The Retired: The Hollows

 Sigh. 

This one was harder to put down, because I liked the central idea. I did a lot of work on it. But I just never wanted to play the damn thing. Something that seemed cooler in concept than it was in execution, I suppose. 

3 Lightning Greaves

4 Flametongue Kavu
3 Dimir House Guard
3 Viashino Sandscout
2 Grave Titan
4 Mardu Strike Leader
1 Flamerush Rider
2 Bane of the Living

4 Death Match

6 Mountain
4 Sulfurous Springs
1 Ebon Stronghold
1 Ghitu Encampment
1 Spawning Pool
7 Swamp
2 Urborg Volcano
1 Rakdos Carnarium
2 Bloodfell Caves

3 Void
1 Torrent of Souls
4 Lab Rats
2 Goblin Offensive

I am proud of the fact that I recognized I needed a lot of land to do what I wanted to do. I still like the basic idea around using Death Match to keep the field clear of creatures, while my creatures were much harder to get rid of. However, this deck has a common problem with many other decks: it's signature card doesn't do anything the turn you play it. 

The Hollows needs me to be in a reasonable position by turn 4 so that I can take a turn off from interacting with the game and cast Death Match, then on turn 5 I can get back to it. Which sounds nice but opponents don't just decide to sit out a turn because you want to do a cool thing. Truth be told, I'm a surprised by this as you are but it's still true.

Which meant that the compulsion to play this deck and do something cool with it just never arrived. Time to let this one go, and invest in an idea that has me interested. 

Temporarily Pacifying

I'm having more fun with this deck than I have in awhile. Terminate has hit the sweet spot of removal. It was a great choice which I think I overlooked because of a combination of overthinking the deck and being overconfident in what the removal suite I had would do.

The rest of the creatures fill in just fine with the Dash mechanic serving me well in combination with Death Match and, a key player nobody likes, Lightning Greaves. Archwing Dragon did what it did but I can't say that it did it any better than Flamerush Rider did. If there aren't any creatures to block, what difference does flying actually make?

And, since Flamerush can copy itself, I'm hitting for six a turn instead of four. Evasion just isn't my problem at that point.

Void has also proven to be incredibly useful. In the picture, I'm playing against Matt's Sands of Time/Equipoise deck. The way it works: Equipoise phases out opponent's permanents, Sands of Time ensures that they never come back. And it would be incredibly difficult to beat except for two things:

First, his deck is slow. I recommended that Matt add in something like Forbidding Watchtower to provide a stronger clock to victory.

Second, his deck is a Jason deck. It's precisely the kind of weird shit that he would pull, using non-creature permanents and challenging card interactions. So Matt is playing against someone who is ready for his wild and crazy ways.

Which is why I run cards like Void. Because Void for four breaks his lock so I can keep doing what I'm doing, and my clock is faster than his. Plus, he can't hide a Sands of Time in his hand to play it after I destroy the first one!

Granted, I have to get to five mana but as I said, his deck is slow. Getting a Lightning Greaves out meant that I could make my creatures untargetable to Maze of Ith and after that I just had to patiently work the inevitability of victory. Or something equally awesome sounding.

The other matchup I got to play was against Caitlin and Mark, one running a deathtouchy rats deck and the other running zombies. Neither of them had an answer for Death Match, so you might imagine how that went for them. It's a good feeling, knowing that it doesn't matter how many times you can bring back the undead, I can just kill them again. And again. Always a fresh target.

I'm so glad this deck has some legs. Sure, it'll suffer horribly against combo matchups and control games are odd but it's a lot of fun. I'm going to call this a winner for now.

It's Time To Bring The Fire Down

I brought out The Hollows against a R/W aggro burn deck that Noah had...and I got stomped, hard. It wasn't just the burn (although there was plenty of that) it was also that I had no removal show up in time to help me. Young Pyromancer and Goblin Rabblemaster were on the board well before I could anything going. Even Bane of the Living wouldn't come online until turn four at best. And that's assuming it survives turn three! (Protip: vs. Red burn, morph creatures die. A lot.)

So I think it's time to concede that against fire (or any seriously aggressive deck) I need removal that happens before turn four. This means that Bane and Torrent of Souls need to come out for some good ol' fashion creature sweeping spells. Terminate seems like a fine idea-cheap, instant, easy to cast and in the colors. I think I may go with it initially buuuuut I have to admit that Terminate isn't a sweeper spell.

Does this deck need such a thing? For now, I'm going to gamble that pinpoint removal that can happen on turn two is going to be better than sweeping removal that won't happen until turn three or later and takes out my team as well. I need my creatures to generate more pinpoint removal as the game goes long-as seen in my games with Jason.

There's still more to test beyond the removal question: I would like to bring in Archwing Dragon over Flamerush Rider because the Dragon has evasion. This may not matter if Death March is out but I want to see it in action.

Through The Heart

I didn't have an Archwing Dragon in my collection. This was only a mild surprise to me, since I thought that card was dumb when it came out. Fortunately, I can pick up one cheaply but for now I'm plugging in Flamerush Rider to see what happens.

This picture is one of the dumbest wins ever, but I'll take it against a tough mono Green deck Jason was running.

I'm down to one when I managed to stabilize the board, Jason is at twenty and I managed to make a comeback to win entirely on the strength of two the Death Matches in play. Every creature I played became an instant kill for nearly everything Jason could play and without any instant speed removal of his own, he couldn't stop my creatures from appearing. And I needed those Death Matches!

His deck ramps up into huge nasty beasts and uses the awesome of Predator Ooze, Primeval Titan and most challenging, Dungrove Elders, coupled with a Rancor to win with giant dudes.. Mine: designed to take down lots and lots of small creatures. You can see how we're working very different paths.

We managed three matches and in the first one, he clocked me, easy. I don't even know that I got in the game, honestly. The second match, I was able to take, 2-0. A timely Void against two 6/6 Duskgrove Elders was the crucial play for me in the game that is pictured. He didn't find another and I just kept attacking for two with the Sandscout.

The card that became the biggest drag was easily Torrent of Souls. Four copies of that card and every time they show up, I was miserable. An easy add for this deck was an additional Grave Titan. The first time one showed up, Jason said; "Where has that card been? That thing blanks everything I have!"

So adding a second Titan was an easy choice. Jason's advice: Bane of the Living. "With enough mana, you can wipe the board," he said, "or just cast the morph and take out something small."

Jason's instincts are usually pretty good so I'm going to go with his advice. I'm wary because the Bane so easily wipes out my board too but sweepers help and I need a way to get things online before turn four. Bane of the Living offers me a chance to tweak the board state before Death Match comes online and that could be vital to me seeing a turn five.

Another bit of data that came out of our matchups is that I need access to a little more Black mana. Multiple games came where I had a Dimir House Guard on turn three, but not enough black mana to use its Transmute ability. I swapped two Mountains for Urborg Volcanoes because I like using my older cards.

I should probably change those to Bloodfell Caves and likely will. The Hollows, like so many of my decks, needs to work the margins everywhere it can to give it time to create any advantage it can get. Lifegain is part of that. I'm also just adding in a 25th land, going to 61 cards: A Rakdos Carnarium, because this deck likes mana. If I get flooded too much, I can easily remove it.