Tuesday, May 28, 2013

The Thief Is Cautious

Playing Chop Shop is an exercise in patience when playing vs other Blue decks. This is almost in opposition to the hurried quality that I need to execute when playing other creature decks; if I cannot get something online and rolling, I am in big trouble against Red or Green, for example.

But against Blue, I have to pick my battles wisely. In the photo, I've achieved a stalemate in that game because I managed to resolve a Veldaken Shackles whilst Noah was tapped out. I later had a second Shackles countered and soon after, I lost the game.

To my credit, I knew there was countermagic and I tried (and succeeded) in baiting it out with other cards. However, in the end Noah had more counters than I did and was able to save one last to keep a card that presented huge problems for him off the board.

Commandeer also continued to prove itself; in one game taking over a Ponder that allowed me to set my deck up while denying Noah the same and in a three player game, retargeting a critical spell that would have been bad for me to something that made it bad for someone else.

What's odd about Chop Shop is that I don't really feel like there are cards I should abandon. I haven't been terribly disappointed by the cards I've had in hand and unlike many decks I've been working with, I don't know that there have been qualitatively better cards printed for me to use than the ones I have. It's all about using the tools I have to make the best of it. I do that, I have a chance. It's just weird to play a deck and not want to make a whole bunch of changes.

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