Solpugid
12-21-2007, 09:14 AM
The following deck is a new project of mine, but one that's hardly changed since its initial form. I worry that I'm biased to the orignal cards, and therefore am reluctat to remove them, but that's where you all come in. It’s essentially a Green/Black Rock deck with a splash of Blue for intuition (hence the deck’s name). Interestingly, it didn’t come about as a spin-off of a traditional Rock deck. Instead, it’s a pet-deck that developed from someone else’s pet-deck.
For many months now (years?), Goaswerfraiejen has been fine-tuning a blue-based aggro control deck called Tarmotog (here’s the link (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6230)). It runs brainstorms and ponders to dig for spells and land, and intuition to tutor up the key synergies of the deck. After playing it myself for a few weeks, I began to feel uncomfortable with the small amount of control elements the deck actually runs: only four force of will to stop troublesome spells preboard. Even these were underwhelming because they forced me to run extra blue spells to support the free counter, which in turn cut into the number of actual spells I could run. The intuition engine, on the other hand, was spectacular.
Dropping the extra blue spells from the list, the cantrips (brainstorm and ponder), meant dropping the force of wills AND increasing the land count of the deck. I was fine with an increased land count, because the deck always felt mana-hungry to me. Getting off an early intuition set the deck up to explode with synergy, but the actual explosion required a lot of excess mana. I decided to accelerate this engine by including birds of paradise. Birds, in turn, justified the inclusion of cabal therapy (already a great choice with intuition), and the following deck was born.
River Rock v1.0, Decklist:
Creatures: 20
4 Birds of paradise
4 Nimble mongoose
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Ravenous baloth
2 Shriekmaw
1 Gigapede
1 Eternal witness
1 Genesis
1 Wonder
Other spells: 17
4 Cabal therapy
3 Thoughtseize
1 Life from the loam
4 Intution
1 Darkblast
4 Pernicious deed
Lands: 23
3 Bayou
3 Tropical island
3 Underground sea
2 Forest
2 Swamp
1 Island
4 Polluted delta
3 Wooded foothills
1 Volrath’s stronghold
1 Cephalid coliseum
Sideboard: 15
3 Krosan grip
3 Extirpate
4 Engineered plague
5 Metagame slots
(Before I go any further, let me just mention that this sideboard is giving me fits; I was never stellar at building boards, but I'm having lots of trouble here)
Below is an explanation of how each card choice works to further the deck’s goals. And yes, the deck looks messy, but each card is important.
Birds of paradise: As I mentioned before, the deck needs a lot of mana in the early turns of the game. Running birds allows explosive starts, which is important in this format.
Nimble mongoose: Could be werebear (suggested by Nihil), but I chose mongoose for its untargetability (er, I’m sorry, “shroud”). There are a lot of decks (and cards) that have a lot of trouble with mongooses, and being able to recur a blocker/attacker for four mana with genesis (instead of five for goyf) is very valuable. If it becomes expendable, it can always be sacrificed to cabal therapy.
Tarmogoyf: It’s tarmogoyf. Seriously. My deck alone can easily grow it to a 5/6, and if I manage to off an opponent’s artifact…well, he’s just awesome, ok?
Ravenous baloth: The four mana is pretty steep, but can actually be a huge bonus if I need to sweep the board with pernicious deed and want to keep him around. His main purpose is as a fat blocker that can keep me alive against an aggressive deck with burn. His sacrifice ability can also come in surprisingly handy, such as when I want to keep counters off of jitte or remove an opposing bridge from below.
Shriekmaw: I tried him in Tarmotog and hated him, because I rarely had five free mana to play him without evoke. This deck has a much easier time hitting that kind of mana, and instant-speed removal is less important (because I have fewer instants all around; why keep the mana open?). Besides all that, he’s just an amazing creature.
Gigapede: When I’m stuck with a wonder or genesis in hand and really want it in the graveyard, gigapede comes to my rescue. I originally underestimated him, but having a flying, recurring, untargetable, 6-power beatstick is surprisingly effective. His high cost again dodges deeds.
Eternal witness: If you have plenty of mana lying around, you can fetch her in your intuition pile. Otherwise she’s a great card to topdeck, giving you instant access to every spell you’ve used before. My most common play with her is bringing back cabal therapy, and using it two more times (by sacrificing her) to shred my opponent’s hand. Honorable mention: recurring a tarmogoyf.
