Razor Margins

So it is now that I have been testing Ironhide with 2 copies of Azorious Cluestone or none for a week now.

I don't know that it matters. The games I played against Matt and Caitlin had four Compulsions and I needed one to crank through my deck fast enough to win, once I had the combo set up.

In my online games with Fuz and Lauriel, I have been using two Cluestones and they've been helpful when they arrived but there have been games where neither the Cluestone nor the Compulsion showed up and I have won (or lost). It's all about the aggro decks and whether or not I can get set up in time. If I can, Ironhide is very difficult to beat.

Lauriel had a neat trick, with her RWB aggro deck using Impact Tremors to seal up wins. I could blunt any attack she made but then I needed to find a Seal of Cleansing to stay alive and couldn't. All she had to do was cast her spells.

It was a good matchup, one I think about sideboards for.

Similarly, Fuz's aggro zombies deck-the man must have five goddamn zombie decks because I swear I'm seeing different things each time-is just so flat out aggressive that I found myself carefully considering mulligans and using Brainstorm and Truth or Tale aggressively myself, trying to speed up Ironhide's resilience. It worked in this matchup but I wouldn't count on it; he was inches from beating me in this picture and it took everything I had to grind this game out.

So I'm not sure that the Cluestones matter.

What is interesting is that every time I've considered removing some tech-be it Daru Encampment or Compulson-that card inevitably does some important work for me. On the one hand, I'm glad that the choices I made to put these cards in to start off with are paying off but on the other, I'm faced with situations where I could be spinning my wheels on a deck like this forever and never getting any closer to actually improving it.

So for now, I'm going to let this one lie. Current decklist:

1 Coastal Tower
1 Kjeldoran Outpost
8 Plains
8 Island
1 Adarkar Wastes
4 Flooded Strand
1 Daru Encampment

2 Martial Coup
2 Condescend

2 Gempalm Avenger

2 Seal of Cleansing
2 Mobilization
4 Humility
4 Orim's Prayer
4 Compulsion

1 Dismantling Blow
3 Truth or Tale
3 Circular Logic
3 Miscalculation
4 Brainstorm

The Blend

I thought about cutting all of the Compulsions for Azorius Cluestones but the more I thought about it, the less sense that made. I want to ramp the mana up but I still am running redundant copies of Orim's Prayer and Humility. I need ways to churn through the deck to get to win conditions, or else the game goes too long.

This becomes especially relevant with Mobilization as one of my win conditions. Generating token(s) every turn is important to keep the pressure on, so mana matters. But if I can't draw one, or get a Martial Coup then I'm really struggling to close things out.

So I split the difference: two Cluestones for two Complusions.

Fortunately, things seem to be working well. Fuz was playing a B/W deck using Exquisite Blood as a win condition-and I handled it just fine. (As a small rules note: cards like Academy Rector do not trigger under a Humility, because the game checks to see what the card was when it left play. )

This was also the case against a pretty interesting G/W Beasts deck. His deck was using some lifegain elements to help give him some reach against more aggressive decks and because his creatures are so big, once it gets rolling it's very difficult to put up a proper defense.

Thankfully, Humility solves those problems.

However until Humility shows up, sometimes Orim's Prayer has to step in and take care of things, as you can see in the picture. 4/4s that only do one point of damage to me are not as effective at closing out the game as they would be otherwise.

(As a second rules note: Humility before Mobilization means my tokens have vigilance. The other way around and they don't).

K.I.S.S.

The best solutions are almost always the simplest ones.

After plowing through set after set to try and figure out what card should replace Aether Storm, I finally realized that the answer was staring me in the face. Almost literally, to be truthful, because there has been a stack of four Brainstorms sitting on my desk waiting for me to find a home for them for over a month.

Brainstorm and fetch lands have been the chocolate and peanut butter of Magic for a long time now. Why am I trying to argue?

So, into the breach we go with Brainstorms!

