Overhauls

I took Undisputed Attitude out on Monday and won against three other players.

That's pretty wild, since I shouldn't have won this game; vs Elf mana ramp into Eldrazi (piloted by stonethorn), mono-U Illusions (piloted by someone I just met), and W/B tokens, piloted by Merrick. There's something very interesting to me about winning that game from a philosophy perspective which I'm going to talk about next time.

What I want to mention here is starts with this: I build every deck I talk about in meatspace. I occasionally put something into Cockatrice to test and then acquire the necessary cards to build it but everything I make actually exists. I don't have online decks that run cards I don't actually own. This is helpful for two reasons: first, it gives me double the opportunities to test my decks. Some of my friends don't live in town and playing online is the only way we can do it. Second-and directly related to the point-is that the Cockatrice decklists give me a way to store my data. I don't have to remember every little deck, I copy/paste my decklists from Cockatrice into this blog.

However, I also have to keep the changes I make to one consistent with the other and in this particular instance, I discovered that I was running a deck with only 21 lands (missing Urborg Volcano) and an additional Festering Goblin. This changes things a bit, because I have more room than I thought I did--and starts to explain why this deck may be having issues: I wasn't supporting it properly!

So first, I had to right that ship, adding back the Urborg Volcano to put me to 22 lands. Next, I got some kick ass suggestions in the comments of my last post that made me reevaluate this deck further.

Though I didn't have time to incorporate them all, Grixis Grimblade and Jund Hackblade definitely need to be tested and while Jund seems more aggressive, the Grixis seems more threatening. An Anathemancer or two might be cut to give them a run. I do like the Anathmancer: It's a wider metagame call. It won't always be good, but when it is...

I also discovered that I only had one Sign in Blood, not two and only one Manaforge Cinder. The upside is that I was able to incorporate Indigo.Righter's suggestion of Pyre Zombie quite easily. I only have one of those but what a great idea! Like Lyzolda, the Pyre Zombie could help give this deck a little reach when the ground game stalls out and though the mana requirements to get a loop going are rather steep, my hope is that with an aggressive deck like this, I don't have to recur the zombie many times; once will do the trick.

Plus, since Pyre Zombie is pretty cheap, it gets under the My Money > Less of My Money rule, so I'll probably pick up one more to replace an Anathemancer.