GETTING THE HANG OF IT

Hey Guys,

Me again. Even though I had a bumpy start I've been doing pretty good in the last few days (link to stats in the right or bottom if you're on a mobile). I've opened some nice pools and even though I lost some matches I slowly began getting the hang of things and winning more. Here are the pools I got in the last few day. Feel free to comment what would you change and if you feel like how I should have built them differently.

16.08.17

17.08.17

NEW POOL 

The pool we're going to discuss today is quite interesting and I had a lot of fun both building and playing it. It had a descent amount of playables in pretty much all the colors. The most cool thing though (and a first for me) was that all the rares were in the same color. Well one was a land and one was a colorless, but it's still quite a thing getting actually 2 rares and 2 mythics in the same color. Here's what the pool looked like.

BY RARITY

BY COLOR

As you can see there are a lot of cool cards present. There's things to do in pretty much every color. Also worth noting is that we have a cycling desert in all the colors which serve as a protection from flooding. Initially I thought this should be a Green 5 or 4 color deck but after a close analysis of the colors I went in a different direction. Here are the colors sorted and ready for analysis. 

WHITE

BLACK

BLUE

RED

GREEN

COLORLESS

WHITE - I'd say that white is the 2nd worst color we have after black. The Steward of Solidarity combos well with the Tah-Crop Elite, but other than that there's nothing else exciting in white. The Saving Grace has been increasing in value in my eyes and is definitely a spell worth running. It saves you in races and can sometimes be a lot of value when played in the right spot.

BLACK - The worst color we have. The trial is descent and we did open a cartouche in blue, so there's a combo we can explore into, but other than that I don't see anything pulling us into black.

RED - I know that Blue is next, but it's the most exciting color so I'll leave it for last. Our red is pretty good. The curve is a bit high, but we have some premium creatures and premium removal. The Gilded Cerodon and the Minotaurs can also help us finish games. The only card I'm not excited about playing in red is probably the Hyena Pack, but it is also a descent creature and I have no problem running it in a deck where we're short on creatures.

GREEN - We have some good stuff in green and we have the Gift of Paradise and Oasis Ritualist if we want to run a multi-color green deck. However when I tried to build it the green felt more like a splash since we have a lot of good stuff in red and blue. After a short consideration I decided that the green was simply not good enough to use as a main color and it felt like we're only giving up the Ambuscade.

COLORLESS - We opened some pretty good colorless cards. The mirage mirror is great in controlling decks. Sunset Pyramid provides us with card advantage and can help us scry lands to the bottom in the late game. The Manalith helps us splash if we need to and the River Hoopoe is definitely a card I'd like to run in the deck, since it's another form of card advantage in the late game.

BLUE - Now we're talking business. Although blue is often referred as the worst color in Limited since it requires a lot of buildaround to be worth playing it we managed to open some pretty strong cards. The cartouche allows us to splash for the Black Trial if we want to, but since I'm already splashing green I decided to skip on the Trial. Kefnet is great in sealed and in the lategame can provide us with serious card advantage. Slamming him on turn 3 is also a powerfull play vs some slow decks (scroll to the bottom to see image). Unesh is also a great card for controlling decks, it is a big body and provides a descent card advantage since you can chose the cards drawn. Kefnet's Last Word is probaby the best card in this cycle. Turn 4 get your best thing might not be the best play, but when the opponent is out of cards is quite devastating. We also have some descent counter spell to go with the rest of the color.

All in all we have a really good Blue pool and we're happy to run it as our main color. Paired with red gives us a great controlling deck with a good amount of reach in the late game.

 

AFTERMATH

We managed to finish 6-3 with the deck. It matched up a bit bad against heavy aggro and after watching a replay of some of the games I also saw that I didn't play optimally in some of the cases. I also had some pretty awesome games. Kefnet over-performed pretty much every time I could play it. Watch the replays below for one of the greatest comebacks I ever had. I was mana screwed in all three games but managed to win the match and I have to say it felt pretty awesome.





Another awesome moment I had was a slam dunk Kefnet turn 3. Here's the result.

Even though the deck was pretty strong my performance wasn't great. I'm happy about a 6-3 since it is a winning record, but I feel that there's a lot of room for improvement. I had a lot of fun playing this deck though and I'm happy with the results. Thanks all for sticking up till the end and I'll see you next week.

May the hearth of the cards be with you,
Tonyo