an LGS and get in some games.

Well, after that never happening for a whole year, it did this week. But when I called the LGS to see if anyone was in, they said it was their weekly Commander tournament.

I knew exactly what that meant and the corner of my mouth twitched just a bit. I don’t own a CEDH deck and just brought casual fun. So if I went, I knew what I was getting into. But I’m desperate. I get in a cab and head over.

I have to take a round one loss because I’m late. But round 2 I lose to food chain after a 20 minute turn spent hoping the player could set it up. Because someone else dropped an early blood moon, I had only casted one creature all game.

Then the next round seemed to go a bit better because there was some gy hate at the table. I actually built a board and seemed in a decent spot. Then the GY player removed the hate and won on the spot. They said they would have on turn 3 without the hate.

And I knew this would happen! But man, it still felt a little disappointing. It sort of soured me on the whole format, too, because everyone seemed to just be going for their own insular, greedy combo in a race to the finish.

Does anyone have any experience trying to play up to CEDH decks? Was my experience not representative of the format? I just want to be prepared if the same kind of situation happens again.