Genesis: An engine in and of itself. The most common components of an intuition pile, genesis gives the deck a fantastic lategame and some much needed tricks. In a pinch it can recur itself and adopt the role of 4/4 face-smasher.
Wonder: Another common intuition target, mostly because it allows the deck to instantly go on the offensive (while still playing strong defense). Do NOT underestimate this card, it single-handedly wins so many games.
Cabal therapy: I’ve been talking about it forever, and why not? This card is amazing. Getting a read on what your opponent is playing and what they have in hand is valuable information for when you cast intuition, regardless of whether or not you hit it. The gravy is, of course, getting to sacrifice a creature to further damage your opponent’s hand. This happens incredibly often, usually by sacrificing birds and mongooses that will die in a deed activation; or often to get eternal witness in the graveyard to be returned by genesis again. Seriously, this card is just as sick as tarmogoyf.
Thoughtseize: The other half of my disruption suite. Casting this first turn and therapy+mongoose second turn can result in an empty handed, and very frustrated, opponent, but it’s great regardless. As long as you have the skill to know what card to pick, thoughtseize is golden 95% of the time. The life loss is not insignificant, however, and in some metagames this should probably become duress.
Life from the loam: Loam forms a secondary engine of the deck (the first being genesis), in combination with coliseum. Those two together can tear through your deck for answers, and both are useful on their own. Loam in particular safeguards against mana-screw and can dredge cards to reach threshold for mongoose.
Intution: Well, I called genesis and loam the engines of the deck, but intuition is the card that enables those engines. The card takes practice to play correctly, but when you tutor for the right cards this deck can just hum. It beat out gifts ungiven for its place for a few reasons: four mana is a LOT more than three mana, don’t doubt that. For what this deck wants to accomplish, intuition is just more efficient. Intuition can also search for three cards of the same name. These moments come up a lot, and grabbing 3 tarmogoyfs, deeds, or therapies is often the right play.
Darkblast: A singleton that pulls tons of weight. It gives the deck an easy (self-recurring) way to kill dark confidant (since shriekmaw doesn’t) and allows you to dominate the goyf-on-goyf fights. A great add-in to the intuition piles.
Pernicious deed: Pernicious deed should need no explanation. As far as Rock decks go, this one has a lot of cheap creatures that die to deed, so I was reluctant to put in the full four. However, it’s relatively easy to hold extra creatures until you pop deed, and the stragglers can be fed to therapy, so deed becomes an important tool here as well. Besides, this deck has recursion, making deed much less double-edged.
Volrath’s stronghold: A pseudo-genesis that denies you a draw, but can be picked up by loam AND produces mana (did I mention this is a mana-hungry deck?); simply supplemental recursion.
Cephalid coliseum: A fantastic card-advantage engine when combined with loam, and gives you a discard outlet for incarnations stuck in your hand. Holding lands (when you have enough in play) is often a strong way to play mind-games with opponents; the presence of coliseum in this deck makes the play that much better.
Playing the deck:
The deck truly shines with an intuition in hand, but if you can’t find one no problem. Start the game by laying some little green creatures, and protect them (and yourself) with your hand control spells. If they get outclassed, sweep the board with deed and start again. By the mid-game you will have drawn into larger creatures (goyf or baloth), a recursion engine, or an intuition (to fetch said engine). From here the deck can take its time, playing a game of attrition until your beaters go all the way (often through the air in one turn).
After the initial aggressiveness of the deck, your creatures become utilities instead of attackers. Remember, if you can control the field and hand to a great enough degree your army can fly in for the win later on. Don’t worry about blowing a few guys up with a deed if it will buy you more time, but if you don’t have a genesis or stronghold this can be chancy. Maindeck graveyard removal can be troubling, mostly because it’s unexpected, but this deck can win just fine without the graveyard. Just beware of the ability to remove wonder, since it invalidates the strategy I mentioned above.
This deck has outs for most any situation, as long as you play correctly. Do not be afraid to intuition for three goyfs if you think ending the game quickly is the best option. Ditto with three deeds, if you really just need to reset the board. However, the vast majority of the time you will tutor for variations on the following two intuition splits:
1. Genesis, wonder, gigapede
2. Life from the loam, cephalid coliseum, volrath’s stronghold
They are in that order because option 1 is usually the best. It sets you up for a spectacular late-game, and will guarantee both incarnations end up in the grave. If you have one of those pieces in hand you can instead grab a darkblast or loam.
