Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Landing

Despite my frustration with the online performance, I didn't change Jetfire afterwards. There didn't seem to be any point.

It does, however, demonstrate something about Magic in a big picture sense. If you check out the top 8 decklists from last weekend's Modern tournament, you may notice something. There are only 118 creature (or creature generating) spells in the maindecks of all of those lists. Out of 480 spells, maindeck. This means roughly 24% creatures with roughly 39% other spells. Only half of the decks there had more creatures than spells and in the semifinal matches, only one deck was creature-focused.

My point is that there is a lot of control out there. Everyone knows that creatures are the easiest path to victory so everyone is prepared. To win most matchups, with creatures as your focused win condition you have to be 1) faster or 2) have better creatures. #2 is why White Weenie archetypes stick around-protection from a color is always good and #1 is why Goblins archetypes stick around: they're absurdly fast.

If I'm going to stick with this deck, then I need to either accept that there will be matchups where they have more removal than I have threats and their removal trumps my creatures, unless I deliberately get off to a blazing fast start, or change the deck to have more removal of my own--like Lightning Bolt instead of Snake Umbra, for example.
8 Forest
8 Mountain
4 Fire-Lit Thicket
1 Copperline Gorge
3 Bloodbraid Elf
2 Burning-Tree Shaman
4 Wild Cantor
2 Radha, Heir to Keld
4 Boartusk Liege
3 Boggart Ram-Gang
4 Tattermunge Maniac
3 Jund Hackblade

4 Wildsize
4 Psychotic Fury
3 Sudden Shock
3 Snake Umbra
Still, look at that list. Hard not to love it as it is, isn't it? And in the matches I've been playing lately, it's done exactly what I hoped: swing hard and win quickly. I lost one game when Scott gave his Angelic Overseer double strike via Boros Charm and then paid one more to a Blind Obedience, hitting me for a total of 12 in one turn.

Shit happens. Then again, I have attacked for 17 with this deck, so I am not complaining.

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