I played another game with this deck yesterday and it went reasonably well. The game was against
Tana, the Bloodsower &
Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist partners,
Korvold, Fae-Cursed King, and
Akroma, Vision of Ixidor &
Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker partners.
I kept a decent hand and was able to draw into a few cards.
Knight of the Reliquary and
Magus of the Order were the big cards at the beginning. Knight allowed me to get
Dryad Arbor which I sacrificed to Korvold's
Call to the Grave. This allowed me to keep Knight and
Magus of the Order on the field.
My plan was to get Bane of Progress since there were a few artifacts and enchantments around. I was planning on waiting but then Akroma cast Wrath of God so I just tutored up Bane in response to that putting everyone with a clean board state. I also sacrificed the 11/11 Bane to Momentous Fall so I could make sure I got lands and other cards to play since I only had removal in hand.
Akroma partners then cast Ishai and I just cast
Yavimaya Dryad and
Remorseful Cleric. The latter for blocking just in case. Tana got Tana back out and then Korvold cast
Reign of the Pit which was super good in that situation. They ended up with a 13/13 Demon and got rid of the creeatures on everyone's boards except I still had Cleric.
Apparently this was too much for Tana though and they scooped it up. Akroma cast Ishai again and I just cast Wall of Blossoms and Necrotic Sliver. The latter was just there to kill the token if I needed to. Instead, they swung at Akroma partners with the big Demon. Then, on Akroma's turn, they cast
Vona's Hunger and I blew up Akroma that they had just cast. I used the Sliver to do this just because I felt I could still hand the Demon and I wanted to keep the Cleric and I figured I was getting rid of 2 creatures either way so I might as well make sure Akroma was gone.
Also, they seemed to be going after Akroma with the Demon and I was fine with letting them keep it considering I had other removal in hand. On my next turn I cast
Ulvenwald Hydra as another blocker and got
Winding Canyons. This allowed me to attack Akroma to take the Monarch. Korvold then cast Korvold and attacked me with the Demon so I blocked with the Hydra. This killed the Hydra so next turn I just cast
Karmic Guide to get it back and give me another blocker. Which was good because Korvold destroyed the Hydra.
So, instead of going after me since I had Guide to block with, they just killed Akroma partners so now it was down to a 1v1 game. I felt like I had the upper hand but Korvold was drawing them quite a few cards. I basically just looped Karmic Guide with Karador for a few turns as I tried to figure out when the best time to strike was. I did have
Pernicious Deed in hand but their board was never scary enough to want to do anything with it. So, I just blocked a few times and they even swung with Korvold trying to dig for cards to deal with my board. Which did lose them Korvold that turn.
Scavenging Ooze came into play around this time as well since it prevented a few of their reanimation/regrowth effects from doing anything. All the while, my board consisted of Ulvenwald Hydra and a bunch of small creatures but Korvold mostly only had Korvold as a threat.
Eventually though, they got
Kogla, the Titan Ape to get rid of Karador which slowed down my loops. I never bothered casting Karador again either since I was in a good spot as it was. They also got
It That Betrays which I exiled pretty quickly by using
Recruiter of the Guard to get
Eternal Witness to get back
Dire Tactics,
Next turn they cast
Pathrazer of Ulamog and
Conduit of Ruin. And then they attacked with Kogla which was basically exactly what I needed them to do since I couldn't deal with all 3 of their big creatures and still kill them. I could have killed them all but they would have survived since
Swords to Plowshares was a removal option.
This allowed me to flash in
Cavalier of Dawn on their turn to destroy Pathrazer and then I could use
Yawgmoth, Thran Physician to kill the Conduit. On my turn, I could cast
Pernicious Deed and crack it for X=5 so only my Hydra and their Ape (which is now tapped) would survive. Since the Hydra was big enough, this would let me just kill them that turn.
Alas, they scooped after Cavalier destroyed Pathrazer so I never got to play out the rest of the plan for the turn but I at least had an end game in mind.
I think Tana scooping was a bit premature and it might have affected the outcome since they could have had a chance to get back into it. But that is hard to evaluate. The looping with Guide and Hydra was pretty big this game and I always had Deed and
False Prophet in hand to deal with a board state if it truly got out of control unexpectedly.
If I really wanted to, I could have
Entombed for
Eerie Ultimatum, sacrificed my board, cast Karador, get back E Witness to get the Ultimatum, and then just flood the board with everything again. I obviously never needed to do that but there were quite a few lines I could go with at that stage of the game depending on how much Korvold actually did for them.
All in all, this went pretty well. As usual, the early game was more about smaller creatures though Magus had a pretty nice effect to help slow people down. I don't know how much I still like Knight of the Reliquary though. In this game she was able to get me Dryad Arbor for sac fodder, but beyond that, I don't know that I care a lot about getting specific lands with her.
She is good at what she does but she is slow due to summoning sickness and I never bothered activating her again after getting Dryad Arbor. She is certainly good since I have important lands to get but I can see a future where Knight ends up being cut for something if I really needed to. It isn't like she is on the list of "need to cut right now" as I don't have any cards like that, but it is something I will be thinking on if cuts need to happen in the future.