The second option is weaker because it requires threshold, eats land drops, and doesn’t immediately affect the board. However, if you have neither engine online by turn 7 or so (and there is a board stalemate) this is probably better. Loam+coliseum is HUGE card advantage, and will quickly draw you into all the gas you’d want (and dump the incarnations in the grave along the way).
A third common split is shriekmaw, tarmogoyf, tarmogoyf. It’s most common against an opposing goyf, and is superior to goyf, goyf, goyf because it gets you the exact same creature (a goyf) but makes a topdecked genesis or stronghold much better by providing more options.
As you can see, playing intuition correctly is incredibly difficult, but the card makes this deck a force to be reckoned with. Although it doesn’t have any easy victories (like TES against White Weenie), River Rock is an all-around solid deck for a varied metagame.
Sideboard strategy:
Krosan grip: A necessary evil against countertop, Survival of the fittest, and other random artifacts and enchantments. This could be cut to two if room needed to be made (especially since it isn’t always boarded for countertop; see below).
Extirpate: Boarded in against Survival, Loam-based decks, and Threshold. Against most builds of Threshold, removing tarmogoyfs not only eliminates their best win condition, but also a solid 40-50% of their offense. Many other random decks are also hosed by this card.
Engineered plague: Goblins still exist, and run this deck through if you come unprepared. Plague can also kill ichorids and Cephalid Breakfast creatures, making it a versatile answer to a lot of decks. They also replace deed against storm combo as a permanent answer to goblin tokens from empty the warrens.
The board also has five metagame slots. These can go toward Duress if you see a lot of control decks (like Landstill), Hydroblast if burn and goblins are rampant, or Daze/Stifle as a surprise tactic. They can also be devoted to random hosers like Null rod, Darkheart sliver, Gaea’s blessing, or other cards. The truth is, the maindeck is so tightly built that sideboarding is very difficult. The trick is to find matchups you’re likely to face, and lose to, and see what cards would improve them (duh). Those are the extra cards you want in the side. As a quick bit of info, here’s what I’ve determined are good sideboarding techniques for some commonly seen decks.
Against Threshold:
+3 Extirpate
-2 Ravenous baloth
-1 Wooded foothills
Kind of a strange switch, but it works very well. The extra life is rarely necessary because your deck is slightly more aggressive. The high cost of baloth also lends it to get countered by daze, which can be devastating tempo disadvantage. Dropping a high-cost creature from the deck alleviates some of the deck’s mana problems, but daze still has to be considered. Extirpate is awesome because it takes out the most important (few) spells your opponent runs. Tarmogoyf and counterbalance are highest on this list, because without them the deck wastes mana on cantrips to draw into spells that are all weaker than yours. Krosan grip can be brought in for some other cards (to hit countertop), but I really don’t find it necessary. However, if you expect shackles or control magic coming in as well, the grips would most likely be worth siding in (even for a deed or two).
Against Goblins:
+4 Engineered plague
+1 Krosan grip
-2 Pernicious deed
-1 Thoughtseize
-1 Eternal witness
-1 Other card (often loam)
Forgo the tricks here, you just need to stay alive. Witness and loam are both too mana-intensive to help early-game (where you need the most help) so they should probably go. If you’re running hydroblast, swap them for the thoughtseizes. A few deeds come out because they are rather clumsy, and often hurt your tempo more than theirs. However, because killing aether vial is very important, I bring a krosan grip in to help out. This may or may not be the right boarding plan, but it’s worked quite well so far in my (admittedly limited) testing.
Against Cephalid Breakfast:
+3 Extirpate
+4 Engineered plague
-6 Engine pieces (genesis, gigapede, witness, wonder, loam, coliseum)
-1 Ravenous baloth
I told you the decklist was tight! The cards in breakfast (force of will, aether vial, lim-dul’s vault, etc.) often yield card disadvantage for them, so your engine pieces are less crucial to owing the late-game. Granted, keeping genesis would be nice, but extirpate and plague are more important (i.e. more damaging). Your control pieces handle their combo quite well, as long as you don’t get cocky and start with a bird on the draw. Mulligan aggressively, and this matchup isn’t so bad. Oh, and by the way, if your opponent brings in tormod’s crypt or extirpate against you, then guess who has the last laugh?
