Adventures in the Forgotten Realms will be Remembered

 

Adventures in Forgotten Realms has been described as a core set in all but name, and like any core set I struggled a lot with this format. I did about 35 drafts and got about 4 trophies with a 54% match record and 50% game record. Definitely a downer after great success in Kaldheim and moderate success in Strixhaven.

Despite that, I really enjoyed drafting AFR more than Strixhaven, despite the imbalance of the power of Red-Black compared to Blue-anything. The flavour of the set really appealled and I found enough room to experiment and play around.

Still, I've gotten very frustrated lately with my lack of success. 

There are three major areas you can leak percentage points:

- drafting

- building a deck

- playing the games

I think drafting I sometimes get too tunnel visioned or not tunneled enough. For example, sometimes I pick a colour pair too early and ride and die on that despite obvious signs a different pair is open. And other times I get to distracted by signals and end up with a pile of junk.

But overall I think I draft OK. Could be better, but not too bad. When it comes to building a deck, I sometimes have trouble deciding on what curve topper I should go for. A big creature? Big spell? How much removal is too much? Not enough? I hear the podcast experts talking about modifiying number of lands and I'm here like thinking "really?". 

And then when I play the games, there are times I know I make stupid punts and lose games, and other times I make no obvious mistake but simply play too agressively.

All told these three leaks and weaknesses adds up to a lot of lost games and percentage points overall. With the upcoming Innistrad Midnight Hunt release I'm going to try and tighten up all three and see if we can't get back to some Kaldheim numbers.

Drafting Magic

 Drafting on Magic Arena continues to be my favourite pastime this long long quarantine. Last time I talked about it here I was lamenting my frustrations with Theros Beyond Death format:

With that said, I did not have fun drafting Theros Beyond Death. I ended up at 55 wins and 60 losses after the many drafts I did, and only once got to 6 wins out of 7 before losing three times. I had many 0-3 results and generally felt flummoxed even when I thought I had a deck that could compete. it really killed my joy in March.

The Ikoria Lair of Behemoths was a 180 degree turnaround for me and I had a ton of fun in that format and was sad to see it go. I finished it at 73 wins 68 losses and got to 7 wins three times in 24 drafts. I think the biggest factor in the turnaround is that archetypes I used were very obvious and decent wide support so you could force a lane whereas in Theros you needed to have extremely good card evaluation skills and reading the drafting signals in order to make the best working deck.

But after Ikoria came Core Set 2021 (aka M21) and I have not had a great run again. Only 58 wins to 56 losses and no 7 win drafts in 20 tries. The win percentage was slightly better than Theros but no trophies (as 7 win drafts are called). I think the same thing as in Theros was plaguing me in m21: trying to find an open lane that had the support to make a strong synergistic deck.

That being said, I still had fun and much prefer drafting with other humans instead of the Arena bots. My goal for the next set, Zendikar Rising (which looks awesome by the way) is to continue to work on that skill of drafting decks as opposed to piles of cards. Let's see if I can get back to getting some trophies!

Beyond Theros and Into Ikoria

My main love of Magic the Gathering is the Limited Draft format. I like the excitement of opening a pack and seeing what cards are there, passing them around and trying to build a deck, and then the excitement when a deck comes together. But the best part is that everyone is on the same level playing field, with ~45 cards to build a deck and play each other.

With that said, I did not have fun drafting Theros Beyond Death. I ended up at 55 wins and 60 losses after the many drafts I did, and only once got to 6 wins out of 7 before losing three times. I had many 0-3 results and generally felt flummoxed even when I thought I had a deck that could compete. it really killed my joy in March.

But along comes Ikoria Lair of Behemoths and the joy has returned! I'm at 28 wins and 18 losses, I've trophied twice (i.e. got 7 wins before 3 losses) in just seven drafts, and really feel like I've got the meta of drafting this set understood.

My best deck was a Sultai deck (Black, Green, Blue) based around Gyruda as companion with a couple cards that also fetched things from the graveyard. It went 7-1 and the only loss was close. Companions are busted.

I think part of my success is owed to drafting against real humans instead of bots. Somehow the open lanes are more obvious when drafting against humans, and it seems more likely that humans will try and force lanes that are already contested if the meta suggests its the best deck, leaving other colours super open and that just does not happen with bots. For example, twice I've drafted powerful Sultai decks because everyone seems to be trying to force Red White cycling decks. That' fine, those are powerful decks, but it means that I'm picking up relevant rares and uncommons deep into the packs.

