Against my better judgment, I caved to peer pressure and went for the full, four-rounds of magic at Phoenix games instead of my usual ramen/coffee/Gamma Ray day on the town. The case against four-rounds is when you’re sitting at 1-2 (raises hand) you don’t really need a fourth round to drive home that your deck sucks. I get it. I was there for those previous three games too! However, Sam’s plea of “But MOAR MAGIC” carried the day.

Plus it turns out that they have coffee in that part of Cap Hill too. Bonuses all around.

I cracked my packs and then frantically searched for additional packs to open because I had very, very few creatures to speak of. Alarmingly few, even counting the sorceries that churn out Saprolings for you.

This is pretty much the most generic GB deck I think it’s possible to build. I had the removal.

Aaaaaand that was pretty much it! I ran 18 lands because I didn’t have a 23rd playable. And calling some of the spells I put in there “playable” was definitely reaching. But I could cast a few creatures, remove a few of theirs, and then sit at a board stall. And by god that’s what I did. Occasionally they had rude interruptions like “playing a creature with flying” that felt a little unsporting. So this deck limped to 2-2 (after falling to 1-2 first. Called it!) with minimal learnings. Some fun moments include:

Achievement unlocked! Drew made some good points how totally nonsensical the kicker cost is. 10 mana! But why not just say “win the game” instead of this annoying-to-manage formality of eight 2/2 zombies with menace? It just doesn’t seem very interesting. Contrast that to the ubiquitous green Saproling-maker.

This is actually offers an interesting decision between the two modes: two 1/1s for two mana or four 1/1s for six? If you topdeck it on turn four, what do you do? Also, this card is very good, so good that I think any green deck will be happy to run this. I wonder if this means that there won’t be enough fuel for Saproling build-arounds.

I would be remiss if i didn’t mention the sweet rares I opened in colors that I couldn’t even come close to supporting.

Some pretty sweet cards! Too bad that my white was comically thin and my blue not much better. Oh and not a single piece of fixing to be seen. The fun part was that I built my sealed pool without looking at my rares. Then once I have that assembled I flip them over one at a time (usually to the great entertainment of the rest of the table) and curse my mixed fortune. Sweet rares that may make my Brawl deck (more on that to come) isn’t too sad of a story. But still. That 23rd playable would have been nice.