Concrete Shoes

stonethorn and I got some games in online over the weekend and he recorded them. You can watch me lose every game we played, here. The sound can be a little wonky and it's over an hour long, so I don't blame you for not viewing it but I've already found it useful.

For example, at about 6 minutes in I should have attacked with the Spark Elemental and in response to the activation of Cartel Aristocrat, I should have Incinerated the Aristocrat. I know what my thought process was-I was trying to bleed him out of creatures but it was the wrong gameplan. He has synergestic but not impressive creatures after the Aristocrat, until turn 5 when the Archangel of Thune arrives, so I should have done everything I could to kill it.The rest I could have rolled over, if I'm up to speed.

The main point however, is this: I got hammered in every game and that's a bad sign.

I also got a few games in against Fuz's G/B Darkest Hour/Elephant Grass deck. We split 1-1 before I had to go but in both games, I struggled.

No offense to Fuz's deck but I shouldn't have. I should have hammed the hell out of that deck. If his turn 1 and 2 plays are those enchantments, and my turn 1 and 2 plays are evil creatures, I ought to get some damage in and grind him out while he spends all his mana on cumulative upkeep (which is one reason I won the game I did.)

I think I understand what may be wrong: Dirty Deeds was built in the Dark Times, before creatures were good, when spells and removal were kings. Small creatures hitting hard made sense because you could overwhelm them rapidly, setting up and endgame before they were ready.

Now, a lot of decks have small, viable, resilient creatures and I'm probably not maximizing what I am using, especially as far as Horned Kavu is concerned.

The problem is that I have to deal with two worlds now: the NWO, where stonethorn and Noah live, and the Old Skool, where Jason and Fuz make things like Darkest Hour or Leveler + Endless Whispers decks. I'm not sure I can build something that can be compatible with both worlds and emerge victorious, without just loading every insane R/G card I own into this deck.

I don't want to do that: I think I'm going to have to focus more on one or the other world and accept that there is a set of bad matchups. But I'm not going to let 'bad' mean 'unwinable', so it's time to do some research.