The Last Punch

I don't think I'm breaking any news here by suggesting that Replenish is a good card.

What I didn't expect to happen was for Replenish to change the way I approached games due to its interaction with Cathartic Reunion.

Now, different combinations come alive and questions like "Should I discard a Pandemonium to try and assemble my combo in the graveyard?" come up. Replenish has opened up some new lines of play, which has been both interesting to wrap my head around and good for my win percentage!

It also ups the complexity level, which means I'm going in the tank a lot to figure out what my play should be. The challenge in this instance is that I don't want to ignore what my opponent is doing or has done while I figure out my best play.

I have a lot of cool interactions now: against control decks, I can try to run out all of my pieces to draw countermagic in hopes of getting a timely Replenish in.

Against combo decks, I can try (however unlikely that is) to race them by dumping my combo into the graveyard and going for the kill on turn four.

So I have outs against other archetypes and I don't think I've done anything particularly detrimental to my 'general creatures' based matchup.

Along those lines, I'd worry more about the two-ofs of Pyroclasm and Seed Spark, but they're also easy to ditch to Cathartic Reunion and honestly, they've been pretty clutch. Pyroclasm always helps keep small creatures off the board, Seed Spark eliminating a key piece of an opponent's deck while giving me more time in the form of saproling speedbumps. It's been pretty good.

So far, I've found that I really like where this deck has ended up. It's got more resilience to it and I think I've sped up the timetable where the combo comes online. Maybe not by a lot, but enough that I can tell it's a better deck.

I like the challenge Brawl has presented to me, migrating from a creature-forward deck to one emphasizing the combo. Sure, it's become more linear, but that is a result of focusing it into doing one thing instead of two.

However; what's been not working out has been the Herald of the Pantheon. I like the card but I already have lifegain and mana is never an issue. In a game with Noah, I had the win until he cast Gaddock Teeg. I spent the rest of the game scrambling for removal and couldn't find it in time.

I hate to say it, but I'm 4 cards short...