Originally Posted by
tescrin
IMO Equipment decks tend to go to time for me a lot more often. They have the chance to have outs via gaining health and things without putting you in a winning position; hoping for that topdeck. I've gone to more aggressive decks in order to make games more win-big-or-go-home kinda deals. I found, FWIW, that Revoker does the same kinda thing. Unsure how to solve that dilemma. I think it's best solved with Flyers or other evasive dudes so that when you equip you tend to connect and thus end the game.
That said, grindy midrange decks (which are my forte) will drain you since you're often playing to outs and topdecks that still take more turns to put you into the winning position than a combo deck takes for a whole game. Yesterday, for instance, I had my second TNN coming up, but not enough to cast; so I laid down something to hold off the opponent so I could get to the next turn, lay TNN #2 and begin swinging with the first one while walling off his dudes. That's a gameplan I can't execute for a turn, takes 4-5 turns to get there and will require re-evaluation upon changes. It's just the way midrange is.
This is why more aggressive decks have become my thang of late; as the Delvers, Goyfs, etc tend to make-or-break earlier in the game, leading to a lot less drawn out games; thus less draining, more chance to scout, etc..
My only advice on this front would be have a Scryb for equips to fly over, a Sigarda to end the game against things like Jund, and maybe add ramp dude #5 or #6 to speed you up, and thus bring you to winning/losing states faster. If you're using library, you could swap to Courser in the short run to reduce number of evaluations you have to make; reduce the number of neat things to fetch with KotR/GSZ and simplify the deck so you have a more deterministic losing/winning state so you know when to concede.
Conceding bad games is a big deal with midrange when you go against Miracles, Midrange anything, or Lands.