Hey, I'll take it.

Another thing I like about Ikoria is that the mechanics are super fun. Mutate is a blast, companions are wicked when they work out, cycling is powerful. Theros' mechanics of Enchantments matter and escape were not exciting... escape was ok, but it did not grab me like Mutate does.

Overall, having lots of fun and I look forward to getting some more craziness in the next draft.

February Arena Progress Update

At the beginning of February I talked about how I was trying two new decks, the UW Dream Trawler control and the mono Red Embercleave decks. I also decided to tip my toe into Best of Three ladder climbing instead of Best of One. Here is my report.

First off, by the end of the month I made Platinum again. Considering I was not trying to aggressively climb I was happy with that result.

Secondly, Best of Three is exhausting! I found it a lot more stressful trying to figure out what to swap in and out for matches two and three, and the time commitment against a slow control deck could be as much as 30 -50 minutes! Also, I discovered that there were a lot more control decks in Bo3 compared to Bo1 where aggressive decks seemed more prominent. Over time I found myself drifting back to Bo1.

Thirdly, my early success rate for both decks was not great. My mono-Red was 59% (23-16) and my Trawler deck was an abysmal 42% (11-15). This might have been compounded by being in Bo3 and not being experienced at sideboarding for the UW deck. Halfway through the month I switched to another version of the mono-Red embercleave deck and focused on Bo1 and was much more successful, going 23-9 for a 72% win rate.

Deck
4 Runaway Steam-Kin (GRN) 115
4 Light Up the Stage (RNA) 107
4 Scorch Spitter (M20) 159
4 Bonecrusher Giant (ELD) 115
3 Embercleave (ELD) 120
4 Fervent Champion (ELD) 124
4 Rimrock Knight (ELD) 137
4 Robber of the Rich (ELD) 138
3 Torbran, Thane of Red Fell (ELD) 147
4 Castle Embereth (ELD) 239
4 Anax, Hardened in the Forge (THB) 125
18 Mountain (THB) 285
Sideboard
1 Experimental Frenzy (GRN) 99
3 Lava Coil (GRN) 108
1 Tibalt, Rakish Instigator (WAR) 146
2 Chandra, Acolyte of Flame (M20) 126
4 Unchained Berserker (M20) 164
3 Redcap Melee (ELD) 135 

It felt competitive in every match when I was not mana-flooded and could steal the occasional match with a surprise Embercleave. If I was solely interested in climbing the ranks I would probably use this deck in Best of One matches.

But we're in March and I wanted to try something new. I wanted to really push into Best of Three and mean in and I wanted a deck that could go toe to toe with the control decks there. One of the latest hotness around is Temur Clover and since it uses a few cards I have and I needed to craft only a handful of rares, I decided to try it out.

The basic idea is run them over with Lovestruck Beast, Bonecrusher Giant, and Beanstalk Giant and everything else is support to get you there. Lucky Clover is a force multiplier for the spells on the Eldraine cards, Escape to the Wilds is surprisingly a "don't always need it" card to search for things you need. Fae of Wishes is the big value even by themselves but really is game winning when combined with 1-2 Lucky Clovers. Excuse me while I get from the sideboard two cards I need to dismantle you.

Eight matches in and I'm only 50% win rate but I'm still getting the hang of this deck so I'm not worried yet. A good thing about this deck is I don't really need to sideboard between games as they are better off in the sideboard where the Fae can fetch them.

I'm really liking this deck as I learn it. Will report on my progress with it in a couple weeks.

Cleaving and Trawling

Since it was February and the month of love due to Valentine's day I decided to go wild and try and Mono Red aggro deck. Well, also because I had accumulated a bunch of Embercleaves so why not? I also decided it was time to try out "traditional" play, i.e. playing Best of 3 games and using a sideboard between matches. 

This is the deck I settled on:

Deck 4 Runaway Steam-Kin (GRN) 115
4 Light Up the Stage (RNA) 107
4 Tin Street Dodger (RNA) 120
4 Scorch Spitter (M20) 159
4 Shock (M20) 160
4 Embercleave (ELD) 120
4 Fervent Champion (ELD) 124
3 Robber of the Rich (ELD) 138
3 Castle Embereth (ELD) 239
3 Anax, Hardened in the Forge (THB) 125
4 Infuriate (THB) 141
2 Phoenix of Ash (THB) 148
17 Mountain (THB) 285
Sideboard
4 Unchained Berserker (M20) 164
4 Claim the Firstborn (ELD) 118
2 Embereth Shieldbreaker (ELD) 122
3 Redcap Melee (ELD) 135

 It did not go well. I stopped after going 5-9 record.

