While the torturer cannot attack, it doesn't have to attack in order to deal damage. It's useful to have alternate paths to victory, just in case they have some big defense that stops us from getting through normally.

Would be nice to hear from the rest of the team, it's kind of been just us three back and forth so far.

Sorry, I'm in a different time zone so it's hard for me to weigh in. Haha. I pretty much agree with thebeardedshuffler. If one of our SP's turns into removal, all the better. Our real win con are the drakes then TandT or DttD. Keepers and ground game are really just decoys and stalls.

I just got word that we have to fix our deck list until Saturday and after that we're (most likely) not allowed to alter the main board after that. I don't really have time today but I would be up for some playtesting tomorrow evening (EU time) if anyone would like to help me. I tested it a bit yesterday and the 17 lands as I laid them out above didn't really seem to work all that well most of the time. Maybe I just had a bad luck streak but I'd rather be top deck screwed than mana or color screwed.

Clarification on the SP's: It would cause them to want to trade, meaning they lose a creature, and we lose a creature + an SP. Sorry, thought was apparent.

I think that if we don't do some of our damage on the ground, we're not going to hit for 20. We do have an aggro element available to us. We're not 100% aggro, no. But I think we'd better include that element and use it, or we're not going to reach 20 damage, esp if we don't happen to draw DttD. Even then, we'll need it.

I'm aware that torturer does not interact with 2 of these 3 cards, which is why I have not been pushing for him. That said, I would still like to find a way to include one for what he brings to a stalemate. But I think we need to keep our 2-drop. This would be one of those things to look at in playtesting.

What if we ditched an ubal sar for the torturer? I know we're big into gatekeepers but we would still have 2 sars and 5 total after that plus the additional damage option from the torturer.

We wouldn't trade a creature that's SP'd and we wouldn't put them in a position to do so. We blunt their assault on the ground, either by stalling the board with big toughness creatures like gatekeepers/hired torturers, or by SPing anything they have with 2 power and only blocking the bigger ones (or multiple SP's on a creature). Then they take damage when they attack or block, which is fine for us, and we nibble in the air with our three drakes. This sets us up to win in four main ways.

Debt to the Deathless: We can probably cast this for 4-5 lategame, taking 8-10 life off them, which will hopefully kill them or swing tempo in our favour to the point where we kill them. With 3 drakes, a warleader's helix and the SP's we can easily drain their life until we reach critical mass.

Toil / Trouble. This can be used to deal, at minimum, 4 damage. Plus 1 for each card in their hand, this usually hits for 6. Not as potent as the DTTD but getting them down to 6 life isn't impossible with the drakes, SP's and helix.

Legion's Initiative. With any gatekeepers in play, this is a game winning bomb. We steal their best guys, blink out viashino firstblades so they get their +1/+1 back, and blow them out on board state.

Gleam of Battle. Incremental advantage via drakes and maybe gatekeepers, this will just take over games. Turns every creature into a pseudo Predator Ooze. As long as we're not already dead, this card virtually guarantees a win.

Now, with four routes to victory, and odds that we'll probably see at least two of them per game, I don't feel like we're lacking finishing power. But we have to get every ounce of incremental damage to put them into the danger zone, with drakes, with sinister possessions, with hired torturers. If we try to out-fight them on the ground they'll just plain win 8 times out of 10 (the other two are the times we have weapon surge in hand). If they want to race us with creatures that deal them 2 damage per attack, then that's fine because we have probably got more blowout spells than they do, and they cannot afford to be giving up life that way.

All of this together makes me wonder why we are even considering a single 2 mana creature we will be able to cast on curve about 15% of the time, whose best contribution to the game from our point of view is trading with one of their dudes, but usually probably just chump blocking.

Also sorry but I don't have cockatrice.

The thing is that we don't really know what we're testing against. We could in theory try to slap together a deck with cards that we passed on, but will that be any good indication of what we actually will face?

Changed the deck up there a bit, exchanging the mastiff and one ubul sar with 2 torturers.

Although that removes 2 creatures that gleam would work on.

Also, Cockatrice can be installed easily :P

If you guys want you can also hit me up on Steam, same name as here. I should be rather easy to find.

I was also starting to wonder about swapping out an Ubul Sar for a Torturer. But that's only if we don't end up playing the stones. If we're going to go w/o the extra card draw and only have 4 gates, then I think that would probably be better.

I see the gatekeepers as defenders more than attackers, so I think we can lose one, and be better off with the Torturer's late game ability.

Yes, it's tough to be taking out attacking creatures(Gleam). I still think the Mastiff should stay. Even if it means that on a 5 mana turn we play Mastiff + a 3 drop, or T6 Mastiff + 4 drop, etc. when the extra 2 mana would have otherwise gone usused. It helps us outpace(or keep up with) the opponent. Bears are not irrelevant. Plenty of times I've seen one sit and make the difference in keeping the opponent from wanting to attack(for us, that would buy some time). Then, later he can swing when we have Gleam, LI, or WS.

I don't have cockatrice either. As for playtesting, all you really need to do to get a sense of it is practice draws. You can do that on this site. I've put together 3 versions to check out. They are all different. Or make your own. Just go do some practice draws(continuing to draw each turn) and see what it looks like.

What I've noticed is that 4 gates is not enough to support 6 gatekeepers.

Yeah, I think the ideal number of gates would've been like 7.

Did a little play-drawing with yours. Not too bad. I think maybe +1 Mountain, -1 Plains.

I'm not sure about reducing any of the colors, we need Plains just as much as any other color. And if we sideboard in the mastiff, even more so.

Actually thinking about it I'll probably stick 1-2 of each land in the sideboard as well and swap them out with sideboarding.

I like this build better. I'd be interested in playtesting it with and without the cluestones though. I'm going to try and do that later today. A part of me thinks that the earlier idea to ditch the possessions for stones might be a good idea.

So, should we stick to this or make some adjustments still?

My only serious concern is if running 2 Blaze Commando s with only 3 damage dealer inst or sorcer is worth it it's a 5/3 otherwise, not that powerhouse but probably the only thing that can stop the Maze Abomination s we passed on

Well, we have 3 cards that can boost it, Initiative, Gleam and Weapon Surge.

I tried it a bit with 8 mountains and 2 plains but it just seemed not working well. we need both white and red for the firstblades, initiative, helix and everything.

Calling the crew for discussion: vic, thebeardedshuffler, tigersfan774, VRonin, anewsome, GoldGhost012, xXBantbladesXx

Ok, I cleaned up here a bit. We really need to get down our final deck list. Would you make any changes on the above? Else I'd play it like this.

Also please check out the other update with questions from Caley and discuss on that a bit.

Also, the first matches will likely not start before Monday.