...it's harder than it looks. The urge to hold on to Brainstorm until I have a Flooded Strand, simply for value is really strong. And, with a deck like Ironhide, which works from a different avenue of attack and defense than most other decks, the unique power of it can help cover a lot of potential mistakes as I find my way to the best play.

My multiplayer games against Matt and Caitlin really demonstrated this: once I got the soft lock, there wasn't anything they could do about my position in the game anymore. But I always felt that I was one misplay away from the whole thing slipping from my fingers-despite winning those games.

On the other hand, you can't prepare for everything, as I learned in my matchup against Fuz while he was playing a U/R deck designed to punish you for drawing cards. Brainstorm plays right into that and I lost my matchup in spectacular fashion.

After these matches, I felt I needed to make a few changes. Compulsion is solid, because it helps me move from the "lock phase" of the game to the "win phase" and that can't be overlooked. However, one of the consistent issues I've noticed is that I always felt hungry for mana. I'd thought having 24 lands would make it work but I may have overrated what Flooded Strand counts for, so I'll be making a few more tweaks, I think.

The Overburden

Of the suggestions Matt proposed to me, Overburden was the one that I liked the most. As a bonus, I happened to own three copies which meant testing it wouldn't require a large outlay of money. And my money > less of my money.

Playing against Lauriel, though, the problem became pretty clear: This is a Humility deck and everything that isn't Humility and Orim's Prayer probably doesn't have the impact on the game that I want it to.

On the other hand, when I had Overburden out on turn 2, I got the reaction that you always want when you play a card that someone isn't familiar with: Oh, no.

And whenever that reaction comes up, that's a Good Thing. I want to play decks that do that, because I'm usually operating a little off the beaten path.

So I'll keep testing it but that card is on a short leash.

Good News, Everybody: Soldiers Are Still Soldiers

Under Humility, that is. I asked a buddy of mine in Arizona who's a Level 2 (3? sorry if I'm getting that wrong) judge and he told me that Humility doesn't effect creature type.

That means Gempalm Avenger: Your role is secure.

I got in a few rounds of multiplayer Magic with Matt and Caitlin a couple nights ago and while I found myself in charge of both matches, I wasn't exactly in control of them. Pushing a win condition wasn't easy and I had to sacrifice a bit too much in the early game in one case.

So it's possible that other cuts should be identified and made. Matt has already suggested that Aether Storm should be replaced and that's not a terrible notion. Of his suggestions for a replacement, Overburden seems like the potential toughest to deal with. Land drops are one of the ways Magic paces itself and messing with that seems really good.

Kusari-Gama also looks really interesting, too. However, I am dubious of the overall costs vs what Gempalm Avenger does for me. That just feels like a more efficient use of mana vs the equipment--except in multiplayer situations. However, even that seems excessive, since I can generate as many tokens as I like. Just run 'em at them, you know?

Still, I've got some options to explore and this deck is making a case for doing so.

Ironhide

How 'bout something more old school?

4 AEther Storm
4 Humility
4 Orim's Prayer
2 Seal of Cleansing
2 Mobilization
4 Compulsion

2 Martial Coup

2 Gempalm Avenger

2 Condescend
3 Truth or Tale
3 Circular Logic
3 Miscalculation
1 Dismantling Blow

8 Plains
8 Island

1 Coastal Tower
1 Kjeldoran Outpost
1 Adarkar Wastes
4 Flooded Strand
1 Daru Encampment

The plan: stall out any creature based strategies with Aether Storm, Humility and Orim's Prayer, while generating as many 1/1 soldier tokens as possible, via Mobilization, Kjeldoran Outpost and Martial Coup. Then use Gempalm Avenger to pump the soldiers and win.

There is, at the moment, one small hole here. When I built Ironhide (named for the Transformer) I'm pretty sure that rulings on creature type weren't necessarily part of Humility's concern.

So the first order of business is going to be to ask some judges about how Humility affects creature type. If there is no impact, Gempalm Avenger still makes sense. The timestamp of Gempalm's ability will not be overwritten by Humility so until end of turn, I'll be set. If there is, then it'll be time to look into other spells.