The Retired: Sunspots

 What a mess this one was/is. 

4 Energy Chamber
3 Engineered Explosives
4 Pentad Prism
3 Clearwater Goblet
2 Golem Foundry
2 Lux Cannon

2 Treasure Hunter
4 Etched Oracle
4 Skyreach Manta

3 Inexorable Tide

2 Clockspinning

2 Swamp
1 Vivid Crag
1 Vivid Creek
2 Vivid Grove
1 Vivid Marsh
1 Vivid Meadow
1 Academy Ruins
2 Mountain
2 Island
6 Forest
2 Plains
2 Tolaria West

4 Rampant Growth

I get what the concept is: just abuse the ability to put counters on things to win. But whoa, what a bunch of nonsense. So many 'well it'll be neat if it works!' ideas without dedicating to an idea that would work.

It'll be good to dismantle this one: it is just so clunky. The manabase is all over, the consistency just isn't there and at no point is this deck truly doing something powerful. 

Gotta Get Out Of Its Way

I was unable to get any games in over the weekend, unfortunately. This happens but it doesn't prevent me from tinkering, trying to see what happens. I've been forced to acknowledge that Sunspots needs time and I need to add cards in that can give it to me. Golem Foundry isn't a bad start but I also need more ways to interact with my opponent: adding Tolaria West as a tutor was my attempt to improve that aspect of the deck.

I also have this habit of leaving cards in my binder, obviously good ones, as though they cannot help me solve a problem they are clearly meant to solve. This is partly a focus issue: I am looking for X, this is not X, therefore no. There is also a touch of hoarding, too: But I might need this someday for a deck! Don't use it!

We live in the now, however and these cards ain't helping me in the binder.

Enter Lux Cannon. It's a charge counter using artifact so it hits all the major themes of Sunspots, while also providing me with a long-term problem for my opponents that isn't easy to destroy. I have two, so I cut two Foundries and added in the Cannons. Will this work out? I can't be certain but I feel it's a step in the right direction. I'm keeping this deck in rotation to continue testing, even though I'm going to start focusing on another deck on Thursday.

Next up: you may have heard about some of the issues that the new trigger rules are creating at pro-level events. 

I'll just sum up if you don't want to read it all: the new rules say that you must announce all triggers and if you don't, the opponent can assume that the trigger did not occur, even if that trigger was mandatory.

This has led to players feeling like assholes when the call their opponents on this. It's legal but it doesn't feel right.

My personal feeling is: if the trigger is mandatory, it happens and if WotC would just use the language at their disposal, they could have, and have used in the past, 'may' triggers (ones you choose) and that would work fine. If it says 'may' then there is a choice. However, apparently that creates problems too and let's just please everyone because blbahblahbalbh. I realize Magic is a complicated game but sometimes, I feel like they're trying to serve the people at the expense of the players. Reading and comprehending the cards is how the game works: if you put people in situations where reading and comprehending the cards isn't how the game works, that is a huge kink in the game.

All that aside, there are two really good explanations of triggered abilities on Reddit, and I suggest you check them out, starting with part one.

A Glare In My Eyes

Note: I meant to get this up last Thursday! Thought I had. Sorry, everyone.

The grand plan did not go as well as I'd hoped.

Don't get me wrong, I still like Golem Foundry but I'm not sure it's the right key for this deck.

On Monday I was involved in a multiplayer game against a mono-w deck and another deck piloted by Merrick, using G/W soulbound and maybe a hint of blue. The details are a little sketchy because I was too busy getting pounded like the daily special. My permanents included a Foundry and a Pentad Prism which was, apparently, enough for the table to believe that I should be exterminated and since the cards weren't giving me anything else to do, I died.

Yeah, yeah I was able to muster up a couple Golems and a Manta with four counters the turn before I died but this was no match for soulbound armies of double strikers.

Next up, I went against stonethorn's new elf deck. A matchup that I knew would be awful for me but when I'm in this stage of testing, losing is practically the point. If I don't lose with this deck, how will I understand how to make it win?

No worries, of course; I got smooshed like a grape.

So I lost to more aggressive decks, unable to find the lifegain or board reset needed to make the game go longer.The relevant part here is that having Channel the Suns would not have changed the outcome and I was able to generate a few golems near the end, even if it wasn't nearly enough.

On the upside, I also won a game, playing against Fuz, who was rocking a GB undying deck. The pic represents the precise moment when I realized I had a chance at winning.

There was a critical mistake that Fuz made: playing his deck.

Which sounds crazy but hear me out. He wants to sacrifice creatures to make bigger creatures and then use Undying and Morbid in order to have his small creatures overrun the game. Which is what he was doing, with Altar's Reap and Strangleborn Geist and the like.

Unfortunately, (and in his defense he was very tired) he was doing this while I had an Engineered Explosives out, which I was able to set to two after he'd put +1 counters on all his creatures and I simply blew the board up, started gaining 6 life a turn and eventually wore him out. If he'd just kept pounding at me and forced me to use the Explosives before I wanted to, I think the game might have gone a little differently.

So if I can get to the midgame with some action-and it doesn't have to be much, because I only had Clearwater Goblet set to 4 originally, in addition to missing some triggers due to sloppiness, I can potentially win out.

I just don't know that the Foundries are the cards I need.

One thing I've been strongly considering is Tolaria West, since that would allow me to find both the Engineered Explosives and the Academy Ruins that could give this deck some resilience. I don't want to give up on the Foundries yet but I've been unable to really get them rolling in the games that mattered.

More Spotty Than Sunny

I ran Sunspots through a couple rounds against Fuz on Saturday. Warning: beer was involved.

The first matchup was like watching two asthmatics have a breathing contest. He was playing a Bant mill deck and neither one of us could get a win condition rolling. At one point in the first game, I had a Chalice set to twelve which I stopped bothering to gain life with once I hit 70, because it didn't matter.

The second game went much faster, thankfully and showed off the issue I was concerned about with this deck: not having enough win conditions. Eventually, I just kept checking my graveyard and once the win conditions were all gone, I conceded.

Match two was up against Bant humans. Fuz apparently has a thing for UWG. GUW? WUG? WUG is better. Sounds like a drunk Ewok talking.

Game one (to the left) went long when I dropped Engineered Explosives, then recurred them, once.

Only once.

After that, it was cheap creatures, cheap enchantments and me taking 18 in a turn. That is no bueno. I made a mistake by not using Clockspinning to keep the Champion of the Parish at reasonable levels when I had the chance. It's hard to believe that this might have made a difference but Magic is frequently a game of inches and it's best to save every inch you can until the game is lost, because you just never know.

Game two went much, much faster and I never got anything going.

I talked to Fuz about the deck for a little while and he agreed: the mana was fine, maybe overkill. I mentioned the Golem Foundry and he got very enthusiastic about the idea. So out come Channel the Suns, in go the Foundries.