Queen Breena's Full Contact Politics

[pokken]

In a 3 player game, you might actually be served by the opposite end of the spectrum in your partner choice —

Akroma, Vision of Ixidor is the one that jumps out to me. After all, this deck is almost never not going to have a 2 drop, and we are already keyword soup tribal.

Alternatively, you could go with Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful, since one drops are far less common.

I'm considering Verrak, Warped Sengir for something in here. Great attacker, and as mentioned in the other thread, goes bananas with our fetchland package.

I did consider Akroma, Vision of Ixidor but man that's a lot of mana. Breena's ability is really unique to grow progressively as the game goes on without mana investment.

I was thinking I might try Keleth, Sunmane Familiar - little simplistic, but curves into Tymna and gets bigger pretty fast.

[pokken]

Man, it's such a bummer, I am getting super frustrated with this deck's recurring inability to stop a counterspell deck. It's super frustrating. I've got to try a few more times and work on my play patterns, but I think this deck might just get retired. I'm so, so, so tired of the play pattern of watching a blue deck build a lethal board state, then double counterspell my combat tricks because they correctly assess that I am the major threat to them.

I think it's that my niceness seeps in and I keep not killing them early, but it feels like the only successful play pattern is to just aggro them down. Even like fairly casual decks can be a big problem if they stack up a couple counterspells, or counter and a removal etc.

Grand Abolisher has put in some serious work on that front so maybe more of that. Myrel, Shield of Argive might be playable.

[yeti1069]

Man, it's such a bummer, I am getting super frustrated with this deck's recurring inability to stop a counterspell deck. It's super frustrating. I've got to try a few more times and work on my play patterns, but I think this deck might just get retired. I'm so, so, so tired of the play pattern of watching a blue deck build a lethal board state, then double counterspell my combat tricks because they correctly assess that I am the major threat to them.

I think it's that my niceness seeps in and I keep not killing them early, but it feels like the only successful play pattern is to just aggro them down. Even like fairly casual decks can be a big problem if they stack up a couple counterspells, or counter and a removal etc.

Grand Abolisher has put in some serious work on that front so maybe more of that. Myrel, Shield of Argive might be playable.

Is Silence in there? That's an all-star vs mana interactive decks!

[pokken]

Is Silence in there? That's an all-star vs mana interactive decks!

It's worth a shot potentially. I try not to run stuff like that, since it's best at combo defense but it does stop a lot of repeat casting combos and such. I'll put it on the list.

It might be I need to be running thoughtseize tbh. Or maybe I could dust out my word of command lol.

[yeti1069]

Is Silence in there? That's an all-star vs mana interactive decks!

It's worth a shot potentially. I try not to run stuff like that, since it's best at combo defense but it does stop a lot of repeat casting combos and such. I'll put it on the list.

It might be I need to be running thoughtseize tbh. Or maybe I could dust out my word of command lol.

I use Silence a lot in Queen Marchesa. Sometimes it's worth Silencing the spellslinger/artifact/enchantment player in their upkeep just to Time Walk them. That said, I get to run Sunforger in QM, so having silver-bullets is more viable. Definitely think focus-firing is the way to go otherwise.

[pokken]

Just a sad note that I am likely abandoning this deck. Two major issues keep cropping up:

* Inability to compete with counterspell decks; counterspell decks have a particular play pattern of encouraging people to attack me, and then countering my combat shenanigans. This play pattern is miserable. If it had happened a couple times I'd just roll with it, but it's become a regular thing. Most games it loses are due to someone countermagicking Inkshield or similar. We can't complete with the tempo of Fierce Guardianship, An Offer You Can't Refuse and similar that people play now.

* The biggest problem is that Breena's templating is just godawful against 3 pods. She grows slower, she can't draw as many cards, and so the deck needs proportionally more non-breena card advantage. It's one of those decks that needs major adjustments. I have tried playing Tymna the Weaver and Keleth, Sunmane Familiar in 3-pods, but the lack of evasion on thes two is problematic. I play a lot of 3-pods and so I don't think I can have $1000 in cards sitting in a deck I can't play half the time.

My plan is at this point to rebuild this as Raffine, Scheming Seer which should be able to leverage the same manabase and ramp package, while adding the ability to play a few fun reanimator targets I haven't been playing. I get to add a small countermagic suite to keep people honest, and also get to add Aetherspouts and potentially Keep Watch.

I'll post a new list when I get that designed but for the moment Breena is basically shelved.