Chaos Theory

Well, not really. I just couldn't think of another relevant-but-interesting title.

Anyway, it's time to talk about those games against mAc Chaos that I didn't talk about last time! There were seven of them.

This time, he wanted to play 2-out-of-3s rather than let me switch decks continuously, so he could get a better feel for his own decks and how they play in various matchups. So we did.

The first game, I took one of my favorite decks (green chroma), and he took an obnoxious black aggro deck. He gets two Stromgald Crusaders out quickly, along with two Bad Moons. This was rather troublesome because I didn't have much anti-flying. I played a Phosphorescent Feast, which gained me 14 life, but at the rate he was pounding me, that was only enough to buy me two turns. I even had some huge/awesome dudes, and I even got them into play, but there was nothing I could do to stop his fliers. So I died.

I was sad, because my deck is so awesome, but it has a lot of trouble against evasion and removal. I'll take a moment to describe its basic principle now. Basically, it has four Primalcrux, one of each green Demigod, and one of each green Liege. It also has a bunch of other powerful green guys with as many green mana symbols as possible. (Pretty much every card in the deck is rare. It would probably cost hundreds of dollars to make in real life. But that's the joy of Magic Workstation!) I use Devoted Druid, Bloom Tender, and Mana Reflection to be able to play my costly dudes as quickly as possible. However, none of my guys have flying or reach, so I have to get them out fast enough to pound the enemy to a pulp before he can do the same to me. I do have a lot of tramplers, but if my opponent's deck is too fast, there's not much I can do. I have a tendency to make slow decks that ramp up quickly in power once they get going.

Anyway, we played again, but I have the same problem and die before anything interesting even happens. Freakin' Soul Spike.

Since he had won 2-0, we switched decks. I decided to play a mono-white Equipment deck I had been meaning to try out, and he kept the same obnoxious aggro deck. In the first game, I had a bad opening hand but didn't mulligan, and I hardly even managed to get any guys into play before dying. It wasn't even noteworthy.

But the second game was better. I managed to equip a Loxodon Punisher with Sword of Light and Shadow, with a Serra's Blessing in play. With the life gain and virtual unblockability of this guy, I managed to win.

Then, in the third game, it was back to getting owned. Distress is an annoying card. Especially when he has two of them. Argh.

My Equipment deck needs a lot of work, but the basic components are pretty neat. Auriok Steelshaper allows me to equip things cheaply, and eventually for free, which sure comes in handy when I have Leonin Shikari. Stonehewer Giant lets me summon Equipment cheaply from my library, and Cloud Key lets me play it cheaply from my hand. Basically, the idea is to get these guys out, then equip them with insane Equipment, then own face. I have yet to see this actually come to fruition, though, which suggests that the deck may need some retooling.

Meanwhile, back in the arena of death, mAc and I both switched decks. I picked my Leaf-Crowned Elder deck (which I described previously), and he picked some other black deck whose purpose was not immediately obvious. All he did in the beginning was kill my dudes, but eventually I used up all his removal spells, and got the Elder out. He played Dread, which might have been troublesome, except for my two Timber Protectors. Then my engine just pumped out Treefolk after Treefolk, pummeling him to death. It was pretty sweet.

In the next game, things didn't go quite so smoothly. Persecute is brutally effective against mono-colored decks, and it made me cry. He played Gauntlet of Power, waited until he had 11 land, then Consumed my Spirit for an instant kill. Quite ridiculous. And by "waited until he had 11 land," I mean "killed everything I played until he had 11 land." It is not difficult to see why black is my least favorite color.

I didn't keep as good notes on these games as on the previous games, which is why my descriptions are shorter. They were also not wonderfully interesting games, nor wonderfully interesting decks, which made them less wonderfully interesting to talk about. But just you wait - I have several extremely cool decks to talk about for next time!