The Wrapup

The last two slots I opened up went to Soulblade Djinn. As a threat unto itself, I can use cheap spells to pump my team for offense or defense, and so I figure: maybe this card meets the Hexdrinker rule.

The games I played suggest that it does indeed! The Eliminator isn't perfect but I did find myself able to mount a solid control game. The sideboard is in need of some reset buttons, just to hold off against some ramp decks but aside from that, I like where this one is set. 

Here you go:

4 Lighthouse Chronologist
2 Psychosis Crawler
4 Faerie Vandal
1 Sower of Temptation
3 Hypnotic Sprite // Mesmeric Glare
2 Soulblade Djinn

3 Mana Leak
3 Opt
3 Polymorphist's Jest
3 Obsessive Search
3 Archmage's Charm

21 Island
2 Mystic Sanctuary

3 Jace, Cunning Castaway
3 Mu Yanling, Sky Dancer

Eliminated

 I ended up going in a slightly different direction, when I discovered that Scion of Oona was going for nearly $10 a pop. I don't know that I want to spend $40 on a deck that is good but definitely mid-tier. 

What I do have, though, is a bunch of copies of Archmage's Charm. It counters, it draws, and in rare instances it can even steal a permanent so...why not?

This meant leaning into a more controlling element of play. 

So I did that; we've got a couple Mystic Sanctuary to reuse my spells, and now it's a matter of seeing how leaning into the control elements work.

The first run is pretty positive: up against Fuz's zombie deck, a deck that uses a lot of recursion to make control elements mostly worthless, I was able to put a 2-1 win. 

In the next set  of games vs Dinosaurs, I couldn't quite come up with as strong a showing.

Fuz suggested Dovin, Hand of Control over Kasmina and I had to admit, Kasmina was underperforming in this deck. Her abilities weren't playing into what I wanted to do at four mana.

So it looks like a little more research needs to be done to fill the last two slots.

The Top End

 I ended up adding both Faerie Formation and Psychosis Crawler to the deck to see if either one of them was clearly superior. 

But it turns out both of them fit the Hexdrinker rule* and neither one of them seemed to out Hexdrinker the other: my opponents didn't want me to have either card. 

*(If you're new, the Hexdrinker rule says that if I'm testing a card and when I play it, my opponents go 'oh no', then I should 100% keep that card).

I also retooled the low end threats to have a faeries bent. So now Faerie Vandal and Scion of Oona join Hypnotic Sprite. 

The Faerie Vandal could become a legit threat over time and since this deck does move to get to midgame, I'm hoping it'll pay off, but the initial tests haven't given me enough data. I'm going to keep running them for now, because I think the opportunity for them to get beefy relatively quickly is there and every threat needs an answer.

There was a game where my opponent played 5 board sweepers. She was running 7 total. There's not much I can do there. But most decks don't go that far, hell, most decks don't even run Wrath effects anymore. So I'm still feeling good about the direction I'm going in. 

Topping Out

 

I'm on the right track, at least. 

That's my current takeaway from the recent batch of games, some three player matches and a few duels. The Eliminator has some resilience, which is very nice to see.

What it doesn't seem to have is that late game finishing quality and that's a shame, because The Eliminator wants to leverage those planeswalkers into the late game. My opponents agreed that Curator of Mysteries fit the deck, it just wasn't scary. 

Psychosis Crawler has been coming up for me: I've been able to make Mu Yanling's emblem happen more than once, which suggests that the Crawler could be the late game nasty I've been hoping for.

Another option has been to replace the creatures with a more faerie oriented suite, and consider Faerie Formation as a top end threat. 

Both are expensive, but both can really push an endgame strategy. The Formation is a lot more mana intensive, that's true but if opponents don't have an answer for it and I untap, that's likely game over. 

A little more testing, I suppose.