MRD - aww1979 testing my deck

by **aww1979** » 05 Dec 2010, 21:22

I'm playing a few practice runs with my draft deck and uploading the videos, both to try and figure out how best to play the deck and to give people an idea of how I'd like to see it played. To start with, I included every single card I drafted, plus 19 swamps and 11 forests, for a 90 card deck. I'll begin cutting cards once I see their effectiveness, or lack thereof. I'm testing against my personal playdeck folder, not against other people's drafts, since I don't know what they are going to choose yet.

Game 1 vs "Black Destroyer" (WIN) | Open: Playing first, my opening hand is Forest, Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker, Mind Stone, Sundering Titan, Perish, Swamp, Persecute. Bolas and the Titan are useless, and I don't know if I'm against green. The only thing going for me is a 3rd turn Persecute, *if* I draw a 2nd black land by then, so I'll mulligan. My new hand is Helm of Obedience, Barter in Blood, Gemstone Mine, Treetop Village, Engineered Explosives, and Gargoyle Castle. Seems alright for 6 cards, and the explosives can take care of an early weenie army, so here goes.
Turn 1: Play Treetop Village. AI plays Swamp. Apparently I misunderstood the AI's deck title; it isn't an antiblack deck, but a black deck.
Turn 2: Draw Liliana Vess. Play Gemstone Mine. AI plays Swamp and Black Knight.
Turn 3: Draw Mind Twist, play Gargoyle Castle. I have a few choices. I can twist for 2, play Engineered Explosives, presumably for 2, or I can do nothing, keeping the Treetop Village for defense. I choose the third option, because I'm pretty sure the AI will be stupid enough to attack into it. AI plays swamp, attacks with Black Knight; Treetop Village animates and blocks to kill it. AI plays another Black Knight postcombat.
Turn 4: Draw/play Forest. I have the same options as last turn, plus Helm of Obedience. I'll play the Mind Twist for 3 and see what I can get. The AI discards Sorceress Queen, Nether Shadow, and Bad Moon. AI plays Swamp and attacks for 2.
Turn 5: Draw Pernicious Deed. If I play the Helm or the Deed, I'll have to use my last Gemstone Mine counter; same with explosives for more than 1 mana, so I'll keep the village for defense. AI attacks with black knight into my village, who kills it, and then plays Zombie Master postcombat.
Turn 6: Draw The Abyss. Nice; I think that's worth spending my last Gemstone Mine counter on, since it will stall for a really long time, so I put it out. AI sacs Zombie Master and plays Royal Assassin.
Turn 7: Draw/play Swamp. I decide to play Helm of Obedience, rather than attack or play the Deed, since if I can get one more black mana, I can play Liliana Vess and tutor up Leyline of the Void and win that way. AI sacs the assassin, returns Nether Shadow to play, plays a Swamp, attacks with the shadow for 1, and plays Abomination.
Turn 8: Draw Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre. Useless in my hand. I play Pernicious Deed, since AI is likely to sac the shadow, and I won't want to animate my village to block Abomination, since it's green. I also would like to save my Helm for when I get Leyline out. AI surprises me by saccing Abomination, and attacks for 1 with the shadow, then plays Royal Assassin.
Turn 9: Draw/play Swamp. Cast Liliana Vess, and activate 2nd ability to tutor for Leyline of the Void. Barring unforeseen difficulties, I win next turn. AI sacs the assassin and attacks Liliana with the shadow for 1.
Turn 10: Draw Leyline of the Void, use Liliana to force AI to discard a Swamp, then play Leyline and activate Helm for 1 to exile AIs deck. AI loses during its draw phase. 1-0

