Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda

The next eight games were an exercise in despair.

Here's a fine example of what happened: In Match 3 against Fuz playing a (very clever) U/G combo:
Turn 2 Battlement, against...Amoeboid Changeling? I have no idea what I'm in for.

Then the Ludvec's Test Subject appears. I cast the Lodestone Myr and wait. Changeling gives the Test Subject all creature types, Moonmist is cast and I take 13.

Fuck.

The dumbest board state ever.

In game 2, I end up with all three Tanglecords in hand. A good sign, right? I should be able to create time. The Amoeboid shows up, I drop the other two walls and have this thought; Seriously, this is the dumbest board state I may have ever seen. EOT Brainstorm from Fuz.

This leads to a Test Subject, Moonmist in the same turn.

Double Fuck.

I bring the deck to Jason to test. He's taken to riffing on my idea, playing W/G Exalted and games go a little like this:

Game 2: I have a Overgrown Battlement, no Forests, in my opening, so I keep, hoping Turn 2 Howling Mine will help. It doesn't: Aven Squire vs Furnace Celebration is the board. I get a Myr, he has a Sigiled Paladin to my Wall of Tanglecord (without G!) Then he has a Battlegrace Angel and I'm looking at 8 a turn in the air.

Match 2: vs Bloodchief discard, with U for special 'suck it, bitches.' A highlight:
Game 2: I get a Myr, which does some early work but soon the Recoils and Jace's Phantasms arrive and I get a solid kicking and die.

My frustration level is very, very high with this deck. Jason wants me to cut Slobad and put in Crawlspace, whack the Heretics so I can move up to four Hellkite Tyrants. I want to like his idea but I just don't see how it's going to help me. Am I being blind to new ideas because I'm that depressed?

It strikes me, after days of dwelling on it, that Bulletproof's redundancies don't help me. It's necessary to run four Mycosynth Lattices because I need them to show up. After the first one, though, they don't do anything. I am frustrated by drawing extra Krark-Clan Ironworks, because I only need one to win, whereas I would not be frustrated by drawing multiple Squires because they, at least, have a greater impact in multiples. My opening hands all suck: I haven't had one that I felt good about since I started this series.

What does adding more Crawlspace do for me? Adding in another Tyrant wouldn't suck of course but again: if I don't get enough time to win with one, how does adding a third or fourth help?

Is it time to give up and call this one a failure? There is a point of 'why bother'.

After pouring through cards for a few hours, I think I'm going to remove 2 Slobad, 2 Heretic, up the Shattering Spree by one and add in 3 Mizzium Mortars. If time is what I need and mana is something I have in abundance, then the Mortars may be my best shot at getting there. Useful in the early and late games and my creatures don't die to it, I am hard pressed to think of a better solution.

For the time being, I'm going to set this aside. It'll stay in the box for me to play against the crew but I'm going to let it go as far as the blog is concerned, at least for now. Current decklist:

4 Furnace Celebration

4 Krark-Clan Ironworks

4 Mycosynth Lattice

4 Howling Mine

4 Lodestone Myr

2 Hellkite Tyrant

3 Wall of Tanglecord

4 Overgrown Battlement

1 Viashino Heretic

1 Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer

3 Shattering Spree

3 Mizzium Mortars

10 Mountain

5 Forest

4 Great Furnace

4 Tree of Tales