Data Stymie

A lot more games, this time with Noah while he played a R/W burn deck-one of my worst matchups.

And it remains so. I played better: knowing what matchup I was in allowed me to make better choices when Impulse dug into my deck, whether or not Steel of the Godhead or Oblivion Ring were better cards, that sort of thing. Still, I was losing that matchup and some others were not quite coming together.

On a walk, a rather odd thought occurred to me: Do I need a one drop in this deck?

Would it be better to have a third Reflector Mage and Lyev Skynight, adding in two Deputy of Acquittals as ways to protect my creatures or reuse the abilities of the Mage or Skynight?

The math is in my favor; the deck speeds up by at least a turn, assuming a Liege is out: 4/4's win the game by turn 5, 3/3s by turn 7 (I'm fudging the math because a) the Zealots all have Flash, so they can be played without summoning sickness, in a way and b) Skyknight is a 5/3 with a Liege out so the math changes again). In a tempo deck like Eject, the denial of that extra turn is going to be a Very Big Deal.

So I'm going to give this change a shot. If I can increase my damage dealing with Skyknight or Reflector and stall the tempo of my opponent's decks better then it's worth exploring.

Sealed & Swap: How'd the Swap turn out?

Well...

Maybe you'll notice that this picture is remarkably free of Swamps, Mountains, and black or red cards.

This is because I forgot to bring the deck I built. I remembered all the other cards, and forgot everything I wanted to get it to work. Sometimes, necessity is the mother of invention.

So, I took the white and green and faked it for the rest of the night. It was a pretty aggressive deck, which means that if I didn't have my opponent on the ropes by turn four, I wasn't going to win. The cards I had just wouldn't allow me to grind it out.

Surprisingly, it worked pretty well. I won most of my matchups-granted, I was often helped by opponents having to mulligan in order to get workable mana, and then that mana not quite working out. However, a win is a win and, when the deck did fire on all cylinders I was attacking for six on turn 4, eight on turn 5.

Hey, it worked for a night.

Sealed & Swap: The Swap

I got Seth's deck in the swap and there are two cards that make the direction of this deck loud and clear:

Sorin, Grim Nemesis and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet.

Seth took his deck in the B/W direction but I'm not confident of that choice.

Here's the Black:
Wasteland Strangler
Sky Scourer
Alms of the Vein
Bone Splinters
Zulaport Cutthroat
Altar's Reap
Culling Drone
Ever After
Dead Weight
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
 Vampire Noble
Krumar Bond-Kin
Creeping Dread
Mire's Malice
Vessle of Malignity

Now the White:
 Gideon's Reproach
Felidar Cub (2)
Emissary of the Sleepless
Thraben Inspector
War Behemoth
Alabasater Kirin
Mighty Leap
Affa Protector
Kor Castigator
Wall of Resurgence
Roil's Retribution
Devilthorn Fox
Hope Against Hope
Firehoof Cavalry

Where it gets interesting (for me) is at the Red:
Reduce to Ashes
Vessel of Volitility
Spiteful Motives
Goblin War Paint
Makindi Sliderunner
Bloodmad Vampire
Voldaren Duelist
Eldrazi Aggressor
Boulder Salvo
Boiling Earth
Bloodfire Mentor
Goblinslide
Outnumber
Ondu Champion
Retreat to Valakut

So I'm going to give the B/R deck a shot with just enough white to cast Sorin.

Sky Scourer
Krumar Bond-Kin
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Zulaport Cutthroat
Vessel of Malignity
Ever After
Bone Splinters
Mire's Malice
Vampire Noble
Wasteland Strangler
Dead Weight
Culling Drone

Hedron Blade
Deathless Behemoth
Flayer Drone
Sorin, Grim Nemesis

Bloodmad Vampire
Outnumber
Retreat to Valakut
Goblinslide
Reduce to Ashes
Ondu Champion
Makindi Sliderunner
Eldrazi Aggressor
Boulder Salvo
Boiling Earth

Holdout Settlement
Scoured Barrens
7 Swamp
6 Mountain

The plan: get some early beats out, use Goblinslide to help create greater numbers than I should have, discard to stall my opponent's plans, Retreat to Valakut for damage and Kalitas and Sorin to finish everything off. We'll see how it goes!

No, Outpost Siege, You Fool

My evaluation of Collected Company for sealed formats was wrong.

Let's just get that out there up front. I was wrong. After a match one loss where I was able to cast CC in three games and missed every time, I figured I'd give Outpost Siege a shot.

And man, did that card shine. Opponents had no answer for it and the card advantage it provided allowed me to grind through games in matches two and three that I would've fallen short in, otherwise.

Of course, in match two, game two, this happened:

What I have is 10 lands in play. The two cards in the lower left? That is my hand, set down so I could take the picture. One of those cards is a land, too.

So out of the 17 lands in my deck, 11 of them got drawn and that was why I lost. Matt suggested after our match that I was running one too many lands and while that doesn't seem possible, it was likely correct. I adjusted the deck again between my second and third match, minus one Forest, adding Atarka Efreet instead.

