The Retired: Razorclaw

 And...as much as I hate letting this one go, I am doing it. Partly because when I picked it up, I was wondering; how the heck does this even work??

2 Druidic Satchel
3 Gruul Signet

3 Mitotic Slime
4 Golden Hind
3 Hound of Griselbrand
3 Valley Rannet
3 Skyship Stalker
3 Flametongue Kavu
2 Countryside Crusher
2 Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar
2 Demanding Dragon

3 Cream of the Crop
3 Primitive Etchings

8 Forest
7 Mountain
4 Gruul Guildgate
4 Sheltered Thicket

1 Domri Rade

I hate to say it but t his deck is 100% the Glory of Cool Things, right? The Cream of the Crop/Primitive Etchings combo is neat but it doesn't actually win the game. It just draws cards, which might be fine if it came online early. Instead this deck ends up doing almost nothing for the first three or four turns. 

That just isn't going to work out well. There's probably some consistency that could be bolstered, too: a Primitive Etchings on turn three is better than four, but it's so clear that I'm dealing with some scraps to get this going, right? 

No one was ever going to be thrilled with Golden Hind as a mana accelerant, and the payoff cards just aren't strong enough. 

But it's OK. There will be another way to use these things!

Setback as Time Walk

Or, why I removed Simian Spirit Guide from Razorclaw.

Last Friday my opening hand wasn't great but it had potential: Simian Spirit Guide, Forest, Golden Hind, Gruul Guildgate, other cards. I could get something going pretty easily, I thought.

So my turn one play was Forest, remove SSG for R, play Golden Hind.

Noah's response was: Island, Vapor Snag, go. 

That's it. The game was over. My turn 2 was Gruul Guildgate, turn 3, play Golden Hind, Hind will meet an untimely end and Noah proceeded to run over me with his deck. Some blue/white/black thing I think. It didn't matter by then because he spend his second and third turns actually doing stuff that I couldn't interact with, stuck at one mana for two turns. He essentially cast Time Stretch for U. 

I talked it over with Noah and although it wasn't explicitly said, what I think we were getting at is that my deck was fragile. A card like Simian Spirit Guide has some very particular uses, specifically in very aggressive or combo decks, where it can represent that extra oomph of speed.

Razorclaw is not that kind of deck. It's slower, grindier, moving to midgame and throttling mana bases and cheap artifacts and enchantments to eventually overwhelm. More importantly, it's not a great deck but it should be the kind of deck that can play through an early game, otherwise irrelevant setback like having a turn one mana generator bounced. I need to play up the edges as much as possible and not make the mistakes everyone else is making with mana starvation, unfocused play and unjustified card selection. That it couldn't means I have to make changes.

So it's time to remove the Spirit Guides and put lands back in. The compliment they add to Primitive Etchings just isn't enough to justify those possible early game setbacks.The soonest the benefit of that combo wouldn't happen until turn 5 and by then either Cream of the Crop is out (filtering the card I want on top anyway) or Cream isn't but it doesn't matter because there are still 29 creatures in the deck which puts the odds highly in my favor to get extra cards. Let's play the best odds.

Shove it

Someone's always got to push the buttons and in this case, it was Fuz.

That's four, count 'em 4!, Hover Barriers. How the hell am I supposed to get through all that madness?

I didn't: Fuz milled my library to goo so I started talking to Fuz about this deck.

What is slowing this deck down? Lands that enter the battlefield tapped and creatures with echo. Of the creatures with echo, Pouncing Jaguar is the only one that doesn't have an additional effect and probably needs to be replaced. It's such a strong turn 1 play though and with so many ETB tapped lands, I often don't have a turn 2 Golden Hind ready so I'm reluctant to let it go.

It was Fuz who suggested something from the Evoke school. Spitebellows can be played for very little and so can Briarthorn. Spitebellows felt like a no-brainer: kill a thing and look at the top six cards of my library for 3? Yeah, let's do that! So out came a Mitotic Slime and the two Flametongue Kavu for three of those. Why the Mitotic Slime? Slime's purpose is to give me resources against Wrath of God effects and I have Wrath defense in Hound of Griselbrand too. Since five mana is expensive, I feel that taking out the redundancy for mana is wise. I also swapped a Forest for a Mountain because of the RR needed to Evoke Spitebellows, tweaking the manabase just a little more toward red but not too much.

Briarthorn feels less obvious but the more I think about it the more awesome I think of it. The ability to play it as an instant is a big deal, and getting a 6/6 blocker as a surprise, plus looking at the top 3 cards of my library? That could be huge for two mana and still a really good deal for 4. It plays nicely with my smaller creatures and could be an acceptable substitution for Pouncing Jaguar. Time to give that a go.

Passive Aggressive

I took Matt's advice and added in three Simian Spirit Guides to Razorclaw.. I removed two Mountains and decided I wanted to go to 61 cards rather than remove another land. I went to three Spirit Guides in order to aggressive test the idea. If I just add one I'm afraid that I won't get the opportunity to see them in action and it won't tell me enough.

Tests against stonethorn let me do (a very little bit of) that.

I went 1-2 against this white weenie-ish deck. The first game I lost because I went down to four cards in my opening hand. It's just never going to work out when that happens.

