This Ain't No Simple Posture

The changes have made for a more compelling deck. I want to get that out up front, because after being depressed about the state of Longshots, finding that the radical shift in focus has improved my experience does a bunch of good for my brain.

After a few online games with Fuz and Jason, Longshots has given me interesting choices to make as well as interesting dilemmas for opponents.

And I lost my fair share of matches. That was OK: I won a few too. The burn in the deck helped keep me in games against Fuz's dinosaur deck (which seems to be his current pet 60), stunting his mana by killing mana dorks, and eventually sticking a legend for the grindy win.

Against Jason's Stiflenaut deck, things got a little trickier. There was more of a 'race' aspect: if I could get things going before the Torpor Orb arrived, I had a shot. If I didn't then I didn't. The picture itself shows a time when I didn't: I was making a last-ditch effort, hoping that Etali's trigger could pull something off the top of either deck to save me.

It didn't.

In our final match, Jason played a more straightforward aggro deck and after it was done he said "So that's your bad matchup," and although he won that match, I'm not sure that it is. Eleven burn spells mean that I should be able to withstand the early game. It worked to keep a mana-ramp deck off balance, so variance is what I'm going with there. However, he did feel-and I agree-that he won fairly handily. That time.

Still, I'm encouraged by what I've seen so far and I look forward to further games. I haven't seen anything glaring yet that needs to be changed but time will tell.