Part of it was learning the deck I admit, learning when to mulligan, which order to cast spells, how to get your attack through, etc. And I know people have ranked high with similar decks, but this version felt so finicky, that is to say if your lands didn't come in just right, or you flooded, it petered out fast. And everyone knows the key cards to remove to disable it.

There are other red aggro decks I'm tempted to look into, but really the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. So I decided to try out something else I had my eye on: Blue White Dream Trawler Control:

Deck
4 Absorb (RNA) 151
4 Hallowed Fountain (RNA) 251
2 Dovin's Veto (WAR) 193
4 Teferi, Time Raveler (WAR) 221
1 Tranquil Cove (M20) 259
2 Castle Ardenvale (ELD) 238
2 Castle Vantress (ELD) 242
4 Banishing Light (THB) 4
4 The Birth of Meletis (THB) 5
4 Shatter the Sky (THB) 37
4 Omen of the Sea (THB) 58
1 Thassa's Intervention (THB) 72
4 Thirst for Meaning (THB) 74
3 Dream Trawler (THB) 214
3 Temple of Enlightenment (THB) 246
6 Plains (THB) 279
8 Island (THB) 281
Sideboard
2 Narset, Parter of Veils (WAR) 61
1 Dovin's Veto (WAR) 193
3 Aether Gust (M20) 42
1 Glass Casket (ELD) 15
1 Mystical Dispute (ELD) 58
2 Sorcerous Spyglass (ELD) 233
1 Elspeth Conquers Death (THB) 13
1 Elspeth, Sun's Nemesis (THB) 14
1 Heliod's Intervention (THB) 19
2 Whirlwind Denial (THB) 81

I've had better success in initial testing, going 5-2. The basic idea is similar to other UW control decks I've run last fall where I delay and put off their creatures until I dominate the board. The big difference is that this deck does so with the impressive Dream Trawler instead of waiting for opponent to give up.

If you can get this guy to land on the board, it will quickly dominate the game. Power it up with some draw card spells and its game over.

One thing I will say about Best of 3 though is that its far more mentally exhausting than Best of 1. Sideboarding cards in and out is stressful, control decks tend to take longer already, and one match can easily take 25 minutes for three games. Take a look at these 5 test games:

And if you lose a 22 minute match? I find it more of a blow than losing a 10 minute match. I want to get better and I think learning the ins and outs of Best of 3 is important, but I'm not sure I want that to be my main playstyle.

Going On An Adventure

At the beginning of November I set a goal to climb the ladder to Platinum and after a few missteps I did so with a Rakdos sacrifice Cat Oven deck. In December I wanted to expand my horizons and do a control deck on the ladder and failed to reach Platinum again, but stilled learned a lot.

January, the last month of the Throne of Eldraine standard meta, I decided to try a Green Black Golgari Adventures deck as it seemed to be one of the toughest decks I was running into on Arena. I'm happy to report that its not even the middle of the month and Platinum rank has been achieved.

Now I'm going to see if I can climb to Diamond before the end of the month.

I started off with a deck I got from @MythicMeebo who used it at the Mythic Championships to a top 8 finish.

I didn't have a great start with it, having a 2-4 record. So I switched to a similar deck:

I played this one a lot, 79 matches, and while I had some early success climbing to Gold 3 quickly it flattened out. At a 54% win rate I was not going to climb very well. The problem seemed to be that it was too slow to kill early, and lacked a lot of end game power. I tried a version with more Beanstalk Giants and a Liliana Dreadhorde General, but really it was too late or too easy to counter. I always felt I was fighting from behind.

So finally I switched to this deck:

This deck had the four mythic Questing Beasts and three Rankle, Master of Pranks which both increased the ability of the deck to hit hard and fast in the early game or as surprise damage in late game. Ideally I overwhelm the opponent before they can stabilize, and if they do stabilize then Cavalier of Night or Massacre Girl can break the deadlock.

One of the things I learned from these decks is the importance of card draw from the Edgewall Innkeeper and Foulmire Knight (and less so from Vraska). Those extra cards are necessary to keep up the pressure against counter spells from control decks or removal from other decks. Without them the deck runs out of gas and its hard to get going again.

