Thursday, January 16, 2014

The Cracks Are Showing

This is what I fielded against Noah a few days ago, with the additions bolded:
2 Ornithopter
3 Shield Sphere
2 Phyrexian Walker
3 Necrotic Sliver 
4 Enduring Renewal 
4 Phyrexian Altar 
3 Recover
4 Stupor
4 Tendrils of Agony
4 Drain Life
2 Inquisition of Kozilek 
2 Enlightened Tutor 
8 Plains
1 Orzhov Guildgate
4 Caves of Koilos
10 Swamp
The mana base is tweaked a bit more to black and Tendrils of Agony have been inserted as the main win condition. I decided to keep the Drain Lifes in as both removal and win conditions 5-8.

Unfortunately, I had a recurrence of my matches with Fuz: against a mono-blue Delver deck, I couldn't get any disruption online, so when I attempted to win I found myself stymied by disruption (especially Vendilion Clique, damnit). Against Scapeshift, I won a game on turn 4 by just comboing out but again: I couldn't get enough disruption online to give me time to win the match.

I did defeat a mono-B deck rather soundly because my deck blanked his removal spells, which left Noah with dead cards in hand.

What I noticed was that when I drew disruption-Inquisition and Stupor-I was able to put together a viable shot at winning. When I didn't-the Delver match was especially conspicuous for this-I got walked over. The card that felt repeatedly useless in all matchups: Necrotic Sliver. Every time I had it in hand, I felt like there was something more important that I needed to be doing and it was easily dispached.

I really like Necrotic Sliver's potential but...I need six mana a turn to make that potential work and I need that six mana right away. Since I'm finding success using discard the answer seems to be; more discard and that's where I'll head for the next matches. 

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