Initially, I'd thought I was facing an anti-black deck, so I was somewhat worried, as I play 2/3 black, but I misunderstood the deck title. (It was a deck that I did not create myself)

http://rapidshare.com/files/435135729/game1.zip

Game 2 vs "Blue Chutney" (WIN) | Open: (I didn't build this deck either, so I have no idea what to expect, other than blue :p)
Playing first, my opening hand is Imperial Seal, Treetop Village, Swamp, Forest, Sundering Titan, Pernicious Deed, Black Lotus. This is an awesome hand, because I can get Oath of Druids with Imperial Seal, so I keep it for sure. Basically, this deck should keep any hand that it gets a tutor in.
Turn 1: Play Swamp, Imperial Seal for Oath of Druids, play Black Lotus. AI plays Plains and Savannah Lions.
Turn 2: Draw Oath of Druids. Play forest and play oath. AI plays Plains, attacks me for 2, and plays White Knight.
Turn 3: Oath mills 46 cards (!) to get Platinum Angel into play. Draw/play Swamp, play Pernicious Deed. AI plays Island and Yotian Soldier.
Turn 4: Oath mills another dozen or so cards and gets me Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre. Draw Expedition Map. (I have Chainer's Edict and Call of the Herd in my graveyard to flashback) Play Treetop Village, cast Expedition Map, and activate it. Turns out all my fun lands are in the graveyard, so I just take a Swamp. Platinum Angel attacks for 4. AI plays Mishra's Factory and passes.
Turn 5: Oath during my upkeep hits Gaea's Blessing and then Lord of Extinction for a 0/0 that instantly dies, so it looks like one of those two cards should get cut :p Draw/play Forest, sac lotus to cast Sundering Titan, smashing plains/island on AIs side and swamp/forest on mine. Angel and Ulamog attack, and annihilator causes AI to sac its entire board except one Plains, so it takes 14 damage. AI Oaths up a Wall of Swords, and plays Plains and Balance. Funny enough, even this isn't enough to save it. I sac a Forest, sac my Angel and my Titan, who smashes a plains and my swamp, and keep Ulamog.
Turn 6: Draw Ivory Tower. Attack with Ulamog; AI sacs its board and takes 10. 2-0
http://rapidshare.com/files/435140037/game2.zip

Having now seen the awful synergy between Oathing up Gaea's Blessing followed by Lord of Extinction, I decide to cut the Lord from my decklist. My deck was already quite mana-heavy, so in addition I cut a swamp, and am down to 88 cards.

Game 3 vs "Apes and Lions and Ogres" (WIN) | Open: This deck I did build, but it was years ago. It's a zoo deck, and as the title suggests, contains Kird Ape, Savannah Lion, and Ghazban Ogre. I don't really know what else is in it, but that alone gives me a fairly good idea of what I face.

Drawing first, my opening hand is Sorin Markov, Gemstone Mine, Swamp, Golgari Signet, Garruk Wildspeaker, Sulfur Vent, Forest. The Signet will let me get turn 3 Garruk and turn 4 Sorin, so I think this is a keeper.

Turn 1: AI plays City of Brass, takes 1 to play Savannah Lions, and plays Black Lotus. I draw a Swamp and play Sulfur Vent.
Turn 2: AI plays Tropical Island and attacks for 2. Knowing my deckbuilding style, I suspect that the AI has the three blue 'Power 9' cards splashed, and perhaps Unstable Mutation or Serendib Efreet. I draw Phyrexian Arena, play Forest and Golgari Signet.
Turn 3: AI attacks for 2 but does nothing else. I have no idea what it could be holding in hand. I draw Liliana Vess, use the Signet to get 4 mana and play Garruk Wildspeaker, and then make a 3/3 beast for defense.
Turn 4: AI plays City of Brass and takes 1 to play Ghazban Ogre. I draw Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker. Doing the math, I realize I can actually play it, and tap the Signet, tap 2 lands, untap with Garruk, tap them all again, and then sac Sulfur Vent to play BOLAS!!! AI plays Bloodlust on its lions in response... I decide to use Bolas to smash the Black Lotus to deny some mana.
Turn 5: AI plays Library of Alexandria (in zoo? wtf was I thinking?) and Mox Emerald. I draw/play Swamp, and have several options. I have Sorin Markov, Phyrexian Arena, and Liliana Vess, but can only play one of them. I play Sorin Markov and zap the AI to 10 life with the 2nd ability. I use BOLAS to destroy Tropical Island; AI responds by tapping a City to Berserk its Ogre. <facepalm> I pass the turn.
Turn 6: AI gives me Ghazban Ogre and passes. I draw/play Swamp, and use BOLAS's 3rd ability; AI takes 7, sacs its board and discards Unholy Strength and Regrowth. AI is at 2 life and Sorin Markov makes the kill. 3-0
http://rapidshare.com/files/435144151/game3.zip