My current deck is working well at the moment, but I've got an eye on some substitutions in case it flounders on the ladder. Noxious Grasp is useful in a lot of situations but could be swapped for something like Lucky Clover to get more value from the adventure spells (as long as you have enough targets or enough life for the ones that take your life as a cost like Swift End), and the Great Henge is OK but rarely affects the outcome of my games, its more of a "win more" card so I might swap it out for another Cavalier of Night who is a definite momentum swing.

Look out Diamond, here I come!

December Wrap Up

So the experiment with controlling decks in December comes to a disappointing end. Things were going swimmingly, I was 1 win from Platinum with over a week left and then... boom. Ended down in Gold 2.

Oof.

I went from a 60% win rate down to a 55% win rate pretty quickly. What the hell happened? Taking a look at my most played match ups gives a good hint.

The meta shifted hard in the last month to more aggro decks than I was seeing before; Red decks of various stripes, Golgari adventures, and Simic flash all were appearing more frequently and all exposed weak spots in my deck's game plan.

- Red aggro simple got in under my defenses faster than I could set up and if I didn't get a turn 5 Time Wipe or maybe a turn 5 Planar Cleansing I was toast.

- Golgari Adventures either hit me with a turn 3 (!) Questing Beast or used Midnight Rider or Edgewall Innkeeper to draw replacement cards enough to simply start over after I did a board sweeper.

- Simic flash simply got creatures on the board and then counter spelled my attempts to remove them.

All three of those matches I faced more frequently in the last ten days of December and all of them were well below a win rate to climb higher. On the upside I dominated against the mirror match up and had a good handle on any Cat Oven decks.

For the last month of Throne of Eldraine standard I'm going a new/old direction. I'm going to find a Golgari deck to use and climb the ladder with. Its going to be difficult since I only have 6 rares with which to craft a deck with so I'm going to have to leverage my existing collection more than I would like. I'll report on this experiment once I have some matches under my belt.

Getting the Hang of Controlling the Game

On December 4th I talked about trying to learn control decks in Magic the Gathering. This was a learning opportunity and I threw myself into it with the usual starting disaster I have trying anything knew. I'm just not a natural at anything I try, I can't see the combos and strategies like others can, I need to learn them from falling down a lot.

And boy did I ever. Fall down a lot I mean.

I was not having luck with the Azorius deck I was trying so I borrowed one from my friend's lists and did even worse. I went back to the Esper control deck I started with and had a bit more luck, but still couldn't make headway on the ladder.

Finally I heard about Ben Stark playing Ally Warfield at the Mythic Championship with an Azorius deck and decided to check out his list. It was even simpler than the ones I had previous tried so I loaded it up and gave it a try. This new deck, combined with some very painful lessons-learned, started to click and I finally climbed my way out of Gold 4 to Gold 3 and then Gold 2 this past weekend.

So far a 63% win rate and while it has not been completely smooth sailing up the ladder, its definitely a lot more consistent than I was experiencing earlier.

My version of Ben Stark's Azorius list for Bo1 ladder play.

And why is that?

First off was the learning curve. When you play with aggro creature-heavy decks or even mid range decks you get value from things on the board, not in your hand. Its second nature to cast things as soon as possible to get the maximum value from them, taking into account what your opponent is doing and how to get around things of course. But at the end of the day, the heuristic to use as much of your mana base as possible each turn is ingrained into my psyche.

But with a control deck every spell has to be weighed against what spells you can't cast if you cast this one. Hesitation, patience, playing the (very) long game are all called for. Its literally like playing a different game, and while I knew in my head that it was a different play style, I had to learn it in my heart and learn new instincts. That took a while.

Another factor was that the first couple decks I crafted, the Esper control and Azorius decks, were based on Best of 3 matches and I suspect that they suffered when playing Best of 1 matches. Control gets more powerful when it can customize the list for colour hate and the opponent's play style in matches 2 and 3 I think.

The Ben Stark deck on the other hand, was a simpler version of the Azorius deck and I found it surprising at the lack of win conditions. Just a few Gadwicks and Brazen Borrowers, how can this be? But it turns out that once you have control of the game in hand, a couple creatures and some 1/1 from the Ardenvale Castle are all you need to win.

