Razor Margins

So it is now that I have been testing Ironhide with 2 copies of Azorious Cluestone or none for a week now.

I don't know that it matters. The games I played against Matt and Caitlin had four Compulsions and I needed one to crank through my deck fast enough to win, once I had the combo set up.

In my online games with Fuz and Lauriel, I have been using two Cluestones and they've been helpful when they arrived but there have been games where neither the Cluestone nor the Compulsion showed up and I have won (or lost). It's all about the aggro decks and whether or not I can get set up in time. If I can, Ironhide is very difficult to beat.

Lauriel had a neat trick, with her RWB aggro deck using Impact Tremors to seal up wins. I could blunt any attack she made but then I needed to find a Seal of Cleansing to stay alive and couldn't. All she had to do was cast her spells.

It was a good matchup, one I think about sideboards for.

Similarly, Fuz's aggro zombies deck-the man must have five goddamn zombie decks because I swear I'm seeing different things each time-is just so flat out aggressive that I found myself carefully considering mulligans and using Brainstorm and Truth or Tale aggressively myself, trying to speed up Ironhide's resilience. It worked in this matchup but I wouldn't count on it; he was inches from beating me in this picture and it took everything I had to grind this game out.

So I'm not sure that the Cluestones matter.

What is interesting is that every time I've considered removing some tech-be it Daru Encampment or Compulson-that card inevitably does some important work for me. On the one hand, I'm glad that the choices I made to put these cards in to start off with are paying off but on the other, I'm faced with situations where I could be spinning my wheels on a deck like this forever and never getting any closer to actually improving it.

So for now, I'm going to let this one lie. Current decklist:

1 Coastal Tower
1 Kjeldoran Outpost
8 Plains
8 Island
1 Adarkar Wastes
4 Flooded Strand
1 Daru Encampment

2 Martial Coup
2 Condescend

2 Gempalm Avenger

2 Seal of Cleansing
2 Mobilization
4 Humility
4 Orim's Prayer
4 Compulsion

1 Dismantling Blow
3 Truth or Tale
3 Circular Logic
3 Miscalculation
4 Brainstorm