Thursday, August 9, 2018

The Walls Are Closing In Again

Although I played a few games against Jason with Monster, it wasn't until I played against a U/R Delver deck at the Tonic, piloted by a fellow named Frank that the issues with this became clear:

I'm trying to play two ideas against each other.

I want to ramp up into big spells: Emerald Medallion and Heart Warden are there to help me do just that.

But I need to ramp up TO something and there really isn't a legendary creature to ramp to that makes the payoff worth it. Jugan, the Rising Star isn't it: that's a card that belongs in a recursion or counters deck.

The other deck I'm trying to play involves using Reki to draw a bunch of cards and overwhelm my opponent via card advantage. This usually means a 'go wide' strategy involving a lot of smaller creatures I can play all at once (thanks to them being cheaper due to Emerald Medallion).

But these two things don't play nice together: the slots involving ramp are taking away from threats or the slots that give me threats aren't letting me ramp up fast enough.

There's also the issue of having cards that go to my graveyard without any real busting of that mechanic: Arashi, the Sky Asunder is helpful-and won me a game against Delver (woo-hoo!) but it did so by me channeling it. Having a 5/5 body for 5 would be nice, instead of having to use it as an uncounterable Hurricane. Although Uncounterable Hurricane is the name of my favorite drink from New Orleans...

Similarly, Baru, Fist of Krosa has a powerful effect, so why am I not trying to break it like I did with the Grandeur cards in Everything Ends? Baru wants graveyard recursion and token making: I should give it that instead of running it here.

Reki, the History of Kamigawa is helpful but maybe there's more support I can provide it, using a list of legendary artifacts.

There's also the question of the other support stuff; the instants that aren't really working and where to take the deck from there. This makes it seem like there is a whole lot of heavy lifting to do and I'm just not sure that's the case. With just a little tweaking, I think Monster could become a much more pleasant experience to play.

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