The Thief Is Cautious

Playing Chop Shop is an exercise in patience when playing vs other Blue decks. This is almost in opposition to the hurried quality that I need to execute when playing other creature decks; if I cannot get something online and rolling, I am in big trouble against Red or Green, for example.

But against Blue, I have to pick my battles wisely. In the photo, I've achieved a stalemate in that game because I managed to resolve a Veldaken Shackles whilst Noah was tapped out. I later had a second Shackles countered and soon after, I lost the game.

To my credit, I knew there was countermagic and I tried (and succeeded) in baiting it out with other cards. However, in the end Noah had more counters than I did and was able to save one last to keep a card that presented huge problems for him off the board.

Commandeer also continued to prove itself; in one game taking over a Ponder that allowed me to set my deck up while denying Noah the same and in a three player game, retargeting a critical spell that would have been bad for me to something that made it bad for someone else.

What's odd about Chop Shop is that I don't really feel like there are cards I should abandon. I haven't been terribly disappointed by the cards I've had in hand and unlike many decks I've been working with, I don't know that there have been qualitatively better cards printed for me to use than the ones I have. It's all about using the tools I have to make the best of it. I do that, I have a chance. It's just weird to play a deck and not want to make a whole bunch of changes.