I need for you to be reasonable

So in my second matchup with $300 I got pounded. Why?

The matchup was white weenie/equipment, using Stoneforge Mystic on a Soltari Visionary. The claim is that it's a milling deck but when you win via damage it really can't be a mill deck. Milling is just extra. I am making big creatures really fast-faster than the mill deck could run me out of cards, so once again: why did I lose?

However the answer to the question is: because I could not bring enough pressure to bear against a deck that was using unblockable creatures to win--and I didn't have enough ways to interact with that unblockable creature. I needed ways to kill creatures and I didn't have them. The WW deck had tutoring to ensure a steadily increasing threat count and I did not.

Fun moment via loss: I cast Bind on a Stoneforge activation, preventing a Sword of Body and Mind from coming into play. My draw; Forest, which is a small indication of how the whole thing went. I do something cool and my reward is mundane.

So here's where I have to decide what kind of situations I want to accept losing with this deck. If I keep $300 as is, what are the good matchups? Where is it weak and what can I do to push through those weaknesses?

Looking at the decklist, the card that I'm most suspicious of now is Sigil Blessing and here's why: I already have five cards in there that give permanent bonuses to my creatures. Giving that bonus as an instant isn't what I care about; I care about making sure I can send the troops over faster/better than my opponent. With the use of Afterlife, I've already stretched the deck into a slightly longer game and I don't think that Sigil Blessing is making it shorter.

So it's coming out. Three cards may not seem like much but people agonize over every selection (and I'm no different) because what I've been taught after fifteen plus years of playing is that every card matters.

-3 Sigil Blessing
+3 ????

That's the question. Possible replacements:
Radiant's Blessing-something to take care of creatures bigger than mine, cycles if I don't need it.
Pacifism: cheap, means the best creature my opponent has can't attack or block, classic answer.
Cage of Hands: Pacifism but can be bounced to use on another creature
Prison Term: Arrest only switchable.
Shackles: A more interesting trick.

Of these, the one I'm looking at the most is Radiant's Blessing.

More interesting replacements: Last Breath (I don't know that I care if they get 4 life but limited by it's targeting requirements) and Reciprocate (have to take a hit but only one.)

I've got a soft spot for Reciprocate so it's down to this and the Blessing to see what might work best.

You turn me up like a garage door

I got a few games in with $300 last night and they weren't terribly instructive. I don't blame anyone for this; Fuz was testing a new deck and in the first matchup, I just rolled him as nothing came up for him to play.

The second matchup was more interesting; he was playing a G/B deck based around Darkest Hour, making all creatures black while playing creatures with protection from black and I was playing a deck that needs its creatures to be green and white.

I didn't even realize what was going on because I had a creature advantage at the time, until I put down a Knight of New Alara and attacked with two Pridemages, saying "Swing for 8," and was corrected "4."

Yup. That's going to be a problem, especially if I'm not paying attention.

Except that it wasn't. I played another Pridemage next turn, destroyed the enchantment and attacked for 12. (So I got lucky, really. Paying attention is crucial all the time, Magic just tends to magnify the need for that skill.)

This is the hallmark of really good builds, I think. Redundancy is certainly part of it but the quality I'm really thinking of is reliability. Can I as a player, depend on this deck/card to do what I want it to do when I want it done-usually, when I draw the card.

The Darkest Hour matchup also showcased why Pridemage really isn't the questionable choice I thought it might be.

Advantages of Qasali Pridemage: Green and white, creature, cheap, has extra ability, has board-impacting ability.

Disadvantages; standard power toughness, doesn't contribute to the masses.

The synergies outweigh the disadvantages and I may have been evaluating the card entirely wrong. It's not like I don't know the card is good, my question was always; Is this good enough? Which it totally is.

Bind is probably the card that most rational people would question. There's just no way for me to know that I'll need that card, right? And in a focused deck, cards I don't have use for 100% of the time just don't belong.

However, the saying goes; No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Bind is my neat concession to this idea and it's why I don't question that card. Nobody expects it, it's useful against many, many abilities and it draws a card. Why not? It's something that if I was in a tournament environment I might axe it but in a deck that is overwhelmingly about aggro force, having a cheap, cool trick to pull on someone is a good thing, especially since I haven't really let that cool thing run away with my deck's overall theme.

Or put another way; I don't always need Bind, but when I do, I giggle.

$300

Let's just get into it, shall we?
First, a link to Gatherer in case people want to look up cards. Eventually I'll probably be incorporating links into decks but for now I'm going with the easy solution.

Next, a link to the source for the deck's title. Decks I build are usually titled after songs or G1 Transformers.

Lands
9 Forest
9 Plains
4 Temple Garden

Instants
4 Afterlife
4 Bind
3 Sigil Blessing

Enchantments
4 Shield of the Oversoul

Creatures
2 Knight of New Alara
4 Qasali Ambusher
4 Qasali Pridemage
4 Seedcradle Witch
4 Valeron Outlander
2 Wilt-Leaf Cavaliers
3 Wilt-Leaf Liege

When the Lieges came out in the Shadowmoor/Eventide block (one of my favorite blocks) I felt I had to build decks using each of them. Because I've been playing for so long, finding the appropriate creatures to fill in wasn't too hard-one of the benefits of having an old collection of cards is you always have ways to fill in those gaps..

This deck isn't too complicated, really; get out creatures, land a Liege or a Knight of New Alara (or both) to make them huge and swing as constantly as you can. Most of the Liege decks work around this principle, with the enemy colors being a bit more challenging/restrictive than the allied colored Lieges but I still want to swing with men for damage.

Sigil Blessing is the kind of cool trick that can really surprise people and Afterlife takes care of troublesome creatures your opponents may play.

Bind is the weird card here and has long been a favorite of mine. It draws cards, counters things nobody is expecting and it's cheap.

Cheap is a watchword for this deck; aggressive starts are what I'm shooting for and so a card that can be played on turn 3, even if it doesn't help me win, is going to be better than one will win and can only be played on turn 5.

Brief moment of aha!; I had to pull the Temple Gardens from another deck but when coupled with Qasali Ambusher, the choice was easy to make. I think that this is one of those subtle things that happen more often than players might realize but also show how finely crafted the game is.

Knights of New Alara were also left out of the original build because I want to try and maximize my card choices and Knights wants cards that have multiple colors. But when I think 'multiple colors' I'm thinking three or more--some way to just really make it awesome!

I don't have to really make it awesome all the time, I just have to win. Giving every creature I have +2/+2 and running Lieges four and five is probably more than enough.

Questionable choices: Sigil Blessing. While I like the card it's also hard to justify. Because it's a card that wants multiple creatures available, it encourages overextension and using it with two or more creatures, specifically creatures that are attacking.
But. There's always that nagging thing in the back of my head that says; 'this is just the glory of cool things.'

And while there are many rules to Magic, one of the unwritten ones is 'the glory of cool things will not win you games'.

Exceptions abound but it's a pretty good truism.

Second questionable choice: Qasali Pridemage. While it's true that the Pridemage is very, very good and fits this deck far better than I could ask it to, the long and short of it is that the Pridemage isn't a creature that  supports a massive attacking deck. However, it shores up so many other weaknesses that not playing the Pridemage would be a bad idea.

Finally, the one drop of Seedcradle Witch is...well, it is what it is. But aggressive decks need one drops and that's the only G/W one I could find.