Wow! Well, after winning that game completely on the backs of my planeswalkers, I think I'll keep those all in. The Golgari Signet made an otherwise slow hand very playable. Turn 4 Bolas? That's just evil :p

I'll play a few more games later on.

by **aww1979** » 07 Dec 2010, 06:55

-Ditched Gloom, Choke, and Perish due to their being dead cards in hand in half the matchups.
-Ditched Goblin Charbelcher due to it being too unreliable and only doing like 1-2 damage on average in this deck.
-Ditched Ivory Tower since I don't usually have a full hand
-Ditched Expedition Map since I don't usually need it to fix mana
-Ditched Nether Void because I don't really have my deck designed to be able to get around that +3 cc penalty other than a few mana accelerants. It also conflicts with The Abyss, being an enchant world, and I don't trust the AI to play it at the right times.
-removed Icy Manipulator because the AI is so bad with it (though it is great in human hands, forcing you to commit 2+ creatures and then using Damnation or something) Several opponents also have large shrouded creatures that this won't work on
-Removed Kodama's Reach since if I can cast this, it means I almost certainly have B and G mana already, as G is my secondary colour
-removed Eureka because once I can cast this, there are only 7 cards in my deck that cost more, and it could backfire badly
-removed Persecute because against multicoloured decks it is hard to hit more than one or two cards; I kept hitting lands or guessing wrong what the AI was holding back
-removed Elephant Grass because it didn't do much to slow down the opponent unless they played black
-removed Call of the Herd because it synergizes poorly with Oath of Druids, Gaea's Blessing, and The Abyss, plus the AI won't flashback
-removed Mind Stone due to antisynergy with various board wipers (chosen over Golgari Signet and Fellwar Stone because signet always fixes my mana and accelerates, and fellwar gives me on-colour mana in 5 matchups, and if you count Bolas, all 7 matchups)
-removed 8 swamps and 6 forests to get to 60 card deck and an appropriate amount of mana

by **aww1979** » 07 Dec 2010, 06:59

by **jatill** » 07 Dec 2010, 13:20

aww1979 wrote:-Ditched Gloom, Choke, and Perish due to their being dead cards in hand in half the matchups.
-Ditched Goblin Charbelcher due to it being too unreliable and only doing like 1-2 damage on average in this deck.
-Ditched Ivory Tower since I don't usually have a full hand
-Ditched Expedition Map since I don't usually need it to fix mana
-Ditched Nether Void because I don't really have my deck designed to be able to get around that +3 cc penalty other than a few mana accelerants. It also conflicts with The Abyss, being an enchant world, and I don't trust the AI to play it at the right times.
-removed Icy Manipulator because the AI is so bad with it (though it is great in human hands, forcing you to commit 2+ creatures and then using Damnation or something) Several opponents also have large shrouded creatures that this won't work on
-Removed Kodama's Reach since if I can cast this, it means I almost certainly have B and G mana already, as G is my secondary colour
-removed Eureka because once I can cast this, there are only 7 cards in my deck that cost more, and it could backfire badly
-removed Persecute because against multicoloured decks it is hard to hit more than one or two cards; I kept hitting lands or guessing wrong what the AI was holding back
-removed Elephant Grass because it didn't do much to slow down the opponent unless they played black
-removed Call of the Herd because it synergizes poorly with Oath of Druids, Gaea's Blessing, and The Abyss, plus the AI won't flashback
-removed Mind Stone due to antisynergy with various board wipers (chosen over Golgari Signet and Fellwar Stone because signet always fixes my mana and accelerates, and fellwar gives me on-colour mana in 5 matchups, and if you count Bolas, all 7 matchups)
-removed 8 swamps and 6 forests to get to 60 card deck and an appropriate amount of mana

Once of these choices is a grave mistake. Hurray! :twisted:

by **aww1979** » 07 Dec 2010, 20:16

Quite possibly :p The deck is doing fairly well in my gauntlet, so at least in human hands it's alright. I haven't had the AI try to play it yet, but I'm pretty sure it will suck with it.