The Chaos Continues

Last night I played 6 more games against mAc Chaos, trying out a bunch of new decks. This time, I kept a brief journal of the games so that I would be able to recall them more accurately when writing this article. Hurray!

The first game, I tried out my Wild Pair/Grinning Ignus deck (see how much I like Grinning Ignus?) against his black Zombie deck. His deck seemed to be built around dangerous and evasive Zombies such as Stromgald Crusader and Nantuko Husk. My deck is based on getting out Wild Pair as soon as possible, then playing any creature (all of which have total power and toughness of four) to summon an Ignus. This allows me to summon tons of creatures for 1 mana each, popping the Ignus and replaying to trigger Wild Pair over and over. However, Wild Pair is 6 mana, so it takes a while to get rolling. I use Teferi's Puzzle Box to cycle through cards as fast as possible to get Wild Pair. Anyway, the game.

As expected, I got off to a slow start as he pummeled me with Stromgald Crusaders. Luckily for me, he was stuck at 3 mana, which gave me time to drop enough Murderous Redcaps to finish off his pesky fliers. Still with no Wild Pair or Puzzle Box in sight, I managed to win by playing two Goretusk Firebeasts from my hand. Even though I managed to win without even using the signature combo, it was somewhat of a hollow victory since he was so helplessly mana screwed the whole game.

So we had a rematch. This time my opening hand had just 1 land in it, so I mulliganed to a hand with 5 land and Jeska, Warrior Adept. I decided to keep it since my dudes are expensive anyway, and Jeska would be effective at picking off Stromgald Crusaders. However, I drew nothing but land the first few turns, giving him time to hurl dudes at my face. By the time I got a Teferi's Puzzle Box out, I was down to 11. The Box brought me a Wild Pair shortly after, and my deck exploded. I won with 2 life left, one Soul Spike away from doom. Quite a close game.

Then we switched decks. Actually, I'm not even sure if he switched, because this deck also had Nantuko Husk and Soul Spike. But since many of his decks have a lot of the same cards, it could have been the same one. I may never know!

I picked a deck based on Juniper Order Ranger and cards with persist (particularly resilient against black removal). I had heard about the combination from somewhere else, probably the Magic website, and decided to try it out. To support the Ranger, I have Cream of the Crop (useful with persist guys) and Llanowar Reborn (to protect the persist guys until I get a Ranger).

I got a Ranger quickly, but he immediately Soul Spiked it. Not that I was expecting much else, since the Ranger doesn't have persist himself and is easily removed. Meanwhile, Cream of the Crop is helpful for getting what I want, while he hits me with shadowy dudes. I eventually get him to sacrifice them to Nantuko Husk, and with Heartmender (a less effective but more resilient Ranger) and Scuzzback Marauders, I seal the deal. One particularly amusing moment was when he blocked my attacking Heartmender with his Nantuko Husk, intending to kill it while it had a counter on it, but when my Heartmender came back, I grafted onto it with Llanowar Reborn, eliciting a shriek of frustration from poor Mac. Juked.

So we switched decks again. He decided to try a black control deck, and I picked a blue-red control deck that I had seen a friend often dominate with. However, I didn't remember exactly what was in the blue-red deck, or the proportions of cards, so I just guessed, erring on the side of too many counters.

The game itself was absolutely hilarious. Neither of us played any spells for a while, except for my Izzet Signets and Compulsive Research (and other various mana artifacts and blue draw spells). Occasionally he would try to play a spell, and I'd Remand or Mana Leak it. But it was a long time before I got any creatures, so all I could do was wait. When I had a bunch of artifacts out, I cast Wildfire with no creatures in play, hoping to slow him down in case he had some huge spells or something. But as he built his land count back up, I still didn't draw many creatures. I knew my friend's version of my deck never had trouble finding creatures, so I was baffled. Anyway, I kept playing artifacts and destroying lands en masse until I drew Akroma, Angel of Fury. At this point I was sick of not doing anything useful, so I played her face down, and she died instantly.

This went on for some time until FINALLY I drew Aeon Chronicler and Triskelavus. With these two guys, I was able to start dealing some actual damage, but they still eventually died. After a while, he just gave up. Since I had kept destroying his lands, he never had enough mana to play anything dangerous (he discarded several Dreads - or maybe the same one several times - due to card overflow), so he figured it was hopeless. At that point he was at 11 and the only damage source I had was two Triskelavus tokens. I pointed out that I had 14 cards in my library, and he may have been able to win if he had just waited it out, but the agony of stagnation had apparently overwhelmed him. Moral of the story: don't play control vs. control.

I remembered right at the end of the game that I had in fact been several creatures short. I had forgotten about Teferi and the two Bogardan Hellkites that were supposed to be in my deck, which would have certainly been useful. Still, I don't know what the exact proportion of cards should be, but at least now I think I know all of the cards that were in it.

Since his black had lost him four games in a row, mAc decided to switch back to Astral Slide (see yesterday's article). I decided to try out my mono-white Stuffy Doll deck, based on enchanting Stuffy Doll with Guilty Conscience, then tapping him for an instant win. To keep the enemy at bay until I could get the combo out, I stuffed the deck with dudes en-Kor and things that provide protection, such as Mother of Runes. The idea was just to protect the Stuffy Doll, and to use the en-Kor to redirect damage to it as well, but the deck turned out to have some even more interesting uses that I discovered accidentally. I love when that happens.

Anyway, the game. I was somewhat mana screwed, but since all my creatures were 1 or 2 mana, I could still play a ton of them. Mac didn't draw his Lightning Rifts or Astral Slides immediately, but he got an Exalted Angel out much too early for comfort. The Angel pounded away and I pounded back with a ton of dudes, but his lifelink was too powerful. Eventually he DID get the enchantments out, and that's where I discovered some fun things.

I had three en-kor dudes, two Mother of Runes, and one Benevolent Bodyguard, all of them tapped from having attacked. He cycled Slice and Dice, hoping to kill off most of my guys in one shot. What I did then was totally awesome. I sacrificed the Bodyguard to give one Mother of Runes protection from red. Then I had all the en-kor dudes redirect their 1 damage to her. I only lost one Mother and the Bodyguard, rather than almost all my dudes. The revelation here is that the Mother and the en-Kor dudes, which I had intended for completely separate purposes, work together very well. If I had had a Mother untapped, I wouldn't even have had to use the Bodyguard. As long as I can give one creature protection, I can redirect all damage from en-Kor dudes to that creature and they'll all live. This of course works well against Astral Slide, which has lots of burns. However, he still had the flying lifelinking Angel and there was nothing preventing him from Lightning Rifting ME, so I died. But the discovery was an awesome one.

Since I hadn't drawn Stuffy Doll at all that game, I threw in some Teferi's Puzzle Boxes before the next game, since they worked so well in the Wild Pair deck. This time I managed to get Stuffy Doll out reasonably early...but I couldn't do anything with it. I couldn't stop his Exalted Angel, and he just threw Lightning Rift at my head. So I died. And then I went to bed.

Later, I tweaked the deck a lot to include Pariah, as well as Leonin Abunas and Privileged Position, just to protect the Doll from outside interference. He may be indestructible, but Astral Slide proved that he is quite vulnerable to a variety of effects. Hopefully, just making him completely safe from outside interference should be enough to get the job done. I haven't tested the new version yet, though.

So, that's what happened. I've made even more decks since then, and I hope to try them out when I get the chance. And of course, I'll let you know how they perform!