30 Turns

Something really isn't right when one goes through half the deck before finding a reset. Yet, there I was, counting the cards left in Here Comes The Butchers, trying to figure out why in the name of Belzebozo I was unable to get a Death Cloud, astounded that the game vs stonethorn and the drowning man was going so long.

The former was playing his angels deck, the latter a U/R deck that got mana screwed twice: the first time in the first 30 turns of the game, the second time when I cast Death Cloud for 10 (TEN!).

stonethorn still had 25 life after I Clouded. It took persistent Spawning Pool beats to bring him within range, with special assistance from Puppeteer Clique. But it worked and eventually I was able to pull out the win, despite making a lame mistake in the penultimate turn.

We did not play a second game. Sometimes, it's better to just let that matchup go.

My second game was against the same U/R deck the drowning man was running as before and a black/red Heartless Summoning deck by stonethorn. I chose...Oak God. Which I said last week: Will suck against Red decks. And boy, did I ever suck.

My mana sources got whacked and I drew too many lands--8, I believe, which is nearly half--without getting any kind of card draw or boo-ya (Genesis Wave.) Eventually, I died to fliers--a possibility I have never taken into consideration with this deck and because it's a green deck, I usually do.

But combo decks don't care about such things and so Oak God is still on the table for play, since I don't know if it's functioning well yet. I don't want to remove more lands but maybe that is the way to get it to work.

Unfortunately, since the first game took so long, my sample data is weaksauce. Improvements to Butchers do seem positive (Spawning Pool is a good fit for sure!) but I never got to check out the other two decks and I certainly didn't get to run them through some paces. Must keep them in the hopper for more testing.