Managed to get 2-2 in my local store.
I lost to:
- W/B Tokens: not enough interaction against his Hidden Stockpile, Anointed Procession, Seal Away and Anointed Priest - I got rolled over in two games. Forgetting about an Aftermath removal and blocking his Anointed Priest, allowing him to Embalm for 2 Tokens due to Anointed Procession probably didn’t help.
- G/u Energy: lost to a Game 1 Nissa, Vital Force that I didn’t manage to handle, won game 2, and lost game 3 to a dramatic Blink of an Eye, that bounced my attacking 11/10 (Hashep Oasis x2... all in!) Steel Leaf Champion while I had no Blossoming Defense in hand...
I won against:
- Sultai Constrictor: my favorite former deck, pre-Attune-ban... Llanowar Elves, Walking Ballista, Steel Leaf Champion and the Monument allowed for some explosiveness that didn’t really allow him to get the most of his Midrange deck... I lost one game to a resolved Hadana’s Climb with a Constrictor out... Nice trick! In game 3, Skysovereign helped me kill a pumped Glint-Sleeve Siphoner, and he couldn’t get back from such a blow...
- W/B Vampire Tribal: after a quick win due to a mana screw in Game 1, I was faced with interesting decisions in game 2 as I had 3 lands in my starting hand, along 4x 3-CMC cards: Steel Leaf Champion, Monument, Rhonas the Indomitable, Thrashing Brontodon...
My hesitation was between, well, first, « Mulligan? », then either T3 Monument / T4 Rhonas + Brontodon, or T3 Steel Leaf, T4 Monument, T5 Rhonas + Brontodon. I think I did the latest, and the Turn 5 attack with a 9/8 Steel Leaf got him down to 6, making him easily killed to some other attacks with Rhonas handing out Trample to the other creatures...
Lessons?
- Hashep Oasis is awesome and can provide kills out of nowhere. If I can remember to pay mana costs correctly to avoid the 1-life ping for colored mana, that will be even better. Needs to be a 4-of.
- Blossoming Defense is a must to dodge spot removal, and I never felt like I had enough... the +2/+2 is kind of the icing on the cake, even helping you to push for lethal. Needs to be a 4-of.
- The deck can pull a T4-5 Ghalta pretty easily, which is a scary prospect too. Luckily I didn’t face a single Vraska’s Contempt the whole day!
- Llanowar Elves + Steel Leaf Champion is a scary, explosive start, especially on the play. It might even be a good idea for the opposing player to Push for the Elves, to prevent that from happening. The « Daunt » ability is also very relevant and is a nice evasion ability.
- Sideboarding is hard, especially in what to remove. Most of the time, I sideboarded out the Monuments for a bit more interaction, sometime with the Aethersphere Harvesters to remove all Artifacts from the deck and neutering their potential removal.
- Explore can be a bane or a boon depending on the situation... in search for lands on T3, I dumped a Walking Ballista into the graveyard, that a few turns later could have proven the way out to deal the last 2 points of damage... Not so sold on the Branchwood Merfolk, that once here usually sits around while the big boys go into the red zone... They’re amazing however with a Monument and another creature out, pumping the other and potentially drawing a Land, all for the cost of a single G!
- The one-ofs (Rhonas, Gearhulk) felt amazing most times I drew them... Memorial to Unity, not so much. It even whiffed once!
- Lifecrafter’s Bestiary, if left unchecked, can turn the tide all y itself. It might be worth to put 1x in the main deck!
- Mulliganing aggressively is probably a good idea (with the amount of T3... until you get a Llanowar Elves, for instance), though you don’t get as much of a payoff as with Hanover that WANTS you to have less cards in hand!
In the end, I had a great time... This deck felt rather easy to pilot (I had never played with it before), and a few things different might have turned this into a 3-1... (or a 1-3, maybe). The explosiveness felt very satisfying, while the difficulty to recover from a few removals was a bit frustrating...
A few tweaks, and I’m ready to stomp again !
