The Old Ways Are Sometimes The Best Ways

After a few days of pounding my head against the wall for a proper reset button (including attempting to remember what Decree of Pain was named and which set it was in-I was originally thinking of Plague Wind) and playing a few more games, including ones where Fuz stole my embiggened Purraj, I finally remembered Noah's advice: Nevinyrral's Disk. Because last time, the biggest problem I had was Primeval Bounty--all the Decrees of Plague Pain in the Multiverse couldn't solve that, so it was time to put in something that would. The only question was: did I have one?

And I did. There it was, hanging out in the binder, like a lost tool hoping the Master Builder will request its service one last time. Excellent. In it goes. The old school reset would certainly be the missing link to elevate Purraj in the difficult games.

But sometimes the best ways aren't good enough.

What you see there is a four-way game, the other commanders are Nin, Kaalia, and Jeleva. I'm in the lower right hand corner, a Disk residing in my hand since the opening 7 and I'm thinking it's time to get it out soon--but not too soon, or else the Jeleva (Noah) and Kaalia (stonethorn) players are going to bring the beatdown before I'm ready. The Nin player, unfortunately, wasn't able to build up much momentum.

What happened next was stonethorn cheating Avacyn into play via Kaalia, putting the boots on her, then casting Akroma's Vengeance. We were pretty much dead men walking at that point, though we put up a good fight. Noah and I attempted to collaborate to use the Disk and a Sudden Spoiling to re-clear the board but between a hardcast Elesh Norn and a cheated Blossom...well, we just ran out of time.

Even the Old Ways understand that.