Dragon’s Maze game day happened over the weekend. I played in two of them.

I didn’t win either one.

I played two different decks, but I probably should’ve played the same in both.

In my first Game Day I played this list

[deck title=Infinite Possibilities]
[Creatures]
4 Arbor Elf
4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim
1 Griselbrand
3 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Laboratory Maniac
2 Thragtusk
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
2 Enter the Infinite
4 Faithless Looting
4 Possibility Storm
2 Memory’s Journey
3 Omniscience
2 Sphinx’s Revelation
1 Thoughtflare
4 Verdant Haven
[/Spells]
[Land]
4 Breeding Pools
7 Forest
3 Island
2 Mountain
4 Stomping Grounds
3 Temple Garden
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
1 Thragtusk
2 Witchbane Orb
2 Thundermaw Hellkite
1 Elderscale Wurm
1 Slaughter Games
3 Boros Reckoner
1 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
2 Progenitor Mimic
2 Zealous Conscripts
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

We only had eight people show up for the morning Game Day, so we did Swiss rounds with no cut. I lost my first round…

The thing about this list is that the more random the opponent’s deck is, the more this deck struggles. I can’t really tell you what I was playing against as it was even more random than anything I could come up with. I saw [card]Unexpected Results[/card], [card]Plasm Capture[/card], [card]Mystic Genesis[/card], [card]Devour Flesh[/card], [card]Slumbering Dragon[/card] and [card]Hamletback Goliath[/card].

Don’t get me wrong, I love to do oddball stuff, but I did not see a cohesive plan to this deck. I made some bad plays and then whiffed on some vital turns. I had zero cards in hand and flashbacked a [card]Faithless Looting[/card] at one point. This didn’t bite me right away, but had I waited the one turn to get a draw step and then cast it I might have hit gold. I also did not sideboard at all, which was, upon reflection, a bad move. My reasoning at the time was that my opponent’s deck was so unstable that I would be able to hit my combo before he could assemble anything worthwhile. In keeping with this thought I then kept a fairly loose hand. I should know better than to fall into this trap, but there it is. I should have sideboarded into being creature heavy and just bashed to end the game quickly.

My last-ditch effort to win was met by my opponent casting a [card]Plasm Capture[/card] (which I had to stop from being cast the turn before because it didn’t have a target) into my double [card]Possibility Storm[/card] on the field. I put [card]Enter the Infinite[/card] onto the stack (casting it from exile with Possibility Storm). My opponent hit a [card]Devour Flesh[/card] from the first trigger and a [card]Mystic Genesis[/card] from the second.

I was fairly disheartened, but I stuck around for the remainder of the Swiss rounds, because it would help me get experience with the deck and maybe tune it up some. I won out the rest of the rounds. I think that, at least in this case, I was victim to the inherent randomness in the deck and possibly a bit of bad luck. There are things I could have done to improve the odds, and I will focus on these.

Playing with this deck can be a test of probable possibilities (pun intended). One of the things I struggle with is doing the hard and fast math. This deck pushes this to the forefront of my mind. If I paid more attention to what cards I had seen and put on the bottom (from each Possibility Storm trigger) I would have been able to craft hands and possibilities better. The reason I say I got a little bit unlucky is the one time I did this I was burned. I had two [card]Faithless Looting[/card] in the graveyard and one in hand. The only thing I could hit off the Storm would be one of the two game-winning [card]Enter the Infinite[/card] or the final [card]Faithless Looting[/card]. I didn’t win that game. I was once again struck by how disruptive [card]Possibility Storm[/card] is to my opponents. I’m not sure if building around it to hit certain cards is the right direction or if using it to simply disrupt my opponent would be better.

I haven’t tried the combo with [card]Curse of Exhaustion[/card], but it is another possible direction.

I almost ran this again in the second Game Day because I went X-1, but I flipped a coin for this and another deck and the other deck won.

[deck title=Beck and Call]
[Creatures]
1 Craterhoof Behemoth
1 Nephalia Smuggler
3 Faerie Impostor
3 Hellraiser Goblin
3 Soul of the Harvest
3 Village Bell-Ringer
4 Arbor Elf
4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Somberwald Sage
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Beck // Call
[/Spells]
[Land]
2 Simic Guildgate
4 Hinterland Harbor
4 Breeding Pool
2 Forest
3 Temple Garden
3 Stomping Ground
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
2 Thragtusk
2 Gnaw to the Bone
2 Progenitor Mimic
1 Cavern of Souls
3 Rootborn Defenses
2 Zealous Conscripts
3 Dispel
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

I took this to an X-2 finish, once again losing in the first round. I played one non-game against UWR Flash followed by losing a close game where, after a mulligan to five, I had one turn to rebuild after a [card]Supreme Verdict[/card] and just didn’t have the gas. This felt like a problem with my sideboard. This sideboard was thrown together hastily and without much thought. I was not originally going to run this deck, and the sideboard was very sloppy. I took creatures out for wrath protection, but drawing the protection after the wrath was a problem. I need to do some research into successful Elf lists to get ideas. I think I did it entirely wrong. In this Game Day there were enough people that I had the hope to make the cut to a top four.