Which brings me to my last point: control decks seem to have a lot more decision points involved. My normal decks have decision trees with 2 or maybe 3 branches at each point; control decks seem to have 4 or 5 branches each turn and making the wrong move can be disastrous (as evidenced by my record). Playing control is not for the casual match!

Now that I feel like I'm getting the hang of how this deck plays, I can see the attraction of control decks, the feeling that you are playing multi-level chess while your opponent is playing tic tac toe. Its intoxicating.

Next step is to ride out the rest of the December season and see if we can't get that Platinum level once again!

Trying to Take Control With Esper and Azorius

With the November season in the books I started the December season with a new Esper control deck I found on the internet and wanted to try.

This deck required a lot of rares to craft (mostly those dual lands) but I had hopes that this would work out and I could learn about the ins and out of control decks more intimately.

It did not go well.

After 23 matches I had a 26% win rate, 6 wins, 17 losses.

I'm pretty sure the problem is me and not the meta. There are a lot of decision points with a deck like this: when do I wipe the board, when do I hold off for a counter spell, do I counter this spell or that one? So many decisions and so many chances to do the wrong thing.

Against aggro decks I seemed to get down to low life before I got enough mana to take control and against other control decks I was simply out played. But there is some good news; I started off 2-13 and then went 4-4 so it was getting better.

I decided to switch to an Azorius control deck as I hoped it would be simpler to learn how to use and I didn't have any rares left to craft something in other colour pairing really. it has a number of similarities to the Esper control deck with Teferi and counter spells but the win condition is based on the Agent of Treachery and Mass Manipulation instead of Liliana.

I've gone 7-11 with it, slightly better with a 39% win rate but still not enough to climb any ranks. I'm still running into the same issues: aggro decks getting me before I can take control and control decks out-controlling me.

Still, I'm going to give it the old college try because its a good learning experience and I have no more rares to craft anything else.

Surprising Climb

A few weeks ago I was lamenting how my efforts at climbing the ladder in Standard Constructed for November's season was not working:

Its amazing how quickly the meta shifts in Magic the Gathering. Just a little while ago I was celebrating getting to Platinum Standard Ranked with my mono black deck and now I'm getting beat around the face like no one's business, languishing in Gold 3 and 4.

 That was back on Nov 5 and I stuck with the deck for another week to give it time and see if it could bounce back (or if I could play it better more accurately) but while I climbed to the cusp of Gold 2 I could not bridge the gap.

I decided to try something else on Nov 13, switching from the mono-black deck centered around Ayara and Liliana to a Rakdos Sacrifice deck that leaned heavily into the Cauldron Familiar/Witch's Oven combo.

At first it did not seem to make a difference, falling all the way down to one loss from back in Silver. It seemed like I was facing nothing but control decks based around Doom Foretold and Fires of Invention! By the middle of the month I had written the season off as I had very few rare wildcards to draft with and was getting very frustrated so I decided just to ride it out and plan for December.

And then something strange started to happen. I started to win more. I don't know if the meta shifted so I saw fewer control decks, or if I relaxed after giving up so I played tighter, or my luck of the draw changed, or some combination of all three but I began climbing from the bottom of Gold IV and after a few days was hitting Gold 2 and 1.

"Maybe I will get back to Platinum this month," I thought, and sure enough, I did.

Highlight is Rakdos Sacrifice deck.

So my original goal of getting to Platinum 2 is back on the table!

About the deck: the base engine of Cat -> Oven is what this deck is built on. They are both one mana to cast and operate without further mana investment, pinging the opponent for 1 each turn and gaining me 1 life in return. And it operates at instant speed so if someone tries to kill the cat early, I can simply remove it myself and bring it back later.

Everything else in the deck is gravy. Mayhem Devil can deal a lot of extra damage if left unchecked, Cavalier of Night and Rankle can beat down as well as trim the herd on the other side of the board, Reaper of Night is value add with some draw cards, and my spells are around removal to make sure I don't die until they do.

Biggest threats to this deck besides bad luck on the draw are decks with tools to remove the Oven and control decks with lots of counter spells. A particularly bad matchup is against the Esper control deck making rounds that uses Doom Foretold to slowly clear the board and take apart my engine and then cripple me with Ethereal Absolution.

I'm going to ride this deck out to the end of the month and see if Plat 2 is reachable in 5 days. Next month, maybe back to mono black with Cat Oven and Ayara?