Just as a note, I don’t have any match-up percentages because I haven’t played them enough. Plus, it has a lot to do with play skill on both sides of the table.
So that’s the deck; I'm looking forward to hearing everyone's criticisms, and suggestions on how to improve the deck. Enjoy!
For many months now (years?), Goaswerfraiejen has been fine-tuning a blue-based aggro control deck called Tarmotog (here’s the link (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6230)). It runs brainstorms and ponders to dig for spells and land, and intuition to tutor up the key synergies of the deck. After playing it myself for a few weeks, I began to feel uncomfortable with the small amount of control elements the deck actually runs: only four force of will to stop troublesome spells preboard. Even these were underwhelming because they forced me to run extra blue spells to support the free counter, which in turn cut into the number of actual spells I could run. The intuition engine, on the other hand, was spectacular.
Dropping the extra blue spells from the list, the cantrips (brainstorm and ponder), meant dropping the force of wills AND increasing the land count of the deck. I was fine with an increased land count, because the deck always felt mana-hungry to me. Getting off an early intuition set the deck up to explode with synergy, but the actual explosion required a lot of excess mana. I decided to accelerate this engine by including birds of paradise. Birds, in turn, justified the inclusion of cabal therapy (already a great choice with intuition), and the following deck was born.
River Rock v1.0, Decklist:
Creatures: 20
4 Birds of paradise
4 Nimble mongoose
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Ravenous baloth
2 Shriekmaw
1 Gigapede
1 Eternal witness
1 Genesis
1 Wonder
Other spells: 17
4 Cabal therapy
3 Thoughtseize
1 Life from the loam
4 Intution
1 Darkblast
4 Pernicious deed
Lands: 23
3 Bayou
3 Tropical island
3 Underground sea
2 Forest
2 Swamp
1 Island
4 Polluted delta
3 Wooded foothills
1 Volrath’s stronghold
1 Cephalid coliseum
Sideboard: 15
3 Krosan grip
3 Extirpate
4 Engineered plague
5 Metagame slots
(Before I go any further, let me just mention that this sideboard is giving me fits; I was never stellar at building boards, but I'm having lots of trouble here)
Below is an explanation of how each card choice works to further the deck’s goals. And yes, the deck looks messy, but each card is important.
Birds of paradise: As I mentioned before, the deck needs a lot of mana in the early turns of the game. Running birds allows explosive starts, which is important in this format.
Nimble mongoose: Could be werebear (suggested by Nihil), but I chose mongoose for its untargetability (er, I’m sorry, “shroud”). There are a lot of decks (and cards) that have a lot of trouble with mongooses, and being able to recur a blocker/attacker for four mana with genesis (instead of five for goyf) is very valuable. If it becomes expendable, it can always be sacrificed to cabal therapy.
Tarmogoyf: It’s tarmogoyf. Seriously. My deck alone can easily grow it to a 5/6, and if I manage to off an opponent’s artifact…well, he’s just awesome, ok?
Ravenous baloth: The four mana is pretty steep, but can actually be a huge bonus if I need to sweep the board with pernicious deed and want to keep him around. His main purpose is as a fat blocker that can keep me alive against an aggressive deck with burn. His sacrifice ability can also come in surprisingly handy, such as when I want to keep counters off of jitte or remove an opposing bridge from below.
Shriekmaw: I tried him in Tarmotog and hated him, because I rarely had five free mana to play him without evoke. This deck has a much easier time hitting that kind of mana, and instant-speed removal is less important (because I have fewer instants all around; why keep the mana open?). Besides all that, he’s just an amazing creature.
Gigapede: When I’m stuck with a wonder or genesis in hand and really want it in the graveyard, gigapede comes to my rescue. I originally underestimated him, but having a flying, recurring, untargetable, 6-power beatstick is surprisingly effective. His high cost again dodges deeds.
Eternal witness: If you have plenty of mana lying around, you can fetch her in your intuition pile. Otherwise she’s a great card to topdeck, giving you instant access to every spell you’ve used before. My most common play with her is bringing back cabal therapy, and using it two more times (by sacrificing her) to shred my opponent’s hand. Honorable mention: recurring a tarmogoyf.
Genesis: An engine in and of itself. The most common components of an intuition pile, genesis gives the deck a fantastic lategame and some much needed tricks. In a pinch it can recur itself and adopt the role of 4/4 face-smasher.
