I made a few tweaks between the firs two leagues I played to account for some lessons learned. To start, here's the updated list.
Previous list here.
Changes
I added another Field of Ruin, and Eldrazi Displacer, and cut Ephemerate to make space. While playing the deck I was never unhappy to draw lands, and I was hoping to gains some percentage against decks like Tron. Field of Ruin being a colorless source was important too, as when adding another Displacer I was interested in adding a bit of consistency activating it. Ephemerate wasn't bad, but it's awful with a Thalia in play as you get taxed twice. Displacer was incredible, especially against the numerous other Stoneforge Mystic decks I played against. Blinking Batterskull created Germ tokens put me ahead in a lot of games that would have been tough otherwise, and I think if the metagame remains heavy on Stoneforge Mystic I want to max out on this card.
Sideboard Swaps
After playing with the sideboard I had some spots where I felt great about my choices, as Gideon Blackblade enormously overperformed, and some places where I couldn't believe how I came to my conclusions, like when I boarded in my one Stony Silence, drew it, and it was worse than useless.Surgical Extraction felt more adorable than anything else, and got cut to make room for Damping Sphere, another card against Tron but also an effective card vs. the Twiddle Storm deck. I added another Fragmentize to beat various Ensnaring Bridge/Karn decks, although I think I'm going to have to diversify this later for something that can also hit Batterskull. Archangel Avacyn proved to be far too adorable, so I cut her for Serra the Benevolent, a card that was reasonable for me when I brought it in vs. Jund, but not one I'm particularly confident shouldn't be Gideon, Ally of Zendikar instead. Despite overperforming, I shaved a Gideon as I was adding a 3rd Fragmentize for Bridge decks and I felt like I didn't need the help vs. U/W control and other decks.
Results of My 2nd League
I managed to continue my run all the way until the last round where I lost to a Jeskai Saheeli deck in the finals. I definitely got a lot of equity from my opponents not knowing my decklist, as I played against an opponent who cast a Blood Moon against me that was totally irrelevant, and I likely would have lost that match if it was a remotely relevant card instead. Walking Ballista was a very valuable tutor target, as my opponents generally didn't expect that I could have any reach, and often let themselves fall to 3 and less when they didn't necessarily have to.
I really missed having access to some sort of answer to Batterskull, as I was often short a good card to board in against other Stoneforge Mystic decks. I think going forward a Fragmentize should become a Disenchant or some allegory, with Batterskull in mind, but also as an answer to Chalice of the Void.
The Falling off Wheels
After some successful leagues, I continued to iterate on the deck and try things out. I played a Shattering Blow in my sideboard, I swapped my Sword of Fire and Ice to a Sword of Light and Shadow, and I even tried Nevermore, which I drew two of against Scapeshift, never drew a 3rd land to cast them, but won anyway as my opponents draw was awful and they died to Batterskull.
It was certainly nice to have some beginner's luck as well as what I still feel like have been good ideas, but this deck definitely has some real flaws, as it has a lot points of vulnerability for our opponents to exploit. We're relatively weak to sweepers, land hate cards, and binary combo decks like Scapeshift and Ad Nauseum. My opponents drew pretty well in general across my 3 weak leagues (I went 2-3, 2-3, 3-2); I got killed by a topdecked Scapeshift, a Linvala the Preserver out of a very similar deck, and an Amulet Titan player who drew running Titans, but with that said I never put enough pressure on anyone to really mitigate any of that. My draws in general were relatively poor as well, but as you'd expect my draws were great in my first two leagues. Even my wins in my last few leagues felt lucky; I played against Mardu Death's Shadow twice while testing out maindeck Sword of Light and Shadow, and it killed them singlehandedly in both matches.
Takeaways
While I still feel like this deck idea has legs, it's going to take a lot of iterating and learning on my own part to really perfect. I have numerous avenues left to explore, and I'm likely going to try out the best version I can come up with in an upcoming MTGO MCQ. This deck has a ton of play and sequencing tricks to learn, and I expect to improve my record just with experience. I was using Thalia to effectively make spells uncounterable against a few opponents just by casting it first, and I decided in general it wasn't good to cast turn 2 Thought-Knot Seer in my deck in my double Eldrazi Temple draws at the expense of casting a 1 mana spell into a two mana spell into Seer instead, which came up a few times and mattered a lot.
Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter
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