Motivated by the joy of a new set, I’ve been sneaking in some binges here and there with ye old magic cards. And guys… it has been absolutely brutal. BRUTAL. Here, check it out.

Take two Tatyova and call me in the morning

This probably wins the award for highest hope, lowest outcome. I was feeling very smug with my ramp, my mythic uncommons… and my total inability to close out a game. I think the mistake I made was not taking an arcane flight or two to throw onto a huge turtle. I lacked finishers.

Bad UR Wizards

This felt like “right seat, unlucky cards”. Someone was clearly snatching up all the academy journeymages to be had and an aggressive tempo deck without bounce isn’t… isn’t very good. I also saw Adeliz one time, which isn’t very good ROI on a game-winning card. I eventually played/tuned this deck into more of a control engine, leaning on my truly ridiculous number of Ghitu Chroniclers.

UW Fliers

Finally I return to my home, UW fliers! What do you mean I only did well because I opened a $20 card? No YOU shut up!! My loss came to a spicy UW matchup that had historic synergies with Tetsuko, Relic Runners, D’Avenant Trappers, and suchlike that was very very fast. We each ate one game of manascrew and I couldn’t quite stabilize in game three. Still, it felt somewhat vindicating to go 2-1 for once. The card draw felt great and it had a reasonable game plan (gum up the ground, win through the air). I waffled a lot on whether or not to main-deck Wizard’s Retort. I would bring it in if I saw reasonable targets (often taking out Naturalize). Felt like the right call.

Learnings

First, Dominaria is pretty hard. The power level can be absurdly high but there’s a wide range of cards. So as the smarter people on podcasts say, you have to really make sure to build a bomb or have one of the rare synergy decks (Saporling, Wizards). Interestingly, I had an IRL draft where I thought my deck was just hot trash, a terrible RW aggressive aura deck. Not where you want to be, but I had some high variance powerhouse combos that actually pulled it to 3-0. In other words, I don’t know anything.