Back to the Drawing Board

Its amazing how quickly the meta shifts in Magic the Gathering. Just a little while ago I was celebrating getting to Platinum Standard Ranked with my mono black deck and now I'm getting beat around the face like no one's business, languishing in Gold 3 and 4.

Not Climbing The Ladder :(

The big issue is that when Field of the Dead was banned, decks around Oko, The Thief of Crowns started to dominate the format, typically in green ramp decks that overwhelmed the opponent and turned their best pieces into 3/3 Elk tokens.

Oko Oh No!

The meta shifted in response to this with more focus on controlling decks, either based around something like Esper Doom Foretold or Fires of Invention enchantments. There is also a fair number of Red and Gruul aggro decks.

My black mono decks, both last season's version and my new one based around Ayara and Midnight Reaper/Liliana Dreadhorde General, do decently against those aggro decks, but the Oko and control decks are very difficult for me to deal with because they have the tools to dismantle parts of my engine fairly easily in the midgame and then overwhelm me with big powerful spells/creatures in the late game.

Look at my stats:

Doesn't look too bad in the matchups, right? Yeah, the Simic is crushing me but everything else is ok...

OMG OUCH! A lot of those decks are really similar Fires of Invention variants which are dragging me down from a win rate of 63% last season to 55% this season, hence the stalled at Gold 3/4 tier.

So I'm going back to the drawing board, just not sure if I'm going to ride the rest of this season out and try again fresh next one, or craft some sort of deck that can get me over the hump.

Reanimating Reanimator

On October 9th I posted about trying out a Reanimator deck:

I started to get interested in net-decking a UB reanimator deck when my best friend pointed me at his Grixis reanimator deck on his Untapped profile. This deck is massively different from anything I've tried before, including trying to run with three colours, but my friend is really smart and good at MtG so I copied his deck list into Arena and spent my stored up wildcards to craft the necessary cards. (Lucky for me I already had three Drakuseth cards in my collection because "hey big dragon!".)
It was quite a mind bender at first, trying to figure out what to discard, when to surveil, how to survive, what lands I needed when, etc but after 12 games in regular play I felt I had gotten the knack of it, so I'm going to try this deck out in Standard Ranked to see if it can help propel me higher than Gold.

But things didn't work out and I ended up going with Mono-black deck to get to platinum:

Last week I talked about how I was going to use my friend's Grixis Reanimator deck to try and climb the standard ranked ladder. It started out ok and I climbed into high silver but then stalled and fell a little. Basically, in many game I had a lot of trouble making all the moving pieces get into the right place before I died: Bond of Revival in hand, Drakuseth or Agent of Treachery in the graveyard, mana to cast it... and even if all the pieces were ready one kill spell or counter spell could spell my ruin. Don't get me wrong; when it works, it works really really well at turning games around, but lacking any life gain or ways to handle big creatures while I set up was severely hurting me. I tried some minor modifications but didn't really help the major weakness: just too slow to get going most of the time.

Since I made the goal last week I've been experimenting with new decks and really trying to find that sweet spot with a Reanimator deck focusing around my favourite dragon Drakuseth, and his constant companion Agent of Treachery.

This deck is where we left off. I had exchanged the Merchant of the Vale for the Murderous Rider for the kill/lifegain combo in hopes of giving me more time to get the Drakuseth/Bond of Revival going, but it made little difference.

 This deck goes straight Blue Black so no chance on casting Drakuseth right from the hand as a last resort, but beefs up with more creatures like Fae of Wishes, Brazen Borrower, Tomebound Lich, and the Doom Whisperer. This deck could survive longer with all the creatures while searching and discarding to set up the reanimating coup de grace, but I found it too slow at times and limited in discard ability. The Fae of Wishes seemed like a good idea but more often than not was too slow to fetch anything useful from the sideboard (usually Unmoored Ego).

 This was my attempt to speed up the setup by adding two Discovery cards which Surveils 2 and then draws a card.

The Doom Whisperer is nice with the built in pay 2 life to surveil 2, as well as being a threat as a 6/6 Trample-Flyer (sometimes reanimating him from the graveyard was game winning enough), but I felt he was competing with Drakuseth too much and exchanged him out for our favourite prankster, Rankle. He can attack two turns sooner than Doom Whipsy because he has haste, gives me an option to discard a card if he hits the other player, and can force a creature sacrifice. I also traded out some creatures for Cry of the Carnarium to give me from respite from small creatures overwhelming me early. In the end, though, these decks still seemed too slow to get to where I needed to be: reanimating Darkuseth to sweep the field and force the enemy to concede.

