Let's take a look at the changes:
Not too many changes. Replaced brainstorm with ancestral visions and made room for a Life From the Loam maindeck. Also smoothed out the lands a bit and added creeping tar pits for more fixin and beatdown action. Sideboard has a new friendly monster too.
Round 1 VS: Affinity...again....
G1: I win the die roll, but have to mull to 6. I keep a fairly mediocre hand with an underground sea, early discard, and a mishras. I lead off with IoK and take a cranial plating, but look at the 2 arcbound ravagers taunting me. Hopefully i can draw a second swamp to keep villain on 1 land for a while with my sinkholes and then play out my counterbalance. Villain plays a mnemite and passes. No such luck on my turn 2, I play my mishra's and pass. Villain drops a second land and the ravager. I draw an underground sea the turn after, and sinkhole a land which becomes ravager food. Another land from villain, another sinkhole from me. I play out the counterbalance before the ravagers...well...ravage.
SB: +3 Abrupt Decay + 2 Pithing Needle, -1 LFTL -1 Nether Void, -1 IoK, -1 Thoughtseize
G2: I lead off with a creeping tar pit..tapped. Villain leads off with menmite, Ornithopter, and signal pest. Again waiting on colors, I play a mishra and pass. Villain adds a vault skirge to the table, and swings for a bunch. I grab a bayou with a fetch, and abrupt decay the signal pest. Villain attacks. I get a counterbalance in play, which ends up countering a bunch of really important spells like cranial plating and arcbound ravagers. Villain has no lands, but I can't draw an answer to the vault skirge, and eventually die to a master of etherium.
0-1
SB: +3 Abrupt Decay + 2 Pithing Needle, -1 LFTL -1 Nether Void, -1 IoK, -1 Thoughtseize
G2: I lead off with a creeping tar pit..tapped. Villain leads off with menmite, Ornithopter, and signal pest. Again waiting on colors, I play a mishra and pass. Villain adds a vault skirge to the table, and swings for a bunch. I grab a bayou with a fetch, and abrupt decay the signal pest. Villain attacks. I get a counterbalance in play, which ends up countering a bunch of really important spells like cranial plating and arcbound ravagers. Villain has no lands, but I can't draw an answer to the vault skirge, and eventually die to a master of etherium.
0-1
R2 VS: Shardless BUG
G1: I lose the roll, but villain plays a tar pit and passes. I IoK away a brainstorm, which would have done some work and found villain the lands he needed. I sinkhole the tarpit, and villain eventually draws some lands, but not before I get a counterbalance into play. Villain maelstrom pulses it, and I don't have a liliana or agent on top to save it. I do have a sinkole, which puts villain back on two lands. A nethervoid the next turn yields a scoop.
SB: None
G2: I stall out pretty hard this game. Villains hymn, tarmogyof, and shardless agent end me pretty quick. I don't really have good notes, but I'm guess I didn't keep a fantastic hand #learntomulligan
SB: +1 Chains + 2 Abrupt Decay, -3 Ancestral Visions, + 3 Gyofs, -3 ?
G3: This was an awesome game. I had answers, he had answers. The board state flip flopped a few times. Good ol fashoned slugfest magic. There were too many turns in this game to effectively take notes, but the allstar of the game was creeping tar pit. CTP is fantastic at killing Jace, and opponents. Villain almost stabilize with a gyof vs my shardless agent, but then realized that CTP was going to end him at 3 life. Come into play tapped is annoying, but can be totally worth it ^_^.
1-1
R3: VS Painter/Grindstone
G1: I lose the roll and mull to 6. I'm unsure of the sequence of plays, but I locked villain off land, and got him with counter/top lock. I had a fantastic blind flip with counterbalance early to counter a painter's servant (which would have meant death), and was able to roll with it from there. Villain scooped once I dropped a mishras. He also claimed that his hand was really really good. LD ftw.
SB: +2 Pithing Needle - 2 ?
G2: Villain lands a turn 1 blood moon. I make him assemble the combo before I scoop to give the impression that I play basics.
SB: +3 Abrupt Decay
G3: An early IoK gets rid of a blood moon. Villain plays a land and passes. Next turn hymn clears out his combo pieces. Unfortunately for me villain topdecks a magus of the moon, and I scoop.
1-2
SB: +2 Pithing Needle - 2 ?
G2: Villain lands a turn 1 blood moon. I make him assemble the combo before I scoop to give the impression that I play basics.
SB: +3 Abrupt Decay
G3: An early IoK gets rid of a blood moon. Villain plays a land and passes. Next turn hymn clears out his combo pieces. Unfortunately for me villain topdecks a magus of the moon, and I scoop.
1-2
I had a much better time with the deck this week. It was working as intended and is a tremendous amount of fun to play. I highly recommend trying it out or proxying it up. The changes have worked out great. The only problem is my local meta. Hurkyl's recall is going into the sideboard. I would not do this in a large tournament, but seeing the same affinity decks over and over again is getting annoying. Painter/grindstone is a problem deck, as it literally runs 8 bloodmoon effects, which it can drop on turn 1. This deck, like many in legacy at the moment, has a very greedy mana base. The red painter/stone deck is one of the many decks that can prey effectively on those manabases. Now might not be the time to take a list like this (or a similar mana base) to a large tournament.
On another note, I've been playing monoB Pox on MTGO. I've sold off a lot of my raredrafts and winnings to start putting some resources into the digital legacy deck. I'm missing some key things (2 liliana and 4 wasteland) but the deck is otherwise tournament ready. Here's the list:
I'm going to make some videos of the deck in action and start including them in the blog.
Thanks for reading!
~TheJGits
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