The other two games were slugfests and I'm pleased to say that my compliment of Acidic Slimes and Wickerbough Elders were very effective in keeping me in the game, win or lose.

But. But. What I'm discovering is that this deck is very, very mana hungry. Five mana is what is needed to play cards like Acidic Slime, Mitotic Slime and Wickerbough Elder and I really want to be able to play them as soon as possible. I need more data to find out if I have enough land or if I just need to bite the bullet and cut one of my Slimes for another.

In the match after this, I played against Pod, and I lost because I couldn't hit 5 mana, even though the game went long. Despite having two Acidic Slimes and two Mitotic slimes, I sat and did nothing while stonethorn executed his plans. The Spirit Guide mana isn't a bad thing but I don't feel like it's the problem either: I just didn't have enough land in two games.

That is a problem and it's not a small one but I need to know if it's a fluke.

Mistakes and Decisions

I was able to play a few games on Cockatrice the other night; Thanks to SirTrae for letting me test Razorclaw more and take screenshots like this:

SirTrae is playing a Battle of Wits deck in that picture and I'm doing pretty well against it, using my Cream of the Crop to help filter up a steady stream of threats. Shortly after the screenshot, my board was wiped but I still have threats in hand (including the critical Wickerbough Elder) so that's OK.

The critical play comes when I have four lands in play and after casting Hound of Griselbrand, I see a Temple of Abandon and a Mountain. This is my thought process:

"If I take the Mountain, I'll be able to cast Elder AND activate its ability on the same turn, which is a solid warning sign to my opponent.

But Battle of Wits isn't out there and I have no idea if he has it so why worry? Temple let's me dig further into my deck if the next Cream of the Crop trigger reveals nothing helpful! Let's play Temple!"

I do, pass the turn, where SirTrae plays Battle of Wits and I lose.

Do you see the thought process that was my mistake? I exchanged the future for the present and lost because of it.

It can be very challenging to live in the now because Magic is so complicated. I often feel that I have to be looking at a hundred lines of play because so many can be shut down that re-routing the thought process quickly is an important skill.

Sometimes, though, choices are simple: Do I lose if my opponent does this?

If yes: don't let them do that. If no: continue hounding them.

In this instance, I didn't take my thought process far enough: If I take the Mountain, I'll be able to cast Elder AND activate its ability on the same turn, which means they cannot win via Battle of Wits until Elder is dealt with.

That would have told me everything I needed to know. But I thought that seeing another card would be more valuable, traded the future for the present and lost.

Next time: do better.

Also, I have discovered where my Temple of Abandons are! They are in Viceroy, which is the all-creature deck. Drat.

Now I have to make a choice: pull the Temples from Viceroy (which sorely needs every little bit it can get, due to the limitations of it's build), buy more Temples (which evokes the 'my money > less of my money' rule) or run another land that can provide Red and Green.

For now, I have plenty of Gruul Guildgates that need a home so they will do just fine.

Razorclaw

Named after the leader of the Predacons, my goal with Razorclaw was essentially this: get 2 for 1 out of every card I cast. So: Avalanche Riders destroys a land in addition to being a creature. Mitotic Slime dies and gives me more creatures. Ohran Viper will kill any creature it damages but will draw me a card if it hits a player, and so on.

I also wanted to use what I thought was a cool interaction between Cream of the Crop and Primitive Etchings. Once those two cards were in play, I could cast a creature and increase the odds of being able to draw a free card off the Etchings every turn. This also explains the inclusion of Dryad Arbor.

The tricky part came when I read the rulings (after the deck was built) on Cream of the Crop, which say that if you have a creature with power equalling 1 then I get to look at the top card but I can't do anything about it. Let's take a look at the decklist:

11 Forest
3 Dryad Arbor
2 Fungal Reaches
1 Raging Ravine
5 Mountain
1 Mossfire Valley 

4 Ohran Viper
3 Wickerbough Elder
4 Caller of the Claw
4 Acidic Slime
4 Mitotic Slime
3 Avalanche Riders
2 Blisterstick Shaman
3 Pouncing Jaguar
2 Flametongue Kavu 

4 Cream of the Crop
4 Primitive Etchings

So, part of that is no friggin' good. Ohran Viper and Dryad Arbor need to come out, because they don't combo with Cream of the Crop. Now the other rule is: all creatures must have a power of 2 or more!

That presents some challenges too. Also: Fungal Reaches has no place in this deck: I am not trying to build up mana to cast some crazy spell: I need to get rolling.

So, perhaps it's time to bring in some Temple of Abandon into the mix instead. That fits the 2 for 1 theme and it can help set up Cream or Etchings.

Caller of the Claw can probably come out too: Mitotic Slime is there for that purpose and yes, it will suck if that gets Path'd, when doesn't that suck? Freeing up space to do something else is probably a better deal, although I'm not sure what right now. Satyr Hedonist might be a thought and so is, interestingly, Golden Hind which the only non-druid creature that taps for mana that I'm aware of.

But I also think that some interaction will serve well too: more Blisterstick Shaman or Flametongue Kavu or something along those lines. If I cannot maximize the value, a deck like this will suffer.