Leveled To Dust

There's an inherent problem with testing any Commander deck concept and it is, simply this: 

Unless one wants to bring competitive level fixing to the deck, the decks are not going to be consistent enough to figure out if the concept is good. Add to that the fact that Commander games just take longer to play, one can have three games in an evening and come away with no idea if what they're doing is right. 

Whereas if I'm playing a 60 card deck, I can get nine games played in the same amount of time and come away with actual experience with the changes or ideas I'm playing with. 

On top of all of that; sometimes decks just poop out. RNGesus is unkind and I draw all the lands and none of the impact cards. Shattergang Brothers isn't structured to dig itself through a 4 lands out of 5 draws kind of game. But it also means that there goes an hour of time where my data is worse than nothing-that is what happened to me on Monday and what happened to Jason last night.

So it starts to come down to me and how I want to play. 

I have a personal commitment to building decks made from cards I own and only those. I have four Savannahs and that's it. If those cards are in a deck (and they are) they can't go into another. This is the nature of dealing with physical stuff.

That's my choice. Building decks on Cockatrice means I can test any card I want to but it doesn't mean that my opponents have to feel constrained. And while it can feel unfair that I'm facing decks with thousand dollar manabases (and seriously, who is running fetchlands in Commander that isn't a competitive meta?), it's up to me to get around the potential of tilting out, and just play the best game I can.

Still, I feel certain there's more I could do here. Hornet Queen could be very helpful, especially since Thopter Assembly has been a rockstar for this deck. The deathtouch on my creatures could act as an important rattlesnake effect to steer attacks away from me.

It was about this point when I started looking at all my other commander decks; surely there was another RGB deck that could fall into The Retired. 

Yet, oddly enough, this is the only RGB deck I have. Which...is very weird. On the other hand, encouraging that I don't have to work through fifteen different decks all doing the same thing!