While I won my third match, I'm not sure if the Efreet/Forest swap made any difference. I didn't seem to be low on mana but my sample size isn't big enough.

Still, 2-1 isn't awful and I'm looking forward to the next round of building.

Sealed & Swap

Here's the premise: take six packs of Magic, make a sealed deck, play them for one night. Then, we swap the entire sealed pool with another player and build a new deck to play next week. We can compare builds later and see what happened. It seems like a pretty cool notion and a way to get some extra mileage out of your sealed packs.

From Magic: Origins, Khans of Tarkir, Fate Reforged, Dragons of Tarkir, Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch packs I am trying to decide between red or black as my second color.

Green is in:
Epic Confrontation
Conclave Naturalists
Saddleback Lagac
Snapping Gnarlid
Ainok Guide
Sultai Flayer
Collected Company
Yeva's Forcemage
Frontier Mastodon
Rhox Maulers
Orchard Spirit
Abzan Kin-Guard

Creatures, Collected Company, that all seems pretty good...

Black looks like this if I add it:
Douse in Gloom
Complete Disregard
Weight of the Underworld
Flatten
Reave Soul
Revenant
Oblivion Strike
Coat with Venom
Sibsig Muckdraggers
Mire's Malace
Alesha's Vanguard

Essentially: all the removal. Red, on the other hand, gives me this:
Outpost Siege

Akroan Sergeant
Hordeling Outburst
Arrow Storm
Atarka Efreet
Boulder Salvo
Sparkmage's Gambit
Mina and Denn, Wildborn
Savage Ventmaw
Vaultbreaker
Tunneling Geopede
Kolaghan Aspirant

So not as much removal but some solid cards and an improved mana curve.

After some hemming and hawing I'm going for the risky RGB deck;

Kolaghan Aspirant
Vaultbreaker
Akroan Sergeant
Savage Ventmaw
Mina and Denn, Wildborn
Epic Confrontation
Conclave Naturalists
Snapping Gnarlid
Ainok Guide
Sultai Flayer
Collected Company
Frontier Mastodon
Rhox Maulers
Orchard Spirit
Abzan Kin-Guard
Douse in Gloom
Complete Disregard
Weight of the Underworld
Flatten
Reave Soul
Oblivion Strike
Coat with Venom

As good as Outpost Siege is, I fear using my turn four casting it. That's an important turn in sealed and having something that really turns the deck on is important. Just as relevant: if I draw that card on turn seven and I'm in trouble, it doesn't help me. Collected Company, on the other hand, has the opportunity to bring out another creature on my opponent's turn. That's a stronger play.

Star Realms-Colony Wars

I spent a weekend playing Colony Wars with my friend Zac and at this point I think I've got a sense of how it plays out. So let me tell you about it.

If you've been playing the original Star Realms, then you've probably discovered by now: the Machine faction (red) is incredibly strong. Even in comparison to all the card draw effects of the other factions, the consistency the Machine faction can provide is incredibly strong.

So I'm pleased to say that they've started balancing it far better in Colony Wars, with cards only allowing players to scrap (exile) cards only in their hand or only their discard pile but not allowing the option to choose either.

That helps hamstring the faction just a little, creating some tension: am I going to get rid of an unused resource in order to gain consistency later, or am I going to hold on to gain more this turn? It's an interesting question and the game is better for it.

It's still really possible to go very, very big early on and blow your opponent out. Scrapping a card for cash can provide the kind of lead in turns 2 or 3 that can find an opponent sucking wind for the rest of the game.

That said, once you get the hang of things, games can become tense affairs that pass by very briskly. Losing doesn't sting so bad, as you just shuffle up for the next game and take another swing. In this sense, the better qualities of the original Star Realms set is perfectly preserved.

If you haven't tried the game and are interested, I say give it a go. If you've already got the original, I think Colony Wars provides balance and enough diversity from the original set to invest in.

Hidden Pop Outs

A few more games with stonethorn on Saturday I can't say I learned much about Eject.

This is both good and bad. The good: I felt like I was always in a position to win games and I won one matchup pretty clearly. The bad: I got blown out by Austere Command.

Now, there are two important facts to note here: first, I didn't know stonethorn's deck was running Austere Command so I didn't play around it. He told me after the game that he kept his opening had specifically because Command was in it: otherwise it sucked.

Second: Cards like Austere Command are doing exactly what they're supposed to do: prevent aggressive decks from overrunning a format. Losing to a card that's meant to stop my deck is not something I can really feel terrible about. I even had an Oblivion Ring in hand to stop his next threat...but not the one after that.

The difficulty here is that I need a lot more games with this deck to start to see the cracks. The synergies are so high that it's difficult for me to find weaknesses in this deck that I really need to shore up. For example, one might argue that Veldaken Outlander doesn't fit but protection from red is a strong ability against a whole lot of pure aggressive decks, which is one of the weaknesses of Eject. Why remove a card that forces red decks to pause and is perfectly solid otherwise?

So this deck needs a lot more testing. I'll do what I can to get that in but the challenge of scheduling adults make it difficult. Still, I have hope that eventually stronger revelations about this deck will come so I'll keep at it.