I had a bye in round two, the worst feeling ever when I just want to jump in a game and reassure myself that my deck isn’t the absolute worst. I’ve built stinkers before, and while I don’t think this is one of them, after the previous Game Day and a poor showing round one, I was feeling pretty down.

I proceeded to combo out on my next opponent and swing for roughly 626 trample damage. I lost to the mulligan monster in game two and simply did lethal in game three.

In the final round before the cut to top four I sat down knowing that I would make the cut if I didn’t lose. My round-one opponent had gone undefeated, bringing my tiebreakers up quite high. I kept a hand that was slow but would be explosive if I reached turn five. My opponent was on the play, and when he played turn-one [card]Stromkirk Noble[/card] I knew I was in trouble. I made a mistake on my first turn that very likely cost me this game. I played a Guildgate instead of a [card]Temple Garden[/card] and a Pilgrim. The guildgate would fix my mana and let me keep some life, but the Garden would have allowed me to play a turn three [card]Soul of the Harvest[/card]. I think the big body would have been better than the two life.

I never made it to turn five.

Game two was the best game I played all day. I kept a hand that with my spicy [card]Gnaw to the Bone[/card] and enough bodies to throw away to make it relevant. The game played out exactly how I envisioned it. I played out bodies to chump and trade and then gained a lot of life off of Gnaw. I stuck a Soul which was bigger than everything he had and he only swung with a [card]Boros Reckoner[/card] to keep me from Harvesting his team away. At this point, I had ten creatures in the bin and we both knew I could reset my life at any point. After I gained several chump blockers, I offered the trade of the Soul for the Reckoner and he took it.

I had roughly twelve of my eighteen land in play and started casting fused [card]Beck // Call[/card] for more chump blockers and to draw several cards. I played out a [card]Hellraiser Goblin[/card] and swung for the fences, but it wasn’t quite lethal. His counterattack was for 16 damage plus burn, but I had twenty life banked from the [card]Gnaw to the Bone[/card]. He cleared the board with [card]Blasphemous Act[/card] with a single red mana. Luckily for me, he didn’t have another Reckoner on the field. I top-decked the best card I could—[card]Thragtusk[/card].

I padded my life total some more and put a reasonable clock on the board, but with only about 20 cards left in my deck I revealed the spicy card I had been sitting on in my hand. In the same turn I cast a [card]Progenitor Mimic[/card] copying my [card]Thragtusk[/card]. My opponent just shook his head. He drew for the turn and played another Reckoner before passing back. I got my token and cast another [card]Progenitor Mimic[/card] copying my other Mimic which gave me a Thragtusk with two triggered abilities. The game was over shortly after this.

This game really made me appreciate the power of fusing [card]Beck // Call[/card]. It is very expensive, but drawing four and getting four bodies on the field is very powerful. Is it worth it? I don’t think I would build around the fused card, but there might be some potential.

My opponent remarked several times that it was the longest game he had played all day. It seemed only fitting that we then played the fastest game of the day.

I mulliganed down to four cards and he had one of those ridiculous Emissary draws that I would have been hard pressed to defeat with a full grip. Oh! Don’t worry, he had the Rampager bloodrush to go with it.

This deck does powerful things, but right now it seems inconsistent. I’m working on trying to solve this problem, but there may not be a way in Standard right now. I know one of the biggest flaws with this game while trying to be competitive is that I like oddball decks like the those I played for Game Day. I keep telling myself that I am going to stop, but like an addict, I keep going back. Winning is fun, but I have so much fun doing weird things that I’m not sure if it is worth it to run something like RG Aggro or Reanimator. The “fire” disagrees with me, and this tension is an awful feeling. There aren’t any big tournaments coming any time soon (at least none that I can attend), so I’m hoping that by the time that PTQ rolls around that I will have picked up a “real” deck… or made one of my oddball things into something “real.”

David Mantel
@Writer1007