Wonder: Another common intuition target, mostly because it allows the deck to instantly go on the offensive (while still playing strong defense). Do NOT underestimate this card, it single-handedly wins so many games.
Cabal therapy: I’ve been talking about it forever, and why not? This card is amazing. Getting a read on what your opponent is playing and what they have in hand is valuable information for when you cast intuition, regardless of whether or not you hit it. The gravy is, of course, getting to sacrifice a creature to further damage your opponent’s hand. This happens incredibly often, usually by sacrificing birds and mongooses that will die in a deed activation; or often to get eternal witness in the graveyard to be returned by genesis again. Seriously, this card is just as sick as tarmogoyf.
Thoughtseize: The other half of my disruption suite. Casting this first turn and therapy+mongoose second turn can result in an empty handed, and very frustrated, opponent, but it’s great regardless. As long as you have the skill to know what card to pick, thoughtseize is golden 95% of the time. The life loss is not insignificant, however, and in some metagames this should probably become duress.
Life from the loam: Loam forms a secondary engine of the deck (the first being genesis), in combination with coliseum. Those two together can tear through your deck for answers, and both are useful on their own. Loam in particular safeguards against mana-screw and can dredge cards to reach threshold for mongoose.
Intution: Well, I called genesis and loam the engines of the deck, but intuition is the card that enables those engines. The card takes practice to play correctly, but when you tutor for the right cards this deck can just hum. It beat out gifts ungiven for its place for a few reasons: four mana is a LOT more than three mana, don’t doubt that. For what this deck wants to accomplish, intuition is just more efficient. Intuition can also search for three cards of the same name. These moments come up a lot, and grabbing 3 tarmogoyfs, deeds, or therapies is often the right play.
Darkblast: A singleton that pulls tons of weight. It gives the deck an easy (self-recurring) way to kill dark confidant (since shriekmaw doesn’t) and allows you to dominate the goyf-on-goyf fights. A great add-in to the intuition piles.
Pernicious deed: Pernicious deed should need no explanation. As far as Rock decks go, this one has a lot of cheap creatures that die to deed, so I was reluctant to put in the full four. However, it’s relatively easy to hold extra creatures until you pop deed, and the stragglers can be fed to therapy, so deed becomes an important tool here as well. Besides, this deck has recursion, making deed much less double-edged.
Volrath’s stronghold: A pseudo-genesis that denies you a draw, but can be picked up by loam AND produces mana (did I mention this is a mana-hungry deck?); simply supplemental recursion.
Cephalid coliseum: A fantastic card-advantage engine when combined with loam, and gives you a discard outlet for incarnations stuck in your hand. Holding lands (when you have enough in play) is often a strong way to play mind-games with opponents; the presence of coliseum in this deck makes the play that much better.
Playing the deck:
The deck truly shines with an intuition in hand, but if you can’t find one no problem. Start the game by laying some little green creatures, and protect them (and yourself) with your hand control spells. If they get outclassed, sweep the board with deed and start again. By the mid-game you will have drawn into larger creatures (goyf or baloth), a recursion engine, or an intuition (to fetch said engine). From here the deck can take its time, playing a game of attrition until your beaters go all the way (often through the air in one turn).
After the initial aggressiveness of the deck, your creatures become utilities instead of attackers. Remember, if you can control the field and hand to a great enough degree your army can fly in for the win later on. Don’t worry about blowing a few guys up with a deed if it will buy you more time, but if you don’t have a genesis or stronghold this can be chancy. Maindeck graveyard removal can be troubling, mostly because it’s unexpected, but this deck can win just fine without the graveyard. Just beware of the ability to remove wonder, since it invalidates the strategy I mentioned above.
This deck has outs for most any situation, as long as you play correctly. Do not be afraid to intuition for three goyfs if you think ending the game quickly is the best option. Ditto with three deeds, if you really just need to reset the board. However, the vast majority of the time you will tutor for variations on the following two intuition splits:
1. Genesis, wonder, gigapede
2. Life from the loam, cephalid coliseum, volrath’s stronghold
They are in that order because option 1 is usually the best. It sets you up for a spectacular late-game, and will guarantee both incarnations end up in the grave. If you have one of those pieces in hand you can instead grab a darkblast or loam.
