Lost in a Haze

 On Bloodhaze Wolverine, I wrote the following:

Bluffing will gives this a lot of its overall power, as the vast majority of the enablers for this are cheap and draw cards.  While I don't recommend playing like that at your local prerelease, treat this creature like it's unblockable the vast majority of the time and you'll get a lot more mileage out of this.  Mental games aside I like this one an awful lot, as triggering it is easy enough to make it feel like a 2 mana 3/2 with first strike.

While I'm not saying I missed the mark on this, I've largely played with and against this card as if my words meant nothing.  It's not just that I'm never bluffing with this, I'm always blocking it when it's on the other side.  My opponents always have something, and it almost never matters in the long run.  I only attack with this when I have something, and my opponents almost always block.  What gives here?

How Match-Ups and Plans Change Cards

The vast majority of times I or my opponents play Bloodhaze Wolverine is in Mono Red or the most aggressive versions of U/R, in other cases it just doesn't get registered.  The powerlevel of this format is high enough that most decks can't afford to play a 2/1 for 2 with no abilities, as the lack of late game scaling and general irrelevance against the de facto defensive creatures, all with 4 toughness, leads to a card that's more often than not, useless.  Mono Red bucks this trend, as anything that can combine well with Barge In or Torbran is worth an inclusion.  As you're also looking for a critical mass of cheap creatures, any 2 power 2 mana creature is going to be good enough.  U/R is where this card is always a 3/2 First Strike, but that deck is much more interested in setting up cards like Improbable Alliance and Mad Ratter, and much less interested in a cheap aggressive creature.

The primary deck where this card is supposed to shine just isn't that interested, and the other deck is all about pushing through damage and avoiding long games.  When a card like Bloodhaze Wolverine is only played in a deck that generally wants to trade its cards for damage, it becomes better generically to just block.

• Mono Red decks lack repeatable ways to trigger Bloodhaze Wolverine, because of Merchant of the Vale it'll only trigger for free once or twice.
• If your opponent is interested in trading cards for damage, the reverse becomes more palatable for you.  Losing Jousting Dummy to a Bloodhaze Wolverine trigger buys you 3 life, making it easier to cast your bigger cards later on.
• When there's reasonable incentive to bluff, your opponent has lesser odds to actually have something.  As you're still OK trading a card for 3 life and some of your opponents mana, it becomes less risky to try to catch an opponent sneaking 2 past you.

Tactics have to change with unexpected context, heavily influencing the way Bloodhaze Wolverine plays.  Despite my initial impression that I'd never block, it turns out I always block.

Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg