That's a Barren Glory deck I'm trying to defeat. It's as hell of a deck because it has the really workable backup plan of just beating the crap out of opponents with Abyssal Persecutor and Hellcarver Demon.
No Eden did fine against this deck for two reasons: 1) I could chump block Hellcarver Demon with cheap fliers and 2) Sundering Vitae.
Jason is piloting the Barren Glory deck and this is exactly the kind of thing he loves to play. He wants decks that execute some weird combo and he figures you can't stop him. His lines of attack in Magic can get so weird that it becomes very difficult to win, unless your plan is to flat out overwhelm him every time and not every deck works that way. Endless Whispers, Shared Fate, Confusion in the Ranks, Merrow Commerce, Mesmeric Orb: these cards allow Jason to build decks that don't want to play the same game you do.
Yet all of those decks have one critical flaw: they all are ruined by Disenchant. Or Naturalize, if we're being modern about it.
For five years, I lived with Jason and we would play Magic nearly ever weekend, often until impossible hours of the morning. It would take until I started playing with an entirely different group of people for me to break my "Disenchant in every deck" rule and even now, I'm reluctant to let it go.
When I play Jason, I remember why.
I also got to test the Devouring Light vs Gideon Jura debate but without much resolution. It's possible both cards are useful in different matchups or it's possible more testing will show one card to have a clear edge.
On the other hand, I was able to spend some time with Jason making his deck better. He was running Brilliant Ultimatums on the premise that he could cast that for free off the Hellfire Demon and keep digging. But there wasn't enough removal in his deck: the Diabolic Edict effects allowed me choices he didn't want to provide me with and he already had twelve cards to dig for what he wanted. I recommended Mutilate at first but also suggested Languish. After testing, Languish became the obvious winner because it would allow his demons to survive no matter how many Swamps he had in play.
I'm going to regret helping him...but not really.
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