Some other decks I looked at included this one that went back to spells to hold the enemy off and left out Agent of Treachery altogether.

And this one that used Niv-Mizzet to push to the goal as a card draw / discard as well as big creature. Very interesting was that Bond of Insight spell which puts 4 cards in the graveyard and then lets me take two Sorcery/Instant cards to my hand from the graveyard.

I didn't have the wildcards to make those decks happen though but I took some of the ideas and combined them to create this current deck:

It looks more like where I started with the Ritual of Soot and Legion's End cards, very useful for surviving the early game along with Cry of the Carnarium, but with added Bond of Insight and Connive/Concoct cards. The former helps with the setup of the graveyard and finding Bond of Revival, while the latter either helps me survive by stealing a creature, or can be used like a slower Bond of Revival reanimation when I need it. After all, Agent of Treachery's big pay off is simply entering the battlefield.


I've got the Tomebound Lich as a possible replacement for the Merchant of the Vale as a creature with draw and discard functionality in the sideboard. I really liked this creature for the defensive ability of the deathtouch, but didn't like how I was forced to draw and discard when he enters the battlefield and attacks. Sometimes I'm happy with my cards, you know? So we will see how it goes from here first.

This current iteration is 3-1 in four quick play games, not enough for a strong indication of how well its working but I'm hopeful. We will see how it goes.

Drafting Disappointment

Last night I got together with friends to do an actual Throne of Eldraine Limited Draft! I was so excited! Here's how we did it: there was four of us, we each go four packs (not three as per usual), opened one, draft a card, pass around. After four rounds we had ~56 cards to make a 40 card deck (basic lands free of course). Then we played each other in a Best of 3 match.

After all the games were played, we will put all the rares and alternate art cards back in a pool and take turns picking them with the winner picking first, second going second, etc.

I have never drafted with real people so it was a very different experience compared to drafting against 7 Arena bots. For one thing, with only 3 other people the cards wheeling around a lot faster, and there was definitely a feeling of what the other people were picking that I did not feel online.

I started off drafting a blue rare, Midnight Clock, not because I wanted it but mainly because I was afraid of what my friend Andrew could do with it. Bad start already. Then I settled into Green and White cards for the first pack and a half but at Pack 3 I was faced with a Murderous Rider and had a couple decent black cards already so I starting snapping up black cards. The question because was I going Green White, Green Black, or Black White?

Then I drew Wintermoor Commander followed by Resolute Rider, I knew I had found my signpost. Black White Knights it is!

My deck was basically aggro based on Knight tribal synergies and recurring them from the graveyard using Barrow Witches and Forever Young, and a smattering of removal from In a Tower and Bake Into A Pie. I felt pretty good overall.

Boy, was I mistaken.

My first match was against Ben who was sporting an artifact/food deck, splashing in Grumgully who made his creatures bigger. First game did not go well, but second game I got my enchantments going and beat him down before he setup. In the tiebreaker, I was pushing hard but a Cauldron Familiar gave him enough life to hold on and win with 1 life point left. I probably screwed that up by attacking aggressively at the end when a slower approach might have been better, but it was that kind of night.

Next match was against Aaron and his Black Blue flyers/control deck. First game he easily beat me with more fliers in the air than I could stop, second game I got more creatures going but he still tied me up and beat me. We had time for a third match and this time my enchantment combo showed up in full force and I beat him down.

Finally I faced Andrew who had defeated Aaron and Ben in the previous rounds. He was sporting a White Red aggro knights deck with lots of combat tricks. First game my deck was doing what it was supposed to with lots of recurring knights but he had the mythic rare Outlaw's Merriment was just insane. Every upkeep, he just gets a new creature. Life, for free. I was able to get him down to four life but he kept getting the Clerics with lifelink and just boosted his health back up to 12. Eventually he just overwhelmed me.

How is that a card?!?!

Next game I never got going as my deck just gave up and he rolled over me.

At the end of the night I was offically 1-6 and by far the bottom of the ranking. Very disappointing.

We put the rares and alternate art back in the middle and picked them in the order of Andrew, Ben, Aaron, and me. I ended up with Clackbridge Troll, Resolute Rider, Lochmere Seprent, and alternate art Foulmire Knight.