The second option is weaker because it requires threshold, eats land drops, and doesn’t immediately affect the board. However, if you have neither engine online by turn 7 or so (and there is a board stalemate) this is probably better. Loam+coliseum is HUGE card advantage, and will quickly draw you into all the gas you’d want (and dump the incarnations in the grave along the way).
A third common split is shriekmaw, tarmogoyf, tarmogoyf. It’s most common against an opposing goyf, and is superior to goyf, goyf, goyf because it gets you the exact same creature (a goyf) but makes a topdecked genesis or stronghold much better by providing more options.
As you can see, playing intuition correctly is incredibly difficult, but the card makes this deck a force to be reckoned with. Although it doesn’t have any easy victories (like TES against White Weenie), River Rock is an all-around solid deck for a varied metagame.
Sideboard strategy:
Krosan grip: A necessary evil against countertop, Survival of the fittest, and other random artifacts and enchantments. This could be cut to two if room needed to be made (especially since it isn’t always boarded for countertop; see below).
Extirpate: Boarded in against Survival, Loam-based decks, and Threshold. Against most builds of Threshold, removing tarmogoyfs not only eliminates their best win condition, but also a solid 40-50% of their offense. Many other random decks are also hosed by this card.
Engineered plague: Goblins still exist, and run this deck through if you come unprepared. Plague can also kill ichorids and Cephalid Breakfast creatures, making it a versatile answer to a lot of decks. They also replace deed against storm combo as a permanent answer to goblin tokens from empty the warrens.
The board also has five metagame slots. These can go toward Duress if you see a lot of control decks (like Landstill), Hydroblast if burn and goblins are rampant, or Daze/Stifle as a surprise tactic. They can also be devoted to random hosers like Null rod, Darkheart sliver, Gaea’s blessing, or other cards. The truth is, the maindeck is so tightly built that sideboarding is very difficult. The trick is to find matchups you’re likely to face, and lose to, and see what cards would improve them (duh). Those are the extra cards you want in the side. As a quick bit of info, here’s what I’ve determined are good sideboarding techniques for some commonly seen decks.
Against Threshold:
+3 Extirpate
-2 Ravenous baloth
-1 Wooded foothills
Kind of a strange switch, but it works very well. The extra life is rarely necessary because your deck is slightly more aggressive. The high cost of baloth also lends it to get countered by daze, which can be devastating tempo disadvantage. Dropping a high-cost creature from the deck alleviates some of the deck’s mana problems, but daze still has to be considered. Extirpate is awesome because it takes out the most important (few) spells your opponent runs. Tarmogoyf and counterbalance are highest on this list, because without them the deck wastes mana on cantrips to draw into spells that are all weaker than yours. Krosan grip can be brought in for some other cards (to hit countertop), but I really don’t find it necessary. However, if you expect shackles or control magic coming in as well, the grips would most likely be worth siding in (even for a deed or two).
Against Goblins:
+4 Engineered plague
+1 Krosan grip
-2 Pernicious deed
-1 Thoughtseize
-1 Eternal witness
-1 Other card (often loam)
Forgo the tricks here, you just need to stay alive. Witness and loam are both too mana-intensive to help early-game (where you need the most help) so they should probably go. If you’re running hydroblast, swap them for the thoughtseizes. A few deeds come out because they are rather clumsy, and often hurt your tempo more than theirs. However, because killing aether vial is very important, I bring a krosan grip in to help out. This may or may not be the right boarding plan, but it’s worked quite well so far in my (admittedly limited) testing.
Against Cephalid Breakfast:
+3 Extirpate
+4 Engineered plague
-6 Engine pieces (genesis, gigapede, witness, wonder, loam, coliseum)
-1 Ravenous baloth
I told you the decklist was tight! The cards in breakfast (force of will, aether vial, lim-dul’s vault, etc.) often yield card disadvantage for them, so your engine pieces are less crucial to owing the late-game. Granted, keeping genesis would be nice, but extirpate and plague are more important (i.e. more damaging). Your control pieces handle their combo quite well, as long as you don’t get cocky and start with a bird on the draw. Mulligan aggressively, and this matchup isn’t so bad. Oh, and by the way, if your opponent brings in tormod’s crypt or extirpate against you, then guess who has the last laugh?
Just as a note, I don’t have any match-up percentages because I haven’t played them enough. Plus, it has a lot to do with play skill on both sides of the table.
So that’s the deck; I'm looking forward to hearing everyone's criticisms, and suggestions on how to improve the deck. Enjoy!