Three quick lessons

If this is your board state, in a 3 way chaos game, what do you do? (Difficulty: there is no Wrath effect coming.)

There are roughly 30 creatures on the board and I'm playing The Thing That Should Not Be against a G/W token deck and a B/W deck that isn't doing much.

Eventually, the GW player swings with 8 3/3 flyers for 24 and I block three of them, which means I take 15 and lose.

Except. See down there, in the lower right hand corner. Those two white cards with the green wave in the middle. Those are two flying tokens I could have used to block another 6 damage, keeping me in the game. I had thought something was wrong but I couldn't place it and in all the madness I'd forgotten/not seen those two tokens.

Lesson 1: if you aren't sure, slow down. Be 100%.

Next: Playing Freedom or Fire against Push the Fader. I know he needs to get 6 mana to Wildfire, I know that I either need to have lands in hand to recover or enough lands in play to make Wildfire not matter.

I go for the not matter strategy. My opponent hits two Wildfires within three turns but it's a little too late-I begin recovering and the Fader deck is drawing lands and Parallax Tide. I need to get Batterskull active again, my opponent needs me to not get that.

He plays more Tides but then doesn't do anything with them so I get my manabase up and running again. It isn't until the game is over that I suggest keeping my land count down by removing them from the game, in order to give himself time might have been a solid strategy.

Lesson 2: consider your options. Decks are often more flexible than their initial impressions.

Finally: I've been getting into a bit of a debate on the Transform mechanic at the WotC boards. Here's what I've discovered:

The people who like the Transform mechanic, like it because of how it feels. Any problems with this mechanic, from a physical perspective, involving potential cheats, hiding information, losing extra pieces etc: do not matter, because, and this is what they say, It feels good to transform.

It doesn't matter to them how difficult that mechanic is for anyone else, nor the myriad of issues that come up, nor the poor implementation of the G/R tribe--all these mechanical things that are issues for me are irrelevant. It feels good, so the conversation ends.

Lesson 3: know when to let people enjoy what makes them happy but be thankful that you won't/don't have to put up with that shit for long-or hopefully, ever again.

One card can matter

My first matchup was against a U/R/W walls deck, with Gideon Jura and Frost Titan as the terrifying cleanup crew.

The first game I was facing two Wall of Omens and a Gideon Jura and broke it open by getting a Furnace of Rath to stick, casting Cave In for free and then redirecting 4 damage to Gideon Jura for 8, clearing the board. That reset let me get a Batterskull down and, although there was a rebound when Consecrated Sphinx hit, not quite enough pressure was applied and Batterskull kept me in the game. This allowed me to land a Purity to stop any Vent Sentinel action and then I was swinging for 20 in the air every turn.

Game two I mulliganed to 6 and had a Plateau, Mountain and other stuff. It wasn't a great hand but passable. Unfortunately, it was also all I got. Gideon Jura arrived and beat me like a child in a mosh pit, with Vent Sentinel riding cleanup. Those losses are always a little weird because it's like losing because you forgot to bring a ball to the game.

So game three! By now I knew what to expect: Negate not Cancel, no artifact removal, just stalling until win conditions arrived. The key moment, in my mind, was trying to bait countermagic out: I had both a Chandra and a Batterskull in hand, with Browbeat to follow and what I needed to do was draw enough countermagic out that I could earn enough time to get the sixth land to cast Crater Hellion.

I chose to lead with Chandra, not Batterskull. I wish I could say that there was a plan there but really I just thought Batterskull would be scarier. Chandra took a Negate and the next turn I dropped the Batterskull, then Cho-Manno, the lamest named Legend ever, cast Browbeat and finally dropped a Crater Hellion that landed because Negate doesn't handle creatures.

At this point it looks pretty good, until a Frost Titan arrives to prevent me from paying the Hellion's echo. I can swing with The Lamest Name so I do. Here's where I think things went wrong for my opponent: he got the fear. So instead of taking the hit, then using the Titan's attacking trigger to lock down the Cho in the future, he holds out hoping for time to do something else. But this allows me to land a Chandra and now the gap between his and my life total is spreading far too quickly. The game ends soon after, because he has to spend time killing Chandra while I'm gaining six life a turn with a undamagable defender in my corner.

I didn't get a chance to play more games with Freedom or Fire but what I've learned is this: Batterskull is an exceptional card and is one of the keys that makes the lock turn for this deck. It gives me both a threat and time, so that cards like Purity or Crater Hellion can come online, or help turn my smaller threats into bigger problems.

That lesson learned, I thought that a creature with protection from red and lifelink might be perfect: Alas, there is no such beast. There are some creatures that have lifegain triggers, such as Kor Firewalker or Auriok Champion but space is tight in a deck like this, so I think I'll stay with the redirection spells and protection from red, until something appropriate comes along. Or I open another Batterskull. That card is insane.