It's FNM! But I won't be able to participate tonight! But this deck needs testing! Luckily players like to hang out at our LGS all day so competitors abound. The deck was played against six opponents, one new player, one casual regular, and four competitive regulars. I'll separate them into these two sections: Main Gauntlet and Bonus Rounds.
Main Gauntlet
- Round 1 vs BR Vehicles: 2-0. Kinjalli's Sunwing mainboard is a big stop on aggro, and you can't Crew when the crew is already tapped. Appetite for the Unnatural and Take Down to pour salt in the wounds.
- Round 2 vs Temur Black Energy: 2-1. This match-up makes me think we need more copies of Ixalan's Binding. Bristling Hydra was the hardest card to deal with if it came down early and the opponent generated enough energy to fight our dinos with it (had me wishing Celestial Flare was Standard legal right now). Take Down wrecks Glorybringer and Whirler Virtuoso's thopter swarm.
- Round 3 vs Mono-Black Aggro: 2-1. Harsh Scrutiny did a number on us game 1. We were stuck playing Lands: The Flooding. Shapers' Sanctuary and Crook of Condemnation won us the next two games.
- Round 4 vs Jeskai Approach: 1-2. Very close match. Our sideboard carried hard (brought in all but Crook of Condemnation and Take Down). The deck can't stop the opponent from casting Approach of the Second Sun, so it's an uphill, obstacle course, marathon, Kennel Club, Iron Man, Kentucky Derby, Ninja Warrior, race against all their removal, wraths, and countermagic.
Bonus Rounds
- Round 1 vs UR Izzet Auras: 2-1. And in case you were wondering, it was indeed Auras. Jokes aside, this was a pretty sweet deck. It played a suite of cheap unblockable and evasive creatures like Slither Blade, Daring Saboteur, and Riddleform (technically a creature?), stuck some auras like Consuming Fervor and Cartouche of Knowledge on them, and backed them up with Lightning Strike and Spell Pierce. So cool.
- Round 2 vs WB Vampires: 2-0. Go wide with all the lifelink! THEN WINDMILL SLAM A Bishop of the Bloodstained!! Good thing they came in tapped (thanks to Kinjalli's Sunwing) and Carnage Tyrant is big enough to trample over for the big hits. Still, though, I loved the opponent's deck. Orzhov is life and vampires are fam.
Thoughts
Personally, I'm more than satisfied with the deck's performance. It went 5-1, playing 16 games across 6 matches. We won 11 and lost 5. That puts the deck about a couple points shy of a 70% win rate. (If you omit the Bonus Rounds, the deck went 3-1 over 11 games. 7 wins, 4 losses. About 64% win rate.) Internally, I didn't find any issues with how the deck played in my hands. It did precisely what it tried to do each game, which is 'ramp big dino and smash' (always fun). Externally, the meta seems somewhat well-suited for a deck like this. It does Energy like the rest of them. Cards that demand interaction are a special challenge to deal with, specifically Approach of the Second Sun. The more resilient the Approach deck against your primary strategy, the worse your odds. I'd discourage trying to sculpt a sideboard against the Approach deck best suited against you, however, because it's such a small percentage of the field that you risk not having the sideboard slots to deal with much else. You'll lose before you get to it. Ultimately, I find that there are only two changes I'm considering. My local meta seems to have moved on from hyper-aggressive decks, so I believe it is a safe call to switch out Appetite for the Unnatural for Forsake the Worldly in the sideboard. Forsake has the advantage of exiling God Pharoah's Gift so that it can't be brought back, as well as having cycling on it if it just sits dead in your hand. The other change I'm considering is swapping out one or both Cast Out in the mainboard for more copies of Ixalan's Binding. Binding makes up for its lack of flash and cycling by keeping your opponent from simply playing another copy of their exiled card. This was very important in the Temur Black Energy match because it kept the opponent from playing their second copy of The Scarab God. If you hit your opponent's Binding, they can't cast another one, which helped in the match against Jeskai Approach. It's very strong (and I just got a foil, yay!). I hope these results were helpful to you, and if you plan on trying this deck, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Sideboard Removals:
Sideboard Additions:
