Patience, practice and patientpractice

Or something clever like that.
Anyway, new changes to Zx means that Oona's Grace is now the card drawing engine and so far I like it but what it means is that using Life from the Loam is now more important than ever and that patience is critical to this deck.

I need to stall until I can absolutely, 100%, no questions asked, go off and get as many turns as I want in a row.

I was playing Fuz and sadly, I don't remember his deck, only that I was holding out fairly well but I was also starting to get panicky. I had drawn over half my deck and blown two Walk the Aeons to buy time and I still didn't have the cards required to combo out.

So I started dumping all my mana into drawing cards via Oona's Blessing and doing it on my turn.

The first problem is that I got worried about something I shouldn't have. The board state was bad but it wasn't dire; I had a turn, likely more if I played it right, to get what I needed.

The second problem is that I violated the advice I give nearly every new player to Magic; only play the spell you need to, at the last possible moment you can play it. Since Oona's Blessing is an instant, the time to play and replay that spell was on Fuz's turn and keep mana up in the meanwhile to threaten a counterspell or Venser, which he knew I had because Oracle of Mul Daya was in play allowing him to see my draws.

Having to play around countermagic does things to the mental state of players and even I haven't gotten the hang of it. Of course, having to play countermagic is a pretty tricky beast too, so I suppose it works out, it's just that saying No in Magic is a lot more powerful than most other effects.

Because I rushed things, I ended up using all my resources and having no way to stop Fuz when he monkeywrenched my board and swung.

Zx is a deck that is going to take some practice to play with; twice now I have found myself in situations where the right play was to be patient and wait, read the cards, take in all the data and execute my masterstroke when it would actually BE a masterstroke.

Instead, I've ended up a Bond villain.