Excited Again

Hi everybody!

So, I haven't been posting much lately. Mostly because I haven't been having a lot of fun with Magic, and I didn't want this to be a dump of negativity. After all, I'm supposed to be Professor Shine, not Professor Dump. The Krakens deck wasn't doing very well, even after tweaking it, and Elephants weren't faring any better. The problem with them seem to be that they struggle against the top decks in the metagame. They are both capable of sneaking under the radar and stealing wins when they critical windows, but I'm not good enough a player to be able to do so consistently. So ... Sorry. Back to the drawing board.

Thankfully, we have a new set, and it's chock full of shiny goodness. I was particular drawn to this pretty little eidolon:

Pretty.

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned here that I've been really wanting to try a deck with Chromanticore for a while, and with all the green land-auras in Standard right now, the time was right. So I brewed up this pile:

Land (25):
4 Temple Garden
4 Temple of Plenty
3 Temple of Mystery
3 Breeding Pool
3 Temple of Enlightenment
3 Hallowed Fountain
4 Forest
1 Mutavault

Spells (35):
1 Mana Bloom
4 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Nylea's Presence
4 Nyx-Fleece Ram
4 Courser of Kruphix
4 Verdant Haven
3 Detention Sphere
1 Banishing Light
4 Eidolon of Blossoms
3 Sphere of Safety
2 Chromanticore
1 Karametra, God of Harvests

Sideboard (15):
2 Pacifism
2 Oppressive Rays
1 Bow of Nylea
1 Spear of Heliod
1 Heliod, God of the Sun
1 Banishing Light
1 Sphere of Safety
1 Elixir of Immortality
2 Plummet
2 Unflinching Courage
1 other card (I don't remember)

The plan is basically this:
1. Play some early ramp and disruption.
2. Stick an Eidolon.
3. Draw a bunch of cards, stick a Sphere of Safety.
4. Draw more cards, stick a Chromanticore.

How did it play out? In my typical tedious style, here's the tournament report:

More or less.

Round 1: vs. Izzet.
This reminded me of the current Event Deck, with Guttersnipes and Nivix Cyclops and Spellheart Chimera and the like. It wasn't huge on countermagic, but it had enough blue-based disruption to protect the various Kiln Fiend-analogs. The main combo of the deck seemed to be Crypsis and Armed (as in, the red half of Armed // Dangerous). Guttersnipe was kind of a backup plan, but it's also capable of being Armed and Crypsis'd.
Anyway, the match seemed to be a race to combo out. He won game one with a 14-point or so attack, I won game two with a Chromanticore bestow'd on a Courser, and he won game three after I flooded out HARD. I think I ended the game with something like 8 lands in hand. And this was after scrying away a bunch of other lands. Crazy. I guess that's Magic, though, eh?
Loss, 1-2. Record: 0-1.

Fear the Sphere!

Round 2: vs. Mono-Black Aggro.
Okay, this is the kinda deck I was hoping to take down, and it worked like a charm. Even pre-board, I was able to stall *just* long enough to get a Sphere of Safety out and keep him from one-shotting me with a giant Bestow'd guy. Game two I ALMOST achieved the dream of bestowing a Chromanticore on a Chromanticore ("Yo dawg..."), but after already getting locked down by a Sphere, he conceded before I could live that particular dream.
Win, 2-0. Record: 1-1.

Chromanticore-bane.

Round 3: vs. B/G Dredge.
I was able to get my engine going both games, but I had some awkward draws, and he had some good draws, and I wasn't able to land enough combinations of Sphere of Safety and D-Sphere to keep him from one-shotting me with a giant bestow'd Lifebane Zombie. This is a potentially problematic matchup, but I have ideas.
Loss, 0-2. Record: 1-2.

If only ...

Round 4: vs. G/R Monsters.
A matchup I was dreading. If Stormbreath didn't have protection from white, this wouldn't be much of a problem. But .... Yeah. So I had to rely on the Sphere of Safety plan to keep it at bay. Unfortunately, I realized another weakness of the deck: I need to close out games. Turns out just stalling out and drawing 10 cards a turn isn't quite enough by itself to ensure victory.
Loss, 0-2. Record: 1-3.

So, not a great performance, but considering it was a relatively competitive tournament, and it was my own brew, and it was the first LIVE ACTION for the deck, not bad. But most importantly: I HAD FUN. And the matches I lost felt like they could have been winnable with (1) some deck tweaks, and (2) more practice. On that note, here are some thoughts about the deck:

• First and foremost, I need to make sure I have a safety valve at all time. Chromanticore is awesome, but it alone won't finish games. I need to be able to hit a proverbial reset button. I'm thinking a Bow of Nylea in the maindeck, Elixir out of the 'board should help.
• Nyx-Fleece Ram is adorable (and the Terese Nielsen artwork is amazing as always), but I'm not sure it's where I want to be.
• I'm probably going to add black. Along the lines of the first point, I feel like I should have a secondary win condition. Underworld Coinsmith seems like he could do the job. It's also another source of lifegain. Doomwake Giant seems worth exploring, too, and I could bring in better removal. There's also the Agent of Erebos for the Dredge deck.
• I thought about maybe adding Pharika, but if I'm relying on being able Bow and/or Elixir myself, I don't want to be exiling my own creatures.
• Sideboarding is difficult. The deck has a strong "engine" component to it, and taking out parts of the engine will make it run less efficiently.

I'm looking forward to making some tweaks, and running it out again next week. Good times!

Well I guess that's it for now. Thanks for reading! Until next time ...