I Can Hear The Battle Cry

I don't hate One Shot At Glory.

But it isn't as compelling to me as I would like it to be and that may have something to do with an inability to see what it needs. For example; I played a few matches against Fuz last weekend and there were boardstates that looked like this:

He's playing Vent Sentinel.deck neither of us are really doing anything to interact with the other. Matchups like that happen sometimes but this picture seems to be indicative of the issues I was having: this deck is very, very one dimensional and I can't seem to accelerate this deck against decks where there is no interference and thus end the game in an expedient manner and against the decks where I need to slowroll everything, I can't quite get the soft lock into play!

Or, the reverse happens: Fuz played his zombie deck and I managed to get out Thought Lash in time to be milled to death. Goddamn 3x Undead Warchief...

The inclusion of Temple of Deceit has been a good one: getting to check that next card for free is pretty awesome. Questionmarks have included Force Spike, which is great against tightly built decks that don't have margin for error, but is less amazing as time goes on and inevitably time does go on with One Shot At Glory, and Tolarian Winds but I am chalking that up to not having enough cantrips and/or not knowing how to play the deck.

Sigh. I don't know what to do here. It's not a bad deck. It's poses some interesting problems and isn't one that allows me to autopilot it. Yet it also doesn't seem to have the components to just crush opponents and I really don't know what I'm missing or maybe more accurately, what could be sacrificed in order to take this deck up to a higher level.

On my walk today, I realized that I am using up three slots for something I do not need. Thought Lash and Doomsday are doing things that I don't necessarily need duplicated. One or the other, sure but maybe if I just pick one and freed the other three slots to accelerate or protect the deck's win condition, I would be better off.

For now, I guess it just sits in regular rotation and I'll see what happens when I just throw it to the wolves, without the need to take notes.

This day (won't) last forever

Here we go.

Not the best picture due to sunlight but hopefully you can see that there is a Liliana of the Veil and a Web of Inertia on the board.

I lost the games I played against stonethorn with this deck and it has a great deal to do with inexperience. In this instance, the killing stroke was to come when he cast Vraska the Unseen and I didn't use the Dissolve in my hand.

I am not used to having countermagic and I am clearly not used to playing this deck. I've made this mistake before and it's happening in part because in an attempt to radiate calm when I play, I will look at my hand and then place it down in front of me. This is good, if I focus and remember what my lines of play are but if don't focus, or forget what's in my hand then I'm late to the party and cannot respond to my opponent as I should.

So this is going to take some practice. Both in remaining calm, as well as focusing on the game in order to play the best game I can.

One Shot At Glory

This is possibly one of the purest combo decks I have ever designed/ripped off. I built it a few months ago, when I was inspired to put together some new decks, including Ephemeral and Skalor. In an effort to not ruin the surprise, I'll just leap to the decklist and talk about it afterwards.

4 Laboratory Maniac

3 Thought Lash
4 Planar Void
4 Web of Inertia

3 Force Spike
4 Catalog
4 Tolarian Winds
4 Dissolve
2 Foil

3 Doomsday
2 Read the Bones

2 Shelldock Isle
10 Swamp
10 Island
1 Polluted Delta

Because this is an all or nothing deck, I named it after the Judas Priest song. Here's what it does:

Draw from an empty library while Laboratory Maniac is on the table and win. That's it.

Everything else is there to a) whittle the library down: Doomsday, Thought Lash, b) protect me while I do that: Planar Void and Web of Inertia for the creature lock, Force Spike, Dissolve, Foil for everything else, and c) draw into what I need: Catalog, Tolarian Winds, Read the Bones, Shelldock Isle (to an extent).

And that's it. One Shot is an exercise in patience, because to get this to work I have to hold back on everything until I can just win. This is a very different mental exercise than most decks want me to engage in, so I look forward to taking it on the road.