This week I’m going to be playing the deck from my last article, so for a discussion on what it’s doing and the card choices, just read that. As a refresher, here’s the list:
Creatures (6)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (25)
Spells (26)
How about some games?
This was an extremely close match, both when I won and when I lost, and I came out on the wrong side of it. I definitely didn’t play perfectly, as noted in the games, and they were close enough that it might have mattered, but I’m not completely sure. Nightbird’s Clutches is an interesting card choice that worked pretty well for him there. If you’re playing red, you might want to try it out.
This match brings me to 3-2 lifetime against Mono-Red Aggro, and I still feel pretty good about it. I do need to work out exactly which spells I want to leave in my deck against them though.
This guy was definitely not a “play to the bitter end” sort. I don’t know what he had or exactly what was in his deck, but neither of those games felt like they were completely over. It helped a lot that I drew my hate in game 2. That deck is scary.
I could definitely see wanting another Ground Seal of Grafdigger’s Cage in the sideboard instead of the Ray of Revelation, maybe even a Purify the Grave. It’s bad if I have Ground Seal and suboptimal if I have Grafdigger’s Cage, but I don’t need it if I have one of those in play. It gives me an answer that they can’t kill with Acidic Slime and might not see coming.
That guy’s deck was pretty awesome. I think he should have named Sphinx’s Revelation with Slaughter Games in game 2. Also, the fact that he generated all that mana and drew all those cards but it still wasn’t enough shows a lot about exactly how big you have to be prepared to go in this format. His deck didn’t have enough cards that mattered.
If he’d had a few more Duresses, Slaughter Games, or Rakdos’s Returns, he would have won easily, but he wasn’t set up for that kind of game. I also think he should be playing Disciple of Bolas, which he didn’t appear to have. Elixir might also help play the kind of game I’m playing, but I don’t know if it’s the best way to interact on that level.
Not a very exciting match. It’s hard to say much about the matchup based on a pair of games where my opponent didn’t do anything. I do think it’s generally the case that the decks that are attacking life totals often end up in extremely embarrassing situations in this format, but they are also pretty good at just running over people who stumble sometimes.
The Forest or second Cavern of Souls issue is also still somewhat undecided. That match featured some data points in favor of Forest, but the U/W/R Midrange deck is a pretty close matchup and uncounterable Thragtusks are extremely important there.
And that’s my deck in action.
Thanks for watching,
Sam
@samuelhblack on Twitter