I had two games last night with this deck that both went pretty smoothly (barring my saltiness)
Game 1
Omnath locus of the roil vs.
Teysa, Orzhov Scion vs. my maelstrom wanderer deck borrowed by another player
In this game, Teysa and I both got decent starts, but Teysa hit a mentor of the meek and some ramp and was getting close to going off (had 3 of 4 combo pieces).
Omnath had played Urborg, so I expedition map'd for coffers and was doing OK, but had mostly an empty hand and could not stop his
Field of the Dead. So coffers out a couple things and go into him with
Yahenni, Undying Partisan,
Ophiomancer,
Sygg, River Cutthroat and
Blood Artist while Teysa has a similar board but with Mentor and Teysa. but obviously Ophiomancer is quite a bit better when it turns into exiling everything on the board constantly with teysa.
Maelstrom wanderer is basically a nonentity because the player had some sequencing fus.
So I pass into OMnath with the aforementioned board and he tutors up
Strip Mine, plays
Crucible of Worlds and proceeds to strip mine my coffers. To which I say "Are you sure I'm the problem here? You 100% cannot beat Teysa 1v1." He nods, "coffers scares me." yeah my 2 card hand of bricks (two fleshbag effects against field of the dead, teysa aristocrats and an empty board) is terrifying when you're literally going to have your general and any card you play exiled forever. He then strip mined Teysa (who had an unbeatable engine on board and it did nothing), setting himself back yet another land to show me his commitment to balance.
Sooo I scoop it up. Enjoy going 1v1 with Teysa and losing (which of course he did). Why? this player has literally focused strip mine looped me out of the game the last 5 times we played despite it massively setting him back 3 of the 5 times, because "emeria scares me" or "coffers scares me" or whatever. I get that's a legitimate strategy but does this need to be a thing? Do I need to mulligan to graveyard hate to get to play the damn game?
I just don't understand the politics of presenting a strip mine loop aggressively like that. Even if I stay in the game I have to focus fire him out of the game because I'm going to struggle to beat that 1v1. Bleh.
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Game 2 was vs. Orvar, Yuriko (toned down ninja tribal, still quite strong), and Anowon.
Anowon basically was a non-entity this game except providing a
Mindcrank to help mill me into stuff.
This game was interesting; it was mostly Yuriko vs. Orvar for most of it, while I set up Yahenni,
Pawn of Ulamog and
Sygg, River Cutthroat but was missing an engine piece (commentary later). Yuriko did synergize pretty strongly with Sygg, letting me draw back into the game pretty well
This game kinda went, Orvar setting up multiple
Peregrine Drake's and
Archaeomancer and basically digging to the combo. He was one mana short of whimming off. I killed Orvar on his end step and then played
Syr Konrad, the Grim, which was really fantastic and helped me draw more sygg cards and pinged people quite a lot.
Turn cycle after that, Orvar replayed his stuff then at his end step I
Intuition'd for
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed Dread Return and
Glen Elendra Archmage - they gave me
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed [/card] which was probably the best answer they had since I didn't have that much mana - unfortunately for them I topdecked
Demonic Tutor and was able to get Coffers for a sizable chunk of mana and was able to play MIkaeus, and flash back
Dread Return sacrificing all my non-humans (boosh that is a combo).
Unfortunately yuriko was able to fetch a counterspell so I couldn't win from there. I instead passed. Yuriko slammed a bunch of attackers, but Orvar bounced his
Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive which caused a massive blowout for him - since we could all block. Everyone took a beating from
Syr Konrad, the Grim from all the deaths.
Yuriko then second mains
Emrakul, the Promised End to take Orvar's turn. he had a hard decision to make since Orvar had the combo on the board and whim of volrath in the bin, and was spell targeting
Archaeomancer from winning. Unfortunately, even with evoking a mulldrifter and digging with top he could not find one, so he passed the turn leaving Orvar with a counterspell and a
Scavenger Grounds to handle me. Orvar reset after losing his orvar again and then passed to me.
At my upkeep I volrath strongholded
Gray Merchant of Asphodel onto my top, which was lethal with
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed and my sac outlets. That forced Orvar to burn scavenger grounds and put him off counter mana. I think he made the best choice he could but the game was locked up there pretty much since I had a grip full of hands from skullclamp and sygging all game.
I played
Bloodghast and
Nether Traitor and then
Zulaport Cutthroat and
Lampad of Death's Vigil and started the dance of sac'ing and mikaeusing and nether traitoring stuff until everyone was super dead. Since I Had Yahenni and Cutthroat and all the tokens from
Pawn of Ulamog it was pretty well over.
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Comments
* I feel like constantly I am missing my recurrable engine card. I think I need to add
Reassembling Skeleton and possibly
Buried Alive.
* The lifegain dudes and the winmore stuff like
Blight Mound seem to be too slow. Witch of the Moors especially just seems to rot in my hand a lot. Might just be the decks I'm running into are not super edictable most of the time.
Veinwitch Coven hasn't really gotten there a lot, but it's possible I am not seeing its play patterns yet either.
* I am regularly feeling the sting of needing something to kill artifacts/enchantments more. I think the answer might be more counterspells or possibly opposing graveyard hate (
Dauthi Voidwalker feels lik a shoe in that I should try to squeeze in).
I need more reps with the deck but I also think it might benefit from a couple more ways to draw cards. that said I am able to draw off Sygg pretty consistently at least one card a turn since I can usually clear the way to beat someone up.
I do really, really enjoy
Sygg, River Cutthroat's play patterns and I am pretty sure even if this deck doesn't stick as aristocrats that I will build something with him.