Getting Meaner

After games with Noah last weekend, his first suggestion was to add Wrath of God. His view was that I am playing a more defensive game and need answers to threats and Wrath is a tried and true one. Cuts are more difficult to make at this point: the cards I have are reasonably good or better, so it's not easy to see what needs to go.

I was also lucky enough to get Fuz to look over the deck and he pulled out the bigger creatures, asking if there wasn't a way to add in more opportunities to get Extort triggers going, along with providing some early game defense. With that in mind, it was pretty easy to pull Tidal Force for Basilica Guards. Tidal Force really belongs in a Derevi deck anyway.

I pulled the Sol Ring out too: WotC, you are getting complacent, adding this card in every time in every deck of the last 3 Commander sets. The card has come down to the $2 level, I think you can retire it for a year.

And so with some more mild tweaks I played this game.

This was against Sliver Overlord (oh, dear) and Sidisi, Brood Tyrant. 

I didn't do well that game and to be honest: my poor performance has a great deal to do with repeatedly missing triggers, especially Oloro's lifegain trigger. Magic takes practice and upkeep triggers, especially invisible ones, are challenging to keep track of. I started putting a die set to 2 on top of my deck so I wouldn't forget!

Missing that life meant missing card draw that I could've gotten to and missing those cards meant losing access to cards that could've helped me out. Forget win or lose: I failed to play the best game I could. That bothers me more than anything else.

I am going to have to start rethinking my approach to the game so I